The Rope Dancer (25 page)

By the time a gentle tug told Carys that she could pull up her rope, Deri had recovered his breath. “You next,” he whispered as the line brushed against him in rising. It paused, and Carys giggled.

“Silly,” she murmured. “I do not need to be let down on a rope.”

Deri laughed too, recognizing his rote reaction and knowing it was ridiculous, but his amusement was brief. “You cannot support me either. Go with Telor and hide him. I will climb down as soon as I can.”

“The beam will support you,” Carys replied impatiently. Deri felt her hands looping the rope around him, tugging to be sure the loops would hold. A moment later she had done something else and added, “Go now. I have been working with ropes all my life. Do not tell me how to manage one.”

That she knew could not be doubted. Deri went down swiftly and smoothly. After the blackness within the hut he had no trouble finding Telor, still on his feet but leaning on the building. A few minutes later, a shadow crept fluidly down the wall to Telor’s left. With Carys between them so they could steady themselves against her, they slunk around the corner of the building and under the wall walkway. There Carys signaled them to silence and disappeared.

Telor sank gratefully to the ground, and Deri stared anxiously at him and then out at what he could see of the buildings and courtyard. All was quiet, except for the regular thud of footsteps and squeak of boards as the guard passed back and forth above them. Despite the quiet, both men were growing desperate with worry by the time Carys came back, carrying Telor’s quarter-staff, the old harp, the smallest lute, and a bundle wrapped in a blanket. Telor and Deri felt a strong impulse to strangle her. With the kind of death they had been promised still looming over them, the things she had rescued had little value in comparison. And then, before they could even breathe sighs of relief, she had laid down all her burdens but her rope, which she had vowed never to be parted from again, and darted away once more.

This time she was back more quickly, and to Telor’s enormous surprise, she flung herself against him and clung to him. His arms came around her by instinct, and for one startled moment he could not help associating her action with his remark about wishing he could have loved her. In the next moment he realized that she was shaking with silent sobs.

Telor bent his head to her, but even with his lips against her ear, he dared not speak. Periodically they had heard the guard passing right above them, and he feared that even the softest murmur would be heard. It was when he raised his head to listen for the heavy footfalls that he realized they were no longer sounding. Was the man standing and waiting for them to betray themselves? Telor listened so intently that it took him a moment to realize Carys was pushing at him for release. He let her go and felt her hand come up to seize his. It was damp and somewhat sticky, and suddenly he understood why he no longer heard the guard pacing.

Telor almost drew his hand out of contact with the blood that stained Carys’s, but then he reminded himself that whoever wielded the knife, the guard had died to set
him
free. It was not Carys who had got them all into trouble by trying to kill the new master of Marston. But for a woman to kill—so softly, so swiftly, so easily…No, Telor corrected himself, it had not been easy for her. She was still sobbing, even as she guided his hand to the lute and the harp and gestured that he should set them over his shoulders. She moved to Deri then and drew his hand to the staff, taking the bundle herself. The dwarf signed that he wanted to carry that too, but she shook her head ferociously and beckoned them to follow her.

A minute’s walk brought them to a ladder fixed from the ground to the wooden walkway. Carys was up it before Telor, his heart in his mouth with fear that he would slip and make a noise, had put his foot on the first rung. As he struggled to climb faster, he heard strange, sharp footsteps, as if the approaching guard were stamping to make his footfalls sound heavy. Telor paused with his head just even with the walkway, tilted back so he could see. Since he did not know where Carys was, he would do nothing unless the guard saw him and seemed about to give an alarm. The chances were the man would pass, since his duty was to watch for attack from outside the walls.

A shadow approached. As it neared, Telor was so terrified he barely choked back a cry, and the only reason he did not lose his grip and fall was that his hand was frozen around the last rung of the ladder. The guard had no head!

The thing came nearer, putting each foot down hard, as if to feel the way. Telor’s breath stopped with horror—it was bending, reaching for him. His eyes were fixed, staring at the hand that groped toward him—and grabbed his hair, and pulled it sharply upward, urging him onto the rampart.

Telor squeezed his eyes shut, gritted his teeth, and brought his head forward hard enough to crack it against the walkway. It was painful—but well deserved for his idiocy, he thought—and the only way he could think of to check the whoops of laughter that were threatening to burst from his throat.

The stalking, headless guard—Carys with the blanket-wrapped bundle protruding above her head to give her height—walked on for about ten yards, turned, and came back. By then, Telor was crouched against the wall, with Deri beside him. The dwarf had been saved from the shock Telor had received. Alarmed by the footsteps, Deri had readied himself to jump off the ladder and catch Telor; however, when Telor did not move and then climbed up despite the patroller, he knew all was safe. Moreover, he was close enough to see the grin on Telor’s face as the headless form returned.

Carys paused for a few minutes, seemingly looking outward but really tying one end of her rope around two of the logs of the palisade and making a wide double loop into which Telor could put his feet. She showed him that and then made one loop with the rope around the top of a log to the side, demonstrating silently to Deri how to let the rope slide slowly around the log as Telor went down. Then, afraid to linger any longer, she started patrolling again, biting her lips with anxiety. All was still quiet when she got back to where her rope hung, and Deri was gone as well as Telor. The rope soon came free in her hand, and it was only another moment’s work to slip the bundle through the loop and lower it.

By then only a thin thread of sanity kept Carys from screaming aloud and throwing herself over the palisade. The moment the weight of the bundle left the rope, she jerked it upward and pulled it free of the logs. Making a wild guess at what might be the middle of the rope, she hung that over the ends of the logs, gripped both parts of the rope in her hands, and let herself over the side. She knew the doubled rope could not reach the ground, but the remaining distance would not be far, so when she felt the end of one part she merely released that part and allowed herself to drop, pulling the rope down with her, which slowed her descent a little.

She was caught by a pair of strong arms; another pair grasped at her, and she felt lips against her own. Fury replaced relief almost instantly. It seemed to Carys that the celebration was very premature. The worst danger still faced them because it was outside that the guards were watching. Every minute they delayed was a minute less that darkness would obscure their movements. Thus, she pulled her mouth free of Telor’s and shoved him away with all the force she could summon, pointing repeatedly and forcibly away from Marston.

Telor staggered back a few steps awkwardly, feeling foolish and embarrassed. He had embraced Carys without thought, in a rush of gratitude and joy, but the moment his lips met hers he had been flooded with a mindless sexual desire so intense that he had lost all sense of time and place. Knowing the stupidity of his reaction was no help at all in reducing the resentment he felt because Carys had not been swept away by the same madness, and being aware that his feelings were not only totally unjustified but utterly ridiculous in the circumstances, made him still angrier—at her, at himself, but most intensely at Orin, whom he blamed for everything. Telor found himself shaking with need and rage and hate, and he stilled his body and looked about him with a new, grim purpose.

Sir Richard had lost Marston because he had never been much of a soldier. That had caused Telor’s troubles, but it would also help him to escape them. Because he felt secure, Sir Richard had not expended any great effort on clearing the land around his manor to remove brush that could conceal attackers. Since Carys had killed the guard, the land immediately ahead of the part of the palisade where they had come down would not be watched closely—until the absence of the guard was detected.

Telor remembered that Orin had feared an attack from Creklade, but the stone outbuilding where they had been imprisoned was toward the east, well away from the gate to the Creklade road. It would be safe then—if anything in this escape could be called safe—to go straight ahead, keeping within the area that should have been watched by the dead guard. Setting his back to the logs of the palisade, Telor stared out, trying to fix some landmark in mind that would keep them from straying. It was far too dark to be sure of anything, but there seemed to be three taller shadows only a little to the north of a straight line.

Telor flinched as a hand gripped his arm and shook it gently. He looked down to see Deri staring anxiously up at him, and he realized that the others were ready to go. Carys had coiled her rope; Deri had somehow managed to fix the bundle to his back and had the quarter-staff in hand. Telor squeezed Deri’s hand and pointed to the three tall shadows outlined against the barely lighter sky. He saw Deri look outward and then back at him, and he bent Deri’s fingers—one, two, three—and pointed again. It took three tries before Deri nodded vigorously and pointed to the three dark peaks. Telor nodded and turned Deri toward Carys. He wanted desperately to use the need to explain as an excuse to touch her, but the desire made him ashamed and angrier at himself. She did not want him, he told himself, turning his back as Deri moved toward her and began with her the process Telor had just finished with him. Why could he not be man enough to let that curb his need for her?

Now Telor slipped the lute and harp from his back, removed one strap, and fastened both together on the other. This shortened the strap so it would be very tight, but that was all to the good. Deri was already back beside him, Carys having understood quickly that they were all to head for the three tall shadows, and Telor reached for the quarterstaff. The dwarf relinquished it gladly because its length made it awkward for him to handle, and Telor forced it between the lute and the harp so it would not wiggle from side to side. Then he wriggled into this burden and tied it firmly to his back with the second strap. Finally, after touching Deri gently and holding up his hand in a symbol for waiting, he bent over almost double and moved very slowly out of the shadow of the palisade, feeling with each foot before he put his weight on it to avoid cracking dead twigs or leaves.

Deri and Carys watched him with unbelieving eyes. They had expected that Telor would dash out of their hiding place at the best speed he could make. Deri bit his lips. He
needed
to run, to reach most quickly a place where he could hide. Every nerve, every muscle screeched for immediate liberation from the silence and fear he had endured, it now seemed to him, from the beginning of time. He felt he was at the end of his strength, that he could bear no more hours of rigidly controlled terror.

Unconsciously, Deri reached out and caught Carys’s hand, and it was plain she was in no better state than he. She was shaking so hard that he wondered how she managed to stand, and he looked toward her. He could see very little more than the irregular shadow that was her body, just a faintly paler oval that must have been her face and, perhaps, an even fainter gleaming streak that might be the track of tears. The brief glance brought no relief. For the first time since Deri had regained consciousness in Telor’s company, he felt the minstrel was selfish. Because his own feet were weak, Telor was condemning his friends to slow torture. But when Deri looked back, fully intending to run as fast as he could despite Telor’s signal, he found that Telor seemed to have disappeared.

For a minute more he stared into the dark, but even knowing the direction to look, he could make out nothing he would swear was Telor. Squeezing Carys’s hand hard once, Deri pointed and pushed her gently. He could see her head turn as she too looked for Telor, and then she stepped away from the palisade. Deri held his breath for a moment, but she did not run, and seeing no reason to wait, he sidled a few steps so as not to be directly behind her and also stepped out into the open.

Long as it had taken to get out of the prison, long as they had waited for Carys, long as it had taken to get down from the walkway, as long as that and far, far longer was that slow walk. Deri felt naked to the eyes of every guard on the wall. It was actually a relief when a call came from Marston and he was free to run as fast as he could—about ten steps before he almost crashed into a tree. He flung his arms around it and clung to it, sobbing with relief and renewed fear as he realized that life was precious to him after all—and now the pursuit would begin.

Telor and Carys expected instant pursuit, just as Deri did, and each began to seek the others. Fortunately, they had all arrived in the band of woodland fairly close together and were able to hold a hurried conference on whether it would be wiser to run together or separately or hide nearby in the hope that Orin would expect them to run. The conference began in silence with waving hands, because silence had become a terror-ingrained habit. The general laughter that resulted when they realized what they were doing did all of them more good than the decision of a Solomon about the best move. That laughter signaled the end of helpless terror.

“Remember,” Telor said, “I am the one Orin will seek most desperately, so it might be safer for you—”

“Not again,” Carys interrupted, half amused, half exasperated. “You should be ashamed to say it. After all Deri and I have done to get you out of there, how you can dare suggest we abandon you now, I do not know.”

Deri chuckled again. “All I did was act stupid and get caught too. I think you had better keep the honors of getting us both out for yourself, Carys.”

“Oh, no,” she said gravely, “getting caught was very useful. How else could we have discovered where they had imprisoned Telor?”

There was a brief choked silence before Deri said, equally gravely, “Unfortunately, that was not why I did it.” Then, after a brief pause, he went on with a sigh, “I wish I had had a more sensible reason than wanting to kill every man in sight.”

Telor hardly listened. He was distracted by the fact that whatever had caused the shout they had heard, there was no more noise coming from the manor. Several torches had made a bright spot on the wall where he guessed the dead guard lay. Now that light was diminishing, probably as they carried the corpse off the wall, but there was no yelling, no great blaze of torchlight in the courtyard to indicate men being mustered and horses being saddled.

“Have you noticed that there is not much noise?” Telor asked. “It is not what I would expect if they were rousing all the men and saddling horses.”

No one answered. All were staring up the slope toward Marston, listening intently. Carys and Deri soon came to the same conclusion Telor had.

“I will lay odds,” Deri said slowly, “that they do not know we have escaped. I must say that if I had found one of the guards on my father’s wall with his throat cut, I would have begun an investigation among the other men-at-arms, not suspected prisoners tied hand and foot and locked into a stone outbuilding.”

Telor nodded. “Likely you are right, but Orin has a fear of an attack by the men of Creklade, and if they come out to search for signs of a surprise attack, we might be swept up in the net.”

“Surely,” Deri offered, “they would search the inside of Marston first, to be certain no one came over the wall to open the gate for the attackers.”

“Inside or outside,” Carys hissed irritably. “They can search both at once too, you know. Let us be gone from here!”

“You are right,” Telor said. “The question is, which way to go?”

“The nearest way off Marston land,” Deri replied.

Telor shook his head. “Not possible. That would be south and would bring us to the river, and there is no ford until Kemp. But I think the Holy Mother has taken us in her hand. From the quiet over there, I would guess that the captain in charge of the night watch has decided not to wake Orin at all. I do not think they will search for us until Orin decides it is time to amuse himself and we are discovered to be gone.”

“Lovely.” Carys’s voice was shaking. “I am glad you think we will not need to run headlong with horsemen on our heels, but if your judgment should be awry, we would be safer a mile from here and up in a tree.”

Telor, who had continued to gaze at Marston all the time he spoke, turned to look at Carys instead. Then he nodded and began to move deeper into the wood. “You are a clever girl,” he said. “Yes, indeed. Let us go a mile or a little less toward Creklade and find a tree, not too far from the road, in which we can perch in comfort.”

“Toward Creklade?” Deri echoed. “I can understand the mile—we would be expected to go much farther than that if we fled as fast as we could from the time the guard was found dead, so they will scarcely search for us closer to Marston—and up a tree is reasonable too, but why near the road, and why not toward Lechlade?”

“Because Orin owes us three horses and sundry other supplies,” Telor replied softly in a voice that made Carys catch her breath and Deri stumble over a root as he turned startled eyes toward his friend. “Orin will ‘know’ we made for Creklade because he made it too clear to me that the men of that town are his enemies,” Telor went on in a much more natural tone of voice. “And since the town is no more than four miles away, it would be only good sense for me to run there for succor.”

“I see that,” Deri agreed. “And since it would take only a couple of hours for us to reach the place, we might be expected to be inside safe. In that case, Orin would most likely curse us and put us out of his mind. Surely he will not fear us—two men, or rather a man and a dwarf, without family or friends or any protector—even if we did attack him. So he might not search for us at all.”

“But would Orin not know that the people of Creklade would not allow us in and protect us?” Carys asked in a small voice. “Players as we are? Townsfolk are usually timid about fighting too. Surely Orin would know they would not offend a neighbor like him for our sakes?”

“You are missing the point,” Telor said, speaking again in that soft, cold voice that had startled his companions so much a few moments past. “I think Orin hopes that no one in Creklade knows he is their neighbor. Really, that is a much better reason for getting rid of all the servants and bringing others, not from the nearby villages but from a distance away. I would not be surprised if Marston village is also empty and if Sir Richard’s more distant farms do not know yet that they have a new master.”

“Oh, come now,” Deri protested. “Taking a manor by force is not something that can be kept secret for long.”

“It has not been long—” Telor replied.

He stopped abruptly, not only what he was saying but physically. The others stopped too, Carys immediately and Deri after a few slower steps. Carys had stiffened and caught her breath to listen until she realized that neither Deri nor Telor was alarmed. Then she noticed that it was lighter ahead of them and guessed they were coming to the end of the woods. Deri, having lived all of his early life in a manor much like Marston, had realized at once that what they were passing through was no more than a strip of woodland between the manor and a farmstead.

In the dim predawn light they saw that beyond the edge of the trees were cultivated fields and off to the right some buildings with no roofs. More important was a track running what they hoped was southward toward the road to Creklade. With one accord they turned to skirt the fields; to pass through the half-grown crops would be to leave a clear trail. And when they came to the track, they hurried along as fast as they could, trailing leafy branches behind them to disguise their footprints. They did not talk anymore, all feeling the need to listen now that they were on a road where horsemen would have a great advantage.

In fact, no one spoke much again until they had found the road to Creklade and gone along it about half a mile. It was full dawn by then, and they were growing tense with the need to find a hiding place. To seek more efficiently, they separated, Telor on the river side and Deri and Carys on the inland side. At last, Telor spied a huge old tree all hung with creepers, which had lost its top when half-grown and survived by sending out many branches that now, a lifetime later, had formed a manyfold crotch. A blackbird’s whistle brought Deri and Carys, and she went up the tree as easily as walking, for the trunk had deep ridges and old burls. She came down grinning with enthusiasm. One could not see the road from the crotch of the tree, but it was easy to climb out along the higher branches, and from several places one could observe the road. Then Telor, who was the tallest, went out into the road and stretched and walked forward and back and even climbed a little way up several trees on the other side to approximate the height of a man on horseback. He could see the tree from many positions—but not the crotch.

Relieved of a major anxiety, they took turns to walk down to the river to attend to calls of nature and drink before they climbed the side of the tree away from the road, disturbing the curtain of creepers as little as possible. With judicious placement of limbs—it helped that Deri’s were so short—the crotch would hold them all. Padded with the blanket and the odds and ends of clothing that Carys had snatched up, and with Telor’s staff wedged between two branches to make a railing of sorts, it was even comfortable. For a minute or two, the three simply sat, staring at each other, unable to believe that it was safe to relax. Then Telor drew a deep, sobbing breath and dropped his head back against the branch he was leaning on; his eyes closed, but he forced them open.

“We need to set a watch,” he mumbled, his voice thick with the exhaustion that fear and tension had held at bay.

Deri was almost as tired. He had been more roughly treated while he was subdued, and had had to struggle to keep up the pace Telor and Carys set, forgetting because of the fear that drove them that Deri needed to take three steps to their one or two.

“I will watch,” Carys offered. She shook her head as Deri frowned. “I have not been beaten and bound,” she pointed out.

The dwarf nodded. That was reasonable enough. “Do not let me sleep later than noon,” he said. “I must try to make a new sling and go hunting for pebbles. Telor—” But the minstrel was already asleep, so Deri shrugged and settled himself.

Carys crawled out on the broadest of the branches from which she could see the road and lay down on it, pillowing her head on her rope. Knowing they were well concealed, she did not watch very assiduously—and there was relatively little to watch, for the road was not much used. Shipment of goods went mostly by river; Carys could occasionally hear a vague sound of voices, which she guessed correctly was boatmen shouting at each other. There was some traffic on the road, though. The Thames grew very shallow past Lechlade so that smaller boats were used between that town and Creklade, and merchants coming from the west often continued to use their pack animals until they reached Lechlade to avoid transferring their goods from one boat to another.

One such merchant with a string of packhorses passed not long after sunrise, waking Carys from a light doze. Later, Carys dozed again, but she wakened easily and noted several parties on foot, and a single man in a brother’s robes riding a mule. No one even vaguely threatening went by in either direction, and traffic grew even lighter as the sun rose higher. It had not reached noon when several sharp blows on the branch drew her attention to Deri, who was beckoning her toward him and, when she turned around and came back, told her, speaking softly, to sleep since he had to make a new sling.

“How?” Carys asked, more interested than sleepy.

“Not easily,” Deri remarked sourly, but then he relented, grinned at her, and held up the leather strap Telor had removed from his instrument. “I will chew the center of this to soften it, and then stretch that part thin. I hope that will make a pocket for a pebble. If the leather is too stiff, I will have to cut it and tie a piece of cloth between the two ends—but that will play the devil with my aim.”

“I cannot see how you aim at all,” Carys said.

Deri chuckled gently. “And I cannot see how you can hit anything with a thrown knife. Both skills come with practice, I suppose. I will teach you if you want to learn.”

“Yes, I do,” Carys said eagerly, her eyes alight. “I am always afraid that my knives will be discovered, but who would suspect a boy’s leather belt and pouch full of pretty pebbles—and I have seen what you can do.”

“Better a girl if you want to conceal a sling,” Deri replied, grinning. “Boys and slings are well known to create mischief. But when we have time, you can try. Now go and sleep. I will watch.”

“I am not sleepy,” she replied. “I am starving. I will go and see what I can glean.” She sighed. “We have not even bread.” Then she looked hopefully at Deri. “I could walk to Creklade and find a new cookshop.”

For one moment Deri looked indecisive—the cookshops in Creklade had provided very savory meals—but then he shook his head. “I wish you had thought of it just after we settled. It is too late now. Most likely Orin plans to order us dragged out after dinner, and it is almost time for the meal now. It is more than two leagues to the town and back and impossible for you to go and come before the searchers are out.” He frowned and went on, “Mayhap it is not safe for you to go searching for food at all.”

“I will not go far,” she promised, “and I will go only toward the town, away from Marston. There will be mushrooms out after yesterday’s rain, I hope. They are very good with wild onions.”

Deri was hungry too, so he nodded at her, issuing a half-jesting warning about not poisoning them all, to which Carys replied by wrinkling her nose at him. To save carrying, she walked upstream without gathering, though she saw a bed of lily plants and what looked like wild cabbage near the riverbank. She found a quick-running brook that had formed a tiny pebbly beach where it entered the river, and she went down it to the riverbank. No boats were visible, so she took the chance of rolling up her braies and wading out into the water for a clearer look up and down the bank.

Farther upstream, where several trees had been cut some years before, there was a clearing that let in the sun. A glance showed a grayish-green mass of daffodil leaves on the upward slope, the sunny flowers gone but the foliage recognizable. The bulbs below would be crisp and sweet. There were also many dandelions and thick fleshy fans of white on the rotting stumps, and farther back, an early-blooming sweetbriar, most of its flowers already gone to seed. They would not be ripe and nutlike yet, but the hips, though sour, were still good to eat.