The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [58]
"I don't wish to wait. I can pay. I am travelling, and I need a man or a boy. He need have no skills, except to keep himself clean, and be faithful to his master, and have enough strength to travel even in winter, when the roads are foul."
As I spoke his manner grew more civil, and the assessment moved up a notch or two. "Travel? So, what is your business?"
I saw no reason to tell him that the servant was not for myself. "I am a doctor."
My answer had the effect it has nine times out of ten. He started eagerly to tell me of all his various ailments, of which, since he was more than forty years old, he had a full supply.
"Well," I said, when he had finished, "I can help you, I think, but it had better be mutual. If you have a likely hand you can let me have as a servant -- and he should be cheap enough, since it's just the riffraff you get here -- then perhaps we can do a deal? One more thing. As you will understand, in my trade there are secrets to be kept. I want no blabbermouth; he must be sparing of speech."
At that the rogue stared, then slapped his thigh and laughed, as if at the greatest joke in the world. He turned his head and bellowed a name. "Casso! Come here! Quickly, you oaf! Here's luck for you, lad, and a new master, and a fine new life adventuring!"
A lanky youth detached himself from a gang which was labouring on stone-breaking under an overhang that looked to me to be ready to collapse. He straightened slowly, and stared, before dropping his pick-helve and starting toward us.
"I'll spare you this one, Master Doctor," said the quarry-master genially. "He's everything you ask for." And he went off into fits of mirth once more.
The youth came up and stood, arms hanging, eyes on the ground. At a guess, he was about eighteen or nineteen. He looked strong enough -- he would have to be, to survive that life for more than six months -- but stupid to the point of idiocy.
"Casso?" I said. He looked up, and I saw that he was merely exhausted. In a life without hope or pleasure there was little point in spending energy on thought.
His master was laughing again. "It's no use talking to him. Anything you want to know you'll have to ask me, or look for yourself." He seized the lad's wrist and held up the arm. "See? Strong as a mule, and sound in wind and limb. And discreet enough, even for you. Discreet as hell, is our Casso. He's dumb."
The youth noticed the handling no more than would a mule, but at the last sentence he met my eyes again, briefly. I had been wrong. There was thought there, and with it hope; I saw the hope die.
"But not deaf with it, I gather?" I said. "What caused it, do you know?"
"You might say his own silly tongue." He started his great laugh again, caught my look, and cleared his throat instead. "You'll make no cure here, Master Doctor, his tongue's out. I never got the rights of it, but he used to be in service down in Bremenium, and the way I heard it, he opened his mouth too wide once too often. Not one to have patience with insolence, isn't the lord Aguisel...Ah, well, but he's learned his lesson. I got him with a job lot of labour after the town bridges were repaired. He's given me no trouble. And for all I know it was house service he was in before, so you'll be getting a bargain with a fine, young -- Hey there!"
While we had been talking his eye had gone, from time to time, to the gang at work on the stone. Now he started over that way, with some shouted abuse at the "idle scum" who had seized the chance to work more slowly.
I looked thoughtfully at Casso. I had caught the look in his face, and the quick, involuntary shake of the head at the quarry-master's mention of "insolence." "You were in Aguisel's household?" I asked him.
A nod.
"I see." I thought I did, indeed. Aguisel was a man of evil reputation, a jackal to Lot's wolf, who