The Rope Dancer

by Roberta Gellis

  That gesture inevitably produced the opposite effect. Deri would pretend to rush eagerly toward Telor, shouting, “You want me, master? Dear master, I come! I come!” all with a leer so suggestive that the innocent words were given an obscene meaning too clear to be misunderstood. But Deri would never reach Telor, who would stand up with a furious expression on his face; instead Deri would fall into a series of frontovers interspersed with even more outrageous remarks. Then Telor would raise his long, iron-shod quarterstaff and shout at Deri to stop his mouth, the dwarf would collapse on the ground in apparent terror, and Telor would grasp his arm and pull him up, holding him as if to keep him still. Finally, he would apologize to the “good people” if his dwarf had offended them—and the act would be over.

  They were always given a meal and offered a place to sleep, sometimes even invited to share a villager’s house. In more prosperous places they might be given a bit of silver coin or, more often, Telor was able to obtain a straight length or block of fine wood or catgut or white hair from the tail of a horse. He would work on the wood in the long spring and summer evenings, shaping and embellishing, until a fine new pipe, harp, gittern, or lute came to life in his skilled hands. When he and Deri arrived in a large town, he would sell his work if they were in need of money, but usually their skills could buy them lodging and food even in the towns.

  In villages, Telor always tried to separate himself from their hosts and find a loft or a shed where they could be apart. Sometimes he used Deri’s bad behavior as an excuse, but often a shed was all they were offered. Even the serfs distrusted and looked down on the roving jongleurs, who sang, danced, and otherwise amused them but who had no settled place in life, no master to protect them, and were meat for any man’s spite. Of course, the serfs had good reason for their distrust, since the jongleurs were often as skilled in thievery as they were in their art.

  Telor would have been one step above that level had he not traveled with Deri; Telor was a minstrel, a skilled musician and singer with a large repertoire of songs, which celebrated epic deeds and heroic love stories. Moreover, Telor was marked as a person of importance by the simple villagers because he had a good horse, Deri a smaller animal, and there was a mule to carry baggage. Besides, Telor looked noble. He was taller than most of the villagers and cleaner. His features were not striking—mild blue eyes, an undistinguished nose, and a mouth that had a smiling look—but his face was long and thin, like a nobleman’s; his clean, shining hair was carefully trimmed and combed, like a nobleman’s; and his calm manner and seeming assurance impressed the simple souls.

  Actually, Telor’s proper audience was among the nobility, to whom his repertoire had meaning and relevance. In a manor or keep, Deri pretended to be Telor’s servant—a sufficient excuse for his presence and sometimes a means of magnifying Telor’s status so that he was lodged like an upper servant instead of being banished to an outbuilding in the bailey.

  Thus, Telor was not at all surprised when, after he had seemingly silenced Deri, the people of Goatacre had been in a quandary. They recognized Telor’s quality, which entitled him to the best they had, but knew that Deri belonged in the sty. The village headman would gladly have invited Telor to his house—such as it was—but did not want Deri loose among his children. Telor swiftly settled the doubt by asking for the use of a shed he had seen, swept out and free of all the odor of the goats, which were left to graze in the common in this mild season. The headman thought that Telor was being considerate, but the truth was that fewer lice would be transferred to their persons and clothing and fewer bedbugs would bite them in the shed than in the headman’s hut. It was at that moment, in a flush of good feeling, that the headman warned Telor that his lord’s men-at-arms had told him there had been fighting along the old road that went from Marlborough to Bath and that the keep to the northwest had been taken by assault.

  Telor had thanked the headman and said they would go elsewhere, but when he and Deri were alone he cursed long and bitterly. He had an engagement to sing at the wedding of the eldest son of de Dunstanville, the lord of Castle Combe, and Combe lay north and west of the village. He did not dare fail to meet his engagement, or de Dunstanville would have the head off his shoulders as soon as he could catch him; yet there was no way to be sure that after he and Deri had dared the danger of passing through an area at war he would find de Dunstanville still the master of his keep. Having expended some of his rage in cursing all the parties in the stupid war that kept bursting out here and there all over the country, Telor fell silent and turned his head toward his companion.

  With his features in repose and his body hidden by the shadows of the byre wall, Deri was singularly handsome. Bright intelligence gleamed in his large, dark eyes, and a straight nose and beautifully molded lips were enhanced by a framing of shining black curls and a well-kept, short black beard. The beard and curls, combed and springy and not matted with filth, would have spoiled Deri’s image as a dim-witted fool had anyone ever noticed, but most people only saw the distorted body with its enormous breadth of shoulder and barrel chest set over legs that, had they not been thickly muscled, would have well befitted a six-year-old child. The arms, which were a match for the upper body and so hung to within a few inches of the ground, emphasized his unnatural shape.

  Deri laughed softly. It was only with him that Telor dropped the guard he usually kept over his strong passions. The gentle manner, wedded to a most bland and unremarkable countenance, was an effective disguise. Telor’s mild blue eyes and soft brown hair were disarming, and the fact that he was clean-shaven made him look younger than he was. His height, which was well above the average, gave him a slender, willowy appearance; most people incorrectly assumed he was a weakling, failing to notice the corded muscles on arms and neck. Deri no longer kept count of the times that innocent and frail appearance had saved them from being robbed or killed or both because the attackers were contemptuous of Telor. Deri could only suppose those who thought them easy pickings did not notice the heavy iron-bound quarterstaff—or did they believe Telor used it to support his faltering steps? It was a deadly weapon, with a longer reach than a sword and the capability of smashing even a helmeted head flat. Deri had seen it happen.

  “Well?” Deri asked. “Do you think this is a local affair or is the king…Is there a king now?”

  “I suppose we should have stopped at Sir Robert’s keep instead of riding ahead,” Telor said, dropping to the ground and resting his back against the shed wall. “Sir Robert might have been able to tell us whether it would be safe to travel past his neighbor’s keep.”

  The minstrel had deliberately ignored Deri’s bitter question. He understood it, but there was no answer he could give that would be of any help. Deri’s life had been destroyed by the sporadic war, which seemed as if it would never end. He had been the son of a rich yeoman and, though he was a dwarf, had been cherished by his parents and his siblings. Their love had saved him from being embittered by his deformity, and his strength and cleverness had won him respect (at the cost of a few broken heads) among the neighboring manors and villages. Those virtues plus the beauty of his face and a sweet temper (when he was not provoked) had even won him a willing bride. And then a battle had been fought right on his father’s manor, and no one was left alive but Deri—no family, no bride, no house, no land, no herds…nothing…only Deri himself, battered and broken but too strong to die.

  Telor had found him, dropped by the side of the road like discarded offal when his captors had decided he would not survive to be their plaything, and Telor had taken him up and nursed him back to life. But the worst of Deri’s fate was that he had no idea who had killed and burned all that had been his life. He did not even know whom to hate—except the king, who was unable to control his barons and had unleashed the unending war. There was nothing Telor could say to comfort Deri; whatever he could say had been said many times before.

  In addition, Telor felt uncomfortable uttering platitudes because his case was so
different. His family was safe and prosperous, talented woodcarvers in the strong city of Bristol. A chartered city with a fine harbor, Bristol had little fear of any earl or king. She welcomed them all in peace, but if threatened, she closed her great gates, her strong artisans manned her high walls, her river gave her unending sweet water, and her ships brought her people food. Thus, impervious to assault or siege, Bristol protected her burghers—but to be sheltered by her strength one must be confined by it, and Telor found that confinement suffocating.

  Not that Telor objected to the walls as walls. He used them to symbolize the courtesies and rigid patterns of behavior that permitted the burghers to live in peace though they were crammed together in their close-packed houses. The bows, the smiles, the prescribed words that set neighbor at ease with neighbor woke a devil of mischief and rebellion in Telor. He was forever in trouble for rudeness, for misbehavior, and for leaving more profitable work to carve instruments that made music or, far worse, to make music himself. The rest of the family could make instruments too, but made them only on order, whereas Telor would willingly make nothing else.

  With one accord Telor’s family all bitterly regretted instructing Telor in the mysteries of fashioning those seductive pieces, but it was too late, and with marked relief Telor’s parents relinquished him to become an apprentice to Eurion, an old customer, a minstrel who had a steady circuit of castles and manors where he was warmly welcomed. It was a great loss of status to sink from a woodworker to a traveling minstrel, but Telor’s parents had begun to fear that if they did not allow him to sink to Eurion’s level, the boy would soon rise—to the top of the gallows. Even so, they did not cast him out; Telor was welcome to return to the bosom of his family when he was ready to settle down, be polite to his neighbors, and carve what he was ordered to carve. Thus, Telor did not roam the roads because he had nowhere to go; he sang for his supper by his own choice, and he felt ill at ease trying to comfort Deri—he, who had never lost anything.

  The best he could do when Deri made no response to his remark was to touch the dwarf’s shoulder. Their horses, tethered at the other end of the shed, moved restlessly. Telor had been offered the freedom of the common to graze them, but he had refused tactfully. The villagers were honest enough, he thought, but the first lesson Master Eurion had taught him was not to put temptation in anyone’s way. No doubt the headman was sincere in his offer, but there was always the chance that one or more of the men would calculate the value of the horses and begin to think that no one would miss Telor and the dwarf, no lord would come seeking revenge for their disappearance. Jongleurs were of no worth, no value to anyone; why should the village not keep the horses? Dead and buried, the minstrel and his dwarf would not complain.

  The sound of the horses’ movement made Deri blink away whatever visions he had been seeing on the blank wall. He was no less aware than Telor that their “wealth” might be a dangerous attraction, and his hand dropped to his belt, where a leather sling and a variety of smooth pebbles provided a simple but deadly armament. When he saw no stranger had caused the uneasiness of the animals, he turned toward Telor and frowned.

  “I wonder if we should go up to the castle to see whether we can get more news,” Telor repeated.

  “The last time you stopped at the keep, Sir Robert kept you over a week writing stupid poems to some woman he wished to futter,” Deri said. “And no doubt he would regard your being late to the lord of Combe’s son’s wedding as no more than a good jest. Besides, would Sir Robert know any more than we? Except for wanting that lady to think him a poet, it is more for the news you carry than for your sweet voice that he is glad of your visits.”

  Telor sighed, partly with relief for having distracted Deri from his sorrows and partly with resignation. It was probably true that Sir Robert knew little or nothing of events beyond the borders of his own land. “The problem remains,” he said. “Do we travel the long way and chance being late at Combe, or do we go straight through and chance being caught in the fighting?”

  Deri looked back at the wall. “As you like. Why should it matter to me?”

  This time Telor did not sigh for fear he would hurt Deri’s feelings. Talk or evidence of war always woke memories in the dwarf that he seemed able to control at other times. “Then I say we should ride straight through. The armies—if armies there are—will do us no harm, after all. It is only if they keep us in camp to amuse them, we will certainly be late.” Then Telor shrugged and laughed. “Ah, well, if we cannot come to Combe in time, we will go north. I begin to feel like a merchant, traveling the same road and making the same stops again and again. Perhaps it is time we saw new country.”

  Shaking free of his gloom again, Deri rose to his feet. “I’d better go get our wages. The longer I wait, the less we get.”

  Telor nodded absently, his mind still on the unrest that might exist between him and Combe. Though what he had said to Deri was true—minstrels and jongleurs were usually regarded as neutrals indifferent to who won or lost in any conflict—they were also mistrusted, and men still half crazed by fighting might kill for no real reason. He had intended to take the old Roman road as far as Bath and then the Fosse Way north, but even if the fighting had stopped, the armies would be likely to camp along those roads. If he and Deri went at night and by the smaller ways, they might avoid being noticed at all. The only road he knew went past the keep that had been wrested from Sir Robert’s neighbor, but it would be shut tight after dark and not opened even if the guards noticed two travelers on the road.

  Chapter 2

  Pain nagged at Carys, and she tried to slip away from it, to remain in the pleasant dark. That had been her only defense many times before, but this time it failed her. A chill night wind ruffled her rags; half conscious, she began to reach out for the worn, patched blanket she thought had slipped away. A sharper pang in her torn palm and a sudden awareness that she lay at a strange angle on the bare ground brought memory back in a rush. She had dropped from the wall, hearing as she fell a woman’s scream and a louder outburst of male voices, but she did not remember her impact with the ground.

  An instinctive, fearful movement wrenched a low moan from Carys, and the sound more than the pain froze her into immobility again. But her mind was clearing rapidly, and she realized there was only dark all around her—dark, but not silence. Dim noises drifted down to her that she now recognized as loud voices, blurred and distorted by the wall above her and the distance. She could not have been lying here long—or if she had been, the voices were a proof of the continued determination to find her, for the men were still searching. How much longer could it be before they realized she was no longer within the walls, before the guards turned away from the tumult in the bailey and looked outward again to watch for enemies? She had to get away. If only she was not broken anywhere.

  With tears of agony streaming down her face but in grim silence, Carys began to move. Everything hurt, and she could feel a few warm trickles of blood, but she managed to roll over and lift herself to her hands and knees. She trembled, barely maintaining her position, her head hanging like that of an animal in the last stages of exhaustion, but one hand went forward, and a knee followed. It hurt so much to move that after a little while it did not seem to matter. Slowly but inexorably, Carys crawled up the outer side of the dry moat.

  Until she reached the edge and the level waste ground that separated the dry moat from the road, Carys never really believed that she would escape. But when her bleeding hands and knees had carried her up and she realized the ground she was moving over so painfully was flat, an explosion of hope galvanized her, muffling her pain and pouring strength into her muscles. She hardly realized that she had sprung to her feet and begun to run until she crossed the road and nearly crashed into the brush that lined the far side. Instinctively she turned away and ran on westward, back toward Chippasham, where the troupe had last played.

  The end of Carys’s strength was as sudden as its coming. All at once she was aware
of a stabbing agony in her back and side and the fact that her arms and legs had turned to lead. She struggled on, her sure stride changing to a pathetic stagger, driving herself though she was barely conscious until her foot sank into a cross ditch and she fell fainting at the side of the road. The faint passed into sodden sleep; not even the sound of horses coming in her direction was able to pierce her exhaustion.

  ***

  Dark as it was, Telor could not fail to see the body by the road. He had been watching the faint difference between the bare dirt and the verge where grass grew, which was dimly visible even without moonlight, so that he could keep the horses from wandering off the track. Carys’s bare limbs made a greater contrast, and her body broke the regular outline of road and verge. At first, thinking it was the body of a man killed in the battle for the keep they had passed, Telor uttered a muffled blasphemy and prepared to urge his horse to a faster walk. Then it occurred to him that he had seen no other corpses, and it was strange that this one body should be left lying in so exposed a spot. Almost simultaneously he recalled the faint glow above the walls and the faint sounds, which had implied lights and voices in the bailey at a time when all should have been dark and silent. He and Deri had hesitated and then gone on, keeping the horses on the verge to silence their hooves, though that meant slaps and scratches from unseen branches of overhanging trees. They were past Carys when Telor’s impressions all came together, and he pulled his horse to a halt with an exclamation.

  “What is it?” Deri asked, his fingers seeking a stone for the sling he had been carrying ready in his hand.

  “Some prisoner must have escaped from that castle,” Telor replied, swinging down from his saddle. “If he’s not dead, perhaps we can help him.”