The Rope Dancer (20 page)

A soft chuckle. “In all my years of wandering, no spirit has ever threatened me. Oh, I have heard the tales Morgan whispered fearfully to a farmer with an outlying cot or in a small village—but that was always in the winter when we wished to lie warmer and feared a cold welcome. Such tales found us a shelter quickly enough, whether through pity or through the desire to use us as a horrible example. Yes, more than one priest and bailiff seized on Morgan’s fancies and approved and upheld him. But do you not think, Telor, that even if the priest believed, the bailiff might have felt the tale would keep his people at home at night and prevent mischief that might otherwise happen?”

“The priest might have thought more like the bailiff than you would suspect,” Telor said, laughing. “But there are many who do believe in spirits—I am not sure that I deny them altogether—but I too have been abroad enough at night to know they do not
throng
the roads the way my sisters and mother in Bristol fear.”

Carys chuckled again. “That is no fault of theirs, I dare say. I suppose, living always in so large a town as Bristol, they are kept close and safe and can have no proof against tales like those which sprang from Morgan’s mind and spread. I should think it is too late to teach them different, and God save them from ever
needing
to learn.”

There was a moment’s silence. Carys drew her eyes from the now brilliant sparks of the fireflies and looked at Telor, but she could not see at all into the shadow made by the tent cloths. Then Telor said, “The road is hard. I suppose you also long for a safe nest.”

“Oh, no.” Once more Carys uttered a soft, contented chuckle. “I would never wish to leave the road.”

Telor felt an odd surge of excitement, not sexual this time, although that urge lay under everything else, like a sweet, heavy drug that had not yet completely overcome him, but he said nothing.

“It is too late for me also,” Carys went on slowly, more as if she were explaining to herself than to him. “Perhaps if I knew no better, I would have been content, but now I would choke shut up behind walls. And I could not bear to know myself trapped utterly and forever under some man’s will. For me, although I have never taken that path, there is always an escape. I need not endure a hated master. I could go to another troupe.”

The words were not directed at him, but Telor felt a surge of indignation at the idea of a woman choosing whether or not she wished to stay with the man to whom she had been bound. At the same time, crazily, Carys became more desirable, a greater prize. Between the two emotions, he could not decide what to say, and Carys, unaware she had both shocked and excited her companion, went on dreamily.

“I love the road. I love nights like this, of talk with good companions who know my worth. I love knowing that tomorrow my rope will be raised and folk will look up and gasp and cry out as I dance. I love to know that the coins they throw in admiration of my skill will buy my bread. And then the next day will show me a new place—or an old place, changed enough while we traveled so I could say, ‘Oh, see, there is a new house. The alehouse sign is all done anew.’ Of course, this is a lovely night. When I am soaked through with rain or shivering so hard from cold that I fear I will shatter my bones, then the road is not quite so dear to me.”

Carys’s voice seemed to become brisker and took on an amused tone on the last few sentences. Telor thought sleepily that he detected a cynical note too, but loss of blood and the weariness that pain brings had made his eyes very heavy. “Well, you need not fear being soaked or frozen anymore,” he mumbled drowsily. “We do not camp out when it rains or in bitter weather.”

Telor did not recognize the significance of what he had said until some time after he woke the next morning. At first he was too absorbed in his own misery, for the cut on his hip was puffed and sore, and every spot that had taken a cudgel blow seemed to have hardened into rock. His muscles grated on each other like millstones when Deri helped him to the stream to empty his bowels and bladder and wash, and it was a good ten minutes after the dwarf had resettled him against the tree that he could think of anything beyond repressing screams. Carys was nowhere to be seen, and Telor remembered Deri had told him she had gone to see what she could glean for breakfast. It was then that he suddenly remembered he had virtually told her he expected her to remain with them.

The slight shock he felt at the realization passed quickly into a mild sense of foolishness. He had known since the third day at Castle Combe that Deri wanted to keep her and that she did not wish to leave them. Certainly she had expressed no surprise at his statement; he had been half asleep, but he would have remembered that. He was pretty sure she had laughed and said something like “I would like that,” which meant she had assumed all along that she would be traveling with them permanently. Then he remembered the rest of the conversation and amended the idea. She would be traveling with them until
she
decided she wanted a change.

At that moment Carys, with the front of her shirt bunched up into a bag held by one hand, leapt light-foot from the far bank of the stream to a large stone, thence to another, and so to their side. She did not call out—a long-inbred caution; players preferred not to be noticed except when they were performing—but she was grinning and waving in her free hand several feathery-leaved plants.

“I have hemlock for you,” she said, falling to her knees beside Telor.

“I admit I feel terrible,” he answered, raising his brows, “but not bad enough to take poison.”

“Do not be so silly,” Carys giggled. “I do not want you to
drink
it. I will grind it and lay the crushed leaves on your wound. They will take the pain away. If there is any extra, I can put some under the bindings over your ribs too. That will help a little, but hemlock is not so good when the skin is not broken. If we had some goose grease…”

“We can buy that when we buy food,” Deri said over his shoulder as he rummaged in his saddle bags. He found a ragged strip of leather and handed it to Carys. “You can use that for your poultice.”

He watched as she pulled the leaves from the stems, arranged them along the leather strip, and started to pound them with a smooth stone. The juices were thin and watery, and it was soon clear that they would not stick to either the skin or the leather on their own, so Deri took a cross garter from Telor’s bundle of extra clothes to bind the poultice around Telor’s hips. While Carys applied the wet mass to the wound, he cleaned the bulbs and roots she had dropped out of her shirt. There was so little hemlock, once the leaves were washed, that Carys decided it was not worth Telor’s discomfort to unbind his ribs and rewrap them, so they took out what little was left of the cheese and bread and broke their fast, discussing, as they ate, the projected visit to Creklade.

The main question was whether to walk or ride. To walk would add considerably to the time Telor must be left alone; to ride would present a problem of where to leave Surefoot and Doralys. Telor protested that he would not mind being alone. He could practice his songs and his music. Deri and Carys urged him to sleep and be quiet instead. It was not likely that the outlaws were still hunting them, but Carys and Deri did not want to leave Telor for too long. Eventually they settled on putting Surefoot’s harness on Doralys, so Carys could ride pillion behind Deri. She would leave the dwarf outside the town and stable the mule before buying the rope.

When Deri pointed out that his stirrups would be too short for Carys and that might be noticed, Carys shook her head, twisted her mouth into an ugly sneer, and, with an aggrieved whine in her voice, said, “My master is so careful of a penny that he makes me use the saddle from his son’s pony.”

“You are a good part player,” Telor said, wondering uneasily how much of what she said and did was truly Carys and how much a role.

Deri simply nodded approval and went on with the plans. When Carys had made her purchase, she would walk back to where Deri was waiting, change into performing clothes, and come back into the town with him as players. When they had done their act, they would walk out of town, Carys would change back into her merchant’s servant disguise, walk back to the town carrying her rope and their other purchases, and recover Doralys, picking up Deri on the way back.

They rode off, armed with Telor’s recollection that there was a small wood about half a mile from the town. They found that and rode in so Deri could dismount and Carys take his place. He spent a few minutes showing her how to handle the reins, and she had no trouble with that, but when he handed her his purse, Carys bit her lip.

“I do not understand money,” she said. “You had better take out all the coins beyond what the rope should cost and tell me the names of what is inside. I will try to pay less than you leave, but I must have a good rope, strong and smooth, that will not stretch too much or too fast.”

Deri looked up at her with exasperation. “You mean you have no idea what such a rope should cost? How do you expect me to know? Did you never go to buy your own rope?”

“Never.” She shook her head. “Morgan taught me…or no, I knew how to walk a rope already, I think. I was only very young. I do not know where the first rope came from. Perhaps it belonged to my father and mother and he just got the same kind each time. I did not get a new rope while I was with Ulric.”

“Do you at least know what kind of rope you need?” Deri asked, his voice rising.

“Oh, yes.” Carys was sure of that. “When I see it, I will know it.”

“That,” Deri growled, “is not much help to me in judging cost. Can you tell me what the rope looks like?”

“About as thick as my thumb and dark in color with many thin twisted strands then twisted together. It is smooth to the hand, without little hard ends sticking out. I think it might be oiled or soaked in something, for it had a smell, but it was not sticky.”

Carys watched Deri hopefully as he racked his memory over all the kinds of rope they had used on his father’s manor, but this was surely not among them. He suspected it was a rope used on ships and said so, advising her to go to the dock to buy, assuming, since the town was named for the “mouth of the creek, or small harbor,” that there must be a dock of some kind. As to price, the best he could do was leave her a little more than what his father had paid for the best rope they used. Having explained that six pence was the price of a week’s work for a man, he doled out the silver pennies.

“I will try to choose a shop where there are already buyers,” Carys said, her lips tight with determination and concern at being trusted with so great a sum. “And I will listen to hear what they pay,” she added shrewdly. “And, if I was a little short, I shall weep and tell them my master will not believe the price and will beat me if I return to him empty-handed.”

Deri laughed. “I see I need not fear you will lack invention if everything does not go just right. Do your best, but do not worry if the price is higher than I judged. It will be quicker for you to come back and get more coins. And look for a place to tie your rope as you go along. If you cannot find one, at least we will know what streets to avoid.”

So Carys set off with a brave face and a quaking heart, so fearful of losing her purse or having it stolen from her that she clutched it tightly in one hand although it was already securely fastened to her belt. This left only one hand to guide Doralys, but that did not matter since the road was hemmed in by hedges and the mule could not stray. Going over in her mind the role she must play—an experienced apprentice who would not be frightened by a good-sized town—calmed her. Carys was indeed familiar with towns like Creklade, and her spirits were further lifted when she was able to enter the town without question although the gates were well guarded and there were men pacing the walls.

The gate guard, seeing only a well-dressed boy on a well-fed mule, had nodded pleasantly and waved her past. It occurred to Carys then that there might be unrest in the neighborhood because many guards paced the wall she had seen, but seeing an ideal place to set up her rope distracted her. In fact, that the town square sported two gibbets implied to Carys that whatever trouble had brought so many alert guards to the town walls was past and that the malefactors were already tried and awaiting punishment. All that mattered to her was that both gibbets were empty and, in all probability, the townsfolk would be greatly amused by seeing the gibbets used for rope dancing before the execution.

Good fortune follows good spirits, she told herself. She had inquired civilly about where to stable her mule, and been answered civilly. Carys knew she owed this new experience to being mounted and to her decent clothes. Players were as likely to be cursed and have garbage thrown at them as to be welcomed with joyous and bawdy cries, but they never had a quiet, civil answer with a pleasant smile to spice it. The fact that the citizen she had questioned showed no fear seemed to confirm that whatever had happened to occasion the lifting of two gibbets, the townsfolk of Creklade had not suffered from it.

Moreover, the kind reception gave her the confidence to ask about where to buy rope and, after stabling Doralys, to follow the directions given her boldly, going down main streets rather than trying to cling to alleys as she and Ulric had done. Then she had the ultimate good fortune to discover a patron haggling over just such a coil as she needed when she entered the shop. She managed to delay until that customer was finished, and obtained a far better price than she or Deri had expected.

The combination of reliefs put wings on Carys’s heels, and she was half dancing on her way back to the gate when she remembered the nods of the guards. It would never do to have ridden in and be walking out, but her confidence was sufficient now that she just laughed and followed the broadest street she could find running eastward, which led to another gate. She went out with no more trouble than she had entering and simply followed the road that ran around the outside of the wall until she could slip into the little wood and find Deri.

The dwarf, already changed into motley, with a small drum hanging about his neck and an obscenely shaped bladder to beat it with, was startled when she told him of the site she had chosen for a performance, but when he followed her reasoning, he nodded. “It can do no harm to ask the bailiff or mayor or whoever has charge of the place,” he agreed.

They did not enter Creklade as easily as Carys had. The guards stopped them and asked from where they came and what they intended to do in the town.

“The boy,” Deri whined, holding fast to Carys’s wrist as if he expected her to bolt away, “is mine. He has been taught to dance on a rope. He is all that is left of our troupe, and the rope and the pack on my back is all that is left of our goods since we were set upon by outlaws not more than six or seven miles down the road. So close to a town, we did not expect them.”

“We have had troubles of our own,” the guard said, waving them through with a warning to report themselves to the bailiff.

When they did so, and Deri mentioned the outlaws again, the bailiff virtually repeated the guard’s remark, adding that a man, Orin, styling himself “lord” but clearly no better than a self-made “captain,” had marched a troop from the east, hoping to take the town. He had been driven off, and it was his henchmen who were to be hanged. And when Deri complained of the loss of his rope dancer’s poles and begged leave to use the gibbets to string the boy’s rope so he could perform and they could buy food, the bailiff laughed heartily and gave permission. One day’s entertainment, he commented, should precede the next.

When they left the bailiff’s house, Deri began to beat his drum and call out for the people to come to the square. No explanation was needed; the gaudy, multicolored, somewhat tattered garments, the rap of the drum, and the gross remarks addressed to those who looked out or came to their doors announced that players had come to town. Carys followed Deri, now walking on her hands, now progressing in handsprings, and, if she fell behind, closing the distance by a series of cartwheels. They went down all three principal streets, then all round the square, and there was a good-sized crowd gathered by the time Deri went up one gibbet with the rope over his shoulder and the other with the end of the rope in his teeth.

On their walk into the town, Carys had shown him the knots, which were not at all difficult to tie, the main trick being in the slipknot, which initially went round the pole and permitted the rope to be drawn to a humming tightness. She had also told him at what points in her act he must seem to threaten her, and when he protested that it would not be easy to change from merry fool to harsh taskmaster, they had stopped and sat under a tree until they worked out a new act, which included the old jests and tumbles, but with a sly, leering quality rather than a sense of an unknowing idiot.

“I will enjoy this—if the crowd does not turn on me and I live through it,” Deri had commented.

“It should be Telor who takes that part,” Carys said, looking concerned. “I wish it were not necessary, but if the people do not think I am frightened and forced to do the more difficult parts, they will not feel the thrills. That is what they throw the coins for—the thrills, the hope of blood. They must believe every minute that I am about to fall.”

Deri shuddered. “They are not the only ones who will have their hearts in their mouths. Gibbets are high.”

Carys laughed merrily and fingered her rope with love. “So much the better. If you look frightened to death, they will be all the more convinced that I am in great danger, and they will pay all the better.”

Now as she watched Deri pull himself up the second gibbet and strain the rope tight, she wished she had not suggested he play the villain. If she
should
fall, the crowd might tear poor Deri apart. Not that Carys doubted her skill, but she suddenly realized she would be working on a new rope, which might have some unexpected qualities. It was too late for second thoughts, however, for Deri had been calling down to her to stay where she was, not to try to run away, and glaring at her suspiciously while he was up each pole. When he descended, he immediately drove her up the gibbet she had chosen as her starting point, mistaking her attempt to warn him not to seem
too
harsh as part of the act and making himself seem even more evil.