“How much do you want?” Thomas asked, licking his lips.
And Gallen realized that there was only one answer. Nothing that Thomas took with him would be of any value out there. “Everything you own,” Gallen said. He watched the old man smile weakly, thinking he would balk at the price. “All of it. You’ll give it all to my mother, and go into the next world as broke as a babe.”
Thomas watched him calculatingly. “I’ll need my lute and my mandolin and flutes.”
“You can keep those,” Gallen said.
“A fitting price,” Thomas agreed. “I’ll make out the papers this morning.”
“And one more thing: I want consent to marry your niece.”
“No, no,” Orick said. “You can’t barter for her like that, Gallen. It’s not proper.”
Thomas smiled greedily, and he scratched his beard, thinking.
“Maggie won’t care. We’ll all get what we want,” Gallen said. “What does it matter what price Thomas and I agree on?”
“It’s a deal,” Thomas said, and he reached out his hand. The two men shook. “I’ll go tell her. She’s got her dress made, so you can marry as soon as the priest gets back.”
Thomas got up, swaggered to the door, opened it and looked out at the sheriffs all gathered around out there. “Oh, it’s going to be the damnedest long day you ever saw,” Thomas bellowed, and he was out the door.
After Thomas left, Gallen’s mother fixed a huge breakfast of ham and eggs with sweet rolls, and in the early morning dawn, Gallen, his mother, and Orick sat down to eat, watching the sheriffs outside through the windows, who all stared in at the banquet with envy.
All through the morning, there was nothing to do but sit, and Gallen waited with a heavy heart, considered routes of escape. But escape was out of the question. Orick tried to go outside, for the sheriffs had one of his bear friends, a female named Grits, in custody, but the sheriffs would not let him past.
And so they sat. In a couple of hours, Thomas came back and sang to the sheriffs a bit, sat with them and drank, laughing, as if they were all as thick as thieves. He came in for a minute, warned Gallen to lock all the doors and windows, and keep his weapons handy. “There’s some sentiment for a lynching out there among those boys. They’ve come a long way to get you, and they don’t want to go back empty-handed. But I think I can cool their heads,” Thomas whispered, then he was back out the door.
In the early afternoon, the scar-faced sheriff came back to Gallen’s door, offering him a bargain. “If you come with us now,” the sheriff said, droplets of nervous perspiration on his brow, “I’m prepared to set your fiancée free. No harm will come to her.”
“And if I don’t come with you?” Gallen asked, wondering why the sheriff wanted a bargain, what had spooked him.
“‘Who knows?” the sheriff said. “We’ll take her north for questioning. It’s a dangerous road. Prisoners have been known to get killed while trying to escape. And the interrogations can get brutal. Even if your girl does make it through all of this, she’ll have a long walk home, over lonely roads, where robbers sometimes would rather take a woman’s virtue than her purse.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Gallen said. There was some shouting outside, townsmen arguing with sheriffs, and Gallen suddenly knew why the sheriff was getting nervous. The crowd was growing, becoming unmanageable.
“With fifty men to back me?” the sheriff said. “Oh, I’d dare.”
Just then, Thomas came up to the door behind the sheriff. “Say, Gallen,” Thomas chortled. “It looks as if you’re getting pretty thick with Sheriff Sully here. He’s the leader of this band of merry lawmakers, you know.”
He pushed past the sheriff, carrying his lute in its case of rosewood, leaving the door wide open. He sat on the couch, pulled out the lute.
“‘Why don’t you invite Sheriff Sully in, Gallen?” Thomas said. “I’ve been working on ballads about this meeting-the meeting of Gallen O’Day and Sheriff Sully-and I’d like you to hear them. They may be sung all over the world for many years, so I’d like your opinion.”
He began fingering his lute, then apologized. “This is an early draft of the song, as you’ll gather. It’s a bit simple, a bit crude, but I always think a song should reflect its subject matter, don’t you?”
Gallen looked to Sully, and he shrugged.
“Now, there is one point I want to be clear on,” Thomas said. “You’ve got a nasty scar on your face, Sheriff Sully, and with a man in your line of work, one might imagine that you got it fighting some notorious outlaw. But that’s not how you got the scar, is it?”
“No,” Sully said.
“As I understand from your townsmen out there, it came about through a whittling mishap?”
Sully squinted and nodded.
Thomas plucked a few notes on his lute, then sang sweetly,
“Come near and listen girls and listen boys,
Whether you be virtuous or bullies
Learn good from bad while you’re still young
Don’t let your name be Sullied.”
Sheriff Sully stiffened, reached for the haft of his sword, a sneer spreading across his face.
“Och, now!” Thomas stopped, looked up. “Do you know the penalty for drawing a blade against a minstrel?” Thomas said. “We carry a license for this work from the Lord Mayor, you know.”
“You can’t sing songs about me, unless a judge approves them!” Sully cried.
“I can’t sing songs in public,” Thomas said. “But I can compose them in private. I’m sure I can clear the song through the review process before going public. It contains nothing slanderous, only the facts. Here’s how it goes.…” His hands strummed, and he continued in a sweet voice,
“Now, when Sheriff Sully was a lad often,
he slept in his own piddle.
He drowned young rats in his grandma’s well
And sliced his face up when he whittled.”
When Thomas sang the word “whittled,” he hit a sour note on his lute, smiled up at the two of them. “That’s the first verse. Sheriff Sully was a bed wetter, Gallen. Did you know that?” Sully’s face had turned a bright red, and he stood there mortified. Several other sheriffs were standing outside the door, and Thomas had sung loud enough for them to hear. Their guffaws reverberated through the room, and they pressed closer. “Anyway,” Thomas said, “here’s my idea for the chorus!” His voice took on a gravelly note as he pounded the strings of his lute and snarled,
“But who knew,
that when his body grew,
his mind would stay so damned little?
Yes, he wounds himself when he whittles!
And you never know where he’ll piddle!”
Thomas got up and strolled the room as he sang through the next two verses. And Sully’s eyes became more and more wild, more desperate and full of rage.
“Sully matured into a fearsome lad,
He turned his knife on others.
And as sheriffs go, he wasn’t bad,
at poking the wife of his own brother!
But who knew,
that when his body grew,
his soul would stay so damned little?
Yes, he wounds himself when he whittles!
And you never know where he’ll piddle!
And with his sister-in-law he diddles!