Fanuilh by Daniel Hood (ebook reader with highlight function TXT) 📗

a passing excellent idea! I'll wait upon you, and if you espy the minstrel, that'll be one more way for us to look."

Coeccias smiled happily and dug hungrily into the food the girl put before him. Liam felt a flutter of discomfort. He could not identify the minstrel, because he had not seen him; Fanuilh had, but he couldn't explain that to the Aedile. They might sit through a hundred performances with the minstrel in every one, and Liam would never know it.

He ate his own meal with much less interest.

Chapter 7

THE COVERED THEATER the Golden Orb Company used in the winter was in the Aurie's Park section of the artisans' quarter, far from both the sea and Liam's lodgings. Half-timbered, it towered windowless over the surrounding homes and shops, cut off from them by narrow lanes on two sides and wide streets on the others. High above the street a giant gilt ball hung from a projecting hook, rain sparkling on its surface; the places where the golden paint was peeling were barely visible in the light leaking from the entrance. With only its bottom hemisphere visible, it looked impressive, like a strange moon.

A sizable crowd stood outside the theater's three sets of wide wooden doors, waiting to get in, and more jammed into the small lobby. They were mostly rough-looking men and women, apprentices and seilffien, clerks and workers, inured to the rain and cold. With no obvious resentment they allowed the occasional better-dressed patron to move through their ranks directly to the entrance, shoving aside to create a path for the rich or well-to-do that closed up immediately behind them. Liam and Coeccias were allowed to pass this way, like ships cutting a wake through the sea, and came up to a man seated behind a barrel, wearing a tunic of motley, the squares of brightly colored cloth marking him out from the plainer clothes of the audience.

"Good even, Master Aedile. Come to close us out?" His eyes sparkled and his lips twisted with a combination of humor and good-natured malice.

"No, Master Player, only to watch the process. If the play likes me not, belike then I'll send you packing to the countryside." Coeccias smiled as well, and gestured to Liam. "He'll quit us, for a box."

Liam frowned and dug out a silver coin. The Aedile had seen the coin he used to pay for his dinner and, deciding that Liam had done the least work of the day, told him off to pay for the evening. Liam dropped the coin on the barrelhead; the player in motley bowed dramatically over the money and waved them inside.

The small lobby was even more closely packed than the street, but the crowd parted for them again. Before him, between heavy, crudely squared wooden pillars, Liam could see the stage, raised above the heads of the people jostling in the pit, but Coeccias led him away to the left and up a narrow flight of steps. The second floor of the theater was a gallery, segmented into booths by the heavy pillars continuing up from below. The Aedile took one of these booths, and motioned Liam to sit beside him on the cushioned bench.

Inside, the Golden Orb's theater was hexagonal, with the raised stage a disproportionately large edge. Two stories of boothed galleries made up the other edges, while the floor was open and seatless. The poor massed there, a sea of heads talking noisily and gaping impatiently at the stage, while the rich who had cut their . way through the crowd filled the galleries; each booth framed expensive clothes and well-fed faces.

Looking around at the others in the galleries, Liam whispered to Coeccias, "I don't think we 're appropriately dressed for the boxes." He indicated the Aedile's crumb-strewn shirt of unrelieved black and his own simple cloak and tunic. Coeccias nodded absently, his own attention fixed on the empty stage.

"I suppose not. But those're guildmasters and merchants and high tradesmen in the other boxes, who needs must impress with their wealth their apprentices and drudges below. Y'have neither employees nor servants in the pit, and I hope none of my Guard is down there, or I'll have their heads. And what's more," he added after a thoughtful pause, "they have to impress each other. I think neither you nor I need to do that."

Liam digested this, inspecting the theater with idle curiosity. The huge wrought-iron chandelier reminded him of the great theaters in Torquay, as did the layout of the stage, with its curtained recess and small balcony. He remembered the few plays he had gone to see when he was a student in the capital, and was surprised that Southwark boasted a theater so niuch like Torquay's. Of course, the roof was thatched, not stone-arched and groined, and the proscenium, balcony and recess were made of plain, undecorated wood, not elaborately carved marble; still, the basic design was the same. And what the Golden Orb lacked in sumptuous decoration and formal sophistication, it made up for in excitement.

The theaters in Torquay had seemed strangely joyless, dark rituals of culture and sobriety; in Southwark, the crowd buzzed and chattered eagerly, excited and impatient for the show to begin. He wondered what the play would be like. He had not bothered to ask Coeccias about it, and as he was about to speak, a sudden wind gusted throughout the theater, cold and foreboding. It rushed outward from the stage with a roar, over the heads of the groundlings, and circled the galleries, rising upward, almost visible in its loud progress, before plunging at the chandelier. Hundreds of candles flickered and guttered wildly, dispersing monstrous shadows before they died. Then the wind died as well, leaving the audience suddenly silent in complete darkness.

"Watch," the Aedile whispered, lightly touching Liam's arm. Liam jumped at the touch in the dark, and peered intently towards where he thought the stage was.

A clean, white light like that in Tarquin's house slowly grew over the