The Rope Dancer (28 page)

Meanwhile Carys had found two of the men squirming and struggling but still bound; the third was dead. The other two lay as still as the dead man when, without a sound, she presented each with the point of her knife. Without further ado, she robbed them most efficiently, taking their belts with swords, knives, and pouches and not forgetting to feel at their necks for a second pouch for each or the soft leather belt one wore under his braies.

That was easy, but stripping the dead man was a nightmare that seemed to go on forever. The heavy, limp body seemed determined to have its revenge by thwarting her. She got the knack of handling it at last, and stripped it down to the braies, piling all the other loot onto the shirt so she could gather it up and run if she had to.

Telor hissed at her from the brush when she was about to yank off the dead man’s braies, and she froze, listening tensely for the sound of a party on the road. All was silent, however, and she could not help giggling to herself as she realized that Telor was not warning her but wanted her to leave the corpse his decency. It seemed silly to her—she was certain a dead man would not care that he was naked—but she was glad to be finished, able to bundle together what she had collected into the shirt and heave it onto the horse.

“You find Deri,” Telor said when he came out of the brush to rejoin her and had taken the rein of the horse she was leading from her hand. “You are too thorough.”

Carys glanced sidelong at him and remembered that, unlike Morgan, Telor disapproved of stealing. “Well, I have never pretended to be an outlaw before,” she said. “It seemed to me that such people would take everything.”

Telor brightened. He had not liked how quickly Carys found the hiding places of the men’s valuables, almost as if she knew from experience where to look, and he felt guilty about taking everything, even what he thought of as the small savings they tried to hide. The efficiency with which she had stripped the corpse disturbed him too. However, he was coming to terms with Carys’s occasionally cold-blooded practicality.

“Well, I do not like it,” he confessed, smiling at her, “but that is plainly stupid. We have probably only taken what they stole from others, and Deri and I will need the dead men’s clothes. This is no time to cling to old, useless prejudices.”

“They are not useless,” Carys told him emphatically. “Stealing is what is stupid, unless, like now, it is more dangerous not to steal.”

She was speaking of her own experience, not out of moral conviction—for it was an unnecessary theft that had cost Morgan his life and nearly destroyed hers. But Telor put his own meaning into her words and was so moved by the beauty of her nature, which he felt had resisted corruption owing to its own purity, that he stopped to embrace her. Having touched her lips, he began to think of corruption—of a different type, admittedly—in a far more favorable light. He was just wondering how to get rid of the horse when Carys wriggled out of his grasp. She was delighted to know that Telor was pleased with her, but she had been growing more nervous by the minute, able to think only of a party coming along the road and finding their victims.

She pointed ahead. “I think that is the gap Deri went through. You get what you must from the dead man. I will help Deri bring the horses out.”

Telor laughed and nodded. “Yes, go fetch Deri,” he exclaimed ruefully. “I certainly need a keeper, for I do not seem able to mind myself when I am alone with you.”

The gentle and amused self-blame almost brought Carys back into his arms. No matter how good her reasons, both Ulric and Morgan were infuriated by her refusals. However, her eagerness to get away from the scene of the attack remained far stronger than the faint urge she felt to touch and caress Telor whenever she was near him. She ran to the gap in the hedge and squeezed through, finding Deri without difficulty and moving so softly that Deri did not hear her. The expression on the dwarf’s face made Carys cry his name aloud and stop in her tracks. He jumped and turned toward her, wearing the perfectly natural scowl of a worried man taken by surprise. Carys let out the breath she had been holding in a sigh of relief. It must have been the dappling of sun and shade on his face that had painted the features into a mask of pain and utter despair.

“What’s wrong?” Deri asked, tugging the horses forward. “Where is Telor?”

“Nothing is wrong,” Carys assured him. “Telor is stripping the dead man near the barricade and we must meet him there.” Deri looked at her questioningly still, and she shrugged. “I am worse than a cat on hot stones,” she said. “Everything is going too well. I feel disaster hanging over us.”

Carys was a poor prophet, however. Not only did no disaster take place, but their luck continued good. When she and Deri reached Telor, he had finished with the corpse and they were able to move through the gap the sapling had made in the hedge with the horses and get well out of sight of the road. Hardly were they safe when they heard hooves and a shout of surprise and fear. The body and the barricade had been discovered. They waited tensely, listening, and hugged each other with relief and joy when the hooves did not return to Marston but continued at a much faster pace toward Creklade.

As the sound died away, they led their animals hastily, but quietly, to the tree where they had left their now scanty possessions. Without even pausing to tie up the few garments and instruments in the blanket, they started east again, keeping a fair distance from the road. They also detoured widely around Marston village, which straggled along the main road near where it met the short track that led to the manor. It might be completely deserted, but it was also possible that Orin had brought wives and families with the men from around Faringdon, and those might now be housed in the village.

They hurried across the well-marked track leading south from the village to the river, which was already showing new grass from not being used, and pushed on eastward for what they guessed was another half-mile. By then it seemed safe for them to stop so the men could change out of their torn and bloody garments. While they did so, Carys removed the saddle from the worst-looking of the animals and tried to make the extra swords, the harp and lute, and other bits and pieces into a pack that would not arouse suspicion. Although neither Telor nor Deri was at all expert with the sword, they had decided to wear the accoutrements of the men-at-arms—including the helmets their victims had neglected—as a kind of disguise.

It took Deri longest to fit himself into the looted garments because his overdeveloped shoulders threatened to burst the arming tunic, and he had to use Carys’s knife to cut the seams under the arms of the hauberk before he could force himself into it. Only Deri’s legs were short, so the hip-length hauberk was just a trifle long, and the dwarf managed to tuck the bottom of the tunic into the tie of his braies and adjust his belt under the hauberk to help prevent the hem from slipping out.

While Deri was poking and pulling at the tunic, cursing freely, Telor had stripped the extra saddle of everything that would come off. By buckling the leather strap of one stirrup to the other, he was able to devise a way for Deri to mount and dismount by himself. He had even more trouble trying to make something that would hold his quarterstaff and had to be content with a kind of soft sling, which meant he would have to hold on to the staff all the time they were riding. Last, he put the stripped saddle back on the horse and arranged the pack Carys had made so that it concealed the cantle and pommel and looked as much like a pack saddle as possible.

Ready to mount, the three looked at each other and took deep breaths. All knew that on the road there was a chance of meeting the men Orin must have sent out to hunt them, but they
had
to go out on the road if they wanted to reach Lechlade before the gates were closed for the night. But their good luck held, and no one they met showed the slightest interest in them.

The safe passage brought Carys no relief. Even after they had passed the gates without question, she felt tense and uneasy and trembled on the brink of tears. By then she had other causes of anxiety than the simple fear of too much good fortune. Both her companions seemed to have become strangers. Telor, as tense as she, was full of a strange, unholy joy for which she could find no cause, and Deri…Deri did not seem to be
there
. His body was on his horse, and he answered each time she spoke to him, but his black eyes were dull and empty, even when he smiled.

Moreover, for a time it seemed as if they would be lodged worse than if they had stayed in the wood. Every alehouse was full and most private houses already had Lord William Gloucester’s men quartered in them. Carys only discovered later it was this news that generated in Telor the crazy joy that she recognized as a sign of the doom she had been expecting. At the time, she was actually more worried by what seemed a final stroke of luck that brought them warm, clean beds in the loft of a cookshop.

Telor had stopped at the place, as if by chance, and shouted for the “ordinary” to the cook, saying they might as well eat while they discussed whether they should go on looking for a lodging or just accept what the alehouse across the lane had offered—a place to tie their horses and lie down in the yard. Then what looked like a child with black hair came out with the food Telor had ordered. Because he knew what he was looking for, Telor saw at once that it was the dwarf daughter. He smiled at her with relief and pleasure as he took the proffered bowls, wondering whether to speak firmly for taking the open-air lodging across the road or to ask the cook, who he thought lived above the cookshop with his family, whether they could stay in his yard—or would that make Deri suspicious?

Wanting to keep the girl in sight in the hope that Deri would notice her on his own and, perhaps, suggest they stay close by, Telor placed three farthings in her hand and asked her to bring them ale. But when she came out of the alehouse across the road, it was Carys, thinking she was a child, not Deri, who jumped up to help her carry the large leather jack, which seemed too heavy for her. The girl resisted momentarily, almost as if she were angry, but she gave up the jack before Carys’s attention was fixed by the reaction and said she would fetch cups. To Telor’s disappointment, Deri never looked at her at all.

She was slow about coming back, and then she chose the wrong moment, just as two men-at-arms pushed past the tethered horses. One of them stepped forward and caught the girl’s arm as she passed. She cried out with fear, and her father rushed from the cookshop brandishing a heavy ladle. Several passersby paused and looked back over their shoulders as Telor jumped to his feet, his hand on his sword hilt. His eyes were on the man who held the little girl, not on the cook with the threatening ladle.

The man who had grabbed the girl glanced from the cook to Telor, released her arm, and held up his hand. “Peace, peace,” he said. “We are only seeking lodging.”

“I have none,” the cook replied sharply.

“You lie,” the second man-at-arms growled. “My friend and three others slept here last night, and I know they left town not an hour since.”

“You are too late,” the cook replied. “These people here”—he gestured toward Telor, Carys, and Deri—“have taken the place.”

“So we have,” Deri remarked, “and we do not choose to share.” There was a kind of violence in his quiet voice that made Carys shiver, and he brought up the point of the long knife, looted from Orin’s man, with which he had been spearing pieces of meat.

There was a tense silence in which the second man half drew his sword, but the first put a hand on his arm and shrugged. “No brawling is the order,” he warned. “A cleaner bed tonight is not worth the rack tomorrow—and there are too many to stand witness.”

It was true that the passersby had retreated to a safe distance, but most of them were still watching, and heads were poked out of doorways and windows in adjoining and opposite buildings. The men-at-arms turned and walked away. They had been warned very strictly about not offending the townspeople, and some men had already been punished for doing so. One had been hanged for raping a girl who was no more than a common tanner’s daughter.

Partly this was because Lechlade had not been “taken”—Lord William was a guest; however, with over a hundred of his men in the town, he might not have cared much about what the burghers liked or did not like if the situation had not been particularly delicate. Only a few miles to the south lay the king’s army besieging Faringdon. It was true that the presence of Lord William’s men had protected Lechlade from looting and foraging parties; that was why he had been welcomed. But if his men became a worse plague than supplying the king’s army, it would be all too easy for the town council to forget their invitation to Lord William and appeal to the king for protection from him.

All this was clear enough to the men-at-arms, except the most brutal and ignorant, and those were being flogged and disciplined in other ways as examples; the men also understood that they could not hold the town an hour if the burghers wanted to open the gates instead of defending them. Since they did not wish to be running for their lives with the army behind them, only to face Lord William’s wrath when they reached safety—if it could be called safety with Lord William angry—all were taking with great seriousness this time standard orders against brawling, which were usually ignored.

Telor sat down again with a sigh of relief. He had jumped up to protect the girl without thinking. The last thing he wanted was to get into a fight with Lord William’s men. Anyhow, Deri could never think he had arranged what had happened, so all he had to do now was ignore the girl completely. She picked up the cups she had dropped while the thoughts ran through Telor’s mind and brought them to the end of the board serving as a counter where the trio was perched on stools, but Deri was staring after the disappearing men-at-arms as if he regretted the peaceful ending of the confrontation. The cook had stood still, also looking after the men until he could not see them, while the people who had been watching dispersed; then he allowed the ladle he had continued to hold threateningly to droop.