A Company of Heroes Book One: The Stonecutter

by Ron Miller

  “You I shall make invisible!”

  The gypsy and the princess enters the rear of another wagon. It is obviously used to carry all the paraphernalia the gypsies need for their shows and daily life; it is packed with baskets, boxes, bags, coils of rope, lanterns, sacks of feed, meal and flour, canned foods, clothing and a seemingly endless quantity of unidentifiable objects.

  “Wait right here,” commands the gypsy as he disappears back into the outside daylight. Bronwyn can hear his deep voice giving orders to his band. He sounds like an iron bell when he spoke in his native tongue. He has apparently given the command to start the procession: she can hear whips snapping, ponies nickering, and suddenly her own wagon gives a jolt and begins moving, its iron-shod wheels rumbling on the cobbles. She wonders what in the world he might have planned for her. She does not much relish the thought of being disguised as an animal. The door flashes daylight at her again, and the gypsy climbs back inside. He shuts the door and the interior is once again plunged into twilight. From around the shutters that ineffectually seal the windows, thin blades of light slice through the dark.

  “Pardon me, please,” begs the gypsy, as he struggles to get behind the princess. He pulls a cloth away from a large object and Bronwyn gives a little gasp of surprise and delight. Revealed is a splendid Peigambarese sultan, a pudgy little man with a hooked nose and black eyes. Above the grinning mouth is a pair of long, pointed mustachios, like the quivering antennae of an insect. A dart-shaped goatee hangs from his pendulous chin. The head is topped with a jeweled turban, the body wrapped in a silken robe. The figure sits with its legs crossed, the toes of its silk slippers flamboyantly curled in full circles. Its hands, the fingers buried beneath an encrustation of jewelry, lay idly on a chessboard that is balanced on its lap. One holds the long, curved stem of a clay pipe. He has been artfully carved entirely from wood, painted and decorated with real clothing and paraphernalia and the princess, who has been that sort of girl who had never in her life owned a doll, is absolutely enchanted. The figure sits cross-legged on top of an ornately decorated box. This is about three feet high, four wide and three deep. In the front are two panels. The gypsy opens these, which comprise almost the entire façade of the box, by sliding one over the other. The inside, in the half Bronwyn can see, is filled with machinery. The gypsy opens another sliding door in the rear of the box, opposite the one in front. Now she can see entirely through the mass of gears, cams and springs to the face of the gypsy grinning amongst the gleaming machinery, like a tiger in a jungle of brass and steel.

  “It’s beautiful,” says Bronwyn, with genuine admiration, though failing to see the point. “But what is it? Why are you showing it to me?”

  “Ah! It is the most wonderful thing! He is really a star, this Peigambar sultan. Everyone wants to see him, and everyone who does must pay their ten poenigs to be sure. But does he want much? Does he eat like poor Gretl does, bless her soul, if bears have souls, and why should they not? No! Does he demand more than his share of the profit, because the people love him the most? No! In fact, he asks for nothing at all! Except perhaps a drop of oil now and then. Ah, I love my gypsies, but I also love my fat little Peigambar sultan!

  ”But what does it...he...it do? What’s the point of this?

  “He plays chess, my Princess! He plays like a master! Anyone is welcome to play against him and see if he does not, but they must pay for the privilege!

  “It’s a mechanical chess-player?” asks the girl, interested in spite of herself, if still mystified. “Ah, now I must be sad because I must tell you a great secret.”

  While he spoke the gypsy has been turning a handle on the side of the box. A soft whirring sound, like beating wings, came from inside. He pulls a lever beside the sultan’s knee and the inside of the box comes to life. The machinery begins turning with a pleasant, soft metallic purring. Bronwyn bends to get a better look at the spinning works; it looks immensely complicated.

  “Make it work!

  “Come around to this side, please.” Bronwyn sidles between the figure and the piles of stores that crowd it until she can see the back of the sultan. “Watch!” The gypsy shuts the sliding panels, then touches some hidden lever or button, and the back of the sultan hinges open, the door cleverly hidden by folds in the figure’s dress. The interior of the figure is hollow. “This is Henda’s job,” explains the gypsy. “It gives him great pleasure. He is a very intelligent boy but, as you might understand, very shy with strangers. It pleases him to be shut up inside the sultan where he can see others while they cannot know he is watching. I think it gives him pleasure, too, to know that he is tricking the very people who once laughs at his face or turns away in disgust. But I will not ask him and you should not either. You noticed that I had to shut the sliding panels before I could open the sultan? Good! That is one of the secrets. I can open either one side of the box or the other, but not both at the same time. I can open the back of the sultan, but not when the front panels are open. You are looking bewildered, Princess! Let me tell you what our villager sees once he has paid his ten poenigs admission.

  “When I bring the sultan before him, Henda is inside. I open one side of the box. I go to the back and open it, too. I hold a candle behind so that the villager can see the light through the machinery. Henda, he has swung his legs to one side, into the closed half of the box. I then slide the panels and do the same for the other side. Henda, he does as before. I close these and open a big door in the chest of the sultan, I open his back. The villager, he can see that the sultan has nothing in him but a few wires, rods and springs. Henda, he has dropped into the box below, bent over as far as he can. I close everything up and invite the villager to a game. Henda raises his head just far enough into the sultan to see the board. Do you see that big jewel in the chest? Look closely, see? It is just paints mesh. Henda can see through it like a window. He stretches a hand into the arm of the sultan, it only needs to move from the elbow, you see?, and can move the pieces on the board with ease. It is so simple!

  “I think that I know what you have in mind,” says Bronwyn, sorry that she had laughed at Thud, “but my chess-playing’s not very good.”

  “It is not necessary! We will not be putting on a show for the Guards, we only need a place to hide you. You are very much taller than Henda; it will not be easy for you. But you are young and can bend like a sapling. You must!” he finishes with sudden intentness.

  “I can but try. But I’ll die in there! How long will it take us to get away from the city?

  “I do not think that you will nes to stay inside the sultan all the time. I will show you how to get in, and we will practice the movements and timing. It is very easy. Then all I will need to do is signal you if we are to be stopped. I will be riding beside the driver. We will be taking the canal north from the city. I think that we will only be searched at the barge pool, but it will be a good search, they will try to miss nothing. Ho ho! But they will miss everything!”

  In the northwest of Blavek’s island, on the south bank of the Moltus, is the reservoir that feeds the canal that runs due north out of the city. It is on a high bluff overlooking the water, just downstream from Pordka Falls. A stone aqueduct carries the canal from the reservoir, over the churning river, to the top of the vertical granite cliffs opposite.

  A full troop of Guards is waiting for the gypsies. The caravan joins the milling throng of passengers and freight wagons that are waiting to be inspected before they can board their respective barges. The Guards are being as thorough as the gypsy had warned Bronwyn they would be. It is slow work and tempers are short. Few, however, dare to speak out too harshly against the inspection. The black mood of the soldiers is too obvious and already several people have been beaten and arrested for obstructing the search, or for just simply being annoying. The message is too blatant for those remaining to miss. The people wisely kept their grumbling sotto voce.

  Slowly, one barge after another moves through the lock and onto the aqueduct. Finally
, the gypsy wagons come under the scrutiny of the Guards. The fugitives’ gypsy friend accompanies the inspection, which is thorough indeed. Half a dozen men comb through each wagon down the line, one at a time. They sound the walls, they look beneath the vans and on the roofs, they check every box, basket, pot, bag, sack and bundle; even things it would be impossible for either the girl or the big man to have fitted into. They are thorough, but, as has been said already, they have no imagination. When they reach the wagon containing Thud, the wagon immediately preceding Bronwyn’s, the Guard in charge asks, “What’s in here?”, an entirely unnecessary question since the closed panels are covers with colorful paintings of a giant, snarling, slavering, sharp-fanged and dagger-taloned animal. Surrounding these are two-foot-high words in gold-outlined letters ‘and altogether belying the ferocious images):

  “It is a dancing bear.”

  “A dancing bear?

  “Yes, a bear; very dangerous animal, very ferocious. I do not know why I keep it, it will kill someone some day, I am sure of this. It also dances.

  “Well, open up, let’s see it.

  “As you wish.” And the gypsy pulls on one of the dangling cords, raising a side panel a few feet, so that it angles out like an awning, shading the inside. The Guard peers into the dim interior. He can see that there is nothing in the cage but a great black shape sitting huddled on the bare wooden floor.

  “That’s it, huh?”

  He rattles the bars with the butt of his rifle.

  “Hoo! Hoo!” he cries.

  The black mass shakes itself.

  “Grrr!” it says.

  “Ugly brute, ain’t it?” says the Guard, stepping back a pace involuntarily. “All right, close it up.”

  As the Guard turns to walk away, the driver gives the wall behind his seat a surreptitious tap, tap, taptap.

  “What’s in here?”the Guard asks as he approaches the next wagon.

  “It is for supplies. A little bit of everything: clothes, props, I do not know. A lumber room, a catch-all.”

  “Open it up.”

  Inside, the Guard faces the almost solid mass of baggage with an air of dejection. “Go through every piece!” he orders his men.

  Only two can fit into the interior at one time. They began passing the larger boxes and trunks to the men outside. In only minutes, the ground surrounding the wagon is buried under the contents of the wagon. There is a surprised shout from inside the van.

  “Captain!”

  “What is it?” asks the officer, putting his head into the doorway. Then: “Holy Musrum!” Then: “Get that thing out of there, it scared the shit out of me!”

  The sultan is wrestled out of the wagon.

  “Please be careful,” worries the gypsy. “That is a valuable work of art!

  “You,” says the captain to the gypsy, “get your people to load this other junk back onto the wagon. Meanwhile, what is this thing?”

  “It is The Great Peigambar Sultan!”

  To which information the captain merely looks blank.

  “It is a chess-player! A grand master! You wind it up, it plays chess. Surely a man of the world such as yourself has heard of this great wonder?”

  “Of course, of course. Open it up, I want to see what’s inside.”

  The gypsy opens the first sliding panel, and then the matching one in the back. The captain bends to look inside and can see one of his other men peering back at him through the maze of gears, pinions and cams. Before he can say anything, the gypsy slides the panels to the other side of the box, revealing the remaining half of its contents. The captain and the soldier repeat their performance. The gypsy is easily able to keep his face sober: he has seen bumpkins in every village in Tamlaght do what he is watching the Guards do now. Once again anticipating the captain’s orders, the gypsy slips the panels shut and opens the sultan’s chest and the door in its back. It is hollow but for a few rods, springs and cables coming from the machinery below.

  “Make it work.”

  “What?”

  “Make it work. I want to see it play this game.”

  “Yes, Sir.” He feels around in his pockets, patting one after another. “Do you have a crown on you, Sir? I need to put a crown in it before it will work. I do not seem to have anything less than an eagle.”

  “Yes, yes, yes.”

  The captain fumbles for a second in his uniform, finally pulling forth a golden coin, with the pride of a magician producing an egg. The gypsy takes it and inserts it in the machine. Stepping to its side, he cranks the handle for a turn or two. The machinery begins its mysterious writhings. The captain is fascinated by the spinning works.

  “You must make the first move,” says the gypsy as he closes the panels.

  “Eh?”

  “The game. The sultan cannot play until you make the first move.”

  “Oh. Well, ah ...”

  The captain reaches out a tentative hand and moves one of the pawns. The sultan whirrrs like a cat; its free arm vibrates, raises itself above the game board, moves until it is above one of its pieces, drops, grasps the pawn between a pincer-like thumb and forefinger and moves it one square ahead.

  “Fascinating!” exclaims the captain. “Well, we must move on...”

  “You will not finish the game? You are doing so well!”

  “Yes? Ah. Well...”

  He moves another piece. So does the sultan. He moves another, and so does the sultan.

  “Ha! Ha!” cries the captain, and jumps four of the automaton’s men, sweeping them off the board into his hand. “Your machine is not so clever as a captain of the Guards, is it, gypsy?

  “I should have known it was futile! My machine has been outwitted! My congratulations, Sir!”

  “All right. Get that thing back in your wagon and move on. Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen!” he confides to the man next to him. “Scared the shit out of me when I saw it sitting in there. Can’t play worth beans, though! Ha!”

  “If I were you, Sir, I’d check to make sure I still had my watch,” suggests the lieutenant, dryly, who does know how to play chess and has always thought his superior officer an idiot. He watches superciliously as the captain checks his watch pocket, happily discovering the timepiece, and decides rather meanly not to remind him of the gold crown he lost in the fruitless demonstration.

  The dozen wagons are loaded onto one of the long, flat, very narrow wooden barges. The animals are penned closely together amidships. The barge masters with their fifteen-foot wooden poles line either side of the boat. They push against the bottom of the shallow reservoir; guided by shore men hauling on cables attached to the bows, the heavily laden barge moves into the rectangular stone lock, within which there is scarcely a foot of clearance all around. The entrance is sealed by a thick timber gate. The water begins churning and there is a distant throbbing sound of draining liquid. The water level drops quickly until the tops of the wagons are well below the rim of the lock. The gates at the opposite end open and the barge is pushed out into the canal by the efforts of the barge masters, aided by the flow of the excess water, their poles straining against the mossy sides of the lock. It glides between grassy banks for a few yards, then enters the aqueduct. Here the canal is carried nearly a hundred feet above the turbulent Moltus by the ancient stone structure, its piers planted firmly in the rocks below. It is a vertiginous five minutes: the sides of the aqueduct are low, barely above the level of the water, and scarcely further apart than the width of the barge. It is possible, by grasping some firmly attached object, to lean out away from the barge and look straight down to the river. There is no way Bronwyn would ever be convinced to try this, in fact, it is just as well for her peace of mind that she is still hidden.

  The barge slips smoothly into the broad main canal beyond the cliffs, still carried by its initial momentum. The gypsy climbs to the driver’s seat of his caravan and raps his knuckles against the wall behind it: tap, tap, taptap.

  “Princess?” he whispers to the wood. “Al
l is well, come to the door.”

  He climbs back to the deck of the barge and circles to the rear of the wagon. He unlocks the door and swung it open.

  “It is safe to come out. The bargemen, they are blind and dumb to that which does not concern them. Do not think about them.”

  Bronwyn steps down from the wagon, shielding her eyes from the glare that squeezes tears from them. The gypsy lends her a hand until she regains her vision.

  “Ah, you were wonderful. Perhaps you are not meant to be a princess; you are intelligent and brave enough to be one of us!”

  “I may never walk erect again,” she answers, bending her back and stretching her knees, up and down. “I feel like a used paper clip.”

  “Let us go and fetch your friend; I do not think he has been any more comfortable than you.”

  The late Gretl’s wagon is directly behind that of the gypsy leader. He unlocks the rear gate.

  “Grrr!” comes a throaty snarl from inside. Bronwyn had almost forgotten there isn’t really a wild animal inside.

  “Thud!” she cries into the dark interior. “It’s me, Princess Bronwyn. You can come out now, everything’s all right.”

  She steps back as an enormous, black, furry creature emerges. The wagon looks like a cubical egg giving birth to a gorilla. The creature shrugs and molts its skin as neatly as a snake. Underneath, Thud’s clothing clung to him wetly: he is drenched to the skin with sweat. Now, however, he begins to shiver in the brisk wind that whisks across the open deck.

  “Are you all right, Thud?”

  “Sure! Fooled them, didn’t we? That was a lot of fun. Grrr! That Guard almost made me laugh!”

  “Well,” says the gypsy, “it is a good thing you did not; even a Guard would not be stupid enough to believe in a laughing bear.”

  “I think Thud needs something warm to put on. Look at him, he’s freezing!”

  “Come, my friend, I think we can accommodate you!”

  The gypsy takes Thud by the arm and leads him to the baggage wagon. Bronwyn, balancing along the narrow catwalk that ran the perimeter of the boat, went to the bow, a blunt, triangular point. The clean air from the north tumbles her hair, shaking it like a terrier worrying a fox. It brushes her cheeks until they stung, until she knew they are bright red. The air is as clear as a vacuum and she can see the multicolored leaves on distant trees with the clarity of the dots in a halftone engraving. They have entered the rolling, open countryside north of Blavek; ahead are foothills that promise ragged mountains still beyond the horizon. The grassy undulations are dun from the frosty gusts of late fall. There is a long winter ahead she decides.