by Noah Gordon
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 other 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.
Next day in Yeoville, to his mortification he dropped three balls during the performance, but Barber was comforting. “It’s bound to happen on occasion in the beginning,” he said. “It will occur less and less frequently and finally not at all.”
Later that week in Taunton, a town of hardworking tradesmen, and in Bridgwater, where there were conservative farmers, they presented their entertainment without bawdiness. Glastonbury was their next stop, a place of pious folk who had built their homes around the large and beautiful Church of St. Michael.
“We must be discreet,” Barber said. “Glastonbury is controlled by priests, and priests look with loathing upon all manner of medical practice, for they believe God has given them sacred charge of men’s bodies as well as their souls.”
They arrived the morning after Whit Sunday, the day that marked the end of the joyous Easter season and commemorated the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the apostles, strengthening them after their nine days of prayer following the ascension of Jesus into Heaven.
Rob noted no fewer than five unjoyous priests among the spectators.
He and Barber juggled red balls, which Barber, in solemn tones, likened to the tongues of fire representing the Holy Spirit in Acts 2:3. The spectators were delighted with the juggling and applauded lustily, but they fell silent as Rob sang “All Glory, Laud and Honor.” He had always liked to sing; his voice cracked at the part about the children making “sweet hosannas ring” and it quavered on the very high notes, but he did fine once his legs stopped jiggling.
Barber brought out holy relics in a battered ash-wood chest. “Pay attention, dear friends,” he said in what he later told Rob was his monk’s voice. He showed them earth and sand carried to England from Mounts Sinai and Olivet; held up a sliver of the Holy Rood and a piece of the beam that had supported the holy manger; displayed water from the Jordan, a clod from Gethsemane, and bits of bone belonging to saints without number.
Then Rob replaced him on the bank and stood alone. Lifting his eyes heavenward, as Barber had instructed, he sang another hymn.
“Creator of the Stars of Night,
Thy people’s everlasting light,
Jesu, Redeemer, save us all,
And hear thy servants when they call.
Thou, grieving that the ancient curse
Should doom to death a universe,
Hast found the medicine, full of grace,
To save and heal a ruined race.”
The spectators were moved. While they were still sighing, Barber was holding out a flask of the Universal Specific. “Friends,” he said. “Just as the Lord has found the medicine for your spirit, I have found the medicine for your body.”
He told them the story about Vitalia the Herb of Life, which obviously worked equally well with the pious as with sinners, for they bought the Specific greedily and then lined up by the barber-surgeon’s screen for consultations and treatment. The watching priests glowered but had been sweetened with gifts and soothed by the religious display, and only one old cleric made objection. “You shall do no bleeding,” he commanded sternly. “For Archbishop Theodore has written that it is dangerous to bleed at a time when the light of the moon and the pull of the tides is increasing.” Barber was quick to agree.
They camped in jubilation that afternoon. Barber boiled bite-sized pieces of beef in wine until tender and added onion, an old turnip that was wrinkled but sound, and new peas and beans, flavoring all with thyme and a bit of mint. There was still a wedge of an exceptional light-colored cheese bought in Bridgwater, and afterward he sat by the fire and with obvious gratification counted the contents of his cash box.
It was perhaps the moment to broach a subject that lay heavy and constant on Rob’s spirit.
“Barber,” he said.
“Hmmm?”
“Barber, when shall we go to London?”
Intent on stacking the coins, Barber waved his hand, not wishing to lose count. “By and by,” he murmured. “In the by-and-by.”
9
THE GIFT
Rob mishandled four balls in Kingswood. He dropped another ball
in Mangotsfield but that was the last time, and after they offered diversion and treatment to the villagers of Redditch in mid-June he no longer spent hours every day practicing his juggling, for the frequent entertainments kept his fingers supple and his sense of rhythm alive. He quickly became an assured juggler. He suspected that eventually he could have learned to manage six balls but Barber would have none of that, preferring that he use his time assisting in the barber-surgeon’s trade.
They traveled north like migrating birds, but instead of flying they wended their way slowly through the mountains between England and Wales. They were in the town of Abergavenny, a row of rickety houses leaning against the side of a sullen shale ridge, when for the first time he aided Barber in the examinations and treatment.
Rob J. was afraid. He had more fear in him than the wooden balls had inspired.
The reasons people ailed were such a mystery. It seemed impossible for a mere man to understand and offer helpful miracles. He knew Barber was smarter than any man he had ever known, to be able to do that.
The people lined up in front of the screen, and he fetched them one by one as soon as Barber had finished with the preceding person, and led them to the partial privacy afforded by the flimsy barrier. The first man Rob took back to his master was large and stooped, with traces of black on his neck and ingrained in his knuckles and under his fingernails.
“You could do with a wash,” Barber suggested, not unkindly.
“It’s the coal, you see,” the man said. “The dust sticks when it is dug.”
“You dig coal?” Barber said. “I’ve heard it’s poison to burn. I’ve seen at first hand that it produces a stink and heavy smoke that doesn’t readily rise through the smoke hole of a house. Is there a living in such poor stuff?”
“It is there, sir, and we are poor. But lately there are aches and swellings in my joints, and it pains me to dig.”
Barber touched the grimy wrists and fingers, poked a pudgy fingertip into the swelling at the man’s elbow. “It comes from inhaling humors from the earth. You must sit in the sun when you can. Bathe frequently in warm water but not hot, for hot baths lead to a weakness of the heart and limbs. Rub your swollen and painful joints with my Universal Specific, which you may take internally with profit as well.”
