The Blind Harpist

Stories for Another Day

Rosabel was born blind, but she didn’t know it for many years. She saw with her hands, and with her hearing, and did not know of anything lacking in her, until one day a visitor to the village said, “Oh, look at the poor blind girl!”

Rosabel went to her mother, Zahara, and said, “Mother, am I blind? What does it mean?”

Zahara said, “It means that you do not see with your eyes, as other people do.”

Rosabel’s feet knew every path and every stone in the village, and she knew the voices of every villager. She learnt to play the harp sitting in her mother’s lap as an infant, tugging at the strings with her short fingers. Wherever she went, her harp was always with her, in a bag that she carried on her back. As she walked through the village and the countryside, friends and neighbours would call out to her and ask her for a song to give them a rhythm for reaping or raising water from the well, or a lullaby to put a baby to sleep, or tunes for the children to dance and clap to.

In the evenings, she and the other harpists in the village would play and sing around the fire, but it was Rosabel that everyone would ask for one more song, when the night was ending.

It was on one of these nights that a band of raiders from the sixth kingdom, on their hard-mouthed horses with hooves like iron, burst out of the darkness into the circle of firelight where the villagers were gathered. They raided the houses and took everything they could carry, carpets, weapons, food and tools. The harps which the village was famous for making meant nothing to the raiders, so they tossed them onto the fire. But their captain, a ruffian named Gilpus, recognised something rare in Rosabel’s beauty, and he caught her up and threw her over his saddle as the raiding party rode off, disappearing into the night with the same speed with which they had appeared.

They left confusion and shock behind them, but when Zahara and Lincoln discovered that their daughter Rosabel had been taken, their sorrow and anger knew no bounds. When light came with the dawn, they searched every inch of the mountains and valleys around them, but no trace of her was found.

Gilpus led his men back to King Haar’s fortress. “I have brought you a prize,” he said to the king, pushing Rosabel forward.

“What, this skinny, unkempt girl?” Haar said. Rosabel turned her head from side to side, trying to measure the size and shape of the room and the people in it by the sounds she could hear. King Haar said contemptuously, “The creature is blind!”

“That may be so,” Gilpus said, “but I have heard she is more skilled in music than anyone you have ever heard. Just listen to her, and if she does not please you, I’ll get rid of her.”

With shaking hands Rosabel took the harp that they gave her and tuned its strings. Then she began to play. The room stood still and the king held his breath.

“You have indeed brought me a treasure, Gilpus,” the king said when she had finished.

Rosabel was bathed and perfumed and dressed in finest silk. Her hair was brushed until it lay on her shoulders like a dark waterfall. She was commanded to play at royal banquets, at suppers, and in the quiet of the evenings, whenever the king desired her presence.

The king was a man of greed and violence, feared, not loved, by all he commanded. Over and over he had led his army against other cities in other lands, building his own wealth by stealing theirs and increasing his power by instilling fear. A man like this often has trouble sleeping, which is why Gilpus’s gift pleased him so much. Rosabel’s playing allowed him to go to sleep, and when he was woken by nightmares, her music soothed him back to sleep.

Whenever the king led his army out to kill and conquer, Rosabel was tied into a saddle and forced to accompany them, so that she could play him to sleep at the end of the day. And over and over, when she heard the horrible sounds of killing and destruction all around her, she was grateful that at least she could not see.

In a neighbouring country there was a city known for its beauty, its music and its wealth. King Haar turned his eyes on it, and he formed a plan. He sent Gilpus and his raiding party into the city by night, to capture its greatest hero by stealth. This man was brought back to the fortress bound in chains, and thrown into a prison made of stone. Then Haar and his soldiers prepared to attack the unprotected city.

Rosabel was free to wander King Haar’s fortress whenever he did not need her to play for him. She often found her way to the kitchen, where she would sit and listen so quietly that people mostly forgot she was there. She heard the servants speaking about the prisoner, and that night, once Haar was asleep, she took her harp and made her way to the prison, where the prisoner sat in deep despair, helpless to protect his city.

When she began to play, the rage and despair in the man’s heart left him, and he listened in silence. Then he began to weep. “How is it that you play exactly those songs which touch my heart?” he asked her.

“I have travelled far, and seen more than the human heart would ever desire to see, although I am blind,” Rosabel said.

The man said, “Your music is more than food and drink to me. Play for me, please.”

Rosabel played, and the music filled the man’s heart with so much hope and courage that he stood and gathered all his strength, and pulling with all his might, he burst the chains that bound him. “Come with me,” he said to Rosabel, catching her hand.

Rosabel answered, “If the kings calls for me and I am not here, he will send Gilpus and his men after us. I can’t travel as fast as you and I would slow you down, and he would easily track the two of us. I would be punished, but it would not be prison for you, it would be death. Go now, while it is still dark. By the time they come to find you in the morning, you will be long gone.”

The man kissed her lightly on the lips and then he escaped into the night.

In the morning, when King Haar found that the hero had escaped, he had Rosabel beaten, then he gave orders that a ball of iron be chained to her leg.

His heart was filled with rage. He ordered Gilpus to disguise himself and his men as merchants, and go to the city with wagons loaded with cakes and sweets. There they pretended to set up a stall in the marketplace. When the children came clamouring around them, they seized them and threw them into the wagons and drove off at high speed, before the townspeople even realised what was happening.

The children were thrown into the dungeon, the locks and the guards doubled. Then King Haar sent a message to the people of the city. “We have your children. Hand over your city to me or they die.”

The people of the city called their heroes and armed themselves, and went to attack the fortress and bring the children back. They found that the walls of stone towered high above them, and the gates of the fortress were as thick as tree trunks. King Haar’s men fired on them over the walls of the fortress, with fire and heavy stones, and they fired back with bows and arrows. The battle went on into the night, and through the next day and the next. The fortress was impenetrable, but the people would not give up while their children remained prisoners inside.

While the battle raged, the children, left alone in the dungeon, set up such a terrible wailing that no-one in the fortress could bear it. “Make them be quiet!” the king ordered, “or I will kill them myself!”

Rosabel said, “If I play for them, it may quiet them.” The king had her taken down at once.

As soon as her fingers touched the strings, the children began to listen. She played the songs their mothers sang to them, the songs they sang at their games in the street. The children came and sat at her feet, weeping. Then she spoke to them, and told them that their families would save them, and they must be very brave while they waited for them to come.

After that she spent every spare moment with the children. When they cried with loneliness and fear, she sang to them and told them stories. Sometimes she asked them to teach her the songs they knew. The music she surrounded them with sustained them and strengthened them.

One morning she heard two servants saying to each other, “If only they knew, in the back wall of the dungeon there is a small door hidden under the rubble, that passes through the wall of the fortress.”

Rosabel sped to the dungeon. In the thick darkness her hands dug feverishly through the rubble at the back of the dungeon. When her hands were not strong enough, she broke her harp into pieces and dug with that until she felt a doorway, hardly as high as her knees. “Children,” she said, “through this door is a tunnel that leads under the wall to the other side, where your families are waiting. You must go now, before the guards come back.”

The children were afraid and said, “Come with us!” but Rosabel pointed to the iron ball and the chain on her leg.

“I can’t run, because of this,” she said.

“That old rusty thing?” the children said. They pulled at the chain and broke it easily, for their tears falling on the chain had rusted it through.

Rosabel helped the children into the tunnel, but when she tried to follow them, the door was almost too small for her to pass through. While the children sped on ahead, Rosabel struggled painfully along the passage inch by inch, scraping the skin off her elbows and knees and nearly getting stuck more than once. At last she felt cool fresh air on her skin, and she pulled herself through the last few metres and out into the sunshine.

She was covered in dirt and scratches, but the sun was shining warmly and she lifted her face to it, smiling. Then she heard shouting from the ramparts above her. “There’s a prisoner escaping!” the king’s soldiers shouted. “Fire! Bring her down!”

Terrible fear filled her. She didn’t know which way to run, or where to hide. Then a strong hand took hers, and a voice she knew well said, “Rosabel! Come with me!” It was the voice of the captive she had sung to, so long ago. Together they set off running for the safety of the forest.

Inside the fortress, everything was in confusion. Outside the gates, the people had gathered up their children and set off for home, singing and shouting for joy, leaving the soldiers in the fortress staring and shouting after them.

The king, when he heard that Rosabel had escaped, fell into such darkness of spirit that he never left the fortress again, so the town was left in safety. As for Rosabel and her rescuer, from that time on they were never apart.