Maze of Moonlight Read Free

and their turned-up shoes, the ones who play pick-a-back with the popes—there's two, you know.”
    “Two?”
    “Two popes. One for each side: black and white. But no one knows . . .” The beggar whinnied like a horse. “. . . which is which. Or which way the board is turned. And they won't until the end.”
    The men who had gathered to hear the performance drew back a little. The schism was not something about which to joke. It had been said that since Clement had been elected in direct opposition to Urban, not a soul had entered Paradise.
    Few saved, many damned. As though many would enter Paradise in any case!
    Pytor accepted a brimming tankard from the tapster, poked a thumb at the beggar. “Who is that, Ernest?”
    Ernest wiped his hands on his apron. “Nay, m'lord seneschal, I don't know. Hasn't said his name. Turned up this afternoon between nones and vespers and hasn't left. Otto gave him some bread and beer for the love of God, but he could surely use more.”
    And, true, the man's tattered clothing hung on a frame that was not much more than bones with enough flesh to keep them dangling. His face, where it was not covered with matted beard and hair sunbleached as white as a leper's arm, was burnt almost black by the sun; and his eyes, ringed with darkness, reflected the firelight with a feral madness that had made him the entertainment this rainy night.
    “I want to hear more about the bears,” someone called.
    “Do you hear that, beggarman?” said Walter. “We want to hear about bears.”
    “Bears? Ah-oo!”
    “Not wolves, idiot.” The turner gave him a shove that nearly sent him into the fire. “Bears.”
    “Bears,” said the beggar. “Bearsbearsbears . . . many bears . . . more bears than you've ever seen, master.”
    “Shut up and show us how bears dance.”
    The beggar hunkered and slouched and capered before the fire, now and again attempting a hoarse roar. Pytor drank his beer. Rain outside, and loneliness in Castle Aurverelle, and a master gone for over three years. The schism had riven the Church to its core, bad weather was threatening the estate with starvation next year . . . and the drunken laborers of Aurverelle had nothing better to do than to torment a daft old man.
    The tapster looked at Pytor and shrugged. Pytor shrugged back. The tapster went back to the counter. Over by the fire, someone had produced an old battered lute, and Walter played the pipe and tabor, and the music echoed and pounded in time to the beggar's dance.
    The merchant drinks, the student drinks,
    The lord drinks, and the lady too,
    The sweet girl drinks, and wencher drinks
    And so all drink, and drink again . . .
    But the beggar was thin and weak, and he could not play the bear forever. Soon, quite soon, he wavered and slumped onto a bench, covering his head with his hands. “Leave me, leave me,” he whimpered.
    “I'm tired. I want to go home.”
    “You're not through dancing, bear.”
    “Leave me. It's too close.”
    “Dance!”
    And Walter and two other men seized him by the arms and stood him on his feet again. The beggar capered for another moment, then collapsed.
    “Hey-nonny-no!” he wheezed faintly. “The fiends have me by the tail and the winds blow cold and cracked! The world is crooked, and who'll set it right?”
    Walter and his friends were reaching for the beggar again when Pytor stood up. “Enough,” he rumbled. “Enough. Leave the man alone.” In the sudden silence, he turned to the tapster. “Ernest, give him some supper and a place to sleep. Tell Otto to send the reckoning to the castle.”
    “It shall be done, Master Pytor.”
    The men by the fire sat back down with dark murmurs, but the beggar straightened up. Even from across the room, Pytor felt the glitter of his feral eyes, and he shuddered and finished his beer standing. No solace here. It would have been better had he stayed in Aurverelle and drunk himself to sleep in the hall outside the door to the baron's bedroom.
    He