Black Rose

(Back to the wacky world of the kids in the weird religious circus thing. There is a point to telling this story, trust me, but it won't come home for a few chapters yet.

Some very minor comic violence in this and a bit of nudity.)

***

Chapter 14

Plank Boy and Rabbit Features

It was raining outside. The wagon was on the coast road through the foothills of the mountains. It was cold, the north wind coming off the sea. They were a day out of Terrasse.

The Coney pulled her blanket about her shoulders, and turned the page of the book, and munched on some bread and cheese.

***

That first year (Cormac wrote) was full of wonders.

We never dreamed that the Chariot could be even more magical than it looked from the seats, but it was.

We learned dances no one could see. We learned how to juggle fire. How to charm tigers, get the whole tent to fly on wings of laughter. How to claim their hearts with a cock of the eyebrow.

We danced, we loved and we laughed.

Shvaun and I were transformed, that first year, into the masters of time, space and the imagination that was the calling of all the Dancers in the Chariot. And at last, we found what we had been born to do. Which was...

... Nah. I'm just messing with you.

It wasshite.

***

We weren't even apprentices. We were 'nobodies'.

Not Nobodies, right? We were nobodies, with a small 'n'. That was made very clear.

Wakeup was at five past five.

The Chariot had a clock. Proper wind-up one, mad old.

It kept the time for the whole Chariot and it was in the director's cart. When it went five bongs, the director woke up, and she'd go to the privy tent, then she'd wake up the crew chiefs.

She did this by ringing bells on wires spread throughout the camp. On an overnight stop this was easy to rig up, because we didn't have to put up the tent, but on a performance stop it took ages, because the camp had to be much more spread-out. But it had to be done, because the Chariot was all about what?

Rhythm.

'If you aren't there when your people need you,' Coach Kenner said to us, 'then they don't need you and you're not wanted. So learn the time. I want you to feel in your spine how long a tick of that clock can last, so when you say you'll be there in three, you'll be there in three, and when you say five, or twenty, or half an hour, that's what you mean.'

First thing in the morning after wakeup was tidy up your bed. Then privy tent.

Then, for nobodies,time drill.

They blindfold you, and they stand you in a field in front of another nobody, also blindfolded.

They would count the time, and then stop, and you had to count to yourself in silence.

At the end of that time, usually sixty ticks, you went to slap the other nobody's face, and the other nobody had to block it. If you didn't time it right, one of you got slapped in the face, and if that happened, the one who got slapped got to slap the one who did the slapping, cause otherwise, it's not fair.

So, before you've even had a bite to eat, you're cold, you feel like an idiot and your face hurts from all the slapping.

One you got the time inside you, you began to learn about the larger rhythms that broke the time up.

After time drill there wastasks, individual jobs, like, in my case, looking after the animals.

Shepard Jon was in charge of the animal vans. He was a crusty old sort, but he loved the animals and he loved the Chariot, and he liked that I knew about herbs. He taught me everything there was to know about shovelling shit, which it turned out, was a lot. Maybe more than I really wanted to know.

He was the oldest man I'd ever met. He'd curly white hair and his face was deeply lined.

Everything he thought or felt passed over his face.

And that made him aterriblecard player, because whenever he had a good hand he couldn't stop himself from chuckling with glee, and whenever he had a bad hand he'd sulk. The only reason he even played cards was to show people this about himself, and then after one hand he'd fold and laugh, and go off to read his books, or talk to someone.

He seemed to have read every book ever. He knew the Chariotbook by heart, of course, but he'd also read the Book from cover to cover, and he could argue about it like he was born to it.

Maybe he had been. You did wonder, with him.

He loved to talk, but the biggest thing about him were the questions.

So your father's a herbalist? What did your mother's people do? She's one as well? How did they do that? How much did he teach you? Is it true that horsehead ferns are good in a poultice? Dogs can't eat hamza bean paste; why do you suppose that is? What made you want to join the Chariot? What do you want to do when you get to be someone again?

These question annoyed the piss out of me, at first. I wanted to get on with learning how to be a Dancer. It took me a while to realise that Shepard Jon asked questions because he genuinely liked other people, and wanted to know them better.

That last question was a bastard, though.What do you want to do?

Because for most of that first year, I was sure that I was about to get thrown out.

***

After time drill and tasks, at eight camebreakfast.

Everyone ate together, and only once a week could you sit where you wanted, with your mates, if you had any. The rest of the time your seat was given to you from a mad list the Chariot ran, that meant one day you were seated next to the director and a hairy tent crew guy, another day you were with the money folk and a star acrobat, another day it was somebody else.

It would be nice to say you got to know everyone, but since nobodies were usually ignored, you only got to know them by overhearing them. The tent crew guys were the least friendly of all and when they said anything at all it was to each other. It took me a long time even to realise what tongue they were speaking in. It was New Tongue, same as everyone else, but their accents were so thick and they were so not into having big chats with people that they were near impossible to understand.

You had thirty minutes to eat and thirty minutes to not-eat, because after you'd eaten you'd to let it sit, before you went about the next thing you had to do.

At nine came cleanup and, if we were moving, getting everything ready for the road, or if we were performing, getting everything ready for that.

At ten, performance or no performance, it waslessons.

***

'What do you think is the Chariot is for,' Aadhya said.

Aadhya was the loremaster. She kept the holy books, and whenever the Dancers wanted to change the script, Aadhya had to approve the changes, or disapprove of them, as she saw fit. If she didn't like the changes, they didn't get made.

Aadhya saw that the Chariot always served the holy books.

She looked at us, unsmiling. She was nearly thirty and she was a bride of the Chariot itself. She'd glossy black hair, tied at the back, which fell down to the base of her spine, and she was thin and severe.

Shvaun put up her hand.

'You,' Aadhya said. 'Rabbit Features.'

Rabbit Features was Shvaun's undername, which the Chariot gave her in place of her old name.

All of us nobodies had an undername.

Apprentices, who'd been through the whole ritual of taking Harness, learned specific skills which people actually wanted to be able to do. But nobodies had to do the crap jobs that nobody wanted to do. The Chariot reckoned if you could stand to do a crap job for a year, you were all right for the Chariot.

If Shvaun lasted the year, she'd get her old name back, but would be given a proper Chariot name, too, which she'd get to use if she ever came to be a performer. In the meantime, nobodies were only ever to be addressed by their undernames.

Undernames were based on first impressions, and they were meant to be humiliating.

Mine was Plank Boy, because it was assumed that, being more talented at sums than anything else, I was going to be a passable money man and a terrible performer.

The funny thing was, the old handslovedtheir undernames. Whenever someone was really pissed off with someone else, or really felt the love for them, they'd use the other person's undername, because that showed you it was Serious Business.

It could have been worse. There was a kid called Puke Breath, because in the Test of Order, when he was lifting shit from one place to another, he'd not been able to stop throwing up.

He didn't last the year. Turned out that the puking was something wrong with his guts, and he died.

'Rabbit Features,' Aadhya said, 'will now tell us what purpose the Chariot serves.' That's how Aadhya talked. Like a book.

'To take people away from themselves,' Shvaun said. 'To show them something beautiful.'

'Wrong!' Aadhya said and she walked, no, she strode down to Shvaun, and made to whack her over the head with the palm of her hand. Shvaun hunched--but the blow never landed. She looked up at Aadhya and grinned uncertainly.

Aadhya was great but she was scary. She had been a Dancer, but there had been in an accident during atamasha, and she'd been hurt so bad she couldn't perform anymore. She knew everything about the gods and their stories cause she'd come from a Chariot family.

'The Chariot does not "take people away from themselves to show them something beautiful",' Aadhya barked. 'It shows them their true selves. People are not good at looking at themselves, because they don't wish to see what they are like. But the Chariot's stage depicts people not as they appear, behind the veil of everyday life, but with the force and vigour and, yes, the beauty which is required to show people their true image. I mean, their image as seen from the viewpoint of the divine. The beauty is only there to get the rubes in the door.'

We all nodded at this. I had no idea what Aadhya was talking about, but I reckoned she did, and if I kept on listening I'd get the hang of it.

'The Chariot is big, and bright, and bold,' Aadhya said more quietly, 'because that is the promise of the divine. The divine is bigger and brighter and bolder than our everyday life. That is why you must strive to support it. You are not doing this for the audience. You do this to honour the gods.'

I wondered what would happen if I were to point out to Aadhya that my dad didn't really believe in the gods.

Aadhya looked at us all, a faint smile on her face.

'You think I am burbling,' she said. 'You think that this is a lot of nonsense which you are obliged to swallow whole, and burp out in word-perfect puffs of gas, so that you can be given the right to daub yourselves with gold and step out in that ring. So that the rubes will envy you, and you can feel yourselves full of glory.'

Nobody looked her in the eye. That's exactly what we were all thinking.

'Ask questions,' she said. 'It is permitted.'

'But why else does anyone want to be in the Chariot,' said Shvaun in a meek voice, and she flinched cause Aadhya glared at her.

'Ask yourself this,' said Aadhya. 'Why do we not say our names at the end of the *tamasha*?'

It was true. We'd seen the director herself appear in thetamashaand we hadn't even known her name until we'd asked her.

'The next time we stop and raise the stage,' Aadhya said, 'you will sit with me in the high seats with the rope crew, and you will watch thetamashawith me, and you will see thetamasha, as we who have made it these many years see it.'

I looked at Shvaun. She was looking up at Aadhya, worried but also fierce curious.

I looked up at Aadhya too, and she was looking down at us with none of her usual height. She was smiling at us, like she knew stuff we didn't dare dream of.

'You think the Chariot is a place where you can be exalted,' she said softly. 'You think it a place of dreams. And it is those things, but first of all, it is a place of humiliation and dirt and shit. For only those who have tasted how low people can go, have the power to lift others from the dirt we all come from. The dirt that wants to swallow us all.'

She eyed us all, with her dark eyes. One of which was larger than the other, on account of the accident which none of us dared ask her about.

'Humiliation,' she repeated, in an ominous voice. 'Dirt. Shit.'

She paused.

'Does anyone have any questions?'

Shvaun stuck up her hand. Aadhya sighed.

'Rabbit Features.'

'Miss Aadhya,' Shvaun said brightly, 'what was your undername?'

'"Little Miss Tight-Arse",' Aadhya said.

***

Shvaun's job, that first year, was not to cook lunch, but to clean up afterwards. She soon discovered that there was a difference between helping an experienced beast-master care for a couple of dozen animals, and cleaning the food pots and crockery of three hundred and seventy people.

The latter was afarworse job.

It took about a week for the smell of kitchen grease to permanently settle in Shvaun's clothes, hair and skin. I had never really noticed people's smells before, but pretty soon, Shvaun smelled, all the time, and it wasn't good. Her hair stuck to her head with grease, and her face had spots it had never had before.

She had to scrub-clean the spits; wash the cutlery and plates of three meals per person per day; wash the cooking surfaces; wash the pots and pans; clean up after the lowest of the cooks had finished preparing and left behind a pile of peel and skin and seeds. (These all went into the compost barrel that the Chariot carried around, so that it could make a little extra money selling Chariot's Own Compost to rubes who wanted to buy it. The money was supposed to go to the Chariot's bank, but I don't think it ever did. --S.D.)

Finally, she had to climb into the enormous soup vats, and scrub them out.

Because that job was left to her when she was the last in the kitchen in the small hours of the morning, in order to spare herself unnecessary laundry, she took to doing it with no clothes on.

I have to admit that, when she told me that, I couldn't help thinking back to the day we had had a shower together before the other Chariot folk. And I knew, even then, that I was curious about Shvaun in more ways than one.

But when Monty, the head cook, discovered she was doing it, he went into a rage, saying that this was not right when she was on her monthly bleeding. Shvaun was outraged at this, at first, but then accepted that Monty had a point.

So she went back to cleaning in her clothes, and the result was the humiliation and dirt that Aadhya had talked about. Maybe that had been the point all along.

Shvaun and I slept in the same enclosure, on bedrolls next to each other, and because I usually finished before her, I would be dozing in my blankets when a greasy, rank-smelling girl would wearily tuck herself into the bedclothes next to mine and almost as quickly start snoring.

One night, a couple of weeks into that first year, I was dead tired as usual and I saw Shvaun trudge into the enclosure and fall onto her bedroll and before she even got time to wrap herself up she was off.

I got out of my bed and made sure she was tucked in. The smell of stale stock and cold fat off her made me feel ill, but I went back to my own bed knowing that I smelled worse, and the only reason I didn't gag from the odour of the shit that encrusted my clothes was that my nose had grown used to my own stench.

Horse and oxen shit didn't smell so bad. It was basically fermented grass. Dog shit was another story, and humans and pigs, as old Shepard pointed out, had the worst-smelling shit of all, because we eat everything.

(The Chariotknewthat Cormac smelled of shit, so they let him change his clothes from time to time. They didn't believe that I did, so I didn't get to. --S.D.)

I lay in my bed, turned away from Shvaun, and I knew that I had made a terrible mistake in joining the Chariot. I knew I wouldn't last the year, but would either be kicked out or would leave. These people were not common clay.

Neither was Shvaun. She had a leap and a fire about her, that lifted her to their level, and so did Aadhya, and the director, and all of the rest of them. Even Shepard Jon, old as he was. He had the curiosity and energy of a young man.

But I was dull. If Shvaun was the dance, I was the receipt for the dance shoes. Plank Boy indeed.

I lay there, weeping a little with self-pity. Then I heard a soft voice.

'Hey. Kid. Kid.'

I did my best to stifle my weeping. It wouldn't do for anyone to see me showing it. If it got back to Shepard Jon that I wasn't man enough to do my job without complaint, then, kindly and twinkly as he was, he would kindly and twinkly inform me that it was just not true that everyone could do everything, and that my place wasn't with the Chariot after all.

I lay still and silent until I felt a finger prodding my shoulder.

Reluctantly, I opened my eyes.

A handsome boy a few years older than me was kneeling next to my bed. He was looking down at me and smiling, his eyes narrowed.

'Sad,' he said.

'No,' I said.

'Liar,' he said. He was wearing a white shirt and loose blue trousers.

'Not lying,' I said.

'Lying is worse than being sad,' he said, and he made a peculiar side-to-side twisting motion of his head, closing his eyes briefly. Then he opened them and went on looking at me.

He was very beautiful, and with a certain shock I realised that he was the youth who had opened thetamashaall those weeks earlier.

Up close, without makeup, fully clothed, he was less exotically alluring than he had been on stage. His features were more delicate without makeup, and he was less... big, somehow. But he was still beautiful, and he was being friendly, and I was grateful.

He was one of the younger Dancers; I had never sat at his table, and didn't know his name. But even off the stage he radiated something that made you want to go on looking at him.

'Yes,' I admitted. 'I'm sad.'

'You thought it would be more fun,' he said.

'I did.'

'It will be,' he said.

'I can't do this for a year,' I said.

'Why not,' he said. 'We all did.'

'You shovelled shit,' I said. '*You*.'

'I did not,' he admitted.

'See?'

'My job was worse,' he said.

'Worse?'

'I worked for Rufus,' he said, his eyes twinkling.

Rufus was the chariot's tanner.

The Chariot tanned its own leather, because it had learned not to trust locally-bought leather, which too often failed under the yanks that Chariot shows put on it.

Rufus spent his days scrubbing gore and flesh off dead animal skins, and immersing them in piss and rubbing shit into them, and his place smelled so bad that the Chariot made him do it at least a field away from the main camp.

Nobody had to sit at Rufus's table. They did, anyway, but only the highest of the high-ups had the stomach to do it for a whole meal; those closest to him were the director, a few of the older dancers and crew. They treated Rufus with huge respect and affection, and it had taken me a while to realise that it was because his leather kept them off the ground, and caught them when they flew through the air, and held them safe, when they were whirled around.

He was a nice, quiet, humble guy. He still smelled terrible, though.

I stared at the boy. Surely they couldn't have put someone as golden as this with Rufus.

'I only stopped having the smell in my nose maybe two years ago,' he said. 'It gets better. I'm Dewi Orr.'

'I'm Plank Boy,' I said.

'I know who you are,' Dewi said. 'You joined a few weeks ago, with Rabbit Features, didn't you.'

'Yes,' I said, flattered that he had noticed me, and embarrassed that I was flattered.