I smiled. “What did they tell you?”
“That Thiel does not live with them, that they know not where he lives, that they saw no one signal the cats, and that they gave no signal themselves. They were abundantly supplied with nos, both of them. I peered in a window of the mill house. Every comfort in full measure. Whatever one thinks of Thiel, the old miller was unkind to him.”
“If his father had left him anything, he might not have become a thief.”
“He stole before his father died, Lodie.”
Oh.
The nine-o’clock bells rang.
“Then, in the square, I interrogated this one and that. The townsfolk expect a lion to run up and down the way, dining on people as he goes. They are worth nothing, the lot of them. If His Lordship becomes His Lordship again, he will not last long. He would do better to come back as a lion and really eat them.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
When we had finished our breakfast, IT announced that we would visit Master Sulow and his troupe. “You say mansioners are observant. We shall find out.”
Master Sulow had seen my performance at the banquet. Had he liked it? Had he hated it?
As I walked to the mansions, missing ITs warmth, IT flew to and fro, ITs shadow scribbling across the landscape. Both of us looked for any animal not acting as it should. Most likely we were too late, but we looked.
Finally the meadow ended. I was close enough to see the cats lolling under the mansions.
My masteress landed and lumbered along at my side. “The villain, whoever he or she is, must object to my questions. You may be in danger. I am near invulnerable, but he or she may attack me through you.”
I shivered, then felt surprise. IT would be injured if I were hurt?
“My wing is an impervious shield. Seek its shelter if need be. Do not stray far from my side until the danger is over.”
I swallowed over a lump in my throat. IT wasn’t using common sense. No one would think of harming me to stop IT.
As before, we reached the mansions from the rear. I heard voices calling to one another, the beat of a hammer, the thud of a mallet. Someone laughed. Then came a cry like none I’d ever heard—a bleat, a bray, a deep wail—all three at once.
“That, no doubt, is Master Sulow, portraying himself as a donkey.” Enh enh enh.
We rounded the side of the purple wagon.
Master Sulow, wearing a bull’s mask, strode back and forth before the black mansion. He sounded like nothing human even as he began to blare words: “Whoever imprisons me will die. I am the whelp of a woman, son of a god.”
I had it. This was Theseus and the Minotaur. Just as at the count’s feast, the next entertainment would be about a beast, this time the bullheaded minotaur, portrayed by Master Sulow.
The front walls had been removed from three mansions. Within the green (for love), trees had been painted on the side walls, and cutouts of trees stood before the back curtain. In the purple (for pomp), a cutout of a castle blocked most of the curtain, and the stage was bare. In the black (for tragedy), the prow of a ship with a single black sail projected from the left-hand wall. Wooden ocean waves, painted blue-green, scalloped the floor.
In front of the mansions a low wooden fence, unfinished,
zigged and zagged and was the source of the hammering and pounding. The apprentices I’d seen at the castle were busy building it, one of the boys steadying the fence while the girl hammered and the other boy held a pail, probably containing nails.
Beyond the fence, four rows of benches had been set facing each open mansion. These seats would accommodate those willing to pay extra for comfort. The rest—called the tin audience, because they paid only a tin or two—would stand.
A group of journeyman mansioners and older apprentices stood by the closed yellow mansion, closed because there was no comedy in Theseus and the Minotaur. I recognized the minstrel from the ogre’s feast. The journeymen spoke lines to one another, softly enough that they didn’t compete with their master, who was trying his lines one way after another. Now he alternated an animal and a human voice. The first made me fear the beast; the second made me pity him.
Experimenting further, he began softly and rose to a rage, animal the whole while. Next he gave an all-human reading drenched in bitterness.
He surpassed Albin and all the mansioners I’d admired in Lahnt. Not merely surpassed. The gulf that separated genius from talent stretched between. If he’d accepted me as an apprentice, how much I could have learned!
And if I’d stayed with Master Sulow, I wouldn’t have grown to love His Lordship. I’d be free of the grief that traveled everywhere with me.
But I wouldn’t have discovered inducing, deducing, and using my common sense.
Master Sulow removed his mask. “Meenore! Young Elodie or Lodie or any other name you prefer!” Holding the mask, he bowed elegantly. “How long have you been watching my wretched attempts?”
Had he truly been unaware of us?