Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

Before dawn, but not before cockcrow, she sets me on my way towards Banbury but I'm hardly more than a hundred yards out of the village when running feet make me turn and Alan falls in beside me without a word, his clay drum on his back and a cloak over his leather jerkin and apron.

Ten yards, and it happens again, through the mist and over the sparkling frost comes David – cloaked, too, and no doubt with his flute about him. He gives Alan a look that lacks friendliness and falls in on the other side, also without a word.

This will not do. Both seek to own me and that I will not have. I whisper a prayer to Parvati and in ten minutes or so it is answered. We are climbing a hill now and once we're over the crest the village will be gone, and nothing will induce them to return. As subtly as I can I reduce the length of my steps. I even pant a little and put my hand on a branch as if I need to rest. And then, at last, they come. First a little girl in a woollen dress, her hair all loose, but she is overtaken by a boy who scampers past her and reaches us first.

"Uncle Alan," he cries, 'Grandpa Bert has broke the chain on his harrow and none of us will get our fields broken up for sowing if you don't come now."

Then the little girl is at my side. 'Uncle David, if you don't come now. Uncle Alan will never get his forge up to heat "cause the bellows has a hole in it."

I look at them both, first Alan then David.

'So. You are the village smith. And you are the bellows mender. A long goodbye to both of you.'

And humming a little hymn to the goddess I pass on my way over the crest of the hill and down the other sale.

In Banbury marketplace there is a fair for carnival. An ox is being roasted whole, which, of course, disgusts me, but there is plenty to please the senses too: apples on sticks, dipped in honey and roasted, cubed pork or lamb sizzling on skewers over gridirons, pastry cakes filled with raisins, a local treat, hot spiced wine, nick-nacks and gew-gaws known as fairings are all for sale. And there are sideshows too: jugglers, fire-eaters, tightrope walkers. There are contests of strength, and contests which involve rolling big wooden balls down a long plank to knock over nine club-shaped skittles. And, above all, there is a carnival procession led by a girl of lovely beauty riding on a white horse. She has pale white skin and long yellow hair, and she is wearing a green dress. She has rings on her fingers and bells on her toes and she is followed by a band with the usual pipes, bagpipes and drums. Do the people of Banbury know who she really is, this Carnival Queen? Maybe, but they'll only whisper it.

Best of all. well, best after Her Ladyship, there's a shadow puppet theatre, best because it reminds me of home where such entertainments are common. There's a two-wheeled cart with a very old horse still between the shafts, munching in a nosebag. The tail-gate has been dropped and there's a white cotton or silk screen stretched in a frame just behind it. Then there's a gap in the planks of the door and up through it. from underneath, and hidden by drapes that brush the cobbles, the puppeteers thrust the two-dimensional dolls and manipulate their limbs and heads in front of a tented bank of oil-lamps and candles. None of it works too well at midday when I arrive, but later as the sky fills with purple clouds and the sun falls behind the big new church and a few flakes of snow drift across the marketplace, it looks better, a little cave of light and pleasure.

There is a notice painted in red and yellow lettering on a semi-circle of wood above the screen: Geoff Reeve and Family, Shadow Puppets for your Edification and Education, as seen by the Crowned Heads of Europe.

They are enacting a miracle performed by the Mother of God on the pilgrims' road to Santiago. My initial fascination wears off and I wander through the crowd, sampling some honeyed barley-cakes, which I filch. I hear a cheer from the crowd round the shadow puppets and wander back.

There's another notice up now as well as the first: it reads 'The Last Inglysshe King'. This looks more interesting. I take my place in the crowd next to a peasant who is eating roasted barley, puffed up by a brazier's heat.

A warrior, clearly the hero because he is taller than all the other characters, swears an oath of fealty to a duke. The crowd boos. He has been tricked into it, they shout. An old king with a crown and a beard dies in his bed. The Warrior Hero takes his crown and the crowd cheers. The Warrior Hero fights a battle against two men in winged helmets and defeats them. The crowd cheers again. Ships rock and sway across the screen. The Duke gets out of one. The crowd boos. A second battle takes place. It lasts a long time. Then an arrow hits the Warrior Hero in the eye and the Duke wades in with his sword, kills him and takes his crown. The crowd boo again, but more soberly. Some turn away and I see that one or two look sad indeed.

The show ends with a comedy. It involves an old man with a young wife who climbs a pear tree where she is fucked by a young man. There's more to this than meets the eye. The old man is winter, the pear tree is the tree of love, of the goddess, the young man is spring and the wife is the earth, a good choice for a festival on the cusp of winter and spring. Considering the whole show has been no more than a matter of shadows on a screen it has been well done, and fulfilled the promise of instruction combined with pleasure.

I am about to leave when I hear an irritated sigh from behind me and a smallish man, with thinning grey hair, spectacles and a pleasing, open face, pushes between us, holding a collecting box in one hand and a walking-stick with a crook for a handle in the other. 'Pennies for the puppets,' he says, and my peasant with the inflated barley grain pushes off fast. I put a penny in the box. I picked it, and four more like it, from his purse during the show.

'Generous,' says the new arrival. 'A farthing would have been ample.'

'You asked for a penny.'

'A manner of speaking.' he takes me by the elbow and looks over his shoulder. 'I take it from the way you speak and the darkness of your skin that you are a stranger to these parts, possibly even from some further shore?'

I nod my concurrence.

By now the crowd is drifting away from us. Geoff Reeve, for that is clearly who he is, casts a jaundiced eye over the receding backs.

'I won't get any more out of this lot. Perhaps you'd care for a jar with me?' He ponders a moment. 'At the White Horse, perhaps?'

He shakes his collecting box and I follow him towards his cart and stage. From behind he has a faintly ecclesiastical look: a bald patch at the back of his head suggests the tonsure, his roped robe a monk's habit. Perhaps he was once in minor orders: certainly his erudition and manner are, I have discovered, rare in Ingerlond outside the Church.

'Jenny?' he calls. 'Chap here, awfully nice fellow, but a Johnny foreigner, so I'm taking him over to the White Horse for a pint. Join us if you've a mind to.'

A handsome woman, younger than him and with blonde hair, who is loading small cushions that had been put out for children in front of the screen into the back of the cart, turns and smiles at me.

'How very nice to meet you,' she says. 'I'll be with you directly.'

Geoff Reeve shakes some coins out of his collecting box, retains a couple of pennies, and gives the rest to Jenny; then he takes my elbow again and we walk over the cobbled square, past the cross to a tavern called the White Horse, on the side opposite the Fine Lady.

He is known in the tavern. 'Master Reeve, what can I get you?' A cheery girl has singled him out, and is ready to serve him ahead of customers who have been trying to get her attention.