‘Food, food,’ said Silas, towelling his face with such vigour that it gleamed. ‘Dear me, how I miss the splendours of my better days!’ He came and sat down by the table with a comically mournful look. ‘I remember a feast which my good friend Trimalchio once laid on for me. Such delicacies! Listen. Around the fountain, with the soothing sound of water in our ears, we ate olives, dormice smothered in honey and poppyseed, dishes of fragrant little sausages. Inside, where a hundred perfumed candles burned, we reclined on silken couches set so that we could look down over the twilit city, the hills. There we had goblets of seared wine with orioles baked in pastry. Next, the gleaming Nubians carried to us trays of capon and sowbelly, a hare with wings like a tiny Pegasus. The gravy boats…well well, forget the gravy boats. Then came a huge wild sow, a daunting brute, whose flank, split open, released a cloud of live thrushes. This pig was not to eat, only for show, for next there came a gargantuan hog which had for guts great rings of sausages and spiced blood puddings. There were fresh fruits and sweetmeats, eggs, pastry thrushes filled with raisins and nuts and sugar. There were quinces and pears and blushing peaches. At last came a platter of roast pork, pork roasted and boned and shaped into the form of fish and birds that swam in a gravy pond on which, ah my friends!, a goose fashioned from pork swam proudly. Great Jove, what a feed. And now? To what am I reduced?’ He puckered his mouth in distaste. ‘Rabbit stew F
Angel paid no attention to him. She counted off on her fingers silently the ingredients in the pot, paused a moment, pondering, and suddenly gave one of her frightful guffaws.
‘No spuds,’ she said, greatly tickled. ‘No spuds!’
Feet beat on the steps of the caravan and the twins tumbled in, struggling and giggling, fighting each other through the narrow doorway.
‘Theserverishere, theserverishere,’ they chanted, ‘theserveris-herewiththepaper!’
Silas jumped up and swiped at them with the towel. They fled amid screams of laughter.
‘Young ruffians,’ he said, shaking his head, and then stopped and stared with slowly dawning horror at his reflection in the cracked mirror. ‘What did they…? The server!’
He whirled about and kicked shut the lower half of the door. The process-server, hopping up the steps, was rapped smartly on the knees. He was a weedy fellow in a green jacket, black britches and a preposterous battered high hat. His long thin nose was raw and red, his pale eyes were moist. He brandished the writ at Silas, who stood inside the halfdoor with his hands clasped behind his back.
‘Are you-?’ the server began.
‘I am not,’ Silas said, and grinned.
Tm serving this writ on you in the name of-’
‘You are not.’
Now it was the server's turn to be amused. His pinched face twitched with a sly little smirk.
‘O I see,’ said he. ‘It's like that, is it? Well let me tell you, we've had your kind before. Would you rather have the squaddies? They're clumsy lads, they are. Things get broke when they arrive. Heads and things.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘I am, aye.’
‘Uncouth fellow!’ Silas roared, and slammed the top half of the door. There was a cry of pain outside, and the sound of feet clattering down the steps. Silas waited a moment, took a deep breath, hitched up his braces and flung open the door again. The server with streaming eyes stood below the steps gingerly fingering his bleeding nose. Silas charged at him, but veered abruptly and scampered away around the side of the caravan. The server stumbled after him with one hand clamped on his hat, the other feebly waving the writ. I poked my head out the door in time to see Silas come pounding around from the left. The server doubled back, they met, and Silas skidded to a halt with a scream of mock terror. Soon they were running in circles around the field, the server wiping his eyes as he ran, Silas puffing and laughing and flapping his arms. The twins, over by the tent, danced up and down and cheered gleefully. Others came out to watch, Magnus and Sybil, Ida wringing her hands, Mario scowling. Silas and his pursuer, exhausted, abandoned the race at last. Silas jammed his hands into his pockets.
‘I don't want it,’ he cried. ‘I don't want that thing.’
‘It's not a question of wanting!’
‘Listen, my man-’
‘Will you take it!’
‘But please-’
‘Right! This is one for Captain Tuzo to settle. We'll see how you get on with him and his men. I'll have the lot of you threw out of here before the day is done.’
‘Listen, my dear Malvolio, be reasonable-’
‘O that'll be all right now,’ said the server, with an assumed calmness, lifting a hand to straighten his hat. ‘That'll be all right.’ He stuffed the writ into his pocket, put a finger to the side of his swollen nose and deposited at Silas's feet a gout of blood and snot. ‘Now!’ he said, and left.
He was as good as his word, for within the hour Rainbird, who had been sent to scout, came back pedalling furiously with the news that the troops were on their way. We hauled down the tent, hitched up the horses, fled. Angel's stew was overturned and lost in the confusion. The army, at a distance, saw us go, lost interest in us and turned back to the town. Out on the roads the air was vile with a smell of rot, and in the ruined fields people stood motionless in groups, baffled and silent. The potato crop had failed.
30
I WAS NOW midway upon my journey, stumbling in darkness, and the day came when I could no longer ignore the fact that the darkness was of my own making. Accordingly, I began to consider seriously my past and my future. It was the present I should have thought about, but the present is unthinkable. It did colour my thoughts, however, with of all things a certain insouciance. The imminence of disaster brings not piety and a concern for last things, it brings frivolity and laughter. I think that we shall all be drunk and gay, dancing a jig in the nude, when the apocalypse arrives to annihilate us at last. Famine hung above us like black smoke, and under that black cloud I wondered, with incredible levity, if it might not be better for me to cast aside the notion of a quest.
The story of my sister, the stolen child, had been laughed at. That laughter woke me from a dream. No, not a dream precisely, but a waking, necessary fantasy. Necessary, yes. If I had not a solid reason to be here, travelling the roads with this preposterous band, then my world threatened to collapse, for I still believed then that life was at least reasonable. The future must have a locus! If not, what was the point? It was a cold bleak sea in which to be adrift. Still, for all the dangers it entailed, I admitted at last that the search for this doubtful sister could no longer sustain me. Well then, if she did not exist-and I could not admit that much- how explain the hints and discrepancies in my past, the tiny corners of enormous secrets revealed, and that one bold forthright message delivered to me the night before I left? I went over these fragments again and agaiq, and always there was distilled out of all my considerations one thrilling and inexplicable name- Prospero. Only the name emerged, no reasons, explanations, revelations, except for a barely substantial sense of a connection somewhere between a red-haired boy and a story told of the shadowy master of revels himself. I wearied my brain with wondering and then stumbled in a kind of trance to see Rainbird, but when I saw him I had nothing to say, for it was not Rainbird himself I had sought but something for which he was a paltry symbol. I turned away, angry and frustrated, and the dwarf smirked and said,