The Puppeteer's Apprentice

by Love, D. Anne

  So this is what it is like to have a mother, she thought, winding her arms tightly around Claire’s neck. Simon finished his first song, and the travelers clapped. Then Will Gooding brought out his flute and played a series of clear, sweet notes that seemed to dance in the air. Mouse struggled to stay awake, but the fire was warm, her belly was full, and she slept till the innkeeper at last took up his candle and led them along a narrow staircase to a sleeping room under the eaves. There, she burrowed into the warm straw mattress beside Claire.

  Before dawn Claire woke her.

  “Listen, Mouse,” she whispered. “I have some news.”

  Mouse sat up on the straw mattress, rubbing her eyes. By the dim light of the sputtering candle, she saw that Claire was already dressed, her clothes brushed, her hair wound into a neat coil at the back of her neck.

  “Remember the woman we saw last night?” Claire whispered. “The one in the blue cloak?”

  Mouse nodded, feeling suddenly uneasy.

  “Her name is Lady Ashby. She has agreed to take me into her household as companion to her children. Her home is far away, and we are leaving now.”

  “You cannot leave me!” Mouse cried. “Surely it was fate that brought us together, and Fenn says we must never tempt fate. If you go, something horrid is sure to happen.”

  “You must not believe everything you hear,” Claire said quietly. “In time I am sure we will both find our places in the world.” She smoothed Mouse’s tangled hair. “Dear child, ever since I learned the truth about the man I loved, I confess there have been moments when I wondered about the very existence of our Lord. But do you not see? That he should have placed me here at the same moment as Lady Ashby, why, it truly is a miracle. If you wish to believe in fate, believe it has brought Lady Ashby to me.”

  Mouse swallowed hard.

  “Simon will look after you,” Claire said. “Despite his roguish tongue, he has a good heart.”

  Mouse grasped Claire’s hand. “If it please you, ask the lady if I may come too. I will not be a bit of trouble. I can earn my keep.”

  “If only you could come with me,” Claire said. “But I have no influence with the lady. I had to beg to be taken on myself. I dare not ask a favor so soon.” Tucking the thin blanket around Mouse’s shoulders, she said, “Go back to sleep and try not to worry. The morrow will take care of itself.” She kissed Mouse’s forehead. “God keep you, little one.”

  Then she was gone.

  Huddled beneath the scratchy blanket, Mouse stared into the darkness, too miserable to sleep. A short while later, when the clop-clop of horses’ hooves sounded on the cobblestones, she ran to the window and peered out.

  Morning was on its way. The stars had faded. A thin line of gray painted the black rooftops. A coach turned through the arched gate, and in the carriage window Mouse caught a glimpse of Claire’s yellow hair and Lady Ashby’s plumed hat before the coach disappeared into the mist.

  “I will not cry,” Mouse said in a wobbly voice. “I am brave and strong.”

  Then the cock announced the new day. Mouse washed her face and smoothed her hair. Her fingers closed over Alice’s coin. Mayhap Simon would take it in exchange for seeing her safely to London. There, she was certain to make her own way, if only in the scullery of some fine house.

  Tiptoeing down the darkened staircase, she eased open the door and hurried across the yard, scattering the geese in her path. She slipped inside the dim, hushed stable. A horse bobbed his head, nickered and danced sideways in his stall.

  “Simon?”

  Hearing no answer, Mouse crept farther into the shadows and called more loudly, “Simon?”

  Then a stableboy swung wide the door. In the pale light of morning, Mouse saw the hollowed-out place where Simon had passed the night. But he had vanished.

  Lute, leather pouch, and all.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Puppeteer

  “There ye be!” the innkeeper said, striding into the stable. “At least ye kept your end of the bargain. Where is Swann?”

  “Gone,” Mouse muttered sadly. “And Claire, too.”

  The innkeeper snickered. “Gone off together, no doubt. Well, good riddance. Swann is a charmer, true enough, but no more dependable than the weather. If ye ask me, ye are well rid of such a companion. Mayhap ye will find a more reliable one on the journey home.”

  Mouse said nothing. Now that she had tasted life on the road, she was more determined than ever not to return to Cook and his cruel ways. But with no one to guide her, she felt adrift in the world and jumpy as a flea.

  The innkeeper clapped his hands, a sharp, unfriendly sound in the still morning. “Away with ye now.”

  “If it be not too much trouble,” Mouse began, “a bit of bread and meat for my journey?”

  “Swann bargained for supper and a bed. Nothing more.”

  “I will work for it,” Mouse said. “I can peel onions, knead bread, sweep the floor, and stir the pots as well as anyone.”

  “That may be, but that face of yours would slay the devil himself. There is no work here for ragtags and crones.”

  Mouse touched the long, crusty scab on her cheek. It had begun to heal, and, as Simon had predicted, she rarely thought of it. Now the innkeeper’s words reminded her of just how unpleasant she must look.

  “Well, off ye go,” he said, shooing her out the door.

  Mouse left the inn, her thoughts a-jumble. She had considered the travelers her first true friends. More than friends. Almost like a real family. But Simon had left her without so much as a by-your-leave. Alice and Claire were far away. Mayhap she never would see them again. She had not realized friendship meant sorrow as well as joy.

  She reached the center of town. The fair was under way, and it was such a lively celebration that Mouse almost forgot her troubles. The streets overflowed with minstrels playing tambourines and flutes, with jugglers and magicians, and peddlers selling live ducks, candles, and wheels of cheese. In a meadow near the end of the road, a spirited horse auction was taking place. As the animals came up for sale, the bidders shouted and waved their arms. Mouse watched as a man bought a sleek brown mare and led the animal away. Then something even more exciting caught her eye.

  Beyond the auction yard, beneath a fluttering yellow banner, stood a wagon painted with splashes of bright green, crimson, and blue. One side was open to reveal a small stage, and there a crowd had gathered to watch two wooden figures singing and dancing. The little wooden dolls moved as effortlessly as if they were truly human. Behind the stage stood an open trunk brimming with more puppets. Mouse stared at them, at the tangle of wires and strings and rainbow-colored costumes, the jumble of arms and legs and brightly painted faces spilling out.

  That is where the puppets live, she thought. Remembering the gloomy, airless corner at Dunston Manor where she had dreamed she might one day be part of the wider world, she imagined the puppets, too, were waiting in the dark of their trunk for something wondrous to happen. She edged closer. “You are like me,” she whispered.

  Above the buzz of the horse auction and the din of street peddlers hawking their wares, Mouse heard the crowd laughing at the puppets’ antics. The sound of it touched something deep inside her. As if drawn by a sorcerer’s spell, she pushed her way through the onlookers till she was standing at the very edge of the stage.

  A wooden jester in a gold and purple cape floated across the stage. Mouse marveled at the way his arms moved in time to his piping song. Then a second jester appeared, bowed low, and began to dance. Now Mouse could see the fine wires running through the puppets’ heads and the strings that connected their arms and legs. It was the strings, she saw, that enabled the figures to turn their heads, lift a shoulder, run, jump, dance.

  The jesters’ song ended, and the puppets disappeared behind a crimson curtain. From behind the stage came a series of bumps and rustlings, mutterings and shufflings. Then a bearded puppet dressed in a loose-fitting robe tied at the waist with a brown velvet cord ca
me onto the stage.

  From the left side of the stage, a puff of smoke appeared, and a voice said, “Noah!”

  The puppet knelt on the stage and folded his hands.

  “You shall build an ark,” came the voice again.

  A parade of animal puppets crossed the stage two by two. First came a pair of fierce-looking beasts Mouse imagined were tigers, then two large gray figures with noses like tree trunks and round flat ears.

  “Elephants!” Mouse shouted.

  A fishwife standing beside her poked her in the ribs. “Quiet, girl!”

  Next came horses, cows, and goats.

  I know this story, Mouse thought. It is the one about the great flood and the rainbow the visiting priest read at Dunston last year.

  The puppet Noah lifted his arms. A shower of water spilled onto the ground in front of the stage. Everyone clapped as a rainbow drifted down, as if from heaven.

  Mouse stood there wonderstruck, as close to perfect happiness as she had ever been in her short life. It was as if a heavy veil suddenly had been lifted from her eyes, giving her a glimpse of a brighter world she had not even known existed. Right then she understood that her future lay not in some dank scullery in London, but with these puppets who moved by some magic she did not yet understand. Somehow, she must learn their secrets. Somehow, she and the puppets must belong to each other.

  When the show ended, she waited until the crowd had gone. Then she walked boldly to the wagon and rapped on the shuttered window.

  “Go away!” came a voice from inside.

  “If you please, I must talk to you.”

  “Leave me be!”

  Again, Mouse rapped on the shutter.

  Suddenly it flew open, and a head appeared. “What?”

  Mouse stared. The puppeteer wore a turban and a hooded crimson cloak that hid everything but a black patch covering one eye. “I—I,” she stammered. “The puppets. They are wondrous.”

  “I quite agree. Good day.”

  “Wait!” Mouse cried, so desperately full of love for the puppets that she could barely contain herself. Words jumped and bumped together inside her head and spilled out too fast. “How do the puppets dance? Is it magic? Will you teach me?”

  The puppeteer fixed her with one bright blue eye. “Teach you? What an absurd notion.”

  The shutter slammed tight. If only Mouse could have described all the feelings churning inside her when she had watched the puppets dance, mayhap she could have convinced the puppeteer to teach her what she longed to learn. But now her chance was lost. Cook was right, she thought as she turned away, stepping carefully around the horse manure and goose droppings littering the road. She was naught but an addlebrained clod. Her throat ached painfully, but tears were useless. She wandered aimlessly among the peddlers and musicians till she came at last to the fortune-teller’s cart.

  “Tell yer fortune, girl?” asked the woman with a broken-toothed smile.

  Though in desperate need of goodly advice, Mouse dared not squander her only coin. She shook her head, but the fortune-teller’s meaty hand closed over her arm. “Well, then, would yer mind standing here and pretending for a while? I have been here since the cock’s first crow, and not a single person has stopped to ask a question. Never have I met a less curious lot of folk.”

  Mouse tried to free herself, but the woman held her fast. “I will not harm ye, girl. In town for the fair?”

  Mouse hesitated, then nodded.

  “What are ye selling, then? Meat pies? Wool? Goats?”

  “I have nothing to sell.”

  The fortune-teller shifted in her chair, and Mouse yanked her arm free.

  “Come now,” the woman said, picking up a dogeared stack of odd-looking cards. “I will not charge ye for pretending. Tell me, in what month were ye born?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Ah. So that is how it is. The cards will not help us, then. Spit into this cup.”

  Too curious to refuse such a strange request, Mouse spat, then watched as the fortune-teller slowly stirred the spittle with one long, broken fingernail, all the while muttering to herself.

  “What?” Mouse cried when she could stand the suspense no longer.

  The fortune-teller’s dark gaze flitted from the cup to Mouse and back again. “For you I see a long journey, a great sorrow, and a dream fulfilled.”

  Just then a goat boy hurtled past, jostling Mouse so hard that she nearly fell. But the fortune-teller seemed not to notice. She clasped Mouse’s hands and peered intently into her face. “Remember this: Some dreams are won by means of money spent, and some by tricks, and some by kindness lent.”

  While Mouse was pondering these words, the goat boy returned. With a slight nod to the fortune-teller, he walked on. Abruptly, the woman dropped Mouse’s hands. “Enough pretending. The rain is starting. No customers today, I trow. Thanks be for yer help, girl. May good fortune be yer companion.”

  Mouse hadn’t noticed the sun disappearing behind the spreading clouds, but now the sky darkened and a cold rain pelted her face as she ran through the streets. Finding herself once again at the Lion’s Head Inn, she hurried across the courtyard and slipped into the stable.

  After the clamor of the fair, the stable seemed eerily quiet. Dust motes swirled in the gray light coming through the cracks in the walls. The air was heavy with the smell of hay and horses. Mouse’s ears rang in the silence.

  Burrowing into the fresh straw, she thought about the fortune-teller’s words. Some dreams are won by means of money spent. And a plan formed inside her head. She would pay to learn the puppeteer’s secrets. On the morrow she would strike a bargain and soon she would possess the magic that made the puppets dance. Filled with determination, she reached inside her pocket for the coin that held the key to her future.

  It was gone.

  Mouse leapt to her feet and dug frantically through the mounds of straw on the floor, then yanked open the stable door and ran into the rain-slicked road. Mayhap her coin had lodged itself between the cobblestones or fallen into the gutter or rolled beneath some wool merchant’s cart. She looked and looked, retracing her steps all the way to the meadow and back again, but plainly, her coin was lost. There was nothing to do but return to the stable.

  “I will not cry,” she told the dappled gray horse that watched her from his stall. “I am brave and strong.”

  But the words rang hollow in her ears. She slumped onto the hay, miserable and defeated.

  The stable door opened, but Mouse didn’t stir till a hand touched her shoulder. She looked into the calm gray eyes of the stableboy.

  “You!” he exclaimed. “I thought you would be on your way home by now.”

  “I have neither home nor hope nor a single coin for bread.”

  He seemed willing to listen, so Mouse told him about the fortune-teller and the goat boy who had jostled her so roughly while she pretended to have her fortune told. She told him about her futile search for her lost coin. To her surprise, the stableboy laughed.

  “That old swine! She and the goat boy are a team, I wager. While you were listening to her nonsense, the boy shoved you and stole your coin. It is a trick older than time itself, one that Swann knows well, no doubt.”

  The mention of Simon brought Mouse perilously close to tears. Despite his kindness on the journey to York, in the end she had mattered not at all.

  The stableboy said, “If the master finds you here, he will flog us both. I can bring you some bread and cheese, and you may pass this night here. But you must go on the morrow.”

  He hurried out and presently returned with a crust of bread, a hunk of moldy cheese, and a wrinkled apple. Wordlessly, he dropped the food onto the hay and pulled the door firmly shut behind him. Mouse ate a bit of everything and saved the rest. She nestled into the hay. Some dreams are won by kindness lent.

  What kindness could she perform that would change the puppeteer’s mind? She thought and thought, but it was a question without an answer.

&nbs
p; And some by tricks. She hated tricks, but Simon had tricked her. And the fortune-teller and the goat boy. As she lay there, listening to the snuffling of the horses and the drip-drip of rain on the cobblestones, it seemed the only way to realize her dream was to trick the puppeteer into teaching her what she must learn.

  Mouse slept little that night, for her mind was busy with a new plan. Even before the cock announced the new day, she rose, tucked her food inside her tunic, and pushed open the stable door.

  The city was asleep. Deep shadows lay across the deserted streets. Here and there, the dim glow of a single candle illuminated the darkness. A dog barked in the distance. Mouse set off toward the meadow where the puppeteer’s wagon stood, her mouth dry as sand. Her daring plan, which had seemed so easy when she was safe inside the stable, now seemed fraught with danger.

  Suppose the puppeteer should suddenly emerge from the shuttered wagon and find her there? Suppose someone watching from a darkened window shouted an alarm?

  “I am brave and strong,” she whispered to an owl that rose, fluttering, from a treetop. Then she reached the wagon.

  The puppeteer’s horse nickered softly. Mouse gave him a bit of her apple, then hoisted herself onto the flat roof of the wagon. It was cold and slick with rain, but she lay completely still, watching the first light of the new morn seep into the sky.

  Soon the turbaned puppeteer, dressed in a shapeless garment of faded gray wool, came out and made a cook fire. The smells of cooking meat and sweet onions wafted up. Mouse’s empty stomach growled, and she reached for her bread. She chewed it slowly while the puppeteer finished eating, doused the campfire, caught the horse, and hitched the wagon.

  By the time the sun had climbed above the trees, the rooftops of York were only a dark blur on the horizon and Mouse was sitting atop the puppeteer’s wagon, munching the last of her apple as they rolled through the countryside.