The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice by Noah Gordon

nimble fingers and a clean manner of work, and must hide behind a patter, using exotic words to adorn your actions.
    “The final rule is by far the most important. You must have devices, gestures of the body, and other diversions that will cause the spectators to
look anywhere but at what you are truly doing.”
    The finest diversion they had was one another, Barber said, and used the ribbon trick to demonstrate. “For this I need ribbons of blue, red, black, yellow, green, and brown. At the end of every yard I tie a slip knot, and then I roll the knotted ribbon tightly, making small coils that are distributed throughout my clothing. The same color is always kept in the same pocket.
    “‘Who would like a ribbon?’ I ask.
    “‘Oh, I, sirrah! A blue ribbon, two yards in length.’ They seldom ask for longer. They do not use ribbon to tether the cow.
    “I appear to forget the request, going on to other matters. Then
you
create a bit of flash, perhaps by juggling. While you have their eyes I go to this left tunic pocket, where blue is always kept. I appear to cover a cough with my hand, and the coil of ribbon is in my mouth. In a moment, when their attention again is on me, I discover the ribbon’s end between my lipsand pull it, bit by bit. When the first knot reaches my teeth, it slips. When the second knot arrives I know I am at two yards, and I cut the ribbon and present it.”
    Rob was delighted to learn the trick yet let down by the unlovely manipulation, feeling cheated of the magic.
    Barber continued to disillusion him. Soon, if he wasn’t yet passing fine as a magician, he did yeoman’s work as a magician’s helper. He learned little dances, hymns and songs, jokes and stories he didn’t understand. Finally, he magpied the speeches that went with the selling of the Universal Specific. Barber declared him a swift learner. Well before his boy thought it possible, the barber-surgeon declared that he was ready.
    They left on a foggy April morning and made their way through the Blackdown Hills for two days in a light spring rain. On the third afternoon, under a sky turned clear and new, they reached the village of Bridgeton. Barber halted the horse by the bridge that gave the place its name and appraised him. “Are you all set, then?”
    He wasn’t certain, but nodded.
    “There’s a good chap. It’s not much of a town. Whoremongers and trulls, a busy public house, and a good many customers who come from far and wide to get at both. So anything’s allowed, eh?”
    Rob had no idea what that meant, but he nodded again. Incitatus responded to the reins and pulled them across the bridge at a promenade trot. At first it was as it had been before. The horse pranced and Rob pounded the drum as they paraded the main street. He set up the bank on the village square and carried three oak-splint baskets of the Specific onto it.
    But this time, when the entertainment began he bounded onto the bank with Barber.
    “Good day and good morrow,” Barber said. They both began to juggle two balls. “We’re comforted to be in Bridgeton.”
    Simultaneously each took a third ball from his pocket, then a fourth and a fifth. Rob’s were red, Barber’s blue; they flowed up from their hands in the center and cascaded down on the outside like water in two fountains. Their hands moving only inches, they made the wooden balls dance.
    Eventually they turned and faced each other on opposite sides of the bank as they juggled. Without missing a beat, Rob sent a ball to Barber and caught a blue one that had been thrown to him. First he sent every third ball to Barber and received every third ball in return. Then every other ball, a steady two-way stream of red and blue missiles. After an almost imperceptible nod from Barber, every time a ball reached Rob’s right hand he sent it hard and fast, retrieving as deftly as he threw.
    The applause was the loudest and best sound he’d ever heard.
    Following the finish he took ten of the twelve