My Swordhand is Singing Read online

  Don’t get involved, was what his father would have said, Peter knew that. He decided to take his father’s advice for once.

  “Father Daniel, I’ve come to collect money. We brought you two loads last week.”

  “You did bring me two loads, but then there was a funeral to pay for.”

  “What has that to do with us?”

  “The woodcutter was your friend. Since there was no one else to pay for the funeral, I’m going to take it from what I owe you. I will pay you for one load of wood only.”

  “He was no more our friend than he was yours!” Peter said angrily. “Someone from Koroceni ought to pay.”

  “Well, you go and find someone from Koroceni and I’ll happily take their money for the funeral.”

  “That was no funeral anyway,” Peter said, knowing he was speaking rashly.

  Daniel opened his door, then turned, pointing a long finger at Peter.

  “Be careful what you say. He was lucky he got buried at all. We did our best for him. You should pray that it is enough!”

  He made to go inside and was shutting the door when Peter stepped forward and stopped it from closing with one strong hand.

  “Father,” he said, as firmly as he could. “Our money.”

  Daniel glared at him.

  “One load only.”

  Peter nodded. He could see he was not going to get any more from the crooked priest.

  “Wait there,” Daniel said, and Peter obeyed, but kept one foot inside the door. He and his father had been cheated too often for him to be careless about things like that.

  The priest returned and grudgingly placed the few coins in Peter’s hand.

  “Take my bucket back to Teodor,” he said. “Tell him I need a little more. Tell him we all need more tar.”

  Peter stepped back from the door and picked up the bucket from the snow. He shoved it into Daniel’s hands.

  “Tell him yourself. I have money to collect.”

  6

  The Dulcimer’s Melody

  Peter stalked away across the square, immediately regretting his confrontation with the bad-tempered priest. It was the sort of thing that had kept them on the move all his life. Never settling anywhere, never belonging with others. Peter might not have liked Tomas’s odd choice of a permanent home, but he was simply glad they had finally come to rest. What they needed now was to avoid trouble.

  Peter heard them before he saw them. Their music drifted ahead of their caravans. Gypsies.

  Three caravans and an open wagon rolled into the square, and people stopped what they were doing to watch. The caravans were brightly painted in yellows and reds—the canvas of their rounded roofs covered in strange, foreign swirls of color. Set against the dull gray-brown walls of the houses, the Gypsies’ appearance became even more exotic, and the villagers were entranced.

  The first caravan was pulled by a bay mare and driven by a tall, strong man with long black hair that he wore in a ponytail. On top of his head was a tiny round hat, and on his lips a smile, not a broad one, but one that looked as if he knew things.

  The music came from the back of the open wagon, where four musicians played. There were two fiddlers and a man with a shallow drum. Next to the drummer sat a man with a dulcimer, which he played with miniature metal hammers. That was what Peter had heard first, an unearthly sound that spoke of other places and other times.

  The four musicians sat in the four corners, but there was a fifth person in the wagon. She stood up as she began to sing, and her voice lifted gently above the music and floated around the square. Up to this moment, Peter had not recognized the tune, so exotic was the sound of the dulcimer and the drum, with the fiddles wavering on top. But there was no mistaking it as the girl’s voice picked out the familiar melody of the Miorita.

  “Tell not a breath of how I met my death;

  Say I could not tarry; I have gone to marry

  A princess—my bride is the whole world’s pride.”

  A princess. Peter was transfixed. The girl was maybe just a few years older, but Peter knew she was very different from him. Even at this distance he could see her pride, her confidence. She stood tall, easily countering the rocking of the wagon with the sway of her hips, where she rested her hands, fingers splayed. Her head was up, her raven hair falling in ringlets across her shoulders.

  Once again Peter struggled with the song. It made no sense to him. He still couldn’t understand why the shepherd behaves the way he does. He hears he’s going to be killed by the other shepherds, maybe jealous of his youth, or his handsome looks. So much, so easy. But then he does nothing. He doesn’t run away, or hide. He doesn’t fight. He accepts his death, and concocts that story for the lamb to tell his mother. That he married a princess from some distant land. Peter, who had never known his mother, could nonetheless understand wanting to protect a loved one from the painful truth. But he couldn’t understand anyone’s accepting his own murder so readily. Unless maybe it was the only way to such great beauty.

  Such beauty as the cosmic princess from the song—

  Suddenly Peter was aware that the Gypsy girl was looking straight at him, fixing him with a stare that was powerful, yet at the same time utterly devoid of emotion. He was unable to look away, and now the three caravans and the wagon pulled to a halt in the center of the square, and the musicians struck up a different, livelier tune, one that leapt to the beat of the drum. It was an instrumental piece, and the girl sat down in the wagon, no longer looking at Peter, though he could do nothing but look at her.

  “I hope you don’t think she’s more beautiful than me?” said a voice behind him.

  He turned to see Agnes looking up at him, smiling.

  Even as he spoke he knew she had only been joking, yet some foolishness inside answered for him.

  “No, no,” he said quickly. “Of course not. I was just admiring the song, that’s all.”

  Agnes stopped smiling.

  “It was the song you were admiring, was it?”

  Peter shuffled awkwardly. He looked down at Agnes, her short brown hair framing that pretty round face, those gray eyes and that little nose.

  “How are you, Agnes? How’s your mother? I haven’t seen you for a while.”

  “That’s because you come to the village only when it suits you.”

  “Agnes, I’d come more often,” Peter stammered. “I’d come to see…”

  He stopped; he didn’t have the courage to say it.

  “I know,” Agnes said, and with a jolt in his heart Peter thought she had guessed what he was about to say. But she hadn’t. “You’d come more often if only you weren’t so busy, if only your father let you, if only you had the money.”

  “Don’t, Agnes,” Peter said. “That’s not fair. You don’t know what it’s like.”

  He’d said the wrong thing.

  “Don’t I?” she cried, her voice high and uneven. “Father died less than a month ago, Mother’s stayed in her bed ever since. I have all the work to do and I must look after her too, and you think I don’t know what it’s like?”

  She turned and hurried away.

  “Agnes,” Peter called. “Wait! Please?”

  People were staring; he ran after her for a few steps, then faltered.

  “Agnes,” he said quietly, but she had gone. He could tell the air what he wanted to say, but what was the point?

  He turned and looked at the Gypsies again. A crowd had gathered, and some were even throwing a little money into a hat that a child was taking around.

  Peter smiled bitterly. It would not be too strong to say he was unsettled by the Gypsies, but he felt some empathy with them. Here were the villagers, happy to listen to their music, happy even to pay for it; yet there was a contradiction. Peter knew that the Gypsies would not be allowed to stay in the village overnight but would have to pitch somewhere outside it when darkness fell. They were tolerated, not trusted.

  He understood how that felt, and more besides. Something about the Gyp
sies spoke directly to Peter’s heart.

  Night was falling as he trudged toward home through the snow. As he walked, his pockets jingled with the money he had collected. Now all he had to do was keep Tomas from drinking it all, as well as explain why the priest had paid for only half his wood.

  Should he tell his father there were Gypsies in the village? He thought better of it. He could see his father’s look of indifference already, and besides, he felt something for them. If his father poured scorn on them the way he poured scorn on everything else, it would be one more thing to have happy dreams about that Peter would have lost. One more thing to push them apart.

  Like the box. It was one of Peter’s earliest memories, and it was a painful one. His father had a long wooden box that had always been with them, but Peter had never seen inside it. Wherever they had been, wherever they had lived, the box had always been there. Tomas always tucked it away out of sight under his mattress, and though Peter couldn’t remember, he knew Tomas must once have told him never to open it.

  As Peter had grown, so had his curiosity. One day it got the better of him. He’d been about to open the box when his father came into the room. Tomas thrashed Peter so hard that every night for weeks afterward he woke from the pain. But Tomas also did something worse.

  On the shelf by Peter’s bed sat the wooden goose Tomas had carved the day he gave his son his knife. Tomas snatched the carving from the shelf and threw it on the floor, then crushed it with his boot. Then he threw the pieces into the fire.

  To this day, Peter resented it. What could be so important that Tomas had to keep it from him? The box was like his life, as far as Peter could see—something he had no control over, something shut away, not to be talked about, full of secrets and riches he must not explore.

  Shutters barred every window as Peter walked out of Chust, but he could hear the sound of singing from every home he passed. Another form of protection, for everyone knew you should sing on St. Andrew’s Eve to keep evil away.

  Peter shrugged. It was the first night of the year, when evil was loosed on the world, and all the villagers had to protect themselves with were tar and singing.

  Above his head he suddenly heard the beat of wings and then the honking of geese. He looked up to see the birds streaming their way across the sky like a living arrowhead.

  “Very late,” Peter whispered to them. “Very late to be heading south.”

  But at least the geese could leave; late or not, they could take flight away from the cold heart of winter.

  For everyone else, it was a long journey indeed to the safety of spring.

  7

  Sheep and Wolves

  For the next few days Peter worked hard, chopping and delivering as much wood as he could before the snows really bit deep. On about half the days he managed to get his father to help him. The rest of the time Tomas sat by the stove in the hut, drinking his way through a small cask of slivovitz that he’d bought with the money Peter brought back from his last trip to Chust.

  Late one morning, as they were chopping logs from the lumber pile, Tomas dropped his axe. Not for the first time Peter noticed his father’s hands shaking. Tomas bent to pick the axe up from the snow but dropped it twice more before he began to swing it again.

  “Get on with your work, Peter,” he said gruffly, seeing his son staring at him.

  Peter didn’t move.

  “It’s cold out here, isn’t it?” Tomas said, pausing. “Can’t keep my damn hands still.”

  “Yes, Father,” Peter said. “The wind’s cruel today.”

  But later, back in the warmth of the hut, Tomas’s hands were still shaking.

  Peter and Sultan made a dozen trips around the village, their battered cart laden and creaking through the snow. Most people had good stores of seasoned logs already, but no one would refuse another delivery; you could never be sure how hard the winter might be. The difficult thing was getting people to pay for the wood straightaway, but nevertheless Peter came home most days with coins to put in the tin under the loose stone in the corner of the hut.

  One day, Peter came home with more than money. Stories were flying around the village, and Peter brought some of them with him too. He led Sultan over the bridge onto their island and hurriedly fed him. While the horse ate, he threw two blankets across the beast’s back. He dragged a bucket through the channel that joined the two arms of the river, and poured water into Sultan’s trough.

  “Drink it before it freezes, boy,” Peter said, shutting the stable door. He felt strange calling the horse “boy.” Sultan was older than him, and somehow, Peter knew, much wiser, but that was what Tomas often called him and it had become a habit. “One day, I really will get you some beet.”

  Peter found his father inside, as usual. For once, though, there was no drink in sight, and there was a pot bubbling on the top of the stove.

  “There’s all sorts of commotion in the village,” Peter said, before he had even closed out the cold.

  “What?” Tomas asked, looking up from stirring the pot.

  “Sheep have been attacked. In their sheds. Cattle in the pasture too.”

  “So the wolves are getting hungry,” Tomas said. “What of it?”

  “It’s not wolves. Well, that’s what they’re saying in Chust.”

  “So what is it then?” Tomas asked.

  “I think you know what they’re saying,” Peter said.

  “Pah!” Tomas spat on the floor. “Idiots! And you’re an idiot too for listening.”

  “I’m just telling you what I heard,” said Peter. “That’s all. You know the miller who died last month? Willem? His widow says he visits her in the night.”

  Tomas said nothing; he turned his attention back to the pot on the stove.

  Peter kept going, for once seeing the chance to actually get his father to talk.

  “She says he’s been visiting her for a week now. She’s very ill. Pale and won’t eat.”

  “So what? She wouldn’t be the first silly old woman to say that! That snooty girl of yours. Agnes.”

  “Yes?” said Peter angrily. “What about her?”

  “They told me in the inn yesterday that her mother’s been saying the same thing about her husband.”

  Peter looked at his father.

  “They said what?”

  “You heard,” Tomas said.

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  Tomas whirled around, sending the pot of stew flying to the floor as he stormed over to Peter, who flinched, convinced his father was going to strike him.

  “No,” Tomas shouted right into his face, “I didn’t tell you, because it’s all nonsense!”

  Peter stood, breathing heavily, trembling. The stew was spreading across the floor. He looked back at his father, determined to hold his gaze.

  “I’m going to see Agnes,” he said quietly. “I’m taking Sultan. I’ll be back late.”

  Peter strode out of the hut and with a silent apology to Sultan put the horse’s saddle and bridle on again. He galloped into Chust, fuming about his father as he rode, happy to let him have to clear up the spilled stew.

  In the hut, Tomas stared at the mess he’d made.

  He got on his hands and knees and tried to scrape what he could back into the pot, but all he managed to do was fill it with a muddy slop. He took the pot outside and threw its contents into the river, then swilled it out and went back indoors. He threw sawdust over what was left on the floor.

  He stood, breathing in quick gulps of air. His eyes fixed on the barrel of slivovitz, but he forced them to move on, and found himself staring at his bed.

  He glanced at the door, but he knew Peter was way into the village by now. Nonetheless he threw the bolt and went and knelt by his low cot, as if he were about to pray.

  Instead, he rummaged with both hands under the mattress and pulled out a long, flat wooden case.

  He let the mattress fall onto the bed again, and placed the box on top. He waited for a moment or tw
o, catching his breath, as if scared of what he was about to do.

  The case had a simple catch and no lock, and was rather plain, made of a dark-colored wood, so unlike the pine and birch of the Mother Forest. Tomas looked behind him once more, at the door, hesitating still. Then he took a deep breath and raised the lid, and from inside he lifted a strange and beautiful object up into the flickering orange lamplight.

  It was a sword, and it was as frightening as it was beautiful, and as foreign as the sun in winter.

  Its slim but lethal blade curved back halfway along from the hilt, widened out for its last third, then tapered to a fearsome point. The hilt itself was sheathed in horn, glossy, gray and mottled, and the crosspiece was an elegant brass creation.

  The blade’s surface was completely smooth, though a strange device was engraved in the steel by the hilt. Two triangles interlocked, forming a six-pointed star, between each arm of which was a small circle. In the middle of the star was a seventh circle, and around the outside ran two concentric circles, keeping everything in order.

  Tomas held the sword, not by the hilt, but with its blade resting gently on his palms. He seemed hypnotized by it; even his breathing appeared to have stopped.

  The only things that moved in the whole hut were the flames dancing in the stove and the tear that fell from Tomas’s cheek onto the blade.

  Memories flooded his brain, unbidden and uncaring. Suddenly he snapped from the reverie, roughly put the sword away in its case, and rammed the case under the bed, as if it were worthless, though nothing could have been further from the truth.

  He grabbed a mug from the table, filled it to the brim with slivovitz, and began to drink, trying to wash the memories away.

  Outside, there was a noise. Footsteps sounded on the log bridge to the island.

  “Peter?” Tomas called, unsettled by something he could not place.

  But Peter was by then knocking on the door of Agnes’s house.