HE BEGAN BY INSTRUCTING ME about the pipe’s holes—the stops, he called them—and the way to shape my mouth around the blowing end, how to shift my fingers, how to make different sounds.
Reluctantly, I took up the recorder, and with fingers like soft clay, tried to play. What came out were sorry, shallow squeaks. “You see,” I said, “I can’t do it.” I offered him back his pipe.
Refusing, he railed at the top of his voice, threatening to inflict upon me every kind of grisly torture if I didn’t try.
At first his shouted warnings terrified me. But as the day wore on, I realized he was mostly bluster. While I didn’t doubt he could have done the ghastly acts he threatened, it was but a rough kindness.
The more I realized this, the less tense I became. Gradually I found my way with tongue, fingers, and breath. Before the day was half done, I managed to pipe out his simple song.
“There. You’ve done it,” he cried out when first I did. “Tell me that you didn’t hear it, too.”
No one was more amazed than me. To think that I, with my breath, could make a song, thrilled me deeply. I wanted to play it over and over again.
Bear only made me work harder. Then, as I played, he began to strike his drum so as to keep the proper beats.
It was midafternoon and I was playing, when something different happened. Before my astonished eyes, this enormous man jumped up and began to dance. Holding his large hands up, pumping his knees high, prancing, his great red beard flapping, his two-pointed hat bobbing this way and that, the hat bells jingling, he was like one possessed. Though a giant, he appeared as light as a goose feather in a swelling breeze.
I was so taken aback at the sight I stopped playing.
“Now you know why I took you on,” he said with a grin.
It took a moment for me to fully grasp his meaning—he wanted me to help him.
“Play, fool,” he yelled. “That’s the point of it all.”
Excited, I resumed, continuing to make music while he paused to scoop up his leather balls. For now, as he danced, he also juggled. Then to all of this he added singing.
“Lady Fortune is friend and foe.
Of poor she makes rich and rich poor also.
Turns misery to prosperity
And wellness unto woe.
So let no man trust this lady
Who turns her wheel ever so!”
Finally, he stopped.
Panting, he thumped me on the back and said, “There, Crispin, my young and fool-ish, soulless saint, you see what we shall do. While I perform my revels, you shall pipe the tune. I promise, it shall bring us pennies of plenty and we—the Bear and his cub—shall prosper greatly!”
His words made me grin.
At this Bear thrust his hand aloft, “O God,” he cried. “Look upon Thy miraculous gift. This wretched boy has given the world a smile!”
That night, as we made ready to sleep, Bear informed me that on the following day we would reach a village by the name of Burley. “It’s only two leagues from where we are. An easy walk,” he said. “And on the main road to Great Wexly.”
Bear’s news about the morrow made me very nervous. Since I had left Stromford, the only person I had been with was him. But I said nothing. He would, I feared, only mock my worries.
Instead, when Bear was asleep, I went upon my knees and with my lead cross in hands, prayed.
“Blessed Saint Giles,” I whispered to the cross, “let me play the music well. Let me be a credit to my master. And I beg Thee, let me have a soul, that I too may sing and dance like Bear. And, Saint Giles, do not let him betray me.”