At some point during the years of repairing the ‘livestock’ of other estates, the ichors of the musicians had been removed and never replaced. Without them, they could neither move nor play a single note.
In the little time that remained before the important guest’s arrival, Master Edwin and the apprentices tried to refill the empty phials. Every cow had been rounded up and their dismantled pieces lay in corners alongside overturned or half-open sheep. Heads of all sizes stared up from the floor, the glass lenses of their eyes gazing sightlessly at the three boys feverishly topping up the musician’s vessels with scavenged cordials. But there was still not quite enough of the amber for the recorder player.
Only a few drops more were needed and so Adam o’the Cogs had been sent out to the piggery to fetch in Old Temperance. The great sow had yellow bile in abundance.
“Where is that clotpole of a boy?” Master Edwin called again. “Hum hum, how long does it take to haul the old pig in here?” Even as he spoke Adam came running in with the piglet under his arm.
“I couldn’t get Old Temperance out of the sty,” he explained hurriedly. “So I brought Suet instead; there ought to be just enough in him.”
Master Edwin waved a podgy hand at the main workbench. “Set it down and hopen it up,” he instructed. “Hardly any time left – we won’t have a chance to rehearse these gleemen.”
Taking the piglet from under his arm, Adam placed it upon the wide workbench. The wooden creature gave a shrill squeal and went scooting from the boy’s grasp. Through a heap of small brass wheels and miniature pulleys it bolted, sending them rolling to the floor. Over a sheep’s hind leg the piglet leaped, darting this way and that as it hunted for an escape.
“Catch it!” Master Edwin roared.
Henry Wattle, a curly-haired apprentice who was the same age as Adam, could not help laughing as the small creature scudded across the bench. Suet looked so comical, dodging and swerving on its small trotters, that Henry was of no assistance at all. Still squealing, the piglet darted to the end of the workbench where the recorder player sat awaiting the remaining drops of amber ichor.
Master Edwin’s stout arms came reaching across to grab it but Suet was too nimble. Nipping aside, it ran straight into the musician’s velvet-covered back.
A high squawk sounded as the piglet’s nose squashed flat. To everyone’s dismay, the figure was knocked from the bench and went lurching to the ground.
“Save it!” Master Edwin cried.
Henry Wattle, who had not stopped laughing, slithered across just in time to break the mechanical’s fall.
Pushing its nose out again, Suet hopped a brief victory jig. Then it jumped from the bench, landed upon the musician’s back, sprang on to Henry’s astonished head and leaped the remaining distance to the floor.
With a triumphant shake of its stiff, leathery ears, the piglet rocketed for the stable door. Haring under Adam’s legs it set off, pelting between the disassembled sheep and cattle which lay between it and freedom. But, even as the yard came into view, a pair of strong hands seized its stumpy body and Suet was plucked from the ground.
Jack Flye lifted the small creature high into the air until it was level with his own lean face and stared into the tiny eyeholes cut into the animal’s carved head.
“Now then,” he said firmly, “we’ll have no more of that. You can go back to Old Temperance tomorrow.”
Before Suet could begin to squeak a protest, it was whirled around and the oldest of the apprentices pressed the Wutton crest which was chiselled upon its back. In that instant the piglet’s struggles ceased, the small trotters juddered to a stop and dangled limply from their axles as the concertina snout extended to its full length with a sad whine of escaping air.
“Thank you, Jack,” Master Edwin sighed, mopping his forehead with his cuff. “Hum hum, take hout the cordial and we can lug the gleemen across to the manor house.”
Suspending the inert piglet from a wire by the hook of its tail, Jack unfastened the clip that held the creature together and the wooden keg of its body swung in half. Deftly, the apprentice reached inside and removed a small glass phial which he carried to where Adam was helping Henry lift the fallen musician back on to the bench. Master Edwin fanned his glowing face with his hat while overseeing this final adjustment.
At seventeen years of age, Jack Flye was the most experienced of his apprentices. He was a serious young man, determined in his ambition to possess his own workshop one day. Adam and Henry both looked up to him; they watched in respectful silence as the youth brushed the dark hair from his eyes and measured several drops of Suet’s ichor into a larger glass vessel already swilling with yellow bile.
“There,” he breathed, placing the second phial into the mannequin’s polished brass head. “The level is amended, the amber cordial is in perfect accord with the red. This fellow is ready to toot until his bellows bust.”
Nodding in satisfaction, Master Dritchly closed the musician’s face and fastened it shut.
“Well done, lads,” he said, a great grin splitting his own features. “I never thought has how we’d do it – I never did, most honest I never. Hum hum.”
Jack sucked his teeth thoughtfully as he gazed at the renovated mechanicals. Arrayed in their repaired finery, the figures looked quite presentable. The recorder player was dressed in a peascod paunch doublet of popinjay green, embellished with gold brocade with matching slops. Not an inch of the internal frame could be seen, and that was just as well for one of the arms was undoubtedly a modified cow’s leg with chicken-claw fingers. Hidden from view by sleeve and glove, nobody would be able to guess – especially at a distance and in candlelight, which was the plan.
The lutanist was dressed in much the same manner, except that the velvet was Coventry blue, pinked with silver tinsel. Yet the colours had faded from both costumes, the trimmings were tarnished and, despite Mistress Dritchly’s best efforts, she had been unable to eradicate the worst patches of mildew.
“Let’s just hope they’ll play in tune after all these years,” Jack murmured.
“Hum hum, may God and the heavenly spheres permit it,” Master Edwin said, “for there’s no time to test them.”
Bidding Henry and Adam to follow them with the actual instruments, Master Edwin and Jack hoisted the musicians over their shoulders and marched from the workshop.
Cog Adam glanced around at the wreckage of animals and birds that littered the stables. “Look at the state of this mess. It’ll take three days at least to put everything back the way it was,” he muttered. “We won’t be able to find half of what’s needed, there’ll be bits missing and most of the sheep will end up limping.”
Henry Wattle picked up the detached head of a tin goose and blew through its neck as though it were a trumpet. The head wagged and a loud “HONK” blasted throughout the workshop. “Duck!” he shouted, throwing it at Adam and cackling at the bad joke.
Adam scowled at him, then clambered up to the hay loft where the instruments had been stored. He reappeared a moment later carrying a large recorder and a very dusty lute.
“One of the strings is broken,” he said, passing the unusual, bowl-shaped object to Henry. “Do you think it matters? Will anyone notice?”
The boy shook his curly head and snorted rather like Old Temperance. “Listen, Coggy,” he laughed, “the less strings there are the better. Less racket, see? Do you really think them