She walked calmly, barefoot, attired in something that only after a moment revealed itself to be a surplice, a genuine liturgical robe. A servant offered a hand to help her climb onto the table. She stood motionless for a time, immersing herself in the rhythm of the drum. Then she lifted the surplice. A little above her knees. And then higher. She swayed gently and turned all around, as ethereal as a scantily clad shepherdess. Manfred of Salm yelled enthusiastically and clapped his hands, but fell silent on noticing that the others were utterly absorbed by the spectacle.

Marketa didn’t even react. Each gesture, movement, glance, twitch of her face and unnatural smile said the same thing: I’m utterly alone here. I’m alone, alone, isolated and far from you. From you and from everything you represent. I’m in a completely different world.

Et in Arcadia ego, thought Reynevan. Et in Arcadia ego.

The drumbeats quickened, but the girl didn’t adapt to the rhythm. On the contrary, her movements were awkward. Ponderous, sluggish. Enticing and hypnotic. And the edge of the surplice she was lifting crept ever higher, to halfway up her thighs, higher, higher, finally and eventually revealing what they had all been waiting for, at the sight of which they reacted with involuntary grimaces, grunts, groans, puffs and loud swallowing.

The drum beat loud and then stopped. Marketa slowly raised the surplice. And then quickly pulled it up over her head. Freckles dotted her arms and shoulders, covering her neck and breasts in a delicate pattern. There were none lower down. The drum banged at a quicker rhythm and the girl began to pirouette and sway, like a Bacchante, like Salome. Now they saw that freckles also covered her back and nape. Her shock of hair undulated like the Red Sea just before Moses commanded it to part before him. The drum boomed loudly and Marketa froze in a pose as lascivious as it was unnatural. Among the spectators, Manfred clapped again, Rohač’s captain yelled, Amadej Baťa cried out and slapped his thighs. Huncleder cackled. Berengar Tauler began to applaud.

But that wasn’t the end of the performance.

The girl knelt and cupped her breasts, squeezing and displaying them to the audience, swaying and writhing like a snake all the while. And smiled. But it wasn’t a smile. It was a spastic contraction, a spasmus musculi faciei.

At a signal from the drum, Marketa lithely and sinuously moved from kneeling to a sitting position. The drum began to beat out a frantic, staccato rhythm and the girl writhed like a snake again. Finally, she stopped moving, tossing her head backwards and spreading her legs wide. So wide that no detail escaped the spectators. Nor any details of the details.

The display went on for some time.