Mad Marguerite

After enjoying a few drinks, Marguerite left the post-show festivities. As much as she enjoyed the revelry, she had had enough of crowds for one day. She returned to Alexandra’s show tent, her temporary home while the circus was grounded, dropping her lab coat on her current bed of blankets and pillows. It felt strange to be in a place so quiet, her usual abode filled with the noises of her animals. So, when a metallic click sounded outside the tent wall, Marguerite hitched up her skirts, tucking them into her belt. She was not about to be caught off guard so near to Vapeur’s successful prank.

Two hushed male voices circled the tent, their footsteps light. Marguerite stood near the entrance. When their voices neared the gap between the curtains, Marguerite stepped outside to see Alphonse and Hyacinth, the acrobat twins from Hirondelle. They each held a lit torch, and smelled like the concoction she had brewed for their circus.

Before they could even recognize her, Marguerite punched one of them, grabbing his torch as he fell and using it to hit the other one upside the head. She grabbed the other torch and kicked the two of them until both had ceased crawling and instead curled around themselves.

“Good evening, messieurs,” she said. “I trust you are well?”

“Crazy bitch!” One of them said. Marguerite hit him with a torch. The blow landed on the back of his head. He screamed and clutched at the singed base of his skull.

“Good to hear,” she continued. “If you will please see yourselves out, now, I’m afraid I’m quite tired, and not up for any further entertaining tonight.”

She dropped the torches on each of them. They screamed and rolled about, putting out the flames on the torches before it could spread to their own clothes. Marguerite thought it a shame that they did not catch fire, but she was pleased when they scrambled to their feet, casting back fearful and angry looks in her direction. They were out of her sight within moments.

Her hands shook. She took a moment to collect herself before inspecting the tent. She smelled oil, and spotted a canister of it at the back of the tent. Thankfully, her torch brandishing had not caught on anything.

A wave of shouting carried across the circus grounds.

“What now?” She said, wondering what further trouble the twins and their lot were causing Vapeur.

She ran in the direction of the shouts, noticing along the way that some people were busy putting out fires. Not about to start playing with that again, she continued to follow the louder noises, which began to include scuffling feet as more circus members came out to see what was happening.

Cirque de la Vapeur’s stagehands were fighting with Hirondelle’s. Marguerite could only imagine that those were the men who she could smell from where she stood on the brawl’s outskirts. Some of the other circus members of Vapeur were trying to pull the men apart, while others joined in. More fires ringed the area, and Marguerite recognized Colette’s cabin on the opposite side of the clearing in time to see her charge into the fray.

“The fire!” Marguerite heard Colette scream. “Put it out, or we’re all going to die!”

Smoke burned Marguerite’s eyes. She threw herself at the nearest pair of fighting men and drew them away by their collars.

“Fools, tend the fire!” Once she had their attention, she added, “Stop the others and get them to the fires! Go!” One of the men nodded, picking another pair to stop the fight between. The other ran off, and Marguerite wished she knew the stagehands better, so that she could have kicked the Hirondelle men some more. Soon enough, the fighting died down and the fires were put out. Some small shouting matches continued, and whenever she heard them, Marguerite swooped down and twisted their ears until they had quieted.

The moon peeked through clouds of smoke, and Marguerite wondered if she would ever be rid of the smells of ash. The unwanted fires were dimming, and soon gone entirely. Stagehands lurched by, nursing wounds at varying levels of severity. Tom Sry approached, his own face bruised over one eye, but the man he supported looked worse.

“I’ve got some boys need patching up, if you don’t mind,” he said.

“Put them in the dining tent. I’ll be with them shortly.” Marguerite did not think this was the time to bring it up, but she wanted to ask Colette if she would eventually receive a bonus for her medical help.

Marguerite fetched a basic medical kit from her belongings, then made her way to the makeshift hospital. There were no life-threatening injuries, although many men would likely have scars. Marguerite took a deep breath.

“Get out if you can walk and are not bleeding,” she said, repeating the instruction as she walked through the area, taking stock of the injuries she would need to treat first. Once the room had cleared of all uninjured except for Tom and a few others who insisted they would help, Marguerite directed that minor cuts be cleaned and covered, then sent on their way. She then began to treat those that needed sutures and a few who needed their noses, jaws, hands, and fingers set from fractures. Many of the stagehands flinched when she treated them. She did not speak to them or respond to their protests of pain, but cleaned them up and moved on. She wanted to get out of clothes that smelled like fire again, and to sleep. These men griped and yelped at her every move, and when they were not making noise of protestation, they were bantering. She wanted them to be quiet for a change, especially after she heard one of them refer to her as Mad Marguerite.

“Your bedside mannerisms are atrocious,” one of the men said. He had tried to tell her a joke, and she had ignored him. Marguerite turned her head to look at him, her eyes narrowed and her fist clenched.

“Monsieur, I assure you that the treatment you are receiving is adequate. Your limbs are still attached, you have not been strapped to a table, nor have you been sedated with anything more flavorful than alcohol. I will excuse your own stupidity for engaging in fisticuffs with less than sanitary gentlemen, but if you insist on insulting your caregiver, I will see to it that you are immobilized for no less than the length of our next excursion.”

The man who spoke wisely ceased his previous action, instead holding out his wound so that its sluggish bleeding was cleaned and bandaged by Marguerite. Their talk unnerved her. What they said made sense, even if she could tell that some of it was said out of nervousness, adrenaline, or shock. They responded to her care, and were alert or chatting with each other while she tended to them. They also called to her attention her less than warm personality outside her profession. The movement of the circus was alien to her actions, which were normally done in quiet rooms on starched sheets with the occasional solitary doctor or nurse waiting for Marguerite to finish her shift.

Tending to sane, living people left Marguerite more drained than she had anticipated after her already long day. When her work was finished, and the stagehands as fixed as they were going to be for the night, Marguerite packed her things and returned to her tent. She collapsed on top of her lab coat, not caring about the ash any more, and slept.