Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 6, June, 1994

The Dancing Master by James S. Dorr

So she had been caught dancing. Was that such a crime? She argued with Gant, the temple priest’s deacon. “My husband is a dancing master. We married because of my love for the dance.” But the deacon slapped her.

“Silence, woman,” he said. “Here, your husband is a musician. He plays for God only — do you understand?”

She risked a glance at Pietro, her husband, and saw the warning in his eyes. Be careful, Melantha.

And so she just nodded.

The deacon, however, was not yet finished. “Here, those who dance, as they do in the south, are considered suspect. You and your husband are from the south, are you not? As you may know, the south is considered a haven for witches.”

Gant spoke the last word as if he would spit it, and so she just nodded a second time. But I am a healer, she thought as he turned away. And God made music. As well as people’s feet. But she kept silent until he had left through the temple doors and only then rushed to Pietro’s arms.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “About dancing. Why do they hate it?”

Her husband kissed her, then looked around quickly. “Shhh,” he said. “They may not like this either. But as for the dancing, I understand from the deacon’s men that they are waging a war against heresy. It makes them nervous. That is, anything that gives people pleasure they think must be sinful.”

She nodded. “We should not have come here,” she muttered.

“I know,” he said. “But here we are anyway, captured when these people’s soldiers attacked our caravan. And it’s our good luck I am a—” his voice caught “—I am a musician.”

He turned, and Melantha’s eyes followed his as they swept through the temple’s vast, ancient interior, finally coming to rest on the huge organ across from the altar. Pipes were dismounted, lying at full length along the floor, while the keyboard, where he had been trying it out, was still half disassembled.

“Suppose you can’t fix it?” Melantha whispered, and yet she knew that her husband could. When they had been taken into the temple six days before, the keys had been frozen, the pipes filled with cobwebs, the windchest cracked and holed. Yet as soon as he had seen it, even in its ruined condition, Pietro’s eyes had lit with a glow.

The priest had noticed that, as had his deacon. Surrounded by soldiers, they had been going through Melantha’s pack, spilling out vials of dried leaves and herbs. She should have been warned when one soldier muttered under his breath and made a hand sign. But then the priest’s deacon had opened Pietro’s.

“Look here,” he said. He pulled out a small flute, then another, a mid-sized recorder. Then tabors and books — music notation, meant simply as exercises for dancers but most impressive for those who might be unskilled in its reading. He turned toward Pietro.

“You are a musician?”

Pietro had nodded, saying nothing. The deacon had turned to the chief priest then and whispered something into his ear. The priest had smiled, and the deacon turned back.

“We have a festival three weeks from this day. Everyone from the city will be here. Can you play this organ?”

Once again, Pietro had nodded. “I’ll need my wife’s assistance,” he had said, and as the interview came to an end, he had gone to inspect it. And now he’d already restored it sufficiently to key a tune on the upper register, using a forge bellows borrowed from one of the city’s blacksmiths to fill the fixed windchest, along with the blacksmith’s apprentice to pump it. The tune he had played was one from their own country. One meant for dancing.

And so she had danced, paying no mind to the boy forcing air through the metal reed pipes. But now she had been warned — the boy had been watching and had told the deacon. And she and her husband had been warned before, when Gant had taken them to the rooms in the back of the temple where they would stay — rooms next to the vestry, where she had first noticed the trace of an almost familiar smell — that if the instrument could not be made ready for the high feast day, both their lives would be taken in forfeit.

The smell pervaded her thoughts. Her dreams. She knew it from someplace — one of her herbs, but one used rarely, an unpleasant odor yet not quite this odor. And why should such odors — odors associated with healers, whom apparently these people feared — be found in the temple?

But she had little time for such thoughts now. With just two weeks left before the feast day, the main work of fixing the organ had begun.

“Gant,” Pietro shouted the first thing that morning, “we have two things missing. The first is a wind source. It’s all very well to use blacksmith’s bellows for playing the smaller pipes, but for music to fill this whole church, we’ll need more than just reed sounds. Do you understand me?”

Gant, squat and muscular, turned toward Pietro. “No, dancing master—” Melantha winced as the deacon contemptuously spoke the name she had used for her husband the evening before “—my business is with people’s souls, not with their hearing. But under the organ there is machinery...”

“Show us, then,” Pietro said. “There must be bellows of some sort down there. Beneath the windchest—” he pointed to the long boxlike frame of the organ proper, studded with tubes that led to the pipe banks. “How do we get there?”

“This way,” the deacon said, gesturing for them to follow him behind the pipes themselves. While they watched, he bent to a ring that was set in the stone floor and, heaving upward, opened the trapdoor.

“This way,” he said again, gesturing this time for them to go first so he could watch them — always he kept an eye on them now, since yesterday’s dancing. Lighting a torch, he followed them down the narrow twisted stairs.

“Pietro, that smell,” Melantha began, but stopped when she realized the deacon could hear, too. She sniffed again. The smell she had noticed before was stronger. Coming from one of the tunnels beneath them.

“The temple catacombs, my lady,” Gant answered for Pietro. Another title, spoken contemptuously just as with Pietro’s ‘dancing master.’ “The air may be somewhat stale. After all, we are under the ground here. And mind your skirts as well; it may be dusty.”

The two had already turned, however, when they’d reached the bottom of the narrow staircase. “Gant, your torch,” Pietro called. “Bring it here, quickly.”

“What?” Gant said. He thrust his torch forward, revealing the bricks of a huge, empty cistern set in the floor, within which was a domelike brass hemisphere topped with a conduit that led to the ceiling.

“What is it?” Melantha asked.

“The organ ‘bellows,’ ” Pietro answered. “Except that it isn’t a bellows at all. I’ve only seen one other like this — before we met, Melantha, when I was still learning and traveled through many lands — and it, like this, was in half-ruined condition. You see those pistons?” He pointed upward next to the great pipe at two narrow rods that also led through the floor above them. “Those we can fix — I dare say we’ll find their tops, covered perhaps with centuries of dirt, somewhere between the chest above us and the temple altar. They’re used to pump air down...”

“But what is it, dancing master?” Gant broke in. “It’s been here as long as I, or anyone, can remember. Just like the organ — just like the temple itself, for that matter. Back to when the city was first built, and even before that.”

“I daresay,” Pietro answered. “The one I saw was ancient as well. It’s called a hydraulikon — a ‘water organ.’ The weight of water presses the air that’s forced into the dome — that, not a bellows, provides the wind. In fact, it stores wind — it can even be played when the person working the pump is resting. But before it can do that, the cistern must be filled with water.”

“Pietro,” Melantha called. “Over on this side. There’s some kind of channel.” She pointed to a tunnel that led from the cistern’s chamber — one tunnel of many but this the only one that slanted gently upward and had in its floor a deep, narrow groove.

Gant pushed ahead of her, blocking its entrance. “No, my lady,” he said, his hand clutching the knife at his belt. “You may not have your leave of this passage.”

“But we must, Gant,” Pietro answered. “If, as I suspect, it leads to the river outside your city, then we must use it to fill the cistern. Do you understand? Whether you threaten to kill us or not, if there is no water, I can’t play your organ.”

Gant hesitated, then finally, slowly, lowered his hand. “Very well, then, but you may have just one look. From that you can tell me what needs to be done — perhaps I’ll have soldiers attend to the work then. And just you alone, dancing master. The lady will first be secured to a pillar...”

Pietro shook his head. “No,” he said. “Melantha accompanies us. Remember, she is my assistant in this. She may have some idea that I would not think of.”

Gant hesitated again, then shrugged. “I go first then,” he finally said. “And you’ll stay close to me, your hands at your sides.” He led them upward, into a gradually freshening breeze, until at last Melantha saw sunlight.

“Pietro!” she said. She couldn’t help herself. “Look. Through the gate. The river. The forest!”

“A water gate, yes,” Pietro answered. “And, Gant, you are right not to trust us too much here, as I as well long to be in that forest. Nevertheless, the gate must be opened. The rubble that blocks the channel must be cleared.”

“It will be done,” Gant said. “But now we go back down.”

He turned and faced them, forcing them before him, out of the tunnel’s breeze, into the cellar’s smells. Into the chamber of the cistern, with its other tunnels, then up the narrow stairs into the temple. When Gant had left them alone to fetch his soldiers to clear the water passage, Melantha kissed Pietro. Softly. Furtively.

“Pietro,” she whispered when she had finished. “What of the other thing?”

“What?” he answered.

“This morning you told Gant there were two things missing. The first was a wind source for the organ. That you have now found. But what was the other?”

Pietro took her to where some of the organ’s larger pipes lay on the floor. He kicked one, then stepped back as part of it crumbled.

“You see?” he said. “These pipes — the large flue pipes — are made of wood. Unlike the smaller metal pipes we tested yesterday, they have rotted over the years. Now, with the cistern being filled, when the time comes, I will be able at least to play something. But to make music...”

Melantha nodded. “For music, you need bass. To hold the rhythm. And that means big pipes—” she glanced toward the one Pietro had kicked “—even bigger than these, if you could obtain them. Is that right, my husband?”

Pietro gazed pensively down at the stone of the temple floor. “Yes,” he finally said. “Bigger, even, than these wooden pipes — if I could obtain them.”

“Pietro,” Melantha whispered several days later, “I know what that smell is.”

“What?” Pietro whispered back, preoccupied as he always was these days. The two had been working under the temple, watching as the final trickle of water from the now-guarded tunnel filled the cistern to its brim. Other work, also, was under way on the cistern itself and its linkages up through the temple floor. And other tunnels, too, had now gained Pietro’s attention.

“The smell,” she repeated. She glanced around her to make sure neither Gant nor any of his soldiers stood near enough to hear what she was saying. “You hardly notice it now, of course. It permeates everything down here. But I think I know why it seems familiar to me.”

“Ah,” her husband said. He glanced around, too, and then, just in case, gestured up toward the pipe and the pistons, as if they were still discussing the work.

“It’s hen’s-bane,” Melantha said. “I’m almost sure now. Yet there’s still a difference...”

“Hen’s-bane?” Pietro asked. “You mean the plant with the pale yellow flowers? It’s poison, isn’t it?”

Melantha nodded. “In large enough quantities, yes, it can kill. Powdered, though, in tiny doses, it has its uses — I’ve used it, for instance, in easing childbirth. Or for a man who has trouble sleeping, the smallest pinch, burned like incense in the lamp he keeps at his bedside, will assure he has pleasant dreams. But there are other kinds...”

She stopped at a gesture of Pietro’s hand, then turned to see a soldier emerge from one of the smaller tunnels that made up the temple’s cellar. “I’ve measured the passage as you told me,” the soldier said. “I’ve marked off the distance.”

“You’re sure?” Pietro asked. “You’re sure that you’ve measured the exact distance?”

The soldier nodded. “Already I have my men bricking it up at the spot where I marked it. And Balin’s men are hard at work in the tunnels you showed them. But may I ask what all this is for?”

Pietro shook his head. It was no secret, Melantha realized — after all, to obtain Gant’s cooperation, her husband had to tell him what he had in mind. And even then Gant had insisted that only certain of the tunnels could be explored, even if only the water tunnel actually had two soldiers assigned to stand at its entrance. From that she realized the other passages offered no chance for their escaping, but simply led more deeply under the temple. And yet, like her husband, she also felt it best not to say any more than was needed to Gant or his people.

So she just smiled when the only thing Pietro finally said was, “You just be sure to let me know when the mortar’s completely dry. You understand? And those tunnels over there. They were completed last night, is that true?”

The soldier grunted, and Melantha looked toward the already sealed-off corridors Pietro had indicated. She let her eyes follow the leather-bound tubes that had been built from them to the ceiling, to thrust through the stone floor behind the organ. She squeezed Pietro’s hand.

“I’m still not sure I quite understand all this either,” she whispered. “I know you’ve told me.”

Pietro smiled. “Remember last night? When we tested the first of those tubes with the bellows.”

“Yes. The whole church shook, it seemed like, until I realized it was only the floor vibrating. Yet the sound that came out was music.”

Pietro nodded. “These tunnels we’re blocking off. These are the pipes of my new bass register. Deeper even — more like a great bass, an octave or more below a true bass. So what you heard was a single ‘pipe,’ just using the blacksmith’s bellows for tuning. Imagine when we have the whole register — all the tunnels the soldiers are sealing — tuned together, playing with the smaller pipes of the higher registers, using the wind that comes out of the cistern...”

Melantha laughed, placing a finger on Pietro’s lips. “You’ve nearly lost me again, my husband. I mean with your details. I just know music — and how to dance to it — not how it’s created. But if I understand this much correctly, what you’ve done is to make the whole temple a part of your organ?”

Pietro nodded once again and led her upstairs, their work completed for that evening. The next morning, though, when they went back down, Melantha noticed that the tunnel where the old, hen’s-banelike smell was the strongest, now was guarded just like the one that led to the river. She didn’t say anything. Rather she concentrated on sewing the leather wrappings that would make the latest of the great-bass tubes airtight. Similarly in the days that followed, both she and Pietro kept their thoughts on the work they were doing.

Still, though, she wondered. She had not had time to tell her husband about the other kinds of hen’s-bane — the red and the black, the latter especially prized by sorcerers and never touched by white healers like her. That, she thought now, was why it smelled different and yet still familiar.

But that just added to the mystery. Black hen’s-bane, she knew, was used by some witches to give them their visions. Concentrated enough, it could drive a man mad for days, or even forever if it didn’t kill him. But hen’s-bane of any sort in the temple?

She found excuses to go to the cellar, even though the important work now had shifted to upstairs. Another week passed; there were only a few days left till the festival. But the work had advanced as well, and finally one evening Pietro told her that the hydraulikon itself was ready for testing.

“You mean now?” she whispered — she always whispered, even though Gant was standing right next to them where he could hear anything that was spoken. “You mean it’s ready?”

“Yes,” Pietro replied. “I don’t mean to test it all at once, mind you. I think, for tonight, I’ll leave the stop-keys in for the great bass, playing only the upper registers. That way—” he looked at Gant, leaning against the side of the windchest “—we’ll leave some surprises for the actual ceremony. Still, though, even with just the smaller pipes, I expect the chief priest would be well pleased.”

He motioned to Gant to stand at the altar where he would be with the other of the priest’s assistants during the service. Then he showed Melantha where the twin foot-pedals that worked the pistons for the hydraulikon thrust through the floor, just to the side of the great organ’s keyboard. “This railing,” he said, pointing to a lecternlike stand, “is for you to lean on. To rest your hands on so you won’t fall. Then put your feet there and pump up and down, just like you were walking.”

Melantha did as she was told. “Like this?” she asked. She heard a faint hiss of air beneath her, then a bubbling as the pistons under her feet forced air into the dome submerged inside the cistern.

“Good,” Pietro said. “You should find it easy at first, but as the pressure builds up, the going will start getting harder. Remember, the air you’re pumping in is being pushed back by the weight of the water of the cistern — the more air you pump, the more water it will force from the dome and, in turn, the more weight of water will push back against it.”

Melantha nodded. It was getting harder, like walking up a steepening hillside. “Will I have to pump the whole time you’re playing?”

“No,” Pietro said. “Once the pressure’s built, you can rest from time to time, as long as you make sure it doesn’t go down too far. Now, watch your footing — I’m pulling the first stop.”

He reached to a row of stirrup-shaped handles above the main keyboard and pulled the leftmost one out toward him, causing her to nearly slip as the pressure beneath her suddenly dropped. “Pump hard!” he shouted. She gripped the railing and did as he said. “It’s filling the windchest. And now the second stop—” he pulled a second stirrup out, and then a third “—treble register and the reed pipes.” He pulled a fourth out. “Now the main register. Are you ready?”

Melantha pumped for all she was worth, sweat starting to gather on her forehead. “Yes,” she shouted back — why were they shouting?

And then, when Pietro’s hands brushed the keyboard, Melantha knew.

She laughed. It was Gant who almost fell this time, surprised by the noise of just one bank of pipes. And then, one by one, Pietro added in the next three, one for each stop-key he’d pulled out in turn.

“Now,” he shouted, “can you hear me?”

“Yes,” she shouted back at him as loud as she could. “But only barely. The music drowns you out.” Then she laughed — she looked at Gant, still at the altar, realizing suddenly that this was one time she could be absolutely sure he was not hearing a word she was saying.

“Shall I try the rightmost stop now?” Pietro was laughing, too. “The one for the great bass? I know I said I didn’t want to, but shall we hear it? Or shall I try the echo register — those are the soft pipes?”

“Please, Pietro. Neither. Or, if you must, only add the soft ones. I’m getting frightened.” She was, too, she realized. Just as when he had tested the first bass pipe with the bellows, and she had thought the whole building was shaking. She would get used to this — she would have to if she was going to walk the pumps again during the festival. But she thought it would be best to get used to it slowly.

To her surprise, she saw Pietro nodding. She thought at first he would pull the last stops anyway, but now she saw he was pushing the others back in, one by one, his hands off the keyboard. And yet the organ continued playing.

“It’s the pressure,” he shouted to her, as if anticipating her question. “It keeps on playing because there’s enough wind to keep individual pipe-valves open. Until I close the whole bank with its stop-key. Like this—” he pushed the last one in, then let his voice sink down, too, to a whisper.

“I love you, Melantha.”

She almost didn’t hear him, this time because of the silence.

Three days to the feast day. Melantha was idle. Except for some minor adjusting and tuning, the work on the great organ had been completed. And so, while Pietro remained upstairs, she spent more and more of her time down below, ostensibly to check the various fittings for air leaks but actually just for something to do.

Surprisingly, Gant did not follow her down, nor did he stay upstairs to watch over Pietro. Of course, there were soldiers — down below there were at least two to guard the watercourse plus the two more who now stood at the tunnel where she had noticed the smell was strongest. But other tunnels, larger tunnels not used for the bass pipes of the organ, were open to her for exploration.

So she went into them from time to time, pacing their lengths just as Pietro had had Gant’s soldiers measure the lengths of the tunnels he’d sealed off. She mapped their turnings, their crumbling stone footings, and later, when she returned upstairs, she retraced her steps on the temple’s main floor, gaining a knowledge of how it was built and how, over the centuries, it had been expanded.

She wondered at this, the new freedom she had, until she realized that Gant could afford to allow her to wander since none of the tunnels — except for the river one — led to anything other than dead ends. Except for the river one and — one other?

Her curiosity grew about the tunnel of odd smells as she came to call it. So one afternoon when, torch in hand and her hair caked with spiders’ webs, she emerged from a winding side tunnel into the room that housed the cistern, and found it unguarded, she took just one look over her shoulder, confirming that the pipes and fittings that filled the room’s center prevented the river guards from seeing her, and crept inside.

She knew the plan of the other tunnels by heart by now, so, mapping the turnings of this one against what she knew must be upstairs, she realized it was leading her back past the temple altar and to the priest’s vestry. That, at least, did not seem puzzling to her — a priest, like any other man, might sometimes want some private place that he could retreat to. And so she wasn’t surprised at all, except for the ever increasing odor, when she came to a broad, darkened room, wider than her torchlight could fathom, with what seemed to be a staircase in its center. A broader, more comfortable one than the staircase up from the cistern.

“Would you like to climb it someday, my lady?” a voice — Gant’s voice — rang out from behind her. She whirled around, dropping her torch, just as a shuttered lantern sprang open. Then another lantern — another — soldiers surrounded her — lining the room’s walls.

Behind the staircase, under its shadow — she was pushed forward now — a wooden table with items on top of it. Her pack and Pietro’s.

“Welcome,” a new voice said, that of the temple priest who, in his robes, sat behind the table. “Tie her hands gently,” he said to the soldiers who gripped her shoulders, forcing her into a waiting chair, looping ropes around her. “See how long they are — long and slender. Hands made for grinding and mixing powders.”

“My husband will hear of this,” Melantha started. “I...”

“Silence, woman,” Gant hissed back at her. No more “my lady” now. “Lord,” he added, turning back to face the priest, “I see no need for formal procedures. I think we know what she is.”

“No,” the priest said. “There must always be a trial.” He looked up at Melantha where she sat alone now. “I understand from Gant that you may have guessed at some of our secrets. Perhaps he failed to explain to you that the room with the cistern is an echo chamber. In any event, such guesswork is dangerous. For instance, about the odor of hen’s-bane...”

Melantha glared at the priest and the others who stood about him but said nothing. She strained at her bonds — she had slender hands. Perhaps one might slip free. But even if she freed herself from the chair, the soldiers still guarded the chamber’s entrance.

“Let it be recorded,” the priest finally said, “that she refuses to give an answer. That is her will.” He turned toward his right, to where a man wrote his words down on parchment, then to his left where Gant stood, waiting.

“Now, Gant, the evidence — let her confront it.”

Gant stepped forward and took up her pack where it lay on the table. He turned out its contents, more violently now than he had before when she and Pietro had first been taken into the temple. He opened vials, spilling their powders, crushing and mixing their contents together.

“The paraphernalia of a witch. Let that be taken down as well.” The priest looked up again at Melantha.

She glared at the temple priest’s eyes. She couldn’t help herself. “I am no witch,” she finally whispered. “I am a healer.”

“Good,” the priest said. “At least the beginnings, now, of a confession. And so let us help her.”

He turned again to his left, to Gant, who produced a censer. He opened its latch and shoved it toward her, showing her the dark, powdered, incenselike substance inside.

She tried to hold her breath — tried to avoid what had come to be all too familiar a smell. “Black hen’s-bane,” she whispered.

“Ah, yes. Black hen’s-bane. Some of us learn to resist it in time. But you know it, woman?”

“Just that it’s evil. I...”

“Light it!” the priest said. He handed the censer back to Gant, who lit its powder from one of the lanterns the soldiers carried, then set it down on the stone floor directly in front of Melantha’s chair.

“Know this,” the priest said, turning back to face Melantha, “about our hen’s-bane. Its properties are that those who breathe its fumes find themselves moved to utter the truth to all questions put to them. Moreover, they find themselves moved to believe...”

The priest’s voice seemed to fade in and out as the sour-smelling incense rose around her. She heard it ask questions: “You say you’re a healer. But what do they call you? Are you a witch, really?” And she heard her own voice — she felt her mouth form the words — as if it came from a very great distance: “A white witch. A healer, yes. Sometimes a forest witch. These things they call me. But I am not evil.”

She felt the room grow hot, her body become slick with perspiration. She felt for her clothes to loosen the bodice — she couldn’t reach them. Her hands were pinned behind her.

She felt herself flying.

She felt her chair rise up. She felt herself straddle it, like the horse Pietro had bought for her when they were first married. But thin, like a broomstick. A distaff.

She screamed.

She felt — no, she saw now — a mountain of dancers. Naked. Below her. She flew to join them...

No!

She screamed again—

She heard voices again now. Gant’s. Pietro’s. As if from far away:

“Condemned for witchcraft.”

“No! Not Melantha.”

“See. In a witch’s trance. You, too, in danger. But if you obey the priest, in all he tells you...”

Darkness. She saw darkness.

Reached for Pietro.

And far in the distance...

...began to hear...

...music

She woke to the organ, felt her feet dancing. Dancing on pedals.

Her hands still tied, but in front of her this time, lashed to the wooden rail, only a few feet away from the keyboard.

She listened. Her nose caught a sudden whiff of something familiar. Something acrid. She blinked. She woke further.

Behind, in the temple, away from the organ and the altar. The benches were filled. Behind them, braziers, fuming with incense. Some had drifted up to where she stood.

Dancing — her feet pumping up and down as if climbing a mountain. Sore, as if climbing a very long time. Hearing the music — treble — main register — reed-pipes — echo...

Pietro!

She looked toward the chair in front of the keyboard. Her husband was playing.

“Melantha! Are you all right?” Pietro shouted. No one but she could hear over the music. “They have condemned you. They said the only way I could save you was to act as if nothing had happened. To play exactly the music they gave me.”

She pulled at the ropes that bound her to the railing. Even though the music was clearly temple music, slow and somber, her feet still longed to dance to its vibrations.

The temple’s vibrations. She saw, in the temple floor below her, stone start to tremble, even without the music of the great bass pipes in the cellar beneath it.

“Pietro!” she shouted. “Look at the people.” She motioned with her head to where the temple congregation was sitting, clouded with incense. Some were fidgeting on their benches. Some were already tapping their feet.

She pulled at her bindings — her hands were slender. One came loose, and she quickly untied the other.

“Pietro,” she shouted. “Start playing faster. Just a little bit. Let them join me.” She leaped from the pump-stand and started dancing.

“Melantha, the priest!”

She looked toward the altar — his and the deacon’s backs were turned. At least for the moment. Then she looked at the congregation.

Some, already, seeing her dance, were beginning to rise. Beginning to be moved to act as they saw her acting.

“The priest can do nothing. Let me tell you about him, Pietro. How he condemned me. He uses the hen’s-bane, not for healing as white witches do, but to manipulate people’s beliefs. To force them to evil. He and the others who serve him here — they are the real witches.”

“Those too, Melantha?”

He looked toward the congregation as well — more now, including even children, were in the aisles, their feet beginning to move to the music.

“Those as well. Yes. Remember the blacksmith’s son — how he betrayed us. Play faster, Pietro!”

Her husband played faster. By now, at the altar, the priest had turned to confront the ones dancing, directing his soldiers to have them sit back down.

The music rose, louder. The stone of the church — not just the floor stones — began to tremble.

“Now, Pietro,” Melantha shouted. She danced to his side, shouting into his ear. “Now pull the great bass stop!”

Pietro pulled the rightmost stirrup out, causing the music to rise to a piercing roar. Underneath, the pipes in the cellar roared back in answer.

“Now, Pietro, how much more time for the wind in the cistern to keep on playing, even without me working the pumps?”

“Five minutes, maybe. Perhaps a bit less. But look! The ceiling...”

She looked up to where the ceiling itself was starting to shake to the music’s vibration, beating in time to the pulse of the now released bass pipes below. Slowly, at first almost imperceptibly, mortar began to crack from between the tiles. Fragments began to shift and fall.

“Pietro — the trapdoor!” She pulled him from the keyboard just as he played a final chord, letting the pressure of the wind keep the pipe-valves open. She ran with him behind the windchest, behind the pipe banks, and down the stairs that led to the cistern.

They ran together through the tunnel that led to the river — even the guards had been ordered upstairs to share in the festival in the temple. They plunged, side by side, into the water as stone crashed behind them.

They swam. They fought the river’s current. They reached the opposite bank, exhausted.

“Melantha,” Pietro whispered to her as he helped her up onto the shore. “Look. Look behind us.”

She caught her breath first, then looked, as he said, back across the water — to where the last of the temple’s great towers were still collapsing, their stone still echoing with the music even though the organ had ceased. Then she looked ahead to where the forest beckoned.

“We’re free now,” she whispered. She raised her voice higher — no need for quietness now. “True, we’ve lost everything — our packs — your music — but we can restore them. My herbs, from this forest. Then later, some healings, some done for nothing, but those who are able to afford it will help us replace your pipes and your tabors. Am I not right in this, my husband?”

She smiled, then she added, once more in a low voice but sweeter than Gant’s had been. “My dancing master?”

Pietro smiled, too, then gazed with her at the sun-dappled road that lay before them. He kissed her softly. “Yes, my forest witch,” he answered.