The Rope Dancer Read Free Page B

king now?”
    “I suppose we should have stopped at Sir Robert’s keep instead of riding ahead,” Telor said, dropping to the ground and resting his back against the shed wall. “Sir Robert might have been able to tell us whether it would be safe to travel past his neighbor’s keep.”
    The minstrel had deliberately ignored Deri’s bitter question. He understood it, but there was no answer he could give that would be of any help. Deri’s life had been destroyed by the sporadic war, which seemed as if it would never end. He had been the son of a rich yeoman and, though he was a dwarf, had been cherished by his parents and his siblings. Their love had saved him from being embittered by his deformity, and his strength and cleverness had won him respect (at the cost of a few broken heads) among the neighboring manors and villages. Those virtues plus the beauty of his face and a sweet temper (when he was not provoked) had even won him a willing bride. And then a battle had been fought right on his father’s manor, and no one was left alive but Deri—no family, no bride, no house, no land, no herds…nothing…only Deri himself, battered and broken but too strong to die.
    Telor had found him, dropped by the side of the road like discarded offal when his captors had decided he would not survive to be their plaything, and Telor had taken him up and nursed him back to life. But the worst of Deri’s fate was that he had no idea who had killed and burned all that had been his life. He did not even know whom to hate—except the king, who was unable to control his barons and had unleashed the unending war. There was nothing Telor could say to comfort Deri; whatever he could say had been said many times before.
    In addition, Telor felt uncomfortable uttering platitudes because his case was so different. His family was safe and prosperous, talented woodcarvers in the strong city of Bristol. A chartered city with a fine harbor, Bristol had little fear of any earl or king. She welcomed them all in peace, but if threatened, she closed her great gates, her strong artisans manned her high walls, her river gave her unending sweet water, and her ships brought her people food. Thus, impervious to assault or siege, Bristol protected her burghers—but to be sheltered by her strength one must be confined by it, and Telor found that confinement suffocating.
    Not that Telor objected to the walls as walls. He used them to symbolize the courtesies and rigid patterns of behavior that permitted the burghers to live in peace though they were crammed together in their close-packed houses. The bows, the smiles, the prescribed words that set neighbor at ease with neighbor woke a devil of mischief and rebellion in Telor. He was forever in trouble for rudeness, for misbehavior, and for leaving more profitable work to carve instruments that made music or, far worse, to make music himself. The rest of the family could make instruments too, but made them only on order, whereas Telor would willingly make nothing else.
    With one accord Telor’s family all bitterly regretted instructing Telor in the mysteries of fashioning those seductive pieces, but it was too late, and with marked relief Telor’s parents relinquished him to become an apprentice to Eurion, an old customer, a minstrel who had a steady circuit of castles and manors where he was warmly welcomed. It was a great loss of status to sink from a woodworker to a traveling minstrel, but Telor’s parents had begun to fear that if they did not allow him to sink to Eurion’s level, the boy would soon rise—to the top of the gallows. Even so, they did not cast him out; Telor was welcome to return to the bosom of his family when he was ready to settle down, be polite to his neighbors, and carve what he was ordered to carve. Thus, Telor did not roam the roads because he had nowhere to go; he sang for his supper by his own choice, and he felt ill at ease trying to comfort Deri—he, who had never lost