The Rope Dancer (13 page)

“Of me?” The words were scarcely audible, for Telor’s breath and heart had stopped.

“Of you! A common churl!” Her voice was bitter, and tears stood in her eyes. “We must not meet again—ever. Even if I call you, you must deny me.”

Telor’s heart jumped, and his breath eased out. For a moment when she implied she was enamored of him, he had feared she had arranged this meeting just so she could accuse him of having accosted her in the woods when she was riding after the hunt. He could have been killed just for speaking to her or startling her; she did not need to compromise her reputation by saying he had tried rape. Now he took her hand and kissed it.

“Oh, my lady, I am so sorry,” he sighed. “I am sorry that you are truly lost to me, but sorrier for the cause. I never meant any hurt to you. Until this moment I thought you were only playing.”

“And so I was,” she said in a more natural voice, removing her hand from his and standing up. “Even when I dreamt of you last night, I thought it was only the delight of my body that I desired. It was when you came upon me in the wood and I saw your fresh, young face—I could not help but wonder whether your tricks were like a dog’s, performed on command without real joy. But when we came into this glade and I thought of you with other women—”

“I have never lain with another woman here,” Telor lied with deep sincerity.

She smiled. “Then I can keep the memory. Now help me dress, and I will go. No, do not look so sad. The wound is a slight one—and I know what salve to lay on it to make it heal.”

Telor sat a long time alone in the glade after Lady Marguerite had ridden away. He knew he had been in great danger and that the danger was not completely over. If Lady Marguerite continued to hunger for him, she might feel the discomfort could be most easily assuaged by having him dead and beyond reach for all time. Perhaps Deri was not so silly, and he should stop playing with noblewomen. If he had a woman of his own, perhaps he would be less likely to look on them with desire…In immediate response to that idea, Carys’s face was in his mind, but Telor remembered too how she had drawn herself together, knees to chin, arms defensively tight around them, when she had recognized his desire for her.

***

A great deal of thought over several days had not brought Carys any closer to a decision about what she wanted. She knew she did not want to join either troupe playing at Castle Combe, but she was even more afraid to remain with Telor, particularly after overhearing his conversation with Deri. Knowing that a noble lady was willing to take such risks to couple with the minstrel had only increased Carys’s interest in him. Now, no matter how often she called herself a fool and tried to drive Telor’s image away, it returned to her mind. She found herself planning what she would say to him or, worse, imagining what it would be like to touch him, caress him, even lie with him. That was stupid and dangerous.

Nor was there any excuse for putting off a decision, Carys knew. Her bruises had healed, her ankle was free of pain, and she had been able to do some exercises in the stable the day Telor had gone off after the lady. Nearly all the horses and grooms had been out that day, and Deri had agreed to keep the one groom left behind outside the stable and busy, after he returned from the keep, looking like a cat that had got into the cream.

The day after Telor’s meeting with the noblewoman had been rainy and both Telor and Deri had been busy in the keep. Carys had slipped away as soon as Deri went to join Telor and had introduced herself to the second troupe, but they were even less attractive to her than the first. Still, she could let her hair loose among them, take off her tunic, and really work to limber up her body. No one in the troupe questioned why she was dressed and acting like a boy; there were many good reasons for the disguise, from simple fear to the satisfaction of a master’s obscene desires, and they knew them all. But they were surprised at the length and intricacy of Carys’s practice, and that worsened her impression of them. All members of a good troupe practiced hard when they were not performing.

When she left them, Carys noted that the smell she had tried to ignore accompanied her. Anxiously, she examined her tunic, but it was not soiled with filth; then she realized it was her shirt, which carried the smell of her own sour sweat. She had not washed after the exercise the previous day, and she had slept in all her clothes because Deri had laid out straw for their beds side by side. Carys thought he did it to protect her from those grooms, men-at-arms, and servants who preferred sleeping in the stable to lying out in the open. Still, she did not want to take any chances and did not remove even her tunic. So there had been no chance for airing, and this day’s work had made the odor worse.

Most of the men and women crowding the area smelled worse than she, but she knew Telor would not like it and, with surprise, decided she did not like it either. She would have to wash or at least air out the shirt as soon as she could. What she needed was her old shift to replace it. She knew where Telor had put the shift, but her spirit was sore from years of suspicion and she did not dare touch Telor’s saddlebags. Not even starvation could have made her steal from either Telor or Deri, but she did not expect them to believe that.

She watched for Deri but did not see him at all after he left the stable that morning, and there was no need for Deri to worry about her. He knew that food and drink were free to all for the taking anywhere in the lower bailey and in the village below the keep. Large roasting pits had been dug, and beef, mutton, and pork turned on improvised spits for anyone to cut at or tear at. There were great piles of coarse bread, and tuns of ale were broached. Serfs and men-at-arms got drunk, slept it off, and got drunk again throughout the day, but no one looked more than once at Carys, who wore her “ugly” face.

When the long evening of summer was over and the light started to fail, Carys went back to her dark corner of the stable to be on the safe side; she knew the old saw about all cats being gray in the dark. She brought with her ample supplies of meat and bread and the waterskin she had earlier filled with ale, thinking that Deri might have been too busy to eat, but he did not arrive until very late. The celebration after the wedding had lasted well into the night, continuing not only in the hall but in the tents in the bailey, long after the young couple had been bedded. Telor had asked Deri to stay to collect the “gifts” for his singing and to bring messages to him from groups or individuals who wanted him to come to them. Tired, Deri refused the food Carys offered and asked testily why she had not
taken
her shift if she needed it.

“I would not open your bags or Telor’s without leave,” Carys replied in a choked voice, hardly believing that the dwarf meant what he said.

“Well, you have leave now,” Deri grunted as he pulled off his tunic and fumbled in the dark until he found the full truss of straw that marked the sleeping place. He laid his tunic over the standing truss, collapsed on part of a second truss, which he had divided and flattened into two pallets, one for himself and the other for Carys, and drew his blanket over himself.

Carys stood indecisively for a moment, then decided it would be better to open Telor’s bag while Deri was there. She found her shift by touch, closed and replaced the bag near Deri’s head, and after a second moment of indecision, took off her tunic and put it alongside Deri’s. There was not the faintest rustle to hint of a change in Deri’s position to watch her and it was very dark, so she faced the wall of the barn and quickly changed the shirt for the shift, drawing her blanket around her even before she lay down. By then, Deri, who had expected to be asleep before his eyes closed, found he was not, and realized it was because he felt guilty for his gruffness.

“You were right to wait for leave,” he said. “I am sorry I scolded you, Car—Caron.” Then he smiled into the dark, having thought of a way to make amends without any suggestive overtones. “Tomorrow will be the tourney, and I must be with Telor on the field, but before I go, I will bring you something to clean your shirt—soap, which is better than ashes.”

Soap. Carys considered the word, which she felt she had heard before but could not connect with anything she had seen. It puzzled her enough to keep her awake for a time after she heard Deri start to snore, until she did remember; her eyes snapped open, and she barely bit back a cry of thanks. It had been four or five years ago that she heard of soap. They had been in Salisbury, and Morgan had sent her to bring certain of the performing costumes to a laundress. It was she who had said the word; making a grimace of distaste, she had said, “These certainly need soap.” And the garments Carys had fetched two days later had been so bright and sweet…But perhaps that was not the word, Carys thought, damping her excitement. Better wait and see before being glad.

***

Deri was gone by the time Carys woke, and she felt lost and even somewhat betrayed when she saw the stable was empty except for herself and Doralys—even Teithiwr and Surefoot were gone. She lay still, thinking that no one had told her not to go to the tournament, and that she could tie her blanket on Doralys and ride down to join the others. But she remembered that Morgan had never been willing to play where a tournament was being held. He said that it was no place for players; everyone was too drunk on blood and pain to find pleasure in milder forms of excitement, and that too many of the audience felt they would like to join the fighters by dismembering a few strangers. Morgan had ended up dead not because he had ever been wrong but because he did not obey his own rules, and Carys was not about to follow his example. She would gladly have gone to the field with Deri and Telor, but she was afraid to go alone.

Carys sat up slowly and was startled when a pouch rolled down from where it had been left on her chest to her lap. Suddenly she did not feel alone and bereft; Deri had not forgotten his promise. With eager fingers she unknotted the string and eased the pouch open. It was full of an odd-smelling yellow paste. She sat and considered it while she broke her fast on the food she had hidden the night before.

Before she discovered how to use the soap, Carys was furious and frustrated. It took her the whole morning to uncover the mystery, but once she found how to rub some on what she wished to clean, add water, and rub again, she was very grateful that she was the only person in the barn. Alone, both she and her shirt could be cleaned in perfect safety—and without wasting the precious soap. More than half of the paste was still in the pouch when she was done because she used the soapy shirt to scrub her body and saved the rinse water to try to bring back the bright color of her dress.

That, she discovered, was impossible. It was not the ash that caused the dulling gray cast but fading of the dyes. Still, there was some color left, and the short, uneven hem and long rents in the skirt, which had made the alewife say the dress was beyond saving, were deliberate, giving freedom to her limbs when she was on the rope and showing tantalizing flickers of her bare legs. The torn back was a problem. After some thought Carys carefully cut off the ragged edges with her knife, leaving wider but smooth openings. There was not much left of the back of the dress now, but it was enough to support the front. Carys did not mind if her shift showed through. If worse came to worst, she could cut the bodice from the skirt entirely and make it into a kind of shawl to disguise the shift underneath it.

The bailey was so empty and quiet that Carys took the chance of hanging shirt and dress over a post near the well to dry in the sun. If asked about the dress, she could say she had been told by the dwarf to wash it. The lowest servant in a group does not question orders from a higher servant. After touching the garments a few times, Carys told herself they would never dry if she sat waiting for it to happen.

She then began to look around the bailey more carefully. If it was as deserted as it looked, she could occupy herself by discovering whether her ankle was strong enough to work on a rope—without Telor or Deri knowing she had tried. Deri had hinted plainly the first day in Combe keep that he expected her to join one troupe or the other. Thus Carys wanted to cling to the excuse that she was not ready, in case she decided that she could not bear to leave. She bit her lip. That was stupid. Stupid! If she stayed with Telor, she would surely make a mistake that would be taken for an invitation. Then what would she do?

Without answering the question or pursuing her examination of the bailey any more closely, Carys jumped to the top plank of the fence that ran from one corner of the barn to the outer wall and provided a large pen where some horses were kept. First she ran along it to test its give and sway. Her ankle was fine, but she grimaced as she began to go through her act. It was much too easy; the fence did not swing or dip under her feet, and it was wider than a rope too.

Still, she did it all: the slow, hesitant first walk; the pretended staggering run at the end to cling to an imaginary wall or tree or post; the show of fear at the imaginary threats of her male partner below; the quicker, sliding retreat back to the center of the rope; and then the dance—slow at first, with outstretched arms as if to balance, then faster, two steps this way, two steps that, a slide, a pause, a swift turn, balanced on one foot, to face the other way; the bend to set hands on the rope in such a way that she faced forward. It was easy on the fence but bitterly hard on a rope, which was usually a little stretched and sagging by then, to stand on her hands and bring her body up and over, slowly, slowly, not to shift the rope a hairbreadth right or left, which would send her over to the side, until her feet touched down. And then, the worst danger, her hands let go so she could straighten her body again.

Erect, Carys ran forward again to the other side as if eager to escape, and then backed to the center once more in response to more imaginary threats from below. She danced again, leaping up and turning, swaying more desperately with each landing; at last, as if in response to orders from below, she bent to place her hands on the rope again. Carys only stood on her hands on the fence this time. On the rope, she would have let herself drop, smiling at the shrieks and gasps of the audience who thought she was falling, only to swing up and over, and up and over again until her feet found the rope and she came upright again.