“Why don’t you ask one of the young ladies to dance?” she inquired.
“I’m still too bruised from the dragon,” I said, loud enough that the young ladies could hear me too. Since there was a shortage of men, I was worried about being pressed into service. “Besides, I’m just enjoying sitting here with you.”
I expected her to smile, as she normally did at all my gallant and meaningless sallies, but she was looking at the illusory basket I had given her, which was perched on the table beside her and was gradually fading. “Perhaps that’s what I’m like,” she said, but so softly I was fairly sure I was not supposed to overhear. As irritated as I had sometimes been at her fecklessness, I liked this even less.
Supper was announced after the next set of dances. As we were finishing eating, there was a clatter in the courtyard, and a group of people in disguises raced into the hall. “Good,” said the duchess. “It’s the mummers from the village. They must have heard I was back.”
There were about a dozen of them, all wearing ordinary working clothes that had been transformed by the application of beads and sequins, or by combining different items of clothes in unusual ways. Their faces were painted, and they wore foil crowns, unusual hats, and, in one case, goat’s horns.
They ran around the hall twice, gabbling and waving their arms. One of the girls was wearing a man’s tunic and was apparently intended to represent the duchess herself. At first she stepped out boldly, but then on the second pass around the hall she became shy and tried to conceal herself behind her companions. The duchess seemed to find it hilarious.
Then the men in foil crowns and enough beads and sequins to suggest kings came forward, challenged each other, blew shrill blasts on tin horns, and began giving each other great blows with wooden swords. Racing around them, prodding them into even fiercer action, was the man in the goat’s horns. He was dressed entirely in red, and I had trouble laughing and applauding after I realized he was supposed to represent a demon.
The wounded “kings” fell back from the fight and collapsed into the arms of the sequined women who were supposed to be the queens. The girl who had been wearing the man’s tunic now pulled on a white shift and a foil halo to come forward as an angel, whose touch caused the kings to jump up with a clapping of hands and race once again around the hall. All of us applauded and dropped a few coins in the chief king’s hat as he circled the tables.
“Now we’re starting to have a properly Merry Christmas,” said the duchess after the mummers had raced out. “Tomorrow, let’s celebrate the Feast of Fools!”
Good, I thought. A festival just for wizards like me.
V
I had of course heard of the Feast of Fools, even though we had had nothing similar in the City when I was young. At some big country houses, on a day between Christmas and New Year’s, for the whole day the ordinary social structures were reversed, and a boy became the lord and the lord a stable boy.
But while I knew what happened in a general way on the Feast, I was still startled to wake and find the queen in my bedroom, as a dark, sleeting morning began outside the window. I pulled the blankets up to my chin.
“Here’s your breakfast, Chaplain,” she said with a laugh, presenting me with a breakfast tray.
I reached for it hesitantly. It contained a donut, rather stale, but also a hot cup of tea. “Why are you calling me the chaplain?”
“We’re all backwards today,” she said with a smile. “I’m the kitchen maid; Gwen and Jon are the queen and king; and you and the chaplain are taking each other’s positions. When you’re ready to get dressed, get some of his vestments and give him some of your clothes to wear.”
Neither of the chaplains, the duchess’s nor Joachim, liked this plan at all. “Chaplains never take part in the Feast of Fools,” said the duchess’s chaplain loftily.
“But this is an unusual Christmas!” the queen insisted. She seemed to be taking direction of the Feast, perhaps, I thought, to wrest control from the duchess. “You won’t have to do anything evil.”
I ended up having to go into the chapel for morning service in the chaplains’ place, wearing an old set of robes from the duchess’s chaplain. If the members of the staff who came to the chapel, dressed in finery, had expected me to give a satirical version of the service, however, they were disappointed, for I merely laid the Bible on the altar, lit the candles, and went out again. Until I had decided what to do about Yurt, I did not dare risk offending the powers of the supernatural.
In the great hall, Gwen and Jon, wearing very fancy and very old draperies that I assumed had come from chests in the duchess’s attic, sat on tall chairs next to the fireplace. Both held rods that apparently represented scepters, something I had never seen the real king and queen use, and both were shouting orders.
“Go weed my roses!” yelled Jon in a high, cracked voice that did not sound at all like the king’s voice. “And do it right, this time! Don’t start breaking off the branches like you did last time!” Since the king did almost all his own weeding, I was surprised at this, but the assembled staff seemed to find it hilarious.
“Why aren’t you feeding my stallion?” cried Gwen in a voice that actually did sound a lot like the queen’s. “Why aren’t you exercising him? Cook!” to one of the ladies. “We’re going to have a hundred and fifty extra people for supper. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but you’d better get started. We have to eat in twenty minutes!”
I stood at the edge of the hall, leaning against the wall and watching. I found this disturbing, and was even more disturbed when one of the stable boys started shouting back at the “royal pair.” “Why don’t you let the cook alone? Why don’t you and the hundred and fifty guests go dig in the fields for a while and work up an appetite?”
Gwen, as the queen, replied, “Don’t bother me with your complaints! Can’t you see the king and I are busy?” and threw herself into Jon’s arms, to his evident approval.
The staff laughed uproariously. The real queen came to stand next to me. “Are you sure allowing this is wise, my lady?”
She smiled. “We did it every year when I was growing up, and I started the practice when I came to Yurt. The staff are somewhat limited, being away from home, but some years they have elaborate props and even whole episodes they act out.”
“But aren’t you encouraging them to think badly of you?”
“Not at all. That’s why it’s called the Feast of Fools; you have to remember not to take anything seriously.”
“They’re saying insulting things to you!”
“If they say insulting things to the false king and queen, they won’t need to say those things to us. And sometimes we can pick up an indication of a real problem, something with which we had started burdening the staff without even realizing it. King Haimeric and I like to think that we treat our staff as well as anyone in the western kingdoms, but as long as they’re in our pay they’re always going to be a little inhibited about speaking up about their problems.”
I nodded, somewhat dubiously. She seemed quite calm about the proceedings, even complacent, but if the queen thought this was all fun and harmless, maybe it was. I was still quite shocked when one of the trumpeters came running into the hall, wearing a ripped red velvet tunic. “The powers of darkness must obey me!” he shouted. “I am stronger than trees and rocks!”
There was a great deal of shouting. “No! You can’t be the wizard!” “The chaplain has to be the wizard!” “But he said he doesn’t want to be!” “Let him be the wizard if he wants to be!” I was especially mortified to see the queen herself struggling with only minimal success to keep from bursting into laughter.
“Maria and I are making lunch today,” she said abruptly, straightening her face. “We’d better get started.” I could tell from the back of her shoulders as she hurried away that she was laughing again.
The cook, who had found a blond wig and apparently represented the Lady Maria, came over to talk to me. “We want to have the ‘wizard’ do magic tricks at lunch. That boy is useless; we’re going to have to have the chaplain do it. Can you teach him a good trick between now and lunch?”
“All right,” I said. Maybe concentrating on the reckless activity of the Feast of Fools would keep me from worrying when, if ever, I would hear what had happened to the old wizard’s last apprentice, much less how I was
