Beyond the Gate (The Golden Queen) (Volume 2) (7 page)

His mother got up from the couch. “It’s going to be a long day, what with everyone running off to see the Lord Sheriff. At least we don’t have to wait on an empty stomach.”

“Aye, what a day,” Thomas said. “Between the trial and my oddities, the inn will be bustling. We might as well put a tent over the whole town. Why, all we lack for a circus is a few dancing horses and a singing dog—the clowns and ringmasters are already in attendance.”

In the kitchen, Gallen’s mother began mixing dough and banging pots. Orick lay at Gallen’s feet. The bloody wound to his shoulder was all scabbed over, and the poor bear lay for a bit, licking himself.

When Thomas was sure that Gallen’s mother was occupied, Thomas leaned forward. “Lad,” he said, “I’m afraid that this trial might go bad for you. It’s said that the angels have come to your aid before. Is there a chance that they’ll come now?”

“I’m afraid not,” Gallen said.

Thomas licked his lips. “Then they’re gone now, to whatever world they hail from?”

Thomas looked into Gallen’s eyes quizzically, and Gallen wondered how much he knew—or had guessed. “Yes, they’re gone, and I don’t think they’ll be back.”

Thomas leaned forward conspiratorially, and whispered, “You’ve talked to an angel? Wha—what did the creature say, man?”

Gallen found his heart hammering. He was tom between the desire to speak the truth, and the desire to keep his secrets. “There are many worlds beyond Geata na Chruinne,” Gallen said, “and people there are not so different than they are here. Some of them are far more beautiful than anything you dream. Some of them are wise. Some of them live forever. In many ways, life is easier there than it is here, but there are also greater perils.”

Thomas sat back, stunned, his face a mask of hope and confusion. “Well, I’ll be … I wonder … I wish I could see … I wish I could have talked to an angel.”

Gallen could see Thomas’s secret desire written plain on his face. The man wanted to see what lay beyond Geata na Chruinne, and Gallen had promised Maggie that he’d talk to Thomas about a quick date for the wedding. He wondered if he told Thomas the truth, if Thomas could understand how important it was for Maggie to marry soon.

“Maggie and I have both been beyond the gate with the folk that you call angels,” Gallen said. “And now that Maggie’s been there, she won’t rest easy until she washes the dust of this world from off her feet once and for all.”

Orick had quit licking his wounds, and now he looked up. “Well, if you’re going to say that much, you might as well tell him the whole truth, Gallen.” Orick turned to Thomas. “Gallen and Maggie are people of some import out there now. They have to return. The fate of ten thousand worlds rests on their shoulders.”

Thomas sat back, as if expecting Gallen to sprout horns from his head or wings from his back. It was an utterly fantastic tale that Gallen was telling, yet the dead “demon” and “angel” in Thomas’s shed gave some proof of it. Thomas must have believed him, for the old minstrel began to weep. “People there can live forever?” Thomas asked. “And all you have to do is walk through Geata na Chruinne?”

“You need a key to the gate,” Orick said.

“And have you got one?”

Gallen nodded.

“Can I see it?” Thomas begged, making little grasping motions with one hand.

Gallen checked to make certain that his mother wasn’t watching, then he went to his room, came back with the key—a glowing crystal globe with golden wiring inside.

Thomas stared in awe, held it in both hands. “This is not of this world, that’s sure,” Thomas said. “But I don’t know if it’s a thing of God, or of the devil.”

“Neither,” Gallen said. “It was made by the Tharrin, a race of good people who rule the heavens.”

Thomas licked his lips, handed the key back to Gallen, who scooted it into his pocket. Thomas said, “So why haven’t you gone already? Is it those green-skinned devils?”

“Something like that,” Gallen said. “Maggie and I have enemies who will begin hunting us soon, and this is a good place to hide. Maggie wants to get married here, before we leave. And to tell the truth, I wanted to say goodbye to my friends.”

“So that’s why Maggie is so hot to marry you now,” Thomas said. “She doesn’t care about your political future, because your future lies elsewhere.”

Gallen nodded.

Thomas folded his hands, stared at them thoughtfully for a long time. “And if you don’t like it out there, you can always come back here, I suppose?”

“Aye,” Gallen said. “We could.”

Thomas leaned back in his chair, studied Gallen a moment, his gray eyes measuring the boy. His beard and moustache were impeccably trimmed. His body was leathery, but he had a gut growing on him. He was at that stage of life where he was still tough, but somewhat worn. And in his bright purple pants and a peach-colored shirt, he looked as if he should be out juggling or singing in the streets. “I want to go with you,” Thomas admitted at last.

“Are you sure?” Gallen asked. “It’s a big place, stranger than I have time to tell.”

“Hmmm …” Thomas eyed the boy thoughtfully, almost grudgingly. “I’ve never put much faith in God and heaven, or any rewards in the afterlife. But dammit, boy,
I want to live forever!”

“And if I were to take you with me,” Gallen mused, “what could you pay?” He said it as a joke, but Thomas didn’t see it as one.

“How much do you want?” Thomas asked, licking his lips.

And Gallen realized that there was only one answer. Nothing that Thomas took with him would be of any value out there. “Everything you own,” Gallen said. He watched the old man smile weakly, thinking he would balk at the price. “All of it. You’ll give it all to my mother, and go into the next world as broke as a babe.”

Thomas watched him calculatingly. “I’ll need my lute and my mandolin and flutes.”

“You can keep those,” Gallen said.

“A fitting price,” Thomas agreed. “I’ll make out the papers this morning.”

“And one more thing: I want consent to marry your niece.”

“No, no,” Orick said. “You can’t barter for her like that, Gallen. It’s not proper.”

Thomas smiled greedily, and he scratched his beard, thinking.

“Maggie won’t care. We’ll all get what we want,” Gallen said. “What does it matter what price Thomas and I agree on?”

“It’s a deal,” Thomas said, and he reached out his hand. The two men shook. “I’ll go tell her. She’s got her dress made, so you can marry as soon as the priest gets back.”

Thomas got up, swaggered to the door, opened it and looked out at the sheriffs all gathered around out there. “Oh, it’s going to be the damnedest long day you ever saw,” Thomas bellowed, and he was out the door.

After Thomas left, Gallen’s mother fixed a huge breakfast of ham and eggs with sweet rolls, and in the early morning dawn, Gallen, his mother, and Orick sat down to eat, watching the sheriffs outside through the windows, who all stared in at the banquet with envy.

All through the morning, there was nothing to do but sit, and Gallen waited with a heavy heart, considered routes of escape. But escape was out of the question. Orick tried to go outside, for the sheriffs had one of his bear friends, a female named Grits, in custody, but the sheriffs would not let him past.

And so they sat. In a couple of hours, Thomas came back and sang to the sheriffs a bit, sat with them and drank, laughing, as if they were all as thick as thieves. He came in for a minute, warned Gallen to lock all the doors and windows, and keep his weapons handy. “There’s some sentiment for a lynching out there among those boys. They’ve come a long way to get you, and they don’t want to go back empty-handed. But I think I can cool their heads,” Thomas whispered, then he was back out the door.

In the early afternoon, the scar-faced sheriff came back to Gallen’s door, offering him a bargain. “If you come with us now,” the sheriff said, droplets of nervous perspiration on his brow, “I’m prepared to set your fiancée free. No harm will come to her.”

“And if I don’t come with you?” Gallen asked, wondering why the sheriff wanted a bargain, what had spooked him.

“‘Who knows?” the sheriff said. “We’ll take her north for questioning. It’s a dangerous road. Prisoners have been known to get killed while trying to escape. And the interrogations can get brutal. Even if your girl does make it through all of this, she’ll have a long walk home, over lonely roads, where robbers sometimes would rather take a woman’s virtue than her purse.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Gallen said. There was some shouting outside, townsmen arguing with sheriffs, and Gallen suddenly knew why the sheriff was getting nervous. The crowd was growing, becoming unmanageable.

“With fifty men to back me?” the sheriff said. “Oh, I’d dare.”

Just then, Thomas came up to the door behind the sheriff. “Say, Gallen,” Thomas chortled. “It looks as if you’re getting pretty thick with Sheriff Sully here. He’s the leader of this band of merry lawmakers, you know.”

He pushed past the sheriff, carrying his lute in its case of rosewood, leaving the door wide open. He sat on the couch, pulled out the lute.

“‘Why don’t you invite Sheriff Sully in, Gallen?” Thomas said. “I’ve been working on ballads about this meeting—the meeting of Gallen O’Day and Sheriff Sully—and I’d like you to hear them. They may be sung all over the world for many years, so I’d like your opinion.”

He began fingering his lute, then apologized. “This is an early draft of the song, as you’ll gather. It’s a bit simple, a bit crude, but I always think a song should reflect its subject matter, don’t you?”

Gallen looked to Sully, and he shrugged.

“Now, there is one point I want to be clear on,” Thomas said. “You’ve got a nasty scar on your face, Sheriff Sully, and with a man in your line of work, one might imagine that you got it fighting some notorious outlaw. But that’s not how you got the scar, is it?”

“No,” Sully said.

“As I understand from your townsmen out there, it came about through a whittling mishap?”

Sully squinted and nodded.

Thomas plucked a few notes on his lute, then sang sweetly,

“Come near and listen girls and listen boys,
Whether you be virtuous or bullies
Learn good from bad while you’re still young
Don’t let your name be Sullied.”

Sheriff Sully stiffened, reached for the haft of his sword, a sneer spreading across his face.

“Och, now!” Thomas stopped, looked up. “Do you know the penalty for drawing a blade against a minstrel?” Thomas said. “We carry a license for this work from the Lord Mayor, you know.”

“You can’t sing songs about me, unless a judge approves them!” Sully cried.

“I can’t sing songs
in public
,” Thomas said. “But I can compose them in private. I’m sure I can clear the song through the review process before going public. It contains nothing slanderous, only the facts. Here’s how it goes.…” His hands strummed, and he continued in a sweet voice,

“Now, when Sheriff Sully was a lad often,
he slept in his own piddle.
He drowned young rats in his grandma’s well
And sliced his face up when he whittled.”

When Thomas sang the word “whittled,” he hit a sour note on his lute, smiled up at the two of them. “That’s the first verse. Sheriff Sully was a bed wetter, Gallen. Did you know that?” Sully’s face had turned a bright red, and he stood there mortified. Several other sheriffs were standing outside the door, and Thomas had sung loud enough for them to hear. Their guffaws reverberated through the room, and they pressed closer. “Anyway,” Thomas said, “here’s my idea for the chorus!” His voice took on a gravelly note as he pounded the strings of his lute and snarled,

“But who knew,
that when his body grew,
his mind would stay so damned little?
Yes, he wounds himself when he whittles!
And you never know where he’ll piddle!”

Thomas got up and strolled the room as he sang through the next two verses. And Sully’s eyes became more and more wild, more desperate and full of rage.

“Sully matured into a fearsome lad,
He turned his knife on others.
And as sheriffs go, he wasn’t bad,
at poking the wife of his own brother!
But who knew,
that when his body grew,
his soul would stay so damned little?
Yes, he wounds himself when he whittles!
And you never know where he’ll piddle!
And with his sister-in-law he diddles!
Now Sheriff Sully knew he was brave,
And he vowed to stamp out sin!
So he hunted that worthy Gallen O’Day
backed by only a hundred well-armed men!
But who knew
that when his body grew
his heart would stay so damned little?
Yes, he wounds himself when he whittles!
And you never know where he’ll piddle!
And with his sister-in-law he diddles!
And what he calls ‘valor’ is a riddle!”

“Enough!” Sheriff Sully screamed, reaching for his sword. But one of his men, who had been inching in through the open door, grabbed his arm and wrestled it behind his back.

“Oh, I don’t think it’s nearly enough.” Thomas grinned. “I’ve got several more verses.”

“I challenge you to a duel … you,” Sully roared. “You knave!”

“Oh, a duel, is it?” Thomas said. “Well, if you’re going to abuse me with language like that, then I accept.”

Gallen looked back and forth between the men for a moment. Sully was younger, bigger, and stronger than Thomas, and in any match, the minstrel was sure to lose.

“I accept your challenge,” Thomas said, “and since you’ve offered the duel, I shall choose the weapons!”

He walked over to the sheriff, who suddenly was glancing about worriedly, wondering what trick the minstrel was playing. Thomas glanced meaningfully at Gallen’s knives, looked over the swords of a couple of Sully’s men. “It shall be a duel … of tongues,” Thomas said. “You and I shall stand and hurl insults at each other for an evening, and we’ll find out who wilts first under the weight of a good tongue-lashing.”

“You … you bombastic, overdressed …” The sheriff could not think what next to say.

“Ah, how right you are!” Thomas said, looking down at his own peach colored shirt and purple trousers. ‘‘You wound me with your foulmouthed invectives, sir—mortally!”