CHAPTER 60

THE BATTLE OF THE WIZARDS

Lucy insinuated herself into the crowd as it wedged itself excitedly into Huffam’s big tent for the first showing.

She wove her way through the crush, all the way to the front, and made herself unnoticeable against the canvas wall separating the crowd from the wings of the stage. She could hear voices on the other side, but before she could quite make them out there was a drum roll and a bright explosion of flash powder, and Huffam himself was on stage.

“Friends!” he roared. “Most esteemed friends and patrons, welcome to my humble auditorium where we have the honour, nay, the distinction of presenting to you the two greatest magicians in the land! On my right, the esteemed Hector Anderson, the Great Wizard of the North—”

Anderson was a little older than Na-Barno, and a little shorter than Huffam, but there was a dark intensity to his eyes that held the audience until he dropped in a simple bow, at which point they cheered and whooped their approval. He was dressed in dark broadcloth and this, along with the way he held himself with a sober dignity, gave him the air of a senior member of the church rather than a showman. In fact the only strikingly showy aspect to his look was the startling contrast between his beetle-black eyebrows and the snowy white hair he wore brushed straight back from an impressively high forehead.

“—and on my left,” continued Huffam, voice beginning to get hoarse from shouting, “is Na-Barno Eagle, the Great Wizard of the South!”

Na-Barno strode out from the wings to another good-natured roar of approval. His more theatrical rig of navy velvet was somehow rendered a little cheap-looking by the unshowy costume worn by his nemesis, and made all the more frivolous by the addition of a large yellow rosette he wore on his arm, fashioned from the yellow ribbons Lucy had seen Georgiana handing out throughout the day. Indeed, much more than half the crowd were waving yellow ribbons in the air as they cheered him. He smiled appreciatively and waved back.

Huffam wasted no time in getting to the nub of the event. He explained what the stakes of the battle were, that the winner would be allowed to call himself the Great Wizard of North and South in perpetuity, and the loser agreed not to call himself the Great Wizard of anything at all, ever again. He didn’t mention the financial side to the wager. But he did explain he was going to toss a coin, and that if it came up tails, Na-Barno would perform first, if heads, Anderson.

Every head in the crowd tilted as they watched the gold coin spin up into the darkness and then fall back into the gleam of the smoking footlights, hitting the wooden stage with a satisfying clunk. Huffam quickly stamped his shiny riding boot on the coin to prevent it rolling away, and then stepped back to read the result.

“Heads!” he shouted, and the crowd roared again.

Lucy saw Na-Barno’s face twitch with something like disappointment, but by the time she’d named the emotion for herself it was gone and he was smiling gracefully, bowing to Anderson and walking off the stage to more cheers.

Anderson watched him go with an answering smile, but it was one in which Lucy thought she saw more than a little satisfaction.

The reason became apparent as soon as he began his act. He explained that he was “interested” to be sharing a stage with the esteemed Mr Eagle (he would not call him a “Great Wizard”, since that name was to be granted by the crowd later, though he was, he averred with a raised eyebrow, undoubtedly a Great Something. What that something might be he forbore to enlarge on, but his very public display of restraint on the matter cleverly led people immediately to the thought that it must be something highly discreditable). He would not say more, he explained, because he believed actions spoke louder than words, and so he would begin his performance forthwith.

Lucy was jammed at the front of the stage, close enough to risk getting both singed and asphyxiated by the smoking oil lamps lining the platform as footlights. She was wedged hard against the right-hand wing, and with her ear to the thin canvas she could also hear a sudden shocked inrush of breath on the other side of the canvas wing.

“My God–my God–my God!” whispered Na-Barno, panic rising with each repetition. “The wretch–surely he cannot—”

“He is, Father,” replied Georgiana flatly. “He most certainly is. We’re dished. How simple. How elegantly simple, and how damnably clever of him to do it.”

What Anderson was doing, the “it” which had dished Georgiana and Na-Barno, was nothing more or less than their very own act.

Or rather Anderson was not only doing their act in perfect mimicry but also improving on it, since he performed each illusion and trick precisely as Na-Barno did it, but then added an embellishment on the end, topping him. The crowd enjoyed the spectacle for what it was, particularly the mind-reading portion, but Lucy could hear a building chatter spreading through the spectators around her as those who knew Na-Barno’s routines from previous tours in the area began to chortle and tell those around them what Anderson was up to. This itself added an extra frisson of delight, and each trick attracted greater applause than the last.

Na-Barno was done for: to come on after this performance and do the very routines which Anderson had now done with such extra flourishes and enhancements would be as excruciating as repeating a joke someone had just told, and repeating it with less coherence and with worse timing.

But it turned out that Anderson was not merely ruthless and clever: he was implacable in his destruction of Na-Barno. After he had performed a mind-reading act with an automaton just like Na-Barno’s, he did something that made the two watchers on the other side of the canvas wing gasp again. He reversed the cabinet with the automaton in it, and lifted the turban from the finely crafted papier-mâché head. He then showed with forensic exactness precisely how the levers and wires worked, proclaiming it a miracle, certainly, but one of artifice and engineering, and not, and he was very definite on this, absolutely not of magic. Too much of what passed for “magic”, he explained, was mere smoke and mirrors, and the clever advances in machinery and engineering powering the new manufactories and mills across this proud nation were also being used by those performers who lacked real ability, and who used automata, clockwork and the like to counterfeit it.

“But, ladies and gentlemen, we just have time for one more thing,” he announced with a knowing smile. “And with it I will not trouble you with mirrors, vapours, gimmicked boxes or even a clockworked automaton as cunningly crafted to confuse as this one. I shall instead do one more thing only. A simple thing but, I think you will agree, a wholly impossible thing!”

The crowd growled happily with approval.

“And the only way to do the impossible is, of course, to use real magic!”

The crowd aahed, which sounded like a big happy purr of anticipation. He leapt to the front of the stage, looming out over the lights, his up-lit face suddenly both affable and vaguely diabolical.

“And not only that! But I shall give you, my friends, the choice of what instrument I shall use to do it with: balls, rings, cups or cards. For the plain simplicity of the tools, the very basics of the conjuror’s art will only emphasise the impossibility of the feat! For, gentlemen, I think you will agree, there is no woman so beautiful that is not made all the more so when seen without the impediments of clothing or artifice. This, my friends, is the real magic, the natural magic, the thing itself! And what is more, I shall give one thousand guineas in gold coin to anyone who can now or within the next twelve months show how I did the trick in a way that was not magical!”

This offer delighted the crowd who cheered and roared its approval.

Anderson stepped back and whipped a scarf off the small table in the centre of the stage. There were three blue beakers on it, next to five small yellow balls, and then there was a pack of playing cards in a red box. Lucy, who had sampled all the shows and booths that she had come across on the showmen’s circuit, thought it looked one of the least promising set of props she’d ever seen. And that was, as it turned out, just another part of Anderson’s genius.

“They’ll choose the damned cards,” she heard Na-Barno say behind the canvas wall at her ear.

“Obviously,” said Georgiana. “There’s not a flat born that won’t choose red, unless they’re an Irish crowd.”

The crowd, by a rowdy show of hands, proved that they were not Irish.

“Cards it is!” cried Anderson, picking up the pack and casually tossing it into the crowd, where a young farmer snatched it out of the air. “Well caught, sir! Now if you would show it to those around you, any who wish to see, and ascertain that this is a normal pack of cards, all present and correct, no absences, duplications or tell-tales marked anywhere…”

The pack was opened and passed around, and after much prodding and poking, riffling and shuffling, measuring and feeling, and even some sniffing and one–loudly prevented–attempt to bite it, it was agreed to be as standard and complete a pack as ever was.

“Then shuffle it!” cried Anderson. “Shuffle it and pass it on and shuffle again, as much as you like, then throw it back to me!”

The crowd liked about three people shuffling the pack, tolerated a fourth, after which they grew restive and called for the pack to be returned and tossed back on stage so the “magic” could commence.

The pack was lobbed to Anderson, who nimbly stuck his hands in his pockets and leapt backward so the box of cards landed at his feet, untouched.

“I will not touch the cards. But the pack must be cut,” he cried. “Who has a knife?”

It was a largely rural town, and a great many of the men in the crowd had blades, most of which were now scooped from pockets, belts or boot-tops and waved in the air.

“I need a strong man who you all know to be local,” announced Anderson. “Someone many of you know and can assure the others is not a plant of my own, for it is at this point that a mere prestidigitator would seek to insert a confederate to aid in the trick. But since this is no trick, but the real magic, I need no such assistance.”

After a great deal of pushing and shoving, and shouting and counter-shouting a burly man in carter’s boots was propelled up on stage. He stood grinning at his friends in the crowd, who whooped and whistled at him.

“Now, my friend,” said Anderson. “Please take the cards out of the box again, and put the deck on this table.”

The carter did so and stood back.

“Now take your knife and stab through the pack, as far as you like. Do not worry about how hard you strike, for the table is sturdy, but try not to go all the way through the pack, for we shall pick the card in this way.”

The carter raised his knife and stabbed the pack as hard as he could. The knife went a little more than halfway through. Some of the younger members of the crowd jeered him for a weak stroke, but Anderson waved them quiet.

“A single card is easy to puncture, but fifty-two layered together? Why, I knew a soldier saved by a small Bible in his waistcoat pocket which stopped a musket ball. There is strength in numbers, do not forget. Now, sir, lift the point of the knife and show the ladies and gentlemen the card!”

Anderson turned away, his back to the audience so as not to be able to see the card and the carter raised his knife, leaving behind the unpierced slab of cards and showing the face of the last one he had stabbed to the crowd.

“Make sure I do not see the card, but ensure everyone else sees it.”

The carter waved the impaled cards from left to right, slowly, so that all could see the seven of diamonds.

“Now, sir, behind you on the table are the three cups. In one is a pencil. In the other a pair of sugar tongs. Please write your name on the card and show it to the crowd. If you do not wish to write your name, make a mark.”

It being the way of crowds to enjoy a joke at someone else’s expense, there was certain amount of coarse suggestions as to whether the carter knew how to write, but write he did, and showed the card to the audience with the word “JOAD” scratched boldly across it.

“Thank you,” continued Anderson. “Now please fold the card in two, then grip it with the sugar tongs and hold it in the candle flame until it is entirely alight. Let it burn to nothing and then drop the ashes to the floor and stamp them into dust.”

The carter did as he was asked, burning the card and scrubbing the black residue across the floor with his boots.

At this point Anderson whirled on the crowd, shook the carter by the hand and helped him return to the crowded murk beyond the footlight.

“Now you all saw that the cards were not gimmicked. That they were shuffled, not by me, but by you. And then you saw I had no control over how deeply the knife penetrated the deck, and that there was no way that I could know which card Mr Joad there would show you.”

There was a rumble in the crowd.

“Oh yes!” he continued. “I know the name that he wrote on the card, though I have never met him before in my life. I know it just as sure as I know the card itself was the seven!”

The rumble from the crowd became appreciative.

“Not just the seven but the red seven, and not the heart, for anyone’s knife may pierce a heart, but the seven of diamonds, yes, diamonds, I say, for the knife is not made that could cut through a diamond! The card was the seven of diamonds!”

The crowd cheered happily, impressed. Some were astonished, others began telling each other that they knew the trick–Lucy heard the man beside her admit that it was well enough done, but of course Anderson had rigged a mirror and seen the front of the card without having to look backwards.

Anderson smiled and waved the crowd to silence.

“Impressive, I hear you say. But not, perhaps… magic? Well, you are a hard crowd to please, wise and suspicious, just as you should be. So far, so difficult, but not, I fear, enough to convince you?”

“Show us more!” shouted a woman at the back.

“Show you I shall!” he shouted. “But real magic must be unconstrained, so if you all follow me outside into the night air, and keep absolutely silent, I swear to you on my life that you will see the impossible, for the deed is but half done! I swear that you will see no sleight of hand, no conjurer’s legerdemain; I swear you will see real magic! But only if you keep absolutely silent and do as I say. Will you trust me?”

The crowd roared an agreement, and then remembered he’d asked them to be silent, which reduced the noise to an apologetic mumble, which in turn dwindled to silence as he stood in front of them with his fingers to his lips.

Once he was satisfied, he took a torch and lit it from the flame of one of the footlights, then made a gesture like Moses dividing the Red Sea and jumped into the crowd which obediently parted, leaving a corridor through which he led the onlookers to the front of the tent and out into the night.

Lucy was swept out in his wake by the press of eager watchers. It was a very eerie thing to be part of, as the silent mass of people formed a column snaking through the bright lights and flares rigging the rest of the fair. The fair-goers who had not come to see the show saw this silent crocodile of earnest faces and became so intrigued by such an odd spectacle that by the time Anderson came to a halt the crowd was about six hundred people.

He stopped at the apple tree guarded by the two brindled mastiffs, who broke the quiet by beginning to bay and snarl at him as he used his torch to light five flares stuck in the paling erected around the tree, and then climbed over the fence.

“Mind the dogs! They’re vicious—” shouted someone, who was then silenced by the hisses of the crowd.

The dogs barked furiously at Anderson, flinging themselves towards him, their chains snapping tight.

He merely raised a hand. They stopped. He turned his hand. They dropped to the ground. He waved. They rolled on their backs. The crowd sighed approvingly.

He climbed on an apple box and looked round at them.

“You saw the card picked at random? You saw the name written on it? And then you saw it consumed by fire? Yes?”

The crowd nodded.

“You may shout the answer to my next question: is it truly IMPOSSIBLE that the card you chose still exists?”

“YES!” bellowed the crowd, the pent-up noise breaking like a thunderous wave.

“NO!” roared Anderson right back at them. “NOT IF MAGIC IS REAL! If magic is real ANYTHING is possible!”

And suddenly he was all action. He shot a pointing finger to the heart of the crowd.

“Miss Georgiana Eagle! Would you be so kind, so very kind as to come and take this long walking stick I have here, and pull any one of these apples off the tree? The choice as to which is entirely yours!”

Georgiana was pushed and jostled to the paling, looking decidedly unhappy about being chosen, but when she was helped over the fence she settled herself in her ribboned dress and turned a professional smile back to the crowd.

“I do not need your stick,” she said. “I choose this apple.”

And she plucked one from a low branch and held it out to him. Lucy could see she had afforded herself some small satisfaction by not following his instructions quite as indicated. Anderson was not perturbed, nor did he take the apple. Instead he put his hands in his pocket again.

“Mr Joad!” he shouted. “Come forward!”

Joad the carter came to the front again.

“Both of you look and tell us what you see,” said Anderson.

“An apple,” said Georgiana.

“ ’S’right,” admitted Joad.

“Any distinguishing marks?”

“No.”

“Any nicks or cuts or signs it has been tampered with?”

“No,” said Joad, squinting at it. “It’s perfect.”

“Show the ladies and gentlemen,” ordered Anderson, and Lucy saw Georgiana bridle again at the way he had suborned her, his rival, into acting as his assistant. Georgiana won another small victory by handing the apple to Joad who showed it to the nearby crowd.

“One apple, ladies and gentlemen, nature’s everyday miracle!” he said with a final flourish. “Real magic, I think you’ll agree!”

The crowd didn’t agree. It was confused. Then nonplussed. Then certainly and increasingly noisily very disappointed indeed.

“Oh,” cried Anderson. “Oh. You were expecting something more?”

The crowd growled in agreement.

“THEN BE SILENT AND YOU SHALL SEE SOMETHING YOUR GRANDCHILDREN WILL TELL THEIR GRANDCHILDREN THAT YOU SAW!” he roared, and so loud was his voice that the crowd followed his instructions and quietened down into one giant held breath.

“Mr Joad,” he said. “Be so kind as to cut the apple in half with your fine knife, but gently does it and do it in plain sight so there is no hint of trickery.”

Joad unclasped his knife, the torchlight flashing off the steel as he locked the blade in place. Then he made a shallow circumference of the apple and then looked puzzled.

“Split it, Mr Joad,” said Anderson, hands still in his pockets. “Split it so that all can see.”

Joad gingerly prised the apple apart. There was an intake of breath, for in doing so he revealed a folded rectangle of red in the very centre.

“Take it out gently,” encouraged Anderson.

Georgiana’s face was tight as she watched Joad do so.

“Unfold it,” said Anderson.

Joad did so. His face went white.

“But…” he said in shock. “But…”

“Exactly,” smiled Anderson. “It is inconceivable, unbelievable, beating the very bounds of possibility! But not if you believe in REAL MAGIC! Show them, man!” Joad held the card up to the crowd as Anderson continued. “Ladies and gentlemen–for your delectation and amazement–I give you… THE IMPOSSIBLE!”

Lucy knew what it was before she could see it clearly from the rapturous response of the crowd.

It was the seven of diamonds–pierced by a knife, with Joad’s name in his writing scrawled across it in thick pencil. There was no doubt. It was the destroyed card, hidden in a perfect apple.

It was, it must, it could surely be–she and the entire crowd agreed–Real Magic.

She glimpsed Georgiana, her face yellow as the ribbons on her dress, searching for her father’s eyes in the crowd. She looked like she was drowning.

“Now, my friends, an intermission!” shouted Anderson who was being hoisted on the shoulders of the crowd. “And back to the tent in a quarter of an hour for my friends the Eagles! But first, I think, a drink!”

Lucy watched the crowd, uproariously noisy and happy now, carrying him off to the beer tents. She saw Georgiana dart forward and grab her father’s arm, leading him into an alley between two tents, whispering furiously into his ear. He walked like a broken man. Lucy followed at a distance, keeping herself in the deep shadows cast by the full moon in the clear sky above them, her fascination with Georgiana leading her onwards.

She had seen how little the girl liked being used by Anderson as his assistant, and could understand it. Anderson had undoubtedly poured salt in the wound he had inflicted on his rival by using his daughter as an unwitting collaborator. Lucy stayed in the shadows as they re-entered Huffam’s marquee, which was now empty while the audience was making use of the intermission to enjoy the beer and cider being sold in the adjoining refreshment tents. Because of this she was able to hear what was going on backstage, even if she couldn’t see it.

Na-Barno sounded hoarse and bewildered.

“He’s done our act and then shown them how we do it. He exposed the secret of my automaton. And then, to top it and bury us five fathoms deep, he performed a truly impossible trick. I do not know what to do.”

“Father, it is simple: if you know how he did the trick, we are rich. If not, we must change our plan. And do it fast!”

Georgiana’s voice was tense and emphatic, as if trying to wake her father out of a stupor.

“I can’t believe how he knew how exactly to mimic our act…”

“That I do know,” sighed Na-Barno. “Because I stole it from him, child, or your mother did.”

There was a cold moment of silence. Georgiana’s voice frosted over, and became icily deliberate.

“And you did not tell me this?”

“I saw no need.”

“No need? If you had told me we could have foreseen his stratagem! We could have planned to counter it. Now you have no choice left to you except to—”

“I know, child: to leave quickly while it is still dark and there is a crowd to confuse.”

Lucy heard the slap as it landed, and the shocked silence that followed it was like punctuation.

“I am not fuddled, child,” Na-Barno’s voice quavered, close to tears.

“I was not slapping the fuddle, Father. I was striking you!” hissed Georgiana.

“But—” choked Na-Barno, the tears coming now.

Georgiana’s interruption was brutal as another slap.

“Fetch the hand.”

“But… but I have not mastered it,” blubbered Na-Barno. “We have not built an act round it.”

His voice choked off as if he was being gripped round the neck, but it was clearly Georgiana’s intensity of purpose that was acting on him as she carried on, her voice unstoppable as the logic she proceeded to steamroller him with.

“Can you not see what has happened? Anderson has changed the rules. It’s not about an act, Father. It’s now down to two things: our survival and the impossible. And that hand is the most impossible thing I have ever seen.”

“But his card trick was impossible—”

“But it was a card trick. Even if it was impossible, even if that itself is true, even if, God and all the little devils help us, it was real magic, it was still a card trick. And that is the only chink in his armour. If we are to gut him back, the way he has filleted us, then that is the only place we can stick the knife. Because people will always suspect a card trick as working by a sleight of hand or a misdirection of some sort, even if they are too slow to see it happening, because they know that is how card tricks work. A card trick itself is stale. The hand is something truly out of the ordinary.”

“But, child, I do not know—”

“I do, and one of us must make the decision or we shall both surely starve and end in the poorhouse. Get the hand. Ask it questions. It won’t matter if the presentation is a little unpractised; what will matter is that you are not only topping Anderson’s impossible thing, you are showing them something truly novel. Do it! They will be back and stomping on the floor in five minutes if we are not ready, and they will all have drunk two more pints apiece as well.”

“You’re right, child. It’s a long shot, but by God we’ll take it.”

She heard Na-Barno run off the stage, and then heard a rustling noise as Georgiana did something to her costume.

Lucy, overhearing all this, realised she had witnessed a second secret performance, for Georgiana had not only picked her father up and revived him, but set him to do her will quite as if he were an automaton himself, she manipulating him as easily as a child jerking a marionette around by its strings. The other thing that impressed Lucy was Georgiana’s sharp intelligence. While her father was still reeling from the effects of Anderson’s clinical double blow, she had already both analysed exactly how he had done so and come up with a counter-move. Though what this “hand” was she had no idea. All she knew was that it was going to be worth seeing, even if it did not out-impossible Anderson.