A Tale of Two Castles

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?

I curtsied. IT inclined ITs head.

“Come! I will not refuse you food today.” He led us to the yellow mansion and opened the door. “Please come in, Lodie.”

“Elodie.”

“Serve us out here, if you please, Sulow. Your mansion is impossible for me, as you know.”

I was being protected. I felt embarrassed, as if Master Sulow would guess that Masteress Meenore didn’t trust him.

He entered the mansion and returned in a few minutes with a tray that held a bowl of apples (again), a smaller bowl of dried apricots and walnuts, a sliced honey cake, and a bowl for each of us. He set the tray on the bench in the first row before the purple mansion. Gallantly he motioned me to sit.

I did, and he took his place on the other side of the tray. IT settled ITself before us, positioned to see Master Sulow and his mansioners and to raise a wing between me and an attacker.

The three of us followed the custom of serving one another.

“Tomorrow afternoon we perform the whole of the minotaur tale, not merely Theseus’s scenes. It is rarely performed in its entirety, Elodie.”

Ordinarily I would have wanted to see the play more than anything, but now I wanted most to find His Lordship—or His Lordship’s killer.

IT put an apple in Master Sulow’s bowl and ate one ITself, core and stem. “Why more mansioning on the subject of a monster?”

“More means more than one, Meenore. We were unable to perform Beauty and the Beast.”

I burst out, “Your minstrel sang about a giant slayer and a giant. A giant is a monster.”

“Young Elodie, my audience is in a mood for monsters. Meenore, would you grill white cheese if your customers preferred yellow?”

“I can turn white to yellow with my flame, and a mansioner as skilled as you can turn anything to anything.”

I smiled with pride. How clever my masteress was.

“No one has eaten any walnuts.” Master Sulow put two in my bowl and three in ITs.

I passed one back to him.

He cocked his head toward his three apprentices. “One will be a tolerable mansioner if I heckle and hound him ceaselessly. The girl shows promise as a carpenter, which I can always use, but the third might as well be a piece of cheese for all the good he will do me. If you hadn’t come, Meenore, I would have sought you out.”

My stomach fluttered.

“Why?” IT asked.

“To apologize. I own up when I’m wrong, unlike some conceited dragons.”

“I am never wrong.” Enh enh enh.

“To apologize to Elodie.” He turned to me.

My heart fluttered.

“I regret that your improvisation for His Lordship’s guests was cut short.”

“Th-thank you.”

“I should have taken you when I saw your Thisbe. I’ll be honored if you apprentice with me.”





Chapter Thirty

Lambs and calves!

IT said something and Master Sulow answered, but I didn’t hear. Instead, my mind numb with astonishment, I turned to watch the other mansioners, who were laughing among themselves. I counted a dozen of them—young, old, fair, uncomely—because there were roles for all sorts.

My masteress snapped, “I pay her!”

I came to attention.

“Alas, the guild does not allow me to pay an apprentice.”

“Then make her a journeyman.”

A journeyman? I gripped the bench with the hand that didn’t hold my bowl.

Silence fell between them.

But IT had said I was in danger and had to remain with IT. Had IT changed ITs mind?

“I will pay her. And you, Meenore, may sell your skewers here.”

This was my soft bed sending me a pillowy dream. I was still in the lair. I could say anything. Real mistakes were impossible in a dream. “Pay me how much?”

“The beginning rate for a mansioner is two coppers a month. The guild will not let me pay less.”

From my masteress I would accumulate a single copper in six months.

Quickly he added, “The guild will not let me pay more, either.”

Talk of the guild didn’t sound dreamlike. “Why are you willing to pay me?” I wanted to hear him say I was that good.

He said so. “The mayor laughed, and I’ve been trying to extort a smile from him for fifteen years. The women left off looking at Thiel and watched you.”