by Adam Oster
“Sure, whatever. I’m not sure that’s going to be enough to keep you from getting executed, but if it makes you feel better, yes, I’ll take the blame for making a stupid decision.”
“After you,” Griff says as he gestures to the wall.
“Okay,” I shrug as I turn and put my hands up on the first deep groove between bricks that I find above my head. Rather effortlessly I pull myself up and find that this is actually an easier climb than the one we had in the dungeon. Of course, this is about twice as high. And the wind is pulling against me.
Yet, the worst thing about this climb is the whining coming from below.
“Quit slipping, kid, you’re kicking all sorts of dust and crap in my face.”
“Sorry,” I say, hoping to appease his incessant bickering. If he doesn’t shut up, we’re sure to be heard by the guards as they make their rounds.
“You better be. This whole thing is your fault after all. I mean, if it weren’t for you, we’d be on the plane by now, heading toward--well, you know, heading toward the sky.”
I stop in my tracks, realizing he still hasn’t told me where we were going. “Wait a second, you keep talking about this plane ride, but you keep managing to avoid the question of where we were headed.”
“Come on, kid. Hurry up. My fingers are burning. If we don’t get to the top soon, I’m sure I’ll lose my—“
“Not until you tell me where we were supposed to be going,” I say, hoping he’s going to give in easily because my fingers are also threatening to stop working. Not a fun prospect when you’re twenty feet above the ground.
“Nowhere. Forget about it.”
“Why are you being so damned mysterious? What’s so special about this trip?”
“Nothing, okay. It’s nothing.”
“If it’s nothing, you shouldn’t have a problem telling me.”
“Come on, kid. I can’t tell you, okay?”
“You’ve never kept secrets from me before. Why now?”
“I’ve kept plenty of secrets from you. You just don’t know about them because they’re secret. Now, let’s go already. I can’t hold on much longer and those guards will be heading back any second.”
“I can hold on all day,” I lie. “And I will keep holding on until you tell me where you were planning on taking me.”
“Dammit, Chelle, this is no time to play around. This is life and death!”
I say nothing.
“Fine, we were going to Spokane.”
Griff’s words ring through my mind as though he had hit me in the gut.
“You alright up there, kid?”
“You were taking me home?” I spit out in surprised anger.
“Look, kid. It’s not that I don’t want to keep you around, but, well, I mean, you’re fifteen, you know? Your parents deserve to know where you are. I couldn’t, in my right mind, keep you away from them for forever.”
“You were taking me home?” I repeat, tears forming in the corner of my eyes.
“I’m sorry, Chelle. I really am. I’ve got a lead on a sting overseas and there’s no way I could manage to get you onto an international flight without causing some major red flags to –“ Griff cuts himself off. I hear voices from the top of the wall.
“Have they a managed to find that lass and her master yet?”
“I’ve heard naught. ‘es been makin’ a lot o noise out at tha Minster yet.”
“Damnation. Tomorrow’s tribute’s bound to be worse than usual. I’ve already lost three nieces to his whimsy. I’m not even certain how I’ve managed to keep my own daughter.”
“Y’ know how ‘e feels abou’ flax-‘aired maidens.”
“My wife keeps reminding me that it’s the cost of safety.”
“’A course, if folks is comin’ and causin’ trouble, mayhaps we is not as safe as we finks.”
“Aye. But I ain’t seen nothin’ t’ be worried about yet.”
“Me neither. A pint at Monkgate?”
“I’ll buy.”
Footsteps fade off into the distance. My fingers are numb. I feel the wall wanting to crumble under my weight. I quickly scale the rest of it and pull myself over the top before even looking to see if Griff had managed to keep his grip.
I lean against the opposite side of the wall and close my eyes while working to catch my breath. Griff’s voice sounds beside me.
“That was close, huh kid?”
I take another deep breath before I finally slap him across the face.
“Oh, come on, Chelle. You know it couldn’t last forever. You’re just a kid. I took you under my wing because I couldn’t let a pretty little thing like you get taken advantage of by some less honorable con, but you had to have known I was going to bring you home sooner or later.”
“I had just always hoped that it would be more later than sooner.”
“Well, considering where we’re at, I think later is the only option left, if at all.”
“Yeah, I guess. Just, now that you mention it, I actually do kinda miss home a bit.”
“Then why the hell are you so mad about me wanting to take you home?”
“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t really realize how homesick I was until we got so far away from it. And besides, I was kinda hoping you would fight me if I ever told you I wanted to leave.”
“Oh, kid,” he says, wrapping his arm around my shoulder. “You have to know, you’re the best shill I’ve ever had.”
“Great, I’m glad I mean so much to you,” I say as I turn away from him.
“You know I don’t mean it like that. I love you, Chelle. These past few months have been amazing for me. I never thought I could care about someone like I care about you.”
“Perv.”
“You know what I mean. You’re like a daughter to me. That’s why I know you have to go home.”
“I know.”
“Okay. So, we good then?”
“Yeah, we’re good.”
He pats me softly on the back and I reach in for a hug.
“Alright, well, now it’s time to get off our butts and go find us a bed before someone realizes who we are.”
“Great idea,” I agree.
Chapter 19
Griff helps me to my feet and we climb over the other side of the wall to the ground below. This side’s a bit easier, being only an eight foot drop to the street.
Pulling the collar of my tunic up around my neck to hide my long hair, we walk hastily down the city’s street in the direction of the gate where we had entered only hours earlier.
Shortly after we begin, we see a man patrolling not far away. We turn to go a different direction just a second too late as the man stops and heads toward us. We amble off as though we have important business, but that doesn’t stop the man from yelling.
“Halt!” he says in an authoritative tone. We stop in place and turn to greet the arriving officer.
A short man in a light chain mail, holding a long sword, approaches us. He has a look of contempt upon his face.
“Awright den, was all dis abow’?”
Griff looks at me questioningly. I realize I’m going to have to take over the discussion.
Trying to make my voice deep, to hide the fact that I’m a girl wearing a man’s tunic, I respond in kind. “Oi, guvena’, we is jus’ out foe a wok we is.”
“Afta’ curfew?” he replies incredulously. “I own’t fink so. Wotcha fink yous doing?”
“We is mighty sorry, we is,” I reply, feeling goofy in my attempts to emulate the speech of the peasants we had seen earlier today. “We ‘ad got ‘ung up tokking wif our mates and los’ track o’ tha time. We’s just ‘eadin’ ‘ome now, we promise.”
“Oh, awright den,” he says, his shoulders slumping as he does. “But you bes’ be careful out dare. The Wizard sez dares evil afoot.”
“Sure thing, guvena’. We’ll be ‘eadin’ home straigh’ away.”
The man looks us over once more before heading off in the direction we had
just come from. I hear Griff let out a sigh of relief.
“I have absolutely no clue what the two of you just said.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I reassure him. “I just told him we’re heading home.”
“By the way,” he says with a light chuckle, “you might want to stop trying that crap accent. You sound like an idiot.”
“Hey, I didn’t see you taking care of the situation.”
“If I had a clue what these people were saying, then maybe I would.”
Quietly and quickly, we make our way through the rest of the town that separates us from the The Goat and The Mare. The smell of stale gruel grows in the air as we near. I hear Griff smacking his lips at the stench.
As we enter the room, we are greeted by the unhappy face of the lady who had served us earlier.
“Oi,” she yells, “wotcha fink ur doin’ comin’ in ‘ere at dis time a night?”
“Sorry miss,” I reply. “We is ‘avin’ a bit o’ a rat problem at the mo’ and wuz ‘oping you could put us up for the night.”
“Y’ got stirlin’?”
“Oh, yes, mum,” I answer, reaching into my back pack for a handful of coins. “Take what is right.”
She nears and looks at the coins in my hand and pulls out three quarters. “Dis’ll be abou’ white.”
She walks away without another word, leaving me and Griff standing in the doorway.
As she reaches the opposite wall, she looks back at us and screams. “Well, cummon den!”
We hustle to her side and follow her through the doorway which exits this room, to a stairwell just beyond. She leads us down the narrow staircase, where I find myself wondering how she manages to cram herself within the space that seems much narrower than she is. Once we reach the bottom, she stops and glares. I freeze in fear of her possibly remembering us from earlier.
“Ewe two ain’t got no livestock you need fodderin’, do yas?”
“No, mum,” I answer politely, not sure what she’s asking, but knowing we don’t have any animals with us.
“Awright den, ‘ere you is,” she says as she opens the door beside her, showing a dingy room not much larger than the closet of the hotel we had been staying in only hours earlier. Actually, I’d be willing to bet it’s smaller. Not only that, but it’s wet and dark and, I’m guessing, filled with insects and rodents that I’d rather not think about. My eyes widen as I come to the realization that this is the place where I am to sleep for the night, not to mention that the miniscule pile of hay placed in the center of the room is the only spot on which to rest.
The woman’s scowl grows larger. “Well, g’wan den. Getcher sef to bed na’.”
She waddles off as Griff and I squeeze into the quarters that aren’t fit for the living.
“Guess you get what you pay for,” Griff laughs.
“I’m pretty sure we paid more for this than the last place we stayed.”
“You know,” Griff’s laugh turns to a smirk, “I do believe you’re right. I think you should have a talk with the manager about this. Seems you’ve been swindled yet again.”
“Maybe in the morning,” I shrug as I kneel down onto the hay. “Considering how much sleep I’m guessing I’ll be getting tonight, I’m sure I’ll be in much more of the right mood for it.”
“You know,” Griff says, still standing above me. “We could head upstairs for a pint or two.”
“I’m fifteen,” I argue.
“I’m pretty sure there’s no age limit on drinking here. In fact, if I remember correctly, beer flowed like water in the Middle Ages, since the water was dangerously unsanitary.”
Water, I think to myself. I haven’t had anything to drink for over six hundred years. I’ve been so caught up in everything that’s been going on, I haven’t even considered being thirsty. Or that I need to pee.
“Um, Griff,” I say. I can hear a tone of fear in my voice. “I don’t suppose you know anything about how a girl would go about relieving herself in the Middle Ages, do you?”
Griff’s smirk grows larger as he looks around the room before he gestures to what appears to be an oversized mug in the corner.
“What’s that?” I ask, the fear in my voice growing.
“A chamberpot, kiddo.”
“Yeah, and?”
“I’ll step upstairs to give you some privacy. Feel free to join me if you decide you’re thirsty.”
I grimace at him as he shuts the door on his way out. At his departure, I turn my unhappy glare toward the clay pot.
I’m not going into details about what happened next, but needless to say, nature won out over my conceptions of decency and I leave the room feeling lighter, while also wondering what I am supposed to do with the leftovers.
Are there housekeepers at a place like this who would be responsible for removing that from the room? Do I actually want to sleep with a pot of my own urine next to my head? If I were to get it out of the room, where would I take it? It seems like I’ve heard they would just toss that stuff out into the street, but not only does that seem to go completely against my personal rules of cleanliness, I’d also hate to be caught as the person who throws their pee out the window when it is in no way the tradition of the region.
I choose to leave it in the room, deciding that I can ask Griff about it later, and head upstairs to find something to drink.
Chapter 20
I step through the door and find Griff chatting up the matron happily, as though he’s suddenly found the Rosetta Stone for medieval slang, while he shoves more gruel into his mouth.
My stomach grumbles as I recognize the bread I had earlier today has done little toward truly satisfying my need for sustenance. Griff notices me standing awkwardly in the doorway and yells in my direction.
“Hey, kid! Come on over and grab a seat. Agnes here was just telling me about how she ended up becoming the owner of this tavern. It’s really quite an amazing tale. Did you know that women weren’t usually even allowed to own businesses in the Middle Ages?”
“Um, I could have guessed,” I say softly as I sit beside him.
“Woodya care fer sum grull, lass?” Agnes asks me, her countenance suddenly much less grumpy than before. I startle once I realize she’s noticed I’m a girl.
“Oh, don’t worry about that whole girl crap. It’s not like she didn’t notice anything when you slung around our funny money. Besides, she said it’s not the first time she’s had to hide a couple o’ fugitives like us. She’s not too keen on our friend, The Wizard, either.”
“’E’s been a right pain my side, ‘e ‘as.”
“Cool. Um, no gruel, please. Is there anything else to eat?”
“Oi got sum mutton, if ya like,” Agnes says as she walks behind the bar. “It ain’t too old yet.”
“Yes, please. And something to drink, please.”
“Decided to try some beer, kid?” Griff says as he lifts his glass joyfully and drains it quickly.
“If there isn’t anything else, I guess.”
“Sorry, dearie. Oi just used tha las’ o’ tha milk fer tha pottage.”
“Okay. Beer it is then.”
“One ale cummon up, den,” Agnes said happily.
Moving with a speed I didn’t think possible for a woman of such orb-like dimensions, I’m suddenly seated behind a thick hunk of meat that would be unidentifiable had I not been warned what it would be and a mug of a golden beverage heaping over with foam. The meat might be more appetizing were it not lounging in a sludgy brown mess that may or may not have been at one time water.
The decision to try the beer first is not one that is hard to come by. My thirst being what it is, I don’t even take a moment to consider what I’m about to imbibe. It’s not like this is the first time I’ve had beer. It just happens to be the first time I’ve tried it when not sitting on my father’s lap.
I tip the cup to my lips and am instantly greeted with a warm sweet liquid sliding down my throat. The taste is not exactly reviling, but it�
��s also not a taste I would choose to try again, were it not for how thirsty I am. Without thinking about it, I again tip the cup back and drown my mouth in more of the amber potion. I shudder at the taste as I slam the mug back down on the table.
“Whoa there, kid,” Griff laughs. “I didn’t think you were going to take to the stuff quite so strongly.”
“That’s disgusting,” I say, sputtering as I consider taking another swig.
“Yeah, they could definitely do well with a bit of refrigeration around here. Think we should go ahead and invent it?”
I pick up the mug again and down another swallow. The flavor is actually already starting to grow on me. Either that, or I’m just really enjoying finally having my thirst quenched, even if it’s with this warm beverage.
“There ya go, kid. Over the lips and past the gums, right?”
“Yeah, whatever,” I mutter in response. The mystery meat is suddenly starting to look appetizing now that I’m feeling less dry and more hungry. Tentatively, I pick off a piece of the dried meat sitting above the water line and place it on the tip of my tongue.
It manages to taste like food, and with only a hint of foot. I picture in my mind a rather dry roast and stab my fork-like utensil into the center of it, lifting it out of its pond carefully as I take a bite.
Agnes stands above me in anticipation of my response. With a mouth full of the mostly edible stuff, I nod my head appreciatively and mumble, “It’s good.”
A smile erupts across her face as I say it and she ambles back behind the counter, pours herself a mug of ale, and sits down across the table from us.
“So, yers gunna tack on Tha Wizzerd, aye?”
I give Griff a startled look.
“Oh, don’t be so uptight, kid. It’s obvious that The Wizard ain’t making too many friends around here. We might as well use that to our advantage.”
“Oi, ‘tis a good plan, that. ‘owever, ewe ain’t tha firs’ to attem’ sucha fing. Wha’ makes ewe fink ewe ken dew it?”
“That’s a great question, Aggie,” Griff beams. When did Griff start to understand how the locals speak? I want to ask him about it, but figure I should let him tell us his plan first. “And to be honest, I’m still working out quite a few of the details. The first thing we need to do is find a way to get close to the man. Do you know anyone who’s got The Wizard’s ear?”