They both looked at Hwel, who was drumming his fingers on his stool. All three found their attention drawn to the bag of silver the Fool had given Hwel. Even by itself it represented enough money to complete the Dysk. And there had been talk of more to follow. Patronage, that was the thing.
‘You’ll do it then, will you?’ said Vitoller.
‘It’s got a certain something,’ Hwel conceded. ‘But . . . I don’t know . . .’
Tm not trying to pressure you,’ said Vitoller. All three pairs of eyes swivelled back to the money bag.
‘It seems a bit fishy,’ Tomjon conceded. ‘I mean, the Fool is decent enough. But the way he tells it . . . it’s very odd. His mouth says the words, and his eyes say something else. And I got the impression he’d much rather we believed his eyes.’
‘On the other hand,’ said Vitoller hurriedly, ‘what harm could it do? The pay’s the thing.’
Hwel raised his head.
‘What?’ he said muzzily.
‘I said, the play’s the thing,’ said Vitoller.
There was silence again, except for the drumming of Hwel’s fingertips. The bag of silver seemed to have grown larger. In fact, it seemed to fill the room.
‘The thing is—’ Vitoller began, unnecessarily loudly.
‘The way I see it—’ Hwel began.
They both stopped.
‘After you. Sorry.’
‘It wasn’t important. Go ahead.’
‘I was going to say, we could afford to build the Dysk anyway,’ said Hwel.
‘Just the shell and the stage,’ said Vitoller. ‘But not all the other things. Not the trapdoor mechanism, or the machine for lowering gods out of heaven. Or the big turntable, or the wind fans.’
‘We used to manage without all that stuff,’ said Hwel. ‘Remember the old days? All we had was a few planks and a bit of painted sacking. But we had a lot of spirit. If we wanted wind we had to make it ourselves.’ He drummed his fingers for a while. ‘Of course,’ he added quietly, ‘we should be able to afford a wave machine. A small one. I’ve got this idea about this ship wrecked on an island, where there’s this—’
‘Sorry.’ Vitoller shook his head. ‘
‘But we’ve had some huge audiences!’ said Tomjon.
‘Sure, lad. Sure. But they pay in ha’pennies. The artificers want silver. If we wanted to be rich men – people,’ he corrected hurriedly, ‘we should have been born carpenters.’ Vitoller shifted uneasily. ‘I already owe Chrystophrase the Troll more than I should.’
The other two stared.
‘He’s the one that has people’s limbs torn off!’ said Tomjon.
‘How much do you owe him?’ said Hwel.
‘It’s all right,’ said Vitoller hurriedly, Tm keeping up the interest payments. More or less.’
‘Yes, but how much does he want?’
‘An arm and a leg.’
The dwarf and boy stared at him in horror. ‘How could you have been so—’
‘I did it for you two! Tomjon deserves a better stage, he doesn’t want to go ruining his health sleeping in lattys and never knowing a home, and you, my man, you need somewhere settled, with all the proper things you ought to have, like trapdoors and . . . wave machines and so forth. You talked me into it, and I thought, they’re right. It’s no life out on the road, giving two performances a day to a bunch of farmers and going round with a hat afterwards, what sort of future is that? I thought, we’ve got to get a place somewhere, with comfortable seats for the gentry, people who don’t throw potatoes at the stage. I said, blow the cost. I just wanted you to—’
‘All right, all right!’ shouted Hwel. ‘I’ll write it!’
‘I’ll act it,’ said Tomjon.
‘I’m not forcing you, mind,’ said Vitoller. ‘It’s your own choice.’
Hwel frowned at the table. There were, he had to admit, some nice touches. Three witches was good. Two wouldn’t be enough, four would be too many. They could be meddling with the destinies of mankind, and everything. Lots of smoke and green light. You could do a lot with three witches. It was surprising no-one had thought of it before.
‘So we can tell this Fool that we’ll do it, can we?’ said Vitoller, his hand on the bag of silver.
And of course you couldn’t go wrong with a good storm. And there was the ghost routine that Vitoller had cut out of Please Yourself, saying they couldn’t afford the muslin. And perhaps he could put Death in, too. Young Dafe would make a damn good Death, with white makeup and platform soles . . .
‘How far away did he say he’d come from?’ he said.
‘The Ramtops,’ said the playmaster. ‘Some little kingdom no-one has ever heard of. Sounds like a chest infection.’
‘It’d take months to get there.’
‘I’d like to go, anyway,’ said Tomjon. ‘That’s where I was born.’
Vitoller looked at the ceiling. Hwel looked at the floor. Anything was better, just at that moment, than looking at each other’s face.
‘That’s what you said,’ said the boy. ‘When you did a tour of the mountains, you said.’
‘Yes, but I can’t remember where,’ said Vitoller. ‘All those little mountain towns looked the same to me. We spent more time pushing the lattys across rivers and dragging them up hills than we ever did on the stage.’
‘I could take some of the younger lads and we could make a summer of it,’ said Tomjon. ‘Put on all the old favourites. And we could still be back by Soulcake Day. You could stay here and see to the theatre, and we could be back for a Grand Opening.’ He grinned at his father. ‘It’d be good for them,’ he said slyly. ‘You always said some of the young lads don’t know what a real acting life is like.’
‘Hwel’s still got to write the play,’ Vitoller pointed out.
Hwel was silent. He was staring at nothing at all. After a while one hand fumbled in his doublet and brought out a sheaf of paper, and then disappeared in the direction of his belt and produced a small corked ink pot and a bundle of quills.
They watched as, without once looking at them, the dwarf smoothed out the paper, opened the ink pot, dipped a quill, held it poised like a hawk waiting for its prey, and then began to write.
Vitoller nodded at Tomjon.
Walking as quietly as they could, they left the room.
Around mid-afternoon they took up a tray of food and a bundle of paper.
The tray was still there at teatime. The paper had gone.
A few hours later a passing member of the company reported hearing a yell of ‘It can’t work! It’s back to front!’ and the sound of something being thrown across the room.
Around supper Vitoller heard a shouted request for more candles and fresh quills.
Tomjon tried to get an early night, but sleep was murdered by the sound of creativity from the next room. There were mutterings about balconies, and whether the world really needed wave machines. The rest was silence, except for the insistent scratching of quills.
Eventually, Tomjon dreamed.
‘Now. Have we got everything this time?’
‘Yes, Granny.’
‘Light the fire, Magrat.’
‘Yes, Granny.’
‘Right. Let’s see now—’
‘I wrote it all down, Granny.’
‘I can read, my girl, thank you very much. Now, what’s this. “Round about the cauldron go, In the poisoned entrails throw . . .” What are these supposed to be?’
‘Our Jason slaughtered a pig yesterday, Esme.’
‘These look like perfectly good chitterlin’s to me, Gytha. There’s a couple of decent meals in them, if I’m any judge.’
‘Please, Granny.’
‘There’s plenty of starvin’ people in Klatch who wouldn ‘t
turn up their nose at ’em, that’s all I’m saying . . . All right, all right. “Whole grain wheat and lentils too, In the cauldron seethe and stew”? What happened to the toad?’
‘Please, Granny. You ‘re slowing it down. You know Goodie was against all unnecessary cruelty. Vegetable protein is a perfectly acceptable substitute.’
‘That means no newt or fenny snake either, I suppose?’
‘No, Granny.’
‘Or tiger’s chaudron?’
‘Here.’
‘What the hell’s this, excuse my Klatchian?’
‘It’s a tiger’s chaudron, Our Wane brought it off a merchant from forn parts.’
‘You sure?’
‘Our Wane asked special, Esme.’
‘Looks like any other chaudron to me. Oh, well. “Double nubble, stubble trouble, Fire burn and cauldron bub&mdash” WHY isn’t the cauldron bubbling, Magrat?’
Tomjon awoke, shivering. The room was dark. Outside a few stars pierced the mists of the city, and there was the occasional whistle of burglars and footpads as they went about their strictly lawful occasions.
There was silence from the next room, but he could see the light of a candle under the door.
He went back to bed.
Across the turgid river the Fool had also awakened. He was staying in the Fool’s Guild, not out of choice but because the duke hadn’t given him any money for anything else, and getting to sleep had been difficult in any case. The chilly walls had brought back too many memories. Besides, if he listened hard he could hear the muted sobs and occasional whimpers from the students’ dormitories, as they contemplated with horror the life that lay ahead of them.