Straw Into Gold

by Gary D. Schmidt

  "The stairs are there," the nurse called, and we climbed them to the thrumming of the mill wheel. The floors, the beams that spanned overhead, the very air vibrated with the turning. Up in the loft a slit of a window let in enough light to see sacks of properly stacked meal. I pulled three from the pile and spread them flat, then laid a blanket over them all. The nurse laid Innes down and checked the bandage, fussing at its tightness but glad that no new blood showed.

  I huddled back against the roughness of the sacks while she fussed, and the smell of the meal dusted up. I closed my eyes and was at once home again with Da, each of our hands yellow with the meal of the week's baking. The smell of the fire, the lumps of dough rolling themselves out to rise, the taste of the meal in the air—they were all so sharp that I almost reached forward for them.

  "I'll be going now and leaving you to Saint Jude of blessed memory," said the nurse. She had to yell against the thrumming.

  I knew she would have to go. She would hurry the cart along and drag with it any searching horsemen, like wood chips in a boat's wake. Only this time if the Grip caught her, he would not simply warn her against meddling. I nodded as she pointed to the bandages. "A change at nightfall, and again in the morning. As gentle as ever you can." I nodded again, and she took my face in her huge hands, leaned forward, and pressed her forehead against mine, her nose against mine. Then she reached down and scooped the thick meal dust into her hands. "Let the eyes of the unjust be blind," she said again. She started down the ladder, looked at us once more, and was gone. I was left with the thrumming and with Innes.

  I had never been kissed so before. The newness of it and the loss of it were all mixed up together, and I could say nothing in the heat of that mix.

  Sitting there, I thought it seemed that this was all one of Da's phantasms. In a moment he would shake his hands and the air would swirl and the misty pictures dissolve. We would pick up our mugs and laugh and stretch our feet out to the fire. But it was no phantasm. The thrumming of the mill wheel and the labor of Innes's breathing were both real.

  We slept. Warm and tight against the sacks, we slept.

  When I opened my eyes, it was still light, the kind of light that lies low on the land late on a winter afternoon. Innes was still asleep, his breathing less harsh now. Nothing else moved. All was absolutely quiet. But something had wakened me.

  Then I knew: It was the quiet that had wakened me. The mill wheel had stopped.

  I crawled to the edge of the loft stairs and peered down at the very moment that the miller was thrust into the mill by the King's Grip, the miller's wife following closely behind. With mailed hands the Grip pulled the miller's smock and lifted him up, holding him so close that it seemed as if he were about to bite him. The miller's wife stood still, her hands smothered in her apron, afraid to plead with anything but her eyes.

  With a jerk the Grip tossed the miller into a heap, and his wife immediately rushed over and knelt between them. But the Grip ignored them. Instead, he drew his sword and began to poke it into the sacks, one after another, until he walked ankle deep in the meal that poured from them. The miller and his wife stayed on the floor, watching.

  I had seen battles in the conjurings that Da had set in the air before us. I had seen the murderous rage in the eyes of the great Achilles as he stalked Hector, then slew him with a sweeping stab. I had never understood the blood lust that reddened his face. I did now.

  The Grip sauntered to the staircase and set his foot on the first step. I scuttled back, crossed the floor, leapt over the sacks, and huddled quietly beside Innes. I wished that the thrumming would cover us again.

  "Master," I heard the miller call, "no one has been up those stairs these five days and more. You see yourself that the dust lies thick upon them."

  I waited, my breath like a millstone in my chest. The first step creaked under the weight of the Grip.

  "With a simple push," the Grip said, "I could split this beam and bring this mill to a ruin. Two, maybe three more winters will bring it down for me. How is it, miller, that fortune changes so quickly for some? You, who might have been miller to the king himself, as wealthy and envied as any merchant has ever been."

  "On the darkest days," said the miller wearily,"I think it but chance."

  "Chance or design, you have lost everything on a boast."

  "Not everything," said the miller's wife.

  As I listened to their voices coming up through the floorboards, I imagined her taking her husband's hand in her own and fronting this man with the short sword.

  A long pause, with some scuttling below. Then the Grip's voice came again. "Chance or design, the end is the same. But here is my design: See to it that you do all as I told you. The reward is large should you be the one to find them. The penalty for hiding them is even larger. And the king is of a mind that no one—not even those closely connected—will be spared his anger. Now bring some bread. And I'll take that bottle, and that. Load them into the saddlebags quickly and hope that I decide not to take anything else. Your ear, or perhaps her nose."

  I heard a bustle below, then the grating sounds of the Grip's footsteps, a whistle and the sharp snort of the horse, and, after a moment, a gallop. I sank back against the meal sacks. "What fills a hand fuller than a skein of gold?" I wondered, and held my own hand up to look at it. I could barely make it out in the wasted light. What might fill my hand? I let it drift to my forehead to touch the spot where the nurse had touched me.

  The sound of someone slowly ascending the stairs. A pause. I backed against the sacks, making myself as small as ever I could. Then a whisper filtered up through the dust like a distant memory.

  "You needn't be afraid now." I peered out from behind the meal at the miller's wife, who stood with open hands looking into the loft. "It's all right. The miller will watch a moment against his return, but he is sure to be off to burn some barn or smash the windows of a manor house or two. That's the way of it with his type."

  I stood up, wonderingly."You knew we were here all along?"

  "Not until the King's Grip started up the stairs. We saw the meal dust fall through the flooring as you ran across. He saw it too, but he didn't know what it meant; fancy that. There's to be some good in working a mill all your life long." She crossed the loft and stood over us. "You're the boy from yesterday," she said, and I nodded.

  When she saw Innes, she looked at him with an almost aching tenderness. She went to the top of the stairs and called the miller, who came with hands roughened by his work to pick up Innes as easily as a sack of flour. He balanced him down the loft stairs and out the mill with his wife mothering behind him.

  "You're not to sling him about like your grain," she scolded. "And you'll be watching his head by the doorway. No, his head, you numb miller."

  The miller nodded patiently.

  "Mind you lay him gently on the cot. Gently. Is that gently?"

  I followed behind, hoping that the miller would not open the shoulder wound more. As it was, the bandage was tinged red. But the miller held Innes like a wounded lamb and laid him down like a baby into feathers. He did not groan.

  "Now take your chunky self away and let me tend to him," the miller's wife said, and he turned to me and shrugged his shoulders, a look of exasperated and long-suffering love on his face.

  "There's not a thing to do with her when she's like this but to stumble along behind the millstone."

  He was a short, thick man, but short as he was, he could have touched the ceiling of the cottage. Its roof squatted down to him, its center beam bowing and one corner sagging like a man in a stupor. The chimney stones stomached out, two iron braces angling against their collapse. It was a house that had settled into itself.

  While the miller's wife fussed over Innes, clucking at the wound, and while the miller bustled through the house to find the new shirt his wife was calling for, I stood by the trestle table and smelled. Just smelled. It was filled with loaves of braided bread, bread speckled with cinnamon, bread ye
llow with its cheesy crusting, bread filled with the last of the fall apples.

  "The boy looks hungry, my dear. It's a glory you've done the baking, or he might wither away as he stands in front of us." The miller laughed deep and low.

  "When we laugh, we escape the Devil," I said automatically, and was startled to see how they both turned toward me, open-mouthed.

  "There's been many a turning of the mill wheel since last I heard that," said the miller slowly.

  "I heard it myself just today," I answered,"but ..."And I looked longingly at the table.

  With a smile the miller brought me close to the fire, laid a wooden trencher in my lap, and ladled in stew.

  Stew! How could I have missed its meaty bubbling? When he ladled it out, the steam curled into the room. I shoveled it into my mouth, finishing the bowl before the miller had torn a hunk of bread for me.

  "Is he about to start on the furniture, or has he left some stew for me?" said Innes, rising on an elbow.

  "Should someone wounded be eating?" I asked.

  "Should someone wounded be eating!" he yelled back.

  "Though it was just a nick, hardly anything to talk about at all."

  "Hardly anything to talk about?"

  "At all."

  Innes sighed deeply. "Daggers, arrows, horses. And now to die of starvation, when the food is so close by that I can smell it."

  "Then here," I said, and I filled my own trencher up and sat beside him on the bed, holding the bowl for him as he spooned the meaty stuff into his mouth, feeding himself so quickly that he almost forgot to breathe, and gasping at the pleasure of the taste.

  The miller and his wife stood by the fire quietly, hand in hand, watching us both. They fitted into each other, as if the curves and bumps of their bodies had grown accustomed. They stared at us, stared as though amazed. "He's so like," she said."The way he holds his head, the way he speaks, the corners of his smiles. They are all the same."

  But the miller shook his head. "We've hoped a thousand times, and a thousand times learned the better of it."

  "But this one time."

  "No, wife. No. Now, these are the boys the Grip wants, and they'll be needing to get away. And no later than morning." He turned to us."He'll watch at the main road, so you'll need another way. A fistful of gold and we'd put an ocean between you and the king, but there is none to be had here."

  "If we had the gift of it, we could spin some out," I said.

  The miller and his wife stared at me.

  "Spin some out?" he said.

  "Yes, spin some out. Da does it often enough, just for the pleasure of the spinning. Afterward we leave it outside for the birds."

  The miller and his wife were very still. Then, slowly, the miller's wife reached out her hand and touched my shoulder. Her eyes welled. "Boy, what is your name?"

  "Tousle."

  She turned back to Innes, then to me, then back to Innes again, her hands up to her face."He is so like..." she said to herself again, and paused as the miller took her hand in his.

  "No, wife. The water has flowed too far and too long, and it does not flow upstream again."

  "How many times have you heard of a man who can spin straw into gold?" she asked, then turned again to me. "Your mother. Tell us about her."

  "I never knew her."

  "You know nothing about her?"

  "Nothing."

  "And you," she asked, turning to Innes. "What of your mother?"

  Innes spread his hands wide and said nothing.

  "You too know nothing about her? Not a thing? Isn't there some small part of her that stays with you?"

  "Nothing," said Innes. It was the emptiest word I had ever heard.

  "And your father?" she asked, turning back to me eagerly, leaning forward, holding hard to my hand now.

  "Da? Da is Da."

  "Are you much like him? The look of you, I mean."

  "No. Not at all."

  At this the miller's wife stepped back and again put her hand to her mouth. She turned again from me to Innes, then back again.

  "Wife, this cannot be. He is long dead." But she only shook her head and watched me, unblinkingly."Wife, even if it was him, he still must be away. Perhaps even tonight. Perhaps in the hay cart."

  "If we were to be found in your hay cart, the king would hear of it," said Innes.

  "Then the king would hear of it," answered the miller gruffly. "There is no cause to love the king in this house. And there is great cause to help those who will not bow the knee to his whims, as I once did."

  "The king set us a riddle," I said. "A riddle we need to answer within the next six days."

  The miller nodded. "The king was ever a lover of riddling."

  I wondered how it was that a miller would know this, but I did not ask."If we can solve it, he will free all the prisoners he has condemned."

  "His promises are always vast," said the miller's wife. "Tell us the riddle."

  "What fills a hand fuller than a skein of gold?"

  "Two skeins,"the miller said immediately."The answer is two skeins. More than anything else, the king has always wanted gold. And if he had one skein of gold in his hands, it would bring him no pleasure unless he might have two."

  "You are sure of this?" asked Innes.

  The miller nodded. "I learned it too late, and to my own sorrow. But what good will even the answer do you? If you solve the riddle, do you think he will clap you merrily on the back and send you off with prisoners dancing behind you? He will not even let you approach before he cuts you down."

  "He made the promise before the Great Lords."

  But the miller gave only a bitter laugh. "A skein of gold for each prisoner might bring release. But nothing else will—most especially a promise."

  "First the answer," said Innes. "Then we shall see what comes with the day."

  A short, guttural sob from the miller's wife, and she turned to her husband and held him.

  Through the windows I watched the sky cloaking into dark. The last light lit the undersides of bulbous clouds waddling in, heavy with their snow. Already the night air was seeping beneath the cottage door and winding its way around my feet.

  "It's to be a cold night," said the miller. "If we're to have these boys gone beyond easy reach by morning, we'll need to be leaving."

  She looked at him, then smiled. "You never did find that shirt, or another for Tousle," she said, wiping at her eyes. "Leave it to me, and you find a sack we might fill for them. Go on, now. Yes, yes, go on." Then slowly, hardly taking her eyes from us, she climbed the steep stairs into the loft.

  "I'd best be taking the bow," called the miller after her.

  She leaned down from the loft. "You haven't strung that bow for more years than you or I can count."

  "Well," he said, taking a bow and quiver from a nail beneath the stair overhang, "that hardly matters. Not a single one of these arrows has a head."

  "Then what earthly good will it do to take it?"

  He shrugged his shoulders and smiled at us as he slung the quiver over his shoulder. "You won't be long up there?"

  "Long enough to find the shirts you could not."

  She was long up there, but when she came down, she brought with her two fine woven shirts. She handed one to me, then turned to Innes and helped him change. I stripped off my own shirt—I was almost as bloody as Innes—and was about to put on this new one when I heard the miller gasp.

  At the same moment, the door smashed open. With a single long stride the Grip strode in and twisted my arm behind my back. Quickly, expertly, he unsheathed his sword and held it tight against my throat.

  "Meal through the floorboards," he said quietly, and smiled.

  Chapter Five

  The cold line pressed against my throat, but it was nothing to the fire in my shoulder with my arm twisted and held high behind my back.

  "Master," came the controlled and slow voice of the miller, "I'm known in these parts as one who never misses his aim."

&n
bsp; "The same is said of me," replied the Grip, and he grinned.

  "Then you know that should you even prick that boy, I'll have an arrow into you before you see blood."

  The Grip laughed. "He'll be dead and I'll be at your throat before you fit an arrow to the bow."

  "Master, folks hereabouts live by poaching, and being that a poacher hunts at the same time he himself is hunted, his hands are faster than fast, and his aim surer than sure. You'll never see the arrow drawn from the quiver and fitted, any more than the doe that ends up on this table, and she with eyes sharper than yours might ever hope to be."

  The Grip held still.

  "I'd pay good and close heed to him, Master," said Innes. "I've never seen him come close to missing."

  "Boy," growled the Grip, "I'm here for this one. But no one will squawk if I let your blood as well."

  "No," replied Innes, his voice low."No one would." Even with the sword at my throat I was startled by the bitterness in his voice.

  "But you would have another soul heaped on your back," said the miller's wife. She stepped to Innes and drew his head against her.

  "An easy load to bear," snarled the Grip.

  The miller drew a hand up to one of the arrow shafts. "By all that's holy, I can sink a shaft through an eye before you blink. Take your hands away from the boy."

  The Grip hesitated and then took the sword from my neck. He let go my arm and it dangled down, the fire so sharp I could hardly keep from crying out.

  "Tousle," said the miller. I looked down toward the blade, then slowly started backward away from it. Beads of sweat ran down my sides, and my breathing was short. I still clutched the shirt in my hand.

  The Grip straightened, holding the sword in front of him. He balanced it in his hand, then sheathed it. "Miller, it makes no difference if I take him here, now, or if I take him in a day or two. None to me, at least. For that matter we can stay here and play the game out until six more suns have set. But, miller, the boy will never finish his business with the king, my life upon it."