Peter & Max: A Fables Novel Read online

  On their annual visits, Squire Peep, who was a generous soul by nature, and never more so than to his dear friends, would host the Pipers, welcoming them into his home and treating them to as lavish a banquet as he could supply and anyone could ever hope to receive. Then, after the dishes were cleared away, and the various frosted, berried and custard-filled desserts were merely a happy memory, the Peeps and their seventeen house servants, along with an ever-changing number of farmhands, shepherds, swineherds, cowherds, brew masters, stable masters, stable boys, carpenters, wheelwrights and sundry other hired workers, would crowd into the mansion’s great room for a night of entertainment, which they anticipated year round. Someone would stoke a crackling fire in the huge stone fireplace. Someone else would bring in pitchers of mulled wine and giant steins of frosty beer — and because of the special occasion, even the younger children would get to try a sip or two. There’d be laughter and small talk, followed by intermittent cries of “shush” and “settle down,” until gradually an eager, anticipatory hush would enfold the room, taking hold in fits and starts over the entire hall as, one by one, they’d realize the Pipers had started to play.

  The first notes always came low and stealthy, a murmured promise, a light tickling of the ears. But slowly the melodies grew, and retreated and then grew again, back and forth, sometimes like a lover’s tease and sometimes like the unstoppable tide, until finally the music swelled into a grand and glorious thing, taking absolute control over the room and everyone in it. It was always in the Peeps’ great hall once every autumn, playing not for money but only for the entertainment of sweet friends, that the Pipers gave their best concert of the year.

  Then, the next morning, they’d pack up their caravan again, for the last day’s journey into Old Winsen Town. And the Peeps too would load their many wagons with harvest goods and ride behind their friends to the festival, where the Pipers would find a bandstand to play and the Peeps would find their stall in the farmer’s market. Along the way, Johannes and Radulf would usually walk together, some distance out ahead of the slow-moving wagon train. They’d fiddle with their pipes — the kind for smoking, not playing — and exchange tobaccos. They’d talk about which giant pumpkin Agathe Peep had selected this year to enter into the judging, and which little lamb young Esmerault believed had the best chance of winning the grand palm. Or they’d talk about how Father Johannes had two sons while Father Radulf had too many daughters, and maybe it isn’t entirely too early to start thinking about the future. Every year the particulars of their conversation would change, but unknown to either man the subject was ever the same — how they were good and true friends and would always remain so.

  NOW, ON THE COUNTRY ROAD, bordered on both sides by the dusky trees of the Schwarzwald, the endless Transylvanian Black Forest that blanketed the entire continent of the Hesse, Peter Piper lay silent but awake in his bunk in the back of the caravan and thought about what the coming night might portend. His parents were dozing in their great bed which took up the entire front of the compartment. His father’s quiet snoring was rhythmic and comforting, like a metronome. Max wasn’t in the caravan’s cabin, which was crowded with everything they owned in all the world, but that wasn’t unusual these days. He’d grown oddly sullen and ever more insistent on privacy of late. His father told him this was because Max was fourteen now, on the threshold of becoming a man, and it was a time in life when every young man begins to ponder his place in the world. Max was no doubt sleeping outside, up on top, sprawled across the baggage tied up there, or maybe stretched out in the front of the wagon, on the driver’s bench. It was their family custom in the cool of the afternoon to take a nap, so that they could stay awake longer into the night. A musician’s day typically begins when the workdays of all others have ended.

  Peter shifted and squirmed in his bed and couldn’t sleep, partly because he’d outgrown the small bunk. He’d turned ten this year and had experienced a surprising spurt of growth. Now he could no longer quite fit into the cozy little space tucked under the polished legs of Mother’s xylophone, where he’d always fit so snugly in years past. This was becoming a problem, but it wasn’t the real reason sleep eluded him. He was thinking about the amazing dinner to come, and the treats and the gifts that would follow. He thought about the large and roly-poly Mr. Peep, who turned bright colors when he laughed, which was often, and who always treated him kindly, even though the squire was an important man of wealth, while Peter was merely the penniless son of a traveling minstrel. He thought about the gigantic estate, where they would spend the night in lavishly appointed guestrooms, one of which, astonishingly, Peter would get all to himself. And besides the main house, there were all of the other buildings and the endless expanse of land, full of dogs and animals and other people — people who never changed from one day to the next and one town to the next — and a home that never moved, but stayed in one place all of the time. Always there. Always reliable. Always home. But most of all Peter thought about the youngest Peep daughter.

  She was eight, or maybe nine years old by now; practically of an age with him. She’d been christened Esmerault at birth, but no one ever called her that, because, from the first day Mr. Peep had lovingly dubbed her Father’s Little Rainbow, which had caught on with Mother Peep and the five older sisters and the informal extended family of hired hands. Later they’d shortened it to the more manageable Rainbow, and later again just to Bo. So, though Esmerault might have been her given name, Bo Peep was her real name, earned through the only true tests of such things: time and repetition.

  Peter couldn’t sleep because he thought about Bo, and also he thought about how odd it was to be thinking about her. She’d been his once-a-year playmate for as many years as he could remember. They’d scaled imaginary castle walls together and vanquished fierce dragons. They’d made mud pies and mud forts and just about anything else that could be formed out of mud. No matter how often the games changed, they’d always played together, because they were friends, and that was that. But then last year something happened that changed everything. On the final day of the harvest festival in Old Winsen Town, when both families were loading up their wagons and saying their reluctant goodbyes, the Peeps to return home and the Pipers to move on, Bo had done a strange and alarming thing. She’d taken Peter around behind the wagons, where they were all alone, and solemnly kissed him on his cheek, saying, “We can marry when we grow up.”

  Peter was appalled. He vigorously and savagely wiped her kiss off his cheek right in front of her, which brought instant tears to her eyes. She turned and ran from his sight, with an angry huff of breath, which quickly turned into a great wet honk of despair as only a thoroughly miserable, blubbering, runny-nosed child can make. That was the last he’d seen of her.

  Over the intervening year he’d often remembered that small chaste kiss, and wondered what it meant. And he wondered if they could become friends again this time, or if she’d somehow grown into too much of a girl, like her sisters, so that their children’s adventure games were done forever. He was ten now; if not close to being a man yet, he was not nearly a child any longer. Maybe it was time for him to put away silly children’s games as well. But then what would they do instead? If you had a friend and wanted to spend as much time with her as possible, in the very little time you had, what else could you do but go out and play? Once in a while he’d seen how some of Bo’s older sisters spent time with the boys who’d call on them. They wouldn’t do anything but sit on the front porch and talk all day, or stroll together through the gardens and talk some more. How many things could there possibly be to talk about? And why would anyone want to waste his time doing that, when instead he could do something fun? Peter had seen those boys who came to visit the Peep daughters, and every one of them looked nervous and fidgety, sometimes completely miserable, and always as though they’d prefer to be anywhere else but where they were, talking and talking endlessly throughout the day. Lord of the murky depths! What if that’s all Bo wanted to
do from now on? Sometime in the last year, while he wasn’t even looking, his entire world had transformed into something alien and impossible to understand. And somehow it was all Bo Peep’s fault.

  This is what he thought about, as forest gradually gave way to fields and a turn in the road brought the caravan wagon into view of the Peep estates. “Time to wake up,” Bonny Lumpen called from outside. “We’re here.”

  “WELCOME!” SQUIRE PEEP BELLOWED from the shade of his columned veranda. “Welcome back to our home!” He’d been sitting in a high-backed cane chair as they drove up and needed the help of his walking stick in one hand and a solid tug from one of his daughters on the other hand (it was Dorthe, or possibly Brigitte) to rise to his feet. “We couldn’t get a single thing done today, because we were all too excited waiting for you!” In the time it took Mr. Peep to negotiate the three steps down from the porch, the front doors burst open and Mrs. Peep flew by him and rushed into the yard, making happy squealing sounds all the while.

  There followed a long bout of hugging and backslapping, as Mother Piper hugged Mother Peep, and then Mr. Piper hugged Mrs. Peep, while Mr. Peep hugged Mrs. Piper. The men happily whacked at each other, as men will do. And then the daughters, more of whom had materialized seemingly out of thin air, joined into the thick of it and the greetings went on and on. Only five of the six Peep daughters were there, which might seem like plenty, unless, like Peter, you were looking for one in particular, who just happened to be the one absent.

  Some time passed before anyone noticed that Max was missing too.

  Max, it turned out, hadn’t been napping up on top of the baggage or in the driver’s bench. He was nowhere to be seen. This wasn’t immediate cause for alarm. The caravan moved so slowly that many times one or more of the family would step down along the road to stretch his legs, walking beside the wagon, or wander off on some brief side trip, knowing he could easily catch up again. More than once the two brothers, back when they still enjoyed each other’s company, spied a nice pond to swim in, or a creek promising fish, and spent entire afternoons letting the caravan get far ahead. But they always managed to catch up again by dinnertime.

  “I didn’t notice when he’d left us,” Bonny Lumpen said.

  “Nothing’s amiss. He’ll turn up soon enough,” Johannes said, though Beatrice couldn’t help but show a mother’s worry.

  Her worry was misplaced though, because in little time at all, Max came trotting down the dirt road, excitedly waving his hand, where he carried something the others couldn’t see at this distance. Max was tall and lanky and so skinny that concerned farm wives and town wives all along their travels constantly tried to feed him back into good health. Max didn’t much mind the attention, possibly because it was his alone and something he didn’t have to share with his little brother, who was also slim, but not alarmingly so. And he didn’t mind the food. Max could eat like a horse, after having eaten a horse. But no matter how much he put away, he never added an inch of girth. He had a mop of tangled hair on his head, which was brown, like all of the Pipers, but a lighter shade than Peter’s very dark brown hair. Max was barefoot. He wore bright red pants and a yellow shirt of good linen. Over that he wore a forest green tunic that was elaborately decorated with gold stitching. These were his performance clothes, which he liked to wear at all times, unlike Peter who couldn’t wait to get out of his gaudy show dress, once a night’s playing was done. “I like bright colors,” was all that Max said one day when Peter had asked him about it. This annoyed Johannes and Beatrice no end, arguing as they often did that his good clothes, which were terribly expensive, would last much longer if he didn’t wear them so often. But Max was impervious to their logic. He’d always select his performance clothes to wear, unless and until specifically ordered out of them. And then he’d put them on again as soon as he determined the term covered by that order had probably expired. By contrast, Peter preferred simple brown homespun, which is what he was wearing today.

  Max dashed between the twin stone gateway pillars that marked the entrance to Peep lands and ran up the dirt driveway, bordered by twin rows of juniper trees. He was still carrying whatever it was he so earnestly wanted the others to see.

  “Look what I found!” he shouted as he ran. “Stuck in a tree! I saw it from our wagon!” When he’d reached the others, quite out of breath by that time, he held out his discovery for all to examine. It was an arrowhead made out of iron or steel, and still attached to a few inches of broken off yew-wood shaft. The arrowhead was dark, almost black, and wickedly barbed. The bit of wood extending from it was painted dark red. Alternating bands of black and ocher thread attached the barbed head to the rest of it.

  “It was stuck in a tree, but I still saw it!” Max said again, when some of his wind had returned. “Have you ever seen anything like it before?”

  “Actually, no,” Radulf Peep said, taking it from Max and examining it more closely. “Its markings aren’t familiar to me. Not the signature of any huntsman I know around here. It almost looks foreign. Where did you find it?”

  “About two miles up the road,” Max said.

  “Hmm, that’s on my land, sure enough,” Radulf said. “I don’t mind a fellow taking a deer when he needs to, but the proper course is to ask first.”

  “What if it wasn’t a hunter?” Max said. “What if this is from an advance scout for an invading army?”

  “Well, I imagine that’s the sort of thing that someone would notice,” Radulf said. “Neighbors would certainly spread the word about armies tramping around in our woods.”

  “But I have heard about it!” Max said. “Lots of times!”

  “I’m afraid my son has fallen in love with some wild stories he picked up in other towns,” Johannes interrupted. “There are always rumors about terrible invading hordes. It’s standard tavern talk by bored men who want to imagine their lives are more exciting than they are. But of course the fanciful armies have always invaded that distant town no one trades with, or that faraway kingdom that nobody ever visits. It’s never anyplace someone actually knows. Finding a bit of arrow stuck in a tree is just the sort of thing to reignite his imagination.”

  “It’s perfectly understandable,” Radulf laughed. “Why, in my childhood, I can’t begin to count the number of times I had to single-handedly repel foreign barbarians from those very same woods. Perhaps we should all get inside, where we’ll be safe?” he laughed again, and others joined in. Then he turned to Peter and said more soberly, “I suspect you’re wondering where my youngest has gotten herself off to? Well, she can’t seem to pull herself away from her lambs these days, not even long enough to show basic courtesy to honored guests. She’s got it into her head that every blessed one of them is this year’s top prize winner. Why don’t you go out behind the house and see if you can find her?”

  “And save her from Max’s pillaging hordes,” Elfride said, which inspired more laughter.

  Peter ran off around the house and everyone else began to move inside, including Max who’d turned quiet and sullen again. He trailed behind the rest of them, hanging his head and beginning to sulk at the fun that was made of him. But when he tried to enter the house behind the rest, Johannes paused in the doorway, blocking it. “Not you, Max,” he said. “Not before you unhitch Bonny Lumpen from the wagon and give her a good brushing.”

  “Why?” Max whined. “They have servants here to do that.”

  “They aren’t our servants,” Johannes said.

  “Why am I being singled out? I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “This isn’t punishment, boy, it’s duty. You’re becoming a man now, and a man learns to get his work done before he rests and plays.”

  “But Peter got to run off and play.”

  “Peter’s only ten years old. When you were still ten I didn’t make you do such chores either. I did them. But now in my rapidly approaching dotage, I’m reminded of a rhyme someone once taught me. ‘The name of my son is my work’s done.’ More and mor
e each day, that’s going to have to be you, Max. Think on it. And think about this too while you do your honest labor. Peter’s the most gifted player of the three of us. Whether he works harder at it than we do, or it comes natural to him, I can’t say. He can simply do things with a flute that you or I can’t match. Which means he brings in more money than either of us. So, consider that when you’re tempted again to worry about who is or isn’t pulling his full weight around here.”

  So Max unhitched Bonny Lumpen and walked with her to the stables where she amiably chatted with the other animals — those who could talk — while he brushed her down. Reluctant though he was, he did a good and thorough job of it, because the mule could tell on him if he didn’t. As he worked he stewed about the arrowhead he’d found. I did hear about real invaders, he thought. Not just rumors, because too many of the stories matched. They got lots of details the same. They should have listened to me.

  And they probably should have listened. Although it’s doubtful, had anyone believed him, that they could have done anything different to stave off or even mitigate the many sorrows to come.

  LITTLE BO PEEP WAS STANDING in the greenest field of grass Peter had ever seen. It was a small, natural meadow set between a stand of hickory trees on one side and one curving edge of the big peach orchard on the other. Seven little white lambs and one scrawny black one grazed on the grass, keeping it cropped down so close to the earth that it looked no thicker than his father’s whiskers an hour after he’d just shaved. Bo was in the yard, facing away from him, while imperiously ordering a single harried but enthusiastic sheepdog about, commanding that he not let any one of their charges break ranks and wander out of the meadow or too far from the others. The dog responded with enough “yes, missy”s and “no, missy”s and “right away, missy”s that it all strung together as one long run-on sentence.