by Noah Gordon
“You don’t progress,” Barber said. “Pay heed. The value of my prentice is to entertain a crowd. My boy must be a juggler.”
“Can I not juggle four balls?”
“An outstanding juggler can keep seven balls in the air. I know several who can handle six. I need only an ordinary juggler. But if you can’t manage five balls, I’m soon to be done with you.” Barber sighed. “I’ve had boys in number, and of all of them only three were fit to be kept. The first was Evan Carey, who learned to juggle five balls very well but had a weakness for drink. He was with me four prosperous years past apprenticeship, until he was stabbed to death in a drunken brawl in Leicester, a fool’s end.
“The second was Jason Earle. He was clever, the best juggler of all. He learned my barber’s trade but married the daughter of the reeve in Portsmouth and allowed his father-in-law to turn him into a proper thief and bribe collector.
“Boy before last was marvelous. Name of Gibby Nelson. He was my bloody food and drink until he caught a fever in York and died.” He frowned. “The damned last boy was a twit. He did same as you, he could juggle four balls but couldn’t get the hang of managing the fifth, and I rid myself of him in London just before I found you.”
They regarded one another unhappily.
“You, now, are no twit. You’re a likely chap, easy to live with, quick to do your work. But I didn’t get the horse and rig, or this house or the meat hanging from its rafters, by teaching my trade to boys I can’t use. You will be a juggler by springtime or I must leave you somewhere. Do you see?”
“Yes, Barber.”
Some things Barber could show him. He had him juggle three apples, and the spiky stems hurt his hands. He caught them softly, yielding his hand a bit at each catch.
“Observe?” Barber said. “Because of the slight deference, an apple already held in your hand doesn’t cause a second caught apple to bounce out of your grasp.” He found that it worked with balls as well as apples. “You make progress,” Barber said hopefully.
Christmastide crept up on them while their attention was elsewhere. Editha invited them to accompany her to church and Barber snorted. “Are we a bloody household, then?” But he made no objection when she asked if she could take just the boy.
The little wattle-and-daub country church was crowded and therefore warmer than the rest of bleak Exmouth. Rob hadn’t been in a church since leaving London and nostalgically breathed the incense-and-people stink and gave himself up to the Mass, a familiar haven. Afterward the priest, who was difficult to understand because of his Dartmoor accent, told of the birth of the Saviour and of the blessed human life that ended when He was slain by the Jews, and he spoke at great length of the fallen angel Lucifer with whom Jesus eternally grapples in defense of all. Rob tried to choose a saint for special prayer but ended up addressing the purest soul his mind could conceive. Watch over the others, please, Mam. I am fine, but help your younger children. Yet he couldn’t forbear to ask a personal request: Please, Mam, help me to juggle five balls.
They went directly from the church to a roast goose turning on Barber’s spit, and a plum-and-onion stuffing. “If a man has goose on Christmas he’ll receive money all through the year,” Barber said.
Editha smiled. “I’ve always heard that to receive money you must eat goose on Michaelmas,” she said, but didn’t argue when Barber insisted it was on Christmas. He was generous with spirits and they had a jolly meal.
She wouldn’t stay the night, perhaps because at Christ’s birth her thoughts were with her dead husband and sons, as Rob’s were elsewhere.
When she had gone home, Barber watched him clean up after their meal. “I shouldn’t grow too fond of Editha,” Barber said finally. “She’s only a woman and we shall soon abandon her.”
The sun never shone. Three weeks into the new year the unchanging grayness of the skies worked its way into their spirits. Now Barber began to drive him, insisting that he stay at his practice no matter how miserable his repeated failure. “Don’t you recall how it was when you tried to juggle three balls? One moment you couldn’t, and then you were able. And the same thing happened with the blowing of the Saxon horn. You must give yourself every chance to juggle five.”
But no matter how many hours he kept at it, the result was the same. He came to approach the task dully, understanding even before he began that he must fail.
He knew spring would come and he wouldn’t be a juggler.
He dreamed one night that Editha touched his head again and opened great thighs and showed him her cunt. When he awoke he couldn’t remember what it had looked like but a strange and terrifying thing had occurred during the dream. He wiped the mess from the fur bedcover when Barber was out of the house and scrubbed it clean with wet ashes.
He was not so foolish as to suppose that Editha might wait for him to become a man and then marry him, but he thought it would improve her condition if she should gain a son. “Barber will leave,” he told her one morning as she helped him carry in the wood. “Could I not stay in Exmouth and live with you?”
Something hard came into her fine eyes but she didn’t look away. “I can’t maintain you. To keep only myself alive, I must be half seamstress and half whore. If I had you too, I should be any man’s.” A stick of wood fell from the pile in her arms. She waited until he had replaced it, then she turned and went into the house.
After that she came less often and gave him only a scarce word. Finally she didn’t come at all. Perhaps Barber was less interested in his pleasure, for he grew more fretful.
“Dolt!” he shouted as Rob J. dropped the balls still another time. “Use only three balls this time but throw them high, as you would in juggling all five. When the third ball is in the air, clap your hands.”
Rob did so, and there was time after the handclap to catch the three balls.
“You see?” Barber said, pleased. “In the time spent clapping, you would have been able to toss up the other two balls.”
But when he tried, all five collided in the air and once again there was chaos, the man cursing and balls rolling everywhere.
Suddenly, spring was short weeks away.
One night when he thought Rob was asleep, Barber came and adjusted the bearskin so it lay warm and snug under his chin. He stood over the bed and looked down at Rob for a long time. Then he sighed and moved away.
In the morning Barber took a whip from the cart. “You don’t think on what you are doing,” he said. Rob never had seen him whip the horse, but when he dropped the balls the lash whistled and cut his legs.
It hurt terribly; he cried out and then he began to sob.
“Pick up the balls.”
He collected them and threw again with the same sorry result, and the leather slashed across his legs.
He had been beaten by his father on numerous occasions, but never with a whip.
Again and again he retrieved the five balls and tried to juggle them but couldn’t. Each time he failed, the whip cut across his legs, causing him to scream.
“Pick up the balls.”
“Please, Barber!”
The man’s face was grim. “It’s for your good. Use your head. Think on it.” Although it was a cold day, Barber was sweating.
The pain did impel him to think on what he did, but he was shuddering with frantic sobbing and his muscles seemed to belong to someone else. He was worse off than ever. He stood and trembled, tears wetting his face and snot running into his mouth, as Barber lashed him. I am a Roman, he told himself. When I’m grown I’ll find this man and kill him.
Barber struck him until blood showed through the legs of the new trousers Editha had sewn. Then he dropped the whip and strode from the house.
The barber-surgeon returned late that night and fell drunkenly into bed.
In the morning when he awoke his eyes were calm but he pursed his lips when he looked at Rob’s legs. He heated water and used a rag to soak them free of dried blood, then he fetched a pot of bear fat. “Rub it
in well,” he said.
The knowledge that he’d lost his chance hurt Rob more than the cuts and the welts.
Barber consulted his charts. “I set out on Maundy Thursday and will take you as far as Bristol. It’s a flourishing port and perhaps you may find a place there.”
“Yes, Barber,” he said in a low voice.
Barber spent a long time readying breakfast and when it was ready he lavishly dealt gruel, cheese toast, eggs and bacon. “Eat, eat,” he said gruffly.
He sat and watched while Rob forced down the food.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was a runagate boy myself and know life can be hard.”
Barber spoke to him only once all the rest of the morning. “You may keep the suit of clothes,” he said.
The colored balls were put away and Rob practiced no more. But Maundy Thursday was almost a fortnight away and Barber continued to work him hard, setting him to the scrubbing of the splintery floors in both rooms. Each spring at home Mam had also washed down her walls and he did that now. There was less smoke in this house than there had been in Mam’s but these walls appeared never to have been washed, and there was a marked difference when he was done.
On a midafternoon the sun magically reappeared, turning the sea blue and glittery and gentling the salty air. For the first time Rob could understand why some folks chose to live in Exmouth. In the woods behind the house small green things began to finger through the wet leaf mold; he picked a potful of fern shoots and they boiled the first greens with bacon. The fishing men had ventured into the calming seas and Barber met a returning boat and bought a fearsome cod and half a dozen fish heads. He set Rob to cubing salt pork and tried the fat meat slowly in the fry pan until it was crisp. Then he brewed a soup, merging meat and fish, sliced turnip, rendered fat, rich milk, and a bit of thyme. They enjoyed it silently with a crusty warm bread, each aware that very soon Rob wouldn’t be eating fare such as this.
Some of the hung mutton had turned green and Barber cut away the spoiled part and carried it into the woods. There was a fierce stench from the apple barrel, in which only a fraction of the original fruit survived. Rob tipped the barrel and emptied it, checking each pippin and setting aside the sound ones.
They felt solid and round in his hands.
Recalling how Barber had helped him to learn a soft catch by giving him apples to juggle, he popped three of them, hup-hup-hup.
He caught them. Then he popped them again, sending them high, and clapped his hands before they fell.
He picked up two more apples and sent all five up, but—surprise!—they collided and landed on the floor somewhat squashily. He froze, not knowing Barber’s whereabouts; he was certain to be beaten again if Barber discovered him wasting food.
But there was no protest from the other room.
He began putting the sound apples back into the barrel. It had not been a bad effort, he told himself; his timing appeared to be better.
He chose five more apples of the proper size and sent them up.
This time it came very close to working, but what failed was his nerve and the fruit came crashing down as if dispersed from its tree by an autumn gale.
He retrieved the apples and sent them up again. He was all over the place and it was herky-jerky instead of smooth and lovely, but this time the five objects went up and came down into his hands and were sent up again as though they were only three.
Up and down and up and down. Over and over again.
“Oh, Mam,” he said shakily, although years later he would debate with himself over whether she had anything to do with it.
Hup-hup-hup-hup-hup!
“Barber,” he said loudly, afraid to shout.
The door opened. A moment later he lost the whole thing and there were falling apples everywhere.
When he looked up he cringed, for Barber was rushing at him with his hand raised.
“I saw it!” Barber cried, and Rob found himself in a joyous hug that compared favorably to the best efforts of Bartram the bear.
8
THE ENTERTAINER
Maundy Thursday came and went and they remained in Exmouth, for Rob had to be trained in all aspects of the entertainment. They worked on team juggling, which he enjoyed from the start and quickly came to perform exceedingly well. Then they moved to legerdemain, magic equal in difficulty to four-ball juggling.
“The Devil doesn’t license magicians,” Barber said. “Magic is a human art, to be mastered the way you conquered juggling. But it is much easier,” he added hastily, seeing Rob’s face.
Barber gave him the simple secrets of white magic. “You must have a bold and audacious spirit and put a confident face on anything you do. You require nimble fingers and a clean manner of work, and must hide behind a patter, using exotic words to adorn your actions.
“The final rule is by far the most important. You must have devices, gestures of the body, and other diversions that will cause the spectators to look anywhere but at what you are truly doing.”
The finest diversion they had was one another, Barber said, and used the ribbon trick to demonstrate. “For this I need ribbons of blue, red, black, yellow, green, and brown. At the end of every yard I tie a slip knot, and then I roll the knotted ribbon tightly, making small coils that are distributed throughout my clothing. The same color is always kept in the same pocket.
“‘Who would like a ribbon?’ I ask.
“‘Oh, I, sirrah! A blue ribbon, two yards in length.’ They seldom ask for longer. They do not use ribbon to tether the cow.
“I appear to forget the request, going on to other matters. Then you create a bit of flash, perhaps by juggling. While you have their eyes I go to this left tunic pocket, where blue is always kept. I appear to cover a cough with my hand, and the coil of ribbon is in my mouth. In a moment, when their attention again is on me, I discover the ribbon’s end between my lips and pull it, bit by bit. When the first knot reaches my teeth, it slips. When the second knot arrives I know I am at two yards, and I cut the ribbon and present it.”
Rob was delighted to learn the trick yet let down by the unlovely manipulation, feeling cheated of the magic.
Barber continued to disillusion him. Soon, if he wasn’t yet passing fine as a magician, he did yeoman’s work as a magician’s helper. He learned little dances, hymns and songs, jokes and stories he didn’t understand. Finally, he magpied the speeches that went with the selling of the Universal Specific. Barber declared him a swift learner. Well before his boy thought it possible, the barber-surgeon declared that he was ready.
They left on a foggy April morning and made their way through the Blackdown Hills for two days in a light spring rain. On the third afternoon, under a sky turned clear and new, they reached the village of Bridgeton. Barber halted the horse by the bridge that gave the place its name and appraised him. “Are you all set, then?”
He wasn’t certain, but nodded.
“There’s a good chap. It’s not much of a town. Whoremongers and trulls, a busy public house, and a good many customers who come from far and wide to get at both. So anything’s allowed, eh?”
Rob had no idea what that meant, but he nodded again. Incitatus responded to the reins and pulled them across the bridge at a promenade trot. At first it was as it had been before. The horse pranced and Rob pounded the drum as they paraded the main street. He set up the bank on the village square and carried three oak-splint baskets of the Specific onto it.
But this time, when the entertainment began he bounded onto the bank with Barber.
“Good day and good morrow,” Barber said. They both began to juggle two balls. “We’re comforted to be in Bridgeton.”
Simultaneously each took a third ball from his pocket, then a fourth and a fifth. Rob’s were red, Barber’s blue; they flowed up from their hands in the center and cascaded down on the outside like water in two fountains. Their hands moving only inches, they made the wooden balls dance.
Eventually they turned and faced each ot
her on opposite sides of the bank as they juggled. Without missing a beat, Rob sent a ball to Barber and caught a blue one that had been thrown to him. First he sent every third ball to Barber and received every third ball in return. Then every other ball, a steady two-way stream of red and blue missiles. After an almost imperceptible nod from Barber, every time a ball reached Rob’s right hand he sent it hard and fast, retrieving as deftly as he threw.
The applause was the loudest and best sound he’d ever heard.
Following the finish he took ten of the twelve balls and left the stage, seeking refuge behind the curtain in the wagon. He was gulping for air, his heart pounding. He could hear Barber, who was not perceptively short of breath, speaking of the joys of juggling as he popped two balls. “Do you know what you have when you hold objects such as these in your hand, Mistress?”
“What is that, sirrah?” asked a trull.
“His complete and perfect attention,” Barber said.
The reveling crowd hooted and yelped.
In the wagon Rob prepared the trappings for several pieces of magic and then rejoined Barber, who consequently caused an empty basket to blossom with paper roses, changed a somber kerchief into an array of colored flags, snatched coins out of thin air, and made first a flagon of ale and then a hen’s egg to disappear.
Rob sang “The Rich Widow’s Wooing” to delighted catcalls, and then Barber quickly sold out his Universal Specific, emptying the three baskets and sending Rob into the wagon for more. Thereupon a long line of patients waited to be treated for numerous ailments, for although the loose crowd was quick to jape and laugh, Rob noted they were extremely serious when it came to seeking cures for the illnesses of their bodies.
As soon as the doctoring was done, they made their way out of Bridgeton, for Barber said it was a sink where throats would be slit after dark. The master was obviously satisfied with their receipts, and Rob settled into sleep that night cherishing the knowledge that he had secured a place in the world.