The Garden Games: SEASON ONE - EPISODE FIVE

By Kevin Karmalade

The Old Vestry is being made ready for the ball. There is much activity afoot. Micah, the head-technician, Dirk and Tristan, discover a dwarf curate, Tom O’Malley. He’s rummaging in the Vestry kitchen-larder, trying to pilfer some alcohol. Seizing the opportunity to improve the entertainment, they forcibly recruit O’Malley by ensnaring him into playing a lead role—in one of the stage-plays they will present.

It is the evening of the ball. Sir Perceval Lamb stares out the window from the first floor. He can see the guests arriving in their mythical tarot-card and or period costumes and masks. He looks down into the churchyard gardens. He can see two teams setting up, with the guests starting to mill around the edges and onto the bleachers of the playing courts. The game appears to be organised. There are rules, scoreboard, a ground layout, equipment and spectators. The umpires present themselves in uniform with whistles and flags.

A radio commentator from Radio Good Shepherd 91.8fm is seated. He begins to commentate a live broadcast as the games get underway. The guests watch the activities; drinks in hand as a set of human-burnings are prepared and executed.

The burnings are treated like an affable sporting contest. It is an exclusive spectacle that Lamb has carefully organised—to invoke the celebratory mood for the rest of the evening’s program. The radio announcer commences the public broadcast, as the choir joins in on cue. We are drawn in, partly through the professional enthusiasm of the broadcast, and partly through what is taking place: the preparation and ‘burning’ of the main actors, who perform the ritual mock immolations.

The episode explores the first phase of the burnings of (mainly) Church of England clergy by the English monarchy from 1555-58. It satirises the stupidity of this. It was triggered by clergy who wouldn't follow Roman church doctrines of the day, like the doctrine of Christ’s actual presence (as flesh and blood) in altar bread when consecrated at mass. The re-creation of the original burnings at a charity ball in this episode is unusual. This is because of the humorous way the misuse of power and the execution of the past clergy—by the then monarch are treated.

Although scholars have studied such events for centuries, the Regina novella brings the issue to the fore again—in an irreverent way. What is thematically implied is, what other senseless and immoral things does society do today? That is, what senseless things do humans do to other humans?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: May 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781642376357

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1558.

EPISODE FIVE

The Garden Games

Preparations for the gala ball; the discovery of assistant-curate O’Malley; the arrival of the guests in their costumes and masks; the Old Vestry garden games; the Chosen versus the Reformationists; broadcast on Radio Good Shepherd 91.8FM; Rogers and Hooper burnings: Taylor and Bradford go up; a combo burn bonus—Ridley and Latimer together; the Cranmer game pulls the biggest crowd; the melting hands; Sir Percy joins the ball to acclaim from his guests; the Melting Cranmer.

13 December 2025

Sir Perceval Lamb and Tristan were ensconced on the front porch of the Old Vestry looking out to the enclosed, high-walled gardens surrounding them. It was the best vantage point to command the activity they were in charge of.

Rector Pandulf, can you ask your helpers to bring those statues into Area C over there please, said Tristan pointing to where she wanted them put temporarily. The proctor had assembled a chain of over a hundred and fifty of St. Dandy’s inhabitants—monks, laundry dwarfs, hornsmen, altar staff, clergy, noviciates, cleaners and maintenance workers, choir members, some florists and administrative staff—to create a chain that ran from deep down in the archive vault, up two floors past the flagellation chambers, out into the vicarage courtyard and into the Old Vestry gardens. They looked like a cohesive group, wearing the white Carillion-bell gloves with the cathedral’s logo on them.

With less than a week to show time, every hour mattered. The responsibility was starting to be felt by the seventy-strong theatrical production and catering team under their command.

The line had been up for over two hours. It had already brought up nearly a hundred sacred statues. Proctor Wallace told Lamb and Tristan, some had not been registered out of the archive for at least a half century.

Is that a donkey prop? Over here please… ordered Tristan, Rhapsody, make me a tea and one for Percy too please… she said bossily.

Where do you want these stuffed rabbits… and the calf and these paper-mache’ shepherds Trisey? asked Dirk, who had Octavia helping him. Director-General Fagan had granted Dirk a week’s leave from the I and T Bureau to work on Lamb’s production.

In this tent here. The technicians will use them when the indoor stage is ready. Look—Area B near Stage 2… directed Tristan checking her master stage-plan diagrams. She pressed the button on her loudhailer, which was the same size as her head. She blurted out an order across the garden square, Those baby lambs and hens over to Tent 1 Stage 1—thank you.

Tristan walked into the Old Vestry’s main ballroom. She watched the technicians cranking the handles of the hoisting winches. They were elevating a cyclorama backdrop at the back of the nativity stage.

One of the senior technicians, Micah—had a team from the laundry. He had them laying the hay bales and organising the stage props that created the scene. Above him