Peter & Max - Bill Willingham [77]
“Perhaps if you could prove your extraordinary claims,” Wenzel said.
“Name it,” Max said, “and I will accomplish it.”
“Impossible,” Diederick said. “I can’t send an untested sorcerer out on a military mission.”
“Then choose something less martial for my first task,” Max said. “What do you need done? What dire problem needs fixing?”
“There’s always the rats,” Wenzel offered, in his customary cringing and wincing way, as if he expected to be struck for the simple impudence of proffering one of his ideas. But he didn’t get struck. In fact Lord Diederick seemed to brighten at the suggestion.
“True,” Diederick said. “Get rid of Hamelin’s rats. Those vermin are everywhere, spreading filth and disease. Even with a generous bounty offered on every one, we still can’t make a dent in the problem. They breed faster than we can kill them.”
“They fight the dogs and kill the cats,” Wenzel added. “And bite the babies in their cradles.”
“An easy task,” Max said. “By the power of my smallest charm, I’m able to draw after me all creatures living beneath the sun, that creep or swim or fly. By breakfast tomorrow, there won’t be a rat in all the town.” Max rose to his feet. His fingers seemed ever to stray over the length of his wooden flute, as if he were constantly eager to be playing it. “And in return I’ll expect at least a thousand silver marks.”
“Only that?” Wenzel said. “Do all that you say and we’ll give you fifty thousand.”
“Then we have a deal,” Max said. Tipping his colorful, feathered cap, he left.
When it was clear that Max was safely gone from the building, Diederick said, “I do believe you let your enthusiasm run away with you, Mister Mayor. Just where do you expect to conjure up the fifty thousand marks you promised that man? Your salary, combined with your office’s entire annual budget, doesn’t come to that much.”
“But the treasury —” Wenzel began, his face a sudden study of despondence.
“The treasury isn’t available at your whim,” Diederick said. “You’d better hope the man turns out to be the charlatan I suspect him to be.”
“But —”
“After all,” Diederick continued, “You were the one who proposed the rat-clearing task. I didn’t. I can hardly be expected to pay for your unsanctioned exuberances.” Diederick thought he could hear almost inaudible keening and moaning from the fat old mayor, as he ponderously removed himself from the Baron’s suite of rooms, clutching his ermine-lined robe of office tightly, almost protectively, around himself as he went.
THAT NIGHT, WHILE PEOPLE LAY ASLEEP in their beds, the sound of music drifted like a fine mist through Hamelin’s countless alleyways and thoroughfares. The enthralling tune seeped everywhere, through shuttered windows and iron sewer grates, over each rooftop, around each garden wall, and under each stone footbridge. Slowly at first, in ones and twos, and then more rapidly, in great, undulating carpets of filthy, wet fur, the rats began to appear. They swarmed up out of basement and sewer, and into the cobbled streets. Down out of every attic and loft they came, frantic in their need to find the source of the music and follow it.
A young thief in the night, out at his prowls, spotted the vast, swarming miracle that filled every street, and he marveled at it. He was called Cort and was one of King Erwin’s secret brotherhood of cutpurses. He sat atop one of the high walls surrounding the grounds of the Cathedral of Saint Nicolai, watching the endless parade of rats and listening to the soft tune that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. It reminds me of Master Thief Peter’s playing, he thought, except that Peter’s music always makes me feel glad to be alive, whereas this tune makes me feel odd and wary.
A peddler boy named Till Eulenspiegel, who was too poor to afford a roof to cover himself, was sleeping in the street, under his pushcart, from which he sold rolls of bread baked into the shapes of monkeys and owls. His deep slumbers were abruptly and violently interrupted, when an army of rats overran him. They scampered across his body