Upon entering the hot and noisy banqueting hall, Polly reeled at the wave of human stench that hit her, and gazing round decided she had never seen so much bad skin gathered in one place. This was something all the historical dramas and interactives had never been accurate about.
‘God, they’re ugly!’
Poxed, the lot of them. There’s no vaccinations in this period. What you are seeing here are the few who have survived to maturity. It’s probably why Berthold thinks you’re such an asset—you’re a rare unmarked beauty. But then Berthold doesn’t know you like I do.
‘Bring on the juggler!’ bellowed the King.
‘Let us begin,’ whispered Berthold, turning to Polly with the bells on his jester’s hat jingling. He then cartwheeled onto the empty floor between the tables, finishing upright after a somersault. The King threw a chicken leg that bounced off Berthold’s face. To a tumultuous roar, other food was hurled at him from every direction. He sinuously dodged these items, then held up his hands.
‘Enough! Enough I say, good sirs! Would you bury me in your generosity?’
To much hilarity, the rain of food finally halted. Berthold stepped to a table and gathered up a goblet, half a loaf of bread and a chicken leg.
‘Good crowd tonight,’ said Mellor from behind Polly. She turned and stared at him, wondering if he was quite mad. Suddenly she felt the overpowering urge for a cigarette—elsewhere.
‘Now, let me introduce to you my beautiful assistant: that Far Eastern Princess, the lady Poliasta!’
Polly walked out to catcalls and shouts of, ‘Get yer dumplin’s out!’—and not all of them from the men. Following Berthold’s earlier instruction, she bowed elaborately towards each table, holding out to one side a sack containing the various items Berthold would use in his act, and into which she must secrete any coins tossed onto the floor.
‘Let me begin with a simple demonstration of the juggling art!’
Berthold set the three items he already held into motion. His competence was quite evident and even caused the surrounding uproar to quieten a little.
‘But such skill is not easily acquired. I had to travel to the far realms of the East, where I found my lovely Princess here, and there I learnt this craft under my wizardly master, the Great Profundo!’
With that Berthold stepped on a stray pheasant carcass and slipped onto his backside—the chicken leg bouncing off his head, the loaf of bread rolling away, but the goblet dropping neatly into his hand. He pretended to drink from it.
‘My master, Profundo, always used to say “Watch your footing.”‘ This comment was almost drowned by the howls of laughter. A few coins tinkled on the floor and, as instructed, Polly set about collecting them. And so it went. The crowd particularly loved Berthold’s obscene juggling act with the painted wooden phalluses, especially when he caught one in his mouth. His knife act he curtailed because this crowd stopped laughing and began to watch him warily. The performance closed with him juggling seven wildly different items, including a codpiece that somehow ended up stuck over his face, before the other props rained down on his head. Finally Berthold and Polly were summoned before the King.
Henry VIII was red-faced, and obviously too pissed to see or talk straight, so it was Thomas Cromwell, leaning in close to him, who began relaying his words.
‘The King congratulates Berthold on his skilled and entertaining performance…’
The King showed signs of anger, and Polly surmised that Cromwell was not relaying the royal sentiments with any precision.
‘The King wishes Berthold to accept this purse…’
Cromwell picked one up and tossed it to Polly, who expertly caught it in her open prop bag, then curtsied.
‘The King now wishes to retire.’
Evidently that was not precisely Henry’s intention because he was still giving Polly a look that should have been censored. Then Cromwell helped King Henry to his feet, and away to his bed.
After the royal departure the party swiftly dissipated—spreading to some of the tents pitched outside for those who wanted to continue.
‘God’s blood!’ Berthold exclaimed, counting out the money collected, and eyeing the sack of leftover food Mellor had collected from the tables. ‘We could go right now and live on this for a year or more!’
‘But not yet,’ insisted Mellor.
‘Two more nights at most,’ Berthold replied. ‘By then they’ll start losing interest.’ He unstoppered a jug from a nearby table, and took a deep slug of its contents.
Between the layers of black and grey something was becoming visible; glittering like nacre and expressing rainbow hues at the edge of the visible.
‘Fistik,’ spat Meelan, now much recovered.
This word being one Tack now identified as a curse, he more closely studied what was angering her. The thing extended as a line between the two surfaces, stretching in either direction to far-off dimensions beyond where Tack could easily focus without feeling as if his brain was tearing away inside his head. Occasionally this object drew close enough to take on substance—the only apparent solidity in this place beyond the confines of the mantisal itself. As he stared at it, Tack felt a growing frustration at knowing he could not ask. But time spent gazing into this etiolated infinity took its toll as his vision blurred and weariness descended on him like a brick. He dozed off, coming half-awake later to see Meelan thrusting her remaining arm into one of the mantisal’s eyes. Meanwhile, Coptic withdrew and turned away, his eyes suddenly dead black.
Then a brightly coloured crowd was feasting nearby and throwing food at a man who was juggling clocks… while, with the insane logic of dream, Tack collected up the shattered amethysts into which the dropped timepieces had transformed. All was now colour and that colour became the smell of heated sand, then a boot inserted under Tack’s side rolled him rudely into wakefulness, falling onto that sand.
Coptic’s laugh was hollow as he too dropped down beside Tack, its humour buried in weariness. Meelan also seemed weary, her eyes turned black like her partner’s. Lying there, Tack observed the mantisal disappear, folding itself away in exactly the same manner as when viewed side-on. He stood, taking up the pack that had dropped beside him, and panted in the sudden heat.
Again they were on a shore—only this time it was a seashore. Scattered along the strand were turtle shells, mounds of fly-blown weed, and nearby the desiccated remains of a shark being pecked at by birds like raggedy miniature vultures. Behind the shore lay a coniferous forest, its trees gigantic. A constant din issued from amid the trunks, some of it identifiable but much of it utterly strange. The singing of the birds was harsher here and possessed an angry immediacy. Occasionally a mournful hooting crescendoed and somewhere a sonorous groaning bemoaned the constant racket.
‘What age is this?’ Tack asked, forgetting himself.
Coptic’s huge hand caught him hard on the side of his head, knocking him to the ground, with lights flashing behind his eyes.
‘Did I permit you to speak?’ the big man asked.