‘Shall I whisper your future?’ a voice asked by his ear, and Daniel started violently.
He turned to see a gypsy woman with a small baby in her arms, sitting cross-legged in an opening in the side of the tent. She seemed to be sitting on a platform, but he could not make out what was behind her.
His silence seemed to anger her, and she sat up stiffly, eyes flashing. ‘But you have no time for Calia, have you? You want the main attraction! Another mooncalf come lusting for the Dove Princess. Fool! There is no future in her for any of you.’ She was so angry she was almost spitting, and Daniel, taken aback, wondered if she was mad. Yet her words made him curious enough to decide that he would go into the tent.
The gypsy gave an angry grunt when she saw him glance to where a wooden sign had been erected, marking the entrance to the tent. She bared a plump golden breast with a dark nipple. The baby seemed to scent it and butted and struggled until it had the nipple fastened in its mouth, then began to suckle hard. Embarrassed by the bared breast and the derision in the woman’s eyes, Daniel made his way to the entrance and pushed the closed flap aside. Light flowed out past him in bright streams as he stepped into a sort of curtained corridor that followed the outer curve of the tent to the left. He tried to push the curtain aside so that he could go into the main part of the tent, but the fabric was heavier than it looked and there was no opening. He gave in and went along the corridor. The outer wall swayed and brushed against him as the wind gusted, and a heavy musty smell puffed out of the cloth. The music he had heard grew steadily louder until he came to an opening in the inner wall of the corridor, through which he could see the main section of the tent. It was smaller than it had looked from the outside, because of the outer corridor that took up a good portion of the space.
Bright lights centred on an empty circle of sandy ground that ran up against the tent wall on the farthest side of the space. On the near side of the circle were curving rows of bench seats, separated from the circular stage by long wooden bolsters wrapped in red satin. There were not more than fifteen people in the audience, most sitting alone. Daniel glanced around, looking for someone to pay, and saw a lean gypsy man approaching with a leather pouch slung about his neck. Daniel paid what he was asked, fumbling at the unfamiliar bills, distracted by a high-wire artist he had just noticed, clad in glittering red and gold, spiralling down on a rope. Obviously she had come to the end of her performance, for when she reached the ground, she stepped away from the rope and bowed to a smattering of applause. Then she ran lightly away and vanished through a slit in the tent wall. The strange, complex tent must have been constructed in this way to allow a backstage area.
Daniel took a seat at one end of the front row of benches as a man in a black cloak lined in gold silk stepped through the slit onto the sandy stage. His long, thick, red-brown hair was drawn tightly into a tail that hung down his back like the brush of a fox. His face was narrow and his teeth flashed white with a hint of gold as he bowed gracefully. The boy who had shown Daniel to the circus pushed through the slit after him, wheeling a glittering gold casket as big as a fridge on wheels. A magician, Daniel thought, as the boy withdrew, and he set himself to watch for sleight of hand.
Cymbals crashed and another boy appeared, so like the first as to be a younger brother, leading a small white goat. There was a burst of violin music and the fox magician began to speak. His words were foreign and incomprehensible to Daniel, but it was clear from his movements that he was describing his prowess as a tamer of the most ferocious sorts of beasts. Then, very slowly and theatrically, he opened the mouth of the goat and pushed the top of his head gently against its teeth.