The Rope Dancer
Authors: Roberta Gellis
Copyright © 1986, 2012 by Roberta Gellis
Cover and internal design © 2012 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design © Vivian Ducas
Cover image © Bridgeman Art Library
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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
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Originally published in 1986 by The Berkley Publishing Group, New York.
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To my beloved husband, Charles, whose patience and forbearance over the years I have been writing surely deserve some greater reward than my deepest love and gratitude—which he has always had
The red-yellow flames of fire, oil lamp, and torch painted golden the rivulets of sweat and tears that streaked Carys’s cheeks. Her breath came in tearing gasps, more of terror than exhaustion, but still she had danced, twirling and leaping in the rapidly diminishing area between the fire in its central hearth on the floor of the great hall and the dais where the lord of the manor sat. Her fear-dilated eyes flicked to him, but the new master of the keep was grinning mercilessly, sometimes watching her desperate dance and sometimes glancing at the walls of men closing in on her from each side. In a minute, or two, or three, he would laugh or lift his hand in a gesture that would loose the men, and they would seize her.
How many were there? Thirty? Fifty? However many, there were too many. Every man there intended to have her, and have her in ways that hurt. She knew she would be torn apart—dead—before they were finished.
Carys was used to judging the size of a crowd even while she twisted and turned, but the vicious lust that deformed every face addled her wits. Not that lust was strange to her, but this was not natural lust—it was an extension of the urge to kill that had minutes earlier taken the life of her protector. Less than a quarter of an hour ago Ulric Strongman had stood between her and those who watched her dance, and before him there had been Morgan Knifethrower. A single flare of hot rage pierced the cold terror that was making Carys’s limbs shake. Men! Stupid,
stupid
, STUPID men! She had no doubt that Ulric’s greed or pride or stupidity had precipitated the fight that led to his death, just as Morgan’s sly dishonesty had got him killed three years ago. But now she would die too, and in agony.
The rage and resentment opened a crack in the encircling terror that had made her death by torture seem inevitable. Carys’s hand fluttered down toward the knives strapped to her thighs. Morgan Knifethrower had left her that gift. Since she must die, she need not go alone. She could throw one knife into the throat of that grinning lordling, who plainly intended to enjoy watching her be raped until she bled to death, and she could plunge the other into her own throat before anyone could reach her. But even as she groped through the garish rags that were her dancing gown, she heard the low, bestial growl coming from the men rise to drown the thin music piped by a local boy to which she had been dancing. A twirl showed her that the men had closed in even in front of the dais. The only break in the circle was the fire.
Before the thought made sense to her, Carys’s trained body had judged and acted. Four swift strides gave her a start for a leap that launched her straight over the heart of the flames. She did not clear the hearth completely; she landed in the fire, but she landed running and was out of it before she felt the heat of the flames. Her bare feet had touched the coals, but the soles were hard as horn, and the few embers that clung were ground out by her next step. She was nearly across the hall before howls of rage burst from the throats of the startled men. The inarticulate shouts were followed by a few cries to guard the door, but Carys was not headed for the door. Long before most of the men had taken a single step, she had gathered herself together and leapt through the window of the ground-floor hall, where the shutters had been broken away in the battle and not been repaired.
Yells of rage followed her. She could hear those as, curled into a tight ball, she hit the ground and rolled. The impact bruised her flesh and tore her skin, but falling was the first art a rope dancer learned, and the pain was not nearly so bad as a beating. On the second roll, Carys unfolded and rose smoothly, running before she had fully straightened her body. She could still hear the shouting, words now, and knew they were commands to catch her, to bring her back. Her mind heard the pounding of pursuing feet, although her ears could not.
“Lady, help,” she prayed, for it was black dark and she was running blind, her eyes not yet adjusted.
Whether the Lady of Carys’s half-pagan faith heard or Carys’s own superb sense of balance protected her, she crossed the corner of the bailey between the window and the outer wall before the door of the hall was flung open and spilled a trail of light only a few yards behind her flying heels. The light spread in discrete halos as men with torches rushed out—but they all ran first to examine the ground where Carys had landed, expecting to see her lying there, broken and groaning. That would not have stopped their fun, she thought bitterly. By now she could see. A running leap brought the eaves of a shed into her reach; a lift and twist carried her up onto the low roof.
The men were still rushing here and there, unable to believe she had disappeared, but soon they would begin to search in a more organized way. Behind Carys were the supports of the palisade walkway. If she could only reach one without being seen…But the bobbing torches seemed to be coming closer, and she rose and leapt, sobbing softly in terrified expectation of hearing a triumphant shout to announce her discovery. A moment later she was perched on a strut in the deepest shadows, right against the wall, but what had seemed like a safe haven when she was on the exposed roof now closed her in like a trap.
The walkway just above her shook as the guards on the walls responded to the shouts of the men on the ground and Carys shook with fear. She had forgotten the men on the wall. Usually they looked outward for attackers, but the noise of the fight that had ended in Ulric’s death must surely have attracted their attention. If one had still been watching the bailey and had seen her, she was lost. There would be no escape from this cage of cross-beams and supporting struts.
At first Carys was so terrified of being trapped that she made no sense of what the men on the ground were shouting up to the guards, but the short negatives of the guards’ replies were unmistakable, and her fear receded enough for her to understand that the men were warning the guards to watch the ladders giving access to the walkway. The boards just above Carys’s head quivered as a man crossed them, and she heard the sound of his footsteps diminish as he moved away. Still she clung unmoving to her perch, frozen as a rabbit when a fox is near, feeling as if she would strangle for lack of breath yet fighting the urge to pant lest the men hear her.
Then her breath stopped altogether as one searcher came right toward her. But he did not thrust a torch in under the walkway; instead he entered the shed on which she had climbed and began to push and pull at the bales and barrels stored there. Carys nearly choked repressing a whimper of fear when he came out, but his back was toward the palisade, and grumbling curses and threats, he trotted off toward the next outbuilding. As she realized that all the men were engaged in examining the interiors of the structures, Carys’s sense of suffocation eased.
Stupid men, Carys thought again, a tiny flicker of contempt further reducing her fear. How could they think she would be so foolish as to hide in those places? But she knew her time of grace was very short. When they had gone through the huts, her danger would be all the greater. Still, her contempt had unlocked her muscles, and she inched forward and peered right and left to see where the ladders were. That was where the guards would be watching for her. None was visible from her perch, and that piece of good fortune cleared her head. She knew she could not stay where she was, and the drawbridge over the dry moat had been lifted and secured for the night. Perhaps she could get down and hide in one of the sheds the men had already searched—but what good would that do? She could not be sure the outbuildings would not be searched a second time, and there was no way of hiding who she was. Her clothes would mark her so that she could not pretend to be one of the serf women or maidservants and escape the next day when the drawbridge was lowered.
Tears started to run down Carys’s face again, though she did not permit herself to sob. The only way out was over the palisade. If she had a rope…But there was no rope and no way to find one. She must let herself fall. Carys shivered. She knew about falling, but the rope on which she danced at village entertainments or town fairs was seldom higher than ten or fifteen feet. The palisade was much higher—perhaps the log wall was twenty feet high and the ditch below it another twenty feet. She shivered again. The men would hear her fall. They would rush out and capture her while she was still stunned. Her back and hips ached and stung from the scrapes and bruises inflicted by her dive out of the window. How much more pain would come from so great a fall?
For a moment Carys fingered one of her knives, wondering if she should save herself more fear and pain with one swift stroke. But even as she thought of killing herself, Carys’s eyes watched the torches that marked the men’s movements in the bailey, and her ears strained to hear whether steps approached her. No one approached; no face turned in her direction; no torch drew near. And as she stared at the flickering lights, she saw in memory a happier time, when the torches and voices calling meant that the play was about to begin.
Playing had always made Carys happy. It was a joy and wonder to her to be dressed in brilliant gowns, glittering with jewels, and to pace onto the stage with measured steps, speaking in the high, fluting voice and accent thought fitting for a great noblewoman. It did not matter that the fabric of the gown was coarse, that the jewels were only glittering shards of glass, that instead of French she spoke the English necessary if the village folk they entertained were to understand. Nor did it matter that the great lady was taunted and tumbled down, the butt of the fool’s wit. What mattered was the excitement, the brilliance of the stage lit by many torches, and the joy her downfall brought. How the people laughed! It was all the revenge they could ever have on their masters, and they enjoyed it.
In those days, before Morgan Knifethrower had played one man too many for a fool, every day was full of small joys. As soon as she rolled out of her blankets, she would run to wake one of the acrobats. Sometimes she chose the wrong one and he would kick at her and curse her, but one or another would set up her rope in some secluded spot while she washed and pissed and rubbed at her teeth with a splintered twig. Or if they were in a barn with the right kind of beams, she might climb the posts and practice there. Practice first, always practice, until she was slicked with sweat and her muscles ached. The art depended on that—the practice must be harder than the act itself.
Then the morning meal. In those days when the troupe was at its best, there was always enough to eat—barring a day here and there when they were caught between towns or keeps and had to sleep out by the road—it was good food too, rich and hot, cooked by the drabs who came and went. They had no skill; all they were good for was to cook and sew and lie with the men, and Morgan drove them away if they bored him or complained.
Nine, there had been nine in the troupe that counted. Morgan first: he did his knife-throwing act with the best-looking drab as target and told fortunes, as well as planning where they were to go, keeping them together, cajoling the other players, sometimes soothing, sometimes threatening; Carys second: her rope dancing brought the most coins, the loudest gasps of pleasure from those who watched; third the four jugglers and acrobats, they changed as some ran off or Morgan found new, more skillful ones; the two dwarves, they were brothers, one more deformed than the other but both humpbacked with bulging chests and both clever—and vicious enough that she had been afraid of them; and Ulric, strong and stupid, he had drawn the two-wheeled cart whose sides and bottom had made the stage they played on. On the road, the cart had held the clothes for playing and usually the dwarves, who could not walk far or very fast.
The dwarves walked into every town, of course, banging on their small drums, dressed in crazy, overlarge garments patched and striped of every bright color and slashed so one color would show through another. The troupe followed, all in costume, all offering a tiny, tempting bit of skill. The dwarves would shout, “The players have come! The players have come!” in their deep, resonant voices and point first to one and then another of the acts, lying freely about the wonders each one would perform. Morgan spun his knives in the air; Ulric drew the cart, in which the goods were lifted on a light frame so that it looked twice as full and heavy as it really was; the jugglers threw and caught bright balls among themselves; and Carys did anything the joy of life brought to her mind—walking on her hands, doing cartwheels, leaping on and off the cart or Ulric’s shoulders. They would wind in and out the streets, shouting and laughing, and the people would rush out of their houses and shops, also shouting and laughing.
Suddenly Carys shuddered. It was not all joy. There were times—especially in the smaller towns—when the shouts were of rage rather than of joy, when an ill-governed troupe had passed through too recently and the trouble they had caused, stealing too much or getting into an unusually bloody brawl, had not yet been forgotten. Or when out of a kind of crazed religiousness or plain spite or greed the bailiff or mayor of the place had refused them permission to play or demanded a bribe that Morgan could not or would not pay. Then they had run, dodging stones and filth, sometimes even clubs if the townsfolk were too much aroused.
Remembered fear made Carys’s hiding place close in on her again. Almost without conscious volition her hands seized the edge of the walkway, her body silently twisted free of the beam on which she had perched. For a single, terrible instant she hung free, in clear view of anyone who looked, and then she was up and over, scuttling as lightly and gently as possible into the deeper blackness where the upper part of the palisade met the walkway. There Carys crouched, trembling and weeping anew, trying to find the courage to take the last step.
It was not courage but fear that finally forced her into action. Her own trembling made her think that the boards under her were shaking and that someone was coming. Again her body moved before her resolution formed clearly in her mind. One hand grasped a V between two sharpened logs; she swung over and hung, grabbing at the next V with her other hand while her toes scrabbled desperately for a hold on the rough wood. One foot found a crevice, but the other found nothing, and when she tried to free a hand to seek a handhold, she could not grip hard enough with her toes to support herself—but neither could she find the courage to release her hold and let herself fall.