Song of the Gargoyle (12 page)

“I thank you, sir, for your timely warning. I can see that it is useless for me to remain here.”

“And which way will you be a-going?” the man asked.

“South. I will go to the south.”

The old man nodded thoughtfully before he spoke. “Yes, it be well for you to go southward. There be the city called Montreff a few days’ journey to the south. Montreff be a great walled city where there be merchants and craftsmen who might need a willing worker.”

So Tymmon thanked the old man for his advice and was turning away when a thin old hand reached out to stop him.

“Wait, boy,” the old man said, and digging into a leather pouch that hung at his belt, he pulled out a small loaf of bread and thrust it into Tymmon’s hands. “Take it,” he said, and when Tymmon tried to protest, he went on. “No, no. It be much too hard and stale for my weak old teeth. Take it and away with you.”

Later that night, just as twilight faded into, darkness, Tymmon and Troff came across a deserted farmyard where the remains of a tiny cottage sagged earthward under a broken roof. Finding a fairly dry spot in a corner, Tymmon opened his pack, spread his blanket, and then carefully cut the loaf of bread into two pieces. Troff’s portion was gone in a moment, but Tymmon ate his very slowly. It was, as the kind old man had said, stale and hard, but it had been a long time since anything had tasted so rare and wonderful.

I
T WAS MIDAFTERNOON WHEN
Tymmon and Troff came out of a narrow valley into a broad plain and saw before them the walled city of Montreff. Dark against a bold blue sky, it sat like a crooked crown on top of a sprawling range of hills, its steep stone walls soaring up to end in an elaborate trimming of battlements, turrets, and towers. A winding road, starting on the valley floor, led upward, twisting and turning like a great snake.

Tymmon, who had never seen such a large city, stopped and stared, gasping in amazement. “Look, Troff, look there, ahead of us. The city of Montreff.”

Troff glanced briefly with little show of interest, and flopped down in the dust at the side of the road. Looking up at Tymmon accusingly from the tops of his eyes, he sighed deeply. He was tired, he said, and hungry, and they had walked much too far.

Tymmon regarded him pityingly. The gargoyle’s feet and legs were caked with dirt, and his ribs stood out sharply beneath his gray-brown hide. “I know,” Tymmon told him, “but we are almost there now. Come on. Just a little farther.” He tugged gently on the lead, Troff struggled to his feet, and they plodded slowly on along the dusty road.

It had been several days—Tymmon had lost track of exactly how many—since they left the village of Bondgard. And in that time they had walked endlessly and eaten but little. Only an occasional scrap—a bit of wormy meat thrown out by a fellow traveler, some bread donated by a kindly village woman, and the one good meal which Tymmon had been able to earn by helping to build a farmer’s stone fence. Not to mention, and it would be best not to mention to anyone, a fine fat chicken that Troff had somehow managed to acquire in the midst of a dark night when they were camped not far from a small village.

Tymmon had, of course, scolded him soundly and had at once broken camp and moved on. But he had taken the chicken with him, and some hours later, in the midst of a small woods, he and Troff had shared a delicious chicken dinner.

But on this last day they had eaten almost nothing, and for some hours Tymmon had been barely able to force himself to move one foot ahead of the other, and now it seemed to be hope alone that was giving him the strength to keep moving. Hope that the city on the hill would somehow provide him and Troff with food and rest and shelter.

On the last leg of the journey, up the steep winding road to the great gate, their pace slowed even more. Other travelers, hurrying to reach the gate, began to stream past them. Now and then someone, a priest riding a donkey, two gypsy children running behind their family’s cart, a well-dressed gentleman on a fine strong mule, glanced curiously in their direction. But for the most part they were ignored, except at one point when a passing group of peasant women noticed Troff—and reacted only by pointing and giggling. Tymmon found himself glaring after them and saying under his breath, “Silly women. Too ignorant to recognize an enchanted creature when one appears before your very noses.” A few minutes later, however, when he and Troff arrived at the great gate with its flanking guard towers, he was glad enough that they were able to pass by unrecognized and unnoticed.

Inside the high walls the city of Montreff, like a gigantic beehive, swarmed with close-packed activity. Narrow curving streets crossed and recrossed, winding between tall stone buildings in a crowded and confusing maze. Small shops of every description spilled their goods out through doors and windows, almost into the right of way. And watchful shopkeepers kept an eye out for thieves while they hawked their wares to the passing crowd.

And people were everywhere. Every kind of human being bumped elbows with every other—troops of running and shouting children, finely dressed members of the nobility in litters or on horseback, rugged peasants in homespun smocks and gaiters, some leading trains of heavily laden mules or donkeys, sober well-clad merchants and their proudly plump wives. And here and there a whining beggar, pale-faced, thin, and ragged.

As Tymmon made his way through the crowds he kept tight hold on the rope collar around Troff’s neck, and tried to keep between him and the nearest passersby. But if he had feared what a gargoyle’s reaction would be to such a pressing horde of humans, his worries appeared to be unfounded. Troff still plodded silently beside him, with low-hung head and drooping tail. Now and then his eyes lit up eagerly, once when a farmer’s cart passed with a load of squawking chickens, and again at the sight of a pack of hounds led by a huntsman. But for the most part he seemed to take little interest in the hubbub around him.

From time to time Tymmon spoke to him, saying, “It’s all right, Troff. They mean no harm.” Or “I know, old friend. Too many people. But you are behaving very well.” At other times, when someone pressed near looking at the gargoyle with curiosity or concern, he would pat Troff’s head and say loudly, “Good dog, Troff. Stout fellow,” as he had often heard the Austerneve kennel master speak to one of King Austern’s hounds.

Sometimes when Tymmon spoke to him, Troff would roll his great sad eyes, but he said nothing, maintaining a doglike silence just as Tymmon had told him that he must.

As they wandered through the crowded streets, Tymmon kept his eyes open for an establishment that might have use of a willing worker. He stopped first at a butcher’s, where the owner took one look at Troff and screamed at them to remove themselves immediately from his premises. He tried next at an inn, where the manager, a large man with a huge head covered by a bush of curly red hair, listened to him kindly enough and then said that his own five sons were more than enough to do all the work that needed to be done, and eat up all the profits as well, without taking on two more mouths to feed, “And one of them of truly prodigious size,” he added, looking at Troff.

A silversmith came next, and then, in rapid succession, a baker (at whose shop the smell of fresh-baked bread so flooded Tymmon’s mouth that he could scarcely speak), a shoemaker, a weaver, and a maker of pots and pans. Some sent them away loudly and angrily and some were kinder, but they were all firmly certain that a dirty, ragged, and hungry-eyed boy and an enormous dog could be of no use to them.

The sky was reddening at sunset when Tymmon and Troff came into the large open square in front of the cathedral. At the top of a wide flight of stairs the huge bronze doors stood open. A trickle of people were making their way up and down the stairs, penitents heading for or coming from the confessionals, or supplicants on their way to pray before the shrines of their favorite saints. At the edge of the wide entryway a group of beggars crouched; a filthy old man with a twisted leg, several ragged children, and two gypsy women with babies in their arms. Tymmon shrugged out of his pack, sat down on the bottom step, and pulled Troff down beside him. For a time he only watched. Watched the passing crowd, and most of all the beggars, wondering if he was close enough to starvation to stifle his pride and reach out as they were doing, begging in a high-pitched voice for alms for the poor.

As he watched, a bitter and painful smile twisted his lips and he leaned forward, burying his face in his arms. To be a beggar. He, the son of a wellborn man. Of a man who, in truth, had chosen to live as a lowly court jester, but who had been born into a noble family. And now he, who had scorned his father for choosing the life of clown and minstrel, was to be forced to sink to the most degrading station of all—that of a common beggar.

A raw and burning tightness gripped his throat and his eyes were beginning to flood when he became aware that Troff was on his feet and moving about. Tightening his hold on the lead, he raised his head to see that Troff was pawing at the pack that lay at their feet.

“What are you doing?” Tymmon’s voice was angry. The anger was mostly at himself for his childish and useless tears, but Troff lowered his head and rolled his eyes guiltily. “There is no food in the pack,” Tymmon went on in a gentler tone. “There is nothing there that is of any use... He paused suddenly. After a moment’s thought he himself turned to the pack and began to untie its bindings.

“Troff,” he said eagerly, “you are right. Perhaps there is something here that might be of use—if we could sell it. Something that we could sell for enough to buy at least a bit of bread.”

There was, of course, the Spanish dagger. That would bring by far the most, but it also might bring suspicion and even worse. What if the buyer accused Tymmon of stealing—as well he might, since a dirty, ragged boy could not have come by such an expensive object legally. No. It would have to be something else.

Not the dagger. And no, not the cap. He could not sell Komus’s cap. And besides, who would want to buy such a thing? That left the tinderbox, the knife, the ax and—the flute. The flute. Of all his meager possessions the flute was perhaps the least necessary.

Taking the old flute, so beautifully carved of dark satiny wood, out of the pack, Tymmon held it in both hands, running his fingers along its familiar surface. He could not recall exactly when his father had given it to him, he had been so young at the time. But he remembered well how proud and delighted he had been when, as a child of four or five, he had several times been allowed to entertain the king’s noble guests by his playing. How he had played at the wedding banquet when the king’s son, Prince Mindor, had married the lady Hanna, at the christening of their baby daughter, and at other grand celebrations. He could even remember some of the tunes he had played. Slowly, lost in memory, Tymmon raised the flute to his lips and began to play.

It was a slow tune that he had chosen. Sweet but sad, and there was a recurring refrain that clung in the mind, bringing with it a soft and yearning melancholy. Tymmon let the music flow out from his heart and closed his eyes against the tears that arose again, this time from the music’s bittersweet lament. He played the song through to the end and began again, but when he came to the refrain, the sweet, low notes of the flute were joined by another, wilder and more discordant, sound. As he had so often done in the forest, Troff was singing along with the music.

Somehow Troff’s singing made the threat of tears even greater, and Tymmon was forced to keep his eyes shut as he went through the song again. And again at each repetition of the refrain, Troff joined in. When the last note of the second playing drifted away to silence, there was another sound. A murmuring that came from very nearby. And when Tymmon opened his eyes he saw that he and Troff were surrounded by a small group of people, two noble ladies with their maids and attendants, and a tall old man dressed in a long, dark robe. As Tymmon stared in astonishment the murmur grew, one of the ladies began to clap her hands, and soon the others were clapping also.

“Bravo, lad,” the tall man said. “You are a gifted musician. And your large companion here is obviously gifted too.”

For a moment Tymmon was too astounded to do more than blurt out a stammering “Thank you, sir.” But when the lady who had begun the clapping asked for another tune, “Perhaps something more cheerful this time?” his mind regained its usual keenness.

“Gladly, my lady,” he said, and lifting the flute, he began another tune, a lively, high-pitched melody. One that, in the past, had brought a quick response from Troff. And Troff did sing again, this time in short, sharp bursts, quite unlike his earlier mournful wailing. And while he played, Tymmon watched his audience with growing excitement.

The tall old man listened smilingly and the ladies and their attendants seemed delighted, the ladies covering their smiles daintily, while two or three of the maids were almost collapsing in fits of giggling laughter. Before the piece was ended others had joined the group of listeners, and a sizable crowd had begun to form around the ragged boy and the great scruffy beast at the foot of the cathedral steps. As Tymmon went on playing, the crowd continued to laugh and clap, and many of them, as they went away, dropped a coin or two onto the cobblestones near Tymmon’s feet.

It was only a little more than an hour later when, after stopping to do some very important shopping, Tymmon and Troff arrived back at the inn where the red-haired manager had turned them away in a kindly manner. But this time they came only to ask for a place to sleep. They found the innkeeper presiding over the large common room of the inn.

“I have money now,” Tymmon said quickly at the large man’s questioning frown.

“And where did you get this money, lad?” The innkeeper’s tone was still kindly but his eyes had narrowed suspiciously. “I will have no thieves spending the night in my inn.”

“No, no,” Tymmon said. “Troff and I—Troff is my dog here—Troff and I earned the money by playing the flute—and singing.”

The red-haired man’s eyes narrowed further. “You and your dog played the flute—and sang?”