THE HAMLET
Marjorie B. Kellogg

WE stood at the edge where the road branched off, debating the downward-heading, miserable little track as loudly as a cluster of ravens at a midden. Not a cairn, not a signpost to be seen. Raw mountains and too many miles behind us; before us, the blank stretch of the island sea. So far, we'd resorted to no more than the usual blame-tossing and invective, but it was only a matter of time. This was not good country to be lost in.
"That's Clearwater?" Little Pete brushed frost from his two-day beard and spat into the frozen mud. "Not on your life."
"No? Why not?" Sofie shook out the excuse for a map that the blacksmith back in Westering had scrawled on a shred of her kerchief. "We turned right by that old wall, like he said we should . . ."
"Obviously he was wrong," I replied, more harshly than I'd intended. "Or we'd have been there yesterday."
"It's not Clearwater." Stephen advanced three heroic paces along the main road. Three. It was always three. Meaning you'd better stand aside if he was headed in your direction. "I say we go on."
Bella nodded, Stephen's faithful echo. But she held her place beside us. I could hear her teeth chattering. By nature childlike in her optimism, even Bella had been shaken by the past few weeks.
I jerked a thumb at the black roil of cloud shoving past the snowy summits of the mountains. Worse than wolves or bandits, I feared the storm that had us in its sights. The first stiff gusts were already arguing with our packs and cloaks and clothing. "I'm from the north country. I know about snow. All we need now is to get caught in a blizzard."
"But it's just around the bend, I tell you!" Stephen gestured along the frigid coast. "Marcus is expecting us! We'll run lines for the new piece as we go."
"No, Jamie's right," said Little Pete. "Snow would not be good. Marcus can wait."
Marcus was our advance man. Little Pete didn't much like him, or the new piece. "Overblown" and "melodramatic" were the kindest of the objections he'd raised. Stephen had written it in the "old style," which required a more straightforward narrative than our usual fare. It was intended as a crowd pleaser, but Stephen was no populist, so it did not showcase Pete's considerable (and crowd-pleasing) comic talents to advantage.
"Her voice is going." I was keeper of the purse. I should be stern with them. Instead, I heard myself pleading, and felt humiliated. "Another night on the ground and you can kiss the next week's bookings good-bye."
"She'll perk up once she hears the applause."
"Stephen, the new piece won't draw if she can't appear in it."
"Pooh! They'll be cheering us in Clearwater by dinnertime!" Stephen spread his arms to embrace the darkening zenith, and I tried not to despise him for believing that an adoring public was the only proper goal in life. Once I might have agreed, but not now, now that I'd seen how truly fickle their adoration could be.
"Especially if we get Act Three down letter-perfect," Stephen concluded.
Sofie flexed her skinny knees and drew one yellow-clad leg up beside her ear. "I'd remember my lines better if I had a few more of them."
"Did someone say dinner?" Little Pete gazed mournfully down the snow-flecked trail to where it dropped sharply into the elbow of the cove. A few small, unpainted boats bobbed on the gray water. A few blue slate roofs poked up through wind-scoured scrub. A solitary stone chimney gave up a slim curl of pallid smoke. "I remember dinner. We might actually get some, down there."
"Oh, spare me!" Stephen swept to the brow of the slope art" posed while the icy wind battled in the violet fullness of his cloak.
"If the entire sorry populace of that flea-bit hamlet can gather three pennies in ajar, I'll eat my doublet."
"You may have to," I murmured, relishing the image.
Sofie giggled in her dazed way, and turned her map upside down. Bella, even faithful Bella, expelled her little breathy laugh and mimed perishing of starvation in a snowdrift.
"A show for a meal, then," determined Little Pete. "Why not? Other people do it."
Stephen glared. "We are not 'other people.' We do that, and soon every town we come to will be expecting a freebie!"
"Word does get around," I agreed, much as it pained me ever to find myself on Stephen's side.
Pete crooked his bristled chin at me, and for a moment I feared he was going to bring up the Forbidden Subject, right out there in the open. "It's not free if they feed you," he said instead.
And then the Diva's wagon clattered up behind us, and the bickering abruptly ceased. We four stood there feigning innocence, while Stephen resumed stalking about hopefully and conspicuously in the icy road ahead. The mules stamped and blew. Sofie leaned against the wagon and traced its bold lettering with a fond and fretful finger, while I tried to ignore the racking cough coming from inside the cab. Up on the driver's perch, Joanie fixed a skeptical eye on the steep and slippery trail to the village.
"This is the place?"
"Um . . . I'm pretty sure it isn't." I shrugged my cloak tighter. The muffled coughing raked along my spine. "But there's a mean blow at our backs."
Joanie pursed her lips at the visible if not very recent wheel ruts. The last show's eye pencil blurred on her plucked brows. "I dunno. We might get her in there, but I wouldn't bet on getting her back out again."

"Dinner, Joanie . . ." Little Pete wooed. "Perhaps a mug of ale . . ."
A hot bath, a dry pallet ..." I stopped, squeezed my eyes shut. I was pleading again.
"I don't think . . ." called Stephen from ahead in the road. The wagon creaked, and the coughing ceased. The painted curtain shielding the side window crinkled aside. "Is there a problem, darlings?"
"Not at all!" Stephen's shout was shrill after the low and smoky music from inside the cab. Even roughened by chill and exhaustion, the Diva's voice stirred souls. At least, it still did mine. And my guilt as well. She needed help, and I could offer none. At least, not the sort she needed.
"We're lost!" Sofie flashed her coquette's grin. For a mad instant, I suspected her of irony, and wondered how she could have so long hidden such complexity.
"Not lost!" Stephen strode back to us. "We're just not there yet!"
"Bad map," growled Little Pete.
"Sssshhhh!" hissed Bella. This was one of her most expressive sounds.
The Diva's dark eyes, so black, so knowing within the folds of her hood—how could a human eye show less light than the sky at night?—swept us all and settled on me. "Is there a problem, Jamie?"
Such sadness, such profound world-weariness and self-contempt, all expressed in five mundane little words! A tiny sob rose in my throat. "Uh ..." I began, and cursed myself. Six years in the Diva's Company and still unable to face her without stumbling over my wretched, worshipful tongue. "Well, yes, I guess there is ... seems to be."
Silence. Only the wind's deepening snarl and the snorting of the mules. Yes, we were lost in bad country with a storm bearing down on us, but we all knew what the real problem was: six sore and hungry people, teetering on the edge of a cliff in a stiff wind, unable to reach a consensus. The worry that had been swirling around us like a flood had risen and finally incapacitated us. Worry like dread, like a canker, unrelieved and unexpressed because even to mention it was to admit to the reality of its cause.
The Diva's tar-pit eyes moved from me to the downward track. Lashes thicker than the falsies the rest of us wore dipped heavily, then rose. We didn't need to explain a thing. "I'm not helpless, you know. I can walk down."
"You mustn't!" cried Stephen.
His gasp drowned out my own sigh of relief. I hadn't expected such easy acquiescence to the idea of stopping in an out-of-the-way place. So naturally, and because the idea was mine, I began to question the wisdom of it.
But Joanie knew how to play to advantage. She leaped from her perch, crimson ringlets slashing across her cheeks, and grabbed the lead mule's bridle. "That's the spirit, boss! You wrap up nice and warm, and I'll take the boys down first, in case the wheels slip a rut or something."
"I really must object!" Stephen loomed at the wagon door. For a moment, he actually pressed against it as the Diva tried to ease it open. "Bad enough stopping here when we're so overdue for our next booking. But for you to go in on foot, Josepha? Into that scruffy village, like any daily player?" He paused, too horrified to continue.
All but the Diva's wide lips and pale, tragic cheekbones were lost in the wagon's dark interior. What was visible, we studied as our text, for mood and meaning, for a sign. I longed so to see her smile again. Instead, her mild regard was like a sigh of regret.
"Daily players," she mused. "Perhaps, Stephen, that's just what we need to be right now."
"But we're mere inches from Clearwater! Marcus will have your likeness all over the neighborhood, and there'll be none but us to protect you! All those dirty hands and staring faces? Wanting? Demanding? Touching? You know how you abhor that!" "Abhor is a strong word, Stephen."
Had he ever won a single of these reckless skirmishes? I would never have tried, and wondered why he persisted. In more gen-erous moments, I admired Stephen's self-immolating passion, knowing it was beyond my reach. Of all of us, only Stephen called the Diva by her first name. Each time, I was surprised she let him get away with it. Now I could hear her gathering up her outer robes. Silken voice, silken rustle, from the darkness, and our course of action was at last decided. I told myself that a little dan-ger and exercise would do her good. And even if she was recognized, in a remote village like this one, how bad could the danger really be?
"It'll be a small mob, most likely," Little Pete observed dryly. "Tiny. The town is. You said it yourself, Stevie."
Nearly hysterical with defeat and disapproval, Stephen bellowed, "Then why are we going there?"
The rest of us stared at him. Wasn't it obvious?
Our fame and fortune required both a clamoring multitude and the Diva's safety. However pampered, she was bound to beat at the walls of her prison every once in a while, and Little Pete encouraged her every whiff of rebellion. I was just glad that my own personal goal—keeping the Diva warm, dry, and fed—for once coincided with her own.
So while Stephen ground his teeth like a pantomimic villain, Sofie did pirouettes, her dervish arms twined above her head and her rainbow cloak a bright swirl against the chill and fading light. "A tiny mob, a tiny mob, a teeny tiny mob!"
I shrugged, stepping up to my favorite role as the only sane one. "You know, uhmm, nothing we can't deal with."
Joanie prized Stephen's hand from the door handle, then stowed it companionably beneath her arm. "Come on, dearie, don't be an old pisspot now. A hot meal would be a blessing. We'll pull the tarp over the wagon, turn our cloaks inside out, and go in like civilians."
"But we're not!" Stephen wailed. "And we never can be!"
But he didn't pull away, and we dutifully exposed our shivering limbs to the elements long enough to reverse our colorful players plumage to its drabber inner linings.
The Diva unfolded her tall muscular frame from the wagon's cramped cab. She stretched, slowly and thoroughly, until she could move without limping, then tightened her hood against the wind and public scrutiny, and down we went.

The Diva, as you may have guessed, is not your ordinary performer.
For instance, I'm a fairly stolid sort. I'd never have left my tranquil youth behind to chase after anything less than a walking miracle. So, in case you think our precautions extreme, here's how it goes each time we come to the next village.
First, there's always a troop of quick lads staked out along the road, eager to sprint ahead and be the first to announce the Diva's approach. In the smaller towns, Marcus has been known to slip them pennies enough to speed their step. Farther on, the men in the fields toss down their hoes to stand smoking and grinning along the verges, while the farm wives coo from their gateposts, their broods all lined up for a wave and a blessing. If they've never seen the Diva work her wonders, an aunt or a neighbor has, or a traveler's tales have enlivened a winter tavern or fireside.
By the time we haul into town, there's a big crowd already waiting, kids and grown-ups and grannies, thronging both sides of the main drag if they're orderly, or pushing, shoving, and clamoring if they're not. Marcus usually puts on a little extra local security, but even with the orderly crowds, the Diva rides in hooded majesty, only her strong, long-fingered hand signaling her greetings from the window, while the rest of us close ranks around the wagon. After all, a good mystery lures even the most hardened skeptic.
But the real reason for all the caution is this: everyone in every crowd has an agenda, and every one of them is convinced that the Diva is whom they should take it to. After all the cheers and applauding come the demands. Most are banal and innocent: a dream needing interpretation, a sickness needing curing, a reluctant lover needing to be convinced. But the folk are like sheep. When one makes a move, they all do, and next thing you know, we've got a stampede. Even when they don't come with a problem, it never occurs to them that the Diva might prefer a little personal space to their unsolicited company. We're all gifted per-formers, even me, it turns out. But the Diva would draw crowds without the theatrical window dressing we provide. Basically, we're there to fend them off.
But it's not the ordinary fan that keeps all six of us armed to the teeth. The Diva disapproves of weaponry—Art should not be held hostage, she harumphs—and I'm never comfortable with the hard chill of a blade strapped to my thigh. But Joanie insists, and too many close calls have proved her right.
For there are those out there whom passion rules beyond all reason: the furious husband (or father) from a previous town who's convinced that his wife (or daughter) has run off with the baker (or miller or shoemaker) because of something the Diva did or said. Or the man in whom meager talents and overweening ambition have combined to produce a fatal poison, the man whose delusions tell him that the void left by the death of the Diva is one only he will be called upon to fill.
At least, that's how it used to be, not so very long ago, before the Diva lost her Power. And there you have it: the Forbidden Subject.

So the crowds had been leaner in recent weeks. Like I said, word gets around. But just for the record, this lack of any advance welcome at all was unprecedented.
"The folks must be all out fishing, huh?" Little Pete liked to think he understood what went on in towns, though he hadn't actually lived in one since he was a child. Several paces ahead, the Diva picked her way along as if mere walking required all her concentration. Stephen followed watchfully, his ear being badly bent by Sofie's latest proposal for an expanded dance number in Act Two. I doubted anything was audible over her enthusiastic trilling of the music she'd written. If the town hadn't known we were coming, they'd know it now. But Pete kept his voice down anyway, in case it should sound like he was making some sort of point about the sparse turnout. "Or maybe they're at dinner," he added hopefully.
"Joanie did say to go in as civilians," I pointed out, as the wind flung its first sleety salvo in our faces.
"Hey, I'm as modest as the next person, but there are limits."
"Maybe they're waiting for us in town."
"Nah, I'll tell you what: that fuck Marcus went straight to Clearwater and never left the first tavern he went into!"
Little Pete carried on with his old bitch-and-grumble, crowding me precariously on the narrow path though his lithe little clown's body could have danced safely over every snowy rut and boulder at a dead run. Plumper by far and less sure of my footing, I listened with half an ear. I was sick of the arguing, and I was hungry and my feet hurt. Besides, though I'd never been much given to sight-seeing, I found my attention oddly drawn to the landscape —not out of boredom or to escape Pete's litany of complaints, but as if the rugged, pine-dotted slope itself demanded my particular scrutiny. Individual details stood out to me as still lives, even in a cold driving rain, when any sensible being would keep his head down and his eyes glued to the precipitous path. I noticed how the wind eased as we descended into the lee of the hill. How the trees farther down relaxed out of the tortured poses of those caught in the cross drafts at the cliff top. How the gray water in the cove below was as still as a mirror, while just outside the harbor, the inland sea raged with whitecaps. The sea. Its gray vast-ness riveted me. I was keeping the books for a dry goods store in the forest town of my birth when the Diva's company happened by and swept me up in its wake. I'd never in my life seen so much water in one place.
"Nice little spot," I remarked, mostly to myself.
Pete peered up at me. I was never much good at satire, as he was fond of pointing out, but he clearly suspected me now of some feeble attempt.
"It's warmer. Don't you think?"
He rolled his eyes. "Warmer. Right."
"Well, it's stopped sleeting."
"Hummp. So it has."

The trail switchbacked down the rocky, brush-pocked slope into the moderating shelter of a thin wood of birch sapling, ash, and pine. Casual piles of kindling and hewn logs marked the first outskirts of the village, then a broken scrawl of stone wall along the seaward edge of the path, as if someone with the best civic intentions had begun the barrier but was soon distracted toward some more pressing project. Still no sign of welcome. I wondered how the Diva was taking it.
Finally a house appeared among the trees, also of stone, a bit more barn than dwelling. Its paddock held tucked against the hillside a damp pair of lop-eared mules and a cud-chewing spotted cow. From a square window beneath deeply protruding eaves, a young girl peered out at us. Sofie grinned up at her and waved. Polite more than curious, the girl waved back, as if bands of cloaked strangers accompanying shrouded wagons were a common sight along this road. Already, Stephen was scowling. Astonishing that he could complain so bitterly about the crowds and yet long for them so desperately. But I knew by then that I could never comprehend Stephen. I could only learn to live with him.
Soon the population of quiet barnyards and homes thickened into the cramped and cobbled streets of a village, woven by its braided stones and slate roofs into the very rock of the hillside. Soon after, the villagers themselves appeared, sweeping snow from their stoops or loading barrels of salt fish onto carts. But little fuss was made over our arrival. A nod here, a smile there, a brief "good even." Nothing further.
It was hard to keep from looking behind us for the usual entourage of fans and petitioners. But we did, or we'd have looked pretty silly. No one was there. Only an old black boat dog nosing lazily along our trail.
"Eyes front," advised Joanie. "Don't want them to think we've someone after us."
None of this boded well for the evening's purse, once we did reveal ourselves as players. Oddly, I felt myself breathing easier. It was even possible that my feet hurt less. I found the quiet town and our sudden anonymity rather novel and interesting. But there, however, opinions diverged.
"That fuck Marcus," muttered Little Pete. "He'll hear a thing or two when we haul him out of whatever dive he's holed up in!
I couldn't blame Marcus for being loath to advertise what he could no longer make good on. I'd be drinking, too.
"They fancy us mere peddlers!" Stephen owned a rich stock of such phrases, culled from roles he adored and nobody else would play.
"No," said Joanie significantly. "Civilians."
"Be careful what you wish for," I joked, encouraged by the softening angle of the Diva's broad shoulders, which reminded me of a smile. And I'd noticed that despite the knee-jerk complaints, our habitually close ranks had eased apart, and our hands had relaxed away from our hidden weaponry.
We went along into the middle of town, easy to find, as the road led right into it, then right out again, to climb back toward the cliff top. Still no waiting crowd. The Diva's posture relaxed a few notches more, no less erect than was her habit, but more fluid, like an ice-chocked river thawing into a stately current. I had an inkling suddenly of how much effort that heroic posture must be to maintain. Were we simply working her too hard?
A central market plaza fronted on the harbor at the head of the cove, cozy-seeming despite the damp and chill. The docks defined one long side, a row of inky wooden tongues lapping the still, reflective water, comfortably pressed left and right by small but sturdy fishing vessels. Past their faded canvas canopies and the dark traceries of rigging, the rocky arms of the shore curled around to stop just short of meeting. In the narrow gap, the waves of the inland ocean crashed and foamed like lions in a cage. Their roar rolled toward us over the smoothing inlet as an audible fog. The Diva moved dreamily past the halted wagon as if drawn by a tightening cord. At the edge of the quay, she stood inhaling deeply and gazing out to sea.
Stephen stared around the nearly deserted square as if he mistrusted his eyes. "Are they in bed already? Is there a plague? Has war been declared?"
"Hush!" scolded Joanie. "It's a chance for a night off!"
The plaza wasn't entirely deserted. Low warehouses formed the short sides of the rectangle, and in one open doorway, two merchants in leather and fur concluded their business with the driver of a slat-sided poultry wagon. Two rows of canvas stalls crouched in the center of the square, most already closed or clos-ing for the day, but here and there, still some activity—a last minute casual choice, a final minor purchase. I watched the Diva watch the villagers, absorbing their ordinariness as avidly as Pete thought about his dinner. This was how people led their lives when nobody famous was around.
The fourth side of the plaza, facing the harbor, was a stubby civic building, recognizable by its insistent blandness. Its blocky columns supported the slate roof of a portico, raised a step or two above the level of the pavement.
"That'll make us a perfect stage," I observed, without adding the obvious: if we can gather up any sort of an audience. I saw no potion-sellers among the tented stalls. No games of chance, no dream-readers, not even the usual local charm merchant. "Wonder what these folks do for entertainment?"
"This burg is dead as ashes," retorted Pete.
"They're probably just home eating."
Which all of us wanted to do sometime very soon, so Joanie set the brake on the wagon and tied up the mules, and we set about searching up a suitable inn. There proved to be two, one farther along the docks, facing the harbor and unmarked but for a weathered board in the shape of an ale keg. The other was on the wide street leading back out of town. It boasted a walled yard with a stout gate that sported a brightly lettered sign: The Quiet Woman. Its glazed windows tossed warm rectangles of light onto the cobbled pavement. Instinctively, we all chose literacy and the light, as more likely to be the polite sort of place where we could both walk into without being mobbed, and find a paying audience. But the Diva called us back.
"Darlings, what do you say to the other?"
Stephen peered around willingly enough. "Is there a third?"
"No, I mean that one, by the water. Couldn't you just devour a hot bowl of seaman's chowder and a mug of grog?"
Stephen's eyes rounded in horror. "G . . . grog?"
I'd have been inclined to agree, but a dim memory prodded me: hadn't the Diva hailed originally from the seacoast? I squinted toward the harborside establishment. It seemed a dreary place, hunkered down on the wharf like a slumbering walrus, grim in the graying dusk. Its two-story facade was nearly obscured by haphazard stacks of crab traps and salt boxes, or lumpish mounts of fishnet. It looked tough and dark and unpredictable. The Diva's fit of nostalgia could get us into serious trouble in such a place.
I said, "I guess ... If you think it's . . . it'll sure be cheaper."
The Diva laughed, deep and throaty, like I hadn't heard in weeks. "Jamie, Jamie! Where's your spirit of adventure? Just smell that salt air! Ah!" She turned as if inspired, and the folds of her cloak flared around her and lifted, allowing me several rhythmic glances of the robe beneath. I started, blinked, and thought, No, it can't be. I'm only seeing what I hope for. But echoing Bella's soft intake of breath, Pete's elbow gouged my ribs.
"Hey! You see that?"
"Yes!" If three of us had seen it, perhaps it wasn't just a trick of the fading light. Perhaps there had indeed been a pale and evanescent shimmer, revealed then concealed by the darker, heavier silk of the outer garment. After long weeks in quiescence, was the old Robe at last stirring to new life?
Meanwhile, there was the Diva, striding alone and unprotected across a darkened public square, her gloom and languor apparently forgotten.
"After her!" Stephen cried, and whatever we'd seen or thought we'd seen, it was no longer in evidence by the time we'd caught up with her at the dockside tavern's door. At least she'd had the courtesy to wait for us before entering.
"Josepha!" Stephen panted. "Have you gone entirely mad?"
Stephen was tall, but standing fully erect, the Diva towered over him. "Not that I know of. Why do you ask?" While Stephen sputtered, the Diva counted heads. "All present, my darlings?" Stunned by her sudden energy, we nodded like obedient ducklings, and she turned once more to the squalid door.
"Wait!" Stephen actually grabbed her by the arm.
She shook him off abruptly and her white teeth were a phosphorescent crescent inside the shadow of her hood. Little Pete's elbow raked my ribs a second time. The Diva waved her hands in front of us like the country fair magician she claimed not to be. Remember, darlings: Joanie said to go in as civilians, and so we shall. Bend your talents to the task! I require your finest performances!"
"In the worst dump in town?"
"Ah, look at it, Stephen!  Look at it!  See how kindly and demurely it sits in the landscape! How natural it seems. Surely not everything has to be about props and costumes and attitude?"
Of course, for us lately, that's all it had been about, and it was Stephen who saw to it that the less successful were the Diva's Transformations, the more elaborate was the entertainment that bracketed them, or more recently, replaced them entirely. And, as always, he felt compelled to meet implication with argument. "No, Josepha, but I think it helps. An audience loves a little glitter and fancy clothes."
"Glitter I can no longer provide, you mean."
Suckered, Stephen glanced away. "No, I ..."
"Ah. Perhaps you think I am withholding on purpose?"
"Of course not!"
"Do we have to do this now?" Sofie danced a little jig of beseeching, while Bella mimed heartfelt support.
"Well, ummm ..." I agreed that the stoop of the local tavern was an unfortunate spot to begin airing the company's dirty linen. Still, any step taken toward discussing the matter would be a forward one.
"It has to come from here!" the Diva insisted, one palm softly striking her robed chest, though it could have been in self-reproach as easily as in emphasis. "There has to be need, Stephen! True need! You think hauling just anyone up out of the audience is all that's required!"
"No, I ..."
"Do we have to do this here?" Joanie demanded.
The Diva inhaled hugely from her diaphragm, then let out the very longest of sighs. "No. Let's eat."
When the door finally opened on the dim and unprepossessing interior, we all piled in, hooded but casual, offering just the right mix of exhaustion, boisterous relief, and eager appetite, seasoned with due respect for the local folk already well into their chowders and grog. We nodded to the barkeep, and headed for a back corner veiled by the sooty haze and away from the prying blaze in the stone hearth that squatted in the center of the low-ceilinged room. The table had seen better days, and was in need of a serious mopping up. While I dabbed at it ineffectually, the Diva leaned over and swiped at it broadly with her sleeve. I would have paid anything for a glimpse of the face that went with Stephen's strangled gasp, but he'd turned it away to the wall. Joanie surreptitiously snuffed the single candle guttering in a broken saucer, but because not to do so would attract more scrutiny, most of us doffed our hoods. The Diva shook hers back a bit, then drew a thick silver braid from behind to drape across her chest like a lopsided necklace. She slouched into her chair and grinned around at each of us.
"Stop glaring into the shadows, Stephen! We're perfectly safe here."
Little Pete rose, swallowing a guffaw. "Okay, what'll it be? Chowder and grog all around?"
"Let's hear the menu," said the Diva. "Call the girl to the table."
Pete lifted an eyebrow, but dutifully went in search of her. An ambivalent silence settled over the table. It was buoying to see the Diva so cheerful and vigorous, but the rest of us reckoned that our rare chance for a night off would be immediately compromised by the arrival of a serving maid. Close up, even in near darkness, the Diva would surely be recognized. So we tensed a bit when Pete reappeared through the smoke and shadows with a lank young woman in tow. Her manner was subdued, her eyes downcast, and her gait listless, but she stood where Pete placed her and recited the choices in a thin but audible monotone. "Capon stew or beef pie."
We waited until it became obvious that she'd said all she had to say, or perhaps all that she could manage.
"That's it?" Sofie mourned. "That's all there is?" "That's all, m'am." The girl brightened, or maybe it was just that she'd reached to the next table for a candle to relight ours. "Tomorrow there'll be lamb shank."
"Hmmmnah," said Pete. "Well, while we're struggling with this very difficult decision, we'll start with a hot jar of grog for the table." "Ale, sir." "Huh?"
"Ale's all we got."
"Ale, then." Pete shrugged and shook his head. "All around."
"Yessir." The girl turned to go.
"Just a moment . . ."
"Sir?" The girl slouched back, offering Stephen a dispirited glower. When he looked blank, she turned the same exhausted look on Little Pete, and then on me, the look of one whom the world is sucking dry. I recognized that look. I'd seen the Diva wearing it herself of late.
"Umm ..." I searched for an appropriate expression of sympathy.
"It was I who spoke," said the Diva from beneath her now scarcely concealing cloak.
"Oh, no," Sofie whispered, drawing up her shoulders tortoise-like as if to avoid whatever was about to happen. Joanie and I glanced left and right, gauging the actual extent of our privacy. Sometimes the Diva needed reminding where her own safety lay.
"I was just wondering about that chowder . . ."
Joanie tried to head her off. "They have no chowder, dearie."
"That's right, ma'm. No chowder."
"But surely you have some milk about the kitchen?"
"Oh, yessum, we have that, all right."
"And some onions, perhaps?"
"How 'bout some ale?" Little Pete slid his chair back, then halted abruptly as if by a hand clamped heavily on his thigh.
The Diva leaned forward, allowing the renewed candle flare to invade the dark cavern of her hood. The light drew a pale outline around her strong, square jaw and glinted in the close-cropped silk of her beard. "And potatoes?"
"Yessum ... er ... sss ... yes, we got all that."
The Diva shifted to lean the black weight of her glance against the discomfited girl's face. "Perhaps you could even scare up a carrot or two."
"Urn, mm ... sss ... can't really say."
"Can't really say ... no. Right?" The Diva smiled.
The girl squinted as if caught in a sudden burst of sun, then returned a confused sort of smile, as if not at all sure why, or if
she should. "I guess, um, there must be a carrot or two around somewhere."
"Excellent! Now, tell me this, my girl . . ." The Diva hiked forward on one elbow, as if prepared to share the most intimate information. The hood slid backward across a sleek crown of silver braids and collapsed in conspiratorial folds about large-lobed ears. In the left lobe sparkled the blue Eye of Albin.
The rest of us readied ourselves. Even silent Bella let out a faint hiss of alarm. But the serving maid merely nodded hip-slung and folded her scrawny arms, to show she was well used to windy customers; in fact, as it was a slow night, she had all the time in the world. I offered Little Pete an oversized shrug. The silly girl had no idea who she was talking to.
"Tell me," the Diva continued, all heavy lids and hush-hush. "Where in this lovely harbor town might one procure a fish?"
In her innocence, the girl would also not realize the implication of the Diva's "tell me." But it perked my ears up all right.
"A fish, mmm, uh, sir? ... why, anyone here can get you a fish!"
The Diva clapped both hands delightedly. "Oh, marvelous! Then we can have our chowder after all, if its parts are all right here to hand!"
The girl stuck her tongue into her sallow cheek, mildly vexed to have been snared by simple logic. "I suppose you could, if you could talk Mr. Harry into fixing it for you."
"But I don't need to, do I, when I have you, darling girl, to do it for me?"
"I dunno . . ."
"I know you can manage it! Tell me, what's your name?"
Yes, to make it work, the Diva would need the name. I could sense now where things were headed. More than chowder was going to be at stake here, and I wasn't sure it was a good idea. Of course, the Diva shouldn't give up trying, but I worried that each disappointment would be the final blow. What if it got half-way and then failed? How would the girl feel, afterward? The poor thing couldn't have avoided mirrors all her life. But I didn't want to stick my nose in. There was always the chance that the Diva would succeed.
"My name?" the girl repeated, as if no one had ever asked. "Lucy, sir."
The Diva nodded encouragingly. "Well, Lucy, surely a pretty wench shouldn't mind employing her wiles in the service of a starving patron?"
Stephen snorted audibly, but at last the girl's wan mouth showed some life of its own, just the faintest upward curl, and I knew the hook was set.
"Starving, sir? Wouldn't know it to look at you."
"Ah, but appearances are deceiving, are they not? So, starving I am. Believe it, Lucy! Starving for the taste of my lost childhood." The Diva sat upright and shook off the last of the hood's confining folds. They resettled in a dark frame that revealed the high collar of the robe beneath: luminous blue chased with the same silver glimmer as the beard and braided hair, and brows as pale as moonlight rising above the nighttime valleys of the Diva's eyes. "Will you do this for me, Lucy?"
Around the table, we were silent as the grave, poised between incurable hope and pragmatic dread.
The girl bobbed her head as if compelled, and found resolve. "I'll sure try, sir." Off she went through the shadows, toward a faint glow that might have been the kitchen. The Diva smiled after her, and soon the smile turned inward and thoughtful.
The rest of us exchanged uneasy glances, but heedless Stephen spoke up before anyone could stop him. "Are you sure this is wise, Joseph? I mean, to attempt this here?"
"Where better?" replied the Diva darkly.
Referring, I assumed, to the convenient absence of a paying audience. I thought I might inquire if we were planning to look for one that evening, and so distract them both. But as I never could gather the presence of mind to look the Diva straight in the eye, I missed the flare of bitterness and determination that made Stephen sit back a bit and blink.
"Um, well ..." I began, and then the girl was back at Pete's elbow with a tray full of brimming pints, her step a world more sprightly than before. She leaned over the table to set the first dripping mug between the Diva's clenched fists, which promptly relaxed into cupped palms of welcome.
"Mr. Harry says he'll do it, can you believe it, sir, seeing as he's made up a pot for his own supper tonight. But you mustn't let on to the other customers. He says to make you promise."
The Diva laid hand on heart. "Not a word, dear girl."
Beside me, Little Pete chuckled and reached for his pint.
The ale was bright and clear and bracing. A sigh went around the table, and I gave up all sour thoughts about our earnings as we followed the Diva's example by offering our next long swig in toast to Lucy, our savior. The girl giggled, and leaned against the wall beside Little Pete's chair. I thought there was better color in her drawn face now, though that might have been due to exertion, or the heat of the kitchen. True need? I mused. This girl is the very definition of it. Casually, I shifted my seat around. I wanted to be able to watch her.
She hooked thin strings of hair around her ears and regarded the Diva sidelong, the sort of glance we all give when we first realize we're interested. "You're not from around here."
Little Pete sucked foam from his mustache. "What was your first clue?"
"Not of late," replied the Diva with pointed grace. "But forever ago, I was born on the Inland Sea, a week's hard travel south of here. It's marvelous to breathe the salt wind again and hear the roar of the surf."
News to me that the Diva ever had a clue where we were geographically, or was even interested. But I'd long suspected that the famous vague frailty that we all indulged was her passive re-volt against the strictures of our care. Of course, the frailer the Diva seemed, the more closely we guarded. I rolled ale around on my tongue and pondered a solution.
Lucy saw no frailty now. "You travel a lot, looks like."
The Diva nodded. "Travel we do, to our detriment."
Next the girl would likely inquire after our occupation, and then our idyll would be at an end. Instead, she sighed, as forlornly as a tragic heroine. "I never do. I've never been anywhere, 'cept
to the next town, once or twice. That's Clearwater, y'know. Are you going there? Oooh, that's a lovely town."
"Then I look forward to it," said the Diva gravely.
Over the top of my ale, I noted Bella's gaping yawn. Little Pete plopped down his empty mug more heartily than was necessary. "How 'bout another round before dinner?"
Lucy's palms flew to her cheeks. "Oh! So sorry! Right away! And I'll check on the chowder while I'm at it!"
As she scurried away, a starved mouse fleeing for the baseboard, the Diva frowned gently into the smoky air above the table.
"Well, we came in here to eat, didn't we?" groused Little Pete.
"Tch, tch," the Diva chided.
I almost mustered the nerve to say that I agreed.
"Oh, come now," smirked Stephen. "A little local travelogue? Hardly the most scintillating conversation ever."
"Ah, but you, Stephen, any one of you, can have unscintillat-ing conversations anytime. You can walk down snowy hillsides and into strange villages on your own two feet, whenever you like."
A familiar argument, and none of us could deny it. Such was the price of fame, one that Stephen and Sofie and maybe even Little Pete would gladly have paid. As for myself, I was tiring of the road, though I hadn't known it until that moment, when I suddenly realized that I could see the Diva's point.
Which had been delivered this time with particular vehemence. But Stephen moved through life enclosed in an invisible reflective bubble that mirrored only his own opinions back to him. So he said flippantly, "If you're going to risk our one chance for peace and quiet, Joseph, you could at least find an interesting subject.
The Diva rounded on him, those black eyes fired by hot points that had to be more than candlelight. "You'll never be a great actor, Stephen, if you never learn to study from life!"
Stephen stared. Then, gut-shot, he wilted. Rarely did the Diva level so personal a reprimand.
"And when fame no longer allows you the opportunity," the
Diva continued, "that might be the right moment to pack it all in."
Silence. Then because he was incapable of seeing that he was not, nor ever, the real target, Stephen muttered something about finding a privy, and stalked off to lick his wounds.
"Um ..." I said, my favorite conversational opener, but once again, Lucy appeared, bearing a fresh round of drinks.
"Lucy, my darling!" exclaimed the Diva extravagantly. "Come to me!"
Briskly passing around the mugs, Lucy blushed, then let a smile bloom hesitantly over her shoulder as she darted away again. "Your soup is warming, Mr. Harry says. I'll be back with it in a moment."
"Feeling peckish, boss?" Joanie remarked when Lucy had retreated. "Drink up. It might improve your manners."
"Mine? What about his?"
"He's never had any. Why expect it now?"
"Because, dearest Joan, diminished expectations are precisely the root of our troubles. Mine of you, and yours of me."
Silence again. The Forbidden Subject hovered once more. But maybe this time was different. I wanted to ask if anyone else had noticed the change in little Lucy, but I knew that premature scrutiny might jinx a still fragile charm. So I entertained myself by worrying about how we were going to pay for our dinner. Whereupon, the chowder appeared.
The girl had lugged the broad iron kettle all the way from the kitchen, its handle looped over one outstretched, shaking arm, a stack of clay bowls clutched under the other, and a wooden ladle clamped between her teeth.
She seemed to be managing, but because my woodlands mother brought me up right, I sprang up to help lift the heavy, soot-encrusted pot onto the tabletop. Lucy flicked me a surprised and grateful smile over the clenched ladle, and I saw that her eyes were a particularly interesting shade of sea blue. The dim light or smoky air must have prevented my noticing this until she stood a little closer. She set the bowls down, stuck the ladle into the pot to stir up the bottom, and from that black and scabrous vessel arose the most divine odor imaginable.
When the bowls were filled, the Diva claimed the nearest and inhaled its rising steam. "Lucy! Bide with us a while, my girl. Tell us about the town."
Lucy's cheeks shone like polished apples. "Oh, sir, I mustn't!" But she slid into Stephen's abandoned chair eagerly enough. "What would you want to know about a nothing old town like this?"
"No town is nothing, child."
"This one is."
Spooning in milky-fragrant chunks of fish and vegetables, the Diva murmured, "Tell us of your life, then."
The girl took a breath, saw we were all waiting, blushed again, and to our astonishment, plunged right in. A mere half hour before, she'd hardly been willing to offer two words in a row. Suddenly she was voluble, a veritable mistress of narrative, as if telling the story of it gave her life more substance and color, more . . . reality. She sat up straight and shapely. Her blue eyes flashed, her apple cheeks glowed, and her mousy hair escaped its bindings at her neck to decorate her animated face with lovelocks of purest shining gold.
I caught myself leaning openmouthed over my empty bowl, and sat back, chagrined. I sensed stirrings in my heart and groin, places I'd thought gone dead of disillusion and disappointment. I recalled the sensations right enough, but the memory was a pale and dim one compared to this. The future seemed suddenly more open and possible. Lucy seemed possible. I wondered if I'd had too much ale. I looked to the others, but their noses were all buried in their bowls.
Across the table, the Diva downed a last swallow of chowder, setting aside spoon and bowl with an air of inner purpose and precision. In his left ear, the blue Eye of Albin glimmered. He turned his head a careful fraction, just so, and the jewel sparked incandescent shards of light that slammed into my eyes, exploded in my brain. I reeled and shuddered, less from pain than revelation.
Flattening both palms on the scarred tabletop, I tried not to suck in air, as if I was drowning. Though, in fact, I was.
The true need had not been Lucy's, but my own.
The Diva's smile flashed into the corners of my soul like sunlight off rippled water. "A thousand thanks, Jamie lad."
I became aware just then, as in a particularly vivid dream, of the tavern's warmth and homeliness, of the humble strength of its stones and sooty beams and whitewashed walls, of the peaceful murmur of its inhabitants, of the scent of fish and garlic.
"But what will I do here?" I knew but was not yet convinced. In my mind's ear, I heard the roll of the sea and the cry of the harbor gulls. I saw Lucy, bright-faced in a garden.
The Diva's frown grasped at stern impatience, but managed only wistfulness. "Live. Raise a family. Have a life."
Behind us, a cheerful commotion erupted at the door. Stephen rushed up breathlessly. He flicked a contemptuous glance at the servant girl discovered sitting in his chair, then looked right through her.
"Stephen!" I cried. "Guess wh . . ."
The Diva reached to lay a hand upon my arm. "He'll never see what you see."
And, of course, Stephen wasn't listening at all. He whipped off his cloak and turned its purple richness right-side out. "Joseph, our luck is changing! There's a late stage arrived from Clearwa-ter, and two fancy carriages driven down off the high road by the storm! The inn is full to bursting! One of the swells spotted our wagon, and the search is on! They're clamoring for you!"
Sofie cheered, and threw off her own cloak. Gauzy scallops of yellow and orange, lime, lilac, and magenta danced in the candlelight. "A show tonight after all!"
"A life," I repeated stupidly, pinned to my seat by the Diva's eye. I would miss them all, of course, even the impossible Stephen, and the Diva most of all. But my time with them was finished. "What sort of a life?"
The Diva shrugged, rubbed his beard. "You'll know what to do better than any of us would. Who knows? Maybe you'll start a theater company."
We both laughed, but the Diva's laugh was hollow. The rowdi-ness across the room blew up into a loud chorus of discovery, and headed our way. We rose from the table as one, Joanie reaching swiftly for the Diva's hood to snug it tight.
He caught her fist and kissed it, then shed his outer layer and, laughing, tossed it into her arms. The Robe shone forth blue and radiant silver, the moon on a rising tide, illuminating the darkest corners of the room. Joanie's answering grin was brighter still.
Stephen whooped for joy. Little Pete leaped straight up, turned a perfect somersault and landed in the center of the table, arms outstretched. The diners and drinkers shouted for more.
"We'll head for the yard at the Quiet Woman!" Stephen crowed, not caring an iota that the romantic lead would not be his tonight.
As the others closed around the Diva, moving toward the door, Lucy stared after him, forgotten. "What? I never . . . can it be? Of course! I should have known!"
I drew her away and into the curve of my arm. Her lovely face was bewildered and bereft, and I accepted that it would be a while before I ceased to be anything but a substitute and a disappointment. The crowd surged around us, calling, pushing, pleading, snatching at the Diva's cloak, or any cloak within reach. The Company rode the hubbub like dolphins on a cresting wave, but this time, the Diva led the way. Once outside, he'd no doubt vault onto the lead mule's back and drive team and wagon hell-bent into the inn yard. Then he'd vanish into the cab to emerge berib-boned, bejeweled, and begowned. And each person watching would see what they most wished to see. The greatest spectacle Stephen could devise was no match for the Diva when the Power was on her.
At the door, I held back, wondering if my friends would even notice my absence. Or the true magic that the Diva had wrought.
But it didn't matter.
I had my Lucy, and the Diva could take care of herself.