Black Pearls - Louise Hawes [53]
"But what of the giant's curse?" his mother asked. "I thought only the black of heart could play her strings." Her expression as she studied me was half sorrow, half yearning.
"That was just a tale I told, Mother," Jack said. "I wanted to keep her safe from prying hands."
"Ay," the woman said, still watching me doubtfully. But when she glanced again at her son, she was once more his doting mother. "Why, lad, 'tis a fine idea," she told him. "And then you might take up that flute your father left. He played it like an angel, he did."
Jack was already dragging me from my place at the fireside. "Perhaps, Mother," he told her, wrapping me in a dark cloth, shutting out the light. "But think of the seasons wasted while I must learn to put my fingers just so on the stops. This harp will play by itself."
"Or there's the viol," his mother offered. "Your uncle says 'tis the favorite instrument at court."
"Mayhap, good dame." The young man's voice sounded agreeable, but he tightened his grip on the bundle he'd made of me. "Yet that one will take even longer to master. Besides, they've nothing like my golden harp at court."
So saying, he juggled me to his back and trundled me down the street before his mother might think of another instrument for him to play. We wound around corner after corner, and though I could see nothing through my swaddling, the cries of vendors, the smells of fish and pies, and the stench of chamber pots poured into the gutter, brought memories of my girlhood in my aunt's village rushing back.
At one turning, where my owner stopped, I thought we had reached the studio of the musician who would fix my strings. But I was wrong, for Jack began to yell and curse at someone nearby. "Have you no better bed than the street, old pissant? Out of my way, I say."
Clearly the young man's anger had gotten the best of him, for I could feel that he was kicking whoever blocked our path. He kicked so fiercely and with such hatred, I fell from his back and lay on my side, the cloth that had covered me undone and my eyes staring into a deep puddle where rain had collected between cobblestones in the street. I hadn't far to search to find the object of my owner's scorn. An old man dressed in beggar's rags, with a face as red as fire, lay curled like a baby against the vicious kicks.
When Jack stopped to catch his breath, the old man lowered his arms and glanced toward me. His yellow eyes narrowed, and when he had assured himself he saw what he saw, that I was not an airy dream brought on by mead, a smile cut his face like a knife. He stared at me now and held my gaze even after my owner had resumed his savage attack.
"Move on, move on, you worthless carrion," Jack screamed. He stooped to retrieve the cloth in which he'd wrapped me and began to beat the man about the head with it. "Are you deaf, you old turd? Get up and let your betters by."
It was then, while the young man yelled and the old one stared, that I felt, as strongly as ever I had at the giant's castle, a song well up in me. Though he did not point and he did not speak, I heard the beggar's command as clearly as if he had been my dead master, leaning against a brocade pillow and bellowing, "Play!"
So I did. Right there, in front of my astonished owner, I reached out to pluck my strings. Once again, at long last, the painful ecstasy took me, and the words ran like a waterfall uphill, charging from my throat: "I once had a love that was truer than true."
The old man's knees dropped from his chest, and both he and Jack were still as stones while I played. "'Twas long ago when the world was new."
I could see the woman in the beggar's eyes, a dark gypsy with a hungry, heart-shaped mouth. "Kiss me once and kiss me twice and beg me thrice to stay."
The man's eyes closed now and he lay as quiet as a