Song of the Gargoyle

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  “Not much,” Tymmon said. “There was food in the pack, but it is almost gone now. I was hoping to buy a meal here in the village. Is there an inn, or perhaps a bake shop nearby?”

  “Buy? You got money?” Petrus moved closer so that Dalia squeezing in front of him was almost standing on Tymmon’s feet. “He got money, Dalia. To buy food with. We show you where to buy food. Dalia and me will show you.

  There was, it seemed, no real inn in the village of Nighmont, but there was a house on the square where food was sometimes provided for travelers. “Mistress Ino’s house,” Petrus said, seizing Tymmon’s hand while Dalia danced ahead of them on tiny bare feet. “We be taking you there, Dalia and me.” And when they reached the square the two of them ran eagerly ahead to a stone house somewhat larger than its neighbors, and pounded on the door.

  It was opened by a neatly dressed village woman, her full cheeks framed in a clean white wimple. She was smiling as she opened the door, but when she saw the two children her face hardened into a frown. Shaking a large wooden spoon in a threatening manner, she shouted, “Shoo, scat, you ragamuffins. Be off with the two of you.”

  The children ran, disappearing like scattered sparrows, and when Mistress Ino’s attention shifted to Troff and Tymmon her anger changed to puzzled curiosity.

  “Madam,” Tymmon said, bowing, “I am traveling northward through your village and I would very much like to buy”—he stressed the word carefully—“some food for myself and my dog.” As he spoke he reached into his belt, took out his bag of coins, and jingled it in his hand.

  At that Mistress Ino’s smile returned, and chatting pleasantly about the weather, she led the way into the cottage. Within a few short minutes Tymmon was seated before the kitchen fire eating meat pies and blood pudding. And at his feet Troff feasted on a ham bone and bread scraps soaked in gravy—not to mention a small meat pie which Tymmon slipped down to him when Mistress Ino was looking the other way.

  There was, it seemed, no place to rent a room in the village, but “My husband and I own a hay barn on the outskirts,” the woman said, “and for a copper more you could spend the night there. The roof is sound and the hay makes a soft resting place.”

  The copper changed hands and not long afterward Tymmon and Troff were on their way to the hay barn through the gathering darkness. Following Mistress Ino’s directions they had just sighted the old barn, when Tymmon suddenly realized they were not alone. From somewhere behind him a small raspy voice whispered, “Did you have meat pies? Did you?” and at the same moment a tiny cold hand grasped Tymmon’s thumb. Tymmon glanced down in surprise. The voice had been that of Petrus, but the hand belonged to his sister.

  “Mistress Ino’s meat pies be the best in the whole world,” Petrus went on, catching up to trot along on the other side of Troff. “Mistress Ino’s meat pies be famous. We had one once at Eastertide. Dinna we, Dalia?”

  Tymmon looked down at the two small faces. In the thickening twilight he could make out little more than blurred ovals, but it would have taken a much greater darkness to hide the hungry gleam in the two pairs of eyes.

  A few minutes later, and back once more at Mistress Ino’s, Tymmon bought two more meat pies, started out the door, and then went back to buy another two. And when the orphans again appeared out of the darkness he gave them all four—one for each of their small dirty hands.

  They disappeared then, drifting off into the darkness eating noisily. But the next morning when Tymmon awoke in a bed of soft, sweet hay, it was to look up into two pairs of eager and hungry eyes.

  “Morning.” Petrus was smiling broadly. Then he dropped down on his knees, crawled to where Troff still lay sprawled on his side, and whispered into the gargoyle’s ear, “Morning, Dog.” Troff opened one eye and grinned. And Tymmon, sitting up, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and then sat with his chin on his knees and stared at the two small human scarecrows.

  In the clear morning light they looked amazingly small, and quite unbelievably dirty, caked and smeared and blurred with soil of every color and description. Not to mention thin and hungry. Tymmon shook his head, sighed, and went on staring. An idea was forming itself inside his mind. It was a wild, foolish, and impractical idea and later he tended to blame it on Troff although he could not clearly remember what the gargoyle had actually said on the subject.

  After a while he pulled his coin purse out of his belt, opened it, and peered inside. Then he thought for a while longer before he turned to Troff and said, “Not much left. We will have to try some more exhibitions.”

  Troff, his head cocked, rolled his eyes and agreed with far more enthusiasm than was necessary.

  “I don’t know how successful we would be in the small villages, but at least they might give us food. And if we stayed a few days in a larger town like Bidborn, we might earn enough to manage.” He shook the purse, sighed again and, lowering his voice, went on. “I thought we had enough for the whole trip but not with four mouths to feed. And we would have to buy them something else to wear, or we would certainly be taken for beggars.”

  Petrus was sidling nearer, pulling Dalia after him. “What you saying about Dalia and me?” he said, his brows knit suspiciously. “What you saying about begging?”

  Tymmon grinned. “I was telling Troff I was thinking of taking you with us to...

  Petrus jumped back, almost jerking Dalia off her feet. “No. Not begging,” he said. “You not be taking us begging for you.”

  Tymmon grinned. “I do not blame you at all for not wanting to be beggars, but that is not...

  Petrus shrugged. “Oh, we be beggars, all right. Dalia and me, we been begging since our folks got deaded. But we not going to go begging for someone else again. Last harvest time a beggar lady came to Nighmont and took us to another place to beg for her. But she starved us and put lye on our arms and legs to make sores so the rich people would feel sorry for us, so we ran away and came back to Nighmont. So we not be begging for anyone else never no more.”

  So Tymmon tried to explain that he was not a beggar and that Petrus and Dalia would not be asked to beg if they came with him, but the children only backed farther away.

  “I heard you saying about begging to Dog, there,” he said, and then, narrowing his eyes even further, he went on, “And I heard you say about not enough money. How you going to get more money if you not be goin’ a-begging?”

  “We do not beg,” Tymmon began. “We earn money by... His voice trailed off as he realized that the children would not understand what he was going to say, and even if they did they would never believe it. Instead he began to prepare the packs, and when all was in readiness he slipped the collar over Troff’s head and turned toward Petrus and Dalia, who were still watching warily. “Troff and I are going back into Nighmont now,” he said. “If you want to come, too, we will show you how we get our money.”

  Petrus nodded slowly, but he moved no nearer, and all the way back into Nighmont he and Dalia followed at a safe distance. A distance great enough to prevent their being snatched and carried away to be starved and burned into professional objects of pity. Looking back at the two tiny scarecrows trudging through the deep dust, Tymmon suddenly shuddered.

  “By all the saints in heaven,” he whispered. And when Troff looked at him questioningly, “It is not to be wondered at that they do not believe we mean them no harm.”

  All the rest of the way into the village his mind was full of the horror of it, of children barely out of infancy who had already faced such terrible sorrow and need. And it was that horror no doubt that made him forget for a time that his own future was dangerous and uncertain. That he was pledged to a quest that certainly should not include two helpless children, and to a cause that left no room for pity.

  Fortunately it was market day in Nighmont and the dusty square was aswarm with farmers and landholders as well as villagers. In a small open area near the booth of a tinsmith Tymmon pulled Troff to a stop. Although they had not performed since they had left Montreff
, it was clear that Troff knew, and approved of, what they were going to do. The moment Tymmon raised the flute to his lips the gargoyle took his place beside him and raised his broad muzzle toward the sky. And before the first song was finished they were surrounded by an eager crowd of laughing and cheering villagers.

  When Troff’s songs were finished, Tymmon’s solo, a lively ballad sung while accompanying himself on the rebec, was also well received, as was his brief exhibition of juggling and tumbling. But it was not to be wondered at that the villagers were most amazed and amused by the singing gargoyle. Amazed and amused even though they seemed quite ready to believe he was no more than a great, ugly dog. There was much cheering and clapping as he performed his deep bows. And when he circled among them with his pail he collected not only several small coppers but various bits of bread and cheese and other foodstuffs as well.

  During the performance Tymmon had once or twice caught sight of two small raggedy figures among the audience, but later when the instruments were packed away and the crowd had dispersed, Petrus and Dalia were nowhere to be seen.

  “I’m not surprised,” Tymmon told Troff as they left the village and headed north along the highroad. “And it’s just as well, actually. We’ve no right to take them with us into the danger we will probably face when we get to Austerneve. I must have been crazy to even think of it. The truth is, I just wasn’t thinking. It’s much better for everyone that they decided not to come with us. Don’t you agree?”

  Troff stopped, looked back over his shoulder, sniffed the air, and said something that could have meant yes or no.

  Tymmon shrugged. Well, perhaps Troff was uncertain whether they had been right to consider taking on the responsibility for two little orphans. But he himself was not. In fact, now that Petrus and Dalia were no longer there, staring up at him with their great hungry eyes, he could scarcely believe that he had forgotten himself so completely. He could not understand how he had forgotten the terrible nature of the quest on which he had embarked, and the vengeance he had sworn. Had even, for a short while, forgotten the anger and hatred that had burned in his heart since he had heard his father’s story. “I’ll not forget again,” he muttered to himself just as Troff once again stopped and, turning back, sat down in the middle of the road. Away to the south a dust cloud was rapidly approaching, and in its midst, two small scarecrow figures were racing at top speed with a stream of tattered rags flapping behind them.

  FOURTEEN

  “YOU SNEAKED OFF ON us,” Petrus yelled, staggering to a stop in front of Tymmon and Troff. Dropping an armload of tattered and filthy rags on the ground, he clutched his heaving chest with both scrawny arms. For a moment he only gasped and sputtered, and when he once more began to shout, his funny creaky voice kept breaking into squeaks and squeals. “Dalia and me, we just gone to get our blankets and things and when we got back you gone off and left us. And you said you would take us with you. You be a liar, Boy.”

  Grinning, Tymmon cowered backwards, pretending to be terror-stricken by the violence of Petrus’s attack. But then, seeing that Petrus was in no mood for game playing, he became serious. In a calm and reasonable tone he said, “But you said you would not come with me, Petrus. And I did look for you when the exhibition was over, but you had disappeared.”

  Still gasping and squeaking, Petrus flailed his arms, beating the air in what seemed to be anger at his own breathlessness as well as at Tymmon’s desertion. “But we told you. We told you we be coming with you.”

  “What?” Tymmon couldn’t believe his ears. “No, you did not. At the barn this morning you said you would never come with me, and...

  “That was afore we knew about how you and Dog got money by singing and”—Petrus pantomimed the playing of a rebec—“and like that, ‘stead of begging,” Petrus interrupted.

  “But you did not tell me you had changed your minds. You said nothing at all to me after we got back to Nighmont.”

  “Well”—Petrus was still glaring but a little less fiercely—”maybe I did not. But Dalia did. Dalia told Dog. She told him when he come past us getting all that money in the pail.”

  Tymmon suppressed a smile. “Dalia told Dog—Troff? But how could she? She cannot talk. I have not heard her say a single word.”

  “She talks,” Petrus said. “She used to talk a lot before she saw what the lord’s men did to our father and mother. But now she only talks to me. Not with saying out loud, but just with her eyes, like—” He rolled his eyes expressively. Then he caught himself. “Oh! And to Dog there. Now she talks to Dog, too.”

  Troff was staring off to the east watching some cattle in a distant pasture, obviously pretending not to be listening, but Tymmon could see that he was grinning. When Tymmon asked him if he knew that Petrus and Dalia were planning to come with them he said yes, he did. Bouncing with both front legs in the way he sometimes did to emphasize a point, he said yes, of course, he did. But when Tymmon asked, “Then why didn’t you tell me?” he only began to leap around playfully, making everyone scatter to keep from being trod upon, which meant he had no more to say on the matter.

  And so it happened that suddenly, just as Tymmon was beginning to realize how lucky he was not to have two dirty and hungry little orphans on his hands, there they were. Sighing, he gathered up their worldly possessions, several ragged and dirty scraps of blankets and a few tattered shreds of clothing, wrapped them together, and tied the bundle on top of Troff’s pack. Then the four of them set off up the dusty road that led toward the North Countries and Austerneve.

  They camped that night beside a stream just outside the walls of Bidborn, a small town built on the top of a stony outcropping at the edge of a range of wooded hills. Before taking their evening meal from Troff’s pack, Tymmon led Petrus and Dalia to the stream bank and insisted that they wash at least their hands and faces. They did so cautiously and sparingly, with Petrus complaining all the while that the water was cold and wet and was doing him serious and lasting harm. But he recovered quickly when the food appeared, and soon afterwards they both fell asleep, cuddled together in their pile of ragged blankets.

  Long after the orphans, and Troff too, were sleeping soundly, Tymmon lay with his hands behind his head, thinking and planning and staring up at the branches of an oak tree as it made intricate inky splashes across the face of the moon.

  He thought again, as he did every night, of the solemn oath he had sworn—to find and free his father and take revenge on his abductors, whoever they might be. And once again, as he had often done before, he tried to imagine who Black Helmet was and why he had come for Komus.

  Was the huge knight in dark, unblazoned armor someone who had been angered by one of Komus’s songs or stories? Or perhaps some enemy from his distant past in Nordencor? It was impossible to even guess. Only one thing was certain, and that was that the answer to the mystery could only be found in Austerneve.

  But soon, with the constant sound of Petrus’s wheezy breathing to remind him of problems nearer at hand, Tymmon found himself thinking more of the morrow and what it might bring. And when morning came he set his plans in motion.

  “I am going into the town now,” he said firmly when the first rays of morning sun touched the treetops and Petrus and Dalia had begun to stretch and yawn. “I will return soon with food and other things.”

  “No.” Petrus struggled out of his pile of rags and jumped to his feet. “You doan go off without us. Dalia and me coming too. You doan sneak off on us again.”

  “I am not planning to sneak off,” Tymmon said, grinning. At least he grinned the first time he said it, but as he repeated the solemn promise again and yet again he did so with growing exasperation. No matter how firmly and positively he said it, Petrus only went on glaring and would not be convinced. Not, at least, until Tymmon suggested that Troff too would stay behind.

  “Oh, that be all right then.” Petrus was suddenly completely reassured. “Rich people like you maybe sneak off from poor little orphinks, but not from th
eir dog, I think. Not if they be a singing one, anyways, like Dog here.”

  Tymmon couldn’t help laughing. “Rich people?” he said. “I am not a rich person.”

  Petrus rolled his eyes knowingly. “Yes, you be, Boy,” he said. “We saw all those monies in Dog’s pail. Dinna we, Dalia?”

  Tymmon didn’t bother to argue. It would have been useless, and besides he rather liked the idea that someone, even if it was only a poor little beggar, saw him as rich. So after making it clear to Troff that he must remain with the two children, he set off for the town, and when he returned some two hours later, his coin purse was empty and his pack was bulging.

  “What you got there? What you got for us, Boy?” Petrus clamored as he and Dalia and Troff, too, danced around Tymmon.

  “Wonderful things,” Tymmon said, grinning, as he unstrapped the heavy pack and lowered it carefully to the ground. “Sausages and cheese and bread and cherries. But first we are going to do magic. We are going to change you and Dalia from two little beggars into a noble prince and princess.”

  What followed was nerve-racking and time-consuming, particularly the parts that involved water and soap. But at least this time the sun was bright and the air warm and dry. So Petrus’s prophecies of immediate death by chills and ague lacked the conviction they had carried the night before.

  Sometime later, when the ordeal was over and Petrus and Dalia stood before Tymmon scrubbed and sheared and dressed in modest but respectable homespun, Tymmon inspected them critically and thoroughly before he grinned and said to Troff, “Well, perhaps not a prince and princess, but so greatly improved I am certain their old acquaintances back in Nighmont would not recognize them. Truly, I scarcely do myself.”

  The soaked and scrubbed and trimmed Petrus, neatly dressed in leggings and tunic, and shod in wooden pattens, was indeed a transformation, but even more remarkable was the change in his tiny sister.