A Company of Heroes Book Three: The Princess

by Ron Miller

  “My dear niece and my great friend,” he begins, “we have been successful beyond our wildest dreams. Rykkla, you and I both think that we might never be able to form another circus, certainly not for a great many years . . .”

  “And we have the money now?” she asks anticipatorily.

  “Enough for two circuses! This is what I think we ought to do. We ought to stay the summer here in Flekke, order wagons, tents, rigging, and while this is being done I can send out word all over Guesclin and even the Continent that Busra’s great circus is back in business!”

  “You mean get all of our old people back again?”

  “Not just them; well, of course, the old acts, of course, we owe them that; but I mean new ones, too. The best.”

  “That can take all summer, we’d miss a whole season.”

  “No matter! We have enough money to live comfortably, and if we get bored we can always put on a show. In a real tent this time!”

  “Well, look here, Uncle. If this is true then I want to talk to you about something I’ve been thinking about.”

  Busra looks at the serious expression on Rykkla’s face, made all the more serious by her black eyes and straight, narrow-lipped mouth. He knows that it cannot but bode ill for his plans. He only raises his bushy eyebrows interrogatively.

  “Well . . .” she begins, but now that the opportunity to speak is presented, she does not know how to best put her argument. “Look, Uncle, I’d like to see Thud and his princess get together again.”

  Busra looks at his niece closely. “Would you really?” he asks.

  “Of course,” she replies, a little too quickly and with a little too much heat. “You know he’s not really happy without her. I want Thud to be happy.”

  There is another brief silence as Busra looks at the girl and thinks about the intensity and reality of her answer. “All right then,” he says, slapping his big hands on his knees with finality. “I’ll give you a month for the round trip. You can use the vacation and I do not really need you here while I’m putting together the new troupe. But do you know,” he says almost to himself, “I do not really expect you to return?”

  Rykkla looks at her uncle as though she is about to contradict him, but does not say anything further.

  Thud and the girl leave for Blavek two days later. They are not ill-equipped; Busra has given them money, not a great deal, but enough if they are frugal, and Thud carries a big bundle of clothing, food and miscellaneous necessaries. They strike out overland, in as direct a line for Blavek as possible. They are fortunate that primitive coach services connect Flekke with the Crotoy-Tamlaght border. This saves a great deal of time but quickly depletes their cash reserves; the drivers make Rykkla pay three full fares for Thud since no one else can ride in the same coach he occupies.

  Crossing the border is not nearly so easy, however, since relations between the two countries are so strained, especially during Tamlaght’s current crisis. As they tramp east and west along the border all they see are endless military encampments filled with bored-looking soldiers. Half a week is lost in trying to find a way past the sentries, since neither possesses passports or indentification papers of any kind.

  On the fourth night they have made camp about a mile north of the border (not twenty-five or thirty miles due north of where Bronwyn and her cousin Piers Monzon had their disastrous reunion; Rykkla, of course, having no way of knowing this). The nights, even this far north, are becoming mild and even occasionally balmy, and Thud and his companion have made themselves comfortable sleeping with only their blankets for shelter. Thud’s presence as always makes it unlikely that they will need fear any disturbance.

  As she broils a pair of sausages over their campfire, Rykkla wrings her brain for any ideas about how they might get across the border, legitimately or otherwise. She has no desire to get shot, certainly not in an effort to restore Thud to his mistress, yet is beginning to seriously consider reckless scenarios discarded half a day earlier.

  As she thinks and plots and Thud stares into the orange flames that lights his face like a pumpkin or paper lantern, the darkness that domed them is broken by a raucous jangling. Not particularly fearing any danger, Rykkla does not disturb herself or her sausages until she sees a boxy wagon lurch out of the night and into the glimmering circle of firelight. Drawn by a single, tired-looking pony, the wagon is a precariously tall, spindly-wheeled affair that does not look very much larger than a piano crate. It is attractively if not freshly painted, and the words ornately scrolled on its side panel read:

  and beneath: C. J. Pamsly, Proprietress. The wagon continues to rock for a moment or two before finally coming to a complete rest. The reins from the pony (who appears to have immediately fallen asleep) lead into the shadowy recess at the front of the decorative box.

  “Pardon me,” comes a voice from the wagon, low-pitched and even more contralto than Rykkla’s, and unmistakably female, “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “Don’t mention it,” replies Rykkla, instinctively polite to someone she recognizes as being in the same business as she and Thud. “Would you care to join us?”

  “Well, don’t mind if I do!”

  A dark figure hops down from the little wagon, which nearly leaps from the ground at the relief of its burden. The figure, whom Rykkla has no further doubt is a woman, approaches the fire in two or three long strides. She is draped in a dark cloak from head to foot. She unfurls this with a theatrical gesture the circus girl appreciates and swirls it into a bundle around one arm. She gives a bow, as though expecting applause, and introduces herself. “My name is C. J. Pamsly, puppeteer, whom my closest associates and intimates simply call Pamsly, and it is the greatest pleasure to meet you!”

  She stansd erect as Rykkla took a second or two to assess the newcomer. She is tall, though not taller than Rykkla who as we know is much taller than average, and strongly built. She wears an elaborately brocaded if threadbare vest and a billowing blouse tucked into the broad waistband of a full, ankle-length woolen skirt that cover the tops of her ornately tooled boots. Her face is round; her hair brown; her eyes blue, deep-set and wide-spaced; her fine nose swoops concavely above a full-lipped and humorous mouth. She is somewhere between five and ten years older than Rykkla, which is to say perhaps as much as thirty.

  “Please join us,” offers Rykkla, “and have something to eat. My name is Rykkla and this is Thud.”

  Pamsly seems to notice Thud for the first time.

  “Rykkla and Thud! Of course! I know you! Know of you at least. I wish we’d crossed paths sooner. I’ve never have the good fortune to see your act, but your reputation is the envy of every performer in Guesclin. This is a pleasure!”

  “You’re much too kind,” replies Rykkla, pleased. “Here, have a sausage. Thud, cut Miss . . . uh . . . Pamsly some bread, won’t you?”

  “It’s just Pamsly. Thank you! Haven’t been able to stop to eat all day.”

  “You’re a puppeteer, then?”

  “Indeed I am and have been for almost as long as I can remember. Wouldn’t be anything else. You wouldn’t have heard of me, would you?”

  “Well, yes,” lies Rykkla, “I do believe I have. It’s too bad we never seem to have crossed paths before.”

  “Indeed. But whatever brings you to this Musrum-forsaken end of nowhere? Surely you are doing better than this, the last I heard.”

  “My uncle, who actually manages the show, is trying to put our circus back together again. That’s really his first love, not the sort of traveling act we’d been doing. We left him back in Flekke to do that while Thud and I go to Blavek.”

  “Blavek? That’s hundreds of miles from here and the whole country’s in some sort of a revolution or something. Whatever’s in Blavek?”

  “It’s really a long story, and I’ll try to fill you in on it later, but Thud really belongs to the Princess Bronwyn of Tamlaght. He needs to get back to her and I’m just helping him out. He’s . . . uh . . . not really up to making a trip
like that entirely on his own, if, um, you understand what I mean.”

  “Of course,” Pamsly replies knowingly, then lowering her voice says, “but, do you know, he doesn’t look nearly so . . . uh . . . so backward, if I may say so, as I have expected, and not half as big and ugly.”

  Rykkla looks at Thud for a long moment before lying to Pamsley. “He looks to me like he’s always looked.” But she’s right. I haven’t noticed. He has changed somehow. How very strange!

  Rykkla turns from Thud and pointedly resumes the conversation. “The only problem we’ve have so far,” she says “is that the border appears to be closed, at least to unofficial travelers.”

  “You don’t have a passport?”

  “No. We’re not citizens of Crotoy anyway. It’s certainly an easier country to get into than out of.”

  “I imagine that along the border with Tamlaght it’s not too easy going either direction.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Well, look here. I’m on my way to Biela-Slatina to visit friends. I’ll have no problem at the border since I more or less expected this and procured all of the necessary papers; it helps, of course, that I’m a Crotoyan citizen, at least ostensibly.”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, then, why don’t you and Thud come with me?”

  “How’d that be possible? We’d still need papers wouldn’t we?”

  “Not necessarily. Let’s see here . . .” She digs into the voluminous bosom of her blouse and excavates a thick leather wallet. From this she extricates a sheaf of official-looking papers all elaborately stamped and sealed. The new paper crackles as she shuffles through it, looking for something particular. “Ah! Listen to this!” She leans closer to the fire in order to read the fine print. “‘This instrument,’” she quotes, “I suppose it means this paper, ‘This instrument is intended to demand safe passage for the bearer and immediate family’ blah blah blah. And family! D’you know what that means?”

  “What?”

  “Come with me and we can cross the border together!”

  “As your family, I suppose?”

  “You can be my sister!”

  “And who will Thud be? Your brother?”

  “Thud’s a problem,” the puppeteer admits.

  “I don’t think that anyone’s going to be able to see a family resemblance between Thud and either of us.”

  “It’s a problem, but I’m rather thankful for that.”

  “It’s a wonderful idea, but I just don’t know how it’s going to work with Thud. Can I see those?”

  “Certainly.” Pamsly hands over the papers. “Perhaps you can find bomething helpful in them.

  “Tell me,” the puppeteer continues while Rykkla pours through the documents, “do you think your uncle mighty have need for a first-rate puppet show?”

  “I don’t know, but I would like to see one added. We used to have a Punch and Judy man before the fire, but he is drunk most of the time and confused the kids by having the puppets complain about his own rather peculiar problems, often in the most graphic possible terms. Do you do Punch and Judy?”

  “I have a wide repertoire of traditional and original plays; I can easily adopt and adapt to whatever audience I have.”

  “That would be a good argument. I’d very much like to see your marionettes sometime.”

  “No!” replies Pamsly with some heat, surprising Rykkla. “They’re not marionettes! My puppets are hand puppets and rod puppets only. Marionettes! Hmmph! Animated yo-yos.”

  “I’m sorry, I meant no offense.”

  “None taken. It’s just a professional and aesthetic quirk.”

  “Look here, if you can help Thud and me get across the border, I’ll give you a letter to take to my uncle. I have no doubt that he’ll find you a place in the show. He owes Thud an awful lot and anyone who helps Thud places a big debt on my uncle.”

  “Done! But we still have the problem of Thud himself.”

  They both glance over to where the big man has been quietly sitting, still staring into the now-dying fire, the ruddy glow of the embers making his smooth round head look as copper-clad as an eclipsed moon. The twin sparks of his eyes look like binary stars of the sixth magnitude.

  “You know,” says Rykkla, “I think I have an idea.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ve met the border sentries?”

  “Not really. I just arrived this evening. Why?”

  “They’re extraordinarily stupid, for one thing. I get every impression that this is the least desirable duty in the whole army; they must only send soldiers here as punishment or if they’re too hopelessly dumb to function anywhere else. Wait until you see them; inbred teenaged hicks, one and all.”

  Pamsly agrees with that description the next morning as she guides her wagon toward the border crossing they had selected the night before. It is miles from any of the larger camps, miles from any of the main or even secondary roads and therefore all the more likely to be manned, as it were, by the least deserving.

  The morning is wet, the air damp and chill. The sun is still only an ivory disc bisected by the hills to the east. The road is little more than a pair of parallel ruts in the soggy grass and the tall wagon bounces and pendulums precariously.

  The rudely constructed gate is flanked by a pair of tall pyramidal tents. Near one of these an ill-fed campfire is sputtering on its damp fuel. Two miserable-looking figures are hunched over it, desperately and unsuccessfully trying to heat their water and food. They barely look up at the approach of the clanking wagon and when they do, Rykkla, who is riding on the driver’s seat next to Pamsly, sees that the lanky, pale, pockmarked faces are dull and incurious.

  “They must be even more stupid than you thought,” whispers Pamsly. Her observation is justified since the appearance of the puppeteer’s wagon has changed significantly since the night before, to a degree that would have excited comment even from the normally slow-witted. The little pony, now looking decidedly happier and perhaps even a little smug, is trotting behind, attached to the rear gate of the wagon by a long rope. The poles at the front are now flanking Thud’s broad hips and Pamsly’s reins are hanging from his shoulders while he grips the iron bit in his teeth.

  “Whoa, there!” says the puppeteer, drawing back on the reins dramatically, bringing Thud to a halt a dozen paces from the gate.

  She waits expectantly, but the two guards simply stand with mouths agape as the realization finally occurs to them that something is out of the ordinary here, even if they can not quite put their grubby fingers on it.

  “Do you want to see our papers?” coaxes Pamsly.

  “Oh! Uh, yes, I guess we do,” replies the homelier of the pair. There is a fairly simple routine that has been laboriously drummed into him, and he gratefully falls back on the mechanical predictability of it.

  “Can I see your papers, ma’m?” he asks, redundantly.

  “I think you’ll find everything in order,” Pamsly replies, handing him the sheaf of official documents. The soldier sifts through them gravely, though it is clear that he can’t read a word. Nevertheless, he had been trained to recognize certain seals and marks and these he dutifully ferrets out, examining each like a suspicious merchant uncertain of the authenticity of a thousand-crown banknote. He passes the papers on to his companion who, it appears, can puzzle out a few words.