After they’d finished eating, the abbot nodded in the direction of the brandy and invited them to help themselves. “Would you pour it for me?” asked Armida in a whispery, girlish voice, and smiled prettily. “I never know how much is proper.”
The abbot, who preferred to keep his hands where they were, buried in the folds of his cassock, smiled at her and said, “I’m unworthy of such an honor! Let the prince pour. That would be more fitting.”
“I’ll be glad to pour,” said Prince Christopher, and gave Armida a solemn wink.
When they all had their brandy, except of course the abbot, the abbot said, with such warmth and good-heartedness that even the dwarf was momentarily persuaded that Armida must surely be mistaken about the monk’s six fingers, “Tell me how you accomplished this great feat, my dear prince, root of all my happiness! How I wish I’d been there to see it! Is it possible—” He smiled and leaned confidentially toward the prince. “Is it possible you had help from the dwarf? I suggested myself, if I remember correctly, that the dwarf might conceivably know a trick or two. A little shape-shifting, perhaps? A little bumble and confusion?”
Prince Christopher chuckled, though his look was still mournful. “Oh, he’s not that kind of dwarf. He may have done such things on rare occasions in his youth, but magic is against his principles. He’s the soul of gentleness and reason, as you’d know if you traveled with him. He refuses even to play chess — game of too much aggression.”
“How odd,” said the abbot, and critically studied the dwarf. “Yet surely he told us in this very room that his reason for considering suicide was his potential destructiveness!”
“That’s always been his one great fear, yes,” the prince said, gazing sadly and kindly at the dwarf. “That’s why it’s so important to him never to let go. I admire him for it, though I confess, when I was fighting the dragon there were moments when I would have been grateful for a little noisy magic. But no matter! Here we are, safe and sound.”
“So you are,” said the abbot with satisfaction. “And has my little cure worked?”
“Cure?” said the prince.
“Surely you’ve realized by now why it was that I proposed that mission. I predicted, didn’t I, that you might come out of it unscathed, thanks to your indifference to your personal welfare and your princely concern about others?”
“I believe you did predict that.”
“Exactly! My thought, you see, was that if you succeeded with the dragon you might shake off that notion of suicide.”
The prince glanced at Armida. “So that was your game.”
“I can’t deny it,” said the abbot. “And I hope you’ll tell me I was successful.”
Prince Christopher laughed with him, a trifle morosely, and studied the abbot’s face. “Surely Armida must be wrong this once,” he thought. “Yes,” he told the abbot, “you were successful; we’ve abandoned the idea.”
“Bless you!” said the abbot. “Perhaps you’d reward me for my favor, then, with a little violin music.”
The prince sneaked a glance at Armida; she just perceptibly nodded. “If you insist,” said the prince with a troubled frown. “I no longer think of myself, to be truthful, as a violinist. I’m a swordsman, basically, as the six-fingered man will soon learn to his grief. But since you ask, I’ll go get my fiddle.” He went off at once and before long returned with the instrument. Deftly he screwed the bow tight and tuned the violin-strings, then looked off into space for a moment, deciding what to play. At last he put the instrument to his chin and, with a long sweet note on the D-string, began.
“Beautiful,” murmured the abbot when Christopher the Sullen had played a phrase or two, and he closed his eyes, wagging his head with the music, and listened with all his heart.
Christopher the Sullen played for hours that night, and the following day he played again for the abbot, a long time or a short time, all the while insisting that he was really a swordsman, and sometimes, between rhapsodies, he would make what seemed an absent-minded little thrust or parry with the bow. Though he was the worst of swordsmen in actual combat — mainly because he had no courage and no interest — he’d had excellent training and looked thoroughly professional, so that the abbot, watching, could not be at all certain that the prince wasn’t dangerous. The dwarf all the while sat placidly smiling, stroking his long beard, sometimes bumping his watch on the chair-arm, as if trying to get the thing going and refusing to use magic. Armida smiled and simpered and batted her eyelashes and once, pretending to have seen a mouse, screamed and panicked.
These ruses worked so well that, despite all they’d told him, by the third day the abbot paid attention to no one but Prince Christopher — gently, mystically smiling at the prince, but watching like a hawk. On that day the brethren returned with their wagonloads of treasure. There were more precious jewels, more gold coins and silver coins, more beautiful works of art than even Chudu the Goat’s Son had ever before seen, though it is part of the business of a dwarf to keep track of old treasures. The monks parked the wagonloads of treasure in the barn, held mass, then began to prepare supper.
Meanwhile, the saintly old abbot prayed for the crippled and sick until all of them were cured. Armida, the prince, and the dwarf observed. “Notice,” Armida whispered, “how he holds his hands to pray.”
The prince bent forward and did as he was told. As the abbot prayed, only four fingers and a thumb on each hand peeked out from the darkness of the cassock’s sleeves; but the prince was almost certain that one more finger on each hand was tucked under, out of sight. Nevertheless, whether or not he was the six-fingered man, the abbot was curing the sufferers. If he was truly that master of disguise, that notorious murderer, how could this be? Armida herself was inclined to doubt, for the hundredth time, that she was right. She cursed, too softly for the others to hear, and bit her knuckles and waited for a sign. If her plan was successful, it would come.
That night, as usual, the abbot retired with the three friends to the stone-walled chamber for brandy, talk, and music. The prince played his fiddle for an hour and more; then he said — for it was part of the plan that the prince do most of the talking, saying exactly what Armida had coached him on, so that he might seem to the abbot to be dangerously clever—“Father, we’ve immensely enjoyed your hospitality; but I’m afraid we must leave tomorrow. I must hunt down the six-fingered man.”
The abbot smiled with his usual gentleness. “I hardly know whether to wish you luck or not,” he said. “Surely if you find him he’ll kill you on sight. But then, how can you find him — unless he, God forbid, should find you?”
“That’s an interesting thought,” said the prince, “and I admit I’ve thought it. It’s his way, I’m told, to study a man for a few days, then steal his identity. It’s entirely possible that from some nook or cranny he may be watching me even now, preparing to slaughter me like a goose. But I’m no child. I must take my chances.”
“You’re a brave young man, my dear prince, glory of my life,” said the abbot. “I admire you for it. Perhaps you’ll get together after all, this fiend and you, and perhaps you’ll actually kill him somehow, though I doubt it. The six-fingered man will be thankful that finally it’s over, if he has any sense.”
“I doubt that he’s feeling that much misery,” laughed the prince.