Crispin_ At the Edge of the World - Avi [29]
In truth, just as I had come to think of myself as inseparable from Bear, I now felt much the same for Troth.
Once she suddenly said to me: “Crispin, when you first saw me did you think me very strange?”
I gazed at her, and realized that I considered her differently from how I had at first. Then I surely saw the disfigurement. Now I saw—Troth. Still, I wondered how she wanted me to answer, but quickly decided she would trust me only if I told her true.
“Did I think you strange?” I echoed. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“You were different. The way you lived.”
“My mouth?”
“That too.”
“And now?” she asked, gazing at me with eyes that welled with tears.
I reached out and placed my hand on her cheek. “Next to Bear …” I stammered, “I have no better friend.”
She smeared the tears from her face then took from her kirtle the sprig of hawthorn she had carried from the forest.
“Why did you take that?” I asked.
“Aude would bless me beneath that tree. She told me a twig of it would bind me to the ones I love.”
“Then the magic works,” I said.
She threw herself at me, hugged me and wept while I stroked her tangled hair.
Once she suddenly said to me, “Bear has a secret sorrow.”
“How do you know?”
“I see it in him,” she said.
“I think you’re right,” I agreed. “At times he’s almost told me. But I didn’t want to hear.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to think any less of him. Do you know what troubles him?”
“Something he regrets.”
“How do you know that?”
“I see it.”
“Is it very bad?”
“He thinks so.”
I sighed. I said, “Someday I will get him to talk about it.”
When I had a chance, I took to wandering about Rye alone. It was not that I did not wish to be with Bear or Troth, but I enjoyed my freedom.
Rye was not nearly as big as Great Wexly, and its state of devastation had reduced it further. The very smallness of the town allowed me to see the whole of it, to find my way with increasing ease. The rubble from the attacks was slowly being cleared. Repairs were being made. Houses were starting to be rebuilt. Even the church began to be cleaned. There was talk of a town wall for defense.
And for the first time, I came to meet with other boys. In my village of Stromford, more often than not I was shunned. It was rare for anyone to befriend me. In Rye, the boys knew nothing of me, save what they saw. Echoing Bear, I claimed York as my home, and that I was traveling with my father and sister as a performing minstrel.
Not knowing what to expect, at first I was uneasy, but the boys took me at my word—the more so as I often helped them in their labors. What’s more, they envied my juggling. On my part, I took great pleasure in being with them.
Some had been on ships and had traveled to distant places. Others were apprentices learning trades: bakers, masons, and others. Others complained of hard masters and harsh parents, while some had only words of kindness for the same.
All had tales of the attack, speaking with bitter anger of the killing, looting, and cruelty. Family losses were great and awful to hear. Many swore revenge upon the French and Castilians.
But despite their doleful recollections, sweetest to me was their irrepressible, raucous sense of life; their boisterous, braggart ways. Despite their losses, these boys found ways to joke and tease among themselves and did the same to me. To be among them made me feel older, wiser, smarter. I was keen to learn. To have what are called friends, to have boys my age greet me by my true name—with pleasure—was a whole new joy for me.
I even made a particular friend, Geoffrey by name, whose father was a mariner. Geoffrey told me many tales about ships and the sea. Once he confided—bragging I would say—that his father had served on a brigand ship attacking French ports.
Not to be outdone, I told him that my father—Bear—had been in a secret brotherhood, but having left it, we needed to be on the watch for them. Such secrets sealed our friendship.
One day Geoffrey took me in a little boat and we went out onto the waters.