“You must have set up Tessis by yourself, then,” said Pedder Makewell. “Look at the size of our Finn!”

“It would be a more telling jest, Master Makewell,” Teodoros replied a touch primly, “if your own greatly swollen sack of guts were not falling over your belt. As it is, the nightsoil digger is suggesting that the saltpeter man stinks.”

Briony did not know why she found that so funny, but she did; she nearly fell over laughing despite (or perhaps because of ) Estir Makewell’s sour look. She and Makewell’s sister were shoveling sand into the barrels to make them stronger supports under the middle of the stage. Estir still did not really like the person she thought of as “Tim”—she would never like adding another hungry mouth to the troop, which reduced the income of the shareholdings—but she had softened toward Briony a bit.

“Leave it to a child,” said Estir, rolling her eyes, “to find such a jest so laughable.” She scowled at the others. “And you men are just as bad. You would think you were all still babies, soiling your smallclothes, to see you get such pleasure out of dribble, fart, and ordure.”

This started Briony laughing all over again—it was the same thing her prim and squeamish brother Barrick had often said about her, although her twin had obviously never blamed it on her being a child.

It was cold out and her hands were chapped and aching already from the rough handle on the shovel, but Briony felt oddly content. She was almost happy, she realized—for the first time in too long to remember: the miseries that dogged her thoughts were not by any means gone, but for the moment she could live with them, as if she and they were old enemies grown too weary to contend.

The men brought out the pieces of the stage and joined them together in one large rectangle, then set it on top of the barrels and lashed the whole thing together. Briony herself, as one of the lightest, was sent to stand on top of it to test its resilience. When she had bounced up and down on it vigorously enough to assure everyone, they continued preparing the rest of their makeshift theater. The smaller of the two wagons was rolled into place at the back of the stage where it would serve as a tiring-room for entrances, exits, and quick changes, as well as a wall on which to hang painted backdrops. They lifted up the hinged top of the wagon, folding it upward so that it could serve as a kind of wall or tower-top from which actors could speak their lines or, as gods, meddle in the lives of callow mortals from on high. Briony could see the persimmon-colored sunlight of fading afternoon on the uppermost peaks of the mountains southeast of Tessis and wondered if the gods were truly up there as she had been taught, watching her and all the other petty mortals.