WHO PAYS THE PIPER
A Short Story by Lee McAulay
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2011 Lee McAulay. This work is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHO PAYS THE PIPER
I am the travelling minstrel. No-one knows where I came from; no-one knows who I am. My accent is untraceable in each of the six languages I speak fluently, and when I sing a rhyme for my audience my voice is as sweet as my smile. I have crossed and re-crossed many borders, under many guises, but I have no passport other than my craft. Minstrelsy earns my bread, provides my lodgings, feeds my ever-thirsty throat with wine.
I play for king and serf alike – no man do I judge simply by his station. Often those who have nothing to spare will offer me what little they can, where a lord or an earl would expect at least a little in return; and to each of these people I sing a different song. It is true, they say that whoever pays the piper may call the tune, and sometimes cash can be outbid.
But I am very vain; I crave appreciation, even if it is only from the scullery-boy who turns the spit.
Although my knapsack is small and tattered – for I have owned it for many years, and its age is starting to show – I have never lost a thing from it, neither by theft nor accident. It holds my mandolin, my three pipes, a couple of small medicine bottles. And much, much more.
I arrived outside the town during the first days of spring, down from the high mountain pass and across the wide patchwork fields, a ragged, unwashed stranger with, I suppose, a lean look on my face. South of the mountains I heard of this place as I played for some drunks in a tavern, bawdy songs to revel in – and I went from the warmth of the miller's wife's bed in the early morning, three days walk in the sleet of a German winter, to arrive on market day with the town walls grey in the early light and the huge wooden gates wide open.