Straw Into Gold (8 page)

The miller nodded patiently.

"Mind you lay him gently on the cot. Gently. Is that gently?"

I followed behind, hoping that the miller would not open the shoulder wound more. As it was, the bandage was tinged red. But the miller held Innes like a wounded lamb and laid him down like a baby into feathers. He did not groan.

"Now take your chunky self away and let me tend to him," the miller's wife said, and he turned to me and shrugged his shoulders, a look of exasperated and long-suffering love on his face.

"There's not a thing to do with her when she's like this but to stumble along behind the millstone."

He was a short, thick man, but short as he was, he could have touched the ceiling of the cottage. Its roof squatted down to him, its center beam bowing and one corner sagging like a man in a stupor. The chimney stones stomached out, two iron braces angling against their collapse. It was a house that had settled into itself.

While the miller's wife fussed over Innes, clucking at the wound, and while the miller bustled through the house to find the new shirt his wife was calling for, I stood by the trestle table and smelled. Just smelled. It was filled with loaves of braided bread, bread speckled with cinnamon, bread yellow with its cheesy crusting, bread filled with the last of the fall apples.

"The boy looks hungry, my dear. It's a glory you've done the baking, or he might wither away as he stands in front of us." The miller laughed deep and low.

"When we laugh, we escape the Devil," I said automatically, and was startled to see how they both turned toward me, open-mouthed.

"There's been many a turning of the mill wheel since last I heard that," said the miller slowly.

"I heard it myself just today," I answered,"but ..."And I looked longingly at the table.

With a smile the miller brought me close to the fire, laid a wooden trencher in my lap, and ladled in stew.

Stew! How could I have missed its meaty bubbling? When he ladled it out, the steam curled into the room. I shoveled it into my mouth, finishing the bowl before the miller had torn a hunk of bread for me.

"Is he about to start on the furniture, or has he left some stew for me?" said Innes, rising on an elbow.

"Should someone wounded be eating?" I asked.

"Should someone wounded be eating!" he yelled back.

"Though it was just a nick, hardly anything to talk about at all."

"Hardly anything to talk about?"

"At all."

Innes sighed deeply. "Daggers, arrows, horses. And now to die of starvation, when the food is so close by that I can smell it."

"Then here," I said, and I filled my own trencher up and sat beside him on the bed, holding the bowl for him as he spooned the meaty stuff into his mouth, feeding himself so quickly that he almost forgot to breathe, and gasping at the pleasure of the taste.

The miller and his wife stood by the fire quietly, hand in hand, watching us both. They fitted into each other, as if the curves and bumps of their bodies had grown accustomed. They stared at us, stared as though amazed. "He's so like," she said."The way he holds his head, the way he speaks, the corners of his smiles. They are all the same."

But the miller shook his head. "We've hoped a thousand times, and a thousand times learned the better of it."

"But this one time."

"No, wife. No. Now, these are the boys the Grip wants, and they'll be needing to get away. And no later than morning." He turned to us."He'll watch at the main road, so you'll need another way. A fistful of gold and we'd put an ocean between you and the king, but there is none to be had here."

"If we had the gift of it, we could spin some out," I said.

The miller and his wife stared at me.

"Spin some out?" he said.

"Yes, spin some out. Da does it often enough, just for the pleasure of the spinning. Afterward we leave it outside for the birds."

The miller and his wife were very still. Then, slowly, the miller's wife reached out her hand and touched my shoulder. Her eyes welled. "Boy, what is your name?"

"Tousle."

She turned back to Innes, then to me, then back to Innes again, her hands up to her face."He is so like..." she said to herself again, and paused as the miller took her hand in his.

"No, wife. The water has flowed too far and too long, and it does not flow upstream again."

"How many times have you heard of a man who can spin straw into gold?" she asked, then turned again to me. "Your mother. Tell us about her."

"I never knew her."

"You know nothing about her?"

"Nothing."

"And you," she asked, turning to Innes. "What of your mother?"

Innes spread his hands wide and said nothing.

"You too know nothing about her? Not a thing? Isn't there some small part of her that stays with you?"

"Nothing," said Innes. It was the emptiest word I had ever heard.

"And your father?" she asked, turning back to me eagerly, leaning forward, holding hard to my hand now.

"Da? Da is Da."

"Are you much like him? The look of you, I mean."

"No. Not at all."

At this the miller's wife stepped back and again put her hand to her mouth. She turned again from me to Innes, then back again.

"Wife, this cannot be. He is long dead." But she only shook her head and watched me, unblinkingly."Wife, even if it was him, he still must be away. Perhaps even tonight. Perhaps in the hay cart."

"If we were to be found in your hay cart, the king would hear of it," said Innes.

"Then the king would hear of it," answered the miller gruffly. "There is no cause to love the king in this house. And there is great cause to help those who will not bow the knee to his whims, as I once did."

"The king set us a riddle," I said. "A riddle we need to answer within the next six days."

The miller nodded. "The king was ever a lover of riddling."

I wondered how it was that a miller would know this, but I did not ask."If we can solve it, he will free all the prisoners he has condemned."

"His promises are always vast," said the miller's wife. "Tell us the riddle."

"
What fills a hand fuller than a skein of gold?
"

"Two skeins,"the miller said immediately."The answer is two skeins. More than anything else, the king has always wanted gold. And if he had one skein of gold in his hands, it would bring him no pleasure unless he might have two."

"You are sure of this?" asked Innes.

The miller nodded. "I learned it too late, and to my own sorrow. But what good will even the answer do you? If you solve the riddle, do you think he will clap you merrily on the back and send you off with prisoners dancing behind you? He will not even let you approach before he cuts you down."

"He made the promise before the Great Lords."

But the miller gave only a bitter laugh. "A skein of gold for each prisoner might bring release. But nothing else will—most especially a promise."

"First the answer," said Innes. "Then we shall see what comes with the day."

A short, guttural sob from the miller's wife, and she turned to her husband and held him.

Through the windows I watched the sky cloaking into dark. The last light lit the undersides of bulbous clouds waddling in, heavy with their snow. Already the night air was seeping beneath the cottage door and winding its way around my feet.

"It's to be a cold night," said the miller. "If we're to have these boys gone beyond easy reach by morning, we'll need to be leaving."

She looked at him, then smiled. "You never did find that shirt, or another for Tousle," she said, wiping at her eyes. "Leave it to me, and you find a sack we might fill for them. Go on, now. Yes, yes, go on." Then slowly, hardly taking her eyes from us, she climbed the steep stairs into the loft.

"I'd best be taking the bow," called the miller after her.

She leaned down from the loft. "You haven't strung that bow for more years than you or I can count."

"Well," he said, taking a bow and quiver from a nail beneath the stair overhang, "that hardly matters. Not a single one of these arrows has a head."

"Then what earthly good will it do to take it?"

He shrugged his shoulders and smiled at us as he slung the quiver over his shoulder. "You won't be long up there?"

"Long enough to find the shirts you could not."

She was long up there, but when she came down, she brought with her two fine woven shirts. She handed one to me, then turned to Innes and helped him change. I stripped off my own shirt—I was almost as bloody as Innes—and was about to put on this new one when I heard the miller gasp.

At the same moment, the door smashed open. With a single long stride the Grip strode in and twisted my arm behind my back. Quickly, expertly, he unsheathed his sword and held it tight against my throat.

"Meal through the floorboards," he said quietly, and smiled.

The cold line pressed against my throat, but it was nothing to the fire in my shoulder with my arm twisted and held high behind my back.

"Master," came the controlled and slow voice of the miller, "I'm known in these parts as one who never misses his aim."

"The same is said of me," replied the Grip, and he grinned.

"Then you know that should you even prick that boy, I'll have an arrow into you before you see blood."

The Grip laughed. "He'll be dead and I'll be at your throat before you fit an arrow to the bow."

"Master, folks hereabouts live by poaching, and being that a poacher hunts at the same time he himself is hunted, his hands are faster than fast, and his aim surer than sure. You'll never see the arrow drawn from the quiver and fitted, any more than the doe that ends up on this table, and she with eyes sharper than yours might ever hope to be."

The Grip held still.

"I'd pay good and close heed to him, Master," said Innes. "I've never seen him come close to missing."

"Boy," growled the Grip, "I'm here for this one. But no one will squawk if I let your blood as well."

"No," replied Innes, his voice low."No one would." Even with the sword at my throat I was startled by the bitterness in his voice.

"But you would have another soul heaped on your back," said the miller's wife. She stepped to Innes and drew his head against her.

"An easy load to bear," snarled the Grip.

The miller drew a hand up to one of the arrow shafts. "By all that's holy, I can sink a shaft through an eye before you blink. Take your hands away from the boy."

The Grip hesitated and then took the sword from my neck. He let go my arm and it dangled down, the fire so sharp I could hardly keep from crying out.

"Tousle," said the miller. I looked down toward the blade, then slowly started backward away from it. Beads of sweat ran down my sides, and my breathing was short. I still clutched the shirt in my hand.

The Grip straightened, holding the sword in front of him. He balanced it in his hand, then sheathed it. "Miller, it makes no difference if I take him here, now, or if I take him in a day or two. None to me, at least. For that matter we can stay here and play the game out until six more suns have set. But, miller, the boy will never finish his business with the king, my life upon it."

"Yes," said the miller, "your life upon it."

The Grip's mouth worked back and forth, and the hand holding the sword hilt grew white-knuckled. Then he exploded. "Do you know what it is to feel the rage of the Great Lords? And what is this boy to you? Nothing. I could take him now and be about my business. We'll be gone and all will be as it was before."

"No," said the miller's wife.

"No," said the miller.

"You've played the fool all your life, and now you play it again. By all that's holy, you never had to send your daughter to Wolverham. The thing was a wisp of the king's fancy, a whim at the end of a hunt. He would have forgotten come morning, and you none the worse for your silly boast."

"He would not have forgotten the spinning of gold."

"He would have forgotten. He is the creature of a moment. All that happened, miller, happened at your designing, and you see now the end. Design again and protect this boy, and I will burn this house, and your mill, around your ears. There is no jest here, miller. I will fill my hands with the ashes of your mill."

"Tousle," said the miller. "You hear the choice. I could send you with the King's Grip, or I could keep you from him." The miller's hand reached out and gripped his wife's shoulder. "We have had this choice before," he said to her, and she nodded. Then he turned to me. "If there is design in this, remember what I choose to do this time. Run, Tousle. Run, Innes. Run and do not look back. And this Grip and I will be about our business."

I dropped the shirt over my head. The miller's wife looked at us, and she smiled. Tears wet the creases in her cheeks."Go," she breathed, and she said it with a sigh, as if she had been waiting to say it for years. "Go, and God go with you."

I crossed to Innes and took him by the sleeve. Together we walked backward out the door and into the frosted night.

But we did not run.

The Grip's black horse, darker than the shadows, stood tied to a low hemlock. He was bigger by far than the Dapple or the Gray, and his steamy breath snorted up like a dragon's. I held Innes to a stop, then stepped to the horse slowly, one hand reaching out. He pulled at his reins, whinnying and tossing his head. If he hadn't been tied by the halter, he would have reared.

And suddenly I was back at Da's farm, the morning the Gray had first trotted out of the forest. Big eyed and blood flecked from ferocious spurs, he had galloped back and forth in the clearing, desperate and terrified, while I watched from the window. Then Da had gone out. Little Da, so tiny against the rearing horse. With one hand outstretched, he had walked steadily, clucking softly, until the horse calmed and stood, eyes still big, still watching. Da had stood on his toes and reached up until the horse leaned his head down. When Da first touched him, the Gray's sides flicked out with fear, but he did not move. He whinnied once, but by the time Da had begun to stroke his neck, the Gray had stuck his muzzle in Da's jerkin. I was not at all surprised when he pulled out a block of sugar.