The Goblin's Puzzle

by Andrew Chilton

  Oswald dressed in his least patched suit and combed his long beard. Then he put on the wig he inherited from a great-uncle who had done well in the costermongery. The wig was only a little one, barely big enough to cover his bald spot, and it had not been powdered in decades. Still, it was the best he had, so he wore it.

  He set out through town toward the Earl’s keep. Many people had seen Plain Alice’s abduction, and the news had spread. As Oswald walked through town, all manner of people asked him, “Is it true?” Or, “Can it be so?” Or, worst of all, “What’re you going to do?” To each, Oswald simply said, “I’m off to see the Earl.” Then, because all of the townsfolk were fond of both Oswald and Alice, and because seeing the Earl was the only thing anyone could do, and because, quite frankly, Alice’s kidnapping was the most exciting thing to happen in Middlebury since a troll had run amok fourteen years earlier, each of them joined Oswald. Along came Elvin the Blacksmith, Arnold the Baker, Dervla the Milkmaid, Jonathan the Clerk, and dozens and dozens more, until half the town had an excuse to dodge that day’s work.

  The boy sat on the side of the road as mule after mule, each saddled with two strongboxes, shuffled by. Most of the mule drivers ignored the boy and concentrated on their work. One, however, broke away from a spot near the end of the train and came to speak to the boy. Even though he wore a friendly expression, his face had hard lines on it. “Afternoon, son. I’m Nikola.” From the bottom of his chin hung a long, narrow beard with beads braided into it. “What’s your name?”

  “I haven’t got one,” said the boy.

  Nikola nodded and tapped his nose. “Understood, understood. Best to keep these things to yourself when you’re on the road,” he said, and put his hand out.

  Duty pulled at the boy’s forehead, tugging it toward the ground, but the boy caught himself just in time. Only slaves abased themselves; free men shook hands. The boy stuck his hand out, but when Nikola took it, the boy’s thumb wound up stuck between their palms. The boy knew at once that he had done it wrong. He had to do better next time if he was to avoid being found out.

  For his part, Nikola didn’t seem to notice. “Still, on the prowl for an adventure, if I am any judge. And I am. I am. Ain’t I, young man?” he said without releasing the boy’s hand.

  Not only had he never shaken a man’s hand, he had never been called a young man before. He was old enough that some might have called him a young man, at least sometimes, had he been free. But slaves were always boys, even when they were old and gray. “Uh, I guess so,” said the boy.

  “Knew it. Knew it. Knew it to be so,” said Nikola, still not releasing the boy’s hand. “We’re headed up to the mines at Mount Dragoman to pick up a load of silver. Then it’s back to Albemarle City. You’re welcome to join us and see where we take you.” Something about the way he said it struck the boy as odd.

  “I don’t have any money,” said the boy, trying to free his hand and take a step back.

  Nikola clapped his other hand on the boy’s shoulder and gripped it firmly. “No need to worry on that, son. It’s not such a long trip. You can pay your way with your company,” said Nikola. He raised his voice a bit. “We’re all pretty heartily sick of one another by now, ain’t we, boys?”

  The men just grumbled and shrugged.

  “That’s very kind, sir. Thank you,” said the boy. Nikola seemed to be friendly enough, but his hunger for the boy to join the caravan was strange. “It wouldn’t feel right taking advantage of your kindness like that. Maybe if you could just spare a little bread?”

  Nikola still did not let him go. “Are you sure? I’d hate for a hungry lad to miss our rabbit stew,” he said. “Almost as much as I’d hate to have him offend my hospitality.”

  “Rabbit stew?” said the boy. He shivered a little in hunger.

  “Rich and savory and plenty of it,” said Nikola.

  Perhaps he had misjudged Nikola. He was a little odd, but some men are just odd. He was probably harmless. And there was rabbit stew. “I’d hate to offend your hospitality,” said the boy.

  “Then it’s signed and sealed. Done, done, done and done,” said Nikola. He put his arm over the boy’s shoulder and hustled him along to catch up with the mule train. “Stout lad like you reminds me of a son of my own.”

  “You’ve a son my age?” asked the boy.

  “Oh, probably. Who knows?” said Nikola. He scanned the caravan for his spot. When he found it, he escorted the boy to it. Only then did he release the boy. “I’m the caravan master,” he said, though the boy had not asked. “I have to be able to see what’s going on all along the caravan.” Nikola swept his arm to take in the length of the caravan, but his eye never left the nearest strongbox.

  For the rest of the day, Nikola regaled the boy with a seemingly endless chain of tales of his romantic misadventures with the various ladies of Albemarle City. The ladies in these stories nearly always turned out to be married, though never to Nikola. The boy was shocked by the casual way Nikola bragged about his scandalous behavior, but said nothing for fear of offending his new host. He also noticed that even when Nikola acted out his outrageous escapes from vengeful husbands, he never strayed far from his strongbox.

  As Oswald’s procession advanced on the keep, Godric, Earl of Middlebury, watched from a parapet with mounting dread. The watch had already reported the kidnapping. The Earl knew what would come next. He was about to be humiliated, and there was nothing he could do about it. The Earl straightened his wig and went down to his main hall to receive the petitioning party. The townsfolk poured into the great hall until it was fuller than the Earl had seen it in many years. He wanted to get this over with, but there were traditions to be upheld. So he waited until the crowd thrust Oswald forward. Oswald bowed a little and, with great formality, said, “My Lord of Middlebury—”

  The Earl rose from his chair and took Oswald’s hand in his own. The crowd fell silent. This was not the sort of thing that earls did. “Oswald the Sage, my old friend,” said the Earl. And they were old friends, after a fashion. Back when Oswald was the most promising boy in Middlebury, the Earl had sponsored Oswald’s apprenticeship as part of his plan to build Middlebury up into a proper market town. He had been a young and ambitious earl once. “I know why you are here. I know of your pain—”

  “Then you must do something,” said Oswald, not even realizing he had dared to interrupt the Earl.

  “I cannot,” said the Earl. “What few hairs I have left are white.” The Earl judged himself no longer in fit condition to quest after monsters. It was not so much that he feared meeting the dragon on the field of honor. If the worst happened, he would at least be spared the nuisance of being the Earl of Middlebury anymore. No, he simply could not stomach the journey. Just the thought of dragging his aching old bones back and forth across the countryside and camping in the mud for weeks on end gave him a headache.

  “My son is crippled,” said the Earl. Lord Arthur, the Earl’s son, had never fully recovered from the injuries he received slaying a troll fourteen years back. The Honorable Aidan, the Earl’s grandson, bravely offered to go, obliging the Earl to explain that six-year-olds were not allowed to fight dragons, which led to a howling temper tantrum.

  “I have no knights.” Usually the Earl had several knights clotting up his castle, mostly his ne’er-do-well nephews. But lately, knights were in mysteriously short supply all over West Stanhope. Of course, knights mostly got into brawls in taverns or chased after shopkeepers’ daughters, so the Earl counted their disappearance a blessing. At least, he did until he needed a few.

  “My counting house is empty.” The same poor harvest that threatened to bankrupt Oswald had resulted in short rents and missed tax payments for the Earl as well. He simply did not have ready money for rewards.

  “I must reject your petition,” said the Earl. The crowd was silent.

  “But what am I to do?” wailed Oswald, sounding more like a lost child than a scholar. “Am I to chase down the dragon with my
pitchfork?”

  “No,” said the Earl. “You will travel to Farnham. There, you will petition the King himself to come to our aid.” The crowd gasped. A few of them had been to Farnham at one time or another. One or two had even seen the King in procession. But no one had ever spoken to the King, much less petitioned him for anything.

  Oswald was so lost in his own worry and grief that he failed to recognize the solemnity of his charge. “But will he help?” asked Oswald.

  “The King is not just our ruler. He is our protector. He must help,” the Earl assured him. “You must go at once.”

  King Julian II, Monarch of West Stanhope and Lord of All Its Assorted Dependencies, held his ear to the conservatory door and strained to hear. If pressed, the King would have been forced to admit that eavesdropping on his daughter, Princess Alice, and her latest gaggle of friends was likely beneath the dignity of so august a personage as himself. But there was nothing else he could do. The King was a desperate man.

  On the far side of the door, a girl said, “Hmm…hmm…I’m not sure.” It was that Dulcinea girl from Pfeppenwald. Or was it Graffenthorpe. Somewhere like that. It didn’t really matter where she came from, as long as she could be sent back there. “Lord Harcourt of Hinchlow?” she said.

  A chorus of girls’ voices cried out, “Oooh!” followed by a lot of giggling. The King sighed. There was always giggling, and he could never figure out what they were giggling about.

  “Alfred the Younger,” said another girl, one whose voice the King did not recognize.

  This suggestion was met with silence.

  “He’s Sir Osric’s squire,” said the girl. “His ears stick out a bit.” There was still no response. The King could almost hear the others avoiding her eyes, poor girl.

  “What about you, Your Highness, what do you think?” said a third girl. She was either Lady Beatrice or the Honorable Serena, Lord Sydenham’s youngest. The King was not sure which.

  “The most handsome man at court?” said the Princess. “I’d say Sir Keevan.”

  The King stiffened. Sir Keevan was a fop and a twit. For their part, the girls all collapsed into giggles again.

  “What about that purple cravat he always wears?” said Dulcinea.

  “I think it’s rather dashing,” said the Princess. “Besides, I hear that purple is all the rage in the Imperial City.” So she was getting fashion reports from the High King’s court, too. The gods alone knew how she was managing that.

  There was nothing for it. He had to get rid of them all, including Dulcinea and Lady Beatrice—or was it the Honorable Serena? He would send them both away, just to be safe. Nor could Sir Keevan be allowed to distract the Princess. He would have to go as well, though that was trickier. He could not just be packed off teary-eyed to his father’s country estate. Of course, an inspection tour of the kingdom’s defenses would keep him away for a month or two. And a good jawboning from the Chamberlain would probably be enough to convince him that it was some great honor. He really was that thick.

  “Julie! What are you doing?”

  King Julian jumped away from the door and spun around to face Queen Ludmilla. “Nothing,” he said, a little too quickly. Then he added, “Dear.” That did not seem to help.

  The Queen fixed him with a suspicious stare. She pressed her own ear to the door for a moment. “Julie,” she said, a note of accusation creeping into her voice. “Eavesdropping on our daughter?”

  “But you don’t understand,” he said. “It’s all clothes and boys and…and giggling.” The giggling really was the worst part. “She’s becoming frivolous.”

  “She’s just at that age,” said the Queen.

  That was the trouble with daughters. They were always at one age or another. “If she’s to become a monarch, she must learn to conduct herself with the seriousness of a monarch.”

  The Queen raised a single eyebrow at him. “Perhaps you could teach her how to conduct herself like a monarch by showing her how to sneak down back halls and listen in on other people’s conversations.”

  Long ago, the King had set himself the goal of winning an argument with his wife. Once again, that day had failed to arrive. Fortunately, at just that moment one of his daughter’s tutors came around the corner. The tutor was a short, bald man who was constantly perspiring. When he saw the King and Queen, his forehead immediately went damp. He turned bright red and bowed deeply. “I do beg your pardon, Your Majesties,” he said. “I—”

  “Shouldn’t you be giving the Princess her lessons?” said the King. He might not be able to win against the Queen, but he could distract her.

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” said the tutor. “But—”

  “She gave you the slip,” said the Queen. “Again.”

  “Well—”

  “She’s in there,” said the Queen, pointing to the conservatory.

  “Gossiping,” added the King. The look the Queen gave him was enough to tell him he had not gotten himself off the hook yet.

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” said the tutor. He contrived to make himself thin enough to slide between the King and the door without touching either one.

  The King had no intention of letting him get away, not while the Queen was still annoyed at him. He dropped his hand on the tutor’s shoulder heavily enough to make the man squeal. “And what lesson should she be having now?” he said. Whatever the answer was, it was sure to displease the Queen.

  “Elocution, Your Majesty,” said the tutor. “To be followed by ballroom dancing.”

  The Queen visited a mighty scowl on the man. “I will have no more of such nonsense,” she said. “From now on, it shall be nothing but history.”

  The tutor turned to the King for help. “Your Majesty, with all due respect, history is hardly a fit subject for young ladies,” he said. Tutors were hired by the Chamberlain, and the Chamberlain’s ideas about the proper education for a princess ran to needlework and curtseying.

  “As always, my wife speaks for me,” said the King. “We will need a new lesson plan. I will instruct the Chamberlain to draw one up.”

  “Again,” said the Queen in irritation. New lessons plans were drawn up frequently, but the actual lessons never seemed to change.

  “But starting now, the Princess will learn history,” said the King. “And law.”

  “And mathematics,” added the Queen.

  “Mathematics?” gasped the tutor. A new round of sweat broke out on his forehead.

  “If the Princess is to take up my crown when I am gone—and I think we would both prefer that to the other possibility…” The tutor turned pale, and the King could hardly blame him. The prospect of Duke Geoffrey on the throne was enough to make even the hardiest man go pale. “If she is to rule, she must be prepared.” The King leaned in so close their noses almost touched. “I will not have her become frivolous.” The King stood up straight and released the tutor.

  “Now see to it,” said the Queen.

  “Yes, Your Majesties. At once, Your Majesties,” said the tutor, and he slipped away through the door to the conservatory.

  “…and when that old carpenter hears me screaming for water, he thinks the floodwaters have come sure. He cuts his rope, and his tub comes crashing to the floor with a thunder like you wouldn’t believe. The old fool even breaks his arm. The whole neighborhood comes to see what the ruckus was about, and he’s running about, screaming flood. I have to run out of there in nothing but my braies. My braies. And with those burns, I can’t even sit for a week. True story,” said Nikola. Although the boy did not see what was so funny about this story, Nikola was laughing so hard tears were coming down his cheeks. “This’ll be our campsite, then,” he said.

  Up ahead, two of the men were already starting to tie up the mules. The rest of the men unloaded all the strongboxes and stacked them up, all except for Nikola’s. Nikola took his strongbox to the middle of camp and kept it by him while he watched the cook build a fire and prepare the rabbit stew. When it was done, the cook ladled
out a bowlful for each man.

  The men were not shy about eating, but they did stop to talk to each other or take swigs from their wineskins. Spurred by his hunger, the boy bolted the stew down. “That was good. Thank you, sir,” he said to the cook.

  The cook merely grunted in response.

  “Go on and give him another bowl,” said Nikola, looking up from his own.

  “Just be wasting it,” said the cook.

  Nikola stared at the cook. “Give him another bowl,” he said. The cook shrugged and ladled up another bowl of stew. The boy wolfed this one down as well. “Another bowl,” said Nikola.

  The cook said, “Sir—”

  “Again,” said Nikola. The cook ladled up a third bowl. “Eat up, son,” said Nikola. “A little meat on those bones would profit us all.” So the boy ate.

  After dinner, Nikola told more of his stories, and the men joined in with some of their own. The boy lay back on a spare blanket and felt the shape of his stomach. His belly was so full of food that it was tender and swollen.

  When the men began to bunk down for the night, the boy said, “I don’t want to be just a burden. I’d like to help with the caravan.”

  “You’ll be help enough when we get to the mine,” said Nikola, lying back on his own blanket.

  “I could keep one of the watches,” said the boy, though as soon as he said it, he realized that no watch had been posted.