"If they don't mind seeing mistakes." Then I paused, hearing Helene's words rebounding in my head. "Castle? They live in an honest to God castle?" At Helene's nod I snorted as I swallowed a laugh. No wonder the duke was confident they would have enough room. Then another thought hit me. Horrified at the possibility, I looked to Helene. "The floor isn't stone is it? Because that's impossible."
"No, Bitty, the floor isn't stone. The castle is not the fortress you imagine, but rather a comfortable home. The floors are wood."
I relaxed with a sigh of relief. Then I queried Helene, "That just leaves remuneration. How much can we expect to charge for the performance? I assume the duke is expecting to pay?"
"Oh, His Grace expects to pay your people for the performance. How does twenty thousand of your dollars sound?"
"Twenty thousand dollars?"
Helene's eyebrows went up and a pensive look crossed her face. "It is not enough? Carl suggested that it would be sufficient, but if you require more, His Grace might be willing to go a little higher."
"Oh, no, it's quite sufficient. Really. It's just I can't imagine paying twenty thousand dollars for an entertainment that lasts less than an hour." My brain was frantically trying to find an anchor point. Twenty thousand dollars? Of course, if I'd had time to think about it—which I didn't, not then—it really wasn't as absurd as it sounded. When you figured the start-up costs of getting a ballet company going, the hours and hours of training, all the rest of it, running a ballet on a professional basis was expensive. But I was still thinking like an amateur, someone who was basically doing it for the love of the art, and to be offered out of the blue twenty thousand dollars—
"Bitty, you don't realize how important this performance will be. It will be unique, the first public performance of en pointe ballet. Today doesn't count. It was just a school recital. Nobody of importance was in the audience. You must realize who is going to be at this entertainment. The duke and his wife wish to impress some very important guests. Twenty thousand dollars for the chance to really impress his guests is, how you say, `peanuts.' Some Twelfth Night entertainments have cost more than ten times the amount. Come. Let us join the others at supper. You can ask the other members of the cast if they are able to attend."
As Helene fed her arm through mine and we walked towards the supper tables, I considered what problems I might have getting a cast together for the private performance. Then I shook my head for wasting my time. For a share of twenty thousand dollars, they were all going to find a way to be available.
The girls had charged through, taking the showers first, so Joseph and Carl continued to cool down in the warm-up room. Joseph looked at the man stretching out beside him. About thirty, Carl had been dragged into the Christmas recital when Joseph's brother Joel had become caught up in training operations with the army. He claimed to have been in the old United States Army back uptime, yet he was a skilled dancer. "Carl, why did you stick with dancing?"
"How do you mean?"
"Well, you said you were regular army since you were eighteen. I was just wondering why you stuck with ballet?"
"You can blame my sister for that. Dad was career Air Force, and often wasn't around. Mom was a Thai war bride. She didn't really get along with the other service wives, so she saved on childcare by dragging me along when she took Chatrasuda to her classes. You could say I was caught young."
"Yeah. I'm in much the same boat. With Mom teaching, there was no escaping it. But what about when you were in the army? Wasn't it hard doing . . . I mean, what did the other guys think?"
"What did the other guys think of me doing such an unmanly thing as ballet?" Carl grinned before continuing. "I didn't tell them, and by the time any of them found out, they also knew I was regularly scoring the maximum three-hundred on the fitness test. It's pretty hard to question the masculinity of someone who is outperforming you on the fitness test."
"Well, why have you stuck with ballet? For a professional soldier, surely something more martial would be more suitable?"
"Why have I stuck with ballet?" Carl's eyes lost a little focus, as if he was looking in at himself in some other time and place. "Because you can lose yourself in the dance, become one with the music and forget everything but the flow of the dance. You can forget all your troubles for the duration of the performance." With a gentle shake of his head Carl looked back at Joseph, his eyes regaining their focus, a wry grin on his face. "That's getting a bit deep and intense, isn't it? Just take it that ballet offers me more than any martial art. It gives me better balance, control, flexibility, and stamina than most black belts I've seen. And you meet a better class of people."