Bird cast a quick glance at old Bowough and shook his head. “My old friend could use a soft bed, if the hostel has such.”
Her heart warmed toward him. “I was about to suggest as much. I’m giving you a supplemental ration card for him, as well, which will entitle him to extra foodstuffs while you are here. He will be the better for some cream and eggs.”
Bird bowed, his extravagant bow, and said, “This is generous of you, Medic.”
“Not really,” she laughed. “All of Women’s Country seems to be going to have an exceptional harvest this year. All the warehouses will be full to overflowing. All the ewes have had twin lambs and the fishermen have never seen such weight of silver in their nets. We can spare some cream and eggs for someone who has devoted his life to amusing us.”
He bowed again, this time seriously, and she aped him, laughing. “Where will you be performing, magician?”
“Arriving early in this way, shouldn’t I be able to secure a place in the plaza?” It was a question, accompanied by a quirked eyebrow and widened nostrils.
“You are among the first.” She nodded. “I’ll stop by tomorrow and take a look at your kinsman. Have you been together long?”
“Some might say long enough, madam. He is my father.”
She handed them their ration cards, then stood staring after them as they took themselves off, the wagon rattling on the cobbles as it climbed the winding street toward the marketplace.
Septemius, on the wagon seat, held the reins in his left hand and put his right hand on the seat, balanced on its fingertips, each finger finding a rounded depression, five in all. “By five,” he mumbled to himself, pressing his fingers down, his lean, agile hand doing five quick pushups on the wooden seat. Five was Septemius’s mandala, his secret key. As a tiny child he had had a blanket with five embroidered bees upon it. The fingers of his hands had fit upon those bees as upon a spread glove. He had learned to count on that blanket. As a boy, he had sought five as a sign, a symbol of guidance. As a man, no less. Sometimes he mocked himself, denying it, while at the same moment seeking some configuration of stars or holes in the wall or trees growing in a meadow which fit his predetermined pattern. Five, done always the same way, one-two, one-two-three. Tip-tap, tip-tap-tap. If this pattern was then followed by another tip-tap, it was a signal of the most urgent kind, seven syllabled, tokening his name. He had learned that sept meant seven in some old language. Fives and sevens were his signposts, his omens, his prayers for protection.
He had never told anyone about this. Even to himself, it sounded silly, babyish, an attempt to attribute order in a world where there was little enough. Septemius had been reared to the belief there was no order, even when there seemed to be.
He had been the only child in the troupe. There had been Bowough, his father, and Genettia, his mama. There had been Old Brack and Old Brick—Bowough’s parents—and Aunt Ambioise, Uncle Chapper, Cousin Bysell, as well as Aunt Netta, who was not really an aunt at all, and her sons and daughters, five of them, all grown up. All of them were animal trainers or magicians or acrobats or knife throwers or whatever else they chose to be at the time. All of them were very strong-willed. No two of them agreed about anything.
The earliest memory Septemius had of this peculiarity of the Troupe Bird had been the matter of the dishes. He could not have been more than five or six, just learning to help with campish chores. Mama had set him on a stool at the tailgate of the wagon with a towel in his hands as she washed the plates and handed them to him. Old Brick had come in and moved the stool to the other side, saying something about fools and mountebanks washing from right to left when every reasonable person knew it was done from left to right. Then Papa had said either way was wrong, that dishes were to be soaked in the soapy water then rinsed all at once with boiling water. Then someone, Mama probably, though it might have been Aunt Ambioise, had screamed a name at him, and they were off, seething like a pot on the fire, with Septemius huddled down upon the stool as each of them boiled up at him at intervals, “Isn’t that so, boy? Isn’t that so?”
That was the first time he remembered, but after that, he remembered little else. Everything Septemius tried to do partook of the same quality of uncertainty. Whether it was feeding donkeys or training dogs or hauling water from the stream; whether it was driving the wagon or washing his own socks. If Mama did it, everyone let her alone. If Papa did it, no one said anything. Any adult member of the troupe could do what he or she chose with no more than a few carping remarks from observers. If Septemius did it, everyone in camp insisted on showing him how, none of them agreeing, each of them claiming
