“Do bears swim?” Hans whispered.
“I don’t know,” Angela said. “The only ones I’ve read about talk and keep house. I think this one’s different.”
The bear reared on its haunches and roared.
“To the coffin,” Hans said. “Push it into the current. It’ll carry us away.”
They spun to the coffin. No use. A second bear was sitting in it. Angela darted to the bulrushes on the right and ran headlong into a third. The beasts bared their teeth.
A horn tooted from behind the bushes and a woman strode forward. She looked like a hollyhock, tall and erect atop a pair of green clogs. Red and green ruffles burst from her bosom and hips, while a mane of orange hair erupted from her head. She clapped her hands. “Naughty bambini!”
The bears looked embarrassed.
A round, mustachioed man joined the woman, followed by a dazzle of children. He wore a cape of black-and-white diamond patches over burgundy pantaloons and a yellow frock coat, topped by a red flap cap. High platform shoes sent him rocketing skyward like a balloon on stilts. The dozen children, multiple sets of twins and triplets in colorful rags, did a series of flips, somersaults, and cartwheels that climaxed in a human pyramid.
“Ciao e buongiorno!” the man boomed. He bowed with a flourish. “I am Signor Pandolini. May I present my wife, Signora Pandolini. Our children: Maria, Giuseppe, and the Etceteras Pandolini. And last but not least, the famous Pandolini Circus of Dancing Bears—Bruno, Balthazar, and Bianca.”
The bears began to fish in the river, batting trout, graylings, and chub onto the bank, where they were promptly gutted by the Pandolini children.
“You’ll dine with us?” Pandolini inquired, taming his bushy eyebrows with the dab of a forefinger.
“I’m terribly sorry, but we’re in a hurry,” Angela said.
Hans coughed. “We’d be delighted,” he corrected her. “A meal would do us good.”
“Fantastico!” Pandolini cheered. “While the love of my life prepares the feast, let me honor you with a tour of our circus.”
Hans and Angela bundled their maps and followed Pandolini through the bushes.
“Are these people crazy?” Angela whispered to Hans.
“Probably, but they’ve got food.”
“Who cares? Arnulf is after us.”
“He has to regroup from the avalanche, first. And we have to eat. We can hardly survive on dreams.”
The Pandolini home was parked on the dirt road beyond the bushes. It was a brightly painted cage on wheels with metal bars and a wooden yoke.
“The padlock on the cage door doesn’t work,” Pandolini said. “The bears let themselves out to do their business.”
“How do you pull the wagon without horses?” Hans asked.
Pandolini wiggled his eyebrows. “Who needs horses when you have bears?”
Angela peered through the bars. “Do you have other acts?”
Pandolini nearly toppled over. “Do dogs have fleas?” He leaped into the cage and swept aside a layer of straw that covered a door in the wagon floor. Beneath was a crawl space, from which he tossed up props and costumes. “We Pandolinis breathe fire, swallow swords, and perform acrobatics and magic. Not long ago, we also did commedia with marionettes.”
“Marionettes!” Angela exclaimed.
The master showman plunged into the crawl space, his burgundy butt waving in the breeze. He emerged with a basket spilling over with tangled strings, wires, and puppet limbs. “Behold!”
Angela’s face fell. “What happened to them?”
Pandolini threw his wrist to his forehead and wailed. “My bambini use them to fight each other. I plead with them, but do they listen?”
“No! They never listen!” Signora Pandolini brayed. She barged from the bushes, bracelets jangling, hands waving to the heavens.
“Never!” Tears dripped from the tips of Pandolini’s handlebar mustache. “Last week, I blink and they toss poor Arlecchino to the bears!”
“Because you blink, Arlecchino, he misses his ear!” Signora Pandolini reached between the bars and thwacked Pandolini on the nose with a spatula. “Idiota!” She turned to Hans and Angela. “We eat now.”
Angela carried the basket of marionettes to the campfire. “Perhaps I could untangle them.”
Signora Pandolini kissed her on both cheeks. “More better, you take us to your village. Introduce us to your mayor. We will perform in your town square.”
“Or in a barnyard,” Pandolini added. “All we ask is food, shelter, and a few coins.”
“Sadly, we’re not from around here,” Hans fibbed. “We’re a poor brother and sister on the road to visit a distant aunt.”
Pandolini pointed to the reeds. “With a coffin?”
“Yes,” Angela nodded. “She’s dead.”
“Are there no coffin makers in her village?”
Hans glared at Angela. “They died too, I’m afraid.”
Signora Pandolini arched her eyebrows. “Where are your parents? Are they not attending your auntie’s funeral?”
“Heavens no,” Angela improvised. “They couldn’t stand her. Nobody could. Not even us. In fact, the village plans a celebration.”
Pandolini burst out laughing. “Fantastico. Never you mind about the truth.” He winked. “I guess your secret. You are on the run. We too have been on the run. Circus. The life of circus.”
Pandolini motioned them to the little fire, where they feasted on bread and fish with the family. Afterward, the younger children ran off to play with the bears. The oldest, Giuseppe and Maria, stayed for a time, but as Hans and Angela spoke no Italian, they soon grew bored and wandered off as well.
Signor and Signora Pandolini regaled Hans and Angela with tales of the road:
“In Anatolia, Bianca did a pirouette on the high wire for the sultan,” Pandolini enthused, stripping a fillet of fish with his teeth and tossing the head into the pot of guts his wife was boiling for a soup.
“And in Bohemia,” Signora Pandolini said as she stirred the broth, “the emperor fainted when the children juggled axes.”
“While swinging by their toes on a trapeze,” Pandolini added.
Angela’s fingers flew as fast as the Pandolinis’ tongues. By the time the showman told of the time he turned a Hapsburg prince into a parrot, she’d untangled the marionettes and had the puppet Scapino dancing on a boulder.
Pandolini clapped his hands to his cheeks. “You’ve saved them! Grazie.”
“I’ve always dreamed of playing the great courts of Europe,” Angela declaimed in the voice of the string man.
Signor Pandolini tossed his cap in the air. “Bravo! Bravissimo!”
Two of the children ran up from the water, pointing and babbling. The Pandolinis jumped to their feet. Signora Pandolini put her hand to her throat. “Madre de Dio!”
“What is it?” Hans asked.
“Soldiers,” Pandolini said. “They scout the riverbank.”
Hans and Angela turned to run.
“Stay where you are!” Pandolini exclaimed with a sweep of his cape.
“But it’s us they’re after,” Hans said.
“Never fear. We shall hide you where even the fox dares not go.”
“No,” Angela protested. “We won’t put your family in danger.”
“What kind of family abandons children?” Signora Pandolini demanded.
In a flash, they spirited Hans and Angela into the crawl space of the circus wagon. Pandolini stuffed costumes after them and covered the floor doors with straw, while his wife and children put the bears in the cage above them.
A dozen soldiers burst through the reeds, as Pandolini snapped the broken padlock in place. The soldiers aimed their muskets at the Pandolinis’ heads.
“Ciao e buongiorno!” The showman beamed. “I am Signor Pandolini. May I present my wife, Signora Pandolini. Our children, Maria, Giuseppe, and the Etceteras Pandolini! Last but not least, our Circus of Dancing Bears.”
The captain eyed Pandolini with suspicion. “We’re looking for two young vagabonds.”
“Vagabondi!” Signora Pandolini gathered her children close.
“They were last seen fleeing down a mountain in a coffin,” the captain said. “A coffin like the one in the reeds by your campsite.”
“It was here when we arrived,” Pandolini said. “Perhaps they fell in the water and drowned?”
“Or perhaps they hide among you,” the captain replied. “Show us your brats. If any boy is found with the mark of an eagle on his shoulder or any girl with golden locks, they shall die at once, and the rest of you after.”
The soldiers examined the Pandolini children. Their hair was as dark as a raven; their skin as clear as olive oil. The captain glanced at the bear cage. “Do these monsters really dance?”
“Do witches fly on broomsticks?” Pandolini snapped his fingers. “Bruno! Balthazar! Bianca!” The bears rose on their hind legs and performed a bored minuet.
“What other acts do you have?”
“We juggle, tumble, and swallow swords,” Pandolini said proudly. “We also perform with marionettes!”
“Hmm. The archduke loves puppets,” the captain said. “Within days, he’ll be at the palace, in need of amusement. Entertain him and you shall be rewarded.”
The Pandolinis exchanged glances.
“We are honored,” Pandolini said. “Yet another time, perhaps. At the moment, we’re headed to Poland.”
The soldiers cocked their muskets.
“At the moment,” the captain said, “you’re headed to the palace.”