The Minstrel in the Tower (3 page)

Sun on his face woke him. He’d slept longer than he’d meant to. While he rubbed his eyes he looked around for his sister, but she was gone.

“Alice!” he shouted.

“I’m in here,” she answered. “Inside the tower. Come see it.”

Roger stood up to look at the tower from the outside. In daylight it seemed ancient. Its rough, weathered stones were furry with moss, and the peak of its cone-shaped roof had fallen in.
What could it have been used for
, he wondered.
A prison? A place to worship
moldy old gods? A defense against barbarians?

“Come on!” Alice called.

He picked his way over the remains of a wooden gate. Once it must have guarded the doorway to the tower, but it now lay rotting. Inside, he looked for his sister.

“I like it here.” Alice’s voice drifted down from above.

“What are you doing up there?”

A spiral stairway stood open and unprotected against the wall. If ever it had been enclosed in a shaft, the wood was long gone, but the stone staircase remained. The top step ended forty feet above ground.

Centuries before, the staircase had led to a floor that held archers, who’d shot arrows through narrow slits in the walls. Now only two thin boards remained between the top step and the wall, and Alice stood upon them.

“Come down this minute!” Roger yelled, his heart hammering.

“I won’t fall,” she told him. “I’m holding on to the window ledge. I can see really far from here, farther than from our sycamore tree at home.”

“Get down!” he called, trying to mask the fear in his voice. “Those boards might cave in under you!”

“Oh, all right!” With nothing to steady her, because there was no railing, Alice skimmed down the stairs. Around and around, down and down—Roger squeezed his eyes shut.

When she reached him, she said, “You didn’t give me a chance to tell you. From up there I could see someone coming through the forest.”

“Who?”

“Two people, I think. Maybe they’ll let you sing for our breakfast. I’ll run and ask them.”

Caution made Roger throw out his arm before Alice could reach the open doorway. “Wait! Let’s see what they look like first. Stay here and keep quiet.”

They heard branches crack, then men laughing and joking. “They sound jolly,” Alice whispered. She and Roger peered through the opening where the tower gate had once stood.

Two men walked into what had been the courtyard. Each carried a dead quail by the neck.

“We could get strung up for stealing game, Simon,” said one, a limping, filthy man.

“We’ve done lots worse things they could hang us for, Odo,” answered the other. He was a thin, bony fellow whose bottom teeth were missing. “Stealing game’s the least of it,” he lisped.

“Right you are, Simon. Haw!”

“Anyway, nobody bothers with this part of the forest,” Simon declared. “They’ve forgotten these old ruins. What a life we could live here, Odo! Undisturbed, like. There’s plenty of game in the woods. Give us a couple of servants to wait on us hand and foot, and we’d live like kings.”

“What’s this?” exclaimed Odo as he caught sight of the lute.

“Don’t know, but we can break it up for firewood.” Simon raised the lute by its neck to smash it against a rock.

“No!
Don’t break it! It’s mine!” Roger yelled. He dashed from the tower and grabbed the lute from Simon, who toppled to the ground in surprise. Before Roger could run away, Odo’s arm flashed around his neck, and Odo’s dagger pricked his throat.

“Leave my brother alone!” Alice screamed, hurling herself at them.

“By my whiskers, another one!” Simon exclaimed. He caught her in his long, skinny arms and held her straight out in front of him. Her feet flailed the air helplessly.

“This is the first time my prayers have been answered so swift,” said Simon. The words whistled through his missing teeth. “‘Give us a couple of servants,’ I said, and here they be! A fine pair of ragamuffins. All shabby and dirty, so they can’t belong to anyone.”

“We belong to ourselves!” Roger shouted. “Let us go!”

“We’ll set you both down, but don’t try and run,” Odo said. “You’re ours now. I always wanted a pair of servants.”

“By my toenails, won’t it be fun to give orders for a change, ’stead of always taking them!” cried Simon. “Boy! Hunt up some firewood. Girl! Pluck the feathers off those quail. Then cook them.” Simon winked. “That’s the way to treat servants, eh, Odo?”

“Right you are, Simon. Haw!”

Surely the men wouldn’t keep them as they were threatening to! As long as Odo waved that dagger, though, Roger didn’t intend to argue. While Alice plucked the birds, he gathered firewood, watching for a chance to speak to his sister.

“Bring your flint and help me start the fire,” Odo called to Simon. The two men busied themselves striking the blade of the dagger with the flint, and Roger moved closer to Alice.

“Let’s run,” she whispered.

“They’d catch us. The lute will slow me.”
He didn’t want to leave it, not yet. Not until he decided how much actual danger they were in. “Wait a while. We’ll see what happens.”

After the fire was lit Odo said, “Servant girl, turn those birds on the spit. Nice and slow, so they won’t burn.” He scratched his raggedy clothes as though he had fleas, and turned to Roger. “Servant boy, while the birds cook, you strum us a song with that tune-twanger of yours. A gallant song for the likes of us, eh, Simon?”

“Right you are, Odo. One about fine, noble fellows, such as you and me.”

“Haw!” laughed Odo.

Roger tried to remember a song about gallantry. Most of the verses his mother had taught him were love songs. Then he thought of the one she’d sung on the day they left home:

Simon’s jaw, with its missing teeth, dropped open. “Where did you learn that?” he demanded.

“From my mother.”

“Your mother! Who is your mother?”

“She’s just my mother. My father’s wife. My father is a Crusader.”

“The Crusades have been over for a long time,” Odo said.

Simon stared hard at Roger. Then, in a strange, slow, crablike motion, he circled the fire, never taking his eyes from Roger’s face. Closer and closer he came, staring all the while.

Roger scrambled backward, holding the lute, but Simon kept coming. Suddenly the man pounced. “Got you!” he cried. “Grab the girl, Odo!”

When Alice tried to run, Odo caught her ankles and tripped her.

“O-ho, Odo, my friend,” crowed Simon. “We’re going to live like kings after all. I’ve just figured out who these two are.”

“That ought to do it!”

The two men leaned one more log against the old gate. They had fitted it into the doorway and piled logs and rocks and brush and everything within reach against it, so it couldn’t be budged. The tower was sealed.

“Now, Simon, tell me why we’ve locked up those two,” Odo demanded. From inside, Roger and Alice could hear everything that was said.

“Ay, I will,” replied Simon. “Until a few years ago, I served a baron whose name was Lord Raimond. I might still be serving him
today, but he threw me out. Why? Because I stole one of his silver plates. Imagine! And him having so many.”

Inside the tower Alice whispered, “Lord Raimond! Did you hear him, Roger? He said Raimond!”

“Shhhh! I don’t want to miss anything!” Roger lifted a finger to his lips.

Simon added, “The baron had a sister called Lady Blanche. And that’s who those two are, in there. Her children.”

Alice clutched her brother’s hand.

Outside, Odo scoffed, “Those two ragamuffins? If they’re the children of a noblewoman, I’m Richard the Lion-Hearted.”

“Then you must be King Richard,” Simon answered. “Because by my eyelids I’ll take an oath that those two are Lady Blanche’s fledglings. ’Twas the song that tipped me off. She used to sing that very same verse to her brother, Lord Raimond. I remember the melody and her voice and the words. Even the lute looks familiar. I daresay she was playing that very one.”

Roger and Alice stared at each other. Blanche was their mother’s name.

“And when I took a good look at that boy,” Simon went on, “I saw Lady Blanche beneath the dirt on his face. The yellow hair. The blue eyes. The same broad forehead. He’s her image, he is.”

Roger dropped his head into his hands. It was true that he and his mother looked exactly alike. But if she was a noblewoman, why had they lived like poor serfs in a tiny cottage?

“What are they doing here in the woods, then?” asked Odo.

“Who can tell? The last I heard of Lady Blanche, she ran away. Seems the baron wanted her to marry a rich old count, and she wouldn’t do it.”

“So she ran off?”

“With a penniless young knight from a family of no importance. The baron was furious. He searched everywhere for her. Then, when the knight was killed at the battle of Acre, he searched again.”

Roger’s eyes closed. It was certain, then. Father was dead. Everyone knew it—even these strangers. He clasped his legs and squeezed his forehead against his knees as though pressure could push away the grief, but tears seeped through his eyelids anyway.

Simon went on. “Lord Raimond never found Lady Blanche. She vanished, like. But now…
now
…!” His voice rose with excitement. “We’ve discovered her two brats. They’ll lead us to her!”

“Right you are, Simon. Haw!” Then Odo sounded puzzled. “But what will we do when we find her?”

“Ask for ransom! He’ll pay for the brats!
And he’ll pay double for his sister! Our fortune is made!”

Odo burst forth with another “haw!” Then he added, “You’re a fine, smart fellow to think of this, Simon. We’ll guard them well.”

“By my knees, we will! And we’ll take our time to think up a foolproof ransom plan. Weeks, if need be. Those two inside will keep.”

Weeks! Roger’s heart sank even further.
Mother is so sick
.…Alice had the same thought. Her lips shaped the word
escape
. Roger nodded.

As the hours of the day ran out, they huddled together inside the stone walls, devising their own plan. When Odo passed roast quail and a waterskin through a hole in the barricaded door, Roger gave Alice his share.