The crowd took it in stride, exclaiming in tones of delighted horror but staying in their seats. The minstrel managed to look nonchalant, as though those were the words he had planned to sing. When they quieted, he went on.
The crowd erupted into exclamations of excited condemnation.
“That conveniently explains why Earl Marshal let Prince Brion live,” Matt said, thin-lipped. “Very neat.”
“Who could have invented such calumnies?” Sir Orizhan protested.
“The bauchan.” Sergeant Brock nodded toward Buckeye.
Sir Orizhan stared at the spirit, then whipped his gaze back to the minstrel. “You mean the creature makes the words come out of the minstrel’s mouth?”
“No, he can’t do that.” Matt frowned, suddenly alert. “I thought he was just putting the thoughts into the minstrel’s head, but… Watch the singer’s lips, closely!”
His companions stared at him as though he were mad, then shrugged and turned to watch the minstrel again. The man sang,
“By my troth, it’s true!” Sir Orizhan exclaimed. “His lips form sounds we’re not hearing!”
Matt nodded. “Buckeye is blocking the words the minstrel’s really saying.”
“So the bauchan is making up the words we do hear?” Sergeant Brock guessed.
“Maybe.” But Matt wasn’t so sure. He was a good American boy who had grown up on commercials and politicians’ promises, and he was very much aware how well the song fitted King Drustan’s purposes. He wondered if it was really the bauchan who was making up those words, after all, though he didn’t doubt it was Buckeye’s mischief that opened a channel for whoever really was broadcasting them. He had a sudden vivid image of the minstrel as a radio, picking up signals from someplace farther north.
The minstrel sang on:
Who really was transmitting? King Drustan was suddenly no longer the obvious source—that last verse favored Prince John too much, as the legitimate heir. Somehow, though, Matt just couldn’t believe such an obvious loser could have the intelligence to compose a ballad like that, let alone think of broadcasting it magically to any minstrels with nothing on their minds—or coming out of their mouths, as the case might be. Also, John was a prince, not a sorcerer.
The minstrel was still singing. Matt concentrated on his words, hoping for a clue.
He struck a final chord, and it echoed in a room suddenly silent, as everyone stared, appalled, at the thought of one of the most chivalrous knights in the land suddenly transformed into a treacherous villain.
It numbed Matt, too. Somebody was trying to destroy the credibility of one of the pillars of goodness and principle in Bretanglia. He suspected sorcery in a big way—but who was a big enough sorcerer?
The Man Who Went Out the Window.
Suddenly, he was back at the top of Matt’s suspect list. Matt began to see that, no matter who lost, the sorcerer won.
Then the crowd rose in one roaring monstrous wave, rolling toward the minstrel.
The man blanched and shrank into the nearest corner.
The reaction took Matt by surprise. He sat frozen for a second, appalled at the transformation from shouting to charging.
Then the shock wore off, and he leaped out of his seat, running to put himself between the minstrel and the crowd, then spinning to face the customers, drawing his sword. A second later Sergeant Brock was at his left with his quarterstaff up to guard, and Sir Orizhan was at his right with his sword out and ready.
The sight of naked steel gave the crowd pause, even a second of silence. Matt took his opportunity. “Freedom of speech!”
A roomful of blank looks answered him—the phrase was nonsense to medieval peasants.
“Let him sing what he pleases,” Matt explained, “and anyone who can argue the queen’s side, go ahead and argue! The rest of you use your common sense and decide who’s right!”
“We know who’s wrong!” A man leaped into the front rank, a man with his hood up and a very hairy forefinger pointing past Matt at the minstrel. “Stop him! He’s going out the window!”
“That doesn’t make him guilty!” Matt shouted, but his voice was lost in the roar as the crowd charged. Cudgels appeared, striking at the knights’ swords, then snapping back as Matt and Sir Orizhan slashed. Sergeant Brock was beating a mad tattoo on three other staves and taking a few knocks himself. Matt stepped in front of him and snapped, “Out the window!”
Sergeant Brock was too experienced a soldier to argue with an officer under battle conditions. He went. Matt cut off a couple of cudgels, then snapped at Sir Orizhan, “Out!”
“I shall not leave you— Ouch!” The knight took a blow on his left shoulder.
“That could have been your right! Get OUT!” Matt stormed, and as the knight faded behind him, he whirled his sword in a figure-eight. The commoners pulled back at his sudden ferocity, pulled back but waited—wisely, too, because Matt couldn’t have kept it up for long. On the other hand, he didn’t need to.
“Away, away! For I will fly to thee, Not through the window where you’ve clambered hard, But on the viewless wings of poesy, To land beside Sir Or’zhan in the yard!”
He fell a foot and a half as the candlelight disappeared, but he was ready for it and only stumbled. He looked up, saw Sergeant Brock and Sir Orizhan staring at him, and beyond them, the minstrel. “Don’t just stand there,” Matt told them. “Run!”
“What from?” Sir Orizhan demanded.
“From the mob!” Matt cried, exasperated. “Who do you think I’m running from—Keats?
They ran.
They had a good enough head start so that they were already lost in the shadows of the village huts before the vanguard of the crowd came charging out of the tavern, howling for blood. They ran about thirty feet, then slowed, stopped, and milled about, baffled and enraged. The wind blew Matt and his companions shreds of conversation.
“Where did they go?”
“Through the huts toward the south road, most likely!”
“Road? That was a sorcerer’s spell!”
“Aye! How else could they all disappear like that?”
“What sorcerer ever had need of a road?”
“Disappear?” Sir Orizhan stared back at the mob.
“We climbed out the window!” the minstrel protested.
“They saw me disappear, and found an empty corner,” Matt explained. “They jumped to conclusions—no surprise, since that’s what they’ve been doing all evening. Let’s make tracks while we can, gentlemen. It’s going to be another cold night.”