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Old 08-05-2011, 03:39 PM   #353
Anguirel
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Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: The 1590s
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Cirdacil

"What trouble have these Players caused, my lord? I said I would aid you if I could, and that word I shall keep."

"The suspicion that has driven me from my desk," the old man muttered, "is that the cause of the trouble...was I myself."

As the sailor and the treasurer wound up the City's high road together, great-uncle imparted the whole story, as quickly as possible, to great-nephew.

Cirdacil began with his original, unlooked for and inexplicable, appointment as Master of the Revels; he explained that his younger son, Sador, had proposed the matter was an intentional test of his mettle and sincerity; detailed the process of engaging as chaotic a company as could be found, his tearaway son-in-law's runagate friend's bravos; ran through the first misadventures of the King's Player's, and the stern measures he had begun to take against them...and at last came to the troubling visit, so recent, of King Elessar himself.

"So it would appear," he finished, "that Sador was wrong in detail, if not in drift; the King was trusting me to make a success of the play, not a failure, after all; and it seems likely he may relieve me of the Treasury if the performance misfires! The Treasury, where I could still be of so much use to him!

"What must I do, nevvy," he gasped out, the Pelargir twang reasserting itself emotionally. "Do I truly have a duty to help this nonsensical operation come to fruition? And if so...Sador's latest report portrayed the troupe as in total disarray. What in Arda can I do to turn this fiasco round...?"

Their hastened journey had whirled them now into the merchant manses; the longest, largest, and yellowest stone among them lay some way further down the cobbles; pillars of smoke seemed to furl behind it, disturbingly, almost as if it was, or had just been on fire...
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