Angel watched the players setting up in the plaza outside her father’s tavern. She saw that their two wagons unfolded in a clever way to create a sort of stage with a two-level platform. Gregorio saw her watching and motioned her over. He said, “How would you like to sing tonight?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you with the voice like starlight. I hear you know ‘The Bandit and the Maid.’ How about that?”
“How does starlight sound?”
“Ah,” he said, “I see you are a philosopher and not just a girl with a voice. Truth be told, starlight sounds like whatever is in your heart when you look toward the sky. If you are lonely, it sounds like loneliness. If you are in love, it sounds like love. And the brighter and clearer the sky, the louder it sings your feelings.”
“Don’t let him fool you,” said a voice from behind Angel’s back. “For him starlight always sounds like a willing woman.”
Angel turned and saw the woman she took to be Gregorio’s wife. Gregorio said, “Those are only the good nights. On bad nights it sounds like a lonely bedroll on the frozen ground, unloved, abandoned, my heart laid waste by female cruelty.”
The woman theatrically rolled her eyes and said, “Angel, I am Miranna, and I swear to you that though my husband will never stop teasing you he will never touch you. Because if he did, his most precious parts would have a bad encounter with my razor.” She walked to Gregorio’s side and kissed him on the cheek.
He said, “How goes Luzo and Esmerelda?”
“I think Rodrigo has his part down, but Sanna keeps forgetting the order and making the happy speech when she is supposed to think he is dead and the sad one after he returns.”
“Well, darling,” said Gregorio, “Nobody will ever do it again like you did.”
She beamed at him and said, “And there will never be another Luzo like you.”
Angel said, “Who are these people?”
Miranna said, “Oh, dear, I have not introduced you around. Rodrigo is the young man you saw playing the lute inside the inn, Sanna the woman you upstaged.”
“I–um–I didn’t mean to.”
“Of course you did not, child, but you must understand that you will never open your mouth without filling other singers with envy. You should think about this whenever you consider whether or not to sing. Luzo and Esmeralda are characters in an ancient play about a city at war. We will be putting on the final scene tonight.”
“If you and Gregorio were so good at it, why don’t you do it yourselves?”
They looked at each other and burst out laughing. “Child,” said Miranna, “We are too old and fat to play young lovers. Now Gregorio plays kings and evil fathers and I play goddesses and scheming aunts.”
Angel nodded. “I’ve been wanting to ask. Is this really a good time for performing? With everyone getting ready for the war?”
“Never a better time,” said Gregorio. “Everyone is working hard all day and will want distraction at night. It will all be rousing stuff, valorous heroes and faithful maids. People will love it.”
“Will you do ‘The Drowned Man?’”
“What is that?”
“It’s a Calyxian song about the last big sea battle we fought, against the Red Admiral.”
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“Let me hear it.”
Angel sang the song, which was rather sad but ended with a vow to defend the city to the death. “Well,” said Gregorio, “The words are good, but I understand now why I don’t know the song.” Motioning to one of the other men in the troop he said, “Anko, bring your lute and come sit with me, we need to write a new tune.”
Then, turning to Angel, he said, “Yours will the third song. I’ll introduce you as a local heroine. Be ready.” The we went off with the man he had called Anko and they began to work on a new tune for the words she had sung. Which, she realized, he had heard only once.
By late afternoon the stage was ready and the players were in their costumes. Angel put on her good dress, which was a little too tight for her now, but Miranna smiled at the way it fit and did up Angel’s hair. Sanna, the young woman who would play Esmerelda, brushed a little rouge on Angel’s cheeks.
Angel was figuring out who the players were. Gregorio and Miranna were the bosses. They decided what to perform, although others also expressed opinions. Sanna and Rodrigo were the youngest, no older than twenty and maybe not even. Anko was another older man, and he seemed to be their most versatile musician, playing the pipes, trumpet and drum as well as the lute. Lucretia and Dian were another couple, perhaps in their mid-twenties. They looked strange together because Dian had the bronze skin of Siria, and Lucretia had the nearly white hair of someone from the Ocean coast. Angel expected them to speak with accents but their words were perfect Calyxian. Dian and Anko seemed to do most of the practical work. They set up the stage and the ropes that kept people who hadn’t paid out of the square.
In early evening the square filled with people who had paid a penny apiece for the show. Angel sat nervously behind the wagon, waiting for her part, and wondering if Andy would sneak in. Rush lights burned on either side of the stage. When he thought the crowd was ready Gregorio strode onto the stage, saying, “Ladies and Gentlemen, now the time has come to put away the cares of your day and step into another world. With words and music we will carry you away to olden times when famous heroes swore love to beautiful queens, then bring you back to your own city and famous days you may remember.”
A trumpet blew and a drum beat, and then Dian and Lucretia entered from opposite directions, singing a sweet little love duet. When they finished Miranna came out, and she and Gregorio sang another song, about a fisherman at sea and his wife who waited, never knowing if he would come home. Angel thought they were the best singers she had ever heard. Miranna had a rich alto voice that filled each syllable with longing, while Gregorio had an amazing range, dropping very deep to sing bass notes about storms on the sea and then rising up for the fisherman’s words to his wife.
Then they had finished and Gregorio was announcing that he had a surprise, since they would be joined by a local talent they all knew. Angel stepped out and people clapped and shouted for her. Gregorio picked up a lute and began to play, and Angel sang her song as best she could. She was happy that Gregorio was playing along, because that gave her the timing and kept her from speeding up, which her voice wanted very much to do. In the middle of the song she suddenly felt certain that Andy was watching her, and that helped. She could not see well at all out past the torches into the crowd, and she could certainly not see the people standing against the walls around the edge, but she felt certain that Andy was one of them. When she finished people clapped loudly for her, and she bowed and walked off – too fast, probably – and went back behind the wagon, where she finally felt like she could breathe.
Anko was telling a story about a boy who served as a messenger in a city under siege, crawling through a tiny gap in the wall and then following a cat that led him through the besiegers’ camp to where messages were hidden for him. He was wonderful, and there was not a sound in the square, and a few people cried audibly when the boy was killed.
Then a few more songs, and then the play. Gregorio gave a speech to set the stage, since they were only performing the last part. All the players appeared, Anko and Lucretia in two parts each. Angel thought the speeches Rodrigo and Sanna gave were marvelous, and everyone in the square cheered loudly when the evil king was killed and the hero and heroine were able to declare their love.
Then Gregorio picked up his lute again and said to the people that he wanted to sing them a song that most of them had heard before, but in a new version, “more beautiful and pure.” He played his lute and Anko played his flute, making sad, beautiful music. Then Rodrigo began to sing, and it was the familiar words of “The Drowned Man,” sounding much better with this new tune. When they reached the end he asked all the people to sing with them, and they did, although it was off because a few kept singing the old tune instead of the new one. Angel sang, too, but not loudly. By the end the crowd had it, and it was beautiful to hear so many Calyxians singing, “I die for my city, I die on the sea, I die for the people I love, who loved me.”
