The goat looked down his nose — and it was a nose a dowager would have been proud of — at the men around the bar and started his count, delicately hitting the floor with his hoof, the noise suddenly being the only sound in the place.
He hit the floor eight times. ‘He got it right!’ declared the barman.
‘I saw something like that afore,’ said one of the men. ‘There was a travelling show. You know, clowns and tightrope walkers and folk with no arms and travelling doctors.[20] They called it a carnival. And they had a horse they said could count. But it was just a trick.’
Geoffrey smiled and said, ‘If a couple of you gentlemen would care to step out for a moment, I will ask my goat to do it again, and you will see that there is no trick involved.’
Intrigued now, several of the men stepped out while the others started to take bets amongst themselves.
‘Gentlemen, my goat will tell you how many people are still in the room,’ said Geoffrey.
Once again, daintily, Mephistopheles tapped out the correct number.
Hearing the cheers, the men who had gone out came back in again, looking curious — and Mephistopheles’s hoof registered each one as he entered. The barman laughed. ‘This trick deserves a meal for you and your remarkable goat, mister. What does he like?’
‘It’s no trick, I assure you, but thank you. Mephistopheles will eat almost anything — he’s a goat. Some scraps would be most acceptable. And for myself, just some bread would be welcome.’
A bowl of kitchen scraps was produced for Mephistopheles and Geoffrey sat down beside him with his pint and a slab of bread and butter, chatting to some of the men who were interested in the goat. An interest which only deepened when Mephistopheles went out in the direction of the privy and after a while came back again.
‘You actually managed to get him to do that?’ said one of them in wonder.
‘Yes,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I trained him from when he was very small. He’s quite docile really. Well, if I’m around.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It means he does what he’s told, but he has a mind of his own as well. I wouldn’t lose him for anything.’
Just then, there were raised voices at the other end of the bar as one drinker, filled with the bluster that ale can give to a man, started a fight with someone else who had just come in. The more sensible people moved away as the two began to trade blows, seemingly intent on beating one another to death, while the barman bellowed about the damage to his furniture and threatened to wallop them with his grandfather’s knobkerrie, a souvenir from the Klatchian campaign, if they didn’t stop.
Mephistopheles was suddenly alert at Geoffrey’s side, and every drinker who was sober understood in his soul that this was no time to be unpleasant to the lad. They didn’t know how they knew, but there was a kind of visceral power there waiting to be unleashed.
‘Why are they fighting? What’s wrong?’ Geoffrey asked his neighbour.
‘An old grudge about a young lady,’ said the man, rolling his eyes. ‘A bad business. Someone’s going to get hurt, you mark my words.’
To everyone’s astonishment Geoffrey strolled across the pub, his goat watching his every step, dodged the wildly swinging blows and stood between the two men, saying, ‘There’s no need to fight, you know.’
The barman’s face fell — he knew what happened to people who tried to get between two idiots smelling blood. And then he could hardly believe his eyes, for the two men abruptly stopped fighting and were standing there, looking rather bemused.
‘Why don’t you two just meet the young lady and see what she thinks before you start beating each other to death?’ Geoffrey said softly.
The men looked at one another and the bigger of the two said: ‘He’s right, you know.’
And the pub audience laughed as the two looked around at the wreckage, seemingly amazed that this could have had anything to do with them.
‘There, that was easy, wasn’t it?’ said Geoffrey, returning to the bar.
‘Ah,’ said the landlord, astonished that he wasn’t having to pick a battered Geoffrey off the floor. ‘You’re not a wizard, are you?’
‘No,’ said Geoffrey. ‘It’s a knack. It happens to me all the time, when I need it.’ He smiled. ‘Mostly with animals and sometimes with people.’ But alas, he thought to himself, not with my father, never with him.
‘Well, you must be some kind of wizard,’ said the barman. ‘You’ve broken up a fight between two of the nastiest bruisers we have around here.’ He glared at the two miscreants. ‘As for you two,’ he said, ‘don’t come back here until you are sober. Look at the mess you’ve made.’ He grabbed both of them and pushed them out the door.
The rest of the drinkers got back to their pints.
The barman turned back to Geoffrey and looked at him in shrewd appraisal.
‘You want a job, lad? No pay, but you get your keep.’
‘I can’t take a job, but I’d be happy to stay for a few days,’ said Geoffrey with alacrity. ‘If you can find some vegetables for me — I eat no meat. And can there be a place for Mephistopheles as well? He’s not very smelly.’
‘Probably no worse than the people we have in here,’ said the barman, laughing. ‘I tell you what. You and your goat can stay in the barn and I’ll give you your dinner and breakfast, and then after that, we’ll see.’ The man held out a rather dirty hand. ‘A deal, then?’
‘Oh yes, thank you. My name is Geoffrey.’
The man hesitated. ‘My name’s Darling. Darling Dove.’ He looked at Geoffrey mournfully and said, ‘Have a laugh about it, will you? Everyone does. Might as well get it out of the way.’
‘Why?’ said Geoffrey. ‘Darling is a kind word and so is Dove. How can these be anything to worry about?’
That night, Mr Dove told his wife, ‘I got us a new bar boy. Funny cove he is too. But he seems, well, harmless. Sort of easy to talk to.’
‘Can we afford it, Darling?’ his wife said.
‘Oh,’ said Darling Dove, ‘he just wants feeding — doesn’t even want meat — and somewhere to sleep. And he’s got a goat. Quite a smart one, really. Does tricks and all. Might bring some more customers in.’
‘Well, dear, if you think it’s a good idea. What are his clothes like?’ asked Mrs Dove.
‘Pretty good,’ said Mr Dove. ‘And he talks like a toff. I wonder if he is running away from something. Best not to ask any questions, I reckon. I tell you what, though: between him and his goat, we won’t have any trouble in the bar.’
And indeed Geoffrey stayed at The Star for two days, simply because Mr Dove liked him hanging around the place. And Mrs Dove said she was sad when he told her husband that he had to move on. ‘A strange boy, young Geoffrey. He kind of gives me the idea that everything is all right, even if I don’t know what it is that is right. A sort of rightness, floating in the air. I’m really sorry that he’s going,’ she said.
‘Yes, dear,’ said Mr Dove. ‘I asked him to stay, I really did, but he said he must go to Lancre.’
‘That’s where they have the witches,’ said his wife. She made a face.
‘Well,’ Mr Dove said, ‘that’s where he wants to go.’ He paused, and added, ‘He said the wind is blowing him there.’
Battling into a bitter headwind on her long journey back to her parents’ farm, Tiffany felt that there was altogether too much wind in and around Lancre. Still, at least it wasn’t raining, she told herself. Yesterday’s rain had been awful — the kind of joyous rain where every cloud had decided to join the party once one cloud had cracked open the first deluge.
20
There was the usual man-who-puts-weasels-down-his-trousers in action too. Hence the need for a doctor.