Part 1
The Pledge
Feed with mystery the human mind, which dearly loves mystery.
—The esteemed magician Harry Kellar
THE NEW YORK HERALD
Friday, November 9, 1883
TENSIONS ESCALATE IN GERMANIC KINGDOM OF WÜRTTEMBERG FOLLOWING RATIFICATION OF “TRIPLE ALLIANCE”
Calvin Archer, New York Office
The historic defensive “Triple Alliance” treaty between the German Empire, Italy, and Austria-Hungary, when initially proposed last year, was met with widespread resistance in the Kingdom of Württemberg, a resource-rich Germanic nation that has suffered both politically and economically since Reich unification. Opponents decried the treaty as overreaching and particularly unfair to Württemberg, and contended that ratification would surely sound the death knell for the southern state’s sovereignty.
King Charles I’s capitulation to the empire’s pressures to ratify subsequently spurred a growing nationalist movement within Württemberg’s borders, with key nobility rumored to be setting the stage for a resistance...
Chapter 1
In the Wings
November 9, 1883
Coraline O’Malley—known as “Cora Mack” to her current troupe and company—stands at the ready as assistant stagehand, watching from behind the scenes as her aging boss, Prospero the Great, performs feat after feat of manufactured wonder for tonight’s enraptured audience. A parade of ghosts slinking through his labyrinth of onstage mirrors. A kaleidoscope of butterflies spiraling out from the floor and over the crowd. A tree growing in rapid time from a plot of dirt, a sprout unfurling and blooming into an orange plant taller than Prospero himself in a matter of minutes.
But the most confounding magic of the night, at least in Cora’s opinion, lies offstage: the wealthiest, most afternoonified audience she has ever encountered, currently seated in Mrs. Iris Witt’s two-hundred-guest-capacity private auditorium housed inside her palatial Madison Avenue home.
Incredibly, Prospero’s show is only one of the evening’s many diversions, a themed “Night of Illusions,” which seems intended to herald the arrival of November and another New York social season. The Witts’ foyer has been transformed intoa circus, complete with fire-eaters. Their ballroom, a ribboned carousel of real live zebras and giraffes. Partygoers decked in costumed gowns riddled with brilliants, skirts swathed in lace, fascinators of gems and exotic feathers. Mrs. Witt’s own peacock headpiece is so enormous that it blocks the views of the ill-fated dozens seated behind her.
Cora swallows. The sheer overwhelming excess, the unfairness ofso muchconcentrated wealth in one room in one corner of one city—
Just breathe, she tells herself.Breathe and reset the stage.Jealousy won’t get her back Long Creek Farm, after all—but picking this audience’s gilded pockets postshow certainly might.
“Are you sure you can handle her?” Maeve, the show’s lead stagehand, sidles breathlessly beside Cora. A hefty magnet—usually Cora’s responsibility during performances—is balanced precariously across Maeve’s back, further rounding the old woman’s stooped shoulders. “Dinah can be a handful, ye know, so if you’re having second thoughts—”
“Maeve, I’ll never manage a raise if I can’t master all the tricks,” Cora says.
Maeve’s crinkled lips pull into a worried frown. “Told ya, love, Prospero don’t give raises.”
“And I told you, I’m gonna be the exception.” Cora sighs, hiding her frustration with an assuring smile. “I can handle her, honest. You can trust me.”Although, come to think of it, Dinah should certainly be out of the dressing rooms by now.
“All right, love. Break a leg.” Maeve flashes Cora a small smile before glancing at the stage. “That’s my cue.” Readjusting the large magnet across her shoulders like a donkey pole, Maeve hurries down the backstage stairs and into the trap room.
Onstage, Prospero welcomes his latest volunteer. “Mr. Vanderbilt, would you consider yourself a man of great strength?”
The volunteer flexes his muscles, and the crowd laughs.
Prospero lifts a small box, opening the container for the audience to see. “You all bear witness, evidence that this box is empty.”
Cora peers around the backstage area, her concern beginning to mount. Dinah is a handful indeed. She has been Prospero’s assistant since the Grant administration and fashions herself a true star—dismissive of Cora and Maeve, generally abrasive, and habitually late. Cora considers dragging her out of the dressing rooms when a high-pitched voice sounds behind her.
“Well, don’t just stand there!” Dinah spins around in her glittering stage dress, giving Cora access to the unbuttoned back. “Hitch me up!”
Cora bites back choice words and jumps to, affixing the wooden plank to Dinah’s corset, just like Maeve showed her during dress rehearsal. If she can somehow prove to Prospero that she deserves to make as much as Maeve—maybe even work onstage alongside him, split the stage tricks with Dinah—well, she’ll be that much closer to getting back her home.
Onstage, meanwhile, Prospero has placed the empty box on a small table before him. “Mr. Vanderbilt, please, if you might lift the box... with your unparalleled vigor.”
