A Mummers' Play Read Free Page A

hall.
    Some of the older people looked decidedly mutinous, but if he was the blasted duke, for once they could do as he said. No matter how bucolic, this entertainment couldn’t be worse than what he had endured thus far. The mummers—a motley crowd in ragbag costumes—stood ready to sing, though they looked startled at the crowd they’d drawn.
    “Welcome!” Jack declared, acting to the full the part of the generous lord. “Let’s hear your songs, my good men, and see your play, and you’ll be well rewarded.”
    The group cheered—though a couple, he noted, were so drunk they were propped up by their fellows—and started into the traditional begging song, “Come gentlemen at Christmastide, give cheer to all mankind. . . .”
    They sang raggedly to begin with, but soon settled into it, even managing a bit of harmony. Jack led the applause.
    The mummers seemed to think they were done, but as the largess didn’t begin, they looked at each other, murmured for a moment, and started the wassail song. When they got to the line about pennies in bowls, quite a few bowls appeared as a broad hint.
    “Excellent, excellent!” called Jack, applauding again. “But now, my good fellows, have pity on a poor soldier who’s not spent a Christmas in England since he was a boy. Can you give me the play of George and the Dragon?”
    The motley group shifted uneasily and he suspected that they were not actually in the habit of acting any kind of play. What had England come to? He was about to take pity on them and give their bounty anyway, when one George clanked forward. “By God, but I can play my part for a hero of the wars,” he declared. “Indeed I can! Is there no dragon here to help me?”
    After a moment, a man in a dragon head and long green cloak shuffled forward. “All right, all right. But be careful with that blinking sword, Georgie.”
    St. George waved the sword, which Jack noted did actually look real—no wonder the dragon was concerned—and declared, “I am George, great soldier of Rome and Christ.” His accent was solid Gloucestershire. “I ’ave come to rescue the fair maiden, Melicent. . . .”
    At that, he looked back at the group and repeated, “
The fair maiden, Melicent . . .”
    Yet more shuffling and murmuring, including a “He’s stone-drunk,” and “Not on your jolly life.” Then a creature in a bright pink dress with a wig of long yellow yarn was ejected from the group.
    The fair maiden Melicent ran to huddle behind the dragon, more in the manner of one seeking protection than one waiting to be saved, but it sufficed. St. George took up his part.
    “I come,” he yelled, so his voice bounced and echoed off marble pillars and gilded walls, “to rescue the fair maiden Melicent, cruelly given to the foul dragon to be its dinner.”
    The dragon got into the spirit of things and growled. It sounded more like a complaint of acute indigestion, but the younger members of the house party decided to support him with cheers.
    “Odds on the dragon!” shouted one young spark. After a moment Jack found a name for him. Stephen, Viscount Leyland. Perhaps there was more to the jessamy than he’d thought.
    “St. George always wins,” the saint pointed out, somewhat aggrieved.
    “My money’s still on the dragon,” replied Leyland. “I like the way he roars.”
    The dragon stood taller and roared again.
    More cheers.
    Jack laughed for the first time since coming to Torlinghurst. “My money’s on St. George,” he declared. “He handles his sword like a true hero!”
    St. George stood taller and swung his sword, narrowly missing a horse nearby.
    “Watch it!” squawked the horse.
    “Well, keep out of the way!”
    “I’m trying to blinking help. St. George ’ad to ’ave a blinking horse, didn’t ’e?”
    “Oh. All right then, Fred. But keep back.”
    St. George adjusted his helm, which tended to slide over his eyes, and turned to face the dragon again. “Give up that fair