by Stephen King
Andy Staad did not sleep all that night.
He sat up by the fire, hoping against hope, but in his heart, he believed he would never see his son again.
65
Ben Staad stood in Anders Peyna's study an hour later. He was curious, even a little awed, but not afraid. He had listened closely to everything Peyna said, and there had been a muted chink as money changed hands.
"You understand all of this, lad?" Peyna asked in his dry courtroom voice.
"Yes, my Lord."
"I would be sure. This is no child's business I send you on. Tell me again what you are to do."
"I am to go to the castle and speak to Dennis, son of Brandon."
"And if Brandon interferes?" Peyna asked sharply.
"I am to tell him he must speak to you."
"Aye," Peyna said, settling back in his chair.
"I am not to say 'Tell no one of this arrangement.' "
"Yes," Peyna said. "Do you know why?"
Ben stood thoughtfully for a moment, head down. Peyna let him think. He liked this boy; he seemed coolheaded and unafraid. Many others brought before him in the middle of the night would have been gibbering with terror.
"Because if I said such a thing, he would be quicker to tell than if I said nothing," Ben said finally.
A smile touched Peyna's lips. "Good," he said. "Go on."
"You've given me ten guilders. I'm to give two to Dennis, one for himself and one for whoever finds the dollhouse that belonged to Peter's mother. The other eight are for Beson, the Chief Warder. Whoever finds the dollhouse will deliver it to Dennis. Dennis will deliver it to me. I will deliver it to Beson. As for the napkins, Dennis himself will take them to Beson."
"How many?"
"Twenty-one each week," Ben replied promptly. "Napkins of the royal house, but with the crest removed. Your man will engage a woman to remove the royal crests. From time to time you will send someone to me with more money, either for Dennis or for Beson."
"But none for yourself?" Peyna asked. He had already offered; Ben had refused.
"No. I believe that's everything."
"You are quick."
"I only wish I could do more."
Peyna sat up, his face suddenly harsh and forbidding. "You must not and you shall not," he said. "This is dangerous enough. You are procuring favors for a young man who has been convicted of committing a foul murder--the second-foulest murder a man may do."
"Peter is my friend," Ben said, and he spoke with a dignity that was impressive in its simplicity.
Anders Peyna smiled faintly, and raised one finger to point at the fading bruises on Ben's face. "I would guess," he said, "that you are already paying for that friendship."
"I would pay such a price a hundred times over," Ben said. He hesitated just a moment and then went on boldly: "I don't believe he killed his father. He loved King Roland as much as I love my own da'."
"Did he?" Peyna asked, apparently without interest.
"He did!" Ben cried. "Do you believe he murdered his father? Do you really believe he did it?"
Peyna smiled such a dry and ferocious smile then that even Ben's hot blood was cooled.
"If I didn't, I should be careful who I said it to," he said. "Very, very careful. Or I should soon feel the headsman's blade go through my neck."
Ben stared at Peyna silently.
"You say you are his friend, and I believe you." Peyna sat up straighter in his chair and leveled a finger at Ben. "If you would be a true friend, do just the things I have asked, and no more. If you see any hope for Peter's eventual release in your mysterious summons here--and I see by your face that you do--you must give that hope up."
Rather than ring for Arlen, Peyna saw the boy out himself--out the back way. The soldier who had brought him tonight would be on his way to the Western Barony tomorrow.
At the door, Peyna said: "Once more: do not stray from the things we've agreed upon so much as one solitary bit. The friends of Peter are not much cared for in Delain now, as your bruises prove."
"I'd fight them all!" Ben said hotly. "One at a time or all at once!"
"Aye," Anders Peyna said with that dry, ferocious smile. "And would you ask your mother to do the same? Or your baby sister?"
Ben gaped at the old man. Fear opened in his heart like a small and delicate rose.
"It will come to that, if you do not exercise all your care," Peyna said. "The storms are not over in Delain yet, but only beginning." He opened the door; snow swirled in, driven by a black gust of wind. "Go home now, Ben. I think your parents will be happy to see you so soon."
This was an understatement of some size. Ben's parents were waiting at the door in their nightclothes when Ben let himself in. They had heard the jingle of the approaching sleigh. His mother hugged him close, weeping. His father, red-faced, unaccustomed tears standing in his eyes, wrung Ben's hand until it ached. Ben remembered Peyna saying The storms are not over but only beginning.
And still later, lying in bed with his hands behind his head, staring up into the darkness and listening to the wind whistle outside, Ben realized that Peyna had never answered his question--had never said whether or not he believed Peter to be guilty.
66
On the seventeenth day of Thomas's reign, Brandon's son, Dennis, brought the first lot of twenty-one napkins to the Needle. He brought them from a storeroom that neither Peter nor Thomas nor Ben Staad nor Peyna himself knew about--although all would become aware of it before the grim business of Peter's imprisonment was done. Dennis knew because he was a butler's son from a long line of butlers, but familiarity breeds contempt, so they say, and he thought nothing much about the storeroom from which he fetched the napkins. We'll speak more of this room later; let me tell you now only that all would have been struck with wonder at the sight of it, and Peter in particular. For had he known of this room which Dennis took completely for granted, he might have attempted his escape as much as three years sooner . . . and much, for better or for worse, might have been changed.
67
The royal crest was removed from each napkin by a woman Peyna had hired for the quickness of her needle and the tightness of her lips. Each day she sat in a rocker just outside the doorway of the storeroom, picking out stitches that were very old indeed. When she did this her lips were tight for more reasons than one; to unmake such lovely needlework seemed to her almost a desecration, but her family was poor, and the money from Peyna was like a gift from heaven. So there she sat, and would sit, for years to come, rocking and plying her needle like one of those weird sisters of whom you may have heard in another tale. She spoke to no one, not even her husband, about her days of unmaking.
The napkins had a strange, faint smell--not of mildew but of must, as if from long disuse--but they were otherwise without fault, each of them twenty rondels by twenty, big enough to cover the lap of even the most dedicated eater.
There was a bit of comedy attached to the first napkin delivery. Dennis hung about Beson, expecting a tip. Beson let him hang about a while because he expected that sooner or later the dimwitted lad would remember to tip him. They both came to the conclusion that neither was going to be tipped at the same time. Dennis started for the door, and Beson helped him along with a kick in the seat of the pants. This caused a pair of Lesser Warders to laugh heartily. Then Beson pretended to wipe his bottom with the handful of napkins for the Lesser Warders' further amusement, but he was careful only to pretend--after all, Peyna was in this business somewhere, and it was best to tread lightly.
Perhaps Peyna would not be around a great deal longer, however. In the meadhouses and wineshops, Beson had begun to hear whispers that Flagg's shadow had fallen on the Judge-General, and that if Peyna was not very, very careful, he might soon be watching the proceedings at court from an even more commanding angle than the bench upon which he now sat--he might be looking in the window, these wags said behind their hands, from one of the spikes atop the castle walls.
68
On the eighteenth day of Thomas's reign, the first napkin was on Peter's breakfast tray when it was delivered in the morning. It was so large and the breakfast so small that it actually covered the meal completely. Peter smiled for the first time since he had come to this cold, high place. His cheeks and chin were shadowed with the beginnings of a beard which would grow full and long in these two drafty rooms, and he looked quite a desperate character . . . until he smiled. The smile lit his face with magical power, made it strong and radiant, a beacon to which one could imagine soldiers rallying in battle.
"Ben," he muttered, picking the napkin up by one corner. His hand shook a bit. "I knew you'd do it. Thank you, my friend. Thank you."
The first thing Peter did with his first napkin was to wipe away the tears that now ran freely down his cheeks.
The peephole in the stout wooden door popped open. Two Lesser Warders appeared again like the two heads of Flagg's parrot, packed into the tiny space cheek to scruffy cheek.
"Hope that baby won't forget to wipe his chinny-chin!" one cried in a cracked, warbling voice.
"Hope that baby won't forget to wipe the eggy off his shirty!" the other cried, and then both screamed with derisive laughter. But Peter did not look at them, and his smile did not fade.
The warders saw that smile and made no more jokes. There was something about it which forbade joking.
Eventually they closed the peephole and left Peter alone.
A napkin came with his lunch that day.
With his dinner that night.
The napkins came to Peter in his lonely cell in the sky for the next five years.
69
The dollhouse arrived on the thirtieth day of Thomas the Light-Bringer's reign. By then modils, those first harbingers of Spring (which we call bluets) were coming up in pretty little roadside bunches. Also by then Thomas the Light-Bringer had signed into law the Farmers' Tax Increase, which quickly became known as Tom's Black Tax. The new joke told in the meadhouses and wineshops was that the King would soon be changing his royal name to Thomas the Tax-Bringer. The increase was not eight percent, which might have been fair, or eighteen percent, which might have been bearable, but eighty percent. Thomas had had some doubts about it at first, but it hadn't taken Flagg long to convince him.
"We must tax them more on what they admit they own, so we can collect at least some of what's due us on all they hide from the tax collector," Flagg said. Thomas, his head fuddled by the wine that now flowed constantly in the court chambers of the castle, had nodded with what he hoped was a wise expression on his face.
For his part, Peter had begun to fear that the dollhouse had been lost after all these years--and that was almost the truth. Ben Staad had commissioned Dennis to find it. After several days of fruitless searching, Dennis had confided in his good old da' --the only person he dared trust with such a serious matter. It had taken Brandon another five days to find the dollhouse in one of the minor storage rooms on the ninth floor, west turret, where its cheerful pretend lawns and long, rambling wings were hidden under an ancient (and slightly moth-eaten) dustcloth that was gray with the years. All of the original furnishings were still in the house, and it had taken Brandon and Dennis and a soldier handpicked by Peyna three more days to make sure all the sharp things were removed. Then, at last, the dollhouse was delivered by two squire boys, who toiled up the three hundred stairs with the heavy, awkward thing spiked to a board between them. Beson followed closely behind, cursing and threatening terrible reprisals if they should drop it. Sweat rolled down the boys' faces in rivers, but they made no reply.
When the door of Peter's prison opened and the dollhouse was brought in, Peter gasped with surprise--not just because the dollhouse was finally here, but because one of the two boys carrying it was Ben Staad.
Give not a sign! Ben's eyes flashed.
Don't look at me too long! Peter's flashed back.
After the advice he had given, Peyna would have been stunned to see Ben here. He had forgotten that the logic of all the wise old men in the world cannot often stand against the logic of a boy's heart, if the boy's heart is large and kind and loyal. Ben Staad's was all three.
It had been the easiest thing in the world to exchange places with one of the squires meant to carry the dollhouse to the top of the Needle. For a guilder--all the money Ben had in the world, as a matter of fact--Dennis had arranged it.
"Don't tell your father of this," Ben cautioned Dennis.
"Why not?" Dennis had asked. "I tell my old da' almost everything . . . don't you?"
"I did," Ben said, remembering how his father had forbidden him to mention Peter's name anymore in the house. "But when boys grow up, I think that sometimes changes. However that may be, you mustn't tell him this, Dennis. He might tell Peyna, and then I'd be in a hot pot on a high-fire."
"All right," Dennis promised. It was a promise he kept. Dennis had been cruelly hurt when his master, whom he had loved, had been first accused and then convicted of murder. In the last few days, Ben had gone a long way toward filling the empty place in Dennis's heart.
"That's good," Ben said, and punched Dennis playfully on the shoulder. "I only want to see him a minute, and refresh my heart."
"He was your best friend, wasn't he?"
"Still is."
Dennis had stared at him, amazed. "How can you claim a man who murdered his own father as your best friend?"
"Because I don't believe he did it," Ben said. "Do you?"
To Ben's utter amazement, Dennis burst into wretched tears. "All my heart says the same, and yet--"
"Listen to it, then," Ben said, and gave Dennis a large rough hug. "And dry off your mug before someone sees you bawling like a kid."
"Put it in the other room," Peter said now, distressed at the slight tremble in his voice. Beson didn't notice; he was too busy cursing the two boys for their slowness, their stupidity, their very existence. They carried the dollhouse into the bedroom and set it down. The other boy, who had a very stupid face, dropped his end too quickly and too hard. There was the tiny sound of something breaking inside. Peter winced. Beson cuffed the boy--but he smiled as he did it. It was the first good thing that had happened to him since these two lads had appeared with the accursed thing.
The stupid boy stood up, wiping the side of his face, which was already starting to swell, and staring at Peter with frank wonder and fear, his mouth wide open; Ben remained on his knees a moment longer. There was a small rattan mat in front of the house's front door--what we would call a welcome mat, I suppose. For just a moment Ben allowed his thumb to move over the top of this, and his eyes met Peter's.
"Now get out!" Beson cried. "Get out, both of you! Go home and curse your mothers for ever bringing such slow, clumsy fools as yourselves into the world!"
The boys passed Peter, the loutish one shrinking away as if the prince might have a disease he could catch. Ben's eyes met Peter's once more, and Peter trembled at the love he saw in his old friend's gaze. Then they were gone.
"Well, you have it now, my good little princeling," Beson said. "What shall we be bringing you next? Little ruffly dresses? Silk underpants?"
Peter turned slowly and looked at Beson. After a moment, Beson dropped his eyes. There was something frightening in Peter's gaze, and Beson was forced to remember again that, sissy or not, Peter had beaten him so badly that his ribs had ached for two days and he had had dizzy spells for a week.
"Well, it's your business," he muttered. "But now that you have it, I could find a table for you to put it on. And a chair to sit in while you . . ." He grimaced. "While you play with it."
"And how much would this cost?"
"A mere three guilders, I should think."
"I have no money."
"Ah, but you know powerful people."
"No more," Peter said. "I traded a favor for a favor, that's all."
"Sit on the floor, then, and get chilblains on your arse, and be damned to you!" Beson said, and strode from the room. The lit
tle flood of guilders he had enjoyed since Peter came to the Needle had apparently dried up. It put Beson in a foul mood for days.
Peter waited until he had heard all the locks and bolts go rattling home before lifting the rattan mat Ben had rubbed with his thumb. Beneath he found a square of paper no larger than the stamp on a letter. Both sides had been written on, and there were no spaces between the words. The letters were tiny indeed--Peter had to squint to read them, and guessed that Ben must have made them with the aid of a magnifying glass.
Peter-Destroy this after you have read it. I don't believe you did it. Others feel the same I am sure. I am still your friend. I love you as I always did. Dennis does not believe it, either. If I can ever help get to me through Peyna. Let your heart be steadfast.
As he read this, Peter's eyes filled with warm tears of gratitude. I think that real friendship always makes us feel such sweet gratitude, because the world almost always seems like a very hard desert, and the flowers that grow there seem to grow against such high odds. "Good old Ben!" he whispered over and over again. In the fullness of his heart, he couldn't think to say anything else. "Good old Ben! Good old Ben!"
For the first time he began to think that his plan, wild and dangerous as it was, might have a chance of succeeding.
Next he thought of the note. Ben had put his life on the line to write it. Ben was noble--barely--but not royal; thus not immune from the headsman's axe. If Beson or one of his jackals found this note, they would guess that one or the other of the boys who had brought the dollhouse must have written it. The loutish one looked as if he couldn't read even the large letters in a child's book, let alone write such tiny ones as these. So they would look for the other boy, and from there to the chopping block might be a short trip for good old Ben.
He could think of only one sure way to get rid of it, and he didn't hesitate; he crumpled the little note up between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand and ate it.