Bardsham was not unattractive, either. As he grew older, he became a more conspicuous member of the troupe. Mangonel required him to pretend to be an idiot lest someone suspect him of being Bardsham. Now when he was old enough to be accepted as the puppeteer, it had become imperative that the mystery be maintained. The mystery of Bardsham was what filled the benches. He helped set up the acts. He assembled and broke down the platforms. But he had to pretend to be less, always less, than what he was. He was finding other people more and more appealing. Women interested him particularly. After all, they wrote him invitations. But what chance did he have with anyone he took a fancy to when he had to play the gibbering fool? Inevitably some people taunted him as he set up. They even jeered, “Hoy, there’s Bardsham!” at him while they pointed and laughed. He was doing twice the work of everyone else in the troupe. He had to be seen working like a lackey and looking like a fool. Secretly, he had to practice, to perform. Even more secretly he had to find ways to gather information on stories without revealing his identity. He donned disguises or masks when he spoke to the elders on the spans. The whole process was exhausting him.
The critical clash with his father was inevitable—a mere question of when the two tempers would flare in unison. His mother did her best to act as intermediary, but she must have known she couldn’t do it forever and dreaded the day when the two men would collide.
That day came: Bardsham had shirked some onerous chore in order to lurk about the span and gather up new stories. Mangonel saw him returning and called him. The old man had his whip.
He asked him something like “Where have you been and why haven’t you done what I told you to do?” You know the sound of it, your uncle brays the same way—when he tells you to do one thing and then damns you for not doing another. Mangonel knew perfectly well that his son had been out doing his job as Bardsham. But he hadn’t shoveled manure or swept off the stage, or cleaned some animal’s pen, which were his duties, too.
Now, Bardsham wasn’t big, but he performed so much of the troupe’s donkeywork that he was much stronger than he looked. And right then he’d had enough of trying to placate, of appeasing when it was himself being mistreated and maligned. Instead of apologizing, he walked over and told the old man that he could hire someone else to do the grunt work from now on. Bardsham had more important things to do and was tired of carrying the burden unnecessarily, just for show. Just—as he saw it—for Mangonel’s amusement. “I’m done!” he shouted, and started away.
The old man might have pretended that what he’d done to his wife was an accident, but what happened next was a hot-blooded assault.
His whip tore at Bardsham left and right, striping him with welts and blood, ripping his clothing, driving him back and back against a wall. He fell over some jugglers’ props that had been assembled—some braziers and flags and large wooden pins. When he scrambled up against the wall the whip tore his shoulder open. If he’d been a second slower, it would have been his nose. He had nothing to protect him, nothing to hide behind. The old man might have been trying to kill him, too—he snapped the whip at his son’s face, just missing an eye and leaving him afterward with a scar to match his mother’s. Maybe it was seeing that scar that made the old man realize he’d never lost control of the whip in his life, not even once, not for a second. Not with anybody.
He raised it again and snapped it, but slow enough that Bardsham caught it and pulled with all his might. Hauled off his feet, the old man flew toward him, and Bardsham, quick as lightning, let go the whip and snatched up one of the juggling pins and swung it all the way around, swung it with his arms stretched out, swung it with all his anger behind it. When it hit, that pin cracked and splintered, and bits of it flew off across the yard. It stove in the side of his father’s head.
Bardsham said he stood there afterward for the longest time, feeling a terrible