The Rope Dancer

by Roberta Gellis

  The main question was whether to walk or ride. To walk would add considerably to the time Telor must be left alone; to ride would present a problem of where to leave Surefoot and Doralys. Telor protested that he would not mind being alone. He could practice his songs and his music. Deri and Carys urged him to sleep and be quiet instead. It was not likely that the outlaws were still hunting them, but Carys and Deri did not want to leave Telor for too long. Eventually they settled on putting Surefoot’s harness on Doralys, so Carys could ride pillion behind Deri. She would leave the dwarf outside the town and stable the mule before buying the rope.

  When Deri pointed out that his stirrups would be too short for Carys and that might be noticed, Carys shook her head, twisted her mouth into an ugly sneer, and, with an aggrieved whine in her voice, said, “My master is so careful of a penny that he makes me use the saddle from his son’s pony.”

  “You are a good part player,” Telor said, wondering uneasily how much of what she said and did was truly Carys and how much a role.

  Deri simply nodded approval and went on with the plans. When Carys had made her purchase, she would walk back to where Deri was waiting, change into performing clothes, and come back into the town with him as players. When they had done their act, they would walk out of town, Carys would change back into her merchant’s servant disguise, walk back to the town carrying her rope and their other purchases, and recover Doralys, picking up Deri on the way back.

  They rode off, armed with Telor’s recollection that there was a small wood about half a mile from the town. They found that and rode in so Deri could dismount and Carys take his place. He spent a few minutes showing her how to handle the reins, and she had no trouble with that, but when he handed her his purse, Carys bit her lip.

  “I do not understand money,” she said. “You had better take out all the coins beyond what the rope should cost and tell me the names of what is inside. I will try to pay less than you leave, but I must have a good rope, strong and smooth, that will not stretch too much or too fast.”

  Deri looked up at her with exasperation. “You mean you have no idea what such a rope should cost? How do you expect me to know? Did you never go to buy your own rope?”

  “Never.” She shook her head. “Morgan taught me…or no, I knew how to walk a rope already, I think. I was only very young. I do not know where the first rope came from. Perhaps it belonged to my father and mother and he just got the same kind each time. I did not get a new rope while I was with Ulric.”

  “Do you at least know what kind of rope you need?” Deri asked, his voice rising.

  “Oh, yes.” Carys was sure of that. “When I see it, I will know it.”

  “That,” Deri growled, “is not much help to me in judging cost. Can you tell me what the rope looks like?”

  “About as thick as my thumb and dark in color with many thin twisted strands then twisted together. It is smooth to the hand, without little hard ends sticking out. I think it might be oiled or soaked in something, for it had a smell, but it was not sticky.”

  Carys watched Deri hopefully as he racked his memory over all the kinds of rope they had used on his father’s manor, but this was surely not among them. He suspected it was a rope used on ships and said so, advising her to go to the dock to buy, assuming, since the town was named for the “mouth of the creek, or small harbor,” that there must be a dock of some kind. As to price, the best he could do was leave her a little more than what his father had paid for the best rope they used. Having explained that six pence was the price of a week’s work for a man, he doled out the silver pennies.

  “I will try to choose a shop where there are already buyers,” Carys said, her lips tight with determination and concern at being trusted with so great a sum. “And I will listen to hear what they pay,” she added shrewdly. “And, if I was a little short, I shall weep and tell them my master will not believe the price and will beat me if I return to him empty-handed.”

  Deri laughed. “I see I need not fear you will lack invention if everything does not go just right. Do your best, but do not worry if the price is higher than I judged. It will be quicker for you to come back and get more coins. And look for a place to tie your rope as you go along. If you cannot find one, at least we will know what streets to avoid.”

  So Carys set off with a brave face and a quaking heart, so fearful of losing her purse or having it stolen from her that she clutched it tightly in one hand although it was already securely fastened to her belt. This left only one hand to guide Doralys, but that did not matter since the road was hemmed in by hedges and the mule could not stray. Going over in her mind the role she must play—an experienced apprentice who would not be frightened by a good-sized town—calmed her. Carys was indeed familiar with towns like Creklade, and her spirits were further lifted when she was able to enter the town without question although the gates were well guarded and there were men pacing the walls.

  The gate guard, seeing only a well-dressed boy on a well-fed mule, had nodded pleasantly and waved her past. It occurred to Carys then that there might be unrest in the neighborhood because many guards paced the wall she had seen, but seeing an ideal place to set up her rope distracted her. In fact, that the town square sported two gibbets implied to Carys that whatever trouble had brought so many alert guards to the town walls was past and that the malefactors were already tried and awaiting punishment. All that mattered to her was that both gibbets were empty and, in all probability, the townsfolk would be greatly amused by seeing the gibbets used for rope dancing before the execution.

  Good fortune follows good spirits, she told herself. She had inquired civilly about where to stable her mule, and been answered civilly. Carys knew she owed this new experience to being mounted and to her decent clothes. Players were as likely to be cursed and have garbage thrown at them as to be welcomed with joyous and bawdy cries, but they never had a quiet, civil answer with a pleasant smile to spice it. The fact that the citizen she had questioned showed no fear seemed to confirm that whatever had happened to occasion the lifting of two gibbets, the townsfolk of Creklade had not suffered from it.

  Moreover, the kind reception gave her the confidence to ask about where to buy rope and, after stabling Doralys, to follow the directions given her boldly, going down main streets rather than trying to cling to alleys as she and Ulric had done. Then she had the ultimate good fortune to discover a patron haggling over just such a coil as she needed when she entered the shop. She managed to delay until that customer was finished, and obtained a far better price than she or Deri had expected.

  The combination of reliefs put wings on Carys’s heels, and she was half dancing on her way back to the gate when she remembered the nods of the guards. It would never do to have ridden in and be walking out, but her confidence was sufficient now that she just laughed and followed the broadest street she could find running eastward, which led to another gate. She went out with no more trouble than she had entering and simply followed the road that ran around the outside of the wall until she could slip into the little wood and find Deri.

  The dwarf, already changed into motley, with a small drum hanging about his neck and an obscenely shaped bladder to beat it with, was startled when she told him of the site she had chosen for a performance, but when he followed her reasoning, he nodded. “It can do no harm to ask the bailiff or mayor or whoever has charge of the place,” he agreed.

  They did not enter Creklade as easily as Carys had. The guards stopped them and asked from where they came and what they intended to do in the town.

  “The boy,” Deri whined, holding fast to Carys’s wrist as if he expected her to bolt away, “is mine. He has been taught to dance on a rope. He is all that is left of our troupe, and the rope and the pack on my back is all that is left of our goods since we were set upon by outlaws not more than six or seven miles down the road. So close to a town, we did not expect them.”

  “We have had troubles of our own,” the guard said, waving them th
rough with a warning to report themselves to the bailiff.

  When they did so, and Deri mentioned the outlaws again, the bailiff virtually repeated the guard’s remark, adding that a man, Orin, styling himself “lord” but clearly no better than a self-made “captain,” had marched a troop from the east, hoping to take the town. He had been driven off, and it was his henchmen who were to be hanged. And when Deri complained of the loss of his rope dancer’s poles and begged leave to use the gibbets to string the boy’s rope so he could perform and they could buy food, the bailiff laughed heartily and gave permission. One day’s entertainment, he commented, should precede the next.

  When they left the bailiff’s house, Deri began to beat his drum and call out for the people to come to the square. No explanation was needed; the gaudy, multicolored, somewhat tattered garments, the rap of the drum, and the gross remarks addressed to those who looked out or came to their doors announced that players had come to town. Carys followed Deri, now walking on her hands, now progressing in handsprings, and, if she fell behind, closing the distance by a series of cartwheels. They went down all three principal streets, then all round the square, and there was a good-sized crowd gathered by the time Deri went up one gibbet with the rope over his shoulder and the other with the end of the rope in his teeth.

  On their walk into the town, Carys had shown him the knots, which were not at all difficult to tie, the main trick being in the slipknot, which initially went round the pole and permitted the rope to be drawn to a humming tightness. She had also told him at what points in her act he must seem to threaten her, and when he protested that it would not be easy to change from merry fool to harsh taskmaster, they had stopped and sat under a tree until they worked out a new act, which included the old jests and tumbles, but with a sly, leering quality rather than a sense of an unknowing idiot.

  “I will enjoy this—if the crowd does not turn on me and I live through it,” Deri had commented.

  “It should be Telor who takes that part,” Carys said, looking concerned. “I wish it were not necessary, but if the people do not think I am frightened and forced to do the more difficult parts, they will not feel the thrills. That is what they throw the coins for—the thrills, the hope of blood. They must believe every minute that I am about to fall.”

  Deri shuddered. “They are not the only ones who will have their hearts in their mouths. Gibbets are high.”

  Carys laughed merrily and fingered her rope with love. “So much the better. If you look frightened to death, they will be all the more convinced that I am in great danger, and they will pay all the better.”

  Now as she watched Deri pull himself up the second gibbet and strain the rope tight, she wished she had not suggested he play the villain. If she should fall, the crowd might tear poor Deri apart. Not that Carys doubted her skill, but she suddenly realized she would be working on a new rope, which might have some unexpected qualities. It was too late for second thoughts, however, for Deri had been calling down to her to stay where she was, not to try to run away, and glaring at her suspiciously while he was up each pole. When he descended, he immediately drove her up the gibbet she had chosen as her starting point, mistaking her attempt to warn him not to seem too harsh as part of the act and making himself seem even more evil.

  There were a few cries of protest from the more tenderhearted, but those dissolved into laughter when Deri started his oration—ostensibly to introduce Carys’s act but quickly branching off into a fool’s tricks. Doing what she could to erase the memory of Deri’s cruelty, Carys perched herself on the cross arm of the gibbet and sat swinging her legs with perfect ease. When he had completed his work and gathered the few coins he had missed catching as they flew, the crowd had swelled considerably. Many more people had been drawn to the green, partly by the crowd itself and partly by the roars of laughter and shouts of abuse. Carys had been thinking of what she could do to protect Deri, but she did not dare change her act. The timing was important to her as well as the movements.

  She rose slowly in response to Deri’s command and put one foot hesitantly on the line, pressing and lifting several times to get the feel of the tension at that end. His voice came up impatiently ordering her to get on with it, and she took a step outward, lifting her arms as her feet took the feel of the line. It was harder, somewhat less resilient than her old rope, but something told her it was going to stretch. Deri shouted again, and she took another step and then another, more quickly, and a fourth still more quickly, until she was running with arms outstretched and shifting up and down so that she swayed a little from side to side as she came down into the belly of the line. Her feet knew it to be the center point, even though Deri had done his work well and no watcher could have said there was a dip there. She slowed a little so she would seem even more unsteady when she arrived at the opposite end and came to the relative safety of the thick crosspiece, where she could grip the upright.

  Usually Carys embraced that upright as if it were her last hope of salvation. This time, with her mind on the fact that the rope might stretch unevenly and cause an accident, she merely set her hand on the post. Deri began to threaten her again, according to plan, and she set out across the line once more, not knowing whether to feel triumph or more worry, when she heard a woman screech—“That little monster did not even give the child a pole for balance”—which was no oversight of Deri’s, of course. Morgan had insisted that Carys dance without any assistance so that her act would not merely be a parade back and forth across the rope.

  Having reached the center, Carys did her dance, gliding, bending, lifting one arm and then the other, swaying her body to counterbalance the weight of the arm, slowly at first and then faster, dancing one way, turning and dancing the other way, starting up the slope of the rope as if she were finished, but really feeling the tension, and returning, pausing as Deri shouted, to stand swaying, thinking of the danger on a new rope, heart leaping with the challenge, and at last bending slowly, so slowly, to set her hands on the rope.

  It was a very successful act. There was not a sound from the crowd as she did her handstand, and there were shouts and applause when she ran for the gibbet after coming erect. So angry were the protests when Deri seemed to drive her to continue the act, that she paused to look down and be sure he was safe. She might have stopped, but Deri had got caught up in the spirit of the cruel master and grew so vituperative when she hesitated, she thought it safer to continue. In the end it was not the rope that nearly caused a disaster, but the howls of rage, shrieks, and screams—even male screams—when she seemed to fall and save herself. So angry were the cries that she looked down to assure herself again of Deri’s safety and missed a handhold. After that she sat astride the rope for a moment to catch her breath and caught a glimpse of Deri down below, arms outstretched to catch her, so she did not bother to get to her feet but slid herself along the rope.

  The dwarf was pelted with coins—and other articles like leeks, old cabbages, and turnips; some were useful, but an equal number were rotten. As she raced down the gibbet, hurrying lest half their pay be picked up by scavengers in the crowd, Carys wondered how much of the overripe produce had been thrown in protest over Deri’s cruelty to her and how much was simply the fun of throwing things at a dwarf. Not that the good vegetables were unwelcome; in most places the cookshops would take them willingly in barter for cooked food.

  When all the coins and produce worth the effort had been collected, Deri went up the gibbets to free the rope. While he was doing so, Carys made another round of the area gathering what she and Deri could not use. This gleaning she placed where it would not be trodden into the ground for those beggars too sick or too crippled to have snatched something before she or Deri got to it. She had plenty of time, for untying the rope always took longer than tying, the knots having been tightened by her weight, and she was back under the gibbet waiting to coil the rope when it fell. Then she and Deri hurried out of the town, keeping to the main street.

  Carys h
ad been the one to insist on that. She feared to be attacked by thieves or even by town guards and have their earnings taken from them. Deri had been shocked when she first made the suggestion and laughed at her when she could not give a reason for it, except that many had seen coins thrown to them and no one would protect them because they were players. He soon understood what she had been unwilling to say, though. A dwarf, often a symbol for evil, and a young boy were a tempting target, and once robbed their complaint would probably be ignored. Yet if they defended themselves, because they were nothing—only players—they would be punished.

  Carys returned alone to find a cookshop, weeping when the cook named the price that the dwarf would beat her if she did not get a good bargain. Often players were overcharged by merchants. Carys did not resent that much, knowing how often players cheated the townsfolk, but this time she came out laden with more than she had expected. In other shops she purchased bread and cheese enough to keep them supplied for several days. When Carys returned to where Deri waited, he complained that the bread would be stale, but Carys laughed at him, saying that he was spoiled by traveling with Telor.

  It was late afternoon before Carys, having changed her clothes and made still another trip into the town, retrieved Doralys. The sun was just setting before she and Deri got back to their camp in the woods, and both were greatly relieved to find Telor quietly asleep and not feverish. He woke easily when he heard their voices, and ate with good appetite, and when Carys removed the bandage and poultice, the cut was not inflamed.