Phyllis Wong and the Return of the Conjuror

by Geoffrey McSkimming

  She stared deeply into the mirror, and spoke in a faraway voice: ‘I will buy entire cities, Glory, all the buildings and roads and parks and harbours in them. I shall own these things, and I shall own the people who live and work there. I shall be more powerful than a Queen or a President. I shall control all that is mine.’

  She looked down at the rat cleaning her wound. ‘Ah, my dear Glory . . . that is good . . . that is good.’

  Beginners please

  Phyllis held the small piece of metal type from Isaac Jaggard’s tightly in her fist. The wind was buffeting her, blowing her almost inside-out, and the light was fading until the blackness of the years, hanging like a heavy curtain around her, smothered the way ahead.

  Her stomach rose and fell; she battled to breathe against the fierce rush of air that barraged her nostrils. From somewhere right behind her, she could sense something, something close to her, almost touching her. It was as if the wind was so strong, the force of the gale so rough, that it was grabbing at her one moment and thrusting her onwards the next . . .

  She leant forward into the tremendous force, putting her head down against her chest. She held her shoulder bag firmly against her hip, and felt Daisy wriggling around frantically inside it. The little dog had been clingy before Phyllis had left, and hadn’t let Phyllis out of her sight, following her around her room and then down into the basement, and even when Phyllis had offered her a small biscuit-treat, Daisy hadn’t been interested in it. All she had wanted was to be with Phyllis, and so Phyllis was left with no choice but to take her small four-pawed pal along with her.

  Back to a faraway London.

  Phyllis patted the outside of the bag, trying to soothe Daisy inside it. The young conjuror leant further into the relentless wind, pressing her chin against her chest, scrunching her eyes shut as tightly as she could.

  I hope this bit of type will take me where I need to go, she thought. I hope it’s right . . .

  Then she began to hear the vibrating, soft, high-pitched humming. The darkness on the other side of her eyelids started to melt away, and a light was emerging. The wind was dropping, and Phyllis leant back, and back further, until she was standing upright again.

  The last vestiges of the breeze faded away; Phyllis’s body trembled uncontrollably for a few moments; her legs were hollow and shaky. She felt her eyes throbbing as she opened them.

  She’d arrived.

  She did two things straightaway: she opened the top of her bag and reached inside to give Daisy a loving pat and ear-cuddle. And, as she told Daisy that everything was okay, Phyllis looked around at their whereabouts.

  She was at the bottom of some wooden stairs.

  She peered up and saw what looked like a small, square trapdoor. It was open, and sunlight was streaming down onto the stairs.

  Daisy popped her head out of the shoulder bag and she too peered up. ‘Rrrrrr?’ she growled uncertainly.

  ‘Let’s go see where we are, Daisy girl,’ whispered Phyllis.

  She started up the stairs, when all at once there was a loud BANG!

  Phyllis’s head snapped up to see a large wooden keg slamming and rolling down the stairs towards her and Daisy. It was coming so fast—like a torpedo—that Phyllis momentarily froze. But then her instincts kicked in and, quickly, just as the keg was about to flatten them, she pressed herself and Daisy and her shoulder bag hard against the stone wall at her side and sucked her stomach in.

  With only a few millimetres to spare, the big, heavy keg crashed past them, clunking and bumping down the rest of the staircase, and came to an abrupt stop on the gloomy floor below.

  ‘Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf!’ barked Daisy at the top of her lungs.

  Phyllis looked down at the bottom of the stairs and saw other wooden kegs stacked on the floor there. ‘We must be in a storage room of some tavern or inn or something,’ she said to Daisy. ‘I think we’d better vamoose, quick smart!’

  She clutched her bag to her side and dashed up the stairs, squeezing through the trapdoor and up, out onto the street and well clear of the trapdoor.

  Taking cover in front of the narrow leadlight windows of a candlemaker’s shop, she smiled as she beheld everything around her. The people milling about the small street were dressed in similar fashions to those she’d encountered when she had Transited to visit Isaac Jaggard—the women’s skirts and bodices, the men’s doublets and breeches and their coats and hats all suggested to Phyllis that she was in the right Time frame.

  But what exactly was the Time?

  Her legs were not shaking as much now, and she could feel her stomach settling. Daisy poked her head and snout out of the bag again and Phyllis gently rubbed the top of her head, next to her permanently folded-over ear. ‘Where are we, Miss Daisy?’ she asked quietly. ‘When are we?’

  At that moment, they heard a bell ringing loudly. The sound was coming from around the corner, and was heading in their direction. Daisy’s ears swivelled towards the ringing, and she craned her neck.

  Dong-ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong!

  Then a man’s voice could be heard, between the bell’s peals. ‘Hear ye, hear ye, good citizens of London town!’

  Phyllis felt her heart quicken—they were in the right place!

  The man came around the corner. He was a portly chap, dressed in a knee-length red robe, trimmed with white fur, and he wore a large, soft felt hat with a broad feather in it. He was shaking the bell vigorously—a fat, shining brass bell with a heavy oak handle—and its clangings echoed up and down the streets.

  ‘Hear ye, hear ye, good citizens of London town,’ he repeated loudly between the clanging.

  ‘He’s the Town Crier,’ Phyllis whispered to Daisy. ‘He’s what they have instead of a newspaper . . .’

  ‘Ah!’ shouted a man hurrying to get past the Crier. ‘What is’t thou mammers about today, you droning, swag-bellied Bellman?’

  The Crier gave the man a withering look and ignored his insults. ‘Here be the news for today,’ he cried, ‘December the 20th in the Year of Our Lord, Sixteen Hundred and Twelve!’

  Phyllis’s heart quickened some more—they were in the right Time!

  ‘Ah, take thy news and blow it out thy pantaloons, you fat-kidneyed harpy!’ a woman shouted at the Crier.

  The Crier rang his bell sharply at her, as if to say, go away and fall into the nearest sewer, where you belong.

  ‘Ye beslubbering foot-licker!’ a man yelled down at him from the upper-floor window of a house across the street. ‘Make thyself gone!’

  ‘Enshut thy trap-hole!’ proclaimed the Crier, ringing his bell fiercely up at him as though it were a whip.

  ‘Away with you, you mountain of wobbly flesh!’ shouted the man, and many in the street laughed heartily.

  The Crier took a deep breath and opened his mouth to start announcing the daily news when someone threw a rotting cabbage at him, knocking his hat into the gutter.

  Phyllis got the impression that the Town Crier was not all that popular in this neighbourhood.

  ‘C’mon,’ she said to Daisy, ‘let’s away.’

  ‘Rrff,’ said Daisy.

  Phyllis edged her way towards the far end of the street. As she went, she took her journal from her coat pocket and quickly thumbed through it to the map she’d copied down from an internet site she’d found a few hours earlier. It showed the streets of London, circa 1610. (Phyllis was glad of the internet when it came to things like this—you could find out just about anything if you knew what to look for.)

  Most importantly, the map she’d copied into her journal showed the street in which the Globe Theatre was to be found—Park Street in Southwark. The Globe was where Shakespeare and his company of actors rehearsed and performed their plays.

  A cold wind was blowing as Phyllis paused at the end of the street to get her bearings. Up on the side of the corner house was a narrow sign: Threadneedle Street. She found where she was on her map and saw that she had a bit of a way to walk: down Bishopga
te Street to London Bridge, then across the bridge and right onto the Bankside. The Globe Theatre was a short walk along the River of Thames.

  ‘Let’s go, Daisy, my girl,’ she said.

  Daisy blinked her big brown eyes and snuggled deeper into the bag, out of the cold.

  Phyllis pulled her collar tighter around her neck. She looked up at the clouds. They looked like they were carrying snow and that it wouldn’t be too far away. She shivered; then she turned right out of Threadneedle Street and started for the theatre.

  Not far behind her, someone else shivered too and wished that the snow would stay away as, furtively and closely, that person followed in Phyllis Wong’s footsteps.

  It was cold crossing London Bridge, and windy. As Phyllis continued along the bank of the Thames, the chill breeze swept across the water and up at her, like an invisible, flapping curtain of iciness.

  She hurried along. There were fewer people here on this side of the river, and the streets were not so close together. Some of the people she passed stared at her; others ignored her. No one bothered her; most folk were hurrying to get indoors away from the cold, or too busy to take any notice of this young, black-clothed girl walking purposefully, head down and eyes bright (with only the faintest glimmers of Transit green in them).

  As she went, she smelled the stomach-churning stench that was wafting up from all the nearby tanneries. She tried not to breathe too deeply; after her Transiting, the last thing she wanted was more tummy upsets from such an awful smell.

  Daisy curled herself into a tight ball inside Phyllis’s bag. The little dog was feeling only slightly unsettled—being close by Phyllis’s side was what she wanted, and right by Phyllis’s side was exactly where Daisy was right now.

  At last, Phyllis saw it: a large, circular, white building with a thatched roof. She recognised it from pictures she’d seen on the net. It was the Globe Theatre.

  She felt light-headed as she approached the famous building. She came to a wall surrounding it, with a set of tall oak doors set into the brickwork. One of the doors was partly open.

  Phyllis took a deep breath and ducked through the doorway, into a deserted courtyard that lay between the wall and the outside of the theatre. She stopped in the courtyard and looked up at the building. It was three storeys tall, with a couple of towers built into its sides. Here and there, around its whitewashed walls, small windows were dotted about.

  Phyllis rubbed Daisy through her bag. ‘We’ve got to get inside the theatre,’ she said quietly.

  Daisy poked out her head and licked Phyllis’s wrist.

  ‘There’s how,’ Phyllis murmured, spying a doorway over to the left, in one of the towers. ‘Down you go, Daisy, best you stay out of sight for a while . . .’

  The little dog snuggled back into the soft darkness of Phyllis’s bag, and Phyllis went up to the door. Gently she pushed it. It was heavy, but it opened smoothly.

  She ventured through the doorway, into the gloominess ahead. There were no candles or lamps burning here in the tower; the only light coming in was from the pale sunlight that, when it wasn’t being covered by the clouds outside, was shining feebly through the narrow windows.

  Phyllis let her eyes get used to the gloom. Then she saw, rising up in front of her, a narrow set of wooden stairs. Towards the top, they disappeared around a corner. She imagined that the auditorium and the stage might be to her left, on the other side of the wall next to her.

  She was about to go up the stairs to see if her hunch was right, when, suddenly, a door at the foot of the stairs—a door she hadn’t seen in the gloom—swung open and a ruddy-faced man came out. He saw Phyllis immediately, but didn’t look surprised. Instead he gave her an impatient look.

  ‘You’re late,’ he said in a gruff voice.

  Phyllis blinked.

  ‘But you’re lucky,’ he went on. ‘The gentlemen still be here. Wait there, and be ready to go on.’

  ‘Um . . . Yes, sir,’ said Phyllis.

  In a flash, the red-faced man went out through the door. Phyllis heard him calling out, ‘There be one more, just arrived. Are ye still interested?’

  ‘Send him in,’ came another voice, from further away.

  Phyllis wondered what was going on. In the whirlwind seconds of what was to happen next, she quickly found out.

  The ruddy-faced man appeared again. ‘Look you sharply,’ he barked at Phyllis. ‘They’re ready for you now. Through here and do not tarry.’ He held the door open and almost shoved Phyllis through.

  And immediately her eyes went as big as plates.

  She was standing on the stage, a big, wide stage with a column on each side. The columns looked like marble, crowned with gold-painted capitals, and they rose up to a ceiling which covered the back half of the stage. Phyllis looked up and she smiled as she saw the sun and the moon and a constellation of stars, all of which had been painted brightly and boldly onto the ceiling. It felt like an enchanted place, and Phyllis liked it straightaway.

  She looked out, ahead of her, to see a vast empty yard. This, she knew, was where the groundlings—the people who bought the cheapest tickets to the plays—stood to watch, clustered around close to the front of the stage and filling the yard. On all sides of the groundlings’ pit, rising up the full three storeys, were tiers of enclosed rooms in which the box seats were set. The back walls of some of the boxes had been painted with scenes of fields and ancient Greek temples and other lavish images. Tickets to these rooms were more expensive, as they permitted a better view of the stage and all the action.

  Her gaze rose higher, and she saw, at the very top of the theatre, the sky, with the clouds rolling gently across it. There was no roof at all above the groundlings’ area. No wonder the tickets for that section were cheap—when it rained, the groundlings would get drenched!

  I’m here, she thought, her spine tingling and zingling and her eyes filling with the wonder of the place. I’m on the stage of the Globe Theatre . . .

  A voice from above made her start. ‘And what are you?’ it asked, loudly and clearly. It was certainly the voice of an actor.

  Phyllis looked up, and all around. She saw, in one of the boxes on the first tier directly in front of the stage, two figures. She could only see their outlines; the day was not bright and the light was gloomy, especially in the boxes which did have ceilings. And there seemed to be a fine fog, a spindly sort of mist, that was floating about the building.

  Phyllis gulped. She was used to being on stages when she performed, but this stage was different—bigger and more open and more . . . raw.

  ‘I say,’ repeated the shadowy man, ‘what are you?’

  In her best, most confident stage voice, she answered: ‘I am a performer, sir.’

  ‘A performer?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  She saw the outline of the man who had spoken move closer to the other man, and she could see the other man’s head nodding. Then the first man spoke again: ‘A performer? And thou art a girl?’

  ‘I am,’ answered Phyllis Wong.

  ‘Strange that a girl should call herself a performer.’

  ‘Where I come from,’ Phyllis called up into the smoky-looking mist, ‘girls can be performers.’

  There was silence. A shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds, onto the stage, and Phyllis put a hand above her eyes to shield them from the glare as she kept looking up.

  Then the voice spoke again: ‘It is obvious, indeed, that thou comest from a very different clime to the stage upon which you find yourself.’

  You can say that again, Phyllis thought. She smiled up at the shadowy men.

  ‘We are curious. What sort of performer art thou? Are you an actor? An acrobat, or a singer or a balladeer? A dancer, perhaps?’

  ‘I am a conjuror,’ Phyllis answered proudly.

  ‘A conjuror?’ repeated the man.

  ‘A prestidigitator,’ she said.

  She saw, through the glare and the mist, the second man writing something down w
ith what looked like a long feather quill.

  ‘A magician,’ she added.

  ‘Oddsbodkins! We have not had anyone with your speciality during the auditions.’

  ‘Auditions?’ said Phyllis.

  ‘Aye. That is not why you are here? Wherefore else wouldst thou come today?’

  ‘Oh. Of course. That’s why I’m here; to audition for your company.’

  ‘Well, then, present us some of your magic . . . erm . . . what is thy name, young woman?’

  ‘Phyllis. Phyllis Wong.’

  She saw the second man’s quill moving again.

  ‘Well, Phyllis Wong,’ the first man called down, ‘amaze us with your ways. We await with bated breath!’

  Phyllis smiled. She took her hand away from her brow and gently placed her bag by her feet. ‘Gentlemen, behold my conjurations!’

  And the second man above her scribbled eagerly.

  Don’t call us . . .

  Phyllis rolled up the sleeves of her black coat, all the way to her elbows. It was chilly on the stage of the Globe, and she felt her arms go all goose-pimply.

  ‘Behold, gentlemen,’ she declaimed boldly. ‘Nothing up my sleeves . . .’

  From above, the second shadowy figure scrawled away with his feather quill.

  Phyllis reached down and picked up her shoulder bag. She opened it and out popped Daisy’s head. The little dog blinked, wondering at her surroundings, and Phyllis patted her soothingly on her neck. ‘Allow me to present to you,’ Phyllis called to the men above, ‘my faithful assistant, Daisy.’

  ‘Rerf!’ barked Daisy, looking all around.

  The first man chuckled. ‘A most noble assistant, Phyllis Wong,’ he called down.

  ‘I thank you,’ said Phyllis. ‘Watch her carefully, for she, like me, is a performer of magic!’

  Phyllis saw both of the silhouetted figures leaning forward, resting their arms on the low wall at the front of their box.