The Minstrel in the Tower Read Online Free

inwardly as he pictured his sister inching down the wall in her bare feet. “After you find the lute. You’ll make less noise if you search barefoot,” he added.
    Roger looked at the worn, slippery stairs of the spiral staircase he’d promised to climb. His stomach clenched like a fist. It was Alice, though, who would need real courage to slip through the window slit, climb down the wall, and hunt for the lute in the dark, without waking Simon and Odo. Then she had to find the road, reach Bordeaux, andsearch for their uncle. Roger groaned. He felt helpless. All because the window slit was too narrow for him.
    “I hear them snoring,” Alice said. “It’s time to go.”
    Alice walked up the spiral staircase. Roger crept up after her on his hands and knees, clutching the edges of each stone step. She reached the top long before he did.
    “Hold my shoes,” she whispered when he got there.
    Roger forced himself to stand on the rotting floorboards and take her shoes. Alice pulled herself onto the window ledge. Feet first, she eased through the narrow opening.
    He held her hand until she got a toehold, watching her dig her fingers and bare toes into the cracks between the stones. He could see only the top of her head as she slowly worked her way down.
La Guenuche
, he thought,
braver than any
real
monkey
.
    At last Alice reached the ground and went off in search of the lute. After many minutes she came back empty-handed, looking worried.
    So she couldn’t find it. They hadn’t countedon that. Roger knew that the lute, with its eagle carving, was proof of who they were. He shook his head and shrugged at Alice. Somehow she would have to manage without it.
    He held out one of her shoes and let it go. She caught it. When he dropped the second shoe, she fumbled for a moment, but caught it too. Roger waved and Alice melted into the dark forest.
    The moon had drifted past the torn roof when he turned to go back down the steps. The tower stood in total darkness. Roger gasped. He couldn’t even see the stairway.
    Terror made him clutch the window ledge. No matter how tightly he held it, he knew he was going to fall into the emptiness below. The two old boards beneath his feet would collapse, hurling him down. The thought made his hands slippery with sweat. He pressed hard against the wall, wanting to fuse himself to the cold stone.
    “The stairs are solid,” he whispered to himself. “I can do it. Alice climbed down a whole wall!” But his fear grew larger until it filled his skin and shook his bones.

    He had to get down those stairs to begin the final part of the plan. Leaning hard against each step, he backed down like a baby. First one knee, then the other. Down, down. Take a breath. Beneath him, there always seemed to be another step. Why wouldn’t they end!
    Finally Roger felt the bottom. As he lay panting on the ground among the rubble, thankful to be alive, he thought of Alice, out in the forest somewhere. She was the brave one, and she was counting on him. Simon and Odo must not discover that she was gone.
    Loudly, to fool them in case they’d awakened, Roger said, “You’d better go to sleep now, sister. Good night, Alice.”
    In Alice’s voice he answered, “Good night, Roger.”

“I’m the baron’s niece,” Alice said.
    In the courtyard, laughter spread from one servant to the next—from men mending harnesses or polishing armor, to women brushing mud from boots and cloak hems, to children piling firewood against the wall. “Lord Raimond’s niece!” Some chuckled. Others dropped their work to circle Alice, mocking her and making faces.
    “What’s causing this disturbance?” cried the steward as he came into the courtyard.
    “This girl…” someone began, but Alice spoke up for herself.

    “I’m here to see Lord Raimond, the baron. I’m his niece.”
    “Throw the scalawag into the moat,” scoffed the steward. “The baron’s niece, indeed!”
    They reached for Alice but she skittered