A Company of Heroes Book One: The Stonecutter

by Ron Miller

  “I suppose I’d better explain from the beginning. From the time we were children, Ferenc was the weakling. Weak in body and weak in mind. He was clumsy and slow to learn. He was forever getting hurt doing the simplest things; most of my earliest memories are of him being coddled in the arms of a nurse. I often suspected him of deliberate injury just for the luxury of the attention and fawning he received. When he wasn’t hurt, he was sick, and I know those were mostly lies.

  “I can’t believe that anyone could be so taken in by such patent fabrications, but our nurses and governesses and especially my father acted as though they thought the fate of the nation hung on every runny nose, bruise or bellyache. Although I outstripped Ferenc in every sport and study, our father treated him as if he could’ve been the country’s greatest soldier, sportsman or statesman, if only his development weren’t being delayed by these pesky illnesses and accidents. Just give the boy time, he seemed to think, and Ferenc would come into his own.

  Not a chance!” she snorted.

  “Your brother’s not very smart, huh?”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “Maybe he’s too dumb to find you?”

  “He is, but he’s not the problem. There’re other people who want to find me who are a lot smarter than my brother.”

  “Who?” he said in a tone that suggested it was hard for him to imagine anyone smarter than the girl.

  “That’s what I’m trying to explain. You see, I’d do almost anything to prevent my brother from becoming king...in fact, I have done something. If I’m not prevented, I can not only keep my brother off the throne, but I can also rid this country of some very evil people.”

  “Bad people?’

  “The worst. They’re the ones who’re after me, trying to stop me from exposing them.”

  “Not your brother?”

  “No, no, not my brother. He’s too stupid. But the people who control him are very smart. They’re not going to leave a stone in this city unturned until they find me and get back the incriminating letters I’ve taken. I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “My cousin, Baron Piers Monzon, can help me if I can get to him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Camped out at the northern border with his army, five hundred miles from here!”

  One of the problems facing Bronwyn and Thud is that two rivers and the entire City separated them from the way north. And the only way into the City on foot is across Palace Island. That is clearly impossible. The island is crossed by a wide boulevard but this passes through four gates at either end. They would surely be heavily and warily guarded.

  The plan that Thud suggests is to cross the south river, the Slideen, by boat, simply drifting with the slow current until they reach the easternmost point of the peninsula called Catstongue. This would bring them within a few hundred yards of the bridge that connects the east part of the City with the north bank of the Moltus. It is the least direct passage between the Transmoltus and the northern roads and might be less watchfully guarded. At night, with absolutely no motion of oars or sculls to attract attention, a small boat ought to be completely invisible. With only the feeble light of the smaller moon, the river would be as black as a sheet of cast iron.

  The first real difficulty they has to face is getting from Thud’s room to the docks, which are about half a mile away. Thud has no workable suggestions regarding that.

  “Time is critical,” says Bronwyn. “The coronation is only three weeks away. I must get the letters to Piers before that, and with enough time for him to show them to the other barons and plan a course of action. We must be on our way tonight. We have to be on the north bank of the Moltus and on our way by tomorrow morning, at the very latest.”

  “It’s after noon now. It’ll be dark in five hours. I think you need some clothes before you can leave.”

  She had forgotten about the threadbare blanket that was her only garment and for a moment has a flash of embarrassment, only partly driven by modesty.

  “Can you do that safely?”

  “Sure. I can go anywhere: the Guards have no reason to stop me.”

  “Well, all right then, but don’t be gone too long.”

  “I can get some clothes from one of the women who live here.”

  “How can you do that without making them suspicious? What will you tell them you need girls’ clothes for?”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be ready to go at dark.” The giant turns to leave and Bronwyn catches his arm.

  “Thud, I don’t know why you’re doing this...”

  “Don’t worry,” he answers as he closes the door after himself.

  Bronwyn hears his heavy footsteps descending the groaning stairs.

  Alone, she tries to carry the details of her plans further ahead than the next morning, but her imagination fails. There are a dozen ways to get to the North Country and she has no idea which might be most practical. She has seldom traveled within Tamlaght by other than first class means and at that paid little attention to where she is going. Her usual official transport is naturally out of the question. She isn’t altogether certain what her alternatives might be.

  Frustrated, she paces the room with furious energy. The blanket-tunic, created only for modesty’s sake ‘in spite of the previous night’s intimacy, of which she has fortunately little recollection), begins to irritate her and she pulls it over her head and tosses it aside. With great satisfaction, she scratches every place the bristly cloth has touched her body until she is covered with red welts. Pouring some water from the stoneware jug into a bowl, she washes herself with Thud’s thick alkaline soap and the itching passes. Finding a comb, and feeling a little mean about rinsing it first, she combs out her mahogany hair. Thud had not bothered to do this after he had washed it for her and it had macraméd itself into a complex, solid mass. Thus passed a pain-filled hour or so.

  She then discovers that Thud, unfortunately, possesses no mirrors. She tries to use the glass in the window, but as long as it is darker in the room than outside, the window doesn’t reflect her image, and she is in any event reluctant to get too close to it for fear of being seen from the street below. She then tries the reflective surface of the palm-sized tintype hanging on the wall surrounded by its paper garden. She can see, mirrored in the dark, shiny surface, her face framed by its usual waves of dark metallic copper. It floats in the midst of the rusty billows like a pale moon rising through a sunset sky. Of her features, she can only clearly see the pink lips of a broad, mobile mouth and the jade spheres of her eyes. An errant ray of light from the setting sun catches them and they shimmer at her like two drops of dew on a mint leaf, cold, green and liquid. By a trick of focus, she sees her face blend into the face in the photograph, then disappear, absorbed; her minty eyes, cinnamon lips and rusty hair are transformed into eyes like drops of black oil, hair like obsidian, lips of pewter and a face of silver. It is a fairy-face, of a beauty as fragile as blown glass; the eyes are full of painful sadness. Bronwyn can’t look into them. She can’t understand the question they seem to be asking her. And she doesn’t like things she can’t understand.

  The room is getting chilly and she hopes Thud will return soon. The idea of wrapping herself in the blanket again is repellent.

  The lowering sun, passing through filtering billows of steam and coal smoke, lights the room with a sanguineous glow. Bronwyn thinks it almost unbearably depressing. She sits in Thud’s little chair, crosses her forearms on the windowsill and leans her chin on them. Twenty yards away is the vertical brick wall of the building opposite. All of the buildings opposite Thud’s are nearly windowless; probably big, uninhabited warehouses. They are persimmon orange against the iron sky. She seems to be on a level with the warehouse’s roof, which would put Thud’s room, it appears, about seven or eight stories above the street.

  She glanced downward. The lower two-thirds of the buildings are in darkness. This is broken only by a few sullen rectangular g
lows from oil lamp-lit windows further up and down the street. The street itself is visible only as a meandering purple thread. Street? There is no street below Thud’s window, she realizes. The purple thread is the twilight sky reflected in a stream of water. It is as though she was on the rim of a deep, narrow, winding canyon of brick. She opened the window and leaned as far out as she dared. The brick canyon curved away from her in either direction, so she can’t see very far to the right or left. Looking down, she sees that a dozen windows in her own building are brightly lit. Moving shadows occasionally dim them. They cast wavering patterns on the opposite wall.

  It is a sheer drop to the stream. She can’t see any doors opening onto it. She closes the window and sits back in the chair, wondering what to make of what she’d just seen.

  Bronwyn as a rule is not given to introspection. She has probably not once in her life ever examined her reasons for doing anything. Why should she? There has never been any need, considering her position, let alone anyone she needed to answer to. To examine her motives would be to try to justify them and her actions required no justification; and if she isn’t answerable to herself, then certainly to no one else. Now it is occurring to her, however, that she is in a unique situation. She has entered into this adventure with all the self-assurance with which she has always approached any game, and now she is beginning to realize how little control she has over the events around her, not at all as her life has been up until this moment. It is disconcerting.

  She is now in a world of which she has not been required to admit the existence...certainly not a world she has at all been prepared to deal with. The world beyond the palace walls, beyond proper, genteel, civilized Society, is as foreign and unreal as the Fairyland of her childhood. She is as unprepared to live in it as a newborn infant. If she has been successful in her old world, it is because that world has been biased in her favor. Her life has been as real as a carefully wrought play. While she has become physically and morally strong, self-assured and intelligent, the artificial basis of these qualities has also made her grow up vain, selfish and arrogant, overconfident in her ability to take care of herself, wholly determined to direct her own fate, and, she thought a little sadly, without even one genuine friend. She appreciated Thud’s help, but no one does anything for nothing. Surely he isn’t so stupid that he doesn’t realize what it might mean to him to aid a princess. There will eventually be a price, she is certain. She is almost sorry she told him that she is the Princess Bronwyn. It would have been interesting to see what he would have done with some ordinary homeless, wretched urchin.

  Soon she hears the heavy footsteps again. They are unmistakable, but her heart begins racing nevertheless. There is no place to hide in the tiny room. She feels as vulnerable as a naked slug dimly aware of an approaching saltshaker. The door opens and the comforting bulk of her giant savior is momentarily silhouetted in the dim glow before the door closes behind him. She doesn’t realize how dark the room has become until Thud asks quietly, “Princess?”

  “By the window,” she answers, and the big shadow moves toward her.

  “I got clothes and some more food.” A bundle thumps onto the

  table. There is a scratching sound in the darkness and a flame splutters and hisses like a skyrocket. She sees Thud’s face briefly illuminated by the winking match. It is suspended in the midst of the darkness like a smooth, expressionless moon, only the twitching shadows cast by the nervous flame give it any life. He turns from her and lights a candle, placing it on a tin plate on the table. Lit now from below, his head disappears into shadow, now a moon eclipsed by the vast planet of his body. Bronwyn unties the bundle and a heap of tangled, multicolored cloth falls into her lap.

  “I got mostly dried things, fruit and jerked meat, and some biscuits and candy. Cans’re awful heavy. And some other things. That stuff all right? I can’t remember how big you are.”

  Bronwyn discovers how simply Thud has solved the problem of procuring women’s clothing: he has instead brought her a wide selection of boys’ clothes. And to take care of the question of fit, he has at least a dozen different sizes. Some of the garments seem intended for an infant, while others might have fit Thud himself. But it all seems a rather haphazard collection; all of the stockings, she sees, are of a single size, and that for someone half her age. On the other hand, all of the shirts are far too large. She hopes she will be able to piece together a complete costume fit to wear.

  Discarding everything that is too small, she spreads the remaining garments over the floor. It all looks hopelessly tawdry and of questionable cleanliness. Musrum! Being chased by armed Guards is one thing, but all this dirtiness...she hated dirt...And even if the clothes were clean, there is no doubt in her mind that they have been worn in the not too distant past by people who are not only unclean but possibly even...but here her mind veers away from the approach of the awful word diseased.

  “Oh, Mr. Mollockle!” she cries as she steps back to review the clothing strewn across the floor. “I can’t wear these things!”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, look! Everything’s so...ugly!”

  “It looks all right to me.”

  “Well, it would,” she says, unkindly.

  “What can I do? It’s all I could find.”

  “I suppose I haven’t any choice. Musrum! I tell you I won’t wear this stuff in daylight. I just won’t do it, that’s all.”

  Thud doesn’t say anything for several long seconds. Then Bronwyn asks, thinking perhaps to change the subject, “Mr. Mollockle, is that a stream I saw down there, below this building?”

  “That? It’s really a sewer. Oh, I heard that a long time ago, when this was still country, that used to be a real nice little river. I don’t know if it’s true. It’s always looked like it does now, so far as l know.”

  “Do you know where the stream goes?” She has found an under vest that seems the right size, and it is clean and soft as well. She slips into it.

  “I’m not sure. I guess it’d go to the river, wouldn’t it?”

  “I’d think so.” She tosses aside three pairs of pants until she finds a pair of patched knickers with black pot-metal buckles at the knees. She stands, pulls them on and buttons up the fly. Not bad, but pretty loose around the waist. Well, one more use for the old cord.

  “Is there a way down to the stream?” she asks as she finds a dark red flannel shirt with a faded blue check. Perfect fit! Perhaps too perfect; fortunately there is a short, belted jacket baggy enough to hide her distinctively female silhouette. She is slim-hipped and small-breasted, but not that slim-hipped and small-breasted.

  “I don’t know. Uh, yes, I used to play down there, when I was little.” ‘Is that possible?) “I just don’t know if I can remember how I ever got down there.”

  He continued shoving supplies into the same big sack in which he had carried Bronwyn the day before. His face bore its usual lack of expression.

  “Did you find any shoes or boots?” Bronwyn asks, holding up her bare feet and wriggling their toes at him.

  “Oh, yeah...someplace.” He burrows into the remaining pile of goods and holds up a pair of lumpy-looking short boots, tied together by their laces and looking like two elderly catfish. “I hope these fit. They’re all I could get.”

  Bronwyn takes them, gingerly, as dubious about their freshness as though they has been elderly fish. She pulls them on and the fit isn’t too bad with an extra pair of socks to make up the difference. She buttons them up.

  “I think,” says Thud, “we can get down to the stream through the basement.”

  “All right, then; I’ll be ready in a second.” Which she actually needs several minutes’ worth of, to braid her hair into two plaits, then to coil those tightly against the back of her head. A floppy, billed cap covers her head to the ears. She would pass for a boy, more or less, at least in the dark. Thud’s improvisational foraging has provided her, unintentionally she is sure, with a fine disguise. Thud waits for her patien
tly, the bag lying at his feet like a sleeping hound.

  She picks up her leather satchel, unbuckles it and again checks its precious contents. She feels a little silly doing that; where would they have gone? She tucks the oilcloth bundles in firmly and rebelts the bag tightly. Ducking her head under its strap, she makes sure it is held snugly under her left armpit. As most people do when they know they are leaving a place forever, she gives the room an automatic, semiconscious scan; what can she have forgotten? She hadn’t had much with her. In fact, she is taking out more than she has brought in. And a strange thought briefly crosses her mind: isn’t that the story of her life?

  Her eyes rest briefly on the wall opposite the stove; the paper garden, grey, brown, umber, indigo and black in the darkness, now surround a rectangular patch of bare plaster, about the size of a playing card; the only thing Thud has taken from the room is his tintype.

  “All ready?” she asks. At a nod from Thud, she opens the door as quietly as she can and starts down the stairs. Beyond the door, the building is new to her; she has yet to see anything other than Thud’s room, which she has never left until now. The stairs are narrow, with high risers and short steps. She has to be careful not to miss her footing or topple off balance. The stairs coil down through the building in an irregular helix. They pass half a dozen landings, each surrounded by numerous narrow doors. Some have been painted a bright color, most are bare wood, stained black in circles around their latches and unhinged edges from the touch of ten thousand unwashed hands. A few have a square of card or a piece of torn paper pinned to their center panels, or to frames, with a clumsily and painfully scrawled name proclaiming person here in block letters of crayon or charcoal. Most occupants, however, seem to have preferred or accepted or encouraged anonymity.

  Finally reaching the ground floor, she finds herself in a hall, flanked by psoriatic stucco walls, with a large door at the end, its glass crisscrossed with wandering sutures of tape without which it would have fallen into pieces. In the other direction, the hall vanishes abruptly into darkness. Thud touches her shoulder and leads her into the ammonia-reeking shadow, plaster fragments crunching under their feet. At the end of the hall, set into a corner, is a small door. Bronwyn tries its latch and finds it is locked. She steps aside for Thud. He takes the latch in his fingers and bears down on it steadily, like an hydraulic press. There is a sharp crack and the latch and its lockbox pop neatly out of the door. It swings open easily, sweeping a fan of floor clean as it does. Wooden steps, set into a stone wall, lead down.