A Knight in Central Park(84)
He looked to the audience, taken aback by the eclectic array of colors and design. The castle itself was grand, but seeing the people of this time, not actors and actresses, but true nobility, was simply incredible. The ladies wore conical headdresses and veils with wire support. Dresses were either heavily embroidered or of fur-lined silks. Sparkling gemstones, necklaces and brooches abounded, even their belts were adorned with jewels. Ermine and sable-lined cloaks kept the ladies warm.
And then Joe saw him...the King of England...it was difficult not to stare. King Henry VII in the flesh. The first of the Tudor dynasty. The king’s complexion appeared sallow set against the crimson velvet of his fur-trimmed hat. Compared to his unborn son, the future King Henry VIII, this King of England was slender. His face looked cheerful though, despite the small blue eyes and poor, blackish teeth that showed clearly when he smiled.
A loud cough drew Joe’s attention to the side curtain where Sebastiano was urging him to say something, anything.
Joe looked over at Garrett and threw his arms out in wide, exaggerated hopelessness.
Garrett stepped forward and said, “Knights and Ladies, Kings and nobleman. ’Twould seem this tale begins, as you can see, with one lone man, a desperate man some would say, who cannot, as hard as he tries, find his way without his life map. Hardly more than a piece of worn parchment this map, but not to this man. To this lonely soul ’Tis much more than that.”
Garrett paced the stage with a stiff bounce to his gait.
“This life map,” Garrett continued, “has become the unyielding goals of a man who does not realize that sometimes one’s destiny is stronger than one’s dreams.”
Joe shook his head and said to the audience, “The narrator is a fool.”
Hoots and titters sounded from the back of the growing assembly.
“And if that be the case,” Garrett said gleefully, looking intently into the faces of the young ladies upfront, “would the audience agree that he who speaks to a narrator is even more the dressmaker’s dummy?”
Great gales of laughter erupted as the men clapped their hands and the ladies murmured to one another their agreement.
Joe cocked a brow, deciding two could play this game. “The boy is right when he calls this troubadour a fool, for it is well known by many that the only reason this wandering troubadour is here at all is because of a promise.”
Joe raised a hand high and squished his forefinger and thumb together. “A very small, simple promise,” he added before dropping his hands to his sides. “Not a promise declared emphatically, but one whispered in a moment of great weakness.”
“But,” Joe stated loudly before Garrett could say another word, startling a few ladies in front, “a promise all the same. What the narrator tends to forget as he and the troubadour roam from castle to castle to tell their tale, is that the troubadour could find his way much faster without a petulant, irritable narrator forever at his heels...like a shadow, but not quite, because the shadow has no voice and it minds its own business.”
“What the ridiculously garbed goliard does not realize,” Garrett cut in with exaggerated glee, “as he spends most his time arguing with his shadow, is that he is in love. And that, my friends, is the crux of this story.”
Even the King of England seemed to be enjoying himself and all was going smoothly until Joe recognized the paid assassin near the back of the hall. A dark hood shadowed his face, but the cruel scar across his chin along with his bulkiness was hard to miss.
While Garrett introduced Alexandra as a young woman who had grown up in the nunnery, Joe glanced toward Sebastiano, gesturing with his chin toward the hooded figure in the back.
Alexandra came onstage, her face covered by a veil. She sat on a stool that had been left for just that purpose. Joe went to her, his back to the audience.
“What is it?” Alexandra asked in a whisper as Garrett held the audience entranced with his recounting of the troubadour and the nun’s first meeting.
Before Joe could answer her, all was quiet again as the audience waited to hear the rest of the tale. Joe turned to Garrett, thanking him for his most interesting of introductions and then tapped his nose to his finger, a signal they had rehearsed before hand, telling Garrett it was time for him to run off and find his sister, Mary.
When Garrett hesitated in leaving the stage, Joe smiled inwardly at the sparkle in Garrett’s face as he took a bow and then another, the crowd thundering their approval before he made off.
“My lady,” Joe said, kneeling down on bended knee after all had quieted again. “I wish you were not hidden beneath that veil, for then you might see the man who tried to kill your brother.”