The man and the boy stood before me in their sodden, dirtied garments. Their faces were smeared with rotten foodstuffs, their hair caked with ash. The boy had begun to shiver. My decision would decide the course of their lives.

'If it please you, my lord,' the boy said, '- We are jesters.'

His companion glanced reprovingly at him for daring to speak to me, but the boy continued undaunted.

'This is how we entertain our masters in our homeland,' he said. He spoke respectfully. 'There is nothing - nothing at all - we are not prepared to do.'

Behind their reddened, streaming eyes, I could glimpse their desperation, and I believed them.

Once a year, during the season when the Emperor occupied his fortress palace in the capital of his great domain, we would select newcomers to join the privileged band of entertainers at the court. The Emperor craved novelty, and I strove to meet his demand. To this end we permitted any commoner to try their fortune and present their talents to us. General proclamations were made throughout the city, and beyond its walls heralds conveyed news of this opportunity, if not to the very limits of the empire then at least to the settled towns of the home provinces within one hundred leagues.

Many youths - even those well-born - would aspire to perform before The Emperor. In the weeks before the given time, prospective musicians, dancers, acrobats, wrestlers, poets, strong-men, tumblers, and actors descended on the city, each propelled by hope and ambition. Many would have walked for weeks - even months - from the furthest reaches of The Emperor's vast realm. And in the days of which I speak his lands were all but boundless, extending from the white-tipped mountains of the black eagle, to the ice-bound inland sea, to the hot sands of the shifting desert, and to the shore of the ocean without end.

Three days were set aside for assessing these aspiring performers. By dawn on the first day a long file of applicants hugged the stone revetments, policed by the palace guards. One by one they would be admitted beneath the portcullis and led through to an empty granary in one of the inner courtyards, there to give the demonstration which might transmogrify their lives.

As Lord Chamberlain, it did not fall to me to oversee the preliminaries of these proceedings. To my deputies I assigned the wearisome business of sorting the promising from the dismal, and dismissing back to obscurity the great majority who failed to make the mark. My officers would prepare for me an annotated list of the candidates who had impressed them, and from these I would select a few to be summoned to repeat their pieces, so that on the third day I could watch and judge in person.

'Pardon me, my lord,' the boy had continued, '- but do not be alarmed. My uncle and I shall now clear away all the materials you see before you here.'

His instinct to reassure me on this point was both canny and justified. The demonstration they had just given had been notably well received by those adjudicating. Even my deputies, though long since seasoned to displays of the rarest talents, had not been able to stifle their simple laughter at the spectacle; and still now - minutes since the performance had concluded - our junior scribes (whose function was to keep the lists) were incapable of suppressing grins.

However, it was difficult not to be aghast at the chaotic disarray the pair had created during their short performance, notwithstanding that my officers had warned me of its likelihood. The rough wooden floor all around the two of them was dirty with matted straw, rotting peelings, and wet sawdust, in the same fashion that their own breathless bodies were now begrimed. The gruel that soaked their short tunics and stung their eyes also slewed in white puddles across this midden.

'We travel with brooms and shovels and a pan, sir,' the boy explained.

I left it to my First Deputy to respond to this.

'Then you had better start at once,' he said. 'We have other people to see here this morning'.

He endeavoured to sound severe, but there was yet a tremor of laughter in his voice. I had served in my office for years enough to be assured that my expression revealed nothing.

In an instant the boy and the man set about the task of clearing the debris, piling up a mound of it onto a hide of leather, which they bundled onto a small handcart. They wiped stray spillages away with a rag. It was almost as compelling to observe this business as their principal performance had been, for they executed it with much swift skill, and in harmonious unity, using the very tools - the broom and the shovel - which only minutes earlier during their play-acting the man had deployed to rain seemingly fearsome blows about the head, shoulders, and buttocks of his disobliging young partner. I interrupted them.

'You have performed this before?'

'Yes, sir.' Still it was only the boy who spoke. 'Many times these past two years, sometimes in grand halls.'

He named the court of a minor princeling of one of the eastern provinces. The boy's accent was of those parts. He wasn't speaking his mother-tongue.

'What age are you?'

'Sixteen years, my lord,' the boy said brightly. 'My uncle though is almost twice this.'

I walked away to confer with my deputies. None of us, we agreed, had seen a performance like it. It had been a most singular display, ripely comic, and original in its entirety.

'A full bowl of pottage,' my first deputy, laughing again at the memory, said in amazement, '- just up-ended over the poor boy's head - and with no thought given as to how he might get clean again.'

My third deputy, whispering, recounted with what ingenuity - in the short time he had been within the palace walls - the boy had apparently managed to acquire the slops and waste with which he and his partner had just now mired each other, deploying guileless charm to sidestep officious guards and reach the steaming kitchens, there to persuade hard-pressed cooks to let him rummage through the bins and drains.

I kept my counsel. I had been much impressed by the pair's performance - by their dexterity, by the varied and inventive ways during their mock-battle they had executed tumbles, sometimes from as high as their shoulder; in particular the boy, who, more than once, landed with full force from such a height entirely on his back, without - it seemed - sustaining injury, and in that I also commended his skill for contriving to fall squarely upon the spot where a straw-bale was concealed beneath the leather hide they'd spread.

The Emperor, I was certain, would enjoy this mime of theirs. He would savour the boy's sweet looks, still at a balance between pugnacity and girlishness, and admire the taut strength of his yet-developing frame. Knowing The Emperor's unabashed relish for scenes of violence (his wrestlers and pankration fighters suffered cruelly to keep him entertained) I imagined that the first pass of this pair's duel, in which the boy had brutally slapped a fistful of oozing mulch into his uncle's face, would please our sovereign mightily.

Other features, too, I thought, would pique The Emperor's interest: that they wore no breeches beneath their shortened tunics and so revealed the sinews of their legs, with the consequence that at the moment the boy took one of his tumbles onto the hide of leather - which by then was awash in sour goat's milk - he lay back momentarily, quite insouciant that his abbreviated tunic had ridden up to reveal his soaking loincloth. I was also confident that the crescendo of their performance would appeal to The Emperor. This was when the exasperated man meted punishment to the madcap boy by taking him over his knee, flipping up the youth's tunic, and spanking him long, hard, and in earnest on his wet and naked buttocks.

'What are their names?' I asked my second deputy.

'The boy is called Arshan, sir. His uncle is Javeed.'

'Command them to remain. Arrange a billet for them.'

'Yes, my lord.'

I left the scene. There would be opportunities later to probe the minor mysteries of their performance: by what means the pair now proposed to wash themselves clean; whether they carried a second and dry set of clothing into which they might re-attire (extraordinary though it would be for any commoner to possess any such), and even if this were the case, how they would launder the garments they had so badly dirtied. What was in no doubt was their devotion to their task - demonstrated by their willingness to endure becoming wet, cold, and soiled with putrid waste, as well as (in the boy's case) submitting to a beating that left wheals upon his flesh - simply to amuse their audience. If they were presented at an opportune moment, The Emperor would surely delight in them.

One thing, though, concerned me. The victuals that they threw at one another should not be too malodorous, or the court would object. I would instruct them not to use fish guts henceforward.



My immediate decision was that it would be best to postpone our new-found jesters' debut before The Emperor - better that they burnish their performance through careful work and repetition so that the peak of their readiness might align with the moment of The Emperor's greatest need for novelty. By this stratagem, I reasoned, we could all prosper. Until such a time, I instructed that the pair should play out their scene in its entirety and in every detail not less than once each day until they had acquired still greater fluency. I charged a young deputy of mine named Hedayat - scarcely older than this boy Arshan, but fiercely sharp of mind - to oversee this work and report its progress to me.

To this purpose the three of them met in an ante-chamber to an outbuilding beside one of the timber stores. It had become disused, and - being dry and well-lit - was a convenient location for their business, but like so many of the service chambers that led like warrens from behind the grandeur of the state rooms, it did not afford privacy. Although the outer door could be secured, there was a passageway on the upper level which intruded in the manner of a gallery. Ostlers took this way to reach a hay-loft, so it could not be closed off, and when word got round each time that the pair were about to play again, faces would soon appear here - a throng of porters, pages, and footmen, all absent from their duties - craning over the balustrade to glimpse the action and guffaw at the frenzied scene. In a place as populace, heady, and prone to rumour as the Imperial Court, secrecy was as arduous to maintain as shielding a single taper in a gale, and soon I was being pestered with queries about my new-found performers and their strange charade, even by noblemen and high-ranking soldiers.

'My Lord Chancellor, is it true you are secreting some unusual buffoons? I am told that to engender laughter they abase themselves quite abjectly. People are saying this is most amusing. When shall you be presenting them to the court?'

I'd reply to the effect that I would not wish to dishonour The Emperor by producing a dish that had not fully ripened, but that these jesters were now close to preparedness, and would perform before one and all shortly.

Winter had set in, and it was uncommonly cold. Hedayat reported that the man and the boy were suffering much with the bathing that necessarily followed their daily practice, for the only means possible to clean themselves was at the well in the outdoor yard, and here the water was like ice to the touch, yet they had to upturn pails of it over their nearly naked bodies to sluice away the mire. The man had contracted a fever, and for three days was unable to work. I decreed that in future the water should be warmed, and that the pair might wash indoors. I commissioned the household coopers to furnish a tub from cedar for them, and I signed the order for the firewood personally. The next time I entered their practice room they prostrated themselves in gratitude.

On this occasion I stayed to watch their rehearsal. Hedayat had obviously worked them hard. They were as amusing as they had been previously, but now were all the more accomplished sharper, quicker - and, if anything, showing even greater disregard for their dignity or comfort. The time for them to play before The Emperor was imminent.

The festival of the solstice was upon us. For three entire weeks during the longest nights of the winter the palace was given over to feasting and revelry: a holiday of bounteous indulgence for the nobles and army seniors at the court, but a prolonged period of relentless toil for those of us in office. Cooks battled at their hellish spits and ovens to produce unending dishes; cellarmen hauled tuns of wine up from the vaults; servants scuttled the passageways without rest, lugging palliasses, logs, and fresh candles to the private chambers; while I and my deputies remained on duty throughout the nightly feasts, seeking to gauge our Emperor's mood and supply him with the very dancers or musicians or jugglers he desired before he had as so much as expressed a wish for them. It could be an effort to maintain his pleasure over the course of those long hours, deciding which of the stable of entertainers would best suit the moment, and have them costumed and waiting in an ante-chamber, ready to be brought in to the Great Hall to give their performances.

By the twelfth night The Emperor was sated. Nothing seemed to delight or amuse him. He slumped on his couch after supper, ignoring the tit-bit dishes of oranges, split pomegranates, and honey that were set upon the low table to his front; scarcely bothering to respond to the gambits of the Prince of the southern marshes - the most senior guest and the one at his side - whose lands had recently been ceded.

Unlike many past occasions, The Emperor was not even inclined to watch Farhoud, the strong-man, his erstwhile favourite, let alone applaud him. The great spread of the huge man's rippling back and the heft of his upper arms was as an impressive a sight as it had formerly been; his oiled skin, glistening in the unsteady gold light of the braziers, and his near-nakedness (for he wore nothing more than a belt of leather at his waist from which was slung a strip of white cloth that formed a tight bundle at his loins) rendered him god-like; and yet his customary feats - holding a whole side of ox above his head, and lifting two grown men that were suspended from a yoke around his neck - failed to arouse The Emperor's interest. At the conclusion of his exhibition the luckless man, sweating from his exertions, bowed and backed out of the performing space to blank indifference from the crowd that thronged the hall.

The hour was late - we were closer now to the next day's dawn than to the previous dusk; the air was fetid with spilled wine and candle-smoke; the company was tired. Should this be the moment to try my new duo? It would be a gamble.

I took the risk. I summoned Hedayat and instructed him to tell the pair they would be performing next. As on the festive nights before this one the boy and the man were waiting in a crowded ante-chamber with the other entertainers, their unusual paraphernalia at their side, in nervous anticipation of a possible call to appear in front of the most powerful man on Earth.

I intercepted them as Hedayat led their way through to the side of the Great Hall.

'Be bold,' I whispered, '- and think only to please His Mightiness.'

In truth, my anxiousness was probably approximate to theirs, but I strove not to betray it. The boy, I saw, was trembling.

I gave the signal for a musician to ring the bell. I approached the dais on which The Emperor and his most important guests reclined and made a bow.

'Your Greatness,' I said, '- if it pleases you, I should like to present two jesters who are new to your splendid court. They shall perform a mime of wondrous foolishness which I hope might cause you merriment.'

I withdrew and signalled for the man and boy to occupy the space in front of the dais which was lit by the large flaming braziers. Hedayat had shown craft. He had reasoned that an accompaniment of music would set a mood of lightheartedness, and so as the pair wheeled on their handcart, and commenced by pulling out and arranging the bale, the hide and the various pails and bowls that were soon to feature, two musicians - one on the fife and one on the tambour - struck up a rhythmic melody of infectious gaiety to underscore their business.

It was, of course, a grave offence ever to stare openly at The Emperor - even for a figure in as senior a position in the household as myself - but from my position at the side of the hall, concealed by shadows, it was sometimes safe enough to risk glances in our supreme leader's direction, and before the man and boy had advanced into the mock argument that propelled their crazed battle, I could see that his Mightiness was paying attention to their well-timed jig.

And then, at the moment that the boy - exasperated by his uncle's nagging - took up a handful of putrescent foodstuffs from inside a jar and pushed it roughly into the grown man's face, I heard the unmistakable bellow of The Emperor's laugh. I could release my breath.

When the boy followed this assault by up-turning a full pail of the rotting waste over his senior's head and twisting it first one way and then the other to let the full amount of the greyish-brown slime drip down the poor man's tunic, The Emperor's laugh re-doubled. The mighty one's mighty laughter grew louder still as the man and the boy each took turns to imbibe stale beer from a flagon, distending their cheeks like ripened melons, so that they might spit the contents into the other's face. Then it particularly amused The Emperor when they squirted a single mouthful of the mixed beer and spittle back and forth, aiming for the other's parted lips till the fronts of their tunics were soaked.

The entire hall laughed at this. High-born pleasure-seekers who moments earlier were only giving thought to when the next goblet of mead would be served to them now craned to see the action; those who were sufficiently agile or sober rushed the stairs to secure places in the galleries that overlooked the floor.

Hedayat had worked cunning embellishments into the pair's display so that many of their hostilities were now preceded by double or triple feints, confounding expectations of what should occur, and causing much beguilement. When the man took up a broom to give the boy a beating the boy ducked and avoided it, leaving the man to turn full circle under its momentum, yet still knock the boy in the face as he re-stood. Similarly, when the man swung the shovel at the boy, the youth turned and prostrated his body, only to receive a full hit to his backside from the shovel's face once he was pulling himself up off the floor. This blow projected the boy headlong to land face first into a dish of rotting quinces, and it was as he was on his knees, attempting once again to stand, that the man poured the full bowl of pottage over him - the act which had amused my deputy so greatly at the audition. It most certainly amused The Emperor now.

Everyone in the hall roared at the pass when the man, having wilfully kicked over the bucket of sour goat's milk, heaved the boy up to shoulder height and hurled him down into the puddle it made. They howled when the man first tugged the boy's tunic over his head to render him trapped by its sleeves, and also bent double, so that his bare buttocks could be a target for a slapped handful of curds; and they shouted encouragement when the man pulled the boy's tunic entirely off, leaving the youth dressed in only a loincloth, before taking the tunic and dunking it in a pail full of gruel.

A wave of delirium was taking hold. The audience - The Emperor included - reacted wildly as the man gripped the now almost naked boy by the waist and held him outwards so that he could dip the boy's head at will down into the same pail where his tunic lay soaking. They shouted as they watched the man first douse the boy in whey, then hurl a sack of finely milled corn over him, until a gritty batter layered his entire body - his face and hair included. And they found extreme hilarity in the moment that the man forced the boy to extract the tunic from its bath of gruel and dress up in it again, its soaking material cleaving to the youth's sullied frame.

But the greatest reaction came as the boy made retaliation by revealing a raw duck's egg he had somehow secreted in his mouth, and slapping it over his uncle's head. From then, through to the climactic moments when the man took the boy over his knee and repeatedly beat him by hand on his bared buttocks, the hall was in uproar. There was stamping and whistling, and The Emperor was even thumping his fists on the table in glee.

The boy put on an excellent show, crying out at each hit, but it was impossible to tell by then if the man might have become intoxicated by the giddy atmosphere and was dealing his nephew authentic pain.

The pair had one further trick. (This was an addition that Hedayat had made.) The man brought his hand down from its highest point with unmediated force onto the youth's backside, but instead of yelping and wriggling as he had done upon each previous strike, the boy turned his face towards his audience and pulled a wide 'Oh!' expression, as if he were embarrassed. He had right to be - he was making water. A stream of his urine had soaked through his loincloth and visibly was splashing out onto his uncle's calf. The man leapt up in disgust, wiping away the fluid and pushing the boy onto the floor, where for a final time he rolled through the pool of varied waste collected there. The hall erupted in appreciative noise. The pair stood together, and made deep and courtly bows first to The Emperor, and then in all directions around the hall, before launching into their joint work of husbandry to clear away the farrago they had created, to the further accompaniment of the fife and tambour.

The Emperor beckoned me to approach.

'Lord Chancellor ... that ... that just there ' he began, but for some long time could not form words in their entirety for he was still gulping with laughter. 'That,' he spluttered, '- was most, most rare. I shall ... I shall see them do it all over again at once.'

'Your Majesty.'

I bowed low and backed away, relieved that not only had The Emperor responded so favourably, but that my instinct had been correct; for earlier - when it had seemed immoderately confident - I had instructed Hedayat to anticipate this particular contingency and prepare sufficient extra foodstuffs and fresh suits of clothes to allow for an immediate repeat performance. As to how the man and boy might feel about having so soon once more to undergo their discomfort I would not trouble myself to worry. They had, after all, elected to become jesters; the boy had told me there was nothing they would not do. Tonight, mercifully, had been a great success for them, and if they remained committed to their calling - and continually resilient - this would be only the first of many occasions when the boy's bold claim would be put to the test.