The Tiger's Egg (14 page)

T
he Circus Bolsillo, tusked, top-hatted and belching fire, wound its way along the summer coast, tracing a route that circuses have followed since your grandfather's grandfather was a child. They stopped at Whelk and Carrig and Twelve Bells, and though Miles could not get enough of the sea, none of these towns left such an imprint on his heart as the port of Fuera. He learned about every aspect of the show, until he knew each animal's favorite treat and every performer's likes and dislikes and every nut and pulley of the mighty tent's skeleton. He knew how to cure a sick parrot and fix the ticket machine and clip a
lion's claws and check the trapezes, and how to take care of a hundred other details that made the difference between a circus and a shambles. The sun darkened his skin and hard work made him wiry and strong and popular with everyone, until Gila commented that if he could double in size and grow a beard he would be Barty Fumble himself. Miles pretended to laugh the comment off, but inside it made him light with pride.

By the time they left the coast and turned northward again, Miles and Little were so at home in the circus that they felt as if they had spent their whole lives on the road. Fabio showed them how to juggle and Umor taught them to cook. By night Miles stood against a wooden board painted with his own silhouette while Stranski—crusty and mute—flung knives at his outline with deadly accuracy, and Hector the monkey picked wallets from the pockets of unsuspecting punters. Afterward he climbed into the star-painted box and the audience gasped as he was neatly sawed in half, and Miles himself was still surprised, by the end of every act, to find that his legs were still his own. Little danced like thistledown on the high wire, and flew through the air with such grace that it would be easy to believe her strapped-on wings were real if you had
never seen the shimmering pair she had lost. In the daytime she seemed to be everywhere at once, and the music she made sweetened the circus like honey in warm milk, though not a note of it could be written on paper.

They passed through Hamba and Shelduck and Sevenbridge, following the river Volte upstream, and turned west (somewhat to Miles's relief) before it could bring them to the city of Smelt. The strange caravan made its way back along the road by which the tiger had brought Miles and Little to the Palace of Laughter the previous autumn, and one hot afternoon, as the apples ripened in the orchard, they saw ahead of them the town of Cnoc perched on its round hill.

“That's where old Baltinglass lives, isn't it?” said Gila, who was driving the wagon while Fabio took a siesta inside.

Miles nodded, shading his eyes to search for Baltinglass's house among the jumble of red roofs that covered the crown of the hill. He hoped to surprise his old friend by turning up on his doorstep unannounced, although he knew from experience that surprising the blind explorer was not nearly as easy as it sounded. “I'd like to visit him while we're here,” he said.

“Better still,” said Umor, “you can invite him to the show.”

“I don't know if he'd want to come,” said Miles, “not being able to see the acts.”

“He might enjoy the music,” said Little.

“No doubt about it,” said Umor.

“We'll find him a seat behind a pillar,” said Gila.

The tent boys had already started unpacking the big top into an empty pasture at the edge of town as Miles and Little walked up the winding road toward Baltinglass of Araby's whitewashed house.

They reached the hobnailed door and Miles pulled the bell rope, bringing the jangle of pots and pans from somewhere inside the house. They heard the thump, thump, thump of a walking stick on a terra-cotta floor, then the door flew open and Baltinglass's wrinkled face was thrust through the gap, his eyes staring out into eternal fog from under his black knitted hat.

“Well?” he shouted before Miles or Little could say a word. “Whatever it is, I've already got half a dozen of 'em, and they bring me out in hives. Come back Tuesday when I'm feeding the crocodiles. They'll be needing something to chew on.” He reached out and made a quick low swipe with his stick as he spoke. Little jumped nimbly over the
cane, but Miles was not quick enough to avoid a crack on the ankle. “Ouch!” he said.

A toothless grin split Baltinglass's wrinkled face. “Master Miles!” he said in delight. “Why didn't you say? You've grown half a head taller by the sound of it, unless you're wearing high heels. No doubt you have Little with you, but she's too quick for me, eh?”

“Hello, Mr. Baltinglass,” laughed Little. “Can we come in?”

“Do that thing,” said the old man. “Doorstep's no place for a powwow.” He flung the door wide and waved his stick dangerously in the air to usher them inside. The house was cool and semidark as usual. Carved faces grimaced from the walls, and blades of every shape and variety glinted between them. Baltinglass led them along the hallway and into the living room. “What brings you to an old nomad's doorstep on an autumn afternoon?” he barked.

“We were passing through,” said Miles. “We've been on the road with the Circus Bolsillo all summer.”

“Ah, the circus!” said Baltinglass. “That explains the grunting of wildebeest that I heard in the wee hours. Thought the river madness was coming back to me.”

“But the circus doesn't ha—,” began Little, but
Miles nudged her and put his finger to his lips.

“Did you ever finish making your apple jelly?” asked Miles, as Baltinglass flung open the French windows.

“There was no point,” barked Baltinglass. “It was too late for that batch. I went off gallivanting with Gertrude Partridge at a crucial moment, and when I got back the whole batch was fizzing in the sun. Gave it to old Julio for his pigs. They were drunk for a month, and now they all call me Uncle. Least they would if they could talk.”

“I doubt it,” whispered Little in Miles's ear. “Pigs call everyone ‘Mum.'”

“Anyway, these blasted crocodiles have kept me too busy to be thinking about apple jelly.” They had emerged into Baltinglass's sunlit garden, and he headed for a wooden bench that sat in the dappled shade of an apple tree. The old man reached out for the arm of the bench, and when he found it he sat down with a sigh, propping his cane beside him.

“What crocodiles?” asked Miles with interest.

“Those ones,” said Baltinglass, picking up his stick and waving it over his shoulder. “Horace and Pagi. Hungry devils, and you have to keep your wits about you when you're feeding them. Their favorite food is thumbs.”

Miles got up from the bench and looked in the direction that Baltinglass had indicated. There was a freshly dug pond at the edge of the garden, and half submerged in the pond was a cage of bamboo, lashed together with an assortment of different-colored string. He could see no sign of any crocodiles.

“Probably underwater,” said Baltinglass without turning around.

“Where did you get them?” asked Miles.

“They were a present from the sultan of Abyssinia on his golden jubilee. I once helped him out with a small camel problem, but that was back when I had eyes and teeth. In any case he never forgot the favor.”

“They don't have a lot of room in that cage,” said Little.

“'Course they don't!” said Baltinglass. “That's why they need to be taken to the circus. You've got crocs in that outfit, haven't you?”

“We have,” said Miles, “but they live in cages too.”

“Ah,” said Baltinglass, “what's a few bars when you're on the road? In the circus they'll get to see a bit of the world. Broaden their scaly little minds. If people would pay to see me rear up and snap my jaws I'd put
myself
in a cage and join the circus faster than a lizard's lick.”

“That reminds me,” said Miles, “the Bolsillo brothers asked me to invite you to tonight's show. If you'd like to come, that is.”

“Count me in, Master Miles,” shouted Baltinglass. “The song of the trapeze! The swish of the popcorn! The smell of the hurdy-gurdy!” He got to his feet and pointed his walking stick more or less in Miles's direction. “How about a spot of lunch first? I'm sure I've got a jar of whelks gathering dust somewhere.”

“Thanks,” said Miles, “but we have to get back. There's a lot of work to be done before the show.”

“Off you go then,” said Baltinglass. “Ask your masters if two enraged reptiles will cover the price of admission, and you can come back later with your crocodile handler and a cart.” He set off with a purposeful stride toward the house. “You can let yourselves out, eh?” he called over his shoulder. “The door is where we left it, I suspect, and the sooner you go the earlier you'll be back.”

 

Baltinglass of Araby, white-caned and milk-eyed, marched down the center of the road, his stout cane knocking obstacles out of the way rather than directing him around them. He headed a procession that brought the people of Cnoc out of their
windows to stare with open curiosity. Behind the blind explorer came a cart that was pulled by Tembo the elephant, and on it was a cage from which the two crocodiles, Horace and Pagi, leered with their crooked grins and slow yellow eyes. On either side walked Gina and Jules, the crocodile handlers, and Miles and Little brought up the rear, handing circus flyers to the mesmerized spectators.

By nightfall the big top had been raised, anchored, checked and checked again. The banked seats were filling up with the people of Cnoc, as the Circus Bolsillo's thousand lights flickered on and the band began to warm up their instruments. Baltinglass of Araby had installed himself in a ringside seat, where he sat cracking his knuckles as though readying himself to take on a lion or two if the need arose. Behind the starry curtain the Zipplethorpe family made final adjustments to the tack of their horses, who stamped and snorted nervously as they waited to open the show.

The band struck up with a fanfare, and Fabio Bolsillo boomed his introduction through an enormous megaphone as the Zipplethorpes galloped into the ring and the night's entertainment began. Miles was kept busy backstage, helping the tent boys with a well-rehearsed routine that was now
second nature to him, and left him little time to worry about his upcoming performance with Stranski the Magician. Before he knew it the second half had begun, and he was helping Hector the monkey into his little waistcoat with the secret pocket, while Countess Fontainbleau and her lions held the audience in thrall.

Miles gave Tangerine a quick squeeze for luck as he prepared the props for his performance with Stranski. A strange feeling came over him as he waited for the knife thrower to stride in through the tent flaps. It was a feeling he had had before, that everything he could see and hear had happened already in precisely the same way. He knew from Lady Partridge's encyclopedia that this feeling was called déjà vu. He closed Stranski's star-painted box with a snap that sounded like an echo of itself, and at that moment Perseus the lion emerged from the ring and into the tunnel of netting that led to his cage outside. The lion glanced at Miles, as he knew it would, in a way that seemed to say “we've been here before, haven't we.” A trumpet squealed and a man's loud cheer rose above the crowd, and he was sure he had heard the same squeal and the same cheer on another night just like this one.

The sensation grew stronger as he stood against the board in the floodlit ring, feeling the swish of air from the knives as they thumped into the painted wood on either side of him. The knives thumped into the same board almost every night, but that did not explain it. Even Baltinglass of Araby, who had never been to the show before, seemed to have sat forever in that same seat at the ringside.

As he climbed into the star-painted box and Stranski locked the enormous padlock, Miles became convinced that if he just concentrated a little harder he could make the echo in his mind pull ahead of what was happening around him, and he would know what was going to happen next. It was a strange feeling, like perching on the edge of a high platform, waiting for the trapeze to reach him. The roar of the saw began, and he pulled his knees tightly to his chest. As he did so he grasped at the slippery images in his mind, and in a sudden flash he knew what he was about to see. Seated in the semidarkness, behind and above the snowy figure of the blind explorer, would be a man who looked disturbingly familiar. He peered past Stranski's polished head into the gloom, his stomach tightening, and sure enough the man was exactly where Miles
expected to find him. He was staring at Miles intensely from deep-set gray eyes, and with his stubby nose and blue chin he looked for all the world like the Great Cortado, but without the fabulous mustache to cover up his mean little mouth.

M
iles Wednesday, spotlit and box-locked, lay trapped as Stranski's saw rattled and coughed through the fresh plywood. He knew that any movement he made might be his last, ingenious though Stranski's contraption might be, and he could not have felt more helpless. His view of the man in the audience was blocked now by Stranski himself, who stood in front of him and sawed like a demon. Stranski glowered at Miles with a deeper frown than usual, and Miles tried to relax his muscles as he had been taught, but with little success. When Stranski wheeled the box halves apart and stepped to one side there was only an empty seat
where the blue-chinned man had been.

“Are you sure it was him?” said Little when he told her afterward.

Miles shook his head. “It was hard to tell without the mustache. It's not that I could see him very well, it's just . . .” He searched for the right words.

“What is it just?” asked Little, folding her goose-feather wings carefully and putting them away in the cloth bag that Delia Zipplethorpe had made for them.

“I felt like I already knew he would be there. Like I'd lived the whole thing before, or dreamed it.”

“Then you probably did,” said Little.

“I don't remember dreaming about it. It just all seemed so familiar when it happened.”

“What do you think he was doing here, if it was him?” asked Little.

“I don't know,” said Miles, “but I'm sure Tau-Tau does, and I intend to ask him as soon as I get a chance.”

The sound of applause and a strangely muscular music drifted across from the big top. “That's K2,” said Little. “They'll be finishing up soon.”

“We'd better get back over,” said Miles. “I told Baltinglass I'd collect him after the show.”

The evening was warm and filled with the chirp
ing of crickets. Moths spun dizzily around the lightbulbs, and the monkeys chattered softly in their cage. Gina smiled at Miles and Little as she passed them, stepping carefully over the uneven ground in her stiletto heels. She led a pair of ostriches on long gold ribbons. They looked as though they were imitating her walk. The flaps on the big top were pulled back, and the people began to stream out into the night. Miles and Little slipped in against the tide, keeping a sharp eye out for anyone who looked like a clean-shaven Cortado, but they found only Baltinglass of Araby waiting for them in his ringside seat, a broad grin on his face and crumbs of popcorn on his shirt.

“A spectacular spectacle!” barked Baltinglass. “An excellent extravaganza! I could see what was happening just by listening to the music, and not a cranium hit the ground from start to finish.” He grasped his cane and levered himself out of his seat. “What happens next, Master Miles?”

“Supper happens next,” said Miles, “once the last few things have been stowed away and Umor has a good fire going.”

They made their way toward the open space in the midst of the trailers where Umor was preparing supper. As they rounded the corner of the Toki
sisters' wagon, Doctor Tau-Tau appeared, muttering to himself as had become his habit, the fez that Little had given him perched on his cotton-candy hair. He tripped over Baltinglass's cane and would have fallen headlong in the grass if Miles had not reached out and steadied him.

“Lucifer's laundry!” spluttered the fortune-teller. “Watch what you're doing with that stick. Are you blind?”

“Of course I am!” shouted Baltinglass. “Are you?”

“Don't be ridiculous!” huffed Doctor Tau-Tau, straightening his fez. “I happen to be gifted with a second sight so powerful that it sometimes interferes with my first.”

Baltinglass snorted. “What did I have for breakfast then, Mystic Ming?”

“Bacon, eggs and mushrooms, a pile of toast and a bucket of strong tea,” said Tau-Tau without hesitation.

“Lucky guess!” barked Baltinglass. “What's my mother's maiden name?”

Doctor Tau-Tau stared closely at Baltinglass's wrinkled face. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples in a circular motion with his fingertips. “Begins with C . . . ,” he muttered. “Curt . . . Cuss . . . it's coming to me from a great distance . . . .” His eyes
snapped open suddenly. “Cousteau!” he said. “It's Cousteau, isn't it?”

“How should I know?” said Baltinglass. “I can barely remember my own name on a good day.” He made a sweep with his cane before resuming his path, and Doctor Tau-Tau had to skip back to avoid having his shins rapped. Baltinglass took one step forward, then he stopped dead as though he had run into an invisible tree. His eyebrows shot up and disappeared into his woolly hat. “Well, tilt me backward!” he exclaimed. “It
was
Cousteau. Elisabeth Lucy Cousteau was my mother's full name. It's just come back to me like a siren in the fog.” He turned toward the fortune-teller. “I've never had much time for mumbo jumbo,” he barked, “but your mumbo jumbo seems to be of superior quality. Maybe you should give me the entire package.”

“Ah, well,” said Doctor Tau-Tau, eyeing Baltinglass's cane nervously, “a bit busy this evening, you know. Perhaps another time . . . .”

“Busy?” shouted Baltinglass. “What's the matter—you have to wash your hair?” He turned to Miles. “I don't smell any supper yet, Master Miles. Do we have time for some mumbo jumbo first?”

“We certainly do,” said Miles. He was keen to know how Doctor Tau-Tau had plucked Baltinglass's
mother's name from the air, and the fortune-teller's reluctance to continue only made him more curious.

“Yes, well . . . if you insist,” said Doctor Tau-Tau doubtfully. “If you'd like to follow me, I will see if my bird is prepared.”

“What's that?” shouted Baltinglass, his hand cupped behind his good ear. “What do you do, pluck the fortune out of a roast turkey?”

“She's not a turkey,” said Miles. “She's a Java sparrow. She picks out a card and Doctor Tau-Tau reads your fortune from it.”

“Is that so?” said Baltinglass. “With any luck I'll get the queen of hearts. Not that luck has paid much attention to me so far. I've been struck by lightning twice, and I haven't seen a blue sky or a plump barmaid in thirty years.”

Miles led Baltinglass up the stairs of Tau-Tau's wagon, as the fortune-teller fumbled with his oracle cards and lit his incense with a shaking hand. “Come in, come in,” said Tau-Tau grandly, as though the invitation had been given freely in the first place.

Miles and Little sat themselves on the end of Doctor Tau-Tau's bunk and watched as he lifted his birdcage down from the top of the cupboard and placed it in front of the red and gold envelopes that
were spread out on the circular table. The small bird hopped from her cage and along the row of overlapping envelopes. She pulled one out with her beak and hopped onto Doctor Tau-Tau's waiting hand. “Well done, Satu,” said Tau-Tau quietly. While the bird ate colored seeds from his palm he shook the card from the envelope with his other hand and held it up in front of him.

Doctor Tau-Tau peered at the card in the dim red light. “Mmm-hmm,” he said, sounding more like a dentist looking at a cavity than an interpreter of hidden meanings. He put the card down on the table and rubbed his temples with his fingertips. Baltinglass drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. “I see mountains,” said Tau-Tau eventually. “There is a town . . . no, a village in their shadow. White houses. Red roofs. There are three poplar trees on the edge of town, and beside them a small house. There are little girls, several of them, playing around the house. I see, wait a minute . . . .” His voice trailed off as though he were a radio going out of tune, then came back a moment later. “I see an enormous pig, with a small boy sitting on his back. A boy with bare feet . . .”

“Rosie!” interrupted Baltinglass, in a quieter voice than usual. Miles gave Little a puzzled look,
and she shrugged. Doctor Tau-Tau was massaging his temples again.

“Rosie was a fine pig,” said Baltinglass. His stared past the fortune-teller, his blind eyes fixed on the past. “Wiser than many a person I knew. She had eight litters of eight. Sixty-four children in all, and enough grandchildren to crew an ocean liner. She died a natural death and was buried under the poplars, which was unusual for a pig, as they have the misfortune to be made of rashers.” He sighed deeply, and scratched the back of his head. “A fancy trick,” he bellowed at Doctor Tau-Tau, “and I haven't the foggiest notion how you did it, but I already know about my barefoot, pig-riding past. What's on the road ahead for these restless old bones, eh? Can you do that one?”

“Patience,” said Tau-Tau. “The veil of truth is not . . .”

“Patience is overrated,” shouted Baltinglass. “There's no point asking about the future if I'm going to spend it sitting in this armchair while your second sight looks for its glasses.”

“I . . . see a journey—,” Doctor Tau-Tau began hastily.

“Long one?” interrupted Baltinglass.

“Yes,” said Tau-Tau, fiddling with the sleeves of
his silk dressing gown. “Very long. With camels, or maybe horses. And wait a moment . . . I see . . .” He glanced sideways at Miles, then quickly returned his gaze to Baltinglass's wrinkled face. “I see another large animal. Perhaps . . . a tiger,” he said.

Baltinglass snorted. “You're living in a circus, man. You'd have to be blindfolded not to see large animals. And there are no tigers here—those are lions. Totally different smell.” He took a pipe from one pocket and a worn leather pouch from the other, and began to tug strings of tobacco from the pouch and cram them into the bowl of the pipe. “You should stick to the past,” he shouted, as he rummaged in his pocket for matches. “You seem to have a better map for that.”

Doctor Tau-Tau's face turned a deeper shade of red, and his eyes bulged. He scooped the red and gold envelopes from the circular table angrily and stacked them in a pile. Miles half expected to see steam coming out of his ears.

“In the land of my birth,” he said heatedly, “our childhood companions were tigers, not pigs. Perhaps
you
should stick to what you are familiar with.”

Baltinglass of Araby sat up straight in the armchair. His ropy neck extended from his old sweater
until it was twice its usual length, and his blind eyes stared straight at the fuming fortune-teller.

“And what land might that be?” he asked.

Doctor Tau-Tau cleared his throat nervously and straightened his fez. “It's nowhere you'll have heard of,” he said.

“No place has been planted on this earth that I haven't heard of,” said Baltinglass. “And I've bunked or bartered in two-thirds of them. Try me.”

“Ma . . . Malabar,” said Tau-Tau. “I was born in Malabar.”

“You told me it began with a ‘Z,'” said Miles, “the place where you came from.”

Doctor Tau-Tau's face took on a hunted look. “That's right,” he said. “Zanzibar, I meant. It was Zanzibar.”

“Ha!” barked Baltinglass. “Malabar, Zanzibar. You sure it wasn't Hotel Bar?”

“It was a long time ago,” said Tau-Tau weakly. “I don't remember being born.”

Baltinglass of Araby turned his head slightly. He seemed to be listening intently. “Say that again,” he shouted.

“Say what?” said the fortune-teller. “I don't remember being born?”

“Borrrn,” mimicked Baltinglass. “Let me tell you
something, Doctor Tea Towel. I've traveled the length and breadth of this country and many others besides, and I know every dialect there is. I don't know what kind of accent you've tried to paste on over your own, but it's been bothering me since you fell over my stick, and now I know why. I can hear what's hiding underneath it.”

Doctor Tau-Tau stumbled to his feet and picked up the birdcage. “Well,” he said hastily, stretching up to replace it on top of the cupboard. “I don't know about you, but I'm hungry.” He turned to Miles and Little and attempted a smile. “We'd better get ourselves out to that fire before all the supper is eaten, don't you think?”

Baltinglass slammed his cane on the table, making everyone jump. “I may look like an old blind fool,” he bellowed, “but I'm only old and blind. I know how you could describe my childhood home. You were born within spitting distance of it yourself. That's a Grubwater accent if ever I heard one, and for the first ten years of my life I heard nothing else. You're a fraud, Tau-Tau, and if I still had my eyes I'd have your proper name pinned on you before you could lace up your boots.”