Chapter Twenty
“Hey, now, hold on!” Matt went up to him, reaching out to reassure.
The little man flinched away from his hand, crying, “All right, I am! Just a thief! Nothing but a thief!
Been a thief since I was a boy learning how to cut purses! Is it my fault I was never any good at it? Is it my fault I was caught every time I tried something big?”
“You were caught?” Papa frowned. “But in the Middle Ages, the punishment for theft was cutting off a hand! How is it you still have them both?”
“Well,” said Callio, “I may not be much as a thief, but I’m very good at escapes.” His tears dried on the instant and he smiled, expanding. “Let me tell you of some of them! There was the time I lurked in a guard’s shadow as he went out… I’m small enough so that no one noticed… and the time I went along to comfort a man on his way to be hanged, then in the fuss after he fell, I wiggled away into the crowd.
After that, there was the bar in the window that was a little loose, and the more I wiggled it, the looser it became… how the other prisoners howled when I slipped through the hole and they could not! But by the time the guards came to see what all the shouting was about, I was away and gone into the night!”
“Amazing,” Matt said, and watched the little man preen. “You don’t maybe sing to yourself while you’re doing these things, do you?”
Callio stared, openmouthed. “How did you know? Yes, I sing, but very, very softly, so that only I can hear.”
Yes, only he could hear… and focus the back of his mind on bending forces to help him. Matt suspected the thief was a magician with a very limited, but very strong, power. “Did you ever try singing while you were pulling off a robbery?”
Callio stared. “Sing while I was robbing? And alert my targets to what I was doing? Certainly not!”
But he’d been plenty willing to sing while he was escaping, literally in a guard’s shadow. Matt didn’t bother pointing out the discrepancy… there was no point in telling the man until he was sure. Why raise false hopes? Especially if he was going to use his powers to steal from honest citizens.
How about dishonest citizens? Matt decided to mull that one over… but Callio probably would have been afraid to rob other criminals. He exchanged a glance with Papa and saw that the older man had grasped the same idea about the thief’s powers.
Callio caught the look. He frowned, fear gone, looking from one to the other. “How is this? What have you learned about me that I don’t know? What is happening?”
“War,” Matt said slowly, “and the Moors may come charging over the hill at any moment.”
“Don’t try to scare me!”
“Why not, if it will help you? Make no mistake, Callio… if the Moors catch you, not only will they take away all your loot, they’ll also take you! They’ll sell you for a slave!”
“I’ll escape!” But Callio had turned pale.
“Maybe,” Matt said, “but you’ll be poor again. What good will all these things do you then?”
“Do not tell me to leave them!” the poor thief wailed in agony. “They’re all I have, all I’ve ever had! No woman would want me because I was too poor and couldn’t earn money for her! No woman, no children, no home! No friends, because they all think I’m too small and weak to be worth respect! This is the first time in my life that I’ve ever had anything, anything at all!”
Matt’s heart went out to the man.
So did Papa’s. All sympathy, he said, “If they catch you, though, you’ll have nothing again, and the more you collect, the slower you’ll go.”
“Yes,” Matt agreed. “They’re bound to catch you sooner or later. A cartload of miscellaneous household goods isn’t worth your hands… or your life.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” Callio wailed. “If I had found any gems or gold or other small things of great value, I could tear myself away from these… but I’ve found nothing of that sort, nothing! No jewels, no coins, no plate! The selfish pigs took it all with them! I haven’t found anything really valuable, not anything at all! Don’t deny me this little bit, at least!”
“The more you have, the more you become a target for some bigger thief, or even a band of them,” Matt warned.
“Don’t tell me that!” Callio cried in an agony of apprehension. “They’ll do it, I know they’ll do it! Big burly brutes! Overbearing ogres! Shambling giants! They’ll take everything from me if they see I have anything! They’ve done it before and they’ll do it again! But I can’t just leave it all! You want me to give it up so nobody can steal it from me? What good will that do?”
“Not a whole lot,” Matt admitted, “but you don’t have to give it up forever… just for a little while.”
Callio stared. “What? That’s ridiculous! How can I give it up for a while, but have it when I want it?”
“Well, maybe not the instant you want it.” Somehow, Matt’s main concern for the little thief was to get him out of the bind his greed had gotten him into.
Papa nodded, catching on. “You can bury it. Haven’t you ever heard of buried treasure?”
“Bury it?” Callio stared. “Well… yes, but… that’s only for real treasure, I mean, gold and jewels and such!”
“But you just told us that if you’d found anything like that, you wouldn’t need to haul all this stuff with you,” Matt said patiently.
“Well… yes, but… that’s because you can carry jewels with you, without hauling a whole cart!”
“Then why do you think people buried their gems?” Papa asked.
Matt nodded. “It was because they were going into country where there were a lot of robbers… or because war was coming.”
Callio looked around wide-eyed. “You mean the townsfolk might have buried their treasures?”
“I doubt that,” Matt said.
Papa nodded. “They wouldn’t have had all that much, any of these commoners… except a few rich merchants, and I don’t doubt they hired small armies to guard their goods as they moved north to join the king.”
“Right.” Matt nodded. “No treasure to be found here… unless you bury it.”
“Me? Bury my things? But how could I do without them?” Nevertheless, Callio’s gaze strayed to the loaded cart.
“You’d know where they were, and you could come back when you’d managed to stea… uh, stake yourself to a horse or two, to do your pulling for you.” Matt didn’t believe for a second that the petty thief would ever manage to steal a whole horse. “But what if I forget where I buried them?” Callio wailed “Draw yourself a map,” Papa suggested “Three maps… this is too big a load to bury in a single hole.”
“But the wood, the feather beds! They’ll rot!”
“You won’t be leaving them that long.” At least, Matt hoped this whole conflict would be tidied up within the month. “Then, too, this is the countryside of La Mancha,” Papa said “It is very dry here, not much water in the ground.”
“It rains, though,” Callio protested weakly. “Not very often, but it rains “
Matt shrugged. “So lay planks on top of the hole, a foot below the surface… and a second layer crosswise, to keep out the damp better.”
“It could work.” Callio’s gaze strayed to the cart.
“Sure it could!” Matt said heartily. “Then every time your cart gets full, you just bury the load again.”
“I could, I could indeed.” Callio gazed at his cart, nodding, lost in thought. Suddenly he turned on Matt.
“Why should you care, though? What do you expect to get out of this?”
“Me? Nothing,” Matt said with contempt. “Just the satisfaction of helping a fellow creature.” He started to climb up to Stegoman’s back. “Come on, Papa. No point in staying where we’re not appreciated.”