by Alex Myers
Two large men shoved their way through the crowd – ‘Get over, stand up,’ they barked as they forced a passage through. Some minstrels started to complain, but the crowd quieted and parted as everyone realized who was trying to pass by: the three judges for the competition, who followed in the wake of the large men. Silence stood on his toes.
Hob tugged his sleeve. ‘You’ll get a good view of them when we’re on stage.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Ah, some noble who fancies he knows a thing about music. Probably has a club foot and couldn’t be a knight, so someone gave him a harp instead,’ Giles said.
The judges took their seats; the one in the middle had a silver-streaked beard hanging far down his chest. He raised his hand and the crowd quieted to murmurs. Silence waited for him to talk, but he only gestured and the scribe who had taken their names climbed onto the stage. ‘To start, from the town of Quint, Basel.’
At first, the crowd was quiet during the music and applauded at the end, cheering for a song they felt was truly good. And there were quite a few good songs – one minstrel’s skill with the harp stunned Silence: he had never heard notes plucked so cleanly and so quickly, landing like raindrops. Many sang with such force of emotion that Silence had to blink back tears. But there were a lot of musicians, and as the afternoon wore on, the crowd became restive, booing and jeering and, on a few occasions, interrupting the song.
Finally, the scribe announced, ‘From the court of Count La Marche, Hob, Giles, and Maurice.’ They climbed onto the stage and took their seats. Silence hadn’t realized how far back the crowd stretched past the judges’ stand, a massive press of people, all staring at him.
‘Focus, now,’ Hob said in a low growl that reminded Silence of Master Waldron.
Hob began, plucking the opening; Giles joined him, the two harps repeating the phrase, and finally Silence added the lute. They all drew a breath together and began to sing.
Later, Silence would say that it felt like he was looking at the night sky. That the audience dimmed and darkened, that sparks like stars winked before him. That he saw and felt something vast and pure and distant as he sang, unaware of voice, unaware of the judges, empty of self.
They reached the end, received the applause, and returned to their spots in the audience. There were more songs and the minstrels nearby shook their hands or clapped them on the back and told them well done in voices of forced politeness. ‘Did it go well?’ Silence asked.
‘I think so, yes,’ Hob replied. Giles said nothing.
At last, the scribe announced that the judges would confer to determine the winner. A troupe of tumblers took the stage, juggling and capering, and hawkers pushed through the crowd selling wine (which Hob bought) and greasy pies (which Giles bought) and bread and fruit and sweets. Silence bought a roll filled with sweet cheese and turned to stare at the judges, who sat with their heads so close together he couldn’t discern their facial expressions. Hob bought more wine.
‘You’re a fool,’ Giles told him. ‘Costs three times as much as at any inn.’
‘Yes, well, there isn’t an inn here, and I want to drink. Besides, you’re the greater fool for eating a pie at a fair. You’ll be sick before long.’
‘Shut it. I wish those judges would hurry.’
At last, the judge with the long beard raised a hand. The two large men who had escorted them once again pushed through the crowd, which had fallen silent for a moment, but now began cheering and clapping as the judges made their way from their pavilion to the stage. One of the large men drew a bright yellow sack out from his jacket. At this, the crowd fell quiet.
‘Three hundred marks,’ the bearded judge said, ‘awarded to the song best performed this day. The most lyrical, the most beautiful, the most stirring …’
‘Get on with it, you goat,’ Giles muttered.
‘For music lifts us closer to God …’
‘I’ll introduce you to Him,’ Giles said, ‘if you don’t hurry.’
‘This day we award the prize to the minstrels Hob and Giles and Maurice!’
The noise of the crowd rocked Silence, and he stumbled after Hob. The crowd gave way to them, the cheers grew louder and louder as they reached the stage. Silence bowed to the judges; Giles took the bulging yellow bag. Hob accepted a piece of parchment festooned with wax seals and bits of ribbon, and the judge pressed a small medallion into each of their hands. They bowed to the crowd, and climbed back down.
Hob seemed to be on the verge of tears, his mouth working like a fish’s, gawping open and closed as he tried to speak to Giles. They stood below the stage, the crowd milling around, many dispersing, others pressing close to offer a word of congratulation. Silence felt his fingers quivering, his whole body trembling. They had won.
The judges walked off the platform and paused in front of them. The bearded one leaned close and said, ‘The song was lovely. A good composition. But what won it,’ here he paused and looked at his colleagues, who nodded, ‘was the singing of the boy. Never had we heard a voice like yours, boy. It is a gift from God. And tall as you are, perhaps your voice is done changing?’
Silence cleared his throat. ‘It could be, my lord. I am sixteen.’
‘Well, then. May it be so. I would hate for the world to lose that voice. God grant you good fortune.’
They found an inn outside the city walls and though the innkeeper at first insisted it was full, when they showed him the scroll that proclaimed them victors and promised to perform the winning song before they departed, he found them a room. Giles tested the bolt on the door while Hob counted the money.
‘Everyone knows we’ve got three hundred marks,’ Giles said. ‘The thieves will be out.’
‘Don’t carry it all in one purse,’ Hob said. ‘And don’t put your purses anywhere obvious.’ He passed a pouch to Silence. ‘Thirty marks to the apprentice.’
Silence took the pouch. He had suspected that they wouldn’t give him a full hundred, but only thirty?
‘Don’t drink yourself stupid, Hob,’ Giles said. ‘Or you’ll end up in a ditch.’
‘I’ll do my drinking here and end up in this room. That suit you, Your Highness?’
‘On second thoughts, take the ditch. Then I don’t have to hear you snore.’
Silence changed from his competition finery into his everyday clothes. Brown leggings, brown tunic, green cap. Not the clothes he’d set out from Tintagel wearing – he’d grown at least a few more inches in his time on the road. He wondered if Griselle would recognize him; his hair had darkened, losing the thin yellow colour, mellowing to a golden hue. Basilard on his belt, he quit the room; he heard someone throw the bolt after he left.
Though not inclined to credit the minstrels’ advice much, Silence did heed what Hob had said and purchased several small pouches. He divided his marks between these and (in the privacy afforded by a dunghill behind a stable) hid one in each of his boots, one inside his shirt, and one in his belt. As he sorted the coins, he wondered if he was right to feel bitter at his share. Only thirty marks. The judge had praised his voice, saying that had been what won the competition. True, Hob and Giles had taught him all he knew about singing and playing. It was only right for a master to claim more of the earnings. And yet. He could hear Alfred mocking him for not demanding his proper share.
He turned on his heel and walked back to the inn. Better to confront them before Hob had any drink and before Giles had spent all the money on clothing and women or, worse, dice. He nodded to the serving girl and started up the stairs. From the turn of the staircase on the second floor, he could see that the door to their room was ajar.
‘Right, I’m off …’
‘I thought you were going to drink here,’ Giles said.
‘There’s a whole city to explore. And the fair. I’ll start elsewhere. But I’ll finish here, I promise.’
‘Your promises are worth less than my farts.’
‘So what if I end up in a ditch? If you can haul me out, dr
ag me back to La Marche with you. A monkey could be his minstrel. And if I’m beyond repair, well, you’ve got your angel boy to sing with you. Who’ll miss old Hob?’
At this, Giles growled. ‘We’re not going back to La Marche. And as to that angel … Shut the damn door and sit down.’
‘What now?’
The door slapped shut.
Silence stood rock still. Then, though he knew it was not noble, he padded up the stairs to the door and put his ear to the wood. Murmurs, but not clear enough. He lay flat and tried for the crack where the door met the jamb. Better. Most unseemly for a knight, but he was not a knight, and the gap let the voices through.
‘… she’ll be due in short order.’
‘A fine mess. A fine mess!’ That was Hob’s voice. ‘And you’ve landed us in it. I liked it at La Marche. The chamber was comfortable. The winter wasn’t too bitter. The food was decent. And you’ve ruined it.’
‘I tell you, it’s that wretched boy. Maurice slept with the countessina and got her with child …’
Hob laughed. A nasty laugh that Silence hadn’t heard before. ‘You forget we’ve been on the road for twelve years together, Giles. I know your work when I see it. And maybe the boy is no saint, but I don’t think his sin is one of lust.’
‘Shut up. Fine. I bedded her, she’s fat with my child. And her marriage is set too late for it to be claimed by the groom. God’s teeth. We can’t go back.’
Silence heard footsteps and started to push himself up, but realized the steps were pacing from one wall of the room to the other.
‘We did try to snare him, me and the countessina. Laid a little trap for our boy. But he snuck out of it. Bastard. Hob, I tell you, I am tired of Maurice. Everywhere we go, from inn to palace, from field to fair, it’s Oh, Maurice. You sing like an angel. Oh, Maurice. God weeps when He hears your voice. No one even notices our harping.’
Silence’s breath caught in his throat. He hadn’t thought Giles liked him, but the venom in the man’s voice was powerful, and Silence felt affronted: he had done nothing to deserve this. Part of him wished to stand up, batter the door down, and confront the minstrels, but he calmed himself, breathing deeply to quiet the buzz of blood in his ears, and leaned closer to the gap.
‘You just wish the girls looked at you and not him. We’re getting old, Giles. I say, keep him around. He’s silent except when he sings. He serves us. We pay him nothing. And today he earned us three hundred marks.’
‘And tomorrow he might leave us and we’d be competing against the very one we trained. It isn’t right.’
The pacing stopped. The creak of wood. Perhaps Giles sitting down. Someone heaved a sigh.
‘It isn’t right,’ Giles repeated.
‘If we aren’t going to La Marche, then where?’ Hob asked. ‘What a mess! We’re known. We’ve won the contest; our angel boy is very distinctive. Once the countessina’s condition is apparent, we’ll be in trouble for certain. She’ll point the finger right at you! And no keep in this country will have us.’
‘What if …’ Giles began. A pause drew out and Silence, still at the crack, worried that Giles was whispering too low for him to hear. But his voice resumed. ‘What if … we did away with our Maurice, and sent a note of apology to Count La Marche. Saying we learned our apprentice had defiled his daughter – against his daughter’s will – and in the name of the count’s honour, we killed our apprentice. We beg his forgiveness, and so on.’
‘Would it work?’
‘I doubt we’d be welcomed back at La Marche, but it might keep him from seeking vengeance.’
‘True. How would we kill him?’
‘It’s two men against a boy.’
‘But he has that sword, and we’ve seen him use it.’
‘We kill him while he sleeps.’
‘But the blood.’
‘We smother him. It’s a small matter.’
‘And remove his body from the chamber how?’
‘Oh, very well. How do you think we ought to kill him?’
‘While we’re on the road. One of us hits him over the head from behind and we leave his body in the woods.’
‘Marvellous.’
Silence inched away from the doorjamb, slowly rising to his feet. He stood for a moment swaying in utter disbelief. That they would plot to kill him! That they would contemplate his murder, when they both knew he had done nothing wrong! It was one thing to kill a man in the heat of battle, one thing to put a lance through a foe, or ram a sword into a robber’s guts. But to slaughter someone you knew, an innocent, and all for the gain of your own reputation? Horrible!
He clenched his fists, digging his nails into his palms, feeling the rage compressed in his sinews. Cheat him of his share of the reward, pin a horrible sin upon him, and then slaughter him … heaven would not allow this! And yet, Silence knew that this inn was not heaven, and he would do himself little good if he burst through the door and confronted the minstrels. No one would believe the word of a boy, an apprentice, a half-trained musician, against two grown men.
So he made his way downstairs, crossing the crowded common room, and out into the early evening. The streets had only grown busier, and Silence shoved his way through the crowds. Kill him! Would they carry through with it? Or would they lose their nerve? He went over their conversation in his mind, then summoned up what he’d heard the countessina and Giles say to each other, recalled how the countessina had drawn close to him, tried several times to seduce him … all the pieces fitted together. He’d been played neatly, his notes struck to form a melody of Giles’s suiting.
Well! He would be no man’s lute. He would show them the true sense of justice. He would show them what virtue looked like, and valour. No striking them from behind, no attacking when they least suspected it. He would catch them in their crime, make them see their own black thoughts.
He had wandered towards the fair, caught up in his rage, and now had to pay attention to the people pressing against him. He threaded his way through, finding the crowds oppressive. He wanted space; he wanted time to contemplate. He wanted the battlements of Tintagel or the forest glen at Ringmar.
The best he could find was a bench beside the nearly deserted jousting pavilion. Two pages dragged a heavy rake behind them, levelling the pitch, struggling with the task in the dark of evening. Silence had purchased a few rolls and chewed them, considering his situation. The noise of the fair was a bit distant now; he could hear the whickering of horses in nearby stables, hear some grooms rattling dice. Tomorrow, these benches would be filled with townsfolk, the pavilion stuffed with nobles, and squires would lead proud-stepping steeds and help their masters mount.
Oh! Where did he belong? All of him felt pulled towards this – jousting, squires, horses, chivalry – but he had been cast out of that world. And now Hob and Giles conspired to remove him not only from the bolt hole he’d meant to carve for himself, but from the world entirely. With a violent flick of his arm, he cast his crust into the darkness.
A scrabbling sound answered him and he stood, expecting to see the naked tail of a rat rustling after his bread. Light caught on a beady eye, but it was no rat. Just a crow. It held Silence’s crust in its beak, working at it for a moment before getting it down its gullet. It contemplated him, turning its head this way and that.
‘I’ve nothing else for you,’ Silence said, holding his empty hands out. ‘I’ve nothing at all to offer.’
The crow turned its head so that one beady eye stared straight at him. Cawwrk.
‘I don’t know what that means,’ Silence said. He thought of the crow he’d spoken with on Tintagel’s battlements, thought of the roads he had followed since then, how long and curving they’d been. How he seemed further than ever from being a knight. And no nearer, either, to being his true self, whatever that might be.
Cawwrk, cawwrk. The crow hopped a few steps closer. Haw?
That noise, so like Merlin’s rusty laugh, made Silence smile. ‘Long ago, a nymph told m
e that if I wanted something, that desire could shape me.’ He laughed again, though the mirth had faded out of him. ‘What do I want? Truly?’ He paused on that question; it hung in the air, tantalizing. And then it seemed to settle on him, not heavy, but a pleasant tingle. ‘I want,’ he whispered to the bird, ‘to be a knight. That is the truth.’ Something didn’t feel right about that. ‘I want to be a knight. And I want to be myself. Both. Can I do that?’
Haw? The crow hopped a few steps and took flight. Silence watched the dark bird meld with the dark sky, felt the tingling spread through him, little sparks buzzing against his skin. He could. He would.
When he returned to the inn, the common room was lively with singing and drinking, but Silence pushed his way through quickly and climbed the stairs, hoping that the room would be empty; he could fetch his few possessions and make his way on his own. But he found it barred, and so knocked.
‘Who is it?’ Giles said.
‘Maurice.’
The bolt slid back. ‘You’re early.’
‘Today was long and thrilling,’ Silence said, forcing cheer into his voice.
‘Yes,’ Giles said sourly. ‘Hob is out, no surprise. I don’t trust the innkeeper enough to leave our winnings in an empty room. Nor do I trust this town well enough to take them into the streets.’
‘A shame you should be sitting here, cooped up on our night of victory. I am happy to sit with our winnings a while.’
‘Indeed.’ Giles regarded him with suspicion. ‘I’ll go downstairs for a quick dinner and bring us some wine when I return. Two watchers are better than one.’
Once Giles had left, Silence gathered his belongings. Thirty marks was not a tremendous fortune, but enough to keep him in food until something came along, particularly if he could find inns that would let him play. Though tempted to search for the winnings Giles had hidden, he resisted. He wasn’t a common thief. The noble course was to confront Hob and Giles, inform them that he knew of their plan, and bring about some sense of justice.