The Harp and the Blade (14 page)

There were eight or ten of them, their truculence the more disturbing because of the dark, and I couldn’t see just how ready they were to act. They were, however, seemingly surprised by my friendliness, so they started off by asking questions instead of getting rough.

“Who are you?”

“A strolling minstrel,” I answered, shifting my harp into line of what vision was left.

“I thought there was a couple of ‘em when I gave the signal,” another spoke up.

“I wish to hell there had been,” I said. “It’s been so lonesome on the way that I felt like a fellow left on the world by mistake after Doomsday.”

“Aw, everybody’s hiding from the Danes!” a third complained with professional envy. “There’s nothing left for us when they’ve passed by.”

I was feeling a little more easy. “If you’re robbers,” I laughed, “you’re wasting your time with me. Not a coin to my name.”

“What are you doing up here where there’s no one to pay you then?”

“Oh, I ran from the Danes, too,” I answered with some measure of truth, if not too much. “Moreover, I didn’t have a lot of breakfast, and I’ve had no food since. What do you say to giving me a meal in exchange for a few songs?”

They frisked me expertly but found I was as poor as I said I was. “Let’s take him to Piers and see what he wants done with him,” an outlaw suggested.

I didn’t like the sound of that, but there was no choice, so through the forest I went with them. We were striking directly away from the girl, leaving her a free trail which I hoped she had sense enough to make use of promptly. Now that we had met one band the odds were in favor of a safe road ahead for her.

Before us there was much loud talking and laughter, and in a minute I saw the flicker of fire. Quite a large one it proved to be, a high blazer with about eighty men, women, brats, and assorted in-betweens lounging in its warmth and glow. The sight of them amply confirmed my forebodings. I had fallen into bad company indeed.

This was that part of the people who had enough strength to refuse the role of serf but not enough to establish a natural and healthy place for themselves as free men. They were far more savage than the Danes, who at least preserved certain dignities of life among themselves, however prone they might be to force chaos on others. A man cannot live with the narrow directness of animals, because he is not satisfied with eating, sleeping, and mating for one brief period of a year. The only thing that stands between his surplus energies and dangerous madness is the recognition of values. Even what these values are and what the sources they are drawn from are questions of minor importance. Without them a man is senseless; and these people had none.

Piers, their leader, proved to be a ruddy, flat-faced man of about my height, though a little more powerfully built. He was fairly drunk, at which I’m not the one to cast a stone, but he didn’t hold his face together the way a proper drinking man should. Having energy and strength without purpose, he personified the whole lot of them. I was very nervous as I stood before him, because there is something peculiarly horrible about persons who don’t act casually.

His initial moves were direct enough, though. “That’s a fine sword you’re sporting,” he remarked after my captors had passed on the information I had given them.

“It’s not bad,” I muttered, “considering I got it just for being in a house when its owner wasn’t.” I was trying to invoke the old law of thieves respecting the loot of colleagues, but he wasn’t moved.

“Easy come, easy go,” he said and laughed as he took it from me. “You wear pretty nice clothes, too,” he went on after looking me over again.

I didn’t think so much of them myself, although as compared with his own they stood for finery. “We’ll swap,” he announced, starting to strip then and there.

Silently swearing vengeance if ever the opportunity for it should come my way, I imitated him, while his unkempt following aggraved the indignity by cheers, laughter and meaningless insults. As I had feared, he no longer had as many fleas as he had nourished before the exchange, and his clothes were greasy. I gulped to control my temper and achieved a smile.

“Your friends forgot to tell you this,” I said, “but in addition to being poor I’m hungry. Will you feed me if I give you a song or so?”

He was delighted with himself because of his new possessions and started to give good-humored acquiescence. Then it evidently struck him that I hadn’t been sufficiently hazed. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said, with a wink at his audience. “If your song’s good I’ll let you eat and drink, too. If it isn’t good I’ll slit your throat to make sure I won’t have to listen to you again.”

He led his rabble’s noisy appreciation of his wit by slapping his thigh, but I lodged one more score against him in the event I lived to meet him again when I had a chance to hold up my end. Actually I was not afraid of disappointing a group it was so easy to please. All that I had to do was to make them laugh, then Piers would have no grounds for fatal practical jokes; and I knew what to give them. Like Gaimar their kind really saw no humor except in bawdiness, and there was no phase of it, so convinced were they that it was always funny, that wouldn’t convulse them.

Swallowing my wrath again, I decided upon a ballad I’d heard at an inn in Paris some years before. “I’ll give you a very sad song of a monk who met a maid,” I announced, and as I’d foreseen they were agrin before I began. Lust on the part of those vowed to chastity was a jest whose bloom never withered.

“A sleek, round monk once saw a maid

Off in the woods so green:

There never was a lustier monk

And fairer maid was never seen.

He looked to east, he looked to west;

She had no kin or friend in sight.

The father licked his lips and smiled;

The maid was in a sorry plight.

Now she was kneeling by a spring

To fix her hair, which was unbound.

The monk came stealing up behind

And pinched her where she was most round.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a couple of the outlaws making pinching motions dreamily. Several of the women giggled. I scratched a flea bite and went on.

“‘You’re caught, you’re mine, my pretty maid!’

He cried and gripped her well.

‘Rather than lie with a monk,’ she wailed,

‘I’d choose a fiend of Hell!

‘A fiend of Hell will sometimes rest
—

Sorrow that I was born
!—

A monk will wreck a maid in a week

And leave her old and worn! ‘

But still he vowed by all the saints

To have her maidenhead.

‘If it must be,’ she said at last,

‘It’s better done in bed.

‘My father is away all day,

My mother died last year;

And feather beds are snugger than

The cold, hard ground is here.

‘So if you’ll take me home to where

It’s soft and warm indoors,

Why ask me then and I will say

My maidenhead is yours.’

But when they came to where she lived

The maiden gave a shout:

‘A lusty monk would force his will!’

Then four stout men came out.”

Some were already laughing. The holy father should not only be unmasked, proving no better than anyone else, but his lot must still be harder than that of other men. Punishment must fall for the merely contemplated sin, not one accomplished and enjoyed.

“‘My father is away,’ she laughed,

‘And mother died last year.

You never asked of other kin:

These are my brothers dear.’

They beat that monk until he howled.

‘You lying wench!’ he said,

‘You swore that if I brought you home

You’d give your maidenhead. ‘

‘It still is yours,’ she answered him,

‘Though where I do not know;

But when you find it, keep the thing
—

I lost it years ago!’ 
”

Piers, I was relieved to note, laughed as heartily as any of the others. “Give the man food!” he commanded as impressively as though he were an emperor decreeing a new law. “Ale here for the minstrel!” Then he snapped his fingers in salute to an idea. “Can you make poems as well as sing?”

“Sometimes,” I said cautiously.

“That’s great!” he commented, irritating me by throwing his arm around my shoulder. “From now on you’ll be my own particular bard.”

That wasn’t a suggestion; it was a statement of ordained fact. He meant to confer a favor, and I murmured my recognition; but that didn’t alter my status as prisoner. That such a wild cur should think I’d let him be my patron annoyed me, but I didn’t let it spoil my appetite for good venison. The ale was heavy and bitter, yet I reasoned that my new fleas would otherwise keep me awake and so drank at large.

“You’ve come along at a lucky time for you,” Piers roared confidentially. “I’m going to claim all the land around here and set myself up as baron.”

“Yes?” I said with mild interest. With food and ale in me my resentment was more or less quiescent.

“Sure. There’ll be fighting, of course, but they’ll have to give me what I want.”

“Who will?”

He frowned. “There are three fellows who’ve been rowing about who’s going to run this part of the world. I’m making myself the fourth. They wouldn’t listen to me a while back, but they’ll have to from now on. You see, I’ve not only got these of my own crew, but I’ve lined up other outlaw gangs.”

I knew how hopeless it was to try to get such bands to act in concert, but, of course, I didn’t tell him that. “I’ve just arrived in this locality,” I lied. “Just what’s going on?”

“Like I told you,” he answered, “besides me there are three men who count hereabouts. There’s a fellow called Chilbert to the south and east, there’s a fellow called Conan to the north, and the Abbot of St. Charles is sandwiched in between.” Perforce their local politics had come to be a matter of real interest to me as one by one I had encountered the figures he had mentioned. “Who’s top rooster?”

“They don’t know it yet,” he smirked, “but I’m going to be. I’m smart enough to wait for the right time, though, see? But just now the Abbot’s got the best grip on what he has, and Chilbert has the most land and people. “

This was my first chance to get definite word of Conan. “How about the other fellow? Is he getting frozen out?”

“He’s newer come than the others and harder to figure, but he’s got quite a name as a fighter.” He chuckled harshly. “A whole bunch of Chilbert’s men ran Conan and another to earth and were damn sorry later. Conan and his partner stood them off, killed plenty and left their marks on a lot more.”

Now I had the opening to discover what I really wanted to know. “You mean to say he did all that and got off scot free?”

“Not exactly but near enough. He was carved up quite a bit himself, I hear, although he’s as good as new now. As a matter of fact the business turned out swell for him, because it made him famous and made the others look like ninnies. Conan rubbed it in, too, sending his minstrel around with a funny version of the story that had everybody laughing at Chilbert. A lot of men who’d been getting ready to join up with him decided to hold off after that until they can be surer about just who’s who.”

That was an interesting development. “What do you think is going to happen now?” I inquired.

“Oh, Chilbert and Conan will have a showdown soon. One will beat the other, but even so the winner will get too much fighting for his own good, see? So I’ll jump on the winner before his men get a chance to rest up, and I’ll beat him. Then I’ll tell the Abbot he can keep his land if he pays me for being nice.” He beamed at me as if my face in reality mirrored his self-approval.

I wasn’t at all impressed by these drunkard’s dreams. “Suppose Conan and Chilbert settle things peaceably,” I suggested by way of removing a prop from under his tower of wishes. “Where will you be then?”

“I’ll make ‘em split the loaf four ways anyhow,” he swaggered while sitting, “because I’ll take my share without asking them whether they like it. Pretty soon, when I get around to it, that is. But Chilbert won’t settle without war. He wants everything in reach, and besides Conan has made too much fun of him.” He barked laughter. “I bet Chilbert could chew rocks every time he thinks how he had his fingers on Conan and let him slip away.” With an inebriate’s emotional vagaries he suddenly ceased to be mirthful. “Conan would never have worked out of my hands,” he said grimly.

“No?”

“By God, no! He had his chance to be my friend and passed it up. When the time comes I’ll remind him of that.”

“What happened?”

“Well, he came along about when I was getting ready to make my bid. I figured that neither of us was as strong then as we might have been and offered to team up with him and split what we could take. He sent back word that he’d just missed hanging a pig the day before, thinking it was me.”

Piers glared in indignant recollection, and I shook my head, making deprecating sounds. “He said,” the outlaw went on heavily, “that he’d apologized to the pig when the pig explained the difference, and that the next time he’d get the noose on the right neck. He meant mine by that,” Piers concluded unnecessarily.

I was pleased with Conan. “What do you think could have given him an idea like that?” I wondered.

“Aw, he thinks he’s better than anybody else because his people have been chiefs around here since before God started teething. But men and forts make a lot more difference these days then who your old man was. I’ll show him, and I’ll show the others, too. Chilbert wouldn’t have me for his ally either, because he wants to run everything all by himself. He had the nerve to tell me I could fight for him, though. Can you beat that? Why, if anybody should follow anybody, he should follow me!”

“Obviously,” I said. “How do you get along with the Abbot?”