The Rope Dancer

by Roberta Gellis

  That admission came grudgingly into Telor’s mind. If she were not already a whore, it would be impossible simply to leave her in the next town as he had originally planned. A rope dancer could not perform alone. There was the rope to set up, for example; the girl was strong, but not strong enough for that. Besides that, a woman alone would soon run afoul of the authorities if she drew attention to herself—and how could she draw an audience without drawing attention if she did not have a man to bang the drum for her? To leave her would force her into whoring—and that seemed cruel, if whoring had not been a major part of her work. Having come to that conclusion, Telor decided he had better listen to her story again with a more open mind.

  “Tell me,” he said, “why you think your troupe was attacked. It is not usual for a whole troupe to be killed even if the lord has reason to become angry at one or two.”

  He expected her to deny all blame vehemently, but she shook her head and said, “It was not a whole troupe, only Ulric and me. That was why I was dancing like a common whore on the ground. Ulric did not wish to set up my rope—and now it is lost.” She paused, and although she was not touching him, Telor could imagine the brief sigh and shrug that dismissed what was lost and beyond regret. “But you asked why he was killed.” She uttered a short laugh. “Ulric was stupid, I suppose, and the men in the keep were still half crazed with fighting. He was always making bets and winning them.”

  “He cheated at a game of chance?” Deri’s deeper voice held a snarl. He hated the thievery and dishonesty characteristic of the wandering players, a little because they made his new life more difficult but more because he took pride in his craft and did not like it soiled.

  Carys looked across at the dim figure on the sturdy pony with some surprise, puzzled by his distaste, because to her knowledge cheating was a natural part of a player’s life. But she responded to the anger in his voice and knew that she felt much the same; what she did not understand was that their reasons were different. She had no moral objections to stealing or cheating; she had never been taught any, and even if she had been, she would have soon learned that morals were a luxury she could not afford. On the other hand, experience had taught her that dishonesty led to disaster sooner or later. Still, although she did not regret Ulric’s death, she had a strong sense of loyalty, and fair was fair.

  “Not in a game,” she replied. “I don’t know what happened, but Ulric was always making bets about what he could do, and winning them. For all I know, that fool said he could throw a man over the wall, and did it, and killed the man. When the men ran into the hall where I was dancing, they were yelling in the lord’s language. I can understand it, mostly, and even speak a little, but I got so scared I couldn’t make head or tail of what they were saying. I knew it was trouble from the way they looked at me.”

  She shuddered as memory renewed terror, and Telor asked, “What happened to the rest of the troupe?” as much to divert her as from interest.

  “One thing after another,” Carys said, shrugging. “It started with Morgan Knifethrower getting so drunk that he was caught switching the bones. The men he was playing with killed him. That was three years ago. We were nine then and had a cart for the gowns and blankets and iron poles for my rope dancing. We did plays—sometimes I was a grand lady and sometimes an old beldame.” She uttered a small delighted chuckle and her voice was light and animated. “And the watchers believed me. I changed my voice and my walk—Morgan taught me that. We even played in keeps then…only three years ago.”

  The lilt had gone, leaving her voice thin and tired. Telor knew the rest of the story without hearing it. With no one to hold the troupe together, quarrels had developed and the group had broken up. Very likely Carys and her man had been looking for another troupe to join and had been caught in the area when fighting broke out. That reminded Telor that she might have information far more important to him than her personal history.

  “How did you come to be in that place?” he asked. “Where did you come from?”

  “We were in Chippasham when the town had news that there was fighting west along the road to Marlborough, so they put us out. We were two extra mouths to feed, and they did not trust us. We knew there had been fighting near Devizes not long ago, so it did not seem safe to go south, and Ulric remembered that the young scholars in Oxford were free with their pennies—those that had any.” Carys shrugged. “We had no news of any fighting there, so we were going toward Oxford and staying off the great roads to be on the safe side. The night before last we spent in a village—it was just ahead. Ulric and I were in a shed near the edge of the town, so we were able to escape when the men-at-arms came through, but they had burnt the place out, and there were dead all around. We could not go back. We were also afraid to try to creep past the keep, lest we be taken for enemies. It seemed best to go boldly, saying we were players. And at first all went well…”

  When her voice drifted into silence, neither Telor nor Deri asked another question. There was already evidence on the breeze that she had told the truth about the village. A scent of burning was in the air, mingled with a fainter, sickly odor. Deri made a wordless sound, and Telor grimaced into the darkness. He thought briefly of leaving the road altogether but dismissed the idea. It would only slow them down, and if they diverted far enough around the village to avoid all evidence of its fate, they could easily be lost. Instead, he told Carys to sit astride and hold tight to the ropes, and as soon as she was set, warned Deri and kicked his horse into a fast trot. He heard the girl behind him whimper with fear and pain and was sorry, but it was more important to him to shield Deri as much as possible.

  Mercifully, the dark hid most of the destruction. Here and there a narrow form, blacker than the surrounding shadows, told of a piece of wall standing gauntly alone and testified to a house burnt to the ground or fallen in, but mostly the huts seemed intact. It had been a very small village, either not worth a total burning or spared because the attacking baron intended to hold the land and use the place. Nor did the odor of death grow stronger. Perhaps those who had escaped or been spared had buried their dead.

  They were through the place very quickly, but above the sound of the horses’ hooves Telor could hear Deri sobbing, and under his breath he cursed those who destroyed the defenseless. Eventually the road they were on ended in a crossroad going east and west. Telor pulled his horse to a halt. Deri’s pony passed him, but it was already slowing and stopped of itself a few yards ahead. Deri did not move. He was no longer crying, but he did not seem aware of where he was. Behind him Telor could hear Carys breathing in little gasps. One of the ropes tied to the saddle passed along his hip, and he could feel it trembling against him with the shaking of her hands, but she had not made a sound other than her breathing after that first whimper. She had courage, he thought, and endurance, for being jostled about must have been torture to her bruised body.

  The moon was up now, over the treetops. Telor turned and looked at the girl. Her eyes were very large, glittering with tears, and there were shining streaks on her cheeks; but before she felt him turn, he saw that she was looking at Deri and there was a kind of pity on her sharp-featured face. The expression sat oddly on her, for the outlines of her face reminded Telor of a fox—the large eyes set above broad cheekbones and tapering sharply to a little pointed chin.

  “There is—or was—a village very close to the east, just beyond a little river,” Telor said. “There was an alehouse there that would give us shelter, but I do not wish to ride in and find more ruins and more dead—”

  Carys’s eyes moved to Deri and she nodded.

  “Nor do I want to leave him alone,” Telor went on. “If I move the horses into the trees and tie them, will you stay with him while I go on to the village?”

  “Will he stay with me is more the question,” Carys said. “What could I do to stop him if he wished to go? I cannot even walk. And…and what if he chooses to hate me because I am alive and…and others are dead…”

  �
��Deri is not that kind,” Telor replied. “He will not hurt you, nor will he go—he has nowhere to go. Only if he comes to himself, it is important that someone be near. Talk to him. It does not matter what you say.”

  “I will try,” Carys said, but her voice shook with fear.

  Chapter 3

  Neither Telor’s nor Carys’s fears were realized. To his surprise, Telor found the village untouched. Emboldened by its peacefulness, he took the chance of waking the keeper of the alehouse and learned that, as in Goatacre, the lord of Tyther had sent men-at-arms to protect the place. Thus, the people were somewhat thinner of supplies than they had been, and a few girls might bear children whose hair and eye color did not match either their mothers’ or that of the men they claimed as fathers, but at least they had not been burnt out or slain. All the more, Telor knew, would the alehouse keeper welcome a few coins, so he did not hesitate to tell the man to stay wakeful until he could return with the rest of his party.

  Carys, lifted down from Telor’s horse and seated against the bole of a tree next to where the animals were tied, watched Deri fearfully, but for a long time he did not speak or move. Weariness began to overpower fear, and Carys’s head had begun to nod when Deri suddenly slid down from his mount. She jerked awake and tried to tell him in a soothing, confident voice that Telor had said to wait for him at that spot, but the words came out in a thin, frightened squeak. The dwarf’s head turned toward her slowly, as if it were a dreadful effort to move, then his body followed, with that same painful effort. By the time he began to walk in her direction, it took all Carys’s will to keep from screaming—but Deri only dropped down beside her, drew up his short legs so he could cross his arms over them, and bent forward to rest his head on his arms.

  Talk, Telor had said, but Carys could not. She did not understand why a burnt-out village should affect Deri so badly; she had never had a fixed home, and it did not occur to her that Deri had really had one either. She assumed a dwarf who was a player had been sold to a troupe as soon as his deformity was recognized. Nonetheless, the sensitivity that had given Carys such pleasure in acting and made her so successful at playing parts responded to the depth of Deri’s grief. She knew that at this moment talk would be an unwanted intrusion, and despite Telor’s assurance that Deri would not hurt her, she was less than eager to draw his attention. The question was soon moot in any case; while considering whether she was more afraid Deri would turn on her or Telor would be angry and desert her because she had not followed his order, Carys fell asleep.

  She woke to a loud, one-sided argument as Telor pulled and prodded at Deri to get him to remount. During this, she had a chance to rehearse her apology for not doing as Telor had asked, but he waved it irritably aside as he lifted her to his horse; and he did not speak to her at all, even when he lifted her down again, carried her into the alehouse, and deposited her gently on a pile of three pallets. Carys had been frightened by Telor’s silence and thus was so stunned by the kindness of giving her all three of the thin pads provided by the alehouse for its guests to sleep on that she could not utter a sound. Nor did she have any other opportunity to thank Telor because he only pushed Deri into the alehouse and went away again. She could hear him talking to the animals as he led them around to the shed at the back, then another man’s voice and sounds that she guessed were made by unsaddling and caring for the horse, pony, and mule.

  Slowly and wearily, Carys untied the rope that held Telor’s blanket around her, eased it out from under her behind, lay down, and pulled it over her. Thanks could wait, Carys thought, but as her eyes closed she wondered if she was being wise to let herself sleep. Tears welled up under her lids as she thought of how stiff and sore she would be and how it would hurt when Telor demanded the use of her. But she was beyond fighting her exhaustion and was unconscious before the tears could gather and fall. And she did not have bad dreams or wake shivering and wet with sweat as she had when she expected Morgan and Ulric to take her. There was something…something she knew but had forgotten that soothed her and let her sink deep, deep into the restful dark.

  A dim sense of movement beyond her woke her, but to no sense of fear, for she had remembered the thing that had soothed her all through the night. So she woke laughing at her own foolishness, until the movement of her body—just as stiff and sore as she had expected it to be—made her gasp with pain. Still, remembering that she had been too tired to catch the significance of Telor’s piling the three pallets atop each other and making no place for himself to lie down beside her kept her smiling. There was now light beyond her still-closed eyelids, but she lay quietly, savoring her relative freedom from pain while she could. When she was wanted, she would be called. No one would care whether she hurt or was sleeping.

  Carys’s peace was short-lived. A bump and scrape and a man’s hearty oath from beyond the thin, withy-woven wall that separated the back shed from the living space of the alehouse brought her up on her knees, regardless of pain. Her eyes darted wildly, first to either side of her and then all around, for some evidence that Telor and Deri were not taking their animals from the shed and leaving her to whatever fate would befall her.

  Had she not been seized by panic, she would have found the evidence instantly—Deri, sleeping soddenly with his head on one of the two tables on either side of the hearth in the center of the room, which was well lit by light from the open door. She did not notice that the sleeper’s legs came nowhere near the floor, and she could not see his face. All she noticed was the remains of a morning meal on the other table. Then, desperately and almost hopelessly, she looked across the room for some signs of her companions, peering into the shadowy spaces between the posts supporting the crossbeams that helped the crucks resist the downward thrust of the turf roof. She had slept in one of those spaces herself, and knew it was the custom to bed guests there.

  She could see no sign of them, and despair kept her frozen for another few moments, until the light from the doorway was blocked out and a new blistering oath, in Telor’s voice, brought her head around. Her lips parted to call out to him, but surprise kept her silent as she watched him back into the room, helping the alehouse keeper support a large tub. They maneuvered it around the table with some difficulty and set it down with a thump in the sleeping space next to her. Then the alewife came in, wearing a yoke that carried two steaming buckets. Carys stared. She knew nothing at all about brewing ale, but it had never occurred to her that it would be done in the main room of an alehouse. It did not seem practical; also early summer, before the grain was ripe, seemed like a strange time of year to begin a brewing. On the other hand, she could think of no other reason for the alewife to be pouring hot water into a tub, and in any case, it was not her affair to criticize. She eased herself forward eagerly, pleased by the opportunity to see something new and different and perhaps learn something useful.

  Telor had turned toward her after the tub was on the floor, but he did not speak. Her wide eyes and lively interest gave her an expression of childlike wonder that made Telor think that she was eager to bathe. He had not been able to talk to Deri about what to do with the girl because the dwarf had been drinking himself insensible the previous night. But perhaps he had been wrong in thinking Carys hopeless. During the night he had come to one decision about her; early this morning he had reversed that decision. And he still could not talk to Deri about the problem. Telor glanced toward the table where Deri was sleeping and shrugged. There would be time enough for what he intended to do while Deri slept off a little more of his potations.

  Telor had not slept as well as Carys. Although one part of him knew it would not have been possible to leave the girl lying beside the road, another part was furious at the embarrassment and inconvenience she would cause. Deri fitted no matter where they went. In villages and small manors, he played the fool and was the main entertainer; among the nobility, he acted the part of a clean, well-mannered servant, adding to Telor’s consequence. Contrariwise, Carys would be a disaster in vill
age and keep alike. Filthy and coarse as she was, village wives would try to have them driven away, assuming that Telor had brought along a whore to tempt out of their men’s purses the few pennies they had. In the castles, a dwarf dressed as a servant might be accepted, but if Telor brought a dancer with him too, many lords would take him for a mere jongleur and not ask him to sing in the great hall.

  The lord of Combe was just the kind to sneer publicly at Telor for claiming he wished to uphold the minstrel’s ancient traditions and then degrading himself by associating with a common dancing girl for the extra farthings she could earn. And there was no way he could defend himself. Let him say one word too many and he would be dead, or maimed, or imprisoned with no recourse. An artisan has his guild and city to protect him; a common serf has a lord who will defend him against strangers for his own honor’s sake, even if that lord himself oppresses the serf. Only minstrels, as if they were outlaws, had no one who would stretch out a hand to shield them, he thought resentfully—and then remembered that Carys was a player too.

  Pity vied with self-interest and finally found a compromise. Telor had some money; his next place to entertain was assured and, because it was a wedding in a large keep, he could expect not only to be paid by de Dunstanville but to receive largesse from many of the guests as well. Thus, he decided that he could give most of the coins he had to Carys. That would be enough to supply her with food and lodging, without whoring, until she could find another troupe that needed her skills.