Peter entered the central tent, which was the center of the camp's crescent moon. In it he found Walter Map seated behind a very large leather volume opened somewhere approximately into the middle of things.
-Welcome Peter to our humble offices. I'm afraid I'm not much of a general sitting here in front a fat book instead of maps and battle plans. No, much more of an archivist I. Suppose that'll inflect our travels some. I've been doing it the whole damned time anyways tho. Something of a hobby. A compulsion perhaps. Do sit tho, do sit.
Peter surveyed the room while Map spoke. Map was presenting their world to him in his little speech, offering up the place to be taken in. It was a dark enclosure, not unlike a general. Ancient feeling all done up in hides and furs, the faint musk of oils used to continually tend the skeins. In a yet darker fabriced corner Peter could just make out the frail limbs of a boy sleeping on what he took to be the generals cot. He was taken a bit aback by the boy's presence, too reminiscent of his own recent convalescence. The boy's legs were too thin and pale. Even in the dim light his pallor was exorbitant. Map noticed his ill ease and turned to see its cause.
-Ah, you're caught Artus sleeping. He is wont these days to do much of that. Worn thin from long day's travel. You won't have met him yet properly. Quite a lad when he's in his full vigor. Something of a leader, tho not without his roguish qualities.
-That boy looks fit to perish. You can't mean you let him out to ride in such a condition.
-Certainly, he's still hale enough. But, I see we haven't explained our positions well enough to you yet. I can't tell Artus a thing. At least not now. In fact, he is the very head of our little band. Only he's grown a bit quiet since it is about time he hand that mantle on. This indeed is why I wanted to have a bit of a chat with you. You might perhaps help me somewhat out of a bit of a jam. You see, I've been tapped to follow young Artus in the guidance of this fair tribe and I'm feeling a conflicted. But there are so many contingencies right now. Please have a seat and let me hash it out with you.
Pressed into his outsize volume, him with the look of a slightly rotund mediaeval friar, he began to unfold the history of the party.
-We're something of a long running group always traveling from place to place. In fact, we're quite like Gypsies in some ways. The Roma are a fine people; we have occasion to meet up with them not infrequently. We're somewhat more insular than they. One of our most steadfast rules is that we do not mingle or take part in the outside world. Our nature is such, you see, that we do better encountering people and groups from the outside world. We are before all else travelers.
Having come through a serious personal ordeal, Peter had become attuned to otherwise odd interactions. It seemed now that he cut in appearance something of a odd figure that allowed people to interact with him on some very different level. In the town, he had elicited startling personal revelations from strangers as early as their first meeting.
Map, now, was different, certainly. He was in no way reacting to Peter's lack of a limb. He was not at all vexed by such a violent anomaly, nor extraordinarily calmed by it—these being the two reactions he'd become used to. No, he spoke with total ease only with the air of one that doesn't often do so. The words, as they arrived, seemed to be newly discovered by Map himself. Indeed, Peter at one point caught him glancing down covetously at his large book as if he desired to record some choice phrasing lest it be lost eternally to time. So yes, the arm seemed at once crucial to the conversation and at the same time without effect at all.
-Now of course, like all good men of your century, you'll need to know the practical side of things, you'll need to see the gears and grinds, you'll need me to lay out the technical operations of the thing. Which makes me wonder if that is some particularly American trait or simply some new millennial consciousness. But, I am a gracious host and tho I wish to ask you your opinion on just such questions, I'll happily satisfy yours first. Manna my dear boy. Or perhaps you might rather call it good fortune, chance or a modicum of well organized activity and planning. Which I still insist might as well be called manna.
-I'll explain. We have among us a thorough going knowledge of lands we pass through. In this old world, there is not a land we are ignorant of. I cannot speak of your new world, tho perhaps some day. And we haven't been out traveling so long without attending to the wisdom of the lands. So we are not wont for the materials the land holds or the sustenance it bears. I hear the natives of your land have had something of the same habits and knowledge. You know, just the other day Artus brought in such a white stag. We'll have a feast certainly. And so, we do not want.
-But surely, the war has made it harder for you? And before that the all the more structured parcelling of land in accord with factories and development?
-Indeed. Squeezed, certainly. But there isn't a net fine enough that it is not yet made of holes. We've always found ways to slip through and press on. Wars erupt from time to time in your world and they are easy enough to skirt. In fact, they tend to throw the world asunder so that we have quite an extraordinary amount of freedom. We're quite their inverse. We never traipse so visibly, with some frivolity and alacrity as when a war is on.
-So you feed upon it? As demons? Taking joy from the destruction?
-Do not be incensed. I apologize if I made to seem we take an particular joy in the destruction of your world. No, we simply find such disastrous times the moment most apt to pose alternatives. As I say, we're the inverse of all that. Our feast is our own and we simply become all the more inviting at the heights of hostility abroad. In fact, we don't change a lick. We just tend to have an increased jurisdiction for the immediate present. But this is all dallying and I did mean to address my bit of a problem with you.
-You see, as I have already mentioned, I am somewhat of the encampment's archivist. I took on the task of recording our travel some time ago. Seems no one had thought to do it before. Gave me quite a clean slate to work me as well I must say. Tho I had a hell of a time making any sense of this groups scattered ramblings before I joined on. As tho they'd been everywhere at different times, not a straight story from the lot of them.
-That is all beside the point of course. But I take my job quite seriously. I've done it for a every long time and I pride myself on doing it well. I'm like the quivering needle of gramophone setting it all down. Which, true to my metaphor, means that I am receptive by nature.
-Now that's not the problem, just the lead up to it. As you've so keenly noticed poor, young Artus' condition, you must understand something of the fact that we're in need of a new chief. Artus'll be fine, but he's weak and needs to be off his feet, carried along with the rest. The point being that we have a bit of a rotating leadership for this band and I've pulled the short straw this time. First time I have. And I feel as though there is something of a conflict of interest is being both the director of the party—actor—and the recorder of the party—receiver. You understand?
-Not entirely, but sure. You'd prefer not take a turn cause you've already got a task to fulfill.
-Indeed. The complication lies tho in the fact that only a few of us are in a position to lead. In fact, we're only four. Harlequin and Herlaquin are the only other two. And despite the obvious impairment of their lunacy, which I'm sure you've noted, each has had a turn just prior to Artus.
-Certainly they must be rested enough and willing to lead again?
-You've seen 'em. Would you call them a well rested duo in full mental capacity? Been like that since I bloody signed on. Tho I did catch the last days of Herla's reign. Majestic in his day, even at the height of foolishness. But no, even were they all about themselves, it's got to be another in the circle before any of them take back up the lead.
-Well then you're in a bit of a bind no matter what then eh? At best you find a poor sap to pick up the reins and you've only got a brief stop gap.
-You're right of course. But I feel confident something will come along either to allow for my continued role as archivist or eternally push back the day on which I must assume the head.
-So have up a young squire from the camp and do him up til he can be the next fair Artus to lead the band, if it is the young you let lead you so.
-Not so young and not so easy indeed. No. One joins this band either with the possibility they will lead or that they will not. I signed on as such a leader. Tho now it seems a fool mistake and against my very nature. Sorry to say, but I had you in mind for the poor sap to induct next. Game for it perhaps?
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The fool and the clown were at it again when Peter left the tent. Entertaining the children and annoying their parents. And these were the camp's former leaders? Two ways to leave that office one supposes, either as a dignitary or a buffoon. Of course Peter was thinking of his ancestral lands in the states and not this little camp in Southern France. He watched the two at work now.
Harlequin would waddle up too a child like an overinflated balloon, or perhaps an overstuffed gentleman. She would tip down above the child with such an awkward cant. Her strained body was so precise giving off the impression of a mass that was both invisible, but clearly affective. With angular and forced motions she'd give the child's head a quick couple of pats. Or perhaps not the child's head at all, but the child's anticipated height some year's hence. Every motion slipped between the real and the actual, impression and sensation battled against direct perception. And suddenly flop. Harlequin lain out on her back some distance from the child with a large flower pressed up from her chest funereally. The children laughed with joy. Even those children who'd lost parents or loved ones. Death was a flower sprung up out of a comic chest and no more.
Herlaquin, alternatively, had taken point on annoying as many of the parent class as he could. He'd also chosen the mime act for the performance and was flusteredly bumping into whomever he could. As in children's mimicking games, he would perform in excess any reaction of his adversary. But more he would overact in advance any reaction. Bumping hurriedly into a passerby and exaggerating the impact. Flinging cloth asunder like so many burst pearls. His eyes, his flourish of hand gestures rebuked his competitor. Overtook their own frustration and spat it back trebled and ridiculous. Peter felt the rage these poor people felt, assaulted and at once deigned their own reactions. Trapped within a manufactured experience with no escape either bodily or mentally. One man's body seemed ready to fight, locked in a perilous stance. Herlaquin took his cue and produced for them a pantomimed fight. Doubling over to an absent blow to the stomach. Quaking with fear as he was lifted bodily and finally into a heap with his collaborating still lying dead. Soon too, he had his own flower pressed upward into the camp's open arch.
The children hooted. The parents could not but give a small impressed applause.
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-Why must you always rotate the leadership?
He was out with Artus on the horses. The boy looked unwell still but stolid enough in the saddle. The question disappeared into the forest long before Artus took it up.
- Long ago we lost a king. And we had to decide what to do.
-Did you ever meet him?
-Yes. I was the last, but for Map. Map was late to arrive and only had a fleeting glimpse of the king. Perhaps I am the last then. I had forgotten it, but Map never met the king proper. He saw us passing by one night much further North. He saw the king at the lead. But when, the next day he sought us out to join up, the king was already gone. And we had Map swear the oath he spoke of with you.
There was silence between them for quite awhile. The woods curled out over their path; their slow trot was the only sound.
-Its all so mystical your troop's happenings. The timeline is something of a mystery to me.
-I'm certain it is. And surprised you haven't been out with it earlier. I'm a young man unnaturally ill. Walter might as well be more portly father. But all of these is naught in our little world. Time itself is a variable thing, as I'm sure you've experienced. Not just here, but before. Perhaps especially in the war. I don't mean it to sound terribly mystical or phenomenal. But we are somewhat timeless ourselves. We're in the midst of a journey and when the journey ends whatever time once was can return. But until then we hold it off. Perhaps we have special circumstances. But we've met many another journeyer on our way and I've observed the same sort of perpetual present in them. The conditions of all journeys must be such. Our king, you asked about. He journeyed for longer than any man throughout time. It is scarce worth attempting to calculate the time and as I say beyond the point. But for the journey, he would have tied millennia ago. When I hear his name now in the outer world, it is passed into the legend of a god. He is thus twice removed from his life. First, he must have been a god to some. Some potent force beyond imagining and fearful. And now, solidified into the distant realm of legend not even alive as a concept, but as the relic of one kept dusty in a corner for want of ever truly letting go or losing our origins. When in fact he was never either, but a great man that refused to jump down. And yet, suddenly one day he stops us and say he's through. That it is time we carried on and he jumped down. Simple as that. He kisses our cheeks and leaps and its just dust in the midday sun.
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