Read Online The Glimmer Palace by Beatrice Colin - Free Book Online Page B

had his arms folded and was tapping his foot. Since he could never remember any lines, the suitor hadn’t been given any. The king sat on a throne that Sister August recognized instantly as one from the chapel.
    “My dear daughter, Wilgefortis, will be here any moment to marry you,” he said. “Ah, here she is now.”
    Tiny Lil was now wearing a long veil over her face. The suitor rubbed his hands. He was a foot smaller than his bride. They stood side by side. Tiny Lil whipped off her veil. The suitor jumped back in horror. Someone stifled a snigger. She wore a huge red fake beard, borrowed from a production of Falstaff .
    “What have you done?” said Tiny Lil’s possible father when the laughing from the younger orphans in the front row had almost stopped. “He’ll never marry you now.”
    “It was God’s work,” she replied. “He answered my prayer.”
    “You’ll pay for this,” yelled the actor. “With your life.”
    The audience, as one, turned and raised their eyebrows at each other. Sister August closed her eyes and breathed out very slowly. Her fists were tightly clenched in her lap.
    When the curtain was yanked up again by a child on the balcony above, Tiny Lil, still wearing the beard, was tied to a cross. She took two deep breaths and then expired. The king and the suitor clinked a couple of tankards and pretended to drink. Nothing happened for a couple of seconds, and Tiny Lil’s eyes flickered open as she tried to catch someone’s eye left of the stage. Finally a small boy walked onstage dressed in torn and dirty clothes, playing a Gypsy tune on a fiddle. He paused at the would-be dead girl’s feet. She kicked off one of her boots. He picked it up.Wernher, who was proud of the fact that he never missed his cues, strolled onstage just at the right moment.
    “How dare you steal my dead daughter’s gold boot,” he hissed.
    “But she kicked it off,” the boy replied.
    “How could she? I had her crucified. I’ll crucify you, too, I think.”
    “Let me prove my innocence,” he pleaded. “Let me play again and show you.”
    The boy played.The actor glanced briefly at the audience.They all seemed transfixed—all except the nun, and that could only be expected. Tiny Lil let him play on, longer than she had done in rehearsal; and then, with all her might, she kicked off the other golden boot. It flew up and turned round and round in the air, toe, heel, toe, heel, and then sailed down in a curve, struck the general on the head, bounced up again, and fell straight into Sister August’s lap. Finally the nun looked up.
    “So you are innocent after all,” the actor proclaimed. “And my daughter was right.There is a God.”
    Here he threw himself on the ground and started to sob noisily.
    “She was a saint, Saint Wilgefortis. And you can keep the boot.”
    And with that, the curtain fell once more and the audience broke into a somewhat unconvinced round of applause. Still wearing her beard, Tiny Lil came out from behind the curtain and took a bow. A few of the actors whistled. One of the actresses had been laughing so hard all the way through that she had to run to the bathroom. The general stood up and proclaimed that he had to leave immediately for another engagement. The contribution plate was awash with ten-mark notes, but the damage had been done. Sister August had proved that she was everything the general had assumed. As she said good-bye and thanked the audience for coming, the nun’s face was ashen. She still held the boot. Some of the gold paint had come off on her hand.
    “Lilly,” she said when the last of them had left, “I want to see you in my office immediately.”
    It was at this point that God’s singularly effervescent light switched itself off in Tiny Lil’s mind for good. A puff of dirty cloud blew across the sun and she suddenly felt a small black hole open inside. She didn’t care about what anyone thought apart from one; she had written the play for Sister August,