The Rope Dancer (21 page)

There were a few cries of protest from the more tenderhearted, but those dissolved into laughter when Deri started his oration—ostensibly to introduce Carys’s act but quickly branching off into a fool’s tricks. Doing what she could to erase the memory of Deri’s cruelty, Carys perched herself on the cross arm of the gibbet and sat swinging her legs with perfect ease. When he had completed his work and gathered the few coins he had missed catching as they flew, the crowd had swelled considerably. Many more people had been drawn to the green, partly by the crowd itself and partly by the roars of laughter and shouts of abuse. Carys had been thinking of what she could do to protect Deri, but she did not dare change her act. The timing was important to her as well as the movements.

She rose slowly in response to Deri’s command and put one foot hesitantly on the line, pressing and lifting several times to get the feel of the tension at that end. His voice came up impatiently ordering her to get on with it, and she took a step outward, lifting her arms as her feet took the feel of the line. It was harder, somewhat less resilient than her old rope, but something told her it was going to stretch. Deri shouted again, and she took another step and then another, more quickly, and a fourth still more quickly, until she was running with arms outstretched and shifting up and down so that she swayed a little from side to side as she came down into the belly of the line. Her feet knew it to be the center point, even though Deri had done his work well and no watcher could have said there was a dip there. She slowed a little so she would seem even more unsteady when she arrived at the opposite end and came to the relative safety of the thick crosspiece, where she could grip the upright.

Usually Carys embraced that upright as if it were her last hope of salvation. This time, with her mind on the fact that the rope might stretch unevenly and cause an accident, she merely set her hand on the post. Deri began to threaten her again, according to plan, and she set out across the line once more, not knowing whether to feel triumph or more worry, when she heard a woman screech—“That little monster did not even give the child a pole for balance”—which was no oversight of Deri’s, of course. Morgan had insisted that Carys dance without any assistance so that her act would not merely be a parade back and forth across the rope.

Having reached the center, Carys did her dance, gliding, bending, lifting one arm and then the other, swaying her body to counterbalance the weight of the arm, slowly at first and then faster, dancing one way, turning and dancing the other way, starting up the slope of the rope as if she were finished, but really feeling the tension, and returning, pausing as Deri shouted, to stand swaying, thinking of the danger on a new rope, heart leaping with the challenge, and at last bending slowly, so slowly, to set her hands on the rope.

It was a very successful act. There was not a sound from the crowd as she did her handstand, and there were shouts and applause when she ran for the gibbet after coming erect. So angry were the protests when Deri seemed to drive her to continue the act, that she paused to look down and be sure he was safe. She might have stopped, but Deri had got caught up in the spirit of the cruel master and grew so vituperative when she hesitated, she thought it safer to continue. In the end it was not the rope that nearly caused a disaster, but the howls of rage, shrieks, and screams—even male screams—when she seemed to fall and save herself. So angry were the cries that she looked down to assure herself again of Deri’s safety and missed a handhold. After that she sat astride the rope for a moment to catch her breath and caught a glimpse of Deri down below, arms outstretched to catch her, so she did not bother to get to her feet but slid herself along the rope.

The dwarf was pelted with coins—and other articles like leeks, old cabbages, and turnips; some were useful, but an equal number were rotten. As she raced down the gibbet, hurrying lest half their pay be picked up by scavengers in the crowd, Carys wondered how much of the overripe produce had been thrown in protest over Deri’s cruelty to her and how much was simply the fun of throwing things at a dwarf. Not that the good vegetables were unwelcome; in most places the cookshops would take them willingly in barter for cooked food.

When all the coins and produce worth the effort had been collected, Deri went up the gibbets to free the rope. While he was doing so, Carys made another round of the area gathering what she and Deri could not use. This gleaning she placed where it would not be trodden into the ground for those beggars too sick or too crippled to have snatched something before she or Deri got to it. She had plenty of time, for untying the rope always took longer than tying, the knots having been tightened by her weight, and she was back under the gibbet waiting to coil the rope when it fell. Then she and Deri hurried out of the town, keeping to the main street.

Carys had been the one to insist on that. She feared to be attacked by thieves or even by town guards and have their earnings taken from them. Deri had been shocked when she first made the suggestion and laughed at her when she could not give a reason for it, except that many had seen coins thrown to them and no one would protect them because they were players. He soon understood what she had been unwilling to say, though. A dwarf, often a symbol for evil, and a young boy were a tempting target, and once robbed their complaint would probably be ignored. Yet if they defended themselves, because they were nothing—only players—they would be punished.

Carys returned alone to find a cookshop, weeping when the cook named the price that the dwarf would beat her if she did not get a good bargain. Often players were overcharged by merchants. Carys did not resent that much, knowing how often players cheated the townsfolk, but this time she came out laden with more than she had expected. In other shops she purchased bread and cheese enough to keep them supplied for several days. When Carys returned to where Deri waited, he complained that the bread would be stale, but Carys laughed at him, saying that he was spoiled by traveling with Telor.

It was late afternoon before Carys, having changed her clothes and made still another trip into the town, retrieved Doralys. The sun was just setting before she and Deri got back to their camp in the woods, and both were greatly relieved to find Telor quietly asleep and not feverish. He woke easily when he heard their voices, and ate with good appetite, and when Carys removed the bandage and poultice, the cut was not inflamed.

By the fifth day, Telor was suggesting he was healed and ready to move on, but Deri and Carys refused to go. It was true that the scab over the cut was hard and dry and beginning to flake off, but it was equally true that Telor’s ribs were still painful. More important, there was no special reason to leave. They had found grazing for the animals, and the weather had been unusually fair. The tent had been sufficient protection from the two light rains that had fallen. They had been able to add thin boughs and piles of bracken to the thick layer of dead needles on which Telor had first been laid, so they slept dry, raised above the worst of the wet.

Carys had more reasons to remain than Telor had to urge them to depart. For one thing, she was working in her new rope, having had Deri tie it from one tree to another across a small clearing. While she practiced on it to make it stretch to its limit, Deri tightening the knots each time it gave, she also tried out some daring new additions to her act. Carys’s devotion to her art made her unaware of how closely Telor watched her, and his shouts when she tumbled off, when trying the impossible, only annoyed her, but his praise and the warmth of his admiration woke a dangerous warmth of response.

That made her all the more eager to stay in the camp. As long as there was no chance at all of privacy, she did not need to consider what to do about her desire for Telor. Whatever urges she felt were easy to control where there was no opportunity to satisfy them. She had cursed bitterly under her breath the first time it began to rain, realizing suddenly that she had to choose to sleep beside one man or the other. In the end she chose to lie next to Telor, not because she feared him less—in fact, she did not fear Deri at all, but she feared to cause the dwarf pain. By now she loved Deri sincerely—but not the way he would wish her to love him if lying beside him woke his desire. So she chose Telor’s side, pushing boughs and bracken up into a ridge between them and lying as far from Telor as she could.

That first night, her precautions were a waste of time. Telor was still too much aware of his hurts to think of making advances, and with Deri so close, there was little likelihood of obtaining any response. The second time it rained Carys did not bother with an elaborate ritual to mark separation. She felt she had made her attitude clear the first time, and the presence of a third party held Telor back. But that night he did not sleep well, all too aware, despite his aching ribs and itching hip, of Carys sleeping beside him.

Simple lust, Telor told himself, but he no longer believed it. His admiration for what Carys was doing—and trying to do—on the rope was killing the sense of difference he had felt between them. He had not changed his opinion that players were a lower form of humanity than he was, but Carys was an artist—a great artist—in her craft. Telor had seen rope dancers, but none of them had been anything like Carys. The beauty of her body in motion, the fluid grace that balanced on a thin line, was driving his physical desire for her to a painful intensity, and that desire could not be satisfied until they found some privacy.

Deri supported Carys’s opinion that they should remain camped where they were. Of course, he wished to be sure that Telor was fully healed, but also it was so pleasant, so easy, to be here with two people who saw him only as Deri. Wherever else they went he was either Deri the dwarf, among those who knew him, or just “a dwarf,” among those who did not. He was accustomed to that, but every man needs a time to be utterly himself, apart from what life has made him, and this was the first time since he had been deprived of his family that Deri had been completely free of sidelong glances.

Deri knew eventually he would tire of it. Like Telor and Carys, he had developed a taste for displaying himself. Indeed, by the fifth day he was already slightly bored, for his act was in large part improvisation and the tumbling did not require the dedicated practice that Carys’s rope dancing did. Still, he sided with Carys and agreed Telor was not well enough healed to leave, even though Marston was little more than three leagues away. Deri saw what was growing between Carys and Telor—a blind man could have seen—and he knew it must culminate at Marston, where he was given a pallet by the fireside and Telor was honored with a chamber of his own. Nothing could be more natural than that the minstrel invite his apprentice to his chamber—and the moment they were alone they would become lovers. Deri did not want that to happen—and did not know why, because he still felt no desire for Carys himself.

On the ninth day the weather broke. They were wakened near dawn by a high wind, and soon it was pouring rain. They huddled in the shelter of the tent, but the wind lashed the branches of the tree so that the tent cloths tore free of the stones that held them on the ground, and even when they held down the cloths the rain was driven in on them. The rain ran down the trunk of the tree too, soaking the ground so thoroughly that their primitive bedding could not keep them dry. The ground all around them would be sodden for days, and the whole area would turn into a mud pit if they tried to walk and work in it.

By the time the rain eased off, all were soaked to the skin. Telor said it was ridiculous for them to sit there cold and wet when in two hours’ time they could be warm and dry in Marston and sooner than that in Creklade. No one argued with him. It was a misery to pack up their soaked belongings; the tent cloths weighed ten times what they did dry and Carys’s rope was hell to untie, but the effort kept one warm. Although Telor was slower and careful in moving, it was clear that his ribs were mending.

When they were near Creklade, it seemed the rain would stop altogether, so Telor insisted they go on. They would be lodged in clean comfort in Marston, whereas who knew what would be the state of any inn or alehouse willing to take them in. That was what he said, but what he felt was that he could not endure another night with Carys only a few feet from him and the image of her lithe body—as good as naked with the thin, sweat-soaked shift clinging to it—hanging before his eyes. Again Deri and Carys did not argue; Deri was afraid he and Carys would be recognized and thus condemned to filthy rooms and beds. Carys knew nothing of Eurion’s place in the lord of Marston’s esteem and assumed that she and Telor would be separated as they had been at Castle Combe, which would again put off her need to remain safe or satisfy her passion.

All of them regretted the decision when, just too far from Creklade to make it worthwhile to return, the storm struck them with renewed fury. Deri and Telor could hardly see through the curtains of wind-driven water, and Carys dared not lift her head, which was bowed down against Telor’s back. Under the circumstances, Telor was not much surprised to find that they had passed the little village below the rise on which the manor stood without seeing it. He was more surprised that he noticed the track that led to the place and that his shout of warning pierced the howling gale so that Deri did not run right into the gates when they arrived. There was nothing surprising in finding the gates in the wooden palisade shut. Telor knew Sir Richard did not fear his neighbors, but news of the attack on Creklade would certainly induce him to close his gate against a like surprise. Even the reluctance of the men to open the gate and let them in seemed natural enough. No one would want to come out in that wet to answer a hail, and who could hear through the fury of the storm, although Telor cried his name half a dozen times, adding “the minstrel” in case the sound of the name was garbled.

At last, long enough for someone to have told Sir Richard who was outside his gate and have him give a special order, one side of the gate was opened and they were let in. The face thrust forward into Telor’s was a hard, unfamiliar countenance, but he thought nothing of that, simply shouting that they would take shelter in the stable, which was close by, until the worst of the storm abated.