Benedek Sly brought his painted cart through the river gate at the hour when the lamps were lit on the Lessary Road, and he did it with a flourish that would have carried across the back of a theatre. The cart’s side was painted with tall gates and small yellow houses. Its wheels were bound in rope where a split spoke had been wrapped by a smith who had not charged for the work. Three of the players were asleep in the straw at the back, under a moth-eaten blanket. The fourth sat on the box beside Sly, dressed in a lord’s plumed hat and a cloak of grey velvet, and he was waving to the gate-warden as though the gate had been built to receive him.
“Dear friend,” Sly called down, in the voice of a man who had spent twenty years being cheered at the back of a hall. “Friend of the gate. We have come a very long road with a very bad wheel, and we have been told by a man at the causeway that there is a Hold here which counts its doors, and I have never in my life been so glad to be counted.”
