Song of the Gargoyle (17 page)

So Tymmon tried to explain that he was not a beggar and that Petrus and Dalia would not be asked to beg if they came with him, but the children only backed farther away.

“I heard you saying about begging to Dog, there,” he said, and then, narrowing his eyes even further, he went on, “And I heard you say about not enough money. How you going to get more money if you not be goin’ a-begging?”

“We do not beg,” Tymmon began. “We earn money by... His voice trailed off as he realized that the children would not understand what he was going to say, and even if they did they would never believe it. Instead he began to prepare the packs, and when all was in readiness he slipped the collar over Troff’s head and turned toward Petrus and Dalia, who were still watching warily. “Troff and I are going back into Nighmont now,” he said. “If you want to come, too, we will show you how we get our money.”

Petrus nodded slowly, but he moved no nearer, and all the way back into Nighmont he and Dalia followed at a safe distance. A distance great enough to prevent their being snatched and carried away to be starved and burned into professional objects of pity. Looking back at the two tiny scarecrows trudging through the deep dust, Tymmon suddenly shuddered.

“By all the saints in heaven,” he whispered. And when Troff looked at him questioningly, “It is not to be wondered at that they do not believe we mean them no harm.”

All the rest of the way into the village his mind was full of the horror of it, of children barely out of infancy who had already faced such terrible sorrow and need. And it was that horror no doubt that made him forget for a time that his own future was dangerous and uncertain. That he was pledged to a quest that certainly should not include two helpless children, and to a cause that left no room for pity.

Fortunately it was market day in Nighmont and the dusty square was aswarm with farmers and landholders as well as villagers. In a small open area near the booth of a tinsmith Tymmon pulled Troff to a stop. Although they had not performed since they had left Montreff, it was clear that Troff knew, and approved of, what they were going to do. The moment Tymmon raised the flute to his lips the gargoyle took his place beside him and raised his broad muzzle toward the sky. And before the first song was finished they were surrounded by an eager crowd of laughing and cheering villagers.

When Troff’s songs were finished, Tymmon’s solo, a lively ballad sung while accompanying himself on the rebec, was also well received, as was his brief exhibition of juggling and tumbling. But it was not to be wondered at that the villagers were most amazed and amused by the singing gargoyle. Amazed and amused even though they seemed quite ready to believe he was no more than a great, ugly dog. There was much cheering and clapping as he performed his deep bows. And when he circled among them with his pail he collected not only several small coppers but various bits of bread and cheese and other foodstuffs as well.

During the performance Tymmon had once or twice caught sight of two small raggedy figures among the audience, but later when the instruments were packed away and the crowd had dispersed, Petrus and Dalia were nowhere to be seen.

“I’m not surprised,” Tymmon told Troff as they left the village and headed north along the highroad. “And it’s just as well, actually. We’ve no right to take them with us into the danger we will probably face when we get to Austerneve. I must have been crazy to even think of it. The truth is, I just wasn’t thinking. It’s much better for everyone that they decided not to come with us. Don’t you agree?”

Troff stopped, looked back over his shoulder, sniffed the air, and said something that could have meant yes or no.

Tymmon shrugged. Well, perhaps Troff was uncertain whether they had been right to consider taking on the responsibility for two little orphans. But he himself was not. In fact, now that Petrus and Dalia were no longer there, staring up at him with their great hungry eyes, he could scarcely believe that he had forgotten himself so completely. He could not understand how he had forgotten the terrible nature of the quest on which he had embarked, and the vengeance he had sworn. Had even, for a short while, forgotten the anger and hatred that had burned in his heart since he had heard his father’s story. “I’ll not forget again,” he muttered to himself just as Troff once again stopped and, turning back, sat down in the middle of the road. Away to the south a dust cloud was rapidly approaching, and in its midst, two small scarecrow figures were racing at top speed with a stream of tattered rags flapping behind them.

“Y
OU SNEAKED OFF ON
us,” Petrus yelled, staggering to a stop in front of Tymmon and Troff. Dropping an armload of tattered and filthy rags on the ground, he clutched his heaving chest with both scrawny arms. For a moment he only gasped and sputtered, and when he once more began to shout, his funny creaky voice kept breaking into squeaks and squeals. “Dalia and me, we just gone to get our blankets and things and when we got back you gone off and left us. And you
said
you would take us with you. You be a liar, Boy.”

Grinning, Tymmon cowered backwards, pretending to be terror-stricken by the violence of Petrus’s attack. But then, seeing that Petrus was in no mood for game playing, he became serious. In a calm and reasonable tone he said, “But you said you would not come with me, Petrus. And I did look for you when the exhibition was over, but you had disappeared.”

Still gasping and squeaking, Petrus flailed his arms, beating the air in what seemed to be anger at his own breathlessness as well as at Tymmon’s desertion. “But we
told
you. We told you we be coming with you.”

“What?” Tymmon couldn’t believe his ears. “No, you did not. At the barn this morning you said you would never come with me, and...

“That was afore we knew about how you and Dog got money by singing and”—Petrus pantomimed the playing of a rebec—“and like that, ‘stead of begging,” Petrus interrupted.

“But you did not tell me you had changed your minds. You said nothing at all to me after we got back to Nighmont.”

“Well”—Petrus was still glaring but a little less fiercely—”maybe I did not. But Dalia did. Dalia told Dog. She told him when he come past us getting all that money in the pail.”

Tymmon suppressed a smile. “Dalia told Dog—Troff? But how could she? She cannot talk. I have not heard her say a single word.”

“She talks,” Petrus said. “She used to talk a lot before she saw what the lord’s men did to our father and mother. But now she only talks to me. Not with saying out loud, but just with her eyes, like—” He rolled his eyes expressively. Then he caught himself. “Oh! And to Dog there. Now she talks to Dog, too.”

Troff was staring off to the east watching some cattle in a distant pasture, obviously pretending not to be listening, but Tymmon could see that he was grinning. When Tymmon asked him if he knew that Petrus and Dalia were planning to come with them he said yes, he did. Bouncing with both front legs in the way he sometimes did to emphasize a point, he said yes, of course, he did. But when Tymmon asked, “Then why didn’t you tell me?” he only began to leap around playfully, making everyone scatter to keep from being trod upon, which meant he had no more to say on the matter.

And so it happened that suddenly, just as Tymmon was beginning to realize how lucky he was not to have two dirty and hungry little orphans on his hands, there they were. Sighing, he gathered up their worldly possessions, several ragged and dirty scraps of blankets and a few tattered shreds of clothing, wrapped them together, and tied the bundle on top of Troff’s pack. Then the four of them set off up the dusty road that led toward the North Countries and Austerneve.

They camped that night beside a stream just outside the walls of Bidborn, a small town built on the top of a stony outcropping at the edge of a range of wooded hills. Before taking their evening meal from Troff’s pack, Tymmon led Petrus and Dalia to the stream bank and insisted that they wash at least their hands and faces. They did so cautiously and sparingly, with Petrus complaining all the while that the water was cold and wet and was doing him serious and lasting harm. But he recovered quickly when the food appeared, and soon afterwards they both fell asleep, cuddled together in their pile of ragged blankets.

Long after the orphans, and Troff too, were sleeping soundly, Tymmon lay with his hands behind his head, thinking and planning and staring up at the branches of an oak tree as it made intricate inky splashes across the face of the moon.

He thought again, as he did every night, of the solemn oath he had sworn—to find and free his father and take revenge on his abductors, whoever they might be. And once again, as he had often done before, he tried to imagine who Black Helmet was and why he had come for Komus.

Was the huge knight in dark, unblazoned armor someone who had been angered by one of Komus’s songs or stories? Or perhaps some enemy from his distant past in Nordencor? It was impossible to even guess. Only one thing was certain, and that was that the answer to the mystery could only be found in Austerneve.

But soon, with the constant sound of Petrus’s wheezy breathing to remind him of problems nearer at hand, Tymmon found himself thinking more of the morrow and what it might bring. And when morning came he set his plans in motion.

“I am going into the town now,” he said firmly when the first rays of morning sun touched the treetops and Petrus and Dalia had begun to stretch and yawn. “I will return soon with food and other things.”

“No.” Petrus struggled out of his pile of rags and jumped to his feet. “You doan go off without us. Dalia and me coming too. You doan sneak off on us again.”

“I am not planning to sneak off,” Tymmon said, grinning. At least he grinned the first time he said it, but as he repeated the solemn promise again and yet again he did so with growing exasperation. No matter how firmly and positively he said it, Petrus only went on glaring and would not be convinced. Not, at least, until Tymmon suggested that Troff too would stay behind.

“Oh, that be all right then.” Petrus was suddenly completely reassured. “Rich people like you maybe sneak off from poor little orphinks, but not from their dog, I think. Not if they be a singing one, anyways, like Dog here.”

Tymmon couldn’t help laughing. “Rich people?” he said. “I am not a rich person.”

Petrus rolled his eyes knowingly. “Yes, you be, Boy,” he said. “We saw all those monies in Dog’s pail. Dinna we, Dalia?”

Tymmon didn’t bother to argue. It would have been useless, and besides he rather liked the idea that someone, even if it was only a poor little beggar, saw him as rich. So after making it clear to Troff that he must remain with the two children, he set off for the town, and when he returned some two hours later, his coin purse was empty and his pack was bulging.

“What you got there? What you got for us, Boy?” Petrus clamored as he and Dalia and Troff, too, danced around Tymmon.

“Wonderful things,” Tymmon said, grinning, as he unstrapped the heavy pack and lowered it carefully to the ground. “Sausages and cheese and bread and cherries. But first we are going to do magic. We are going to change you and Dalia from two little beggars into a noble prince and princess.”

What followed was nerve-racking and time-consuming, particularly the parts that involved water and soap. But at least this time the sun was bright and the air warm and dry. So Petrus’s prophecies of immediate death by chills and ague lacked the conviction they had carried the night before.

Sometime later, when the ordeal was over and Petrus and Dalia stood before Tymmon scrubbed and sheared and dressed in modest but respectable homespun, Tymmon inspected them critically and thoroughly before he grinned and said to Troff, “Well, perhaps not a prince and princess, but so greatly improved I am certain their old acquaintances back in Nighmont would not recognize them. Truly, I scarcely do myself.”

The soaked and scrubbed and trimmed Petrus, neatly dressed in leggings and tunic, and shod in wooden pattens, was indeed a transformation, but even more remarkable was the change in his tiny sister.

After trying for a long and painful half hour to get a comb through the tangled mat of Dalia’s hair, Tymmon gave up, and using the Spanish dagger as a razor, he cut most of it away. And when what remained was thoroughly washed it sprang up into a shining cap of ringlets that framed a visage that had somehow changed from that of a small wild beast to the wide-eyed face of a human girlchild. Human, or at least partly so, for the enormous eyes, wide cheekbones, and pointed chin produced a beauty that was somehow more elfin than babylike. Dressed now in a tiny gown of blue linen, she stared down at herself, ran her hand across her shorn head, and then, looking up at Tymmon, let her lips curve upward. It was the first time Tymmon had seen her smile. Shortly thereafter the two orphans, clumping awkwardly but proudly in their new and unaccustomed pattens, followed Tymmon and Troff up the hill and into the city.

Bidborn was a small town but obviously prosperous and strongly fortified, its high walls dropping down to sheer cliffs on two sides and protected on the others by a deep moat. Inside the walls the streets were well paved with cobblestones, and shops crowded each other along narrow streets and alleyways. Trudging along the busy streets, Petrus and Dalia stared in wonder at the two- and three-storied buildings, at the bustling crowds of people, and perhaps most of all at the many enticing wares displayed in the shops and market booths. Nudging Troff, Tymmon grinned and pointed to the entranced children.

“They’ve not seen anything like this before, I wager,” he whispered, and Troff grinned back and agreed. Then, pulling Tymmon after him, he suddenly trotted ahead to shoulder the spellbound orphans out of the way of a passing cart.

What with shepherding Dalia past booths of shawls and ribbons and pretty toys, and Petrus past anything that looked as if it could possibly be eaten, it was some time before they reached the small hostel where Tymmon had arranged for them to spend the night. The hostel’s owner, a woman of awesome size and dignity, seemed surprised and not at all pleased that Tymmon’s party included an enormous dog and two small children.