Page 45 of The Devils
Good Givers
‘Sure I can’t tempt you?’ simpered the Pope, hitching up her skirts, painted lips gleaming by torchlight.
The Patriarch of Troy gripped the golden wheel he wore and turned his eyes towards heaven. ‘My virtue is not for sale at any price, devil!’
The crowd – if you could use the word about two dozen peasants, a couple of merchants, a monk, a princess, a werewolf, an uncomfortable elf sticking to the shadows, and a baffled-looking dog – dutifully clapped. Well, the dog didn’t, because it lacked the equipment, but Alex clapped loudly enough for both of them.
‘Always loved the players,’ she explained, over her shoulder.
‘Hmmm,’ said Sunny. She was less keen. They’d opened this particular performance with John of Antioch bashing up some often-patched pointy-eared dummies, which was a good way to chisel a cheer from even the most sullen audience, as her old ringmaster could no doubt have testified, but was a long way from her own favourite spectacle.
‘All the silly stories,’ Alex was saying, ‘and the nimble talk and the costumes and clowning. Takes you out of yourself for a while. Away from your hunger and your debts and the shit people done to you and the shit you had to do to them and maybe the coins up your arse.’
‘Coins up your—?’ asked Sunny. But Alex was already blathering on.
‘Then the best players pull some big audiences all fixed on something else, so there’s no better place for lifting purses.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Sunny, wishing she could think of something clever or funny to say, but the cupboard was bare.
‘I used to dream of joining ’em when I was little. Looked like heaven to me. A company to belong to. Always on the road, always on the move, leaving your regrets at your back, never in one place long enough to be hated, getting paid for pretending to be someone else. That’s all I wanted, when I was little. To be someone else …’ And she petered out, frowning towards the stage.
Sunny wanted to say she liked Alex the way she was. Liked her more than anyone else she knew. She’d wanted to say it ever since that kiss. But having an audience didn’t help at all, with Brother Diaz there to judge and Vigga to make jokes. Now somehow too much time had passed, like the way things were was mortar in a wall and had set hard.
Sometimes Alex would look at Sunny, like she was trying to smile, and Sunny would try to smile back but her stupid face wouldn’t do it. Stupid face! And Alex would look away a bit crestfallen and that would feel actually painful.
Though maybe it was her broken ribs which were still very sore when she breathed in.
If there was going to be a next move Sunny would have to make it, but when you’ve spent so long building walls you can’t topple them whenever you fancy. A few times every day she’d work herself up to do it, then she’d start thinking Alex was so easy, maybe kissing people was just something she did? Maybe she kissed all sorts of people all the time and she’d already forgotten about it. That thought made Sunny feel strangely miserable. People really fucking hate the elves, as John of Antioch could no doubt have testified, but in her experience, they also really want to have sex with them, so it was far from the first kissing she’d done, but it was the first in a while she’d had any wish to repeat.
The Pope whipped her skirts up again to give everyone a glimpse of a big fake muff and that made them all laugh which seemed like good cover. Sunny leaned forwards, reaching out with one hesitant finger to tap Alex on the shoulder—
‘Here!’ Vigga blundered past to stick another skewer of meat in Alex’s hand. A big woman was cooking them over a sparky fire and they were covered in char and oily sauce and weren’t to Sunny’s taste at all.
‘Looks like hell,’ said Alex, closing her eyes as she sniffed at it. ‘Tastes like heaven,’ and she took a bite from one of the lumps.
‘I have my doubts it’s lamb,’ said Brother Diaz, nibbling at his own skewer with his front teeth.
‘If I found out it was human I’d likely keep eating,’ said Alex around her mouthful.
‘Sunny?’ asked Vigga, waving a skewer at her.
Sunny pulled her hood down lower and retreated back into the shadows by the wall. ‘I’m full.’
‘Well, you’re no thicker’n a blade of grass.’ And Vigga stuck out her long tongue and slid the whole skewer into her mouth and sucked the lot off it while Brother Diaz watched her, very quiet, and she chewed away with her tattooed cheeks bulging and dragged out a bit of hair she’d got stuck in her mouth and stared happily mystified towards the stage. ‘What in the name of all that’s unholy are these bastards about?’
‘Fucking is bad,’ said Alex, ‘is the gist.’
Vigga leaned over to spit out a bit of gristle. ‘And up’s down and day’s night. It’s like they can’t be happy till everyone’s miserable. I swear they’d snuff the sun out if they could. Give us another coin, Alex.’
Alex slapped a little silver coin into Vigga’s palm and she went to get more meat. Sunny leaned close to her. ‘Tell me that hadn’t been up your arse.’
‘I only put gold up there these days.’ Alex stuck her chin in the air as she turned back to the play. ‘I’m a princess, don’t you know.’
It all ended with the sinful Pope dragged to hell, of course. Or at any rate, behind some painted wooden flames stage left, the hands of whoever was wiggling them just about visible from where Sunny was standing. The Patriarch gave a booming oration on the importance of the Twelve Virtues, especially Charity and Generosity. Then, in an entirely unconnected move, he hopped down from the stage with his bowl out, at which the audience scattered quicker than they might’ve if Sunny had thrown her hood back and shown everyone her ears.
Alex made it worth the players’ while, though. For someone who’d grown up finding new places to hide coins, she was open-handed when she had the chance. The Patriarch of Troy raised his bushy brows – one hanging off by a bit of failed glue – when he saw what’d tinkled into his bowl. ‘Blessings upon your generosity, my child,’ and he made the sign of the wheel on the front of his robes, which close-up were sprinkled with a goodly contribution of dandruff.
‘Your sinful Pope was quite the laugh,’ said Alex. ‘Can’t imagine it plays too well in the west, mind you.’
The Patriarch leaned closer to murmur, ‘In the east it’s a sinful Pope and a righteous Patriarch, in the west we swap over.’
‘What about the middle?’ asked Brother Diaz.
‘If you’re not sure of the opinions of your audience, try to be as vague as possible.’
The Pope had ambled over now, freed from eternal damnation and flapping her vestments to let some air in. ‘Been sent running from more than one village by a torch-wielding mob after misjudging the mood,’ she observed.
Vigga nodded thoughtfully along. ‘Who hasn’t?’ The players didn’t seem unduly worried by her. Hard to perform in a travelling show without getting comfortable with the unusual, but there were limits, so Sunny made sure to keep her own hood well down.
Brother Diaz still seemed troubled. ‘Surely a good play does not merely indulge the biases of the audience, but guides them towards the Saviour’s truth ?’
‘Sounds grand in theory.’ The Patriarch removed his crown to scratch at a wispy and slightly scabrous pate. ‘But, believe me, there’s no good tips in it.’
‘Fornication is …’ Brother Diaz cleared his throat. ‘A sin , of course …’ He cleared his throat again. ‘But there are ample examples in the histories of … sinners of that variety repenting of their ways and returning to the bosom of the Saviour—’
‘Pray leave the Saviour’s bosom out of this!’ intoned the Pope, looking piously to the skies.
‘To the grace of the Almighty, then! It’s just that being dragged to hell … well …’ Brother Diaz cleared his throat even one more time. ‘I prefer to believe in a forgiving God than a vengeful one, that’s all.’
‘Don’t we all?’ muttered Sunny, under her breath, though she wasn’t sure the evidence was with him.
‘I’m no priest, friend,’ said the Patriarch, ‘despite the robes. But it seems to me the sin she’s punished for ain’t so much the fornication as the hypocrisy.’
‘That’s it,’ chimed in the Pope, in a display of unity between the Churches of East and West sadly absent off the stage. ‘The beasts in the field all fornicate, after all.’
‘When their luck’s in,’ said Vigga, grease on her chin and cheeks bulging with meat.
‘But they don’t lie ,’ said the Patriarch. ‘They don’t preach one thing and practise another. They don’t judge others while riddled with sin themselves.’
‘Right,’ said Brother Diaz, frowning at the ground as if that wasn’t quite the answer he’d been hoping for. ‘Hmmm.’
‘But I do thank you most profusely for the contribution.’ The Patriarch bowed low. ‘Don’t run into many good givers these days, sad to say.’
‘A sign of the times indeed.’ Alex glanced across at Sunny with the hint of a grin, and Sunny was trying to arrange her stupid face to do the same when the Pope spoke up again.
‘Who was that fellow the other day?’ She nodded towards the road east they were planning to take in the morning. ‘The one with the golden cloak.’ Sunny felt a prickling on the back of her neck. ‘Stupidest cloak I ever saw, but he was a good giver.’
‘What was his name?’ asked Alex, trying to sound breezy but Sunny could hear the strain in her voice.
‘Sad ass?’ ventured the woman who played the Pope. ‘No! Sabbas.’ It wasn’t an unpleasant surprise, exactly, because bad news never came as a surprise to Sunny, more a tiresome confirmation of what she’d somehow known was coming. ‘Said he was searching for a girl.’
‘That so?’ asked Alex, almost a groan.
‘And I replied that for a further contribution I’d play any part he pleased, but he said he was looking for a particular girl.’ The woman leaned close. ‘Her Highness Alexia Pyrogennetos! Long-lost heiress to the Throne of Troy!’
The Patriarch looked thoughtfully at his stage, which was a flat wagon with a few brightly painted boards around it. ‘Must admit I thought right then that’d make a fine play.’
‘Stretching credibility a little,’ said Brother Diaz, voice somewhat tight.
‘If I’ve learned one thing in forty years on the stage, it’s that folk will believe any old shit if you dress it up right. Don’t suppose you lot seen a princess on your wanderings, have you?’
‘We mix with royalty daily!’ said Alex, forcing another laugh.
‘Shame.’ The Pope sighed as she pulled the sock from her head, a surprising quantity of red hair spilling out. ‘This Sabbas was offering quite the reward. Enough for a man to become a good giver himself.’
‘If he was that way inclined,’ added the Patriarch, and he planted his headdress back on, at something of an angle, and waved a flamboyant benediction. Slightly less effective now he’d taken off the beard to reveal a rather weak chin, but the voice rang out nicely. ‘May good fortune follow you, my children!’
Alex met Sunny’s eye for a moment, then looked away. ‘It’d be a fucking first,’ she muttered.