“I assure you, sir, the pies were fresh-baked this morning by my wife.”
“This pie is stale,” the richly clothed shopper insisted. He threw the half-eaten pie at the stall-holder’s feet.
The pie-seller sighed. “Then please choose another, sir. But I assure you, they are all from today’s batch.”
“I have a good mind to draw this to the attention of the Guard. Swindlers like you ought not to be allowed to peddle their inferior wares in the market place. When I buy a pie for my breakfast I expect it to be fresh, not dried up like a blacksmith’s boot. But, since I am in haste this morning, I will have to satisfy myself with another sample from your display.” The man selected three of the largest pies from the stall. “I shall take these; out of the three I ought to be able to find one that is no more than a day old.”
“Excuse me,” Edison said, as he bumped against the customer. The man merely snorted and hurried away.
Edison held up a purse before the pie-seller. “I did not see who dropped this, did you?”
The stall-holder glanced quickly after the disgruntled customer and turned back to the smiling, auburn-haired man at his stall.
“No, Mr. Edison, I can’t say that I did,” the pie-seller said.
“Now, it would be a crime if one were found in possession of another man’s purse,” Edison said, emptying the contents of the purse into his palm. “But one coin looks much like another, don’t you think?”
“Indeed, sir.”
Edison handed the pie man all the coins but one. “And with this one I should like to purchase a pie,” he said.
The pie man smiled. “Select where you like, sir. They are all fresh-baked, I swear.”
“That I know for a fact, my friend.” Edison bit into the warm pie and bid the stall-holder good day.
Other traders close by shouted of the quality and fair prices of their wares. A stall of leather goods scented the air with the sharp smell of cured hide. A knife-grinder, his wheel spinning briskly, filled the space around him with sparks and the smell of hot metal. An apothecary attempted to convince a meagre crowd that his muddy-looking elixir would cure any ill or injury short of an amputated arm, while his companion moved among the unsuspecting crowd as cut-purse. Skinny men in coloured robes sat cross-legged beside blankets containing brassy religious artefacts and talismans, each purporting to be blessed by any one of the dozen most popular deities. Music was just audible above the babble of the crowd and the pleas of the beggars; minstrels played pipes, a lute and drums, while their vocalist paused occasionally to pass his hat amongst the listeners. Anton looked about him and smiled, feeling at home.
Lieutenant Sheldrake strode through the market square, his black and red uniform clean and crisp, his hair combed back and shining. There were purple shadows under his red-rimmed eyes and his face was set in a scowl. His ear was still red and swollen. At his side was an old man who kept glancing worriedly at his master, occasionally having to break into a half-run to keep pace with him.
“If I might make so bold as to say, sir, you look fatigued,” the old man said.
“I had the most terrible dream last night, Henrik,” Sheldrake said.
The old man frowned.
“Do you believe dreams hold significance?” Sheldrake asked.
The old man shrugged, then realised he had fallen behind and his master would not have seen the gesture. “It would depend, I should say, upon the content of the dream. Some dreams have significance only in that they are warnings that we should not consume copious amounts of wine and cheese before retiring.” Henrik tittered.
“I was visited by the ghost of a man I killed,” Sheldrake said, then added quickly: “A man I killed some time ago. He warned me that I would be visited by other ghosts from my past.”
Henrik scurried after his master. “Perhaps it was merely your conscience, sir,” the old man ventured.
Sheldrake stopped suddenly.
Henrik carried on, unaware, then had to turn and walk back.
“What exactly did you mean by that last remark?” Sheldrake asked, dangerously.
Henrik swallowed, carefully considering his response. “I meant, sir, only that even when we take the life of another with just and legal cause – as I am certain you did in this particular instance – then our conscience is still, on occasion, troubled. However right the circumstances made it for you to kill this man, as an educated and sensitive man you feel some unease at having taken the life of another.”
“Ah.” Sheldrake set off again.
“The dream was merely a twinge of doubt, and I am certain that you will be troubled by no more ghosts, sir,” Henrik said.
“There’s one!” Sheldrake shouted, suddenly pointing. He raced off across the market square. People turned to watch him. He moved through the crowd, squeezing through gaps, and ignoring the exclamations of those whose arms he jostled in his haste.
Sheldrake took a stall-holder by the arm, spinning him round roughly.
“What the...” The man bit off the expletive when he saw the red and black uniform.
“Where is he?” Sheldrake demanded of the startled fruit-seller.
“Where is who, sir?”
“The man who was standing here, where did he go?”
The market trader looked puzzled.
“Thin, wearing a red hood, and the white face of a phantom...” Sheldrake looked wildly left and right, trying to see over and through the crowd.
“I am sorry, sir, but I did not see such a man.”
Sheldrake glared at the man, then released him. The stall-holder sniffed, straightening his clothing.
“He was here,” Sheldrake said softly.
The old man caught up with him, shouldering his way through the crowd. “Sir, are you all right?”
Sheldrake sighed. “Of course.”
Over by the fountain, a juggler fumbled another catch. A club plopped into the water behind him, and the crowd grew restless. Some laughed or groaned, others simply wandered away to discover what else the market had to offer by way of entertainment. Suddenly the juggler was juggling air: the clubs had disappeared. A sudden shove in the middle of the back sent him sprawling. The crowd laughed. He turned and found a white-faced clown standing on the little wall that surrounded the fountain, throwing the clubs higher and higher into the air, spinning them about their mid-points. The juggler scowled.
Dark red paint extended Anton Leyander’s lips into an unnaturally broad, sharp smile. Black eyebrows arched high over eyes rimmed with kohl, and his dark hair was bound back in a ponytail. He was dressed in a loose white shirt and black leggings. The clubs then seemed to be transformed into three pale paddle-like objects, which he tossed in such a way that they appeared double in number. Then their motion slowed and Anton held them fanned in front of his chest, and the objects were revealed to be white theatrical face masks.
There was a light smattering of applause from the crowd. The original juggler looked down and found the four clubs at his feet. He picked them up and slunk away.
“What price am I offered for a story?” Anton asked. “A penny will buy you a tale of love and magic. No takers?”
“How can we be sure your tale is worth the asking price?” a man in the crowd asked.
“It is a tale in which I perform three characters, how can it not be worth a few coppers?” Noting very little enthusiasm from his watchers, Anton moved to put the masks inside his shirt and turned as if to leave.
“Stay and tell the tale,” someone urged.
“But what profit would there be for me in that? Storytelling is apt to raise a thirst, and I have not a penny to buy a drink afterwards,” Anton said, his tone regretful.
Reluctantly, some dug into their purses and tossed copper coins on the dusty ground at the clown’s feet.
“It is quite a long tale...” Anton said. Several more coins fell. “Very well.” He pulled out the plaster masks once more. “‘Twas a fine day. The sun was bright and warm, and the b
irds were singing about whatever it is that birds sing about on fine days. On this fine day, a young man came walking down the road. A stranger to the area, he was heading towards a small town. He might have been a prince, or perhaps the son of a lord, for he was elegantly dressed and had about him a lordly air. He intended to have luncheon in the little town, before he returned to wherever it was that he was not a stranger.”
Anton placed the first mask in front of his face. The smooth white image was that of a handsome young man, with holes where the mouth and eyes should have been. The story-teller’s own painted mouth filled the hole and smiled at his audience.
“Being not a local, he was not aware that in walking this road, he would pass the home of a certain woman. A woman who some called ‘witch’.”
Anton placed another mask in front of his face. Now he was a hideous old woman, with hook-nose and beetled-brow.
“He approached her modest dwelling, which was set some way back from the road, and had a garden surrounded by a stone wall. The woman herself was not unpleasant to look at: she was not blessed with the looks of a goddess, but she did have a down-soft moustache and several of her own teeth. She was not evil, but like many of her age, she was somewhat short of temper; perhaps because her eyesight may have been fading, or her bones might have been aching from the damp and the cold. And despite her magical powers, she was unable to banish these ailments, nor delay the progress of the ageing which brought them on. So, like most of those with white hair, she took it out on the young folk.
“The young people of the locality were wise enough to keep away from her, except when they offered to perform duties for her in exchange for medicines or charms for their families. Then of course they showed her great respect, and she enjoyed it hugely, without appearing to. And if the witch was to say that a young man’s hair was too long, or that a young woman’s skirt was too short, the deficiency was soon put right. After all, it does not do to antagonise a witch: who wants a second nose or a third ear?”
Some among the audience nodded agreement.
“All of this was unknown to the young man who walked down the road on this particular day. And this particular day was Monday. Wash-day. Being a prince, or a lord, he might have been forgiven for not knowing that it was inadvisable to walk past the witch’s house while she was pegging out her undergarments to dry. But what was unforgivable was that he leaned on the witch’s garden wall and called:
“‘Good grief, granny, it must take a great woman to fill those garments!’” Anton said this through the young man’s mouth. Then he switched quickly to the old hag mask.
“The witch turned suddenly. Her face was dark like storm clouds and her eyes were tiny malevolent slits.”
The young man’s face reappeared.
“The young man paled, realising his error, but before he could turn tail and flee, there was a bright flash, and where the young man had stood, there was now a shiny green frog sitting on top a pile of elegant clothes.”
Anton twisted the young man’s face round on its stick: the reverse held the face of a frog. Laughter from the audience, spontaneous applause.
“The young man sat there and said Bloomp. The witch scooped him up and put him in a little cage in her cottage. And she made him eat blue-bottles.” Anton smiled.
“What happened to him then?” someone asked eagerly.
A fat lady with two massive baskets of mushrooms and other hopefully edible fungi moved through the crowd, shouting: “Inkytops, puffballs, blue-buttons...” Behind her, a pair of grubby-faced street urchins took up the cry: “Death cap, yellow-stainer...” They raced away when she turned to scowl at them.
“Can you see my husband?” a woman asked the stilt-walker. He surveyed the crowd and directed the woman to the saddler’s stall.
One of the ragamuffins distracted a fruitier with earnest questions about the freshness of his wares, while his companion filled the front of his shirt with shiny red apples. The florid-faced trader gave chase when he discovered their ploy, but he soon gave up when the boys disappeared into the crowd. The boys paused to share their booty and munched away happily, staring with grim fascination at a sword-swallower with scarred lips. Then, bored with the spectacle, they hurried off after the brightly garbed piper, whose muscular companion led a mangy bear on a chain, which would reluctantly dance when urged with a pointed stick.
“Some time later, a princess came along the road,” Anton continued. “She had loved the young man, and learning what happened to him, she had come to seek out the witch.”
The third and final mask was a marble-white representation of a beautiful woman.
“The witch took her into the cottage and they had tea and gingerbread, and the princess told the witch how much she loved the young man. ‘I love him so dearly. I would give absolutely anything to have him returned to me in his right form,’” Anton said through the girl’s mouth, his voice a breathy falsetto.
“A gleam appeared in the witch’s eyes, and a smile tugged at one corner of her wrinkled face. The frog wanted to call out and warn the princess, but all it could say was Bloomp.
“‘You would give anything?’” Hag-voiced, through the witch’s mouth.
“‘Yes, anything,’ the princess said.
“Now the witch had never been attractive. In fact, the reason she had become a witch was because the options of wife-hood and motherhood had not been offered her. She had never in her life been able to attract the attentions of a man. A relatively plain man, with spots, a bald head, one eye and a wooden leg would have done. But he never appeared. And so the witch had never done what it is that men and women do together,” Anton looked around to make sure his audience knew to what he referred. “Not once. For a witch cannot use her magic to change her own appearance to win a man for herself. But she can use it to borrow someone else’s body for a brief period, provided that the person agrees to the loan.
“This being so, you might imagine what it was that the witch asked the princess to give so that she could have the young man returned to himself.
“‘And it will be for one day only?’ The princess asked.
“‘Promise,’ the crone said.
“The princess agreed, and she exchanged bodies with the witch.”
Anton turned the princess mask around on its stick, and the face there was the hag’s.
“The witch, in the beautiful princess’s body, skipped off into town to pounce upon a muscular young woodcutter who had once caught her eye: there she intended to release the pent-up frustrations and fantasies of sixty-eight years of enforced celibacy.”
He turned the witch’s mask, and it showed the princess’s. He switched back to the hag mask.
“The princess waited back at the cottage, in the witch’s body. She must have felt horrible: suddenly fat, wrinkled and not terribly clean.”
He held up the frog mask, turned it slowly to reveal the young man once more.
“The young man lay on the bed, returned to his own form and sleeping off the effects of the spell. He awoke finally and was relieved to find that he had his own body back.
“‘Where am I?’” Anton said through the young man mask. “He looked around him. ‘Oh no, I am still in the old hag’s cottage.’
“Then he saw the witch seated by the bed, and was suddenly afraid.
“‘I am sorry, I did not mean – Please don’t make me eat any more flies,’ he pleaded.
“‘It is all right, it’s me,’” The princess’s voice coming from the old crone’s mask. “‘I have waited so long to see you again,’ she said. ‘Come, kiss me my love.’”
Anton switched masks again.
“‘No, I could not kiss that: you are nasty and wrinkled, and I might get something horrible.’
“In fact, he did get something horrible: he got hit over the head with a saucepan and knocked senseless.”
Anton crossed his eyes behind the mask, and let it fall away from his face at an angle.
“When he regained
his senses, the witch had returned. She was flushed and happy, and sore, and a little sad that it was all over. She found that the princess was waiting with another deal: ‘Leave him handsome, but make it so that all he can eat is blue-bottles, and I will lend you my body for another day.’
“The witch got that gleam in her eyes again, and they both smiled.”
Anton stuck out his tongue suddenly through the hole in the young man mask, snapped his mouth shut and gulped down an imaginary blue-bottle.
Bloomp!
The audience laughed and clapped. Anton bowed, bent to pick up the coins at his feet. The spell broken, the crowd began to disperse.
“And what is the moral of the story?” asked a man in the audience, who felt all stories should have such things.
“The moral of the story is that a man who thinks with his prick is likely to end up well and truly fucked,” his wife said. She took hold of his ear and led him away.
The landlord from a nearby tavern brought Anton a drink, indicating that it had come from a woman with an eye-patch, who now turned and walked away. Anton tried to push through the crowd towards her.
“Wait!”
She turned into a narrow side street. When Anton reached the turn, she had disappeared.
“I just wanted to thank you for the drink...” he told the empty street. He leaned against the wall, sipping his drink, hoping to see her reappear further down the street. She did not.
Chapter Eight
The sun had set and the town-folk were snug in their homes or favourite drinking places. A few scattered lamps bounced light from the rain-slick walls. As night had fallen, another brief rain shower had drifted in off the sea, but it did not last long. The thief detached himself from the shadows and moved silently along the street. He was dressed in shadow-grey and paused to pull up the hood of his shirt, hiding his red-gold hair. This was one of the wealthier, more fashionable, areas of town. Here the streets were wider, the architecture designed for beauty as well as function. Smooth walls were painted in clean pastel shades, with clematis and rose plants climbing them. The smell of damp earth and exotic blooms came from the rich floral gardens hidden behind the higher walls. The thief ducked back into the deeper shadows as the sound of hooves on cobbles approached; he waited until the Guard patrol had passed the end of the street, then crossed to the high wall opposite. He leaped and grasped the top of the wall, swinging himself up to crouch on top of it. He paused and breathed deeply, surveying the layout of the place. Then dropped to the ground.
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