Angels of Music Read Online Free PDF

fresh face. And finished.’
    He stopped before Christine, struck by her.
    ‘You are so perfect,’ said Cochenille. ‘From here, you will go to the arms of a rich man, a powerful man who will be in
your
power. You will sway the fates of fortunes, armies, countries. But you will have no happiness for yourself. These men who receive you, they appreciate you not. Only Cochenille truly sees your beauty.’
    Christine concentrated very hard on being frozen. As an artists’ model, Trilby was used to holding a pose, but Christine’s nerves were a-twitch. She worried that the pulse in her throat or a flicker in her eyes would give her away. And the urge to fidget was strong in her.
    ‘What these men know not is that they take my cast-offs,’ said the gnome, rather unpleasantly. ‘Before you wake, before you are sent to them, you are – for this brief tender moment – the Brides of Cochenille.’
    With horror, Christine realised this shrunken thing, with his withered face and roué’s face paint, was unbuttoning his one-piece garment, working down from his neck, shrugging free of his sleeves.
    She would do only so much for Erik!
    Cochenille leaned close, wet tongue out. Suddenly, he was puzzled, affronted.
    ‘Mademoiselle,’ he said, shocked, ‘you are too… warm!’
    Christine gripped the rack from which she was hung, taking the weight off her corset, and scissored her legs around Cochenille’s middle. Trilby leaped up, tearing an arm from the nearest doll, wielding it like a polo mallet. She fetched the gnome a ferocious blow on the side of his head as Christine tried to squeeze life out of the loathsome little degenerate.
    Cochenille’s head spun around on his neck, rotating in a complete circle several times. He ended up looking behind him, at the astonished Trilby.
    ‘He’s a doll,’ she gasped.
    Something in his neck had broken and he couldn’t speak. His glass eyes glinted furiously. Christine still had him trapped.
    ‘And he is a disgusting swine,’ she said.
    Trilby lifted Cochenille’s head from his neck and his body went limp in Christine’s grip. She let go and the body collapsed like a puppet unstrung.
    His eyes still moved angrily. Trilby yanked coils and springs from his neck, detaching a long velvety tongue with a slither as if she were pulling a snake out of a bag. She threw the tongue away.
    Christine got down from her rack and uncricked her aching back.
    Trilby tossed the head to her, as if it were a child’s ball. She saw lechery in those marble eyes, and threw the nasty thing out of the window, hoping it wound up stuck on one of the fence spikes.
    Outside, dogs barked.
    Christine, conscious of her
déshabillé
, looked around for her ruined dress.
    Then the door opened again.
    They looked at the guns aimed at them. Christine slowly put her hands up. Trilby did likewise.
    ‘Who have we here?’ said the tall old man with the pistols. ‘Uninvited guests?’
    ‘Snoopers,’ said his smaller partner. ‘Drop ’em in the vat.’
    The tall man smiled, showing sharp yellow teeth.

VI
    I RENE AND THE Persian had doffed their Khasi and Princess disguises. Now, they wore close-fitting black bodystockings with tight hoods like those popularised by the English soldiers at Balaclava. The lower parts of their faces were covered with black silk scarves; only their eyes showed.
    They crept along the deck of the barge, conscious of the music and chatter below. The clowns were performing some interminable rhapsody from Bohemia, which made Irene vow to avoid that region in the future. The full moon and the lights of the city were not their friend, but they knew how to slip from shadow to shadow.
    On the Pont du Carrousel, a solitary man stood, looking down at the dark waters and the barge. Irene saw the shape and laid a hand on the Persian’s arm to stop him stepping into moonlight. They pressed against the side of a lifeboat, still in the shadow. Irene first assumed the man on the bridge was a stroller