The Harp and the Blade (18 page)

They were abashed then and listened. Next to Ann herself I had the most right to speak.

S
OMEWHERE
in the back of my mind I could see that infernal Pict grinning triumphantly. In recent months I had stepped into sufficient trouble but always at times when circumstances had me cornered, leaving no loophole. Now I was outbidding eager scapegoats.

“One reason I’m better suited for this job,” I explained to Conan’s lieutenants, “is that I’m a stranger to Gregory and all his men, not to mention the fact that I’m obviously not a native. You’re both known by reputation and, I suspect, personally.”

They nodded glumly. “Moreover,” I gestured toward where my harp hung on the wall, “that will give me entry and a reason for passing that way on the loose which demands no explanation.”

“All right,” Jean gave in. “What are you going to do once you’re inside?”

“I don’t know,” I answered frankly. “Anything that seems indicated. I’m not guaranteeing I’ll be of any use even, because they’ve got us on the hip and no mistake. But it’s our only chance.”

“Yes,” Ann said after a long moment, and that settled it.

“You’ll need a guide,” Rainault said hopefully.

“I will,” I agreed, “but it can’t be either of you. You’ll both be needed to save what’s possible if Conan doesn’t return.”

I didn’t want a companion that would pound me with ad-

vice and suggestions. But there was one among them, who, I felt sure, would follow and obey me blindly when, as, and if I conceived a plan. The youngster, Fulke, had a bad case of hero worship which he’d get over in time, being a sound lad. Now, however, I could make use of it.

“If you know the way, I’d like you to go with me, Fulke.” His face lighted up as if I’d just given him something of immense value instead of inviting him on an expedition to get his throat cut. “Sure, I know the way. Thanks, Finnian!”

I grunted sourly. Everybody except myself seemed to think that extricating a man from a well-garrisoned fort was some sort of delightful pastime. Had I chosen to stay with them, the other men would have gone on discussing the project, but I wasn’t in the mood for useless gab. “I’m going outside for a while,” I announced. “Try to get some sleep, Fulke.”

He had the saccharine docility of a child with a treat in store. “I’ll go to bed right away,” he promised.

Ann’s face was stiff and white. “I’ll have food ready when the night starts to change.” With an ineffably poignant gesture she touched my arm, then turned away. I nodded to the others and strode to the door.

It was a star night, cool and quiet. Ordinarily I might have found it too chilly without a cloak, but trifling discomforts could make no impression on me then. I walked slowly over to a low, unfinished portion of the outer wall and after first notifying the watchman of my presence sat down to consider. I had vaguely hoped that inspiration for a course of procedure might come to me, but the more I thought about it the more convinced I became that I would have to wait and improvise plans after I’d looked the scene of action over.

I had no inclination for sleep, but I was on the verge of forcing myself to attempt it when I heard a low but urgent voice just below me. “Would you help me up, please?”

The voice was Marie’s, and I assumed its rightful owner was using it, although the figure in the heavy shadow of the wall was unrecognizable. I reached down a hand, hauled her up, and waited to hear what she had to say. I didn’t object to her company, but I was considerably surprised that she had sought mine. While we had been quizzing the messenger and afterwards I had been hardly aware of her, for she had kept sensibly in the background. And had I since thought about her at all I would have taken it for granted that she had retired when Ann did.

“I’ll go away if you wish,” she said with a hesitancy I had not learned to expect from her. “I know you’ve got important things on your mind.”

“Both obliging and flattering,” I murmured. “You haven’t always so pampered me.”

“No,” she admitted, and I could sense that she was more at ease. Nevertheless, her tone remained serious. “You may not come back, and I wouldn’t like to feel that I had never talked to you. You happen to have been a crucial factor in my life, and I’d like to realize you a little. Do you see that?”

I nodded and then remembered the darkness. “It was nice of you to come out,” I helped her. “I’m too restless for sleep.”

“Thanks, whether it’s true or not.” She hugged herself, fighting off the chill. “Everybody takes it for granted that you’re willing to go for Conan. They’re so wrapped up in what they’re trying to do that they think you’re part of it. But you’re not, are you?”

“No,”

“And suppose you save Conan—what’ll you do then?”

“Hadn’t figured.”

“Oh yes, you have,” she astonished me with contradiction. “If you can help it you won’t come back to get mixed up in troubles here any longer.”

I didn’t bother to argue the point. “I’m only catechizing you to find out some things for myself,” she apologized when I didn’t answer. “You see, I don’t belong to this, either. I don’t belong to anything now, and I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m talking to you because you seem to get along without everything most people want. Or have you got them somewhere else?”

“I haven’t got much,” I admitted.

“Well, I had a home and people. Things belonged to me. I was going to marry a man.”

“What stopped you?”

“The Danes. They killed him, too.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Did you want him much?”

“Some. I don’t know. But as a wife I’d be a person doing everything about life that I could. I wanted that, and now I’m not sure that I can ever have the chance again.”

I knew a girl without property couldn’t often make the sort of match she desired. “You’ve still got the land,” I suggested. “Yes, but there are no men to rebuild the hall and hold it now, and none can be spared for long hereabouts. Besides, what’s the use in building something for more Danes or some other batch of thieves to destroy? No, that’s gone, and now if Conan dies everything here will fall apart, too. I think,” she continued after a brief pause, “that if I saw that happen I could never hope again or believe that men have any power against evil, any choice but to live in bestiality like Piers and his kind.”

Anybody who has lived in France in our time has necessarily seen too much of the harsh side of life, and this girl had just been forced to look long and carefully at horror. I wished that I could have been some use to her; but her problems were involved with the social conditions, and there was nothing good to say about them. “The game isn’t over,” was the most I could offer.

“Not yet,” she said without optimism. “If Conan lives, why—Well, I’ve seen what he has done, starting out with almost nothing but himself. He knows what we all must have and has the strength to bring it about. He has all our hope in his hand; and that’s what is so queer now. If one of the others were going for him he would be desperate with the knowledge that his whole world would collapse if he failed. But you don’t care.”

She couldn’t be expected to know how I felt about Conan. “Oh, I do in my way.”

“What is your way? That’s what I’m trying to find out in case all the props I know about should fail me utterly, as they seem likely to do.”

“Don’t look to me for any guiding philosophy,” I told her uneasily. “I have none. There’s a thing I possess which pleases me. It’s poetry, and by and large it is a spacious enough kingdom in which to move. In situations where it isn’t adequate there aren’t any rules. Things just happen.”

“You’re being very patient with me,” she said, “but you never have made any sense.”

“This is more like old times,” I cheered her, but she refused to be shaken out of seriousness.

“You’re deliberately taking a trip to do something which is apt to prove disastrous for you. If it doesn’t, you and Conan will get drunk and talk a lot of nonsense together, then you’ll go off as unconcernedly as a dog that’s stopped to scratch a flea. What you’re trying to do is hard and good, and it should have great significance for you. But it hasn’t.”

“Maybe I’ll have time for it later,” I said, amused alike at her diagnosis and arraignment, “if a bunch of Franks don’t stick swords through me. So far as I know now there’s only one significance to that.”

She laughed apologetically. “I’m sorry, but now that it’s been taken away from me I see that what I want most is a continuity of experience, the building up of associations with both people and things. But as you’re trying to be the answer to necessity I was wrong and silly to scold you for whatever nonessential things you are not. And maybe you have your reasons. In times like ours it must be as hard to be a man as to be a woman.”

A bachelor of any maturity may be sad or glad about his singularity, but shelve the problem he cannot. Even churchmen have to fortify their vows of chastity by slandering womankind, the shrill petulance of the vilifications betraying the sense of wrong. Perforce then when she was still after that remark I thought how I might die the next night without ever having undertaken a male’s ultimate responsibility. I looked at Marie’s shadowy profile and wondered if I would ever talk to a girl again. Feeling half fey, as I did, I had no passion, but I experienced the tenderness a man occasionally knows for women in general seen as the embodiment of fineness and beauty.

And with that feeling came a sort of weary resignation. “I’m glad you came out here,” I told her again. “I’ll sleep now, and I can use the rest.” I jumped down and reached up. “Here, take my hand.”

I eased her descent, and we walked toward the hall quietly, our fingers still locked. A couple of torches were still burning to light the main room, but no one was about. I filled two wine cups and looked at her face, a lovely and always changing pattern in the flickering light. “Good luck!” I toasted her.

She looked at me with compassion. “Good luck, Finnian.” It was the first time I had heard her use my name, a thing I have always found compelling on the lips of a sightly woman. We smiled warmly and parted.

I got into bed, and the next thing I knew Jean was shaking me vigorously. “It’s still night!” I protested.

“First light’s showing,” he insisted and threw the blanket on the floor. Dumb with drowsiness I reached for my clothes, but he handed me a cloak. “Take a dive in the moat,” he ordered. “You can’t be sleep-walking now.”

The cool water first, then the cooler air on my wet body waked me thoroughly. I dressed on the bridge, whither Jean had followed with my clothes, then returned with him swiftly to the hall. Fulke was before me and greeted me enthusiastically, but Rainault told him to shut up and eat. The meal was adequate but briefly handled. Nobody shared it with us but stood watching, their anxious expressions and subdued whispers adding to the cheerlessness of the dimly lit hall.

“Come on,” I mumbled to Fulke over my final bite, and led the way out to the court. The sky had perceptibly lightened by then, and I could see the three horses being held for us by the gate. The third, destined, we hoped, for Conan, was loaded with my harp, such trifling supplies as we would need, and a sword. That, too, was for Conan.

“Now you do exactly what Finnian tells you and nothing else,” I heard Rainault warning Fulke while Jean was giving me a leg up. Marie was not there, having said her farewell the night before, but every other member of the household and garrison was astir; and there was a half-hearted attempt to give us a cheer.

Ann, who had been taking leave of Fulke, now turned to me. I was glad the pre-dawn murk made our faces unreadable. “Finnian,” she said, and that was the most she could manage. I reached down my hand, she held it to her cheek an instant, then pushed away through the crowd.

“Don’t drink all the wine,” I told Jean. “Watch him, Rainault.”

They made valedictory gestures, and we trotted across the bridge. The fields were smoky with mist, but the pallid sky was cloudless. We were going to have a good day for it, which, as there had been no recent rains to muddy the trails, guaranteed us prime traveling conditions. It proved good for our morale, too. In the early chill we rode in moody silence, for even Fulke had been depressed by the lugubrious attitude of our well-wishers, but when the world became fair with light we drew a measure of gaiety from it. Fulke, especially, having recovered his pristine zest for the undertaking, joked and sang continually. As he was doing it for his own amusement he put no burden of conversation on me, although I occasionally interjected comments and jests of my own. At other whiles I wrestled with the problems of our venture, assuming possible contingencies then trying to answer them with sound courses of action.

When the sun had been up two or three hours I saw that we rode a little south of east. We were heading, my calculations assured me, into territory I had visited before. “Pull up,” I ordered Fulke, and while he fidgeted with curiosity I considered what had just occurred to me.

“Aren’t we heading toward the abbey?” I asked after a minute.

“More or less, but not quite. We’ll cross the road several miles north of it.”

“How soon could we reach it?”

“In about an hour, traveling fast. But what would be the use of going there?”

I thought a little longer. It was a chance, but it was a good chance. It was, in fact, the only useful notion that had so far occurred to me. “If we can see the Abbot he may help us,” I said. “He’s the only man I know of who can.”

So it came to pass, just as it had a little over two months before, that I sat in the saddle looking up to where Father Clovis lounged above the abbey gates. “God the Father!” he chuckled. “Here’s our poet and scholar back with a new steed.”

“The other was taken from me,” I said, sighing, as I thought of that splendid bay.

“He begrudges a man his own horse,” the monk said to no one in particular. He chuckled again. “I saw Chilbert on it not three weeks back. I could have kicked myself for not having recognized it when you first came. How have you been?”

“Fine, thanks.” I jerked my head at my companion. “Father Clovis, this minstrel is Fulke, a man of Conan’s.” I uttered the concluding phrase pointedly, and the monk straightened, cocking an eye. “I’ve heard of him. So it was you who helped raise Cain with Oliver. I often wondered.”