The Accidental Highwayman (26 page)

“It's not enemies I fear,” she said. “It's going before the manling crowd to read fortunes.”

I'd completely forgotten about the tarot deck. “Shall I describe the cards?” I asked. “We can pretend you're reading my future.”

“No,” said she. “I worry the card of death will come up.”

“Right,” I said. “Never mind the cards, then. Just take the palm like this”—here I extended my hand—“and run your finger along the lines. Hem and haw, then say whatever seems good to you. The less instructive you can be, the better people will like it.”

She took my hand, and when her fingertips traced the lines on my palm, sparks flew up. We both laughed at that. Then she composed herself and tried again, her face grave.

Without warning, the world vanished around me, and I saw another of those visions such as had visited me when first we met.

I saw a terrifying beast wreathed in red flames, its head all jaws and teeth, plunging into combat with a vast dragon. There was a bloody battlefield beneath a sky full of enormous stars, or moons, I knew not which. I saw a fearsome black orb of immense size that belched smoke and fire and flew through the air, swallowing entire planets.

The next thing I saw was Morgana and Lily looking down at me with the ordinary afternoon sky above them. I was lying upon the ground.

“You fainted,” said Morgana.

“He's suffering from nerves, I expect,” said Lily. “It used to happen to 'im right before a performance when he was small.”

 

Chapter 25

PUGGLE'S SPECTACULAR

“L
ADIES,
G
ENTLEMEN,
and Urchins Underfoot,” cried Uncle Cornelius, “what you are about to witness is a distillation of wonders from all my years touring the world. This is not the most lavish show, nor the largest; I shall not fill your ears with unfounded claims. What I bring to you is a sampling of delectable delights, made portable enough to fit within the confines of our motley wain, with which we have beguiled the very crowns of Europe and the world. And they paid more than tuppence, rest assured.”

The old gentleman went on in this manner for some time, his voice, if not as loud as it once was, still equally persuasive. We had entreated him to complete his costume from the waist down, so now he wore riding breeches and turned-down boots lined with yellow calfskin, as well as a fine wooden theatrical sword.

We had determined the order of the performances based upon their likelihood of success, putting the weakest ones in the middle. Consequently Lily and Fred went on first, with a comical turn. Then I would perform some poorly rehearsed equestrian feats upon Midnight. Uncle Cornelius would deliver a humorous monologue about the Caliph of Arabee, and Lily would go on again to do her tightrope routine for the finale. Simultaneously with all of these events, Willum and Gruntle would put on their puppet show, and Morgana would sit on the back step of the wagon, pretending to read fortunes.

Cornelius would oversee everything and make certain we delivered a few pennies' worth of entertainment before the day was done.

We had decided to separate Morgana and the feyín from the main show in order that they might keep a lookout for Faerie agents. Morgana, particularly, was concerned about pixies—if the wagon was left unattended, they could get past the gold-leaf decorations and ill-repaired window just as well as Willum and Gruntle, for they were even smaller, and once concealed inside could cause us immeasurable trouble. But all of us hoped fervently they'd never discover we were persons of interest.

*   *   *

We stopped the caravan on the village green opposite the marketplace of the town we had selected, and Uncle Cornelius immediately demonstrated that he might be a little hazy about what year it was and whose company he was in, but he had forgotten not a whit of his experience doing shows.

“Ah, Beauregard,” said he, to my latest incarnation. “Just the fellow I wished to speak to. I have considered the arrangements and they are to be thus: if we arrange the tightrope there, between those two trees, we can park the 'van directly behind to act as a backdrop; and then we can place the bank, or stage platform, here at the side, at a slight angle so everyone can see. We'll need four casks of hogshead size and a dozen planks for this purpose.

“Then we shall put down straw in a circle forty-two feet in diameter, no more and no less, to cover the riding-ground directly beneath the tightrope. You can measure the circle precisely by attaching a twenty-one foot string to a stake; simply walk around the full compass with the string extended, and there's your riding-ring. But you know all this, Beau. I don't know why I'm telling you. I suppose I'm just anxious because the Sultan will be attending.”

I did as he directed. He barked up a crowd, collected pennies, and the show began.

Lily, who had only missed a few days of performance time during her retirement from the trade, was superb. She teased laughter from the crowd with Fred's assistance; he was a droll and heartwarming clown despite his two-inch fangs. Thus was sympathy established for the yellow-haired beauty. Then I came around from behind the wagon, riding upon Midnight. We hadn't rehearsed properly, but our desperate flight cross-country had taught us perfect harmony between rider and mount.

Midnight discharged his duties with excellent form. I, however, made a mess of things, and the crowd was against me until I tumbled off while attempting to stand in the saddle. There came a great gasp of horror from the audience. Now, just as my skill with a sword was mostly defensive, my finest skill upon a horse was falling off.

Long experience had taught me to roll through the impact with the straw-strewn ground. This I did, with no harm to my person. But when I stood up, the crowd groaning with concern, I made a great show of being wracked with agony. Thereafter, when I mounted the beast again, I could do no wrong—there's nothing like the possibility of a broken neck to warm up a crowd.

Cornelius's monologue was uproariously funny, the highlight of the show to that point. It had been an amusing patter when he was younger, I am sure. Now that he was absolutely mad, however, he kept adding in nonsensical flights of fancy, getting names wrong, forgetting his place in the story, and addressing an imaginary boy at the side of the stage who insisted on interrupting him. The entire crowd was doubled up and weeping with laughter by the time he was done. Although our better knowledge of his pitiable condition robbed his performance of mirth for we troupe-mates, we were as glad as any for the uproarious applause he received.

The final act could not have been better. Lily ascended to the tightrope, some twenty feet from the turf, on a loose end of the same strand that hung to the ground. Then I threw a cane up to her, as I had done so many times in my childhood. There was the sketch on the map! She used the cane as a balancing staff, and made a great deal of work out of shuffling to the middle of the swaying span. This was deliberate. She could, if she wished,
run
across a rope blind drunk and reading a book. With the audience's sympathies already aroused by her charming drollery with Fred, and then by her hesitant and fearful progress along the slender perch, she could have plucked the petals off a daisy and the entire crowd would have thought her brilliant.

However, she gave them everything she had (as was her custom in all matters). My own eyes swam with admiration for her courage and skill. She did cartwheels and somersaults, and danced upon the gyring rope as if it were the floor of the Palais Ballroom. She even walked upon her hands, revealing enough of her hind limbs to get every gentleman in the crowd perspiring freely. At the end of Lily's turn upon the rope, she struck a pose and called over the heads of the onlookers for me to bring Midnight around for the “old plunge,” as she called it.

I didn't want to make the attempt—I'd lost my touch with it completely—but she begged me, and the crowd demanded it, and at last I rode Midnight directly beneath her position, and stood upon the saddle with my arms stretched upward. Lily, now hanging by her hands from the rope, released her hold and plummeted into my arms. Luck was with us, and I didn't drop her or fall off the horse. We cantered around the ring to general applause, and I hadn't so enjoyed myself in two years.

“Extraordinary!” said Uncle Cornelius to Lily, when the crowd had dispersed. “Young lady, you are a natural talent, perfected by hard work. I have only known one better, and that was my niece, Lily, whom I scorned terribly, and who left my life years ago. If she was here—ah, but she is not. If only angels would deliver her to me, then you should see a proud gentleman begging upon his knees to be forgiven. But I'm being rude, and now my eyes are wet with tears, and I suppose I
am
just a mad old fool.”

Lily met this speech with implorations: “I
am
your Lily,” and, “Don't you know me, Uncle?”

She devolved into misery when the old man asked her, but a minute later, “Did you not enjoy the show, ma'amoiselle? If not, I shall allow you admittance to the audience free of cost upon the occasion of our next performance.”

All did not go perfectly. There were impediments to the success of the show other than my own incompetence, which I heard about later that evening when the market had closed up and we were sojourning in a farmer's field before a good campfire, with an enormous feast of market-fresh delicacies roasting upon it, and a jug of ale passing around.

The first difficulty involved Gruntle, who, minutes before the Punch-theater curtains were to part, was overcome by a terrible case of stage fright. The poor fellow was beside himself. Willum had reminded him they would never be visible, even for a moment, and it was just playacting for children, like when the feyín enchanted ladybirds for their own young to distract them from doing ruckinses. Willum tried everything to keep his companion from paralysis. Gruntle thought he was going to be sick. Then the curtains parted, and Gruntle took courage and went on.

Had a child crept close to the puppet theater and whisked aside the painted tapestry that formed the enclosure for the puppeteer's legs, he would have been surprised to discover there were no legs within, nor any puppeteer. Fortunately, no child was so precocious. Instead, the crisis arose when Willum and Gruntle started out as Punch and Judy, and made a terrible mess of it; they were heckled by infants.

Uncle Cornelius, between his own turns, had an opportunity to observe. He saw the feyín lurching their puppet costumes about, shouting in shrill voices in just the way all such shows are done. It looked very like any other puppet show, but lacked the slightest spark of fun.

So he went up behind the theater and whispered, “Tell 'em any story you like, lads, but it's got to be a story you believe. Put your own life into it. They'll like that well enough.”

This could have been a disaster, if the Faeries had taken him at his literal word, for they might have exposed the entire subterfuge. We would have been beset by pixies inside the half hour. But humble Gruntle was inspired; he took the lead. In no time, he was clad in a dragon-puppet costume, and breathing fire of orange yarn at the brave highwayman, secretly the son of a noble family (Willum inside a Dick Turpin puppet), who must also battle a large spider, Punch, a soldier, and a genuine stuffed rat before he won the princess's hand.

Below is rendered a sample of the performance that day.

The scene: a typical Punch-theater with curtains framing the proscenium, the performance area being about two feet square, with an apron suitable for hand puppets. The backdrop is a painted country scene. A score of children sit before the theater.

Dick Turpin rises into view.

D
ICK
T
URPIN

Right ho, list thee well, you rotten little scoundrels. I am in fact the famous highwayman Whistling Ja—No … er … em …

[There is a pause while he struggles to think of a name.]

D
ICK
T
URPIN

Not Whistling ahem. Er … Whispering Jane. Rather … Shivering Jim? No no no no … My name is Sniveling Git!

[Roar of laughter from crowd]

D
ICK
T
URPIN

No, no, I said that wrong. I meant to say … erm …

[Various unsavory suggestions from the crowd]

D
ICK
T
URPIN

You! You in front there, with the tooth missing. One more remark like that and I'll give you a clout up your earhole you won't soon forget!

[Further threats are interrupted by a voice issuing from out of sight below the apron.]

S
PIDER

(loud whisper)

Thundering Clive.

D
ICK
T
URPIN

Thundering Clive? Who the blazes is that, thou mutton-witted aphid-muncher?