It’s a fair-sized crowd. Among them I notice three stranger men. I don’t know how exactly I can tell they’re strangers. Something about their clothes or the look on their faces says they’re not from here. Two of them carry what look like long lutes, as if they’re musicians. Before I can think on it more, one of the newsboys dances out in front of the crowd and announces a countess has been arrested for plotting against Queen Bethany. Behind him, the other boys act it out. One’s made up like the countess, lead paint rubbed into his cheeks to make them white like highborn ladies’. Another plays a guard.

‘Of what am I accused?’ cries the countess.

‘Sending spies to murder Queen Bethany and put her Eucharistian cousin on the throne instead,’ answers the guard.

‘Oh, Maker mine!’ says the countess. She pulls out a string of prayer beads and begins to pray. It’s a very daring bit of playacting, since prayer beads are from the old Eucharistian faith and were outlawed when Bethany became queen. But it’s also clever, I think, because it says the countess is Eucharistian without saying it aloud. Every folk knows the Eucharistians want Bethany dead and her Eucharistian cousin on the throne, or at least for Queen Bethany to name her cousin as her heir since she has no children of her own.

One of the pantoboys with a fine voice begins a song:

The Dame of Pikes,

Brings her spies

To take our ace of hearts.

But her vile knaves

Will never trump

With their veiled arts.

With clubs and tiles,

We’ll seek these spies

And chop them into parts.

On their coffins

Will be et beefsteak,

As well as cock brain tarts

The song sounds like it’s about playing cards, but I think the dame of pikes is meant to be the countess and the ace of hearts Queen Bethany. Beefsteak is et for treason and cock brain tart must be for spying, though I’m not sure. It gives me shivers to think there might be spies hidden in town. I look for the three stranger musicians I saw in the crowd, but they’ve gone.

The panto ends with the guard pushing the countess off as if towards the dungeon under Queen Bethany’s castle. Folk clap, but there’s a mutter here and there too. Queen Bethany’s hard as bone with rivals. They don’t live long.

‘Tempered choleric, like a man,’ I hear a folk say.

‘Unnatural,’ inkles another.