CHAPTER TEN
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Oh, here is love, and here is truth,
And here is food for joyous laughter. . . .
—Ibid, Act II
I was in the square the following afternoon—trying not to notice how the gleaming blade of a newly crafted sword hanging in the open doorway at the blacksmith’s shop looked just like Corbin’s eyes when he was kissing me—when an odd figure skulked into view. The man was dressed in a ragged collection of ill-fitting garments: yellow striped knickers, rags strapped to his feet in lieu of shoes, and a long, knee-length red jacket tied around the waist by a dingy white sash. But it was the battered green tricorn hat, the eye patch, and what looked like a poorly stuffed green and blue parrot attached to the shoulder that caused pretty much everyone in the square to stop talkin
