Almost unnoticed, Mr. Bendiff and Ari had slipped around William Starling, so the table was now crowded and the teapot already empty. Grammie got up, to reheat the water, and Mr. Bendiff said, “So it was Juan Carlos behind it all, to get the throne. Not to mention the royal wealth.”
“Also Malpenso, to get Elizaveta,” said Tomi.
“Balcor has rescued her from that, at least,” said Colly, and he suspected, because this was something he knew too much about, “It’s going to be hard on her, being that man’s daughter.”
“Did the General suspect him all along?” Ari asked. “I didn’t like the man, but…Did anyone here suspect what he was up to? Did you, William?”
Apparently, Max’s father and the other two men had had the chance to introduce and identify themselves.
“I never liked him, either. He was oily. Does that count as suspicion?” William Starling asked.
“We were kept so isolated. We were told so little,” his wife explained.
“Everything we knew came from Balcor, the man of mysteries—who told us nothing,” William added.
“I think General Balcor must have suspected” was Mr. Bendiff’s opinion. “I got the feeling that nothing that happened today surprised him. Will he take the crown?”
“I don’t think he wants it,” Max said.
“Of course he does,” answered the former and false King. “Why wouldn’t he?”
“Did you?” Max asked. “Do you?”
“It’s different for me,” his father explained. “As an actor, I never had to have the power of a real king, or the importance, or the responsibilities. Although I think I could have become a good one,” William Starling said, and he glanced away from the table to the front door of the guesthouse, and the city beyond. “If you are a king, a king is all you can be; it’s what you have to be, all the time.” He turned to his wife to ask, “What about you, Mary? Are you sorry that you’re no longer Queen of Andesia?”
Max’s mother just smiled, and drank her tea.
Max was curious. “How did Balcor manage it?” he asked. “Captain Francis saw you on the docks, but—” He turned to look at his mother—and lost the train of his thought because—
He was sitting at the same table with his parents and he was looking at his mother’s bright eyes and hearing his father’s dramatic voice. It made him so…so joyous, he almost climbed up onto the table to put a rose between his teeth and dance a fandango. Whatever a fandango was, he thought, and grinned. “But he didn’t say anything about seeing you,” he said to his mother. Talking to his father again, he said, “He didn’t say anything about you looking worried, or troubled, either. What’s a fandango, anyway?”
“Ask your grandmother, she knows everything,” William Starling answered, but without giving Max time to do that, he told his story: First, the shining, closed carriage that arrived at 5 Thieves Alley, with the three-peaked emblem painted on its doors and the pair of matching horses. This was shortly after Max had ridden off on his bicycle, “To have a class with you, if I remember correctly,” William told Joachim. The carriage had taken them to the docks, right up to a gangplank, the railings of which were twined with swags of flowers, “So why would anyone suspect anything?” The couple was greeted ceremoniously by a captain in full white uniform and escorted along a well-lit, carpeted corridor to a door, which was held open for them by a respectful member of the crew, also in dress whites. “And that was the moment when everything turned wrong. Do you agree, my dearling?”
“Absolutely,” his wife said. “Although there was champagne,” she reminded him.
“There was General Balcor,” he reminded her.
Thus it was, William Starling explained, that he found himself loitering on the docks just in front of the Simón Bolívar, asking a gypsy-looking fellow—“untrustworthy ears on him, but beggars can’t be choosers”—wandering by, to deliver the note he’d written—“which Balcor read every word of, you can be sure. I had to be quick, and clever.” He couldn’t call for help or attempt an escape. His wife was locked in the cabin of a ship about to sail for who knew what destination, except it was probably not India, and if he gave the game away he had no idea what would happen to her. “As it turns out, probably nothing, but how could I know that I had the essential role? The throne of Andesia could only be inherited by a male of the line,” he told them. “Until recently,” he added, with a good dollop of self-satisfaction. The note had been the best he could do to leave word of their situation. He’d hoped Max would decipher it. “As you must have,” he told his son. “For you’ve obviously found my fortune to live on, and you will have been staying with Grammie, where we knew you’d be safe, and you did wait—although I presume not patiently—for the next time I could send word.”
Max took a quick look at his grandmother and did not contradict his father. Grammie also said nothing, for which he was grateful. He would tell his story in his own time. Maybe when he was asked for it? Meanwhile, William Starling looked around the table to say, “I’ve never seen any of these actors. Where did Max find you?”
“I can’t act,” Ari said, quite truthfully.
“King Teodor found me,” said Mr. Bendiff.
“I’m no actor,” Tomi said, and, “Me neither,” Colly agreed.
Max could have laughed out loud at the expression on his father’s face. “Don’t tell me you’re a legitimate embassy,” the actor protested.
“We have credentials,” Ari told him. “We have Teodor’s letter of credit.”
“So the King really sent you?”
“The royal family always attended our performances,” Mary reminded him carefully, as if she was telling him more than her actual words said, as if she was warning him to be careful what he said. “He seems to admire us more than we knew.”
Max could have laughed at the two of them. Even being kidnapped and held prisoner, and almost being hanged, too, didn’t stop his father. Or his mother, either.
“Max must have persuaded you to let him join you,” William told Ari. “And bring his grandmother, too, for which we thank you, whoever you are. Didn’t I always say it?” Max’s father asked the room in general. “By twelve, a boy is capable of real independence. You do me proud, Max.”
Max shrugged and held his tongue. In fact, he had done his father proud.
“I’m certainly grateful to all of you,” William Starling went on. “Every one of you, boys included, mothers-in-law included. Did you already know this?” he asked his wife.
“I only heard just before you got here.”
“And I was going to ask you two to join the Company,” William Starling said, with a rueful smile. “Especially you,” he told Ari. “You were the spitting image of that old Baroness, stiff and disapproving in her box, in her black dresses, in her pride.”
“I am the next Baron,” Ari admitted, with a smile for Max.
At that point, Tomi asked the question foremost on all their minds. “Will Balcor really let us leave?”
“We are going with Stefano’s wagons in the morning,” Ari said, and smiled. “I’m pretty eager to get back.”
“It’s a good thing we’re already packed,” Grammie said.
“You haven’t said how you feel about becoming a grandmother again,” Mary remarked to her mother, teasing.
“You can’t become a grandmother twice,” Grammie snapped, with uncharacteristic uncooperativeness, “the same way you can’t become a parent twice. The first time does the job, no matter how many others appear and how often.”
“There speaks my favorite librarian,” said William.
“Not anymore,” Grammie said. “And I don’t know what kind of grandmothering you two are expecting from me,” she went on, with a grumpiness that was just as uncharacteristic.
William Starling looked at his wife and Mary Starling looked at her husband. Alarmed?
Into this quiet came the sound of the door opening, followed by the sound of booted feet marching. Now everyone was alarm
ed.
The General came to the kitchen doorway, a soldier at each shoulder. He dismissed his guard and stood, feet slightly apart, his shako held at his side. He looked different, Max thought. Not taller, but for some reason younger. General Balcor was not much older than Ari, Max realized.
Without hesitating, William Starling demanded, “You don’t knock?”
Max almost groaned aloud, and he did groan silently. His father seemed to think King William of Andesia was still onstage. Without asking the General to be seated, or to join them for tea, William Starling had his say. “Just for curiosity, Balcor, would you have let me hang?”
This question was answered, and not answered. “The boy would not have allowed it. I came to thank him. I would not have enjoyed watching you kick your life away at the end of a rope.”
The image silenced William Starling.
“I have come also because you will have questions to ask,” the General announced to the members of the embassy. He might look younger, but he was no less powerful.
“If we are to leave in the morning, what about our trunk of scripts and scenery and costumes?” Mary Starling asked.
“That is being taken right now to the mercado, and there is another as well, packed with the clothing made for you during your brief reign.” He looked at William to say, “Including those handsome boots you stride about in so well. You did not disappoint me,” he said to his ex-King, with full seriousness.
William’s mouth worked, as if trying to force words free, but he didn’t speak and Max was glad to see his father for once made speechless—with confusion? outrage? amusement? Certainly not embarrassment. Embarrassment was not in William Starling’s repertoire.
Bolder now himself, Max asked, “Back in April, was there really a ticket waiting for me? Or did you plan for me to be left behind?”
“I had no clear plans,” the General answered. “Not at that time.”
Since questions were allowed, Colly wondered, “Did you know all along what Juan Carlos was plotting?”
“The man was too oily not to be up to something,” William answered. “The first time I met him, I knew he was up to no good.”
“I had suspicions,” the General told them, “but I lacked proof. I hoped to put the cat among the pigeons. They are excitable creatures, pigeons, and once excited, once flurrying about?” He shrugged. “I hoped they might make patterns, in which the truth could be glimpsed.”
“I was more like a staked goat than a cat,” William Starling said.
Balcor nodded, once, in agreement.
“We were bait in a trap,” William went on, offended now, but whether at the General’s metaphor or the danger he’d been put in, Max couldn’t tell. The actor pointed out, “Pigeons aren’t killers.”
Balcor shrugged again. He looked at Ari. “I understood to whose advantage it was for the throne to be empty, but I had no proof. Today, that proof was given to me, thanks to your embassy.”
William Starling disagreed. “I’d say it was thanks to those two or three Andesians who spoke up out of the crowd,” he said. “I’m thanking my lucky stars they did—although, I admit it, I am not surprised to have landed on my feet.”
“Your lucky stars?” Balcor asked, as if he was confused by the expression. “It was the embassy,” he repeated, with a glance at Max.
William Starling maintained a dignified, kingly silence, but Mr. Bendiff wondered, “What will happen now in Andesia?”
“That remains to be seen. Changes have become possible, but real life is a matter of improvisation, not a script. Don’t you agree, William?”
“Unfortunately,” the actor said, proving that the General wasn’t the only person present who could speak ambiguously.
“However, I would like to hope that your interest in my country will continue,” the General said to Mr. Bendiff, who answered without hesitation or ambiguity, “It will.”
This satisfied Balcor. “I expect that Juan Luc and Juan Antonio will be communicating with you.” He turned to Joachim. “I expect also that your pictures—because ours is so wild and beautiful a landscape—will show the world that we are in fact a nation, and not a prize to be taken as booty.”
“That’s not why I will paint them,” Joachim told him. He met the General’s stern glance with an equally unyielding glance of his own.
“About Elizaveta,” Ari began, and hesitated, and decided to continue even if the General might think it irrelevant. “Elizaveta would make good use of an education and, as well, be glad to be away from Apapa for a year or two.”
Grammie put her oar in. “There is no school in your country, General, and no library. An educated young woman—even if she marries and has children—might be happy to concern herself with creating a school and a library.”
Balcor acknowledged, “The young woman is in my thoughts,” but revealed no more, instead saying to Mary Starling, “You understand that the crown and the jewels must remain here in Andesia, to be the wealth of the new country?”
“Of course,” she said. “My goodness. I wouldn’t know what to do with them, except wear them onstage, and for the stage, crowns need to be bigger and brighter. Lighter, too—more show and less substance. What would we do with those crowns, William? Imagine trying to act under the weight of a real crown.”
He smiled, allowing that she was right, but he had a final question of his own. “Why me, General? Out of all the world, why did you choose me for this role?”
This the General answered straightforwardly. “I saw you play Shakespeare’s King Henry. When I was traveling with the son of the President of Peru on his grand tour. We visited Queensbridge, and the lake—it was a few years ago, but I remembered. Before your own King, you played a stage King, and he applauded the performance. And you, lady, made a lovely and wise young French Princess, willing to marry him for the good of your country. When I came to Andesia, and had need of a King, I remembered your performances.”
This was a satisfying piece of information in answer to the last of the party’s questions. The General put his shako back on his head, then, to announce, “Madam, the brooch I sent to you, that is yours to keep, with the country’s thanks. If that is all, then—William, Envoy, Mr. Bendiff, Maximilian—the name of a king, is it not?—Mrs….Sevin, did he say? Painter and boys, all of you, I will leave you now. Soldiers will arrive in the morning, early, to take your luggage and escort you to the wagons. I will not be present at your departure, so this is our final farewell.” With a quick bow, General Balcor turned on his booted heels, and in six quick steps, he closed the door behind him.
That night, after a makeshift meal taken all together in the dining room, the ex–royal couple took Hamish Bendiff’s rooms, while Ari moved into Max’s bed to give the older man the better accommodations, and all three boys slept wrapped in alpaca blankets on the kitchen floor. At dawn, with Max again disguised in chupalla and poncho, they went to join Stefano, who waited by the wagons. By mid-morning they were rounding the high ridge, leaving Andesia.
The Rest of Max’s Life
• ACT I •
SCENE 1 THREE INSIGHTS
It didn’t take long for Max to figure out that he had a problem. It might be a problem that didn’t surprise him, and might even be a problem he’d been looking forward to having, but still…
It was his parents, of course.
It was his father, mostly.
With an eye out for snakes and spiders, with a bandanna tied around his head to keep sweat out of his eyes, Max thought about how in Balcor’s play, even his flamboyant father had been a minor character, and the rescue party only a plot device. Balcor’s play had begun with the murder of a royal family, and it ended when the villain was unmasked and the rule of law begun in Andesia. William Starling’s play, which had begun with a kidnapping, had ended in the same scene, but with a rescue. Max’s concern now—now that the final curtain had fallen—was his play, which also began with that kidnapping. He didn’t want his play to be over, es
pecially the story of its main character, Mister Max, the Solutioneer. His play had just begun.
That was his first insight into the problem and—since insight is one of the earliest steps toward solution—he thought hard about it.
There was no question that Max was filled with a joy and relief that bubbled steadily inside him, long day of hard traveling after long day of hard traveling. His parents were safe. They were all of them safe, the whole rescue party. He had done it! For the return journey, there was a whole wagon available for those who wished to ride, not walk. Grammie and Joachim had permanent seats, as did William and Mary, but the rest of the party sometimes rode and sometimes chose the exercise of going along on foot, as if by moving under their own power they would arrive sooner at Cúcuta, and Maracaibo, and Caracas—where they would find a boat to take them home.
They were still accompanied by soldiers, and by Stefano, and they were traveling in the opposite of comfort, but they were a cheerful, lively party, slapping at insects or stomping on insects as they jounced along in their wagon, across hillsides and then down into the denser growth of tropical forests, where the insects became more colorful, and larger, and the danger of snakes increased. William Starling was like a gifted schoolteacher, always ready to set off a guessing game or a song or to tell the story of one or another of the many, many plays he knew. Wet and dry, cool and warmer, the days went by quickly enough.
Evenings, however, were a different story, the mood not one of joy and relief but dread. In the evenings, they claimed bowls of whatever stew the camp cook had prepared, carrying them back to eat around their fire, to eat as slowly as possible, as if by eating slowly and talking constantly they could hold back the creeping darkness of this wild country, and hold back memories that—even under a sky so thick with stars that the dense twisting vines couldn’t entirely conceal them—slipped in with the darkness. But none of them could, and so every night, eventually, a silence would fall around their fire as each one of them struggled not to remember.