Straw Into Gold

by Gary D. Schmidt

  That night brought with it the first warm breezes of the early spring. They came up as if they had been massing just outside the kingdom's borders, and then rushed forward like a roiling cloud. They blew up and over the city gates, setting the icicles to melting, dropping soggy chunks of snow from battlements, and puffing gently into houses and stables, so that men and women and horses and dogs woke from sleep and sniffed at the new smells.

  They blew against us as well, and at first I pulled my cloak tight against then, anticipating the cold. But the sudden warmth, the good earthy smells they carried, the unexpected spring pleasure, made me half forget why we were sitting on a cart in a darkened alley through the night. It set the miller whistling, and the queen suddenly held up the hem of her skirts and showed us the paces of a dance she had footed one festive May Day. She took Innes's hands in hers and brought him down from the cart.

  "This foot forward," she said, tapping his left. "Now back, and then forward again. Then the other. Now repeat. No, the left foot first," and then she laughed as Innes shuffled back, then caught on with a sprightliness that only spring can bring.

  "And now you, Tousle," said the queen, and I held her hands and danced to the farmer's whistle, and Innes clapped and danced, and then even the farmer took the queen's hand and, awkward and embarrassed, showed his paces. And when I looked at the miller, I could see even in the darkness the tears that hung at his eyes, and I knew why they were there.

  So we danced and whistled through the night, until the dark sipped back the stars one by one and faded with its bloating.

  The queen looked at the sky, then let go our hands and pulled her cloak more tightly around her. She thanked the farmer, who of a sudden knelt on both knees in that alley, knelt to this girl who had measured out grain in the mill across from his farm, knelt to the Majesty that she had become. And then the four of us left the alley to take our longest journey.

  It was a crowded journey. All of Wolverham knew that this was the dawning when the riddle would be answered—if it was to be answered. It was easy to slide into the groups that huddled toward the castle. Everybody was quiet, strangely quiet, with never even a murmuring from one person to another. They walked like small mounds, cloaks pulled tightly around them and faces hidden, and I wondered why they had come to the castle. Were they coming to a hanging, or to a salvation? I wanted to shout out loud to stir them, but I was not sure that they would have lifted their faces.

  As we came closer to the castle, its outlines grew stronger against the sky, which had already colored to a purple. We were pressed now on all sides by the crowds, and the queen held out her hands to Innes and me to hold us by her side. The miller stayed in front to shield the queen.

  "Majesty," I whispered, "perhaps walking like a queen is not what you should be about just now."

  She turned to me, then to Innes. "He would give me lessons in walking."

  Innes smiled and whispered back, "He might teach you how to walk like a Holy Sister."

  "No," laughed the queen quietly."I do not think he could." She took a deep breath. "Now we shall see what comes with the day."

  The way opened up into the courtyard, and the pressure of the mounds against us eased. For a moment we stood still, looking at the looming castle that seemed larger—though not grander—than I had seen it before. But it was not the castle that stiffened my spine. All around the courtyard, gallows had been erected in a grisly circling. Rough-hewn beams, still black in this light, stood wedged into the air, and from them hung nooses like coiling snakes. They swayed back and forth in the breezes, darker than the shadows around them.

  In front of the courtyard Lord Beryn's Guard held themselves in a frozen circle around the prisoners. On the parapet above them the Great Lords stood in a curved line, completing the symmetry of the gallows. We pushed forward through the crowd, not daring to talk now, not daring to look at the gallows. It was as quiet as if there were not a single tongue in that place, as if everyone were holding back a breath to wait for what would come.

  But as we pushed closer and closer, it was no longer so quiet. Now we could hear the clanking of the prisoners' chains and the weak coughs that came out. Innes leaned toward me. "Tousle, there were two young girls. Only about this high." He held out his hand."Are they there?"

  I stretched out my neck, but there were crowds between us and the prisoners, and it was still too dark. "Not that I can see," I answered.

  Innes laid his hand on the queen's shoulder. "Closer," he urged.

  The queen nodded and whispered to the miller. "Closer still."

  He turned and looked at us, a half smile on his face. "Well," he said, "never fill a sack halfway." With a shrug of his shoulders, he pushed on.

  The sky was a lighter purple now, and I could see Innes lifting his face to the sky, waiting for the bells of the dawn. But it was trumpets instead of bells that suddenly blared out across the courtyard, their notes iron cold and shrill. Then the line of the Great Lords opened like a gap-toothed smile, and the king strode forward, Lord Beryn half a step behind him at his right shoulder. The king was armored again all in gold, but Lord Beryn was somehow even more splendid. His armor was of a startling white, and in this half darkness it shone even more gloriously than the king's. At his side hung a scabbard, and it too was white. I imagined how cold it would be to the touch.

  Together they stood at the edge of the parapet, and we were close enough now to see their faces. The king's was grim, his mouth in a straight line and his pale eyes looking over the crowds at his feet. Lord Beryn was smiling, though his eyes looked out to the gallows.

  The king held out his hands and opened his mouth as if to speak, but then he hesitated. None of the souls in the courtyard had lifted their heads.

  "People of Wolverham," he called.

  Heads stayed down.

  "People of Wolverham," he called again.

  No motion. Not a single sound.

  With a look of scorn, Lord Beryn came from behind him and raised his hands. "The dawn approaches, people of Wolverham. The dawn approaches when your judgment will be carried out."

  Had it been only seven days ago when the crowds had cheered such words? But there was no cheering now. Only silence broken by the quiet coughing of the prisoners.

  Lord Beryn tried again. "People of—"

  But he was interrupted by a high, impossibly high screech of a young girl, a screech that resolved itself into a single word:"Innes!"

  Innes broke from the queen, ran past the miller, and stretched out his arms to the cry. "Innes. Oh, Innes." A young girl, just so high, calling out from the prisoners, and Innes pushing through the crowd, his arms in front of him, desperately, desperately coming to her. "Innes, Innes," she sobbed over and over, stretching out her shackled hands. No one else moved in that great courtyard. No one else breathed. We all watched as the girl's cries brought Innes to her, until she was in his arms and he circled her. He circled her against all the power of the Great Lords.

  "Eleanor?" he cried. "Eleanor?" And then a second girl, only a bit smaller than the first, threw herself at him. Together they knelt, Innes laying their heads against his chest, the sobbing of all three mixing such joy and sorrow that it was a marvel the world could keep whole and not crack.

  And now all the crowd had lifted and thrown back their hoods, and they stared at Innes and the two girls.

  "You see, Lord Beryn, that you have lost your wager," said the king, who was now smiling. But he was not looking at Lord Beryn as he spoke. He was looking again into the crowd, searching—searching as if he had been filled with hope.

  But Lord Beryn was no longer searching. With a motion of his hand he summoned up two of his Guard, and with a spurt they started toward Innes.

  But they were not the only ones who spurted across the courtyard. With a battle cry of rage the miller was upon them. He grabbed their necks and threw the Guard back upon the stones of the courtyard. After that they did not move.

  Another two of the Guard app
roached, but now the miller pulled up one of the fallen Guard's swords, and he stood in front of Innes, as menacing as madness.

  "Not again!" he shouted. "By all that's holy, not again." He held the sword with two hands, high above his shoulders.

  "Miller?" called the king wonderingly. "Is it the miller?"

  The queen and I stepped forward, and now the two Guard turned to face us. But the queen pushed her hood back and held her hand high."Move aside," she said simply, and the royalty of her voice pushed them back.

  When I looked at the king again, there was a kind of desperate joy in his face. "The queen," he whispered, and his whisper was loud enough for everyone in that courtyard to hear.

  "The queen indeed," replied Lord Beryn,"on a mission of such foolishness that I wonder she ever chose to undertake it."

  "That you need to wonder, my lord, is evidence enough of your unworthiness," said the queen, and the words hung in the air like icicles that would not melt for any spring wind.

  "Unworthiness, Mistress Miller, is not a word that you should speak. You have forced the king to the point of it. Let it be on your own head." He turned back to the king and waved at the crowds in the courtyard. "Your Majesty, renounce her now, before all your people. Renounce her, if you are to be the king you were born to be."

  But the king did not take his eyes from her. "You came," he said, still wondering. "You came." He stepped from the parapet. She waited for him, standing with us by the prisoners. And all the while the sky lightened and lightened.

  "The dawn!" Innes called."Mother, the dawn!"

  With a gasp the king looked at Innes, then back to the queen, then back to Innes. "What did you say, boy?"

  Innes picked up Eleanor and held her in his arms. The other girl stood at his side, her hand in his, looking only at him. Innes did not answer the king.

  "Lady," said the king.

  But then Lord Beryn shoved beside him, the other Great Lords grouped just behind. "This is a peasant queen," he cried, "and no one in all of Wolverham will bow the knee to her. Not a one. Renounce her now."

  And so the world held its breath once again in this courtyard, waiting for the king's word. Waiting, waiting, while Innes lifted his face to the sky, and I knew that the dawn had begun.

  The king moved forward again, past Lord Beryn, down the steps of the parapet, and held out his hands to the queen. "Lady," he said again quietly.

  But she did not reach to him. Instead, she looked back at me, called me to her, and when I came, she took my hands and held them so firmly, so firmly, that I knew I would not be alone at the end of this day. "Tousle," she asked, "what fills a hand fuller than a skein of gold?"

  And I knew this as well.

  "Another hand," I said. "Another hand."

  The queen drew my hands up to her lips and kissed them. Then she let them go and turned back to the king. She held her own hand out and took off the king's mailed glove; it fell to the stones, the gold of it gleaming dully at their feet. Then she slowly, slowly laid her own hand in his.

  The joy that filled his face was no longer a desperate joy.

  And the crowds were no longer quiet.

  Such a cheering echoed in that place. The joy of those two touching hands spread until everyone in that courtyard was filled with it, and the walls echoed to the cheering, echoed to the calls and the laughter and the cries that carried in a blissful whirlwind up and up into the sky. And suddenly full dawn was upon us all, and light cascaded all in a white-water rush into the sky. And I saw Innes's face and knew he still heard more than the cheers.

  But I could also hear Lord Beryn, who was not cheering. He too came down from the parapet and stood in front of the king with his back to the courtyard. "Do not challenge me on this," he menaced. "We will not bow the knee to a miller's daughter, or to her blind son. Do not challenge me. Renounce her even now and hang the rebels."

  The king looked long into the eyes of the queen, and then, hand in hand, they both shoved past Lord Beryn and climbed back up the steps of the parapet. The king held his arms out over the crowd, and they quieted. "The riddle is answered," he called. "Tear down Lord Beryn's gallows."

  Another cheer, and immediately the gallows started to sway drunkenly back and forth in the air. One by one they splintered and came down, each fall greeted with yet a louder, impossibly louder cheer.

  And then as I watched, something lobbed from the crowd toward the Great Lords. It curved through the air, catching the new sunlight for a moment until it struck the chest of one of the Lords, who stepped back with a startled grunt. Another lob, and then another and another, and suddenly they were coming from everywhere in the courtyard, lob after lob battering the Great Lords, driving them back and back.

  "Turnips!" I called. "Innes, they're throwing turnips at the Great Lords."

  "Is their aim any better than—"

  "Be careful I don't throw one at you!"

  "If it's me you're aiming at, I'll be safe."

  "So you would be." A pause."Innes," I said quietly,"you came on a horse to find me. You came on a horse."

  "I would have come on a rhinoceros."

  At this I laid my hand on his shoulder—the shoulder of the next king.

  But Lord Beryn was not finished. With a cry he grabbed a lance from one of his Guard and held it back over his shoulder."There will never be a peasant king!" he screamed, and when the queen gasped, the king turned first to look at her, and then to where she was looking. Lord Beryn was pointing the lance at Innes.

  "It is what I should have done when the brat was born. It is what I would have done had this miller's daughter not spirited the child away from me." He turned to the courtyard. "People of Wolverham, we will not have a peasant king!"

  And with the words, he threw the lance at Innes, even as the king came leaping down at him with his sword out.

  A cry from one of the girls. A call from the queen.

  And I stepped in front of Innes. I held out both hands to catch the shaft, felt its wood slide eagerly past my palms, and then with a shock I jolted back. I was terribly cold.

  And in an instant I was home with Da, him sitting by the fireplace holding his pipe. He sat back and puffed at it, watching me. He raised his eyebrows.

  "No," Da said,"this is not his dream."

  "Am I still..."

  "He is still alive. He is talking to me, after all." Da fussed with his pipe and tapped some of the ashes out onto the hearth. He filled it with a pinch of tobacco, then tapped it with his thumbnail to light it again."It was I, he knows, who took the young prince from his mother's arms, never telling her that the king was too weak to protect his own son from the Great Lords. That he was too weak to protect even her. It was I who brought him to the village where he would be raised with another boy just his age. But I had left him only a few seasons before he was found out. His pale eyes could not be concealed, and word had spread."

  "Da..." I began, wonderingly.

  He held his hand up. "No, I'll finish now, and then he may forgive me or not. When I returned to find the boy, the parents were murdered, the young prince gone who knows where, and only the other boy crying in the house that Lord Beryn's Guard had set afire. I thought the prince dead. And there was only Tousle left, all alone. So I took him myself."

  "But you did not take me to another family."

  "I did not. At first I kept him to spite chance, to teach it that it was not as powerful as it thought. But soon I kept him for another reason. And then I knew that nothing, nothing is ever quite by chance."

  He came close to me and placed his hands in mine. "I came to love him," he said quietly.

  I reached around him and held him to me, the sweet tobacco smell of him wafting around us.

  Then he pushed back. "Almost I could not let him go to Wolverham."

  "But when you found that the prince was alive..."

  He nodded. "Then I knew that there was design, and if I would keep him apart from it, then how would that design finish its patterning?
So to Wolverham, and the pattern of the young prince's life has woven itself together."

  He was right. He was right. The pattern of Innes's life had woven itself together. But when his had been ripped apart, mine had ripped too. And where was my weaving? Where was mine?

  "As for that," Da said, as if he could read my thoughts, "there is more for him to finish." Here he waited a moment, smiled, almost laughed. "And he has found his gift."

  "My own gift?"

  "A king's son can hear the dawn, a sexton can see in the dark, a funny little man with froggy eyes and spindly fingers can spin straw into gold. And his, his is the best of all."

  "But what is it?"

  The room glimmered, then began to fade. Soon all there was to see was Da, standing alone, still smiling. "He has the gift of giving himself," he said.

  Suddenly there was a jerk and a stabbing pain in my shoulder, and I was no longer with Da. The warmth of smoke and the house vanished, and I felt the ice-cold cobblestones on my back. I wondered how it was that the stabbing heat of my shoulder did not melt them. I blinked and tried to raise myself up.

  "Stay down," said the queen. "We have taken the lance out, but we have to stop the blood."

  "Innes."

  "I'm here." He was kneeling by me too.

  "You know, of course..." I gasped as the queen began wrapping something around me. "You know that this is much worse than a tiny arrow in the shoulder."

  He laughed, a laugh of relief. "You have beaten me squarely. Shall we say that this competition is over?"

  Then it was the king at my side."I shall lift you now, boy. No, miller, this is for me to do. If you put your arm about my neck, just so, yes, just like that..."

  I gasped again as he lifted me. He stepped around something sprawled on the cobblestones, then carried me up onto the parapet. The queen and Innes came behind, and at the very top the king stopped and turned to the people of Wolverham. "This day," he cried, "this gladdest day of the world, this boy has brought back to me my queen and my son. This day..." and then he could not go on.