All One Horse

the bobbing lights of the harbour

I had disappeared for a long time. Friends found me in this rainy city. During the past time I had grown to know the king and the princess of the land, or those accorded the roles, sometimes, the courtiers and the courtesans and the actors and the spies, the buffoons at court. I take my friends down a gentle green hillside to a vantage point overlooking the narrow mudwalled street penetrating the city. Dusk fell, a perpetual grey cloth of rain. The king was returning to town from an inspection of the districts with his entourage. He precedes the night. The cantering pace, the clinking hooves, the dark-hued fluttering panoplies, the burnished breastplates glowing dully in the half light. The princess comes by all in silver, rouged cheeks and glittering eyes, six ladies-in-waiting carrying the train of her dress. She must be wearing boots for the mud. I wave. She doesn’t respond. Nobody acknowledges me any more. Knights and hunters gallop by, pull up their chargers sharply to tumble over the necks of the steeds and perform summersaults on the ground. They slap their thighs with gloved hands. The street is lined with people bearing spluttering torches. Tomorrow the festivities are due to commence. Tomorrow the king will officially be within the gates. There will be popcorn and rattles and flowers to go to the sea. My friends accompany me to the inn where I had been staying for a long time. We must leave. I must fetch my robe. At the inn I inquire after Mustapha, my travelling companion. We have to go now to that distant place. The innkeeper looks at me down his brown nose. He indicates a small box made of tarnished silver on the mantelpiece. The box is filled to the lid with red soil. Did we not know that the trains no longer run? And that the last red boat had gone? Look at the rotting carcass, waterlogged among the bobbing lights of the harbour.