The Eyes of the Dragon(58)

"And how much would this cost?"

"A mere three guilders, I should think."

"I have no money."

"Ah, but you know powerful people."

"No more," Peter said. "I traded a favor for a favor, that's all."

"Sit on the floor, then, and get chilblains on your arse, and be damned to you!" Beson said, and strode from the room. The little flood of guilders he had enjoyed since Peter came to the Needle had apparently dried up. It put Beson in a foul mood for days.

Peter waited until he had heard all the locks and bolts go rattling home before lifting the rattan mat Ben had rubbed with his thumb. Beneath he found a square of paper no larger than the stamp on a letter. Both sides had been written on, and there were no spaces between the words. The letters were tiny in-deed-Peter had to squint to read them, and guessed that Ben must have made them with the aid of a magnifying glass.

Peter-destroy this after you have read it. I don't believe you did it. Others feel the same I am sure. I am still your friend. I love you as I always did. Dennis does not believe it, either. If I can ever help get to me through Peyna. Let your heart be steadfast.

As he read this, Peter's eyes filled with warm tears of gratitude. I think that real friendship always makes us feel such sweet grat-itude, because the world almost always seems like a very hard desert, and the flowers that grow there seem to grow against such high odds. "Good old Ben!" he whispered over and over again. In the fullness of his heart, he couldn't think to say any-thing else. "Good old Ben! Good old Ben!"

For the first time he began to think that his plan, wild and dangerous as it was, might have a chance of succeeding.

Next he thought of the note. Ben had put his life on the line to write it. Ben was noble-barely-but not royal; thus not immune from the headsman's axe. If Beson or one of his jackals found this note, they would guess that one or the other of the boys who had brought the dollhouse must have written it. The loutish one looked as if he couldn't read even the large letters in a child's book, let alone write such tiny ones as these. So they would look for the other boy, and from there to the chopping block might be a short trip for good old Ben.

He could think of only one sure way to get rid of it, and he didn't hesitate; he crumpled the little note up between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand and ate it.

70

By now I am sure you have guessed Peter's plan of escape, because you know a good deal more than Peyna did when he read Peter's requests. But in any case, the time has come to tell you straight out. He planned to use linen threads to make a rope. The threads would come, of course, from the edges of the napkins. He would descend this rope to the ground and so escape. Some of you may be laughing very hard at this idea.

Threads from napkins to escape a tower three hundred feet high? you could be saying. Either you are mad, Storyteller, or Peter was!

Nothing of the sort. Peter knew how high the Needle was, and he believed he must never be greedy about how many threads he took from each napkin. If he unraveled too much, someone might become very curious. It didn't have to be the Chief War-der; the laundress who washed the napkins might be the one to notice rather a lot of each one was gone. She might mention it to a friend... who could mention it to another friend... and so the story would spread... and it wasn't really Beson Peter was worried about, you know. Beson was, all things said, a fairly stupid fellow.

Flagg was not.

Flagg had murdered his father-

-and Flagg kept his ear to the ground.

It was a shame Peter never stopped to wonder about that vague smell of must about the napkins, or to ask if the person hired to remove the royal crests had been let go after removing a certain number, or if that person was still at work-but, of course, his mind was on other things. He could not help noticing that they were very old, and this was certainly a good thing-he was able to take a great many more threads from each than he ever would have guessed in even his most optimistic moments. How many more than that he could have taken he came to know only in time.

Still, I can hear some of you saying, threads from napkins to make a rope long enough to reach from the window of the Needle's topmost cell to the courtyard? Threads from napkins to make a rope strong enough to support one hundred and seventy pounds? I still think you are joking!

Those of you who think so are forgetting the dollhouse... and the loom within, a loom so tiny that the threads of napkins were perfect for its tiny shuttle. Those of you who think so are forgetting that everything in the dollhouse was tiny, but worked perfectly. The sharp things had been removed, and that included the loom's cutting blade... but otherwise it was in-tact.

It was the dollhouse about which Flagg had had vague mis-givings so long ago which was now Peter's only real hope of escape.

Chapter 11

71

It would have to be a much better storyteller than I am, I think, to tell you how it was for Peter during the five years he spent at the top of the Needle. He ate; he slept; he looked out the window, which gave him a view to the west of the city; he exercised morning, noon, and evening; he dreamed his dreams of freedom. In the summer his apartment sweltered. In the winter it froze.

During the second winter he caught a bad case of the grippe which almost killed him.

Peter lay feverish and coughing under the thin blanket on his bed. At first, he was only afraid he would lapse into delirium and rave about the rope that was hidden in a neat coil under two of the stone blocks on the east side of his bedroom. As his fever grew worse, the rope he had woven with the tiny dollhouse loom came to seem less important, because he began to think he would die.