The Adventures of Mr. Maximillian Bacchus and His Travelling Circus (3 page)

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The road to Asia the deep was a long and uneven one, and it was uncomfortable in the small caravan. Although it had been generally agreed at the beginning of the journey that the idea of going to Cathay was a good one, as the days passed, and the road became narrower, it seemed less and less attractive.

They had been travelling on the road for about five or six days when they came to an orchard. There were hundreds of trees laid out in avenues—plum, apple, peach, fig and pomegranate—all heavily laden with ripe fruit. In the evening sky the Plough was rising, so Hero stopped the caravan and everybody climbed out to stretch their legs and to smell the sweet September air. Suddenly, the perfect silence was broken by a loud voice:

“Thief! Thief!” it shouted. “Stop thief!” and as its first echoes died, between the trees there ran a young man with long black curls, pursued from the depths of the orchard by the orchard-keeper himself, shouting oaths and accusations. Run as he might, however, the keeper was too short and fat to catch up, until suddenly the beautiful young man tripped over the sprawling roots of a plum tree and fell headlong into the uncut grass. There he lay, quite still, and when the angry keeper at last reached the spot and raised the youth’s head by the hair his eyes were closed and his mouth gaped like that of a Lantern Fish. The orchard keeper was too angry to notice, however, and seizing up a dead branch from the ground he cried:

“I shall beat you, boy—within an inch of paradise and back again.”

At that moment Mr. Bacchus opened the orchard gate and marched towards the keeper.

“You, sir!” he said, pointing his stick at the panting little man.

“What do you want, Mummer?” growled the keeper.

“That boy is either senseless or dead, sir,” replied Mr. Bacchus. “May I suggest you unhand him?”

“What?” exclaimed the orchard-keeper with a horrified look, releasing the youth’s hair as if it had become snakes and bitten him. “Dead? What’s that? I didn’t touch him. Did I strike him? Did the blow fall? No!”

By now Ophelia was kneeling beside the fallen youth, trying to turn him over.

“Let me,” said Hero, and with one hand rolled the young man onto his back.

The sight was not a pretty one. The youth’s white shirt was entirely stained with blood. Malachi turned pale at the sight.

“Aten!” he muttered. “I can’t stand the sight of blood. It makes me feel dizzy,” and he scuttled up into one of the apple trees and hid there with only his twitching tail dangling down between the branches. At that moment the young man’s eyes opened. It was as if a candle had emerged from behind a veil.

“He’s not dead,” said Hero.

“Of course not,” said Domingo, dancing on the spot. “How could he be?”

“But the blood!” said Ophelia.

The young man looked down solemnly at his wounded chest and smiled.

“Squashed fruit,” he said. “I hid the fruit inside my shirt.”

“What’s your name, fellow?” demanded Mr. Bacchus.

“Angelo, sir,” replied the young man, getting to his feet and retrieving the ruined fruit from inside his shirt.

“And you are a thief, are you not?” said Mr. Bacchus sternly.

“I am, sir,” replied the youth. “That is the lightest of my sins, and I will admit to it. I had no money, and I was hungry, so…”

“So he stole my fruit,” interrupted the orchard keeper, becoming angry again and mopping his forehead with a small lace handkerchief. “And now who’ll pay for it?”

“I would gladly, sir,” replied Mr. Bacchus. “But unfortunately I have not the price of a glass of wine.”

Then another voice was heard in the orchard; a woman’s voice, half-begging, half-calling:

“Madeline! Madeline!”

“That’s my wife,” explained the orchard keeper. “Calling in my daughter for her supper.”

The voice approached, still calling, until the keeper’s wife appeared through the trees, tears pouring down her cheeks. As soon as she set eyes on her husband she rushed to him, sobbing.

“Madeline is gone,” she wept. “She wandered off while I was in the house taking pies out of the oven.”

“It will be dark soon,” said the orchard-keeper, and as he spoke, a look of fear moved in his eyes. “Do you know where she went, woman?”

The keeper’s wife began to sob even louder at this, and pointed to the forest that stood poised at the perimeter of the orchard. The trees were pines, and unlike the well-tended avenues of the fruit trees, they had a look of the wasteland about them, as if their sap might be tar and their cones the eggs of the cockatrice.

“She was playing close to the forest,” said the keeper’s wife.

“Then she must have wandered in,” replied the keeper grimly. “There are peacocks in there with two thousand eyes, tigers and barking mandrills with purple snouts. They will have eaten her by now.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Mr. Bacchus. “Malachi will deal with the peacocks and the tigers, and Hero can wrestle the mandrills.”

Malachi peered from out of the apple tree when he heard his name being mentioned. “Must I?” he said. “Your peacock is a savage beast when roused.”

“We must help the gentleman find his daughter,” said Mr. Bacchus. “And if that means wrestling peacocks and tigers—then surely wrestle them we shall.”

Now the sun was sinking, and the air that had been sweet with perfume of ripe fruit was cold, and it seemed to stink of peacocks. The dying light of the sun, passing through the rows of trees, striped each of the company like tigers, and from the forest, unnamable sounds drifted. The keeper’s wife began to cry once more.

“Madeline,” she said. “We’ll never see her again.”

Angelo interrupted her. “I have stolen your fruit,” he said quietly. “And I must make amends. I will go to the forest and find your daughter.”

“It’s useless, thief,” said the keeper bitterly. “The forest is as endless as Mino’s maze and the tigers will tear you to pieces before you have taken a step.”

But Angelo only smiled, and, with the others following behind, slipped between the trees to the place where the orchard surrendered itself to the pines. It was growing darker and darker every moment, as the sun slipped behind the Himalayas, and now and then, in the depths of the forest it seemed as though they heard the baboons picking their teeth.

Angelo stood on the very edge of the pines and closed his eyes. Utter silence fell. Even the nameless noises ceased. The sun was immersed altogether, and the Himalayas fled up to meet the night. Then, very slowly, Angelo opened his eyes, and a light seemed to flow from them, a light that flickered like a flame in a breath.

Everybody gasped in amazement.

“What is it?” hissed Domingo.

“Ssssh!” insisted Ophelia. “It’s magic!”

“A trick?” said Hero. “That’s no trick.”

Trick or not, the light was real, and even as they watched, from the shadows of the pines, and from the grass, from between the patterns of dead pine-needles, and from under the vanes of the cones, moths began to appear. It was the light from Angelo’s eyes that they were fluttering towards, and they gathered around his head like so many stars. Now even Malachi stared in disbelief.

Suddenly, something in the forest moved. Everybody slowly took a step back. And another. A baboon screeched hysterically among the high branches, like a Bird of Paradise mad with its beauty.

“Back!” cried the orchard-keeper.

“What is it?” asked Mr. Bacchus.

“A tiger!” the keeper yelled. “It’s a tiger!”

“Are you sure?” said Mr. Bacchus, raising his stick.

“Look!” replied the keeper, and pointed into the darkness. Something was emerging from the forest, albino, as if it had been centuries without light. Its pale form was threaded through the trees like a will-o–the-wisp in reeds.

“A tiger!” cried the keeper again. “A white tiger! Run!”

Nobody needed a further warning. Everyone turned and ran like the wind, back to the safety of the orchard. Only Angelo remained at the edge of the pines, still making the moths dance in the light around his head.

“He doesn’t see it!” said Hero. “He doesn’t see the tiger.”

“Don’t look!” cried the keeper, expecting the tiger to leap from the darkness on top of Angelo and tear him hand from arm. Ophelia hid her eyes, Domingo stood on his head, and Malachi ran up a tree again. They waited as the living darkness engulfed them, frozen in fear. Long minutes passed. The orchard was silent. Ophelia peered tentatively between her fingers, Domingo turned a somersault to stand on his feet, and Malachi parted the leaves of the apple tree. There was no sign of the tiger. Nor a peacock. Not even a barking baboon.

Instead, from the clutches of the pine forest emerged a little girl in a muddied white dress, laughing to herself as she chased the moths that were fluttering in front of her towards Angelo’s eyes.

“Madeline!” cried the orchard-keeper’s wife, rushing forward to sweep her daughter up into her arms. “Madeline, my girl, where have you been?”

“In the forest,” replied the child, with a grin.

“What about tigers, girl?” said her father, peering into the pines. “Why didn’t the tigers eat you? Or have they, and you are an apparition?”

“What are tigers?” said Madeline.

There was a moment’s silence. The keeper shook his head.

“Home for you,” said the wife to her daughter, and carried her down the avenues of the trees, scolding and kissing her at the same time. The orchard-keeper just looked bewildered.

“She said she saw no tigers,” he said. “Yet the forest is full of them.”

“Perhaps,” said Bacchus knowingly, “it is your heads which are full of tigers.”

“Not mine,” said Malachi. “They smell.”

By this time, the light in Angelo’s eyes had faded, and he was walking off towards the road.

“Thief,” the orchard-keeper called after him. “You have brought my daughter back to me. Please—will you come home and eat with us?”

“A capital idea,” said Mr. Bacchus “Malachi, you may come out of that tree now.”

When they had dined on pies and wine, Angelo told them how he had been exiled from his father’s house when it was discovered that his eyes glowed like candle-flames.

“They believed I was a changeling,” he said. “That I was the son of a satyr.”

“No such thing,” said Malachi.

“Oh dear me!” said Bacchus. “Why, in Arcady, the times we’d—”

Ophelia interrupted him before he could begin his reminiscing.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked Angelo.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I shall just follow the road wherever it goes.”

“A splendid philosophy,” said Mr. Bacchus. “My own! My own! I’m taking my circus to Cathay, in Asia the Deep, my boy, to delight the Khan called Kublai with tumbling and mumming. I should be charmed if you’d join us, and come along to Xanadu. What an act you have! Angelo and his dancing moths! Extraordinary! Will you come, my dear boy?”

“Thank you,” said Angelo. “I should be honoured.”

“True,” said Bacchus.

And so they said goodbye to the orchard-keeper, to his wife, and to Madeline the apparition, and one by one they climbed back into the caravan with a high bright moon turning the road before them to a silver ribbon, and set off once more on their journey to Cathay and to the lichened towers of Xanadu.

This is the second story about Mr. Bacchus and his Travelling Circus, and it concerns the face of the Flying Lion-Fish, and why Doctor Jozabiah Bentham’s Theatre of Tears sailed North to battle whales.

A bitter south-easterly wind howled and careened along the open road, and there were ponderous thunderclouds across the star. In the caravan, everyone was listening to the moan of the wind between the spokes of the wheels, unable to get a wink of sleep. Malachi had given up trying to remember the names of the Rameses the Second’s dogs, and was lying full-length on the floor with his head on his claws. Angelo was attempting to teach Ophelia to play chess, but if even a pawn were taken she would begin to weep. Posing against the wall, Domingo de Ybarrondo, the Clown, pulled faces at himself in the hand-mirror, first joyful, then rejected, ridiculous, marital, tragic and awful. Hero, meanwhile, was attempting to sketch Malachi, but the creature he had drawn looked extremely odd, so he transformed it into a shattered pillar of a temple lying on its side, with two toads squatting on it. Only Mr. Bacchus himself was asleep, sitting slumped in his wicker chair with his head on his broad chest. With each snore his beard quivered, and occasionally a dead oak or vine leaf would be lifted into the air by his breath, and then drift lazily down to the floor.