Will Sparrow's Road

by Karen Cushman

  Nell threw the boots behind her, leaned over, and thumped Will on the knee. "Where you goin' to?”

  "Nowhere,” he said, tugging his mind away from her boots. "I be goin' from.”

  "A runner, are ye? Least little thing goes wrong and ye run.”

  Will's temper boiled over. He sat up and grabbed the bag of apples. "'Little thing,' you say? My father traded me to an innkeeper for beer. That be no little thing.” Will's anger was mingled with an odd bit of pride: certes no other father in the world misprized his son so.

  "My own daddy, he ne'er would have done as yours did,” Nell said, lying back in the straw. "We lost our land when the scurvy lord took it. He dammed the river, and the whole village disappeared beneath a lake he used for mock sea battles. We was eight and no mam, but ne'er did my daddy think to rid himself of us.” Nell frowned and was silent for a bit. "Your own father, you say? May turnips grow in his nose! Why, had I a son like you, a brave and bonny boy, I would ne'er treat him so.” She slammed her fist against the straw-strewn floor. "Were the man here,” she declared, "I would cuff him about his ears, I would.”

  She panted in outrage for a moment and then asked, "What be in that sack you're cuddling like a babe? 'Twouldn't be someut to eat, would it?”

  Will clutched his sack of apples. "Nay, 'tis nothing. Only the ... the remains of ... of ... a cat. An old cat. I did pledge to my dear granny that I would bury her cat ... er, in a sunny place. Aye, in a sunny place by a stream, and so I will.”

  Nell still looked curiously at the sack, so Will added, "He do be starting to stink some.”

  Nell shivered and waved him silent. His apples, Will thought, were safe.

  Of a sudden there were voices calling in the field outside. Nell jumped up. "Do someone seek ye?” she asked.

  Did they? Will shrugged, then nodded, then shrugged again. Was the innkeeper still on his trail? Or the carter?

  "I aim to hide myself, boy,” Nell said, "burrow into that straw like a mole. You might do the same, and they will find no one here.” She gave him a small shove. "Go. God save ye, boy,” she said. She shook her head. "Traded for beer, the poor wee wretch.”

  Will slipped into his shirt, still damp from the rain, and crouched in the corner, pulling great masses of straw over himself. He would hide just long enough for the voices to pass, and then, before Nell showed herself again, he would have her boots and be off. Will was grateful for her sympathy, but boots were boots.

  Pieces of straw poked in his mouth and tickled his nose. A sneeze began, and grew, and grew. Will muffled it with his arm, but then came another and another. He wiped his soggy hand on his breeches and waited. Had he given himself away?

  The voices outside came nearer, and Will heard someone say, "Mayhap the baggage is in the shed.” And the door swung open and shut.

  Had they come in? Will's heart pounded so loudly, he was certain it could be heard even to the next county. Belike he would be back at the inn before morning. His belly grumbled at the thought.

  There came a shout from outside. "There she goes!”

  And another: "Nellie, girl, we got you now. Nellie! Nell?”

  "Blast it,” said the first voice. "Where has the she-devil gone?” and their voices grew fainter as they moved off.

  Will was bewildered. Gone? She was gone? Was she not hiding in the straw? He stood up, brushing straw from his hair and his clothes and his mouth. He was alone. The men had not come in. She had run out. And they had called her Nell. They were after her all along and not him! Horses and thieves were worth following and recovering, but he was not, it appeared.

  He looked around the shed. Nell was gone indeed, and so too were her boots. And his blanket and the sack of apples. Gone, the lying thief, the villainous harpy, may maggots build nests in her hair!

  He opened the door and peered out. No one was there waiting for him, so he stepped outside. "Begone and stay gone, you baggage!” he shouted. "I hope my apples gripe your guts and rats eat your toes right through those fine boots!”

  It appeared Will Sparrow was not the clever thief he thought himself, for he was left with no boots, no apples, no blanket. Outsmarted by a woman! Nell had acted kindly toward him and then stole what little he had, the foul and ugly toad. Fie upon it, he would not make that mistake again. He would speak to no one, listen to no one, and let no one get close enough to take what was his. I care for no one but myself, he thought, kicking at the straw-covered floor, and nothing but my belly. And boots.

  Fie on Nell Liftpurse, the hag! Fie on all women! He had nothing good to say for them. His mother had run off when he was small enough still to need a mother. No more than five he was when she left, the selfish wretch. Will hated her and hoped she was grown ugly, crooked, and wartish.

  His stepmother, the green-eyed Ysabo, who had appeared before his mother's chair was cold, had left them soon after for the miller, who was pockmarked and stooped but had promised her two new dresses and fresh bread every week. She told Will so before she left, their last chicken under her arm.

  He hated both of them but especially his mother, with her silver gilt hair and her soft laughter. Fie upon her! Thinking of his mother grizzled his liver, so he shut the memories away as if in a cupboard and locked them in.

  Will felt the dawn chill on his face. It was time to go. The rain had stopped, and the fading moon was yet bright enough to light his way. He was far enough from the inn, he thought, that it would be safe to walk on the road as long as he kept his wits about him.

  Snuffling loudly, he kicked at a puddle. No one was seeking him here. He was not worth that much to the innkeeper and worth nothing to his tall, redheaded father, the Devil take him! Village schoolmaster the man had been, insufficiently learned though handy with the switch, but a man of some consequence until his wife left and he took to drink, forfeiting his position and his friends and his prospects. "'Tis your fault she be gone,” Will's father told him often. "She could not abide you, and no more can I. Look at you, you dark, skinny runt. I mistrust you are mine. A changeling, most like, left by fairies when they took my own son. My real boy...” He mewled and blubbered like a babe, lost himself in drink, boxed Will about the ears regularly, and sold him to the innkeeper.

  Will picked up a rock and hurled it at the nearest tree. He was no changeling! Will hurled another rock. Although he was not tall and redheaded, nor soft and silver haired, but small and dark, he was no changeling. He was Will Sparrow, wary and sly, liar and thief, with knobby knees and a gap-toothed smile. He could whistle through that gap, spit through it, and thrust the tip of his tongue through it when he thought or wondered or worried, as he did now.

  Will was alone, farther from home than he had ever been, with no plan, no one to depend on, no one to trust. He took a deep breath of the rain-washed air. In sooth, everything lay ahead of him. He was no inn boy, no chimney sweep. He was free and on the road to somewhere. A tiny flicker of hope flared in his belly.

  THREE

  IN WHICH WILL EARNS

  BUT IS CHEATED OF A SUPPER

  THE DAY grew hot and late-summer dry, and the puddles disappeared in the sun. Tired of walking and weary in his bones, Will trudged through the brown grass. Scritch-scritcha-scritch, it sang as he walked, and he was suddenly attentive. Scritch-scritcha-scritch. If he put one dirty bare foot on the road and the other in the grass, he could change the tune: thud-scritcha-thud.

  By moving back and forth from grass to road, he could make music: scritch-scritcha-thud-thud, thud-scritcha-thud. Bump-bumpa went a rock as he kicked it, and Will added that to his song. Scritch-scritcha-thud-thud, thud-scritcha-thud-bump-bumpa. He chanted it aloud as he walked: Scritch-scritcha-thud-thud, thud-scritcha-thud, bump-bumpa-bump-bump.

  So intent was he on his music making that he nearly walked into a wagon parked at the side of the road.

  "Watch yourself, boy,” a voice said, "or you will end up with a bump-bumpa-bump-bump on that head of yours.”

  Will stopped, ready to run, bu
t saw from the corner of his eye what appeared to be a giant tooth wobbling in the breeze. Surely his pursuers would not chase him in a wagon topped with a giant tooth.

  "I see you admiring my embellishments,” said the man with the voice, who was standing next to the toothed wagon. He was shaped much like an egg: small at the top and bottom and rounded in the middle, stuffed into a padded doublet of stained and spotted green. "I be Doctor Hieronymus Munster,” he said with a little bow, "tooth puller and traveling purveyor of remedies. Need you extraction or distraction or satisfaction, I can likely provide.”

  Will said nothing and resumed walking. The man was not the innkeeper nor the carter who would take him to sweep chimneys, but as likely as not he was up to no good. Will's encounter with Nell Liftpurse had taught him that wary as he was, clever and slippery as he was, it was not enough for a boy in a world of grown-up liars and thieves.

  The man climbed onto the wagon. He clucked to his great black horse, and they drove slowly alongside the boy. "From the appearance of your dusty attire and your dirty feet, I suspect you would not be disinclined to ride to wherever you are headed,” said the man. "Do I have the way of it?”

  Will's tired feet pleaded, "Aye, aye, we want to ride,” but the boy shook his head.

  "Be you mute or merely thrifty with your words?”

  "I can speak,” said Will, "when I have reason,” but he did not stop.

  "Good. I wish to come to an agreeance with you. I seek your aid, if you'd care to—”

  "Nay, I care for no one but myself and nothing but my belly.”

  "A prudent stance, I do say. But I have business awaiting in a village yon, and, if you will assist me, I will remunerate you.”

  Will crinkled his face in puzzlement. Was that a threat? Should he run?

  "Pay, boy. That means I will pay you,” said the man.

  Pay? Will stopped. "How much?” he asked. "Show me.”

  "I do not precisely have the coins now,” the man said, and Will shook his head again and walked on. "But with your help, I shall be earning a great many, which I shall use to buy us supper. Juicy fat beef ribs. Pork pies. And crumb cakes.”

  Will slowed. He had seen fine folk eat such at the inn, but he himself had had only the leavings.

  "We shall sit by the fire and eat our fill,” said the tooth puller.

  "With new bread? And mugs of ale?” It was more than he had hoped for, willing to be satisfied by smoked herring or jellied eels.

  "Certes,” the man said, nodding his head until his chins wobbled.

  "What you would have me do—be it painful, gruesome, or disgustful?”

  "Not at all. You will merely serve as an exemplar of my work.”

  Will did not understand what that meant, but since it was not painful, gruesome, or disgustful, he said, "I might, if I choose.” He walked even slower. "And there will be beef ribs afterward?”

  The tooth puller nodded again.

  "Then 'tis possible I will do it,” Will said, still wary of the man but eager to feel the grease of the beef on his lips.

  "Climb up, then, young master,” said Doctor Hieronymus Munster, and Will did.

  The man shook the reins, and the big black horse began to move. "Where be you headed?” he asked.

  Will motioned vaguely toward the road ahead. "Up there.”

  "Good,” said Doctor Munster. "That is precisely where I am going.”

  "What is it you will pay me to do? You do not expect me to pull teeth as you do?”

  Doctor Munster chuckled. "Pish, as if a slip of a boy like you could pull out anything more difficult than a fish from a stream. You will only show folk how easy and painless it be to have a tooth drawn.”

  "You mean to pull my teeth?” Will made ready to leap from the wagon.

  "Nay, nay, not in truth, but it will appear so. You will be doing folk a boon, calming their fears and assuring them of the safety and painlessness of the procedure.”

  "You mean I shall lie,” Will said, nodding. "That I can do.”

  "Lie? Lie? I never thought of it as lying, more as ... representing and ... encouraging. I often use some lackwit fellow I pick up—” The doctor stopped talking and cleared his throat. "Nay, usually I use a lackwit fellow, but you seem a bright and likely boy.” Handing the reins to Will, the tooth puller put his hand into his own mouth, clutched a front tooth with his fingers, tugged a bit, and held up a bloody tooth.

  Will nearly dropped the reins. How had the man done that? How could he pull out a tooth with his fingers? And the blood—did it not hurt?

  Then the tooth puller smiled. His tooth was still there.

  "But I saw you pull that tooth with my own eyes,” Will said.

  "Things are not always what they seem, boy.” The tooth puller put the tooth in his pouch and took the reins back from Will. "It takes but practice and a bit of chicken blood. Now let me hear you moan.”

  "Moan?” Will asked. "Why moan?” Again he made ready to flee if he liked not the answer.

  "If you are to assist me, you must seem so distraught with pain that you have come to me to have your tooth removed. Now moan.”

  Will frowned. He would not perform like a trained dog at a fair. Even so, at the thought that he might lose the beef ribs and warm bread, he moaned, “Ohhhhhh." He coughed a bit from the dust as they bounced and swayed down the road, and he moaned again, "Ohhhhhh."

  "Just so,” said the tooth puller, "but louder. Think of some injury you have suffered.”

  Will thought of the time he ripped the nail off his toe as he was climbing the stone fence around Odo Waterman's orchard, and he moaned louder.

  "Good,” said the tooth puller. "Now make it a bit deeper.”

  Will remembered slamming his finger in the door of the inn the day he arrived. The finger dangled broken and useless until Magda the midwife forced it straight and tied it tightly with two sticks and a length of cloth torn from her underskirt. Will moaned deeper.

  "Better, better, but with more pain.”

  Will considered the time his father sent him to catch a fish for their supper and Will lay on the bank, his feet dangling in the water, enjoying the way the fish nibbled at his toes, until his father found him and cuffed him so hard that he fell and cracked his head on a rock and blood trickled from his ear. Will heard less well on that side now, and sometimes the ear ached fiercely. "Ahhhh-ehhh-owww!" Will bellowed.

  "A truly prodigious effort, my boy!” Doctor Munster said, slapping his knee. "Now I will pull the tooth from your mouth and hold it aloft. You will give me many good thanks and disappear before anyone do look too closely at your teeth, which will all be there.”

  They practiced again and again as the wagon slowly rumbled along. By and by, Doctor Munster called, "Whoa, Molly,” and they bounced to a stop. "Here I will ready myself for my entrance into the village.”

  He climbed down, a curious Will following him. Behind the wagon, the man shrugged into a cloak of russet wool and placed a pointed hat securely on his head. Lastly he settled around his neck a string of rugged brownish stones.

  Will looked closely at the string. Not stones but teeth. He shuddered. Teeth.

  "I am ready,” said Hieronymus Munster. "Molly and I will ride into the village, but you must come around through those trees there lest the village folk see us together and grow suspicious. I will set up in the churchyard, and you will meet us there. Do be moaning and staggering from pain when you arrive.”

  "When do we sup?”

  Doctor Munster waved his hand at the boy. "Anon, anon. After you leave the churchyard, come hither. I will meet you when I have finished relieving folks of their teeth and their coins.” He lifted from the wagon a small drum and tapped it twice. "Be ready to leave at once. We will depart in some haste, for folk grow testy when they discover tooth pulling is not as easy or painless as promised. Then we shall visit a coaching inn I know of that offers the fattest beef and the freshest ale. Now begone. I will see you soonly.”

  Will patted
his empty belly and soothed it with promises: "We hoped for someut to eat besides apples, and here it be. We shall be stuffed full and satisfied ere the day be out.” Hope again flickered within him.

  He did as he was bid and cut through the trees to the village. Cottages leaned and tumbled on both sides of a dusty road that was playground for children and supper table for chickens. He saw the church some way down the road.

  The wagon with its waggling tooth stood nigh a tree stump, where a small crowd was gathering. Doctor Munster was next to the stump, banging his drum and shouting, "Do your teeth trouble you more than the tax collector? Do you fear you will never again bite into a crisp apple or a crust of bread? Do you lie awake by night in sore distress? I can free you from your pain—I, Doctor Hieronymus Munster, trained by masters of the dental arts in far-off Arabia. I have with good success and without pain pulled teeth from the crowned heads of Europe, and I can do the same for you here in this celebrated community of, er...” He looked around.

  Someone called out, "Lesser Oakbridge.”

  "Indeed,” Doctor Munster continued, "here in Lesser Oakbridge.” He beckoned to his listeners. "Come and be made sound again, goodmen and ladies. Be not afeared, be not afeared.”

  No one came forward, so the tooth puller signaled to Will, who put his hand to his cheek and let out a tremendous moan. "Ah, lad, I hear your suffering. Come up, come up, and experience the painless artistry of Doctor Hieronymus Munster. A shilling to draw forth a stump, or but sixpence if the tooth be whole.”

  Will moved nearer, and Doctor Munster pushed him down onto the tree stump. "Moan, you lumpish rascal! Moan!” the tooth puller whispered to Will, who moaned. The tooth puller put his hand into the boy's mouth, Will wriggled, and finally Doctor Munster held a bloody tooth above his head. "Success!”