The Harp and the Blade (20 page)

Knowing I must maintain my strength, I ate quite a bit, but I had no appetite for it. The only man there who had alike the ability and the willingness to tell me what I wanted to know
_t
was Conan himself, and my chances of getting a word alone with him were non-existent. Nor could our knowledge of foreign languages be of any more use, for they’d surely choke him off and as certainly grow suspicious of me, the stranger, if he should suddenly start saying anything in tongues they didn’t comprehend like Danish, Irish, or—

I twitched. Conan knew Gaelic because he had studied at a monastery school in Ireland, and therefore he should know a trick I’d learned at a similar place. For the first time I looked to pick him out where he sat next to Gregory, and even under the circumstances, or perhaps because of them, it was heartening to get a good look at him again. A moment later his gaze wandered listlessly in my direction, and I saw that he had already found me. Then he dropped his eyes and sat slumped, epitomized resignation.

At harvest time men begin early and work hard. When the day is finished, consequently, they demand drink and song, and a chief with any wisdom lets them have it. These were labor-hungry fellows, not epicures to linger over their food; but even so it was nearly dark when they had done, and a great blaze had been started in an open fireplace to one side. There would be an hour or so of relaxation, and benches were dragged to ring the fire. Now was my time, and I claimed it.

Most of them applauded beforehand when I stepped forward, my harp a guarantee of entertainment.

“A minstrel!”

“Swell! Let’s hear him!”

“How the hell can we unless you shut up?”

Gregory knew his business and smiled tolerantly as he held up his hand for silence. No doubt, with triumph envisioned for the morrow, he was feeling fairly jovial himself. I bowed to him when they were hushed. “I should like to repay your generous hospitality with a few songs,” I told him.

“Make it something gay for the season,” he suggested. Conan, sitting beside him, could now look at me in the natural order of things. He knew that I would speak to him if I could, and his eyes were alert in a still face. While I looked around, smiling acknowledgment of the audience’s cheers and suggestions, I scratched one hand with the other, then flexed the fingers of my right hand before I touched the strings. That, I reasoned, would serve to show that I would signal rather than give verbal cues.

At the monastery where I had been schooled it had long been a tradition for the boys to communicate with each other by hand ogham, and I was banking on the probability that its usefulness was known at every school in Ireland. The ogham alphabet was originally designed for cutting words on stones or wands, letters being formed by combinations of one to five dashes in relation to a horizontal or vertical line; but an adaptation of it was eminently suitable for silent communication during classes or the interminable prayers that make up so large a portion of monastic routine. During prayers the nose was used as the transverse line while the fingers of the supposedly worshipping boy, his hand held reverently to his bowed head, would nimbly move back and forth to signal insults to some watching mate. In the classroom the forearm could be used for the transverse, or the stylus. The harp strings would serve me. I was no longer adept at sending, and he would be rusty at receiving, but a thing at once so simple and so carefully practiced for years could never be forgotten. If I went very slowly he must be able to read.

When all had quieted to listen I strummed a brief prelude and commenced singing. Thereafter my voice carried the burden of the tune, the harp supporting it with only occasional chords and runs of music between the stanzas.

“Oh, Jacques met Ann And found her crying.

‘Pretty little Ann, say why do you weep?”

‘I’m wedding a man,

And I’d rather be dying!’

‘What
would
you marry—a mute or a sheep?”

Meanwhile my hands had been at work. “Where?” I had spelled. There was no response from Conan, and for a panicky moment I thought my scheme had failed. As I began the next strophe, however, my friend casually crossed his legs to sit, ankle over knee. He could thus use his shin bone for the transverse, his signaling fingers looking as if they were tapping time to the melody.

“ ‘But Robert’s gray And mostly belly

And stinks like a fish in the noonday sun
.’

‘Then why not, I pray,

Pick a fellow less smelly?

For one so pretty it is simply done.’ ”

“Northeast wing,” Conan had spelled. I looked at Gregory, but he wasn’t an attentive member of my auditors. His mind was on Chilbert’s visit. Father Clovis was smiling lazily, but I saw his eyes roll to take in Conan. He knew that something was being accomplished between us.

” ‘But Robert’s rich And Dad likes money

Better than a heathen is loved by Hell;

Ah, an old bear’s itch

For to guzzle new honey

Makes Robert pay high, so Father will sell.’ ”

“Door?” I had asked. “No,” Conan had sent. That meant no egress except through the hall, which was bad.

” ‘Would you wed me?

I haven’t a penny,

But I will love you well, I swear, my sweet.
’

‘But, Jacques, how could we Get along without any?

All we pretty maids rather like to eat.’ “

“Window?” I had spelled. “Too small,” had been the answer.

” ‘You’d rather bed,

Come, dare confessing,

With a lad like me than a fat, old cluck.’

‘But I’ll never wed

Unless I have a blessing

Given by my father, for that’s bad luck.’

” ‘Don’t, pretty Ann,

Be broken-hearted;

I’ll get a blessing for us out of hand,

And as I’m a man,

Stinking Robert, outsmarted,

Will buy us a house and acres of land.’ 
”

“Guards,” Conan had been telling me. “Two. Lights. All night.” That was very bad. In fact, the more I learned the worse I felt.

”
‘Sir, do you know That in the hollow

Kings buried treasure in the swamp of old?

Now if you will go

Down there tonight and follow

Where the folly fire leads you’ll find much gold.’

‘I’m in a bog

And stuck fast, sinking!’

‘Sir, will you let me wed your daughter dear?’

‘Why never, you dog!’

‘Then go on with your shrinking:

I’ll stay around and watch you disappear
.’

‘Oh, help me, Jacques!

My neck’s in the water! ‘

‘Hard on the turtles, but it doesn’t hurt me
’

‘I take it all back,

You can marry my daughter;

But first make sure that I’m alive to see.
’ 
”

“Best wall?” I had asked. Having been there for some while and having, perhaps, visited the fort before he became an important enough figure to be worth a kinsman’s betrayment, he might know not only which steps up to the wall could be reached and climbed with the greatest chance of privacy but also, and even more important, where we could jump down with the least chance of breaking a leg. “North,” he had answered, which wasn’t good, either. That meant we’d have to circle half around the place before we could reach Fulke and the horses.

” ‘If there’s a maid For whom, sir, you’re pining,

And you put your head through the bridal stone,

She will be displayed

In the moon’s shining

With no clothes on her—just herself alone.’

‘My head’s stuck now!

The devil’s in it!

I can’t pull away so I’ll starve and die! ‘

‘Don’t fret, sir, I vow I’ll free you in a minute

If you ‘II buy this oil—though the price is high.’

‘I’ll grease the hole And free you gently

With no wounds left you by the rough, hard stone,

Or shove a live coal At you incontinently,

And you’ll jerk back then, ripped to the bare bone.’

‘The oil, Jacques, pray!’

‘Where is the money?’

‘Here in the belt I wear around my waist. ‘

‘You’re kind, sir, to pay For the luscious, new honey,

All for me and which you will never taste.’ 
”

There had been one other thing to find out. What about the three men who had accompanied him into the fort? Once outside, Conan might be able to do something for them, and I knew, the odds being what they were against even Conan himself escaping, that that was their only chance. Still he might refuse to leave without them. I had asked about them during the stanzas, and, to my great relief, his answer had been: “Later.”

” ‘Sweet Ann, let’s run To church for wedding;

Your father’s overjoyed that we are matched.

And when that’s done,

Then it’s ho! for our bedding

In our own fine house that Robert has thatched.’ 
”

For one of the few times in my experience I took no note of the applause. I remember giving two or three other songs, then I excused myself and pretended to be very busy with the wine. Though as a matter of fact I drank almost nothing. I had many things to think over in a very short time, and I wanted only solitary silence; but Gregory might start thinking about me if I abruptly took leave of the company. It was he himself who came to my rescue. He had an eye on the harvesting and sent his men to sleep early.

A
DOZEN
men, it turned out, were sharing the loft with me, but I got there first and gained the corner where my weapons were hidden. Those who straggled in after me had had enough wine on top of weariness to bring sleep suddenly. It would be a sound sleep, too, so that when I got ready to move none of them was likely to challenge me.

I lay on my back, open-eyed in the black dark, and methodically worked the problem over. I had pictured Conan as being in some convenient guardhouse out in the court, watched over by no more than one man at a time. Such a sentinel could conceivably be slugged in peace and quiet, but as it was there would be no such easy means of getting at my friend. Aside from the two who stayed in a lighted room with him—they were taking no chances, sure enough!—there would be men bedded down in the main room of the hall, my point of entry, who’d rise at a word from the guards to overwhelm me.

The only solution was to have the garrison’s attention otherwise and thoroughly occupied. Well, there was a means of doing that, though it would beget noteworthy dangers on its own account. After a while I was sure that the risk was worth it because there was no other way possessing even a smell of feasibility. Then I considered where to begin and concluded that I could do no better than to operate in the barn where I then was.

Well, now it was coming. I used one of my old tricks for handling myself, running over some lines of amusing poetry to clear my mind of doubts and hesitations, then I sat up. Snores muted the rustling of the hay as I felt along the wall carrying the two blades still wrapped in my cape in such a way that they wouldn’t rattle against each other. My harp I had left behind. If I survived Conan could buy me another; if not, its loss would be a matter of no more concern to me than anything else. I was too intent on the business in hand even to regret the destruction of a fine and prized instrument.

I felt as stealthily feral as my movements. One great thing about action, once it is thoroughly entered into, is its selfcontainment. It believes thoroughly in its power to complete itself. Nothing else seems possible, let alone logical.

By listening carefully to the snoring and heavy breathing, I avoided stepping on anybody, though I came near falling out of the loft when I reached the edge. A minute later I located the ladder, however, and descended to stand in the litter of hay on the floor below. I could see a little there, but neither my eyes nor my ears could detect a possible watcher. Soft-footing it to the door, I saw that the court looked deserted. There was no sign of anyone being awake, but I knew there were guards on the walls. I stole back.

It didn’t take long to make a pile of hay several feet high against the inside wall of the barn. The men above, I thought with hard humor, had better not sleep too soundly or they’d know all about Hell before they got there. Striking sparks to my tinder, I blew the glow to a flame.

The hay smoked heavily, then burst afire. I threw more on, and the blaze stretched, reaching up to the hay drooping down from the loft. One pendent wisp caught but dropped harmlessly. Another took fire and did not drop. The little flame crept upward, got a grip on the main bulk of the hay, and spread like something spilled. A moment later there was the crackling of burning wood, and I waited for no more.

As I ran from it I could hear a man coughing between drowsy curses. I spun when I had gone a few paces and made sure the glow was apparent from the outside. “Fire,” I yelled, running again.

“Where?”

“Look! It’s the great barn!”

“Oh, my God!”

“Fire!”

The watchmen shouted the dread word repeatedly as they came down from the walls. Possible danger from without was dwarfed by the archfoeman within. I hid in the shadow of the woodshed and watched them finish the rousing. There were frantic shouts from the barn itself now, and a frightened horse screamed horribly. The fire had eaten through the boards at its original starting point and was climbing up the outside.

As I glanced toward the hall again, men began scrambling out, each pausing for an instant for a look then dashing either for the barn or for the well. Gregory was one of the first, for I heard his angry voice yelling commands. I had little fear that any of the men who sped by would look my way. They had serious business on hand.