I decided there and then
I would know his ken
And bravely strode over to appraise him
As I let down my hand
Like a gangway he climbed on board
To the port
Holding him as Hamlet
Once held Yorick so
I asked him alas what his name was
And how he came to be this John Doe
He answered his name was Miklos Kundra
A Hungarian travelling magician
That he had been touring this land
In the year 1597
Not long after the great dissolution
All had been going well for him
London had been his home
He played on the great stages and theatres
Of the Age
He had known the great playwrights
Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe
Ben Johnson had sponsored him
To perform for the Queen
And she had loved his panache and bravado
But the forces of jealousy were quick and great
And rivalling acts competed for his space
Until he found himself ostracized for some minor disgrace
He was not as refined a courtier as he might have been
His acts they were audacious
Disappearances and then the revealing
And the source of his magic so mysterious
The religious fanatics began to question quite what he was concealing
They pushed him out of court
One day he was toast of all london and the nation
The next he was an abomination
He was forced to play the taverns
He drifted down squalid alley ways
The sounds of bow bells left his ears
And he was a cast out, to the rural condition
Being of strong constitution
And robust matter of fact way of thinking
His attitude and skill got him a new position
With a travelling circus which stopped him from sinking
The troupe consisted of a milleu of characters
From the sublimely beautiful actress, to the thieves of ill report
From troubadours with trombone tones, and mandolins with strings taut
They toured the village fairs, the country lanes were their companions
They slept in Gypsy caravans or under the stars as the notion took them
They were welcomed as fascinations
But sometimes shunned as charlatans or crooks
They carried no identifications, they lived by their wits and their looks
It was one night in little Thumbstead
That the caravan drew up outside the woodland's head
The fields hay was fresh in their nostrils
And the midsummer haze rested on brooks
The evening sun was setting down
And Miklos was preparing his show for the town
Checking his props worked, his devious mechanisms
Of fiendishly complex invention
They left the onlooker in some despair unable to work out
What was going on there, and beyond their comprehension
Soon the time came to go down to town
And set up inside the tent
The atmosphere was dizzy with jovial excitement
With men swigging ales and women tittering,
The crowd swelled to enlargement
And gaiety and blessedness of the cider that flowed
And then Miklos saw the face of a lover he once knowed
"Nessie, what are you doing here?" he spoke
But he said it in Hungarian and it startled a few folk
What strange language was this foreigner speaking?
unlike the French tongue, the German or Anglo Saxon
The only other place they knew of mysterious words spoken
Was in the Latin mass, a practice outlawed and forbidden
Suspicions began to spread through the crowd
and Miklos pulled Nessie inside the tents shroud
He firmly gripped her and asked her again
"Why did you follow me here from the Hortobágy plain?"
"I followed you Miklos to let you know
That you died for that day you left me alone with child
To pursue your great and wonderful dream
To be the court Magician to England's great Queen"
"I followed you here to say that your boy is now a man
He is a soldier fighting the Turks trying to defend his father's land,
While you bleeding heart go and suckle on England's Rose
Oh you great pretender now how does your garden grow?"
Miklos turned away, in shame, this woman, his wife
knew not of his fame, nor indeed of his rise and fall in life
"One day I will win back the Queen's favour
As the finest magician living in all the Western World
But the trick to make you love me, is like a flame I eat that's curled
It's like a fire snake inside me burning a red hot ember
And I cannot escape the past, and now you make me remember"
"Your son Miklos will likely die this year
The Turks are over running us, we run away in fear
They burn our villages, babies from the breast they tear
And dash apart their brains on any rock that they find near"
"If we are not enslaved we are punished, humiliated or maimed
And to live life we must adopt Islam as our religion as well
You must come home now to help fight them
You must help vanquish from Hungary this hell
I know you have the ability to lead
And inspire a spirit to fight these Turkish devils !"
As Miklos was about to speak, his name was called out on stage
The act was about to begin, quickly he changed into the guise of a mage
The crowd was hot in anticipation and some rebellion in the ranks
The cider, Miklos thought, was getting to them, but for the chance to perform
He gave thanks
Some local girl he picked out from the crowd to assist him
In his magic trick
It was the end of the night, the fire flies were bright
And under the torch light he sweated from his flanks
The thought of his son never left him,
In fact it recurred as a bad dream,
What if he should die on the battlefield
Abandoned while his father pursued his mad scheme
The trick was one he had performed before
A simple one with a box and a saw
A trick of light and mirrors
Of sleight of hand, and lightening fast manouvres
That would see the girl's body apparently cut in quarters
By Miklos' own hand as he wielded his saw
Then by a miracle the crowd would gasp
As the box's parts would be pulled apart
And the girl still alive with her beating heart,
Would then be returned to what she had been before
But as the lights dimmed
And the girl climbed into the Magician's trap
Miklos felt a shiver, and the signs of a nervous attack
A panic, that turned into a mental gap
What if he had failed in his magic?
The one trick he wished he knew
Was how to make somebody love him
And their life renew
And as this thought rebounded inside his skull
He began to cut the girl's box as well
Then with a rush of realization he knew
He had forgotten to replace a vital screw
That meant the false box had not
Properly slid into place
And as he looked to the wings
He witnessed Nessie's white face
For on the floor surrounding the box
Was a pool of blood the colour of a fox
A second later the crowd knew as well
And there was howling and whupping
And the scenes of a living hell
As frantic relatives, husband and wife
Fell over themselves to try to save the girl's life
And Miklos could only stand and watch in utter disbelief
Until the angry mob gathered round
To vent on him their grief
The harrowing scenes took a turn for the worse
As his Hungarian name was revealed
And in torture he uttered his native tongue of course
The sign of the devil, must be witchcraft or spell
Must have been plotting to kill the Queen of England as well
Turn the nation into Anarchy and hell
And so he was tried as a traitor to the realm
And also under witch craft laws was tied up to an elm
And whipped until blood came curdling from his mouth
And Nessie she begged them for mercy, if he would only renounce
But Miklos was so strong willed, he confessed he only loved the Queen
He had been trying to make her better,
He was branded obscene
He claimed he was no sorceror, just an honest magician
He had only smoke and mirrors, but no malicious intentions
They hounded him from Basingstoke up to Bayswater
They said he was the son of the Devil and Nessie was the Devil's daughter
They were to be burnt at the stake, their bodies drawn and quartered
A retribution for his mistake, for killing the girl a dunking under water
Their bodies they were flayed, women and men turned away,
Then they chopped them up, in a darkened corner of a forest buried them
Somewhere in Cirencester or it could have been leeds,
But that is where their bodies now lie, and why
This skull needs the help it needs
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