The Adventures of Mr. Maximillian Bacchus and His Travelling Circus (7 page)

“The trolls,” the woman replied under her breath. “The trolls.”

At the mention of the word “trolls” the doors slammed closed again, and the bolts were driven back into place, and the curtains swiftly drawn. But Mr. Bacchus only laughed.

“Trolls!” he exclaimed to the rest of the Circus. “They’re afraid of trolls!” and he laughed until the tears ran down his face and mingled with the rain. Then he began to beat on his drum louder than ever and called down the street: “I’m a magician! A veritable maker of miracles! My magic is laughter! My spells are dances! Come out into the streets, my friends! Come out into the warm rain and dance in the puddles! The Circus is here!”

Cautiously, the faces re-appeared at the windows, and the bolts were drawn again.

“Come out! Come out!” Mr. Bacchus continued. “The show begins in only a few minutes! Spectacle! Danger on High Wire! The strongest man in the world! Grand Opera from Venice! Comedy and juggling from the World’s Greatest Clown, Domingo de Ybarrondo, pupil of the Great Grimaldi himself! The dance of moths! Bathsheba the orang-outang taming the great Ibis-bird. Prodigies! Delights!”

Then he began to beat the drum once more and the company danced out of the town. At first, the towns-people were too nervous to follow, but the children slipped through their parents’ legs and were away with the wind, screaming and laughing, and the people simply had to follow. Of course, the further they were led from their homes, the more frightened they became, but the music and Bacchus’ words overcame their doubts, and the procession made its way along the wet road to the field where the World Ended.

The rain had gone off by now, and the sky was clearing. The flags were drying in the wind, and Thoth the Ibis-bird was preening his feathers.

A few minutes before the sun set over the Edge of the World, the performance commenced. The towns-people loved every moment of it. They clapped, shouted and whistled when Ophelia danced on the wire with a parasol in one hand and a vase of rosemary on her head. They wept with laughter when Malachi sang excerpts from Wagner. They sat in awe-struck silence when the torches were doused and Angelo gathered the moths around his head like stars. They gasped at Hero’s strength, and cheered when Bathsheba rode the bucking Ibis-bird.

While the performance was going on, a dark, hunched form appeared from the gloom over the Edge of the World, its deep-set black eyes reflecting the torch-lit stage at the other end of the field. Close to the edge it squatted on its lean haunches, and peered through the twilight until its gaze rested upon the caravan, standing unguarded in the middle of the field. Then it turned, leaned over the Edge of the World once more, and hissed.

“Ullock, Ashur, Solomon, Wind and Weather, there’s a Circus, there’s a Circus making all this noise. And a caravan, a painted caravan, which we shall drag over the Edge.”

At the sound of the Troll’s hiss, from their holes in the World’s side, the rest of the tribe appeared: foul-looking creatures with boars’ tusks and iguanas’ tails. There they had been living, in slimy burrows in the Side of the World, since they were exiled from the flat earth before Babylon fell. And though they were forbidden to ever set palm or sole upon the top of the world again, they nevertheless crept out at night and ventured into town, terrorizing people, stealing babies and leaving their own hideous off-spring in the cots. That was why the towns-people locked themselves in their homes, and kept their children from playing in the streets.

Silent as darkness itself, the trolls crossed the field towards the caravan, squirming in the mud like migrating eels. Domingo, meanwhile, was practising his juggling with two bruised oranges, before his cue to begin his act, and as the trolls knotted their goat-tong rope around the caravan, and heaved, he heard the wheels squeaking and the Troll-King’s voice hissing:

“Pull, Ulock! Pull, Ashur! Solomon, bend your back! Wind and Weather! Pull! PULL! Rawhead and Bloody-Bones commands.”

In the gloom, Domingo could just see the dark shapes of the trolls, and the caravan’s imminent destruction, and without thinking of the danger, he stepped onto his blue ball and rolled towards them. The spindle-limbed creatures were pulling as hard as they could, but the wheels of the caravan spun in the mud, and it was heavy work.

“Put your backs into it!” roared Rawhead and Bloody-Bones, his black, three-forked tongue curling in front of his nose.

“Stop! Stop!” yelled Domingo, rolling towards them. “Bacchus! Malachi! They’re stealing the caravan.”

Now the caravan was only a few feet from the End of the World, and the trolls were swarming over it like maggots, pushing, pulling, shrieking and grunting.

The next moment, the back wheels slid off the edge into oblivion, and the caravan was balanced precariously between safety and disaster. Laughing now in expectation of their triumph, the trolls prepared for a final push. But as they did so, they found themselves pelted with green oranges by Domingo, who was rolling towards them at a furious rate.

All the commotion had, of course, stopped the show, and the towns-people, seeing the trolls, were scattering in all directions. Mr. Bacchus picked up his ringmaster’s whip and strode across the field, cracking it above his head. At the sight and the sound, the trolls fled for their lives, believing the magicians had returned. It was then that Mr. Bacchus spotted Domingo, still on his ball, hurtling towards the Edge of the World.

“Look out! Clown!” he yelled. “Jump off, my boy!” But Domingo was too angry to listen, and by the time he saw the Edge of the World yawning before him, it was too late. The ball spun beneath him and the Edge rushed closer and closer. In a high, frightened voice he cried, “Grimaldi!” and then disappeared. The trolls, clinging to the side of the world, watched him fall past them, and threw clods of earth at him, shrieking with pleasure at his fate.

Mr. Bacchus reached the Edge of the World, and peered over. The Clown was disappearing into the darkness at a tremendous speed, becoming smaller and more indistinct as each moment passed, until only his flour-white face could be seen in the gloom, peering up as if from depths of a bottomless black sea.

“Oh, Sybil,” said Mr. Bacchus to himself. “You should have told me. Now the poor boy’s gone.”

Ophelia, who had followed Mr. Bacchus to the edge, burst into tears. “He said,” she wept, “he said we should have camped elsewhere.”

“Serves him right,” said Malachi coldly. “He should have had more sense. Anyway, we’ve still got our caravan.”

Indeed, the Clown had saved the caravan, which was still balanced on the Edge of the World, its back wheels slowly spinning in space. But, by the time everyone had reached the Edge, there was nothing to be seen of Domingo. Even his face had been consumed by the gloom. And the trolls had crept back into their burrows to quake at the memory of Mr. Bacchus’ whip. The night was empty, except for the stars and the rising moon.

All the towns-people had, of course, disappeared into the town, ushering their children before them, so that was the end of the show. Only the blacksmith was left, a burly man with a black beard, who, because he had neither wife nor child, was less frightened of the trolls than the rest.

“I’m sorry about the Clown,” he said. “If you like, I’ll round up a few of these cowards in the town tomorrow, and help you haul your caravan back over the Edge of the World. You’re best away from here, where you can forget what happened tonight. For now, you can sleep in my forge, if that’s not beneath you, sirs. It’s cold brick and iron, but it’s dry.”

And as if to give emphasis to his words, black clouds billowed up from over the edge, covering the moon, and it began to rain.

The following morning, after having passed an uncomfortable night in the forge, the Circus returned to the field, with those towns-men the blacksmith had been able to rouse. With ropes, levers and pulleys the caravan was at last heaved to safety on the muddy field. It was a long and difficult business, because the vehicle was so delicately balanced that the merest cough would undoubtedly have sent it plummeting over the Edge. It took nearly all day in fact, weighing up the situation, tying the ropes, arranging the pulleys, and so forth, and when it was done everyone was relieved. There were no smiles, however; no congratulations, because the Circus company and the towns-people alike were thinking about Domingo.

“Well,” said Mr. Bacchus finally. “You have been most generous with your assistance. What can we offer you in return? Only the Circus. The songs! The Excitement! The laughter! Well, perhaps not the laughter. Still, the least we can do is give you a free performance.”

“But the trolls,” said one man. “Suppose they return?”

“I have my whip,” replied Mr. Bacchus. “Which they cower before. You and your families will be quite safe.”

“Yes,” said the blacksmith. “What have we to fear from them? They’ve claimed their victim; they will be sated with their mischief.”

This seemed to satisfy the men, and they took the road back to the town to collect their wives and children. It was almost dark by the time the stage, the lights and the flags had been once more prepared for the performance, and the audience had drifted in from the town, their faces nervous and pale.

Ophelia performed once more, although every now and then she looked as if she might cry. Hero lifted Mr. Bacchus singlehandedly, which, he said, made the six bulls feel like so many pebbles. Malachi sang some melancholy excerpts from this and that, Angelo summoned his moths, and Bathsheba danced a job on Thoth.

Beyond the small, torch-lit stage, as night fell, the stars rose over the Edge of the World, and began to glimmer in the night sky. They were followed by the moon, like a sliver of peel.

“Well,” said Mr. Bacchus, when all the acts were finished. “That’s the end of the performance. Bow, everyone.” And he sighed heavily. Though each had done his best, the Circus would never quite be the same without the Clown. The company was lined up to take their bows, not a smile on a single face, when quite suddenly the audience gasped, stood on its feet, then cheered, clapped and laughed ecstatically.

“You weren’t that good,” said Malachi to Hero. “I was, but you weren’t.”

“They weren’t cheering us,” said Hero.

“What then?” said the crocodile.

The audience was pointing up into the sky behind the stage.

Hardly daring to guess the cause of their emotion, the company turned and looked. The stars had risen. The moon had risen. And finally, Domingo de Ybarrondo the Clown had risen too, standing on his blue ball juggling the green oranges. He was singing, and pulling faces and dancing jubilantly. First he stood on one leg, then on one hand. He followed that by balancing the oranges on his nose, then on one finger, on his elbow and on his toes, and all the time the audience was clapping and cheering and the company was crying with happiness.

It was the most wonderful performance Domingo had ever given, and it was seen for hundreds of miles.

In faraway Cathay, the Astrologer to the Khan called Kublai, suspended in a balloon above the clouds that bailed about Xanadu, peered through his telescope in amazement at the new star that had appeared in the sky. In towns and villages, on the edge of untigered pine forests and in the silent snows of the Himalayas, on the high seas where trade winds roar and in the desert where the sand sings, people looked up at the sky that night, and there, between the stars and the moon, eclipsing Venus, Domingo was standing on his head and dancing and singing and juggling his green oranges. And when he finished and bowed deeply to the moon, stars, mountains, forests, seas and deserts, such a thunder of applause rose into the air that tears came into his eyes and ploughed salt-streams in the flour on his face.

At last Angelo climbed onto the back of Thoth and they flew up into the night sky to bring Domingo down to earth again. Unfortunately in the excitement, he forgot to bring down his blue ball and oranges.

In time they became a constellation.

Peering out of their burrows in the side of the world, the trolls saw the Clown ascend with the moon and stars, and covered their deep-set eyes with their fingers in mortal terror, scurrying deeper into the darkness, vowing never to set a sole on the flat earth again. Thereafter, they kept their hideous children to themselves, and taught them that if any troll were ever to climb on top of the world, they would meet a dreadful creature with a white face and a grin, standing on a blue ball, juggling stars.

Later, when Domingo had related his adventures over the World’s Edge a dozen times or more, Mr. Bacchus announced that it was time the Circus was on its way again.

The towns-people were sorry to see them go, and made Bacchus promise he would return.

“Only,” said Mr. Bacchus, “if you will plant that dreadful field with trees. A copse would be pleasant, a wood delightful and a forest magnificent.”

“It shall be done,” said the blacksmith.

“One other little problem,” said Bacchus. “Perhaps you could assist us.”

“Yes?” said the blacksmith.

“We seem to have mislaid the road to Cathay. Would you know of it?”