The Truth-Teller's Tale (17 page)

I had to admit I was impressed. Most people failed to notice those slight variations until they were pointed out, and even then they could not remember which twin was which. “We favor our opposite hands, too,” I said, holding up my left hand while Adele extended her right.

“Still, that's not much help for a man who comes across you suddenly and tries to figure out which one you are,” the dancing master said in a slightly dissatisfied voice. “How do people tell you apart?”

Adele, as always, was highly amused by the possibility of confusion. “They can ask us our names,” she suggested.

“And those names are?”

“I'm Eleda. She's Adele,” I answered. “But sometimes Adele answers to my name. I never answer to hers.”

The dancing master divided a look between us again, seeming thoroughly intrigued. He was the sort of man who liked a puzzle, I supposed, and there couldn't have been too many puzzles to solve on the wet road to Merendon. “So you must have very different personalities as well,” he speculated.

“Very,” I said rather shortly. Adele merely offered him her mysterious smile.

“Hmmm,” the dancing master said. “I wonder if we will be here long enough to sort you out?”

“I don't mind confusing them,” Alexander said. “They're both very pretty girls.”

This made me smile and Adele laugh. “So what brings you to Merendon?” I asked, just to have something to say.

“I thought we already said. The famous ball at Mr. Karro's house.”

I tilted my head a little, my senses alert. True—and yet not entirely. “There must be important balls in Wodenderry during the summer season,” I said. “Why not stay there and run your lessons?”

The two men exchanged rueful glances. “There was—a reason—we needed to escape the city,” the dancing master said at last. “Something quite minor, you understand, but—potentially unpleasant. Merendon seemed just far enough away to provide us a place to . . . relax. Think things over. Decide our next course of action.”

Adele was nodding, but I frowned a little. It was clear he was not being completely honest, and yet he really hadn't said much of anything, so it was hard to judge. My quick suspicion was that Alexander had romanced a young noblewoman and an irate father wanted them out of the city. “Well, I hope our little town lives up to your expectations,” was all I could think to reply.

Alexander grinned. “It has so far.”

I didn't have a chance to respond to that. Father returned at that moment, a sum of money written on a piece of paper. “This is the price we've come up with,” he said, showing the dancing master. “It covers your own meals as well as refreshments that might be offered to your patrons. Is it agreeable to you?”

The dark-haired man barely glanced at the figure and thrust a hand into his breeches pocket. “Most agreeable. How much of it would you like in advance?”

“The first week,” my father said firmly.

The dancing master produced a roll of gold coins. “This should cover us. If you find we are more expensive than you bargained for, talk to me again at the end of the week and we'll discuss the matter.”

Such open-handedness was unheard-of among our guests. I could see my father wishing he had asked for more money and then silently admonishing himself not to be greedy. Before he could say anything, our mother came hurrying up with the guest book in her hand. “Here, which of you would like to sign the book?” she asked. “And I'm sorry, I didn't catch both your names.”

“I'm Alexander,” the blond young man said, bowing from the waist as he sat in the overstuffed chair. I could only imagine how gracefully he would perform such a maneuver if he were standing and really trying to make a good impression.

“I'm Gregory, and I'll sign your register,” said the dancing master, taking the book from my mother's hand.

I was staring at him, but he did not notice. His head was bowed over the page as he signed his name with a bold flourish. I could see the word
Gregory
taking shape only seconds after the syllables had come left his mouth. But every instinct in my body told me that he was lying, and that that was not his name at all.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I would say that it was barely noon the next day before every single resident of Merendon had heard the news about the dancing master and his apprentice. And this was even before my father and the man who called himself Gregory had hand-lettered a sign and attached it to a stake in the front lawn. “Available here: DANCING CLASSES, first come, first served.” By evening of that first day, we had two dozen residents signed up for the first week of classes and more who had come to inquire. It was clear the dancing master and his apprentice were going to be a rousing success.

Roelynn was one of the first to stop by. “Dance instructors from Wodenderry,” she breathed in a voice of undiluted delight. “But how utterly thrilling. And they've come to Merendon because of my father's ball! At last I have a reason to be grateful for my father's ostentation. I must sign up for classes.”

Adele glanced over at her. “I hardly think you need them. You're a better dancer than anyone in Merendon.”

Roelynn laughed. “But I
want
them. Think how much fun! And there will be no problem convincing my father they're necessary. He would not want me to be embarrassed by being less skillful than the young women from Wodenderry who are coming to town for the ball.”

Indeed, the very next afternoon Roelynn returned carrying a roll of gold coins to pay for her lessons and bearing instructions from her father: She and Micah were both to take lessons with the new arrivals. But they were to have their own private sessions that were not to be intruded on or observed by any of the lesser townspeople.

“Though I'm
not
twirling around your parlor every day for two weeks in my brother's arms,” Roelynn told us with a little sniff. “So one of you will just have to come in and work with Micah, since I can't imagine the dancing masters will want to take a turn with him.”

“We'd be happy to help out any way we can,” I said very gravely, though I was laughing inside. Adele, who could always control her features perfectly, seemed to show the faintest pink. “When do your lessons start?”

“Next week, in the afternoon,” Roelynn said. “Better buy yourself some dancing shoes.”

So it came about, several days later, that Roelynn and Alexander, Adele and Micah, and Gregory and I formed three sets of couples to tread out the figures of the waltz in my parents' parlor. If that had not occurred, I often ask myself, would everything else have followed? Would the events of Summermoon have unfolded differently, less dramatically, had we never paired off to practice the minuet, the quadrille, the country reels? Impossible to know, of course. I tend to give all the blame to the polonaise.

 

 

In the days before Adele and I began to take our dancing lessons, we became quite familiar with the routines that governed the parlor, now empty of all its furniture. A group of young women (and occasionally a young man or two) would arrive a few minutes before their scheduled hour and stand giggling in the hall. Adele and I would take their hats and offer them refreshments and usher them into the room when it was ready. Gregory would greet everyone with warm enthusiasm; Alexander would manage to bestow a private smile on each blushing girl. First they would review the steps that had been covered in the previous lesson, then they would demonstrate the movements that were to be learned this day. Finally, one of them would wind up the large, ornate music box and the whole group would begin to dance.

I had wondered, till I first heard the tinny tinkling of that box, who was going to supply the music for the lessons. The inn had no piano or harp, and none of us could play an instrument, anyway. Unless Alexander or Gregory planned to sing aloud while they went through the figures of the dance, I could not imagine how they expected to find their beat. But the music box was a delightful little invention. It came with ten or twelve long cylinders of metal, each one of them capable of producing a different tune. Once the cylinder was inserted and the box was wound up, the music would play for a full two minutes. I swear, I could never get that music out of my head, even when I left the inn to run errands. My dreams were haunted by those light, merry tunes, made no less appealing by the strange acoustics and metallic precision. Even in the days before I knew the formal steps, my feet were engaged in dancing. It was that kind of music. It was that kind of summer.

Within two days, it felt as if Alexander and Gregory had always lived at the inn. I'm sure that was because, for noble folk, they seemed most unpretentious. Everything pleased Gregory, and most things made Alexander smile. They were polite to my mother, respectful to my father, and completely at ease with Adele and me. They didn't flirt with us, exactly—they treated us more like mischievous little sisters who could be counted on to enliven any situation.

As you might imagine, Adele responded more favorably to such treatment than I did.

It was not long before Adele and Alexander, in particular, developed a bantering relationship that delighted them both. I was cooking in the kitchen one day while Alexander sat in the dining room and Adele brought him various ales to try with his dinner. “These are all good,” he said, sounding genuinely appreciative. “Better than much of the beer I've been served in Wodenderry. Does your father brew any of it?”

“No, but the supplier has been a friend of my father's since they were boys.”

“Well, I'll take a glass of the lager, and Greg will probably prefer the stout,” Alexander said. “I have to thank you for allowing me to sample them.”

“Of course.”

A pause. “Now which sister are you?” Alexander asked cautiously.

No hesitation. “Eleda.” I looked up from my frying pan and stared at the door in some resentment, not that either of them could see me.

“The left-handed one? Write your name for me.”

A laugh. “No, I'm Adele.”

“The devious one.” A note of satisfaction in his voice. “I thought so.”

The softest voice imaginable. “Devious, sir? How cruel.”

“Oh, well, if we're to talk of cruelty, let's discuss lying to poor weary travelers who try in good faith to learn the identities of their hosts.”

“I would think dancing all day would exhaust you more than trying to learn four simple names.”

This time he laughed. “Dancing all day with blushing, giggling, smiling, beautiful young girls? You must have a strange idea of the ways of young men if you think that's a tedious chore.”

“For some men it would be torture.”

“Well, I suppose I am more dissolute than most.”

He was not, though. Dissolute, I mean. I never saw him or Gregory take more than two glasses of ale at any one meal, and they didn't go out carousing in the evenings at the excellent pubs of Merendon. They often played games of cards or chess in the dining room (there being no place left to sit in the parlor), and then retired relatively early to their rooms. While they might have flirted outrageously with the young women who came for lessons, they did not seem to be bent on seduction. They appeared, in fact, to think of very little except dancing.

During this first week before our own lessons began, Adele could think of very little except how to trick Alexander. She spent hours up in our room practicing writing my name with her left hand, but she never mastered the skill well enough to deceive anybody. If Alexander commented on some item of clothing I'd worn, Adele would be sure to put it on the very next day. If he was within view and someone called my name, she would turn and respond. If I was nowhere in sight, she would ask, “Where's Adele?” Once we had explained to the two of them our roles as Safe-Keeper and Truth-Teller, she would go sit under the chatterleaf every time she had a free moment.

I don't know if Alexander was ever truly fooled, but he pretended to be often enough to make them both erupt into gales of laughter. For myself, I could not understand what was so funny, and I spent much of those first few days seething with a silent irritation.

Gregory seemed to find my anger as amusing as Alexander found Adele's antics. He was coming in one day as I was flouncing out, having overheard my sister tell our guest that it was impossible for her to speak a lie. “Well! You're in a hurry,” Gregory observed, holding the door for me as I stalked out to fetch more wood for the kitchen stove. “What's put such a scowl on your face?”

“Irrational behavior,” I said shortly, and headed for the woodpile. He followed me, which surprised me, and loaded up his own arms with fuel. No guest had ever done such a thing before.

“How much do you need?” he asked. “Is this enough?”

“Yes—plenty—thank you,” I stammered. He followed me back into the house, too, and arranged the logs precisely in the carrier.

Then he pulled up a chair at the kitchen table and seemed prepared to sit and talk. “So who's being irrational?” he asked. “I don't suppose you could spare a cup of tea, could you? I'm thirsty.”

I could hardly tell him to get out of the kitchen, though I couldn't imagine why he would want to sit there and converse with me. So I set the kettle on to boil and got out one of the stained old earthenware cups we used just for family. If he was going to sit in the workers' quarters, he was not going to be treated like a guest.

“My sister,” I fumed. “Playing games with your apprentice.”

Gregory laughed softly. “I think my apprentice quite enjoys the games.”

“But it's so ridiculous!” I exclaimed. “Why would that be any fun at all? Who would want to pretend to be someone she's not?”