Fox knew not to underestimate him; Brand had said he was a clever, brutal man. Normally at the end of the first two shows the King’s Men would take a short break, but Fox didn’t want to give the Count any opportunity to notice something was amiss. He thought quickly and settled on an idea: He was going to play for time.
“Thank you for your applause. Our next show is something new... a rather ambitious piece of work, and one of our longer pieces. We have been working hard on this one for a long time, and you all get to have the honor of being the first people to see it performed!”
A new round of cheers and applause broke out. Fox waited for them to die down before speaking again.
“This show is known as ‘Kings of the Corona’. Ladies, gentlemen, let’s begin.”
And Fox’s troupe, used to performing on the fly, quickly assembled themselves for the new show (poor Bennett, forced to appear in the plays, scrambled to remember Fox’s quick summaries from the ride over). It took less than a minute of preparation before they began.
CHAPTER 30
Kings of the Corona, by Justin M. Tarquin
Part 1: The Brewery Boy
No one in Palavel remembered just when the Romans had departed from Britain, but everyone in the valley-kingdom knew the two arches of the aqueduct they had built, coming down from the western slopes toward the lake at the valley’s southern end. It was impressive stonework, even though they had abandoned it unfinished, ending in midair. Mauregal’s master, Bodlaut, had his brewery near the ruins, only a half-hour’s walk from the village by the lake.
In the early morning Mauregal trod next to his empty mule-cart on the path to the village. He breathed the dewy exhalations of the summer wildflowers with the elevated, almost euphoric consciousness of a young man with a girl-friend and high hopes for the day. The creaking of the cartwheels sounded loud in the stillness, broken only occasionally by a distant rooster’s cry or the scuffling of a fox in the bushes. Pearly half-light covered the field on his left, and the oxen resting for another day of pulling the hay-wains made indistinct, dark lumps in the grayness.
Taurus twinkled in the clear sky, about to vanish under the hills beyond the lake; Mithras, the Hunter, had already sunk below the horizon. Mauregal was tall and sturdy, but not quite burly enough to be in danger of having to portray Mithras in the midwinter festival. They would sacrifice a bull, and the heftiest youth would represent the godlike hunter, reclining on the bull’s skin and feasting on its roasted flesh with Sol Invictus. The current King always played the part of the Unconquered Sun.
Lowering his eyes to the village, still more than a mile away, Mauregal beheld at ground level a light that resembled one more star gleaming like a baleful comet. Apparently the King was already up and poking his head out of doors. Mauregal scowled. Seeing the distant Corona as if it were a terrestrial star seemed rather to impugn the heavens than to exalt the Earth, as though the beauty of the very celestial sphere might in reality be tawdry and mean, rendered mysterious only by distance.
“Gee, Aercus, whoa, now,” he told the mule as it pulled up to the house of Argudanus, the smith. Mauregal walked in to find the smith and his sons Ganuan, Idwallo, and Imanor breakfasting on oatcakes and cheese. They seemed amused at something. Mauregal looked around for Gautius, the eldest son, who was supposed to have something ready for Mauregal to give his sweetheart.
“Hail, Mauregal,” said Argudanus. “We heard you coming. Gautius is collecting our empty casks from the back. Have an oatcake.” As he spoke, Gautius came through carrying two compact bundles, smaller casks nested in larger ones, one over each shoulder. Mauregal shook his head in admiration.
“Maybe I should, if a good breakfast is how you get so strong!” The others laughed, a bit more than seemed necessary, as Mauregal sat and took one of the flat cakes. “I was just thinking on my way here, Gautius might be the one feeding beef to the King this midwinter.” The three boys, in a merry mood, laughed at this too; for his part, Gautius shook his head, grinning, and went out to set the casks on the cart. He seemed a little embarrassed and didn’t meet Mauregal’s eye.
“If he must,” said the smith, shaking his head. “There used to be priests devoted to Mithraism, elaborate liturgies, but that was all before the Corona came. Then the kings took over the ritual for their own amusement till it’s meaningless, now.”
“Do you remember those days?” asked Mauregal, amazed. The people of Palavel didn’t number years, and had only hazy ideas of how long ago historical events had occurred. But Mauregal had thought stories of a time before the Corona were only legends.
“No, not I. But my grandfather did, from when he was a little boy.” As Gautius returned, his father looked up with a twinkle in his eye and said, “Oh, Gautius, don’t forget that basket you have for Mauregal.”
At this Mauregal looked up sharply at Gautius, and the three younger boys laughed out loud at his discomposure. “Gautius!” said Mauregal. “Did you—did you tell everyone?”
“I’m sorry, Mauregal, I had to,” said his friend, handing him a basket of strawberries. “After we dug Althrum’s ditch they wanted to know why I wanted part of my pay in berries, and then why I insisted on keeping them overnight.”
“Couldn’t you have said—” Mauregal began, but then stopped himself and looked at Argudanus.
“Said what, Mauregal?” asked the smith darkly, with half-serious menace. “My sons are not liars.”
“No, sir, of course not. Well, anyway, if all you honest fellows’ honesty will let you keep from blabbing for a few hours, I’d appreciate it. I don’t want Lunwyn to hear what I’m going to say from anyone else before I get there.”
“No fear,” chuckled the smith. “They’re all headed up-valley again today, to Ferthian’s acres. More ditch-digging.”
“More money!” said Ganuan with relish. “Every day we don’t have to…” But he stopped short at the entrance of Caillo, a tow-headed six-year-old. His father was the carpenter, Vallidin, a friend of Argudanus, but Caillo was in the King’s service.
Everyone became serious at Caillo’s arrival. Mauregal knew what Ganuan had been about to say, in any case: Every day we don’t have to bear King Caredan’s litter is a day we can earn money. The King had no need to pay anyone. He also had no need to be carried about in a litter, but then, he was the King. Now Caillo, panting from his trot from the village, must be carrying some message, which clearly boded ill for their plans. Argudanus made him sit down and Mauregal gave him a swig of small beer before he spoke. (Even children in Britain at this time seldom drank water. Folk considered it unhealthy, and through their innocent unawareness of germs or basic sanitation, it often was.)
“The King,” panted the boy. “He wants the four of you back today. He didn’t like the team he had yesterday. Just made up his mind about it, and sent me running.”
The younger brothers groaned at this. “We only had one day off,” complained Imanor. Gautius and Ganuan shook their heads, dismayed.
“Well,” said Argudanus, glowering at his plate, “I always say my sons are the strongest in the valley. Apparently Caredan agrees. Have an oatcake, Caillo, you look famished.” The boy took one hungrily and began to devour it.
“Strong indeed, but that’s also why the farmers need them,” said Mauregal with some heat. “If Caredan weren’t disposed to laziness they could—” But Caillo suddenly cried out and they turned to him.
“Bit my tongue,” he said tearfully. “Hard! Should have remembered-King said, no breakfast for me till I got back. Figured he’d make me hurry that way.”
“I’m sorry, Caillo,” said Argudanus. He scowled. “When did the King want them to report to him?”
“Wanted them by sunrise,” said the boy through his pain, holding his cheek.
At this stunning news, everyone stopped short. They darted glances to the brightening sky and suddenly the older three were in motion, rushing to get their things ready. But Imanor said, “Wait a moment, Caillo: did the King say he
wanted us there by sunrise, or did he order us there by sunrise?” Idwallo also stopped short, waiting for Caillo to reply, but the two eldest went on getting their things together.
“Don’t answer that, Caillo,” said Argudanus sharply, “You’ve done well, and they’ll be there by sunrise.”
“But, Father, it makes a difference! If the King only said he wanted us there…”
“I understand what you’re saying, Imanor. But the child could get it wrong, and then if you were late the Corona would give him second-punishment for not delivering the order right. We won’t endanger Vallidin’s boy like that. Take it as an order, get there by sunrise.” Imanor looked sullen for a moment longer but at a dark look from his father began scooping up his things to leave.
Imanor and the other brothers were gone in a minute, and Mauregal offered to let Caillo ride back to the village on the mule-cart. Argudanus sat looking into the cooking-fire as they bade him farewell. He nodded but didn’t look up. Mauregal lingered a moment, uncomfortably, wondering if he should do anything. But at last the smith sighed and shook his head, and said, “May the gods grant them speed,” he said, “and if they suffer first-punishment may it not injure them hand or foot.”
Caillo sat in the mulecart on the path back to the village, unhappily nursing his hurt tongue. At length he said, thickly, “I’m never going to disobey the King again.”
Mauregal, walking on the side, felt an unreasonable disquiet at this expression of acquiescence: unreasonable, since it was after all what adults always instructed children to do. Yet the apprentice brewer was at the dawn of his own adulthood, and had begun to consider not only how things were, and must be, but how they ought to be, and felt a need to talk through his musings.
“Do you like the King?” he asked Caillo.
The boy hesitated before saying, in a small voice, “No.”
“Neither do I,” said Mauregal boldly. “And I don’t like the Corona, either.” And when this confidence elicited no reply from the wondering child, he added, “I mean, I think it’s… bad, that you have to do every least thing the King commands.”
“But I don’t want to get punished!” objected Caillo.
“No, I understand that. I only mean, I think sometimes it’s worth the risk of getting punished, to be your own man—to keep the King from getting his way, every single time.”
“There’s no risk of getting punished. The Corona always does something to you.”
“Well, you’re right…. That’s true, of course,” said Mauregal, deciding that he wouldn’t be able to make himself clear to one so young. And after all, did he himself know clearly what he wanted to say?
Caillo sat in silence for a minute or two, and then said, “Thank you for letting me ride with you. I’d better go ahead now.” He hopped down and trotted onward toward the village. Mauregal watched him hurrying back to the King, regretting having said anything at all, until his mind turned again to Lunwyn and more cheerful thoughts.
The sun had risen now, and Mauregal had completed his rounds collecting empty vessels, all except the one stop he had purposely kept till last, when he heard his name called.
“Mauregal!” came a piping old-woman’s voice after him.
He turned to see Ettarona, the ancient herbwife, hurrying up the road, basket over one shoulder and her pet ferret on the other. When she caught up he grinned and asked, “Such a fine morning! Enjoying your stroll?”
“Stroll, you say! What else should I be doing a Saturday morning but peddling my blossoms to all the brewers?” She cast her eye up the road he was following. “Ah, I know why you’re cheerful. You’re stopping at the Goose next!” She pinched his cheek with her gnarly fingers, adding a blush to his fresh, smiling face. “Well, it’s to save me a trip to your master Bodlaut I’m after you. Have ye a copper?”
“That I have, mother,” he said familiarly (she was no relation), handing her a small coin, and taking a bundle of mugwort from her basket.
“Take two. Bodlaut will want to dry some for his cyser; it’s almost the season. You’ll be harvesting yon orchards in a couple months.”
“I only have one copper,” he objected.
But she waved her hand at this. “Take it, there’s plenty more where it came from.”
“Thanks, then,” he said, stuffing it after the first one into his poke. “You save us a lot of work gathering from the countryside. But I don’t know how you live on what you charge.”
She chuckled. “I get by just fine. Stay out of drafts and do as the King says, and if you’re lucky you’ll make it to my age too.”
He laughed. “I always stay out of drafts,” he said with a wink.
Catching what he left unsaid, she immediately changed to her serious face and shook a finger after him. Her ferret, sinuous as a snake, climbed across her back to her other arm and took up a comfortable position there, making it harder to wag her finger. “And do as the King says!” she insisted. “Drat it, Vorrex,” and shrugged him around to a better spot while Mauregal went on.
He walked beside the mule up to the house with an old signboard on a post by the door, a white goose painted on it, and stopped a minute before going in, patting the mule and looking into the distance. His lips moved now and then. He had always believed that good preparations made everything easier, but the principle seemed hard to apply with a girl. At length he took a breath and went in.
Lunwyn, the tavern maid, greeted him pleasantly. She was surprised and delighted at the gift of a basket of strawberries, and returned with him to his cart, lingering there as he tied the casks to the heap he already had, chatting of inconsequential things. Eventually there was a lull, but still he stood in the lengthening silence, thinking furiously how to introduce his topic. The girl also stood, smiling and watching him expectantly. Then she asked, “And Bodlaut, I hope his back is recovering?”
“Yes, he’s up and around, doing light work,” he replied gratefully, and took a deep breath. “In fact, he and I spoke last night. He’s very pleased with how I’ve handled the brewery while he couldn’t work.”
“As he should be,” said Lunwyn. “Everyone speaks well of you.”
“And he says he’s even decided to name me master-brewer now.”
She gasped. “Why, Mauregal, that’s wonderful news! That’s almost two years early!”
Mauregal’s heart hammered as he gazed at her. “Nearly so. And, it means I can at last begin to think of my future.”
Lunwyn’s smile suddenly trembled, and as the youth continued, she looked away and swallowed. Her face blushed and then paled, and her downcast eyes seemed to glisten as her smile returned ever so tentatively. She had suddenly become as self-conscious as Mauregal was, as if sensing the conversation had turned in a significant direction.
“Of course, I must continue to take care of Bodlaut in his age,” Mauregal was saying. “That was always our understanding, but it’s no different from any man’s duties. I mean, he has no sons, and I have no parents…”
“Of course,” she said. “You’ve always gotten on well together.”
“I suppose he can turn more and more to his gardening, while I become the brewer. But I would always want it to be known as Bodlaut’s brewery, as long as he lives.”
Lunwyn smiled and nodded. Mauregal took her hands in his, and took a deep breath. “But now that I can think of starting a family of my own…”
“Mauregal!” came a voice from down the street again, this time a young man’s, commanding as a blare of trumpets.
Startled, Lunwyn withdrew her hands and the pair separated. Mauregal was sore annoyed, and turned to the newcomer. “Guillus,” he greeted the King’s messenger sourly. “What is it?”
Guillus approached and looked the two up and down. His clothes were finer than theirs; he had prevailed upon the King years ago that royal servants ought to have a smart appearance for the King’s own honor. His eyes lingered on Lunwyn before turning to Mauregal, at whom he raised one eyebrow. Mauregal had remar
ked before that this trick was Guillus’s one talent.
“The King desires fresh damsons, and commands that you gather some from Bodlaut’s orchard,” said Guillus. “Immediately.”
“But,” Mauregal sputtered, “they won’t be ripe yet!” Lunwyn gasped and shook her head at Mauregal, trying to stop him.
“How do you know, until you go see,” replied Guillus calmly. He didn’t say it like a question.
“I was there last week-but even if I hadn’t been, I can read a calendar!”
“Well, doubtless some will have ripened earlier than the others. Bring those.”
“Why, you—none of them will be ripe yet, it’s not even the corn moon!”
“Mauregal,” warned Lunwyn.
But Mauregal was warming to his subject. “Just what does the King plan to do with these damsons? Break eggs against them? Because that’s all they’ll be good for.”
Guillus smirked. “Well, it’s clear someone here hasn’t heard the maxim, ‘don’t use up your first-punishment before noon.’” He caught Lunwyn’s eye and shook his head with ironic concern, as though inviting her to share his superiority over the foolish brewer. But she only looked away angrily, and he returned to Mauregal.
“Really, Mauregal, backtalk? This is folly. You know you’ve been commanded not to question the King’s orders.”
Mauregal was furious, but Lunwyn took hold of his arm, her eyes pleading. He gritted his teeth and nodded.
“Of course I’ll get the King his damsons, but I regret he will be disappointed to find them green.”
“As I said, you are to set out for the orchard ‘immediately’. And see that you find the best ones for him. You are not such a favorite of the King that you can afford to disappoint him.”
Helpless, Mauregal turned to Lunwyn. She nodded at him and whispered, “Go: we’ll talk more later. I’ll tend to the cart and send word to Bodlaut.”
He turned to go and brushed his hand on the tavern’s sign board, but then cried out in pain: he had driven a huge splinter into his palm.
Tales of the Once and Future King Page 24
