A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)
Mercedes Lackey
1
NAN Killian was surrounded by mayhem. Deafening pandemonium.
Darkness shrouded her and her companions; they were nothing but a handful of insignificant observers in the cavernous, shadow-wrapped room full of people.
And all of them were screaming.
“Look behind you!” Nan shrieked at the top of her lungs. Beside her, her ward, little Suki, screamed the same thing. So did Sarah Lyon-White, her dearest friend—and John and Mary Watson sitting on the other side of Suki. Even Lord Alderscroft!
Everyone else in the theater shouted the same words, together, in a thundering, raucous chorus.
“Look behind you!” they all screamed with delight, as Aladdin, resplendent in blue and gold satin, tiptoed his way across the stage, with the black-robed Evil Magician Abanazer right behind him, about to pounce and steal his lamp.
It was a week to Christmas, and that meant it was time for that hallowed and beloved Christmas tradition known throughout all of England, when theaters and music halls gave over their usual schedules to the Panto. The cherished, silly, absurd, childish Christmas Pantomime, that everyone went to, and probably enjoyed to the hilt even when they were pretending not to. It was a chance not just to feel like a child, but to be a child again. A chance to be dazzled by tinsel and stage magic, to enjoy a sugarcoated story where the hero and heroine would live happily forever and, for the adults, a chance to catch naughty double entendres that flew right over the children’s heads.
And here in London, Christmas Panto time meant you were absolutely spoiled for choice. Every theater had a different show, but Suki, Nan and Sarah’s “adopted” charge, had been very firm in her wish to see Aladdin, and only Aladdin, and only this Aladdin. When the papers began advertising the upcoming season, she had, it seemed, carefully perused the newspaper accounts of every production on offer, and she wanted this particular one, at the Britannia, which featured two stars this year, a ballet dancer (who was supposedly very famous) as the Princess, and a prominent Shakespearian actor as Widow Twanky, Aladdin’s mother. Nan had never heard of either of them, but Sarah had assured her that they were both very highly regarded, which was good enough for her. So plans were made, and then put in motion.
But then the plans changed, for the better.
A few days ago, when Nan had begged off the lecture John Watson had proposed for this afternoon, and she had explained why, Mary had perked up so much even John had noticed.
“My love, are you actually—” he began.
“Proposing we go to the Panto?” she responded, before he could finish the sentence. “Oh yes, please! I haven’t been since I was tiny—Father didn’t really approve of theater in any form, and we lived very quiet lives. Can we? I should like to play at being a child again for an afternoon!”
John Watson had been very surprised at this side of his wife, but Nan could tell he rather liked it. “Very well, my dear, if it’s all right with Nan, we’ll all go, and we’ll do the Christmas Treat properly. Luncheon at that tearoom you like so much, the matinee, then we’ll look at store windows until Suki is tired, or we run out of windows, then dinner wherever takes your fancy, and home in a jolly old growler.”
And the day had almost gone according to that programme—except that Lord Alderscroft had got wind of it, and nothing would do but he send his carriage and come along himself for the fun. So Alderscroft had picked them all up in his carriage, then luncheon had been in the tearoom. But dinner would be at his Lordship’s townhouse, which he had opened for the Christmas season although he usually lived at his club. And here they all were, in the best seats in the house, a private box, no less, with his Lordship himself next to Sarah, bellowing with everyone else, “Look behind you!”
If anyone had told Nan as a child that the cold, forbidding Lord Alderscroft would be sitting next to her at the Panto yelling at the actors, she would have said, “You’re barmy!”
This version of the Wizard of London was one she liked very much better than the one she had first been introduced to as a child. She was pretty certain he liked this version of himself very much better as well.
Mary and John appeared to be having the time of their lives. Mary was pink with pleasure, and John Watson had thrown off the least inkling of stuffiness and was catcalling and cheering like one of the little boys sitting below their box.
Suki was nearly beside herself with happiness. She had almost all of her favorite adults with her, and they were all acting just like children in the best possible ways—shouting for the hero and heroine, hissing and insulting the villain, and screaming at the stage at all the right moments.
Nan and Sarah were no strangers to the Christmas Panto tradition; the entire Harton School—barring the ones too small—went every year. But the expense of procuring tickets for dozens of children, not to mention the expense of transportation for so many, had meant that they’d only ever seen the stage from what Sahib Harton inelegantly called the “pigeon’s seats,” from which vantage the figures on the stage looked like brightly colored insects, and you couldn’t properly see the magic tricks at all. Lord Alderscroft had taken over the expedition with his customary efficiency—or rather, his private secretary had—and so the private box was exceedingly comfortable, near enough to see everything clearly, but as his Lordship said, “Near enough to see the pips on the playing cards. Far enough away the tinsel looks like gold.” It was a little bit of a squash getting all six of them in a box meant for four, but they managed.