The Rope Dancer (3 page)

Deri looked back at the wall. “As you like. Why should it matter to me?”

This time Telor did not sigh for fear he would hurt Deri’s feelings. Talk or evidence of war always woke memories in the dwarf that he seemed able to control at other times. “Then I say we should ride straight through. The armies—if armies there are—will do us no harm, after all. It is only if they keep us in camp to amuse them, we will certainly be late.” Then Telor shrugged and laughed. “Ah, well, if we cannot come to Combe in time, we will go north. I begin to feel like a merchant, traveling the same road and making the same stops again and again. Perhaps it is time we saw new country.”

Shaking free of his gloom again, Deri rose to his feet. “I’d better go get our wages. The longer I wait, the less we get.”

Telor nodded absently, his mind still on the unrest that might exist between him and Combe. Though what he had said to Deri was true—minstrels and jongleurs were usually regarded as neutrals indifferent to who won or lost in any conflict—they were also mistrusted, and men still half crazed by fighting might kill for no real reason. He had intended to take the old Roman road as far as Bath and then the Fosse Way north, but even if the fighting had stopped, the armies would be likely to camp along those roads. If he and Deri went at night and by the smaller ways, they might avoid being noticed at all. The only road he knew went past the keep that had been wrested from Sir Robert’s neighbor, but it would be shut tight after dark and not opened even if the guards noticed two travelers on the road.

Pain nagged at Carys, and she tried to slip away from it, to remain in the pleasant dark. That had been her only defense many times before, but this time it failed her. A chill night wind ruffled her rags; half conscious, she began to reach out for the worn, patched blanket she thought had slipped away. A sharper pang in her torn palm and a sudden awareness that she lay at a strange angle on the bare ground brought memory back in a rush. She had dropped from the wall, hearing as she fell a woman’s scream and a louder outburst of male voices, but she did not remember her impact with the ground.

An instinctive, fearful movement wrenched a low moan from Carys, and the sound more than the pain froze her into immobility again. But her mind was clearing rapidly, and she realized there was only dark all around her—dark, but not silence. Dim noises drifted down to her that she now recognized as loud voices, blurred and distorted by the wall above her and the distance. She could not have been lying here long—or if she had been, the voices were a proof of the continued determination to find her, for the men were still searching. How much longer could it be before they realized she was no longer within the walls, before the guards turned away from the tumult in the bailey and looked outward again to watch for enemies? She had to get away. If only she was not broken anywhere.

With tears of agony streaming down her face but in grim silence, Carys began to move. Everything hurt, and she could feel a few warm trickles of blood, but she managed to roll over and lift herself to her hands and knees. She trembled, barely maintaining her position, her head hanging like that of an animal in the last stages of exhaustion, but one hand went forward, and a knee followed. It hurt so much to move that after a little while it did not seem to matter. Slowly but inexorably, Carys crawled up the outer side of the dry moat.

Until she reached the edge and the level waste ground that separated the dry moat from the road, Carys never really believed that she would escape. But when her bleeding hands and knees had carried her up and she realized the ground she was moving over so painfully was flat, an explosion of hope galvanized her, muffling her pain and pouring strength into her muscles. She hardly realized that she had sprung to her feet and begun to run until she crossed the road and nearly crashed into the brush that lined the far side. Instinctively she turned away and ran on westward, back toward Chippasham, where the troupe had last played.

The end of Carys’s strength was as sudden as its coming. All at once she was aware of a stabbing agony in her back and side and the fact that her arms and legs had turned to lead. She struggled on, her sure stride changing to a pathetic stagger, driving herself though she was barely conscious until her foot sank into a cross ditch and she fell fainting at the side of the road. The faint passed into sodden sleep; not even the sound of horses coming in her direction was able to pierce her exhaustion.

***

Dark as it was, Telor could not fail to see the body by the road. He had been watching the faint difference between the bare dirt and the verge where grass grew, which was dimly visible even without moonlight, so that he could keep the horses from wandering off the track. Carys’s bare limbs made a greater contrast, and her body broke the regular outline of road and verge. At first, thinking it was the body of a man killed in the battle for the keep they had passed, Telor uttered a muffled blasphemy and prepared to urge his horse to a faster walk. Then it occurred to him that he had seen no other corpses, and it was strange that this one body should be left lying in so exposed a spot. Almost simultaneously he recalled the faint glow above the walls and the faint sounds, which had implied lights and voices in the bailey at a time when all should have been dark and silent. He and Deri had hesitated and then gone on, keeping the horses on the verge to silence their hooves, though that meant slaps and scratches from unseen branches of overhanging trees. They were past Carys when Telor’s impressions all came together, and he pulled his horse to a halt with an exclamation.

“What is it?” Deri asked, his fingers seeking a stone for the sling he had been carrying ready in his hand.

“Some prisoner must have escaped from that castle,” Telor replied, swinging down from his saddle. “If he’s not dead, perhaps we can help him.”

Deri opened his mouth to protest, and then shut it. He was the last man on earth to object to Telor’s kindness. There were still times when he wished Telor had let him die by the roadside, but his pain was dimming with the year that had passed. Mostly he enjoyed his life, taking a wicked pleasure in the license allowed a “fool” and feeling “right” as Telor’s companion. With a pang he admitted that though he had been loved, he had never been “right” in his place on the manse and in the village. But Deri had no time to examine that revelation, for a second exclamation from Telor brought him down from his pony to lead all three animals closer.

“By God’s liver, it’s a girl, and she’s alive.”

“Heaven and earth,” Deri breathed, seeing the long bloody scrapes and the trickles of blood that showed black against the unmarked patches of skin. “Who could do that to a slip of a girl?”

“Let me mount,” Telor said, not wasting time on speculation in so wide a field, “and you hand her up to me. Take her gently by shoulders and hips. We do not know what is broken in her, poor thing. Let’s not make matters worse by mayhap driving a rib through her lungs.”

He was surprised to hear Deri grunt when he lifted the body from the ground and asked if the dwarf had hurt himself, for Deri was strong enough to lift
him
without trouble.

“Slip of a girl,” Deri muttered. “She must be made of iron. She weighs twice what I thought. Wait till you smell her too.”

The grunt, however, had been one of surprise, not effort. Despite what he had said, Deri lifted the girl from the ground easily and raised her over his shoulder level so that Telor, reaching down from his horse, could grasp her. Telor was grateful for Deri’s warning when Carys’s weight came into his arms, for he was sure he would have dropped her or toppled off his horse had he not been braced. He gazed with some amazement at the slender arms and legs and narrow body. Where was all that weight hidden? And despite Deri’s second warning, Telor coughed and drew back his head from the girl’s stench.

Although the dull thud of hooves on packed earth had not wakened Carys, Telor’s first exclamation had done so. She had been frozen with terror and despair just long enough to realize that neither emotion was yet necessary. The voice that spoke was surprised, not angry, and no rough hands were laid on her. And the next voice and remark were definitely sympathetic. The men who had found her were not from the keep. The flood of relief that followed this realization caused a simultaneous flood of weakness so that at first Carys could not make any response. What she heard Telor say next implied that he and his companion would take her away with them, and she decided swiftly to remain limp with closed eyes, fearing that if she seemed capable of walking, they might change their minds and leave her to fend for herself.

Carys felt arms inch gently under her and consciously controlled her breathing so she would not gasp with pain. But being lifted did not wake the agony she had expected, and a thrill of joy that nothing was broken passed through her. Bruises protested the pressure of the arms around her, but what startled her out of her determination to remain “unconscious” was the lack of a second jostling. She had assumed the man who lifted her had knelt to pick her up and would rise from his knees, both jerking her upward and unconsciously clutching her closer—but that never happened. The way she was lifted, and the distance she rose before the other man’s arms received her, brought Carys’s eyes wide open and made her catch her breath with surprise.

“A dwarf!” she gasped. “Are you players?”

Her sudden return to consciousness nearly precipitated a disaster. Telor was so startled that his grip relaxed and Carys began to slide, but her arms flashed up to grasp his neck, and in jerking back, Telor pulled her lower body so that she was sitting across his thighs. The movement did not free his head, and Telor gagged, partly because Carys was strangling him but equally because her odor was so rank.

No one traveling the roads could be clean, but Telor and Deri washed as often and as thoroughly as they could, using the bathhouse in keeps or the public baths in large towns. Deri’s family had been rising in social status and thus was far stricter in their niceties than those socially above them. Telor had also learned cleanliness by family habit because it was part of an artisan’s business not to drive away custom with dirt or offensive odors. That had been reinforced by his master, who had taught him that no matter whether a baron was himself filthy, he would not tolerate the same condition in a man invited to entertain his guests.

The sense of security Carys obtained when she felt herself drawn up on Telor’s lap allowed her to relax her stranglehold, and cry, “I’m sorry. I was afraid to fall.” And her voice was so thin, so breathless and frightened, that Telor managed to resist his impulse to thrust her away.

“I thought you were near dead.” He choked, coughing convulsively.

Carys, having caught sight of Deri, and seen that he was, indeed, a dwarf, felt almost safe with “her own kind” and launched into an explanation of what had happened to her, sobbing and shaking again with remembered terror. Long before she came to explaining what had aroused the threat against her, however, she broke off to beg Telor to go on lest those in the castle come after her. Recalling the light and sound from the bailey, Telor felt her fears had some foundation. Despite what she was and what she smelled like, it was impossible for him to leave her there, but he did not believe he could bear to carry her so close to him on the front of his saddle.

“Could you ride pillion behind me?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” Carys replied, sighing with relief.

As soon as her primary fears of being recaptured had been relieved, Carys had realized that her position had a number of disadvantages. Far too much of her sore body was in contact with either the hard saddle bow or with her rescuer himself. Anywhere he touched her hurt, but more important than the pain this caused was the near-certainty that the man would soon notice the knives she was carrying. The fact that he had stopped to help her showed that this was a good man. Carys
thought
she had met some good people, but she had never remained with any of them long enough to be sure they had no ulterior motive for their seeming kindness, and all those she knew intimately had only wanted to use her for their own purposes. It was best that these men believe her to be utterly helpless; that was the quickest way to learn their intentions.

They moved off the road and into the shelter of the trees so that Deri and Telor could cobble together some kind of pillion saddle from a blanket and rope. But when Telor let her down, Carys cried out and sank to the ground, staring with horror at one ankle. The way her eyes rounded, the whites glinting all around the dark pupils, was visible even in the dark—a silent scream of ultimate despair. Telor’s heart lurched in instant empathy. For a dancer to break an ankle was equivalent to his breaking a hand or a wrist. He went down on one knee beside her.

“Move your toes,” he said harshly.

Carys’s frightened eyes turned to him. She bit her lips with pain, but the toes moved. Telor put a hand on the ankle, touching it here and there with his sensitive fingers. Carys whimpered but did not pull away, staring at his face.

After a moment he said, “I don’t think it’s broken. You must have wrenched it.”

He heard her long, trembling sigh of relief and prayed he was right, for he had spoken more from a desire to give comfort than from real knowledge. Then, to keep her from thinking, he said he would help her deeper into the wood to the little stream so she could wash the dirt out of her scrapes, and assured her they would have time enough to get away if the men from the keep should come seeking.

“And stick that foot in the water too,” he urged. “The cold will do it good.”

Carys did not need his advice. Actually, she was more familiar with sprains and broken bones than Telor. Had she not jumped from the wall, she would not have suffered the moment of panic. In the stress and confusion of escape and rescue, she had momentarily forgotten how far she had run on that ankle. But as she eased it into the water and bent to soak her battered hands also, she breathed a soft “Thank you, Lady,” for the ankle would take a few days to heal. She had felt the sympathy of the tall man when he saw her fear. Perhaps he would let her stay with them until she could dance again, and then, when she could pay her way, perhaps she could make it a permanent arrangement. If not, her condition would be desperate when they left her.

There was no way Carys could use her skills without a troupe; if she came alone to dance, she would be driven out of any town or village as a whore, even if she never took a man. In fact, the only way she could keep body and soul together, if these two men would not keep her until she found a troupe, would be by whoring. Carys’s mouth turned down in distaste. She was not above taking pay for bedding a man, and both Morgan and Ulric had always encouraged her to do so. Despite their urging, though, she had never taken anyone who did not appeal to her—except Morgan and Ulric themselves, and her cold indifference had made their demands on her small, for both could get more willing partners without trouble. They kept her for what she made dancing, which was far more than she could bring in as a whore, and neither dared beat her much or press her too hard to whore for extra farthings because she was a fine rope dancer and could have changed to a new troupe if they mistreated her. But Carys knew it took time to find a good troupe that needed a rope dancer, and if she did not stay with these men, she would have to whore or starve until she made the right connection. Still, she hated the thought of having to lie with any person who offered her a bit of bread or sup of ale no matter how ugly and cruel that person might be.