Black Pearls - Louise Hawes [15]
My father seldom used my name, and I would go days without hearing anyone call me Emmett. The blacksmith's apprentice sometimes shouted, "Hi, there, Emmett!" as I passed the smith's stall, and of course, the children outside the baker's all knew me and my soft heart. "Emmett! Emmett!" they would shriek each time I came for the seeded rolls Father favored. "Give us a crumb, Emmett! Give us a taste!"
"That will be a sight to see," Father was saying now. He had begun work on the chest, his hands moving so expertly with the fittings, he hardly needed to look at all. "I expect the whole town will be in the streets to watch the piper." He raised his eyes to me, and if I saw no fondness there, his expression was at least kind. "We shall take the morning off, boy. I would not want to miss those inky devils skittering out of Hameln."
"I am afraid I would only slow you down, Pater," I said, ashamed. "Unless you will allow me to carve a new crutch tonight?" I hated the reedy way my voice rose at the end of the question, the way my eyes avoided his.
He barely hesitated. "No need," he told me, waving my concern away with his thick, corded arm. "We will ride in the lumber wagon and have a fine view from there." Nothing, it seemed, would dampen his spirits, not even a crippled son.
Good as his coerced word, our mayor saw to it that the famous rat-catcher came to town the next day. It looked as though a puppet show or a magical healer were expected, so lined with people were the streets around the main square. Father and I, perched atop our wagon, had a clear view over the heads of the crowd: we could see the grand spire of St. Nicolai rising across from us and the pie sellers and candy vendors weaving through the throng. The children who normally haunted the baker's were now stationed behind the pastry seller, dogging his every step like pigeons waiting for him to drop some of the sweet stuff.
I was wishing I had been able to whittle a new crutch, to sneak away and buy a few squares of honey bread for those hungry youngsters, when silence fell on the square. The vendors stopped hawking, the children stopped playing, and everyone turned to look down the road from town hall. There, marching to the strangest, shrillest tune I had ever heard, a man wound his way in and out of side streets, gradually advancing toward the crowd in the square.
His flowing cape winked from red to green to blue as he moved. His leggings were a bright wheat color, and he wore a small striped cap on his head. By the time he had worked his way to the market square, I could see that his shoulders were broad and his face smiling. I could also see that he was not alone. Behind him, trailing like a long black ribbon in the dirt, were the rats of Hameln. The piper moved briskly across the square but appeared not in the least alarmed, as if there were nothing strange about being followed by an endless parade of rats.
And endless it was. Every rat from every rat hole in the city seemed to have fallen in love with the piper's music. Mice, too, had joined the swarm of small dark bodies that hurried in a steady, squeaking stream after the rat-catcher. As if his whistle pipe had taken ill and could play only in fits and starts, the piper's tune resembled nothing so much as a bout of hiccups, or the whine of wind trapped behind a thick oak door. It faded and swelled, darted and turned, but to the vermin it may as well have been church bells calling them to penance. Like the sinners they were, they rushed by the hundreds—nay, by the thousands—along Market Street past our astonished eyes.
By the time the last rat finally scrambled down the street, the piper had long since disappeared from view. But our holiday did not end there. People began to break from the crowd and rush after the rats to see where the piper would lead them. Father, not to be outdone, flicked the reins across old Patience's back and turned the cart to fall in line