The Rope Dancer (6 page)

“No,” she said. “I am very grateful to you because it is most like that you saved me from death by torture, but if you only saved me to torture me yourself, I am not willing.”

As she spoke, her hand slid down under the blanket to the knife on her thigh. Men who had strange tastes in futtering were often violent in other ways too.

“Torture!” Telor exclaimed angrily. “How can I take you with me if you will not do as I say? I have even gone to the trouble of asking the woman to warm the water so you would not be cold. How can you call sitting in a little warm water torture?”

Carys hesitated, staring up at Telor. He was angry, but he did not look mad, and he seemed to be promising to take her with him if she complied. Moreover, he spoke as if what he desired were a simple, easy matter. Carys glanced at the tub, then rose slowly to her knees. As she moved, she felt the ache of bruises, the pull and sting of newly scabbed skin. No, she would never heal if he always coupled in tubs or chose even stranger positions.

“No,” she repeated, “I will not.” Telor took a step toward her, his face set. Her arm tensed to draw her knife. “Please,” she cried, her eyes filling with tears, “you have been so kind to me. Do not make me hurt you. I will couple with you gladly, but not in the tub.”

“Couple…in the tub!” The idea was so ludicrous that it blotted out everything else, and Telor burst out laughing. “You stupid slut. Do you think I am a lunatic? I would as soon take a pig in a wallow. Now will you take your clothes off and wash, or shall I wake Deri and go? As you are, I cannot take you with me to Castle Combe. You would ruin my reputation.”

“Wash?” Carys echoed weakly, her fingers still gripping the hilt of her knife.

“Yes, wash,” Telor snapped. “That is what
I
do in a tub as often as I can, and you will too, if you wish to remain in my company.”

Remain in his company? The words implied a kind of permanence. Hope flooded Carys. If all she needed to do was wash, she would gladly do it ten times a day to please him. Fitting herself to so harmless and innocent a madness would be a pleasure compared with others—and besides, Carys knew the opportunity would not often arise. Then, suddenly, she remembered how she had asked how it could be done in the tub and how she had twisted the meaning of Telor’s innocent reply that it would be a tight fit but that she was thin and would manage. She began to laugh helplessly.

“There is nothing funny about taking a bath,” Telor snarled at her, thoroughly exasperated. “Are you going to take off those filthy rags, or must I do it for you? I swear that if Deri wakes up before you are soaked clean, I will leave you behind.”

That recalled to Carys’s mind how horrified she had been when Telor said “it” would take so long that the water would cool. Realization of the different meanings each of them had given “it” brought on another fit of laughter, but when Telor began to advance on her again and her hand instinctively tightened on her knife hilt, she sobered and pulled the blanket up protectively. If Telor undressed her or watched her undress, he would see the knives. By this time she almost trusted him enough to let him know, but Carys had not really trusted anyone for as long as she could remember, and almost was not quite enough.

“I will undress,” she cried. “I will, but please do not watch me.”

Telor stopped and stared, utterly amazed. Only a few minutes before she had offered to spread her legs for him, and now she was cringing behind her blanket as modestly as either of his sisters. The rage and disgust Telor had felt when he understood what she believed he wanted began to drain away. She could not be innocent in the way his sister had been before marriage; that was impossible. But he now understood that she was not a practiced whore. It seemed she had offered herself to him only because she realized how terrible her situation would be if he deserted her, and she had been willing to do anything within reason to please him. He had to grin when he thought of her pleading “not in the tub.” He could not help but agree that that was beyond reason.

“Very well,” he said, feeling rather pleased. “I will tie one of the blankets across the two posts to shield you. But I think you will need help, cut and bruised as you are. Let the alewife come to you.”

“Yes, gladly,” Carys said, “thank you.” As she spoke she had looked at him, but her hands were busy unstrapping the knife sheaths under the blanket. She did not care whether she had help or not, so long as she could hide her knives.

Before the alewife arrived, Carys had knives, belt, and sheaths wrapped in one strip torn from her skirt. She had first intended to use her shift, but recalling Telor’s remark about her “filthy rags” and his passion for washing, she began to wonder if he would insist on soaking her clothing too. After removing and looking at her gown, Carys herself thought that washing it would be a good idea. Much dirt had been added to the ordinary stains of wear by her escape. She had nothing else to put on; her everyday gown had been lost, but she could wrap herself in the blanket or…Carys drew a short breath of excitement. Telor had paid for the food and lodging and doubtless for this bath; perhaps he was rich enough to get new clothes for her.

Carys was trying to think of some way to broach that idea when the alewife came in carrying a pot full of ashes and some tattered linen cloths. Before Carys could ask a question, the woman told her to bend over the tub and wet her hair. Remembering that Telor might be on the other side of the blanket, Carys did as she was told, making no protest even when the alewife wet the ashes and began to work them thoroughly into her hair. Then, having wrapped Carys’s head in a rag, the woman proceeded to spread the remaining ashes liberally over Carys’s body.

She was a kind woman, clucking and sympathizing over the mischance that had scraped and bruised the girl, and she was gentle as she could be in rubbing in the ashes, but she could do nothing to ease the sting of the wood-ash lye where Carys’s skin was torn. By then, Carys realized that something in the ashes would clean her, so she did not fight, but she was weeping with pain when she was helped into the tub to be rinsed off. Washing her hair was an additional torment, since the lye in the water burned her eyes, but at least the earlier pain spared her somewhat, for the tears she was already shedding diluted and washed away the irritant.

What gave Carys courage to endure were the few glimpses she had caught of her skin after she was pulled from the tub. It was white and soft—at least wherever it was not scabbed and black and blue. A few times when Morgan’s troupe had entertained at a keep Carys had seen the ladies; what skin they showed had been like that—white and soft. Her hair felt different once the ashes were washed out, but it was still so tangled and matted that Carys could not draw the alewife’s comb through it. The woman tried to help after she had dumped Carys’s clothes into the tub to soak, but she could not comb it either.

“It will have to be cut off,” she said, and looked at Carys suspiciously for the first time. “How did it get so bad?”

Carys hung her head. She had broken her comb and the pieces had been lost, and though she had asked several times, Ulric had not got her another. But she could not say that to the alewife.

“It is such a trouble to comb it,” she muttered. “I just bundled it up. He never noticed. And when I fell…” She let her voice fade.

The alewife
tch
’d but said no more and went out around the blanket to get a knife.

“Clever girl,” Telor said softly from the other side of the blanket. “It is just as well, because I want you to dress as a boy. I will explain later.” And then he raised his voice to speak to the returning woman. “You can take these garments to the girl, alewife. They are all I can spare.”

Dress as a boy? Carys considered the idea as the woman lifted sections of her hair and drew the knife across them. At first Carys felt relief. Dressed as a boy she would be spared the looks and remarks, the pawing by men, which she hated. Ulric had never tried to shield her from anything other than actually being used—and that only because he intended to collect a fee for it. But for all Telor’s kindness, Carys could not really believe that saving her from unpleasantness could be his reason for wanting her to be thought a boy. Men did not care what a woman felt. Certainly Telor had been indifferent to what she might feel when her hair was shorn. Carys shivered as more hair fell. Her head felt strangely light.

“It will soon grow back,” the alewife said, “and you will not be so stupid and lazy as not to comb it in the future.”

A spurt of hatred for the dead Ulric, who had reduced her to pulling what tangles she could from her hair with her fingers, passed through Carys. She had had to take the blame for the condition of her hair, but her anger and frustration spilled over onto Telor. He had said he would explain, but in Carys’s experience explanations meant lies. The truth was always clear enough to understand without explanation.

First Carys wondered if Telor feared being cast into the shade by her skill. She had often been the target of spite of other players envious of her work. Nonetheless, she was proud of that skill, and though she hated the lust generated in some men by the display of her art, she loved the attention and admiration of the rest of the people. It had always been a pure joy to her to watch the eager faces as the rope on which she danced was raised into place. And the shouts and gasps, the cries of delight during and after her performance, had often satisfied her enough to dull the pangs of real hunger. But then Carys frowned. First of all, Telor could have no notion of whether she was a good rope dancer or not, for he had never seen her work. Second, while she was lame she could not draw attention away from him, so why dress her as a boy?

Then, as the last matted tress fell, Carys remembered how Telor had called her a filthy slut and said he would sooner lie with a pig in a wallow. At the moment the words had meant nothing to her. Morgan and Ulric had often said worse when she displeased them. But Telor had meant it! He was ashamed of her!

Carys’s reaction was a shock of disbelief. Both Morgan and Ulric had been very proud of her and had displayed her as a prize possession. She had had offers to join other troupes but had not done so because she owed Morgan a debt for having kept her as a child and trained her. And Ulric had protected her after Morgan died, so she owed him too; besides, for all his strength he was so stupid and helpless that she had not been able to desert him. Never before had her worth been questioned.

She was so deep in her thoughts that she hardly felt the alewife running the comb through what was left of her hair, tugging at the remaining tangles until the comb ran smoothly. The pain within Carys was far sharper than that caused by pulling her hair. She had taken it for granted that she and Telor were equals because they were both players, and had not given much thought to the signs of wealth. All she had thought was that he could afford to feed her and perhaps clothe her. Now she understood that he must be another kind of player altogether, the kind that performed before lords and perhaps murmured sweet love songs into the ears of great ladies and kissed their soft white hands.

Something inside Carys shriveled and sank until she bent in on herself, and the alewife patted her shoulder. “There, there, child,” the woman said, “I have not made you bald. See, the hair is almost to your shoulder. If you wear a loose cloth over it, no one will know.” Then she pulled Carys’s head toward her, lifted her chin, laughed, and added, “And you are such a pretty thing, no one will care even if they do know.”

With the words—and the touch of envy in the woman’s voice—reaction swept through Carys. She knew she was pretty. Many men had told her that, even some who were not seeking to lie with her. More important, she was a fine rope dancer, one of the best. I have nothing to be ashamed of, Carys thought, straightening her body. She was as good as any soft-voiced singer with dainty ways. Sooner lie with a pig in a wallow, would he? Then why was he so eager to have her accompany him that he would pay to have her bathed?

Suddenly, a far different reason for Telor’s wishing her to dress as a boy came into Carys’s mind. If she was taken for a boy, other men would not desire her. Could not
that
be Telor’s reason? Carys smiled at the woman and shook her head, loosening her damp locks from the straight pattern in which the comb had set them. Freed, the hair began to spring into curls. Carys put up a hand to touch it and sighed, then smiled again.

“Yes, it will grow,” she said to the alewife, unconsciously matching her speech to that of the woman as she had earlier matched the way Telor spoke.

It was easy for Carys to mimic accent and rhythm; she had a keen ear and was accustomed to playing roles that required different speech. Actually, because Morgan had taught her always to speak as nearly as she could as those around her did, Carys hardly had a natural mode of speech. A strange accent, he had told her, marked a stranger, and strangers were always untrustworthy in the minds of those who lived always in one place. Out of costume, it was safer not to be taken for a player too.

“And meanwhile,” Carys added for Telor’s ears, although she still seemed to speak to the alewife, “since I have lost my clothes, the short hair will better befit these that have been lent me.”

“Good.” The woman returned Carys’s smile, then turned away and pulled the dress and shift from the tub and wrung them out. “I will rinse these at the well, since you cannot walk, but I think the gown may be too far gone to be mended. That must have been a bad fall.”

“It was.”

Carys shuddered as the memory of her escape flashed though her mind, and the anger coiling inside her at Telor’s seeming duplicity lost its hold. He could have left her by the road, she reminded herself. He could not have known who or what she was from a glimpse in the dark, and that he had stopped to help showed a good heart. If he desired her and wished to keep her from others—was that bad?

What Carys had said for Telor’s benefit was wasted. She had been so deep in her own thoughts and misery that she had not heard Telor shaking Deri and at last lifting him, with considerable effort, to carry him out and dump him near the well where he could soak Deri’s head and flush away the results of his being sick from drinking too much. Carys had noticed that the dwarf was gone from the table when she watched the alewife leave the room. Her eyes also took in the food on the other table, and a pang of hunger assailed her, reminding her that she had eaten nothing since the previous day’s single meal.

There were more important things than hunger, however, and Carys made haste to belt on her knives and pull the shirt over her head so she could conceal herself and what she was doing, if necessary. Then she took one knife from its sheath and used it to open the seams of each leg of the braies so she could reach through and grasp her weapons. Having drawn the braies over her legs, standing to tie them around her waist, she tried out the arrangement. It was clumsy; she would have to remember to give herself more time, especially since she would also have to reach under the tunic, she thought. But she did not think she would need to use the knives against Telor or Deri, and she hoped that they would protect her from others.

Carys had been standing on one foot because her ankle was still painful, but it was only slightly black and blue and not at all swollen. She hopped quickly to the table where the remains of Telor’s breakfast lay. Progress on one foot was no trouble, for her balance was perfect, but hopping was noisy, and she glanced over her shoulder to be sure no one was in sight before she broke healthy hunks from the cheese and the loaf of bread. Although she did not believe that Telor would begrudge her a meal, hard experience had made her cautious, and she bit quickly into both in several places before she sank down onto the bench to eat her meal more slowly. She was sure that Telor would not want anything bitten by someone else, and the alewife would certainly not take back the food because it could not be offered for sale.

Her full belly and the hopeful prospect of a kind protector so lightened Carys’s heart that she could not help laughing aloud when she got up from the bench and looked down at herself. The shirt would have come down to her knees if it were not held up by the crotch of the braies; the braies had to be doubled up along her leg almost back to her thighs; and the tunic looked like a gown on her. Telor’s clothes, she thought, fingering the garments gently; he was very tall. Deri’s would have been much too broad, though the length would have better suited the purpose of making her look like a boy.

Still she was lighthearted and smiling as she untied the blanket from the posts and then carefully folded it and the one she had slept under and placed both on the table. That done, she looked around and saw the tub of water. She glanced hastily down at her hands. They looked clean to her, but only Telor knew what he thought would be clean enough and Carys had no intention of another dose of those ashes until after she was healed. The burning in her cuts and scrapes was only just dying away. Get rid of the bath, she decided. So when Telor came back, Carys was dipping the ash-laden water out of the tub and into the bucket.

“You need not do that,” he said, but his expression was approving.

Relieved of the anxiety that Telor was going to demand she get back into the bath, Carys smiled. “I can do no more,” she replied, rising. “The bucket is as full as can be carried without slopping over, but the alewife was kind and I am glad to help. Should I roll the blankets? I was not sure how they were to be carried.”

Telor hesitated before answering, so surprised by Carys’s speech and voice, which he had not really noticed before, that his full attention fixed on her. He was sharply aware that there was nothing coarse or shrill about her. Her speech was refined, he thought, like his sisters’, and her voice far more beautiful.

In fact, Carys was altogether much more attractive than he had expected, although now that she was clean, she reminded him more than ever of a pretty, dainty fox. Her hair, almost dry, was the same light, rich red-brown as fox fur, and her large eyes were also a warm light brown with long, thick lashes of almost the same color; the eyes seemed to tilt upward slightly at their outer edges as a fox’s did too—or perhaps it was only that the brows slanted. He had seen the shape of the face correctly: wide temples, high cheekbones, and a small pointed chin, but the lips were full and soft with a smiling look to them. A flicker of regret passed through Telor as he remembered the brutal way he had refused her offer to couple with him. It would be hard to wipe that from her memory and make her willing to come to his bed. And then Telor repressed the idea sternly. What
was
he thinking! It would be monstrous to take advantage of the girl’s helplessness.

“No,” Telor said, picking up the blankets, quite unaware of how long he had been staring at Carys. “I want to take them out and give them a few strokes with my cudgel to shake the fleas out. I would not sleep on the pallet the alewife offered and brought in clean straw, but—” Suddenly his voice faltered and a slight flush stained his cheeks. Then he walked rapidly away to get his quarterstaff, which had been leaning against the wall, but, as if to make up to her for what he had admitted, he flung over his shoulder, “It did not help much. I suppose the pests come right out of the walls.”

Carys had stiffened warily when Telor stared at her without reply, but the wariness had passed into amusement at his first words. She felt a flash of disappointment and anger when she realized it was not for kindness that Telor had given her all three pallets; it seemed he had assumed that she would not mind the fleas or had so many already that a few more would not matter. But she could not remain angry. Now that she was clean, she realized how far down she had sunk in Ulric’s company from what she had been while Morgan managed their troupe. It had happened little by little, day by day, so that she had not noticed what she had become.

Besides, she was amused by Telor’s thoughtless confession and his embarrassment over it. Obviously lying was not his greatest skill. A skillful liar like Morgan always remembered both dishonest acts and spoken untruths. In addition, what Telor had said seemed so much at odds with the way he had looked at her that Carys began to wonder whether he actually knew why he wanted to conceal the fact that she was a woman.

“I am afraid these clothes do not make me look much like a boy,” she said to his rapidly retreating back.

He paused and half turned. “Oh, well, we can stop on the road and attend to that. I will send Deri in to carry you out.”

A devil of mischief entered Carys, and she laughed. “I think poor Deri can hardly carry himself. A man who sleeps the sun as high as he did must have good reason.” She paused to give Telor a chance to say he had forgotten Deri’s condition and offer to carry her himself, and when he did not but started on his way again, she said, “I do not need to be carried. I can come with you.” And hopped rapidly across the floor after him.

Amazement flashed across Telor’s face, and then he laughed. “Of course, not having two feet to balance on should not mean much to a rope dancer. I had forgotten.”

“Or having no feet at all,” Carys said as the braies slid down and she flipped over to walk on her hands. That hurt her sore palms, so she let herself down and sat to tuck the braies up more firmly while Telor stared.

“Yes, and that is the reason that I prefer you be thought a boy,” he said, as she got up and they went into the yard toward a tree with a low bough. “You cannot work before you heal, so we cannot look for a troupe that will suit you at once. In any case, I have no time to spend hunting troupes of players just now. I must be at Castle Combe by evening tomorrow at the latest, for I am summoned to sing at the wedding of de Dunstanville’s eldest son.”

Carys had kept pace with him easily and felt no surprise at the reason he gave for wanting her to look like a boy. As he hung one blanket over the low branch and struck it sharply, she cried eagerly, “A wedding! Then there will be several troupes of players there, and great weddings in castles last some time. I will be healed enough to dance for the guests before they go, and the other players will see me—”

“No,” Telor said.

Carys blinked at the explosive quality of the single word and hesitated before she replied. She would like to stay with Telor; he was kind and she believed he would be easy to manipulate, but if he intended that she give up rope dancing, they must part—and the sooner the better.

“No what?” Carys asked, watching him yank down the blanket he had beaten, fling it over a nearby hedge in the sun, and hang up the second blanket. “You mean there will not be other players there?”

“Likely there will be,” Telor replied disdainfully. “I have nothing to do with their kind.” Then realizing that Carys was their kind, he flung his staff to the ground and snapped, “I am very sorry if I offend you, but I am not a player. I do not whine out common tunes to please common folk. My work is in the keep before the lords and ladies where I sing the great chansons and epic lays. I am a minstrel, not a jongleur—and to speak the truth, if I am known to have a dancing girl with me, ill will be thought of me and my honor will be lessened.”

“I am not a dancing girl any more than you are a jongleur,” Carys cried. “I am a rope dancer, not a whore. And you already have a dwarf with you. Will you try to make me believe that Deri does not do on motley and play the fool?”

Telor had the honesty to flush again. “He does in small towns and villages,” he admitted. “But when I go to sing in a keep, Deri acts as my servant. I could have two servants, or a boy apprentice. I did not mean that you have no art, Carys, only that if the lords know I also play in villages, they will no longer invite me to play for them.”

“Oh.”

Carys was not sure this was the truth, but she thought it might be so. She did not ask why; she knew little about lords and to her mind there was no accounting for what they did. She had been carefully kept away from the gentlemen when Morgan’s troupe played in castles. Morgan had told her dreadful tales, which she had not believed, at least not completely, but she feared a lord might demand to keep her and enjoy her until he tired of the novelty. That might mean a sure supply of food and shelter, perhaps even a few rich gifts, but it would also mean leaving the troupe. Moreover, she doubted a lord would allow her to practice her art or bother to learn if she had a place to go when he had had enough of her. It was that knowledge, not Morgan’s tales, that made her very willing not to display herself except when she was working. Her recent experience also made Morgan’s stories more believable, and she agreed that it would be better not to draw attention to herself until they were well away from the castle.

“Shall I roll this blanket now?” she asked, putting her hand on the one he had laid on the hedge.

Her question changed Telor’s mood. He had turned away after his reply, picked up his staff, and applied it to the blanket again with more energy than was strictly necessary. He was annoyed with Carys for having forced him to embarrass her and also annoyed with her for standing there, rock-steady on her one foot—she really did have remarkable balance—when he had no idea what else to say. He had just been wondering where Deri was when Carys spoke. The dwarf was awake and over the worst of this sickness, so he should already have brought the animals out to be saddled and loaded. Carys’s easy question relieved Telor of the need to explain himself further, so he smiled and pulled the second blanket down.

“Yes, roll them both, if you can,” he said, “and I will go see what has happened to Deri.”

“Does he always drink so much?” Carys asked.

“No,” Telor replied. “It was the burnt-out village. It reminded him of his own lost family and land.”

“I thought he had always been a player—I mean, from the time it was seen he would be a dwarf.”

Telor shook his head, and then, knowing that Carys would be with them for a few days at least, he told her some of Deri’s story and warned her about what subjects seemed most painful to the dwarf.

She nodded, her large eyes full of sympathy. “I will be careful,” she assured him. Something tugged at her and made her throat ache—a distant memory of weeping and weeping for love that was lost to her.

The soft expression made Telor feel guilty. She was a fine, good-hearted girl, he thought, and it was wrong for him to refuse her the best opportunity that might occur for some time to find a good troupe. The wedding at Combe Castle would bring together as many troupes as a fair—unless the fighting had driven them out of the area.

“We will see,” he said as Carys picked up one corner of a blanket and began to fold it lengthwise for rolling. “If your ankle is strong enough and we can find a proper time and a rope for you to use, perhaps you can show your skill at the castle.”

She turned toward him, surprised both by his change of heart and the reintroduction of a subject she thought settled, but he was already walking away, and Carys shrugged. Men were all strange, and Telor was stranger than most. His thoughts did not seem to follow the patterns with which she was familiar, and she had twice been deceived by his bland looks into waking his hot temper. Carys found this difference between looks and character very interesting. Both men she had dealt with intimately in the past looked what they were: Ulric was strong and stupid, and Morgan, although he could hide what he was under a “player’s face” for a time, betrayed the sly cleverness by his sharp features and narrow eyes when he was not acting. But Carys was sure Telor was not playing any role for her, which meant his face did not portray the inner man. Interesting…and dangerous. Carys resolved to be more cautious when dealing with Telor. He came out of the back shed, herding a white-faced and red-eyed Deri before him, and no one had spoken a single word while the men strapped up their belongings, saddled their mounts, and loaded the pack mule.

Just as they were about to leave, the alewife came running around the corner of the building with Carys’s wet dress and shift. Telor looked as if he were about to wave her away, but then he dismounted and laid the tattered garments atop the other baggage, tucked into straps here and there to hold them. Carys was very grateful that she had not needed to cross Telor’s will again so soon and settled herself on the pillion seat, which she did not find very frightening now.