The Lady of Misrule by Suzannah Dunn Page A

ready to give of himself, and there was something close to comical about him – the ale-ruddied cheeks and cowslick hair, the popped buttons – but he was definitely in on the joke, which only made it funnier.
    â€˜Hello, Lizzie,’ he said, and that too was funny, to have a greeting voiced as if we were anywhere other than passing each other, flushed and breathless, in a dance. No one ever greeted anyone during a dance; everyone just danced. And what a funny pair we made, too: the big man and the scrap that was me. But a proper pair in that hallful of fair-weather friends, because we’d known each other for my whole life and for a moment, just one moment, as he took my hand, I felt that no one else would ever know me so well. But it was only a moment, gone in a flash and if nothing more had happened later then I’d never have remembered it, I’d have danced on down that line, partner after partner, with Harry long gone as he should’ve been.
    A little later, the music stopped and that year’s lord of misrule came running on to the dais to direct the festivities. Iknew the face – he was one of our stablelads – but the face wasn’t what drew the eye. Skipping on to that little stage to cat-calls from the audience who’d voted him there, he was preceded by an absurdly swollen codpiece which spoke of high jinks behind the scenes: a host of stablelads having had a hand, as it were, in its creation.
    Their handiwork had been slapdash, though, and now it was skewiff, the stuffing slipped, not that our puny stablelad seemed bothered. He was keen to display his appendage with swirls of an over-sized cloak which would’ve been loaned by someone twice his size.
    With a particularly vicious swirl, he regaled us: ‘Oh, you lover-ly lot.’ A snarl, but scamp-eyed in the delivery and I recalled him as meek and mild-mannered at the stables, much more so than the other lads, which was probably why they’d voted him up there. The gleam in his eye said he wouldn’t disappoint them: if he really did have to don an outsize codpiece and whip up a crowd, then he’d not be doing it by halves. ‘You lover-ly lot down there.’ The dais elevated him all of a hand’s breadth above us, the advantage of which was lost by his diminutive stature. ‘Call that dancing, do you?’ He was deriding us as he was supposed to do: we dancers who’d halted dutifully to become his audience. ‘All that lover-ly little neat-stepping of yours,’ and he took a couple of niggardly, prancing steps which had the codpiece bouncing horribly and of course we all laughed. ‘Well, you know what?’ He stood tall, as much as he could. ‘Life’s been too kind to you.’ At this, the laughter turned slightly guarded, although the dealwas that we should give ourselves over for goading, that we should lay ourselves open to it, and anyway there was safety for us in numbers. I hoped those who’d volunteered him had his interests at heart, because I saw now that he was a little unsteady on his feet; I hoped he knew his limits. ‘You don’t neeeed to enjoy yourselves, do you.’ He lunged accusingly and the crowd, as one, drew back, but then he was swirling again, working himself up to being a spectacle for us, and letting us off the hook. ‘Because every day’s a party, for you, isn’t it. Not just for you…’ he seemed unsure how to name us, ‘finer people,’ said, though, with no detectable rancour, ‘but all of you,’ he crooned it to the roof before snatching it down into a playful sneer, ‘with your oh-so-lover-ly indoor lives.’ A flamboyant swirl of the cloak almost unbalanced him. ‘But you know what? You wanna be outside with the real men.’ His relish of the word ‘real’ garnered him a roar of approval: he was playing to those friends of his, now, and specifically addressed them: