The Accidental Highwayman (27 page)

[A large SPIDER rises until just visible at the bottom of the stage, prodding Dick Turpin with a hairy leg.]

S
PIDER

You are, mate.

D
ICK
T
URPIN

Oh, you mean—… YES! That's my name, for I am Thundering Clive, fearsome pirate.

S
PIDER

Highwayman.

T
HUNDERING
C
LIVE

Where!

S
PIDER

You are. A highwayman.

[Peals of laughter from audience]

T
HUNDERING
C
LIVE

The next one of you delinquents laughs at my suffering, you're in for a smiting.

[The spider emerges into full view, bows to the audience.]

S
PIDER

But after all, 'ere we are, you adventurin' about like what you do, and up jumps me, this great urgly spider, and says I'm going to bite yon princess on the head. Now what are you going to do, Clive?

T
HUNDERING
C
LIVE

By the Barbary Ape of the Forgotten Moon! Have at you, thou rancid villain!

[Thundering Clive strikes the spider across the head with some violence. The spider, enraged, beats at Clive with its nine or ten legs.]

S
PIDER

Quit hittin' me so 'ard! Take that, and these!

[A furious battle rages across the stage. Then Clive drops out of sight and returns with a REDCOAT SOLDIER puppet, permanently attached to a musket with fixed bayonet. He uses this weapon to jab at the spider.]

T
HUNDERING
C
LIVE

How do you like that! Taste cold steel, Tegenaria gigantea!

S
PIDER

Right, you're for it, mate.

[The somewhat tattered spider dips out of view, during which time Clive accidentally drops the redcoat puppet in front of the theater and has to implore a scurvy child of four years to return it.]

[Meanwhile, hook-nosed PUNCH has risen into view behind Clive, wielding a club.]

[Punch insists on speaking with the whistling voice of the traditional character, which requires a kazoolike device called a swazzle inserted in the mouth. As the swazzle is for human-sized mouths, nothing Punch says can be deciphered.]

P
UNCH

(unintelligible cry)

[Shouted warnings from thoroughly amused children]

[Punch gives the highwayman a good thump on the head.]

T
HUNDERING
C
LIVE

Attack from behind!

[Thundering Clive and Punch proceed to beat each other until Punch's chin falls off.]

The best laughs were got when Willum's temper overboiled and he fell out of character and began to shout at Gruntle. The latter party, meanwhile, revealed a talent for storytelling that had all the children in the audience clamoring with delight. As soon as the performance had ended, Uncle Cornelius pretended to escort the puppet-master within the theater back to the wagon; in truth he was carrying the entire apparatus.

I had the opportunity to watch a bit of the performance, and laughed aloud. Then a rare flash of inspiration came to me, and I drew the map out of my coat. The hunched figure in the new drawing wasn't Magda at all. It was the puppet Punch!

The final difficulty in our première performance taught Morgana a thing or two about human nature. She sat on the caravan's back step with her crystal ball (a lump of glass) and Gypsy costume (she had made her nose longer and more prominent for the occasion, some little adjustment with the jaguundi cloak).

She did not have the power of seeing the future the way Magda did, but as I had explained to her beforehand, a fortune-teller does not tell the fortune of tomorrow, but of today. So when she began taking customers, mostly women come to town to do their marketing, she saw glimpses, in that uncanny way she had, of their innermost hopes and fears. She addressed these directly.

This went very poorly. Her customers didn't want to hear whom their husbands found prettier than them, or learn their children were just as badly behaved as they feared. She was spoiling her patrons' illusions about themselves.

“You're a witch!” one of the women cried.

“Not yet. I'm too young,” said Morgana. The woman ran away wailing.

After that, Morgana didn't want to tell fortunes any longer. But Uncle Cornelius whispered in her ear, and she went from a state of misery to one of inspiration. She had only one customer left, a shy girl with a stammer. She informed the girl that she would come, ere long, into good luck, love, and money. The girl scampered away in a state of great excitement. Within minutes, Morgana had a queue stretched halfway around the riding-ring, and was pronounced a genuine soothsayer, consorting with the very spirits of the aether.

*   *   *

There had been no sign of magical persons the entire day, and although a couple of soldiers stopped to watch Lily's aerial act, they didn't take any interest in me. Like the fellows I had enriched at the bridge, they were ordinary king's men. Once Captain Sterne followed our trail to this place, as he surely would, I didn't doubt they would remember the trick-rider on the beautiful black horse well enough. But as long as we stayed ahead, our subterfuge might work: It seemed our little troupe's greatest disguise was indeed the open air.

 

Chapter 26

A BRIEF AND HAPPY IDYLL

I
T IS
a regrettable feature of storytelling that the happy parts must generally be left out, or the tale becomes dull. Forgive me for omitting an account of the carefree days we spent upon the road, except to describe them in summary form, with a discursion into one unpleasant occasion.

We made our way northwest by short stages, stopping wherever our little Spectacular might draw a crowd. We were sometimes in the company of other troupes, and sometimes by ourselves; many a stimulating adventure was had, and many a triumph won, all within the compass of our show. I don't think Lily or I had ever enjoyed such success—I had enough gold to keep us all, but in the end we earned enough copper to pay for our fare, without the slightest touch on my pocket.

The wagon was the sun, and we its satellites. Along we went, through rain and shine. There were good roads and bad. Midnight seemed happy in his new role: He would condescend to pull the wagon if he could later canter around the ring to cries of admiration. The friendships between us all were cemented (all but one, which I shall explain shortly).

Uncle Cornelius was the happiest man alive, returned to his glory before senescence
*
took him, and mingling daily with imaginary kings. He delighted in the company of Lily, whom he often said reminded him uncommonly much of his niece; but Lily herself—whom he called Julie, or Meg, or Emma, or Saphira, or a host of other people's names—was always found wanting, for she had not all the excellent qualities of the Lily he carried with him in his mind.

Willum and Gruntle continued to argue, but found great joy in their theatrical partnership, and Gruntle's wing knit back together with the help of daily healing comprimaunts performed by Willum. Morgana and Lily, meanwhile, as different a pair as nature could devise, their friendship strengthened by adversity, grew fonder of each other by the day. Lily taught Morgana everything there was to know about human strengths and weaknesses, which she was adept at mixing in perfect proportion. I think Morgana, for her part, showed Lily how to be more confident in herself, lending her a little royal dignity.

The only friendship that seemed to gain no strength from experience was that between Morgana and myself. It was always thus: We would enjoy some mutual occasion that ought to have thrown us closer together, and then something would occur that seemed to widen the gulf even more. It put me in a terrible state of agitation, at times; I knew not why, unless it was a desire to be popular with princesses, or to have pretty Faerie halfsies think me admirable. The worst of these occasions began as a harmless mistake, and burgeoned into a tempest.

*   *   *

We had a day without any performances to do, wending our way between two towns, and upon our halt happened to camp somewhere in the vicinity of a beehive. Consequently, there were many of the industrious little creatures about. Morgana was constantly occupied with them.

“Cannot bees be intercepted by spies?” I asked while one such creature spelled out its message on the back of her hand.

“No, for they will reveal their messages to none but the recipient.”

“Even on pain of death?”

“Bees live in numbers, not alone. They care little for their own lives, if the rest live.”

“Admirable quality,” said I, and sat upon a stone. A lance of pain shot up the part of me that doesn't light up, and I sprang to my feet.

“Pixies!” I cried.

Willum soared into view, casting caprizels in all directions.

“Into the wagon!” Morgana cried, and Lily and Uncle Cornelius, at least, complied. Fred bared his teeth, crouched on the roof of the wagon. We waited for the onslaught of arrows, Morgana with her hands up to ward them off with magic.

Nothing happened. The air hummed with drowsy bees, not pixie arrows.

Willum alighted on the stone I'd recently vacated, and examined its surface.

“Not pixies,” said he. “You sat upon a bee.”

“By the Six Sisters!” Morgana shouted at me. “Thou manling blunderoon!”

She wouldn't speak to me, nor accept my apologies. I'd not only slain the bee, but erased its message, which was part of some fey negotiation.

*   *   *

Disgraced, I retreated to the far side of the wagon and told my troubles to Midnight. Willum took pity on me, I suspect, for he took up a post between the horse's ears and began to describe his ongoing efforts to recruit local feyín to our cause. According to him, the wee people, feyín and pixies, were the only Faeries who lived most of the time in the First Realm. Could we but recruit enough of them to the revolutionary cause, King Elgeron would be isolated in the Middle Kingdom and his human alliances made moot.

Since our adventures began, he had been flitting about, always far from our route, to pass word to his relatives about the cause. He had thousands of relatives, and word spread quickly. But few would commit to it, fearing raids by the royalist pixie bands such as had slain Violets. As we spoke of these matters, a bee alighted in a flower not far from us.

“How do I send someone a bee?” I asked, watching the insect at its work.

Willum rolled his eyes at my simplicity. “It's simple. First get its attention, and then tell it your message. Then tell it who the message is for. Off it goes,” he said, as if to a child.

“So I could tell this bee,” I said, pointing to a bee, “‘Dear Princess Morgana, you enchant me,' and then say, ‘Take this to Princess Morgana,' and it would do so? Simple as that?”

I composed this message ironically, for Morgana and I were not speaking.

“Yes, but that's not the right sort of bee,” Willum said.

“How do I know the right kind of bee?”

“By its accent,” he said, and, bored with my ignorance, flew away.

*   *   *

Not an hour later, having practiced some riding tricks with Midnight and Lily, I returned to the wagon for some tea, and found Morgana sitting alone inside, her eyes downcast.

“You and Lily,” said she, “get along so very well.”

“Yes,” said I, defensively. “It's because she's predictable, and I'm not very bright. It's the formula for happiness.”

“You're far more clever than you believe,” she said. “Twisting a princess up in knots is no easy feat.”

Well, I thought I was in for another argument, and filled my chest with air to expend upon my defense, but the sharp words didn't come. Instead, she looked up at me and smiled her radiant, secret smile, the one that bewitched me. I thought to myself,
This must be what warm toast feels like when butter melts into it.

Her smile turned quizzical. “Toast?” she said.

Once again I turned red with such force my face felt as if it might burst.

“Can you read my mind?” I fairly shouted. “I've been meaning to ask, but I was afraid of the answer.”

Morgana looked surprised, and a little hurt. “I don't
read
your mind, I
receive
things from it. You just sent me a picture of buttered toast. I love buttered toast the best of all manling food.”

“Oh curse my britches!” I said. “I was just admiring your smile, and an image of buttered toast came into my head, that's all.”