The Minstrel in the Tower

by Gloria Skurzynski

  “I like it here.” Alice’s voice drifted down from above.

  “What are you doing up there?”

  A spiral stairway stood open and unprotected against the wall. If ever it had been enclosed in a shaft, the wood was long gone, but the stone staircase remained. The top step ended forty feet above ground.

  Centuries before, the staircase had led to a floor that held archers, who’d shot arrows through narrow slits in the walls. Now only two thin boards remained between the top step and the wall, and Alice stood upon them.

  “Come down this minute!” Roger yelled, his heart hammering.

  “I won’t fall,” she told him. “I’m holding on to the window ledge. I can see really far from here, farther than from our sycamore tree at home.”

  “Get down!” he called, trying to mask the fear in his voice. “Those boards might cave in under you!”

  “Oh, all right!” With nothing to steady her, because there was no railing, Alice skimmed down the stairs. Around and around, down and down—Roger squeezed his eyes shut.

  When she reached him, she said, “You didn’t give me a chance to tell you. From up there I could see someone coming through the forest.”

  “Who?”

  “Two people, I think. Maybe they’ll let you sing for our breakfast. I’ll run and ask them.”

  Caution made Roger throw out his arm before Alice could reach the open doorway. “Wait! Let’s see what they look like first. Stay here and keep quiet.”

  They heard branches crack, then men laughing and joking. “They sound jolly,” Alice whispered. She and Roger peered through the opening where the tower gate had once stood.

  Two men walked into what had been the courtyard. Each carried a dead quail by the neck.

  “We could get strung up for stealing game, Simon,” said one, a limping, filthy man.

  “We’ve done lots worse things they could hang us for, Odo,” answered the other. He was a thin, bony fellow whose bottom teeth were missing. “Stealing game’s the least of it,” he lisped.

  “Right you are, Simon. Haw!”

  “Anyway, nobody bothers with this part of the forest,” Simon declared. “They’ve forgotten these old ruins. What a life we could live here, Odo! Undisturbed, like. There’s plenty of game in the woods. Give us a couple of servants to wait on us hand and foot, and we’d live like kings.”

  “What’s this?” exclaimed Odo as he caught sight of the lute.

  “Don’t know, but we can break it up for firewood.” Simon raised the lute by its neck to smash it against a rock.

  “No! Don’t break it! It’s mine!” Roger yelled. He dashed from the tower and grabbed the lute from Simon, who toppled to the ground in surprise. Before Roger could run away, Odo’s arm flashed around his neck, and Odo’s dagger pricked his throat.

  “Leave my brother alone!” Alice screamed, hurling herself at them.

  “By my whiskers, another one!” Simon exclaimed. He caught her in his long, skinny arms and held her straight out in front of him. Her feet flailed the air helplessly.

  “This is the first time my prayers have been answered so swift,” said Simon. The words whistled through his missing teeth. “‘Give us a couple of servants,’ I said, and here they be! A fine pair of ragamuffins. All shabby and dirty, so they can’t belong to anyone.”

  “We belong to ourselves!” Roger shouted. “Let us go!”

  “We’ll set you both down, but don’t try and run,” Odo said. “You’re ours now. I always wanted a pair of servants.”

  “By my toenails, won’t it be fun to give orders for a change, ’stead of always taking them!” cried Simon. “Boy! Hunt up some firewood. Girl! Pluck the feathers off those quail. Then cook them.” Simon winked. “That’s the way to treat servants, eh, Odo?”

  “Right you are, Simon. Haw!”

  Surely the men wouldn’t keep them as they were threatening to! As long as Odo waved that dagger, though, Roger didn’t intend to argue. While Alice plucked the birds, he gathered firewood, watching for a chance to speak to his sister.

  “Bring your flint and help me start the fire,” Odo called to Simon. The two men busied themselves striking the blade of the dagger with the flint, and Roger moved closer to Alice.

  “Let’s run,” she whispered.

  “They’d catch us. The lute will slow me.” He didn’t want to leave it, not yet. Not until he decided how much actual danger they were in. “Wait a while. We’ll see what happens.”

  After the fire was lit Odo said, “Servant girl, turn those birds on the spit. Nice and slow, so they won’t burn.” He scratched his raggedy clothes as though he had fleas, and turned to Roger. “Servant boy, while the birds cook, you strum us a song with that tune-twanger of yours. A gallant song for the likes of us, eh, Simon?”

  “Right you are, Odo. One about fine, noble fellows, such as you and me.”

  “Haw!” laughed Odo.

  Roger tried to remember a song about gallantry. Most of the verses his mother had taught him were love songs. Then he thought of the one she’d sung on the day they left home:

  “My brother is a noble knight,

  An eagle guards his shield of white,

  My brother won’t forgive a wrong,

  His sword is steel, his arm is strong.”

  Simon’s jaw, with its missing teeth, dropped open. “Where did you learn that?” he demanded.

  “From my mother.”

  “Your mother! Who is your mother?”

  “She’s just my mother. My father’s wife. My father is a Crusader.”

  “The Crusades have been over for a long time,” Odo said.

  Simon stared hard at Roger. Then, in a strange, slow, crablike motion, he circled the fire, never taking his eyes from Roger’s face. Closer and closer he came, staring all the while.

  Roger scrambled backward, holding the lute, but Simon kept coming. Suddenly the man pounced. “Got you!” he cried. “Grab the girl, Odo!”

  When Alice tried to run, Odo caught her ankles and tripped her.

  “O-ho, Odo, my friend,” crowed Simon. “We’re going to live like kings after all. I’ve just figured out who these two are.”

  “That ought to do it!”

  The two men leaned one more log against the old gate. They had fitted it into the doorway and piled logs and rocks and brush and everything within reach against it, so it couldn’t be budged. The tower was sealed.

  “Now, Simon, tell me why we’ve locked up those two,” Odo demanded. From inside, Roger and Alice could hear everything that was said.

  “Ay, I will,” replied Simon. “Until a few years ago, I served a baron whose name was Lord Raimond. I might still be serving him today, but he threw me out. Why? Because I stole one of his silver plates. Imagine! And him having so many.”

  Inside the tower Alice whispered, “Lord Raimond! Did you hear him, Roger? He said Raimond!”

  “Shhhh! I don’t want to miss anything!” Roger lifted a finger to his lips.

  Simon added, “The baron had a sister called Lady Blanche. And that’s who those two are, in there. Her children.”

  Alice clutched her brother’s hand.

  Outside, Odo scoffed, “Those two ragamuffins? If they’re the children of a noblewoman, I’m Richard the Lion-Hearted.”

  “Then you must be King Richard,” Simon answered. “Because by my eyelids I’ll take an oath that those two are Lady Blanche’s fledglings. ’Twas the song that tipped me off. She used to sing that very same verse to her brother, Lord Raimond. I remember the melody and her voice and the words. Even the lute looks familiar. I daresay she was playing that very one.”

  Roger and Alice stared at each other. Blanche was their mother’s name.

  “And when I took a good look at that boy,” Simon went on, “I saw Lady Blanche beneath the dirt on his face. The yellow hair. The blue eyes. The same broad forehead. He’s her image, he is.”

  Roger dropped his head into his hands. It was true that he and his mothe
r looked exactly alike. But if she was a noblewoman, why had they lived like poor serfs in a tiny cottage?

  “What are they doing here in the woods, then?” asked Odo.

  “Who can tell? The last I heard of Lady Blanche, she ran away. Seems the baron wanted her to marry a rich old count, and she wouldn’t do it.”

  “So she ran off?”

  “With a penniless young knight from a family of no importance. The baron was furious. He searched everywhere for her. Then, when the knight was killed at the battle of Acre, he searched again.”

  Roger’s eyes closed. It was certain, then. Father was dead. Everyone knew it—even these strangers. He clasped his legs and squeezed his forehead against his knees as though pressure could push away the grief, but tears seeped through his eyelids anyway.

  Simon went on. “Lord Raimond never found Lady Blanche. She vanished, like. But now… now…!” His voice rose with excitement. “We’ve discovered her two brats. They’ll lead us to her!”

  “Right you are, Simon. Haw!” Then Odo sounded puzzled. “But what will we do when we find her?”

  “Ask for ransom! He’ll pay for the brats! And he’ll pay double for his sister! Our fortune is made!”

  Odo burst forth with another “haw!” Then he added, “You’re a fine, smart fellow to think of this, Simon. We’ll guard them well.”

  “By my knees, we will! And we’ll take our time to think up a foolproof ransom plan. Weeks, if need be. Those two inside will keep.”

  Weeks! Roger’s heart sank even further. Mother is so sick.…Alice had the same thought. Her lips shaped the word escape. Roger nodded.

  As the hours of the day ran out, they huddled together inside the stone walls, devising their own plan. When Odo passed roast quail and a waterskin through a hole in the barricaded door, Roger gave Alice his share.

  At last the moon centered itself above the tower where the roof’s peak had fallen through. A shaft of moonlight shone straight down on them, just as they needed it to.

  “You don’t have to climb up with me,” Alice said softly.

  “Yes, I do. I shouldn’t be letting you do it at all. I’m older than you. I should be the one to go.”

  “But you’re too big,” said Alice. “You can’t fit through the space. I can.”

  Roger shuddered. In the pale light the window slit looked very high, and what Alice had to do seemed much too dangerous. He no longer had a father. His mother might die. How could he send his sister down that sheer stone wall in the dark?

  Alice hugged him. “I’m glad you’re going up the steps with me.”

  “I’ll throw your shoes down to you once you’re on the ground,” said Roger. He winced inwardly as he pictured his sister inching down the wall in her bare feet. “After you find the lute. You’ll make less noise if you search barefoot,” he added.

  Roger looked at the worn, slippery stairs of the spiral staircase he’d promised to climb. His stomach clenched like a fist. It was Alice, though, who would need real courage to slip through the window slit, climb down the wall, and hunt for the lute in the dark, without waking Simon and Odo. Then she had to find the road, reach Bordeaux, and search for their uncle. Roger groaned. He felt helpless. All because the window slit was too narrow for him.

  “I hear them snoring,” Alice said. “It’s time to go.”

  Alice walked up the spiral staircase. Roger crept up after her on his hands and knees, clutching the edges of each stone step. She reached the top long before he did.

  “Hold my shoes,” she whispered when he got there.

  Roger forced himself to stand on the rotting floorboards and take her shoes. Alice pulled herself onto the window ledge. Feet first, she eased through the narrow opening.

  He held her hand until she got a toehold, watching her dig her fingers and bare toes into the cracks between the stones. He could see only the top of her head as she slowly worked her way down. La Guenuche, he thought, braver than any real monkey.

  At last Alice reached the ground and went off in search of the lute. After many minutes she came back empty-handed, looking worried.

  So she couldn’t find it. They hadn’t counted on that. Roger knew that the lute, with its eagle carving, was proof of who they were. He shook his head and shrugged at Alice. Somehow she would have to manage without it.

  He held out one of her shoes and let it go. She caught it. When he dropped the second shoe, she fumbled for a moment, but caught it too. Roger waved and Alice melted into the dark forest.

  The moon had drifted past the torn roof when he turned to go back down the steps. The tower stood in total darkness. Roger gasped. He couldn’t even see the stairway.

  Terror made him clutch the window ledge. No matter how tightly he held it, he knew he was going to fall into the emptiness below. The two old boards beneath his feet would collapse, hurling him down. The thought made his hands slippery with sweat. He pressed hard against the wall, wanting to fuse himself to the cold stone.

  “The stairs are solid,” he whispered to himself. “I can do it. Alice climbed down a whole wall!” But his fear grew larger until it filled his skin and shook his bones.

  He had to get down those stairs to begin the final part of the plan. Leaning hard against each step, he backed down like a baby. First one knee, then the other. Down, down. Take a breath. Beneath him, there always seemed to be another step. Why wouldn’t they end!

  Finally Roger felt the bottom. As he lay panting on the ground among the rubble, thankful to be alive, he thought of Alice, out in the forest somewhere. She was the brave one, and she was counting on him. Simon and Odo must not discover that she was gone.

  Loudly, to fool them in case they’d awakened, Roger said, “You’d better go to sleep now, sister. Good night, Alice.”

  In Alice’s voice he answered, “Good night, Roger.”

  “I’m the baron’s niece,” Alice said.

  In the courtyard, laughter spread from one servant to the next—from men mending harnesses or polishing armor, to women brushing mud from boots and cloak hems, to children piling firewood against the wall. “Lord Raimond’s niece!” Some chuckled. Others dropped their work to circle Alice, mocking her and making faces.

  “What’s causing this disturbance?” cried the steward as he came into the courtyard.

  “This girl…” someone began, but Alice spoke up for herself.

  “I’m here to see Lord Raimond, the baron. I’m his niece.”

  “Throw the scalawag into the moat,” scoffed the steward. “The baron’s niece, indeed!”

  They reached for Alice but she skittered between them and ran. She hadn’t traveled all this way just to be thrown into a moat!

  For nearly two days Alice had searched for the baron’s chateau, asking directions of everyone she met. A dozen times she’d lost her way. And she’d been hungry.

  Once she’d rescued a cat from a tree, and its owner had rewarded her with a handful of plums. A baker had given her a bun for carrying a basket of eggs from the market to his shop. A housewife had poured her a cup of fresh milk, for no reason other than kindness.

  But much of the time she’d been famished and footsore and shivery from worry. And now—“Catch the little baggage!” the steward shrieked as the servants chased Alice around and around the courtyard.

  In one wall stood a wooden door decorated with iron bands. Alice threw herself against it and the door burst open into a great hall hung with beautiful tapestries and banners.

  “What is this?” A very tall nobleman, with straight blond hair and a narrow beard, rose angrily from his chair. “Steward!”

  “Forgive me, Lord Raimond,” the red-faced steward apologized. “This child… she says she’s related to you.”

  A young knight eating at the baron’s table burst into laughter, but Lord Raimond was not amused. “Remove her at once,” he ordered coldly.

  The steward and the servants began the chase again, but Alice, too quick for them, scrambled up a rough stone wall.
A little higher than their upstretched arms, she clung to a timber that supported one of the ceiling arches. “Listen to me!” she shouted down. “I am the daughter of Lady Blanche!”

  The echo of her voice fell into a deathly silent hall. For years no one had mentioned Lady Blanche in Lord Raimond’s presence. The only sounds were the sniffing of hunting dogs who searched for bits of food among the reeds strewn on the floor and the shuffle of servants’ feet as they stole away. None but the steward and the young knight were brave enough to remain.

  Lord Raimond’s voice no longer sounded cold. Now it was hot with fury. “If you don’t come down at once,” he shouted, “I will order my archers to shoot you down!”

  “You’re supposed to be my uncle,” she shouted back, “and you won’t even listen to me! Mother told me to show you the eagle on the lute, but Simon and Odo hid it somewhere. And Roger can’t get out of the tower, and Mother wants you to forgive her…” Suddenly it was too much for Alice, and she started to cry.

  “Stop!” Lord Raimond raised his hand. “What’s this about a lute? Come down here and make sense.”

  Alice lowered herself to the floor, but stood warily with her back against the wall. First she told Lord Raimond about her mother’s illness. When he remained silent, she went on to describe everything else—the journey, Simon and Odo, and Roger’s imprisonment in the tower.

  “She claims to be your niece, my lord,” remarked the steward, “but she looks nothing at all like you.”

  “That’s true.” Lord Raimond frowned. “If you’re lying, child, it’s a terrible lie for you to tell.”

  “Have you any proof?” asked the young knight.

  “The lute was supposed to be proof. It’s Mother’s lute, but Roger can play it too. But it’s gone.”

  The stern look had faded from the baron’s face. “Come here,” he said. “I will not harm you.” When she approached he caught hold of her and drew her closer until she stood right in front of him. For a moment he stared at her, with eyes of the same blue as Roger’s.