"Ah, my king."
That evening, in the brightly lit public assembly hall, the Fujimaru Ritsuka Troupe's first performance began. Mash served as both narrator and prompter, an extremely important role. Whether a stage play could be performed successfully depended greatly on the prompter. To do her job well, Mash had memorized all the lines Da Vinci and Sherlock Holmes had written.
Solomon and Queen of Sheba's play told the story of how, after hearing of Solomon's wisdom, Queen of Sheba traveled across deserts and seas from afar, bringing countless treasures and overcoming every obstacle to seek his hand in marriage.
Though it was called a proposal, strictly speaking, Queen of Sheba had merely brought wealth in hopes of borrowing Solomon's wisdom to answer her three questions. There were many versions of those questions, such as what was the hardest thing, or what possessed the greatest strength.
Da Vinci had chosen three riddle-like questions, such as: There were ten doors in a room. Opening one closed the other nine, while opening nine closed the remaining one. The answer was a person.
Through everyone's efforts, the premiere was a complete success. Though Shen Fei, Mash, Ritsuka, and Kato Danzo were all performing onstage for the first time, Da Vinci was not. Her portrayal of Queen of Sheba had been vivid, and when the curtain fell, the applause from the audience was thunderous. After all, there was hardly any entertainment in this little town, much less theater performances.
After the performance succeeded, Da Vinci went to meet Carter, the village pastor, and the elders. In the end, they agreed to let the troupe perform in the village and settled on payment. It was not much, barely enough to keep them fed in this era.
For Da Vinci, payment was not truly necessary. However,