Aachen

After Heidelberg, they stuck with the river and went through Mannheim, Worms, Mainz, and all the way up to Cologne. From Cologne, they crossed the river and made for Aachen where they arrived on Sunday, July ninth. They were taken to a field where they could set up, but they did nothing except go to church and rest on that day.

Leonora got nervous in Cologne. From there it took five days on good roads to reach Aachen and every step of the way she became more nervous and got grumpy and cranky about everything. She spent that Sunday, the day of rest, hiding in Giovanni’s wagon. She locked herself in at one point and Giovanni had to get Mankin to turn insubstantial, the way goblins can and come up through the floorboards to the inside of the cabin to unlock the door from the inside.

Leonora did not scream or make any indication that she was scared in any way. She just huffed and called Giovanni a cheater. “Cheat,” she said. “Cheater.” Giovanni and Mankin got the papers and ledger they needed and left her alone.

Gabriella could not entice her out with food. Titania and Baklovani could not get her to come out and play a game with them. They were going to play a card game with Madam Figiori’s fortune telling cards. Rosa said that she and the boys were going to practice and they needed her to help and critique their work, but she would not budge.

Finally, Giovanni, Oberon, and Edwina, the knife thrower’s wife with the sheers to trim Harley’s hair came to the door and more or less forced their way in.

“I’m afraid,” she confessed. “I have this awful premonition that after all this time I am going to be found out. It feels like what Madam Figiori must go through all the time. It feels terrible, but I can feel it. People are sneaking around. Your friend Otto is going to find out and I am going to be trapped and forced into a marriage I don’t want.”

“Do you even know what you want?” Edwina asked while she snipped. “I thought I wanted Vader. He seemed so handsome and dashing. Now, he throws daggers at me every night.” She sighed without explaining anymore.

“Yes,” Leonora said. “I know exactly what I want, but someone is too stupid and stubborn for words.” She gave Giovanni her meanest stare.

Oberon looked at Giovanni, who looked distressed. Oberon said, “She must have heard you use the phrase stupid and stubborn, though they do go together like bacon and eggs. Okay, now I’m hungry.”

“There is nothing more stubborn than a man who is wrong but thinks he is right,” Edwina said while she brushed away the cut hair.

“Not just men,” Giovanni said. “It means ignorant people think they know everything whereas intelligent people understand how little they know.”

“No,” Leonora grumped and again gave Giovanni her meanest stare. “It is just men.”

“You know the rule,” he raised his voice a little and gave her mean stare right back at her.

“It’s a stupid rule,” she shouted at him.

“I’m not going there,” he shouted.

Her face turned red with anger. She looked ready to explode, but at the last second it all poured out of her and in a small voice she said, “Maybe you really don’t want to go there.”

“That is not true. You know exactly what I want.” Giovanni growled and stomped out of the wagon.

Sibelius sat on the wagon steps whittling something. Rosa tumbled into the wagon as soon as the door opened. She arrived in time to see Leonora’s tears and hear Leonora say, “Maybe I should go to the palace and turn myself in.”

“No,” Rosa spouted. “You can’t do that.” And Rosa, Edwina, and Oberon spent the next half hour talking Leonora out of that idea.

On that Sunday of rest, they found out that Otto was out of town, but he would be coming in that evening, so that was good. A delegation from Venice was also in town to finalize and sign some trade agreements. Giovanni hoped the Venetians had seen the circus and might encourage the people to go and see for themselves. They also heard that some bishop from the east was visiting the bishop in Aachen and he presumably heard all about the circus. Of course, what he heard was distorted in his mind.

The bishop imagined the circus was full of magic, that is, witches, demons, and pagan practices that would lead people away from the true faith. The circus and circus master had already enticed Otto, and that was a danger to all the people. From the Venetians, he heard all about the immoral adulterer that ran the circus, this Don Giovanni.

The bishop went to the Venetian delegation since he heard the circus was from Venice. He found two Venetians in particular who agreed with him and supported all of his misconceptions. He thought they should know since they came from the same place.

The two Venetians talked about people they called Flesh Eaters. They sounded like cannibals, or demons that consumed the souls of the faithful. They talked about a whole village of witches. The bishop could only imagine witches cursing the ground, making slaves of the people, or worse, making the dead rise up to serve them like the Witch of Endor.

They told how the circus master fit right in there. He was a man who despoiled poor innocent virgins everywhere he went. He made the evil ones, the cannibals and witches, work together for some unknown foul reason and purpose. He used his black arts to travel halfway around the world and brought back a monster, eight feet tall at the shoulder, eighteen feet long and measured in the tons. And the beast obeys him to destroy his enemies.

They also talked about Wolvs in the Black Forest. He heard about the big bad wolves that hid in the darkness of the woods. This circus master bent the Wolvs to his will, so the Wolvs attacked a town on the Rhine and ate many of the people before they were sent back into the woods to wait. Wait for what?

They say this circus master is thousands of years old. He can change his appearance, clothes, and everything so he can hide in a crowd. He can speak every language and is responsible for the rising up and tearing down of all the great civilizations. His power is great to the ends of the Earth, and the numberless spirits of the air, fire, water, and earth worship him and do his bidding.

The bishop spoke to his priests and to the two Venetians. “And now he is here to do who knows what wicked mischief and maybe even sway the emperor against the faith.”

The bishop decided he needed to find a way to shut down the circus before this circus master, this Don Giovanni could begin whatever malicious plan he had in mind for Aachen and maybe for the whole empire. The problem was the circus people had yet to do anything he could honestly accuse them of. He liked to think of himself as a true to godly, upright, and righteous man. He never wanted to be accused of undue prejudice. He wanted real evidence. It was one of the Venetians that came up with the plan, and he endorsed it even if it involved lying and stealing. He figured he could repent later.

At the beginning of that winter, Giovanni and Leonora spent hours, some said days, staring hard at each other but not talking, like two stubborn mules determined to go in opposite directions. Don Giovanni could not give up the circus. He would not betray the dream of his father and grandfather. He had a whole circus full of people that were depending on him. He could not let them down.

Likewise, Leonora would not give up on Giovanni or the circus where, for the first time in her life, she felt she had worth, value, and meaning. She knew her father would neither hear that nor understand that, so she generally hid when people came to the swamp to visit or just to pass through. She was more likely to come out when new acts came to try out for the circus. Truth be told, her life had been shallow and pointless. Here, suddenly, the whole world opened up to her. She had a real contribution to make. She had real friends, no matter how odd they might look. In fact, she stopped seeing them from the outside and saw only their hearts. Giovanni’s heart was the only one she could not seem to reach, but she would not give up until she succeeded. “Like a slow back handspring,” she told herself. “I won’t give up until I master it.”

Three things happened that winter which changed the direction of everything. The first stretched over those months and gave Giovanni a number of sleepless nights, mainly because it was not a burden he could share with anyone.

Before the new year, Giovanni heard from Lady Alice of Avalon. “An Ape warship is scouring the asteroid belt looking for an escaped Flesh Eater shuttle. The shuttle scooted out from the search area and is presently sitting on Mars where they no doubt picked up the distress signal from the Flesh Eaters in the woods between Bavaria and Swabia. I expect the Flesh Eaters on Mars to make a dash for the Earth. Whether or not they can do so without being seen by the Apes is a question. If the Apes follow, the potential for a battle is great, and possibly in the atmosphere, and probably over the Danube.”

Giovanni did not know what to do. He tried to talk to Oberon and Madam Figiori about it, but they had nothing to suggest. Leonora talked to him about it when she saw that something was causing him stress, but she really did not understand.

“So, two armies are likely to come to blows. True, I don’t know what you mean by Flesh Eaters or Apes, but it is what armies do. Why is this so different, and why do you have to be involved?”

He tried to explain about them being aliens, not from this earth, but it was a hard concept to grasp in the abstract. He told her that the Apes and Flesh Eater ships had weapons of unbelievable power and they would inevitably spill over on to the earth. They might poison the whole Danube River and for miles, maybe hundreds of miles around contaminate the ground for a thousand years. They might make a whole area unlivable unless I can stop them. In the end, he felt she got the general idea, though seeing would be believing even though he hoped she would never have to get that close to a Flesh Eater. She did have one last thing to say.

“Just so you know. You are not allowed to have an adventure without me.”

She got up and walked off, and Giovanni thought that he had no intention of ever having an adventure without her or, for that matter, doing anything at all without her.

After the new year, Giovanni’s problem seemed to resolve itself. He wondered if maybe Lady Alice suggested the idea or maybe got some little ones, like some local elves or fairies to invisibly make the suggestion in the right ears. In any case, he got a return letter from Otto.

Otto said he was sorry to have missed them in Rome, but politics required him to be elsewhere. Now, his grandmother, Adelaide of Italy was ill and talking a lot about dying. Giovanni should remember her. She was the old lady with the cane when they first met ten years ago. She said if he wanted to make his residence in Rome, he needed to go to Aachen and gather the relics and symbols of his rule in the line of Charlemagne. He agreed and promised. He should be in or around Aachen all summer…

“I know it is a long trip, but for you it should be like all new territory. The people in the Germanies have never seen the circus and would greatly benefit from the entertainment that they will remember fondly for years to come, even as I remember. Please consider coming to Aachen. That would make me very happy.”

“It is a long way,” Oberon said.

“New territory worked out well, especially between Florence and Pavia,” Madigan pointed out.

“Yes,” Constantine agreed. “But the people there all heard about the circus only they never had a chance to see it, so they were curious and interested.”

“This will be like all completely new territory,” Baklovani said.

“We need runners,” Sibelius suggested.

“Runners??” Mankin asked. People looked at him with some surprise because normally he just sat at their meetings saying nothing and staring at everyone with his beady little eyes, like he was trying to figure out how he could save a penny here and a penny there.

“People to go out and tell what the circus is,” Giovanni understood and explained. “To build up anticipation for the arrival of the Greatest Show on Earth.” People smiled at the phrase and nodded. They liked that idea. Giovanni turned to Leonora. “What do you think?”

“I like new territory,” she said with her smile on full display. “My father will never find me in Germany.” She leaned over and kissed Giovanni smack on the lips, and he kissed her back. She never lost her smile, but she put one on his face, until Madam Figiori came into the tent where they were meeting.

“So, Germany,” she said without anyone having to tell her. “I hope you are prepared for the witches and terrors in the Bavarian woods, and the Black Forest and the big bad wolf.”

“That’s just a story,” Titania objected. “Isn’t it?”

Giovanni could only shrug.

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MONDAY

That winter in the swamp, Giovanni needs to make peace with Corriden and then he needs to fetch his elephant. Until Monday, Happy Reading