The Minstrel in the Tower Read Free

crossbows,others bearing longbows. Then came hundreds of foot soldiers, with banners fluttering from their upraised lances.
    Father waited for the whole column tomarch by before he mounted his impatient steed and rode away. Watching him, Roger waved until every last Crusader disappeared over the edge of the hill. That was the last time he ever saw his father. He was six then.

    Now the tall, round tower loomed in front of him. Blacker than the night, it was an eerie shadow that pushed Roger’s doubts toward dread. Was his father alive or dead? Was Uncle Raimond real? With one arm across the curved body of the lute, he settled on the ground to wait for the night to pass.

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 worshipmoldy 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!”