A Company of Heroes Book One: The Stonecutter (15 page)

“The child was exceptionally beautiful. Pink and fat and as wrinkled as a prune. When Mama and I left the girl for the night, the baby was already suckling at her tiny breast.

“I see you stealing a glance at our friend. You cannot imagine him as a beautiful child, eh? I have seen far worse come from better beginnings. But that is usually by disease or accident or inclination. Never mind. When I finish, you can decide for yourself.

“The next morning, when Mama and I returned to the wagon where we had left the mother and child, we discovered that something strange has happened during the night. Me, I am not very sensitive to things like this, but I can tell that something had happened to the infant. Its shape was somehow different, though I cannot tell you in what way. Only that it was, what?
Awry
, that is the word, I think, yes? Awry. The hair that had been but a few fair wisps is now thick and red. And the eyes...I knew there was something wrong with the eyes. The night before they had been as big and blue as a kitten’s, but now they were like little black beads. The baby looked like a fat mole.

“The girl did not stay with us long after that. She never seemed to notice any change in her child, or that there was anything strange about a baby that neither laughed nor cried. We were camps then near a village not far from Blavek. And one day she was gone.”

There is a long moment’s silence before Bronwyn realizes that the story is over.

“That’s it, then? You think Thud is this baby?”

“He has the picture of the girl.”

“And you’re certain about that?”

“It has been a long time, but I can remember that face. I think you know why...you have seen it.”

“She’s beautiful in her way, but it makes me very uncomfortable to look at her. I guess I know what you mean; I don’t think I could forget her, either.”

“Yes, then, I think that Thud is that child.”

“I don’t understand though. Are you puzzled because Thud doesn’t turn out as beautiful as he was as a baby? These things happen. I’ve read books. Look at everything that poor girl has been through; it surely would have affected a baby. And you don’t know who the father was; Thud may have taken after him.”

“I am sure you are right about that.”

“Do you think you ought to tell him?”

“No. I do not know what he has told himself, and I really have so little to offer. No, it would be better to leave things as they are. He is happy and that is enough.”

As they drift north, the Zileheroum gradually narrows. The low hills that bound it to the east and west grow closer together and blue mountains become distantly visible in the northwest. They are not high but look dangerously jagged, like shattered glass. There is already snow on them. The canal no longer strays very far from the river, which is now almost continuously broken by frothing rapids. The canal itself passes through locks more often. Where they had been ten or even twenty miles apart at the beginning, they now came every five miles, or less, as the valley floor became steeper. It takes the barge upwards of fifteen minutes or more to transit a lock, and Bronwyn chafes and complains at every delay. They no longer pass villages, only an occasional shepherd’s or hunter’s hut. They see, more often than in the south, the tiny wayside Musrumic altars, pyramidal, gleamingly whitewashed, that lie deep within the thick woods that are gradually encroaching on the narrowing flood plain. They look like a collection of eyeteeth that some dentist has spilled onto a dark green carpet. They see fewer cows and more herds of goats, their bells clanking clearly from the hillsides. One of the gypsy women, a sister-in-law of Janos’s, gives Bronwyn an embroidered skirt and blouse to wear, with a bolero vest very much like the gypsy leader’s. The princess gratefully changes into them from the now-filthy clothes that Thud had found for her. Janos is delighted with the alteration in her appearance.

“Ho! You look more like a gypsy than my own sister, by the hairy knuckles of Musrum!”

“It
is
a beautiful dress,” she answers, pleased. “I’ve never seen such lovely embroidery!”

“Thank you,” Janos replies, answering for his sister-in-law, who is blushing speechlessly at the compliment. “It is all Juditkha’s own work.”

“I’ve never worn anything so beautiful,” Bronwyn says to the woman and Juditkha beams even more.

“May I ask the Princess something?”

“Of course.”

“May I see your hand? Please?”

“My hand? I suppose so; why...?”

“The palm up, please?”

A slender finger with a sharply pointed nail, more like a pen than a digit, traces one of the lines that crease Bronwyn’s palm. It tickles. The gypsy woman frowns.

“Ah, yes...poor girl!”

“What is it?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“You have put yourself into deadly danger, more danger than I think you know. Why have you done this? I do not wish to offend you, but I do not believe it is for love of your country.”

“That
should
be offensive!” Bronwyn murmurs, her back stiffening huffily.

“But she is correct?” Janos asks.

“No...no, I guess not. I mean, no, she’s probably right.” Then, to the woman: “You’re not suggesting that I don’t love Tamlaght, I do!, what you’re suggesting is that I’m not here
because
of that love; that’s it, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps.”

“Well, maybe it isn’t love of Tamlaght, maybe it’s hatred of Payne Roelt. But doesn’t that amount to the same thing? He’s going to destroy this country if he can!”

“From what you have told us, that seems to be true,” says Janos.

“Well, then, if I can get these letters to my cousin, it’ll destroy Payne and everything he’s done. Tamlaght will be safe.”

“But why
you
, Princess?”

“What do you mean, ‘why me’?”

“Why are you doing this, Princess? There must be hundreds of people, soldiers, servants, I do not know, who can have acts as a courier for you, and would have known exactly what to do. That is why Juditkha asks why you do this yourself.”

“Well...I don’t know. And so what if I am?”

“I love this life, Princess,” says Janos, apparently irrelevantly. “That of my gypsy band. I would trade it for no other. But sometimes it is hard and often it is hungry. When we have set up our little carnival on the grounds of some great estate and performs for the beautifully dressed people, I admit to feeling envy. Wealth and position: accidents of birth
, pfah
! They cannot guarantee happiness. I am happy, I have been happy and I expect to die happy But still...still...it can be hard; money and position, these can be like the grease on an axle. So much of what I and my people do, it is just to stay alive. Only when there is something left over can we have anything more, a little luxury to us that to you would be nothing.

“This trip north on the canal, it has cost us everything that we made in the City. Well, nearly; the owner of the barge line owed us a favor, but it is only a small one. We have very little more now than we has when we first entered Blavek’s gates. And what is this luxury? It is that we can travel to a new city while at the same time we can do all of this work we must do.

“That is why she asks you what she does, Princess. We cannot understand why you would give up so much. You had all the freedom in the world to do and go whatever and wherever you pleased. And now you are hunted like a criminal instead of being treated like a princess. Why?”

She had been watching the drifting landscape. Now she turns toward the gypsy.

“Janos, you don’t know how many walls a palace has.”

There are beautiful gardens, dressed in rainbows, roses in velvet gowns jewels with dew, quiet pools of pansies, irises like ribbons lances and a full breath of mignonettes. Beyond: hills of billowing blue gauze. And I, I would give the whole of it, and all my poor heart, to feel the salt wind on my face, to taste it on my lips, to look down from the bow of a ship at the foam spreading a lace coverlet over the waves. There isn’t a ship I saw pass down the Slideen but held my heart as a stowaway. One will sail to Peigambar, another’ll swing around the Cape, another to the vast archipelagoes beyond Socotarra; oh! I’d’ve been a happy girl if I’d been common-born! I swore that one day I’d break my bonds, close my books, burn my great globe and wander free, before my eyes and mouth are stopped up with clay. There are a thousand who’d take my place and no one would know the difference. There was so little I was doing in my life; the months and years were going by ghost-like as the days went. I ornamented parties and charmed hostesses and watched all my dreams evaporate like shining bubbles. I had nothing to hope for but a miracle. I don’t know, I can’t even explain to myself the way I feel. Somehow I seemed to see tall masts and swinging stars where I should have seen columns and chandeliers, and if Musrum pleased, I’d sail to the rim of the world. Maybe I would find there, and could keep, a dream or two I could sleep with. It would’ve been simple if it’d only been walls that surrounded me, but I was tied by golden strings that bound me tighter than iron bands. Why, oh why does Musrum give me dreams like these?

But what she said to Janos was: “I don’t know. I guess I hadn’t thought things through.”

“There is one other thing, Princess,” adds Juditkha.

“What is that?”

“Be wary,” the gypsy says as she traces a line on Bronwyn’s palm, “of large grey strangers.”

Later that day Bronwyn takes the opportunity given her by her new dress to give her boy’s costume a well-needed wash, which she does in a deep wooden bucket full of cold water drawn from the canal. While she works, Bronwyn notices that Henda is perched on the rim of a wagon wheel, watching her. His face is unswathed, as it often is when he is alone among the gypsies. She is surprised that he is uncovered in her presence, something he has not done before. She nods to him, trying to keep her expression uncommitted; she does not feel comfortable with the idea of returning his smile. She would hate for him to think he is being mocked or reminded of his disfigurement. She continues her laundry, scrubbing the heavy, corrugated knickers on the corrugated metal washboard. She pushes back an errant lock of hair with a soapy fist and steals a glance at the boy. He is watching her intently and shyly.

The wound on his face is terrible; she can’t imagine such cruelty being done to a child. She wonders how old he had been, what the pain must have been like; had it been done by his own father? Or was he a child the Verstummellin had stolen? Does he remember his real parents? She glances at Henda again through strands of wet hair. Is he really smiling at her? Or is it just the scar? It is impossible to tell. The wound carved into his face is too deep. He would smile if he were happy, she decides, and he would smile if his heart was broken, he smiles in his sleep, he smiles when he eats, he smiles when he cries. The scar split his face in a sickle-shaped curve from ear to ear and as it healed it stretched what was left of his mutilated mouth into the tragic laugh that clowns try so hard to create on their faces but without anything like Henda’s success.

On the morning of the third day, Bronwyn found Janos at the stern of the barge, studying the southern horizon. She looks in the same direction, shielding her eyes against the glare of the low autumn sun. There is a dun cloud where the canal meets the horizon.

“What is it?” she asks.

“I think you have been found out.”

“Guards?”

“Yes, it must be. They will catch up with us long before we reach Biela-Slatina.”

“They look so far off.”

“No, only two hours, perhaps three at the most.”

“We’re still more than a day from the town!”

“Yes. We must make your preparations now. There will be another lock we must pass, one or two miles ahead. You must leave us there.”

“But where’ll we go? It’s still more than a hundred miles to Piers’ camp! You can’t just leave us here!”

“I do not have much that I can tell you. I am sorry, Princess.”

“Please...don’t be sorry; you’ve helped us more than I have any right to expect,” she says to her credit and then spoils it by adding: “I’ll see that you’ll be well repaid...”

“We are going to embarrass ourselves if we start thinking of obligations and debts. I, for one, never think of debts. You had better get your big friend while I have Juditkha pack some things.”

“There’s no other way? No place we can hide?”

“Not this time. We are not abandoning you: there is no other choice.”

Bronwyn found Thud with Hottl, who was introducing the big man to the art of sleight-of-hand. The old gypsy is a skilled manipulator of playing cards, and they dance and flutter through his fingers like butterflies in a bouquet of weeds. Thud is absolutely entranced; watch as he might, he is unable to follow the intricate moves or discover where the cards came from or went to, when they appear with a snap or evaporate like snowflakes; in all his life he has never seen anything to equal it.

“Thud,” Bronwyn interrupts, “Janos says we’re being follows by Guards and that they’ll catch up with us in a couple of hours. We have to leave the barge at the next lock.”

“All right,” he answers, his usual agreeability tainted for the first time by reluctance. “May I watch Hottl for a few minutes more? I can’t figure this out...”

“Yes, I suppose so. There’s nothing to do until we reach the lock. I’ll come for you in half an hour.”

Thud replies with a nod only, already deeply reabsorbed into the whirlpool of painted pasteboard. She looks at the gaunt, morose gypsy and Hottl grins back at her, quickly; that is, grinning as best as anyone can with eight teeth. She nods a thank-you to him for pleasing her friend. A glint of mockery sparkles in the man’s eyes and Bronwyn feels herself flush with anger. There is a light touch on her shoulder and she turns to find Juditkha at her side.

“I have food for you; and Janos, he wishes to speak.”

Bronwyn follows the woman to her brother-in-law’s wagon where Janos is waiting. He holds a large canvas rucksack in his arms. He sets it at the princess’ feet and opens its flap. Inside is a densely packed assortment of food and other packages.