The Pied Piper by Celeste Hall

The Pied Piper
     
    “The rats are everywhere,” old man Johan
complained loudly enough for Chloe to clearly hear it from her
hiding place, behind the partially closed closet door in her
father’s private study.
    As the group entered, she peeked out through
the crack and recognized nearly every affluent businessmen and town
leader of Hamelin.
    “There isn’t a barn or a corn-rick, a
storeroom or a cupboard, that they haven’t eaten their way into.
There is not a cheese that they haven’t gnawed hollow, or a sugar
puncheon they haven’t cleared out.”
    “Why the very mead and the beer in the
barrels are not safe from them,” Brewer Cole continued as Johan
stopped to take a breath. “They gnaw a hole near the top of the tun
and chew their way down as they drain the drink. But that is not
the worst of it. What of all the incessant squeaking and shrieking,
the hurrying and scurrying, so that you can neither hear yourself
speak nor get a wink of good honest sleep the live-long night!”
    “Not to mention that mamma must needs sit up
and keep watch and ward over the baby's cradle, or there'd be a big
ugly rat running across the poor little fellow's face, and doing
who knows what mischief,” complained Farmer Tomas. “We cannot live
this way any longer, something must be done!”
    “We have purchased entire armies of cats,”
Grocer Dan pointed out, “but the rats have driven them all
away.”
    “We have used wagons full of poison,” old man
Johan jumped back into the protest. “So much poison that it fairly
bred a plague.”
    “Rat catchers!” Brewer Cole continued, “Why
there isn't a rat catcher from John o' Groat's house to the Land's
End that hasn't tried his luck. But do what we might, cats or
poison, terrier or traps, there seem to be more rats than ever, and
every day a fresh rat is socking his tail or pricking his
whiskers.”
    Chloe watched as her father patted his brow
with a handkerchief and shook his head in frustration. As mayor,
the men had come to him for some answers, but he had already
wracked his poor brain and come up empty of solutions. Yet just as
he was about to confess his helplessness in this situation, Chloe’s
mother came rushing into the room.
    “Benedict,” she gasped, quite out of breath
and excited. “There is a very queer fellow here for you. I don’t
rightly know what to make of him, but he insists upon seeing you at
once."
    "Show him in," gruffed the mayor, secretly
pleased at the temporary reprieve, while Chloe strained to look
upon the newcomer from her hiding place.
    A queer fellow, truly, for there wasn't a
color of the rainbow that couldn’t be found in some corner of his
flowing traveler’s cloak. But he was tall and strong, with keen
piercing eyes that lingered a fraction too long as they passed over
Chloe’s hiding place. He had dark hair that was roughly cut,
hanging unkempt to shadow intelligent brows and lean, angular
cheeks. His jaw was stern, and her overall impression was that he
might be some lordly gentleman using the gaudy patchwork cloak as a
disguise to draw the eye away from his true appearance.
    "I am called the Pied Piper," the mysterious
stranger began. "I have heard of your plague. So pray, what might
you be willing to pay me, if I rid you of every single rat in
Hamelin?"
    Chloe felt her heart leap, for there was
something in the man’s voice that spoke of power and confidence
unlike anything the town had seen before. Her father must have
heard it too, for he didn’t jump to throw the man out for bragging.
Instead, the town council appeared to seriously consider his
offer.
    Unfortunately, as much as they hated the
rats, they hated parting with their money more, and fain would they
have higgled and haggled for a week of Sundays. But the piper was
not a man to stand nonsense.
    “Do not offend me by suggesting an amount
less than you have paid my predecessors. They have failed where I
shall exceed. Let us say fifty pounds and be done with