Another cheer, and another drink.
‘Now you, servant Kate. You are one of us this evening, and you must make a toast as well,’ Callan said.
Kate, who was lying propped up on one arm, chewing an apple, straightened herself and picked up her mug. She peered into it with one eye closed to make sure there was still some beer in it.
‘I,’ she began, then stopped, and thought. ‘I,’ she resumed after a while, ‘would like to toast those who take the good in the Story and shun the bad. Who stray never from kindness, and who know where lies true contentment. I would like to toast kind masters and good friends.’ She saluted the other two and drank deeply. They followed her lead, then clapped enthusiastically.
‘Bravo, servant!’ said Callan. ‘As a reward you may clear the plates and prepare the beds. After you are done, it seems a pity to waste the opportunity of having a Storyteller with us.’
‘But I am not a Storyteller,’ Jay said. ‘I’ve never told one in public.’
‘Nonsense,’ Kate said, momentarily reverting to her true self before remembering. ‘Sorry. Slipped.’
‘She is right,’ Callan added. ‘You may not have told a story, but what better start could there be, under the warm night sky, with an appreciative and’ — here he glanced at Kate — ‘slightly drunk audience? What better place and time could you have? Besides, no word of this interlude must ever be spoken, so if you make an idiot of yourself then no one will ever know.’
‘Except us,’ Kate pointed out happily.
‘Come along, Jay,’ Callan said. ‘Please do. Remember, you owe me a kindness. While you prepare, this excellent servant will clean up, and I will stack some more logs on the fire, and when you are done, we will sleep.’
While they worked, Jay calmed himself down with the breathing exercises he had been taught, sitting still and loosening his muscles, gaining control of his diaphragm, then putting his hands together and bowing his head to empty it of extraneous thought.
When he was prepared as he could be, he began.
There was once a Storyteller who was known as the wisest man of his generation. He was kind to his students, careful in his judgements. His reasoning was so powerful, his use of argument so great that all naturally accepted his word. For twenty years he had gone on the regular circle of visits, listening, considering and deciding. In that time there was not one appeal against his verdicts, and his relations with those who went with him were perfect.
Often, when travelling through the countryside, he would stop on a hilltop at evening and stare at the beauty of the valley below. Or he would pause as he passed a ruin of great antiquity and wonder aloud what its history was. Later, one remembered him in a library, running his fingers over the leather of an old manuscript, looking at it in a way that was not easy to interpret.
One day he went to a town where there was a difficult dispute to resolve. The mayor had married his daughter to a lord ten miles away. The marriage had been settled, the dowry agreement signed, but then an argument had erupted. The lord said the girl was bad-tempered, lazy and offensive. He would not repudiate her, but demanded more money to keep her. The mayor refused, saying the agreement had been freely made. So the lord sent her back, but kept the dowry, as she was still his wife.
The dispute caused ill-feeling between the town, which was angry at the insult, and the lands around. Blows were exchanged, local farmers assaulted as they came into market. So it was the scholar’s first duty to resolve the matter when he arrived. He listened (as was his habit) to those involved, and many who were not. He asked penetrating questions and decided that all were equally at fault. Such was his reputation and his secret pride that he did not listen to his fellow who was with him, but reached his decisions alone.
Here was the judgement: the girl was indeed rude and offensive to her husband, but this was because he was a dolt, well-meaning but stupid. The girl’s father had filled her with vanity at her beauty and importance, so had made her unwilling to see the good in others. And the lord was incapable of seeing what a lovely creature he had, although unworthily, been allotted as his wife.
All should apologise. The father should pay the extra dowry, but give it to the poor of the lands around, and the husband should give an equal amount.
The mayor of the town was a cunning fellow. He pretended to accept the judgement, with fine words of praise for the scholar’s wisdom, but secretly he was furious. He invited the scholar to his house and gave him food and wine. Then he brought out a great treasure, a small picture of ageless antiquity. It was his, and had been in his family for longer than anyone could remember, he said.
The scholar wondered at the object, which was more beautiful than anything made by the hand of man that he had ever seen, and the mayor knew that the scholar coveted the beautiful thing for himself.
‘It is yours, as thanks for your wisdom,’ said the mayor. ‘Or rather, it would have been. For now I have to pay the extra dowry for my daughter I will be a poor man, and will have to sell it to the highest bidder for whatever I can get for it.’
The next day the scholar gave his judgement. He found in favour of the mayor and condemned the lord for his actions. He took the little picture, wrapped it in his baggage and left the town.
But it was not the mayor’s to give. It was the most precious possession of the town, and as soon as its loss was discovered there was much unhappiness. The townspeople searched the baggage of the scholar’s clerk, found the picture and arrested him.
The scholar immediately returned and confessed what had happened. He said his clerk had been innocent, and that he had taken the picture as a gift.
Then he left the town and went wandering, no longer a scholar, but a beggar until his dying day.
Jay had chosen well; at the end, it took some time before his audience — small but appreciative — came out of the reverie the words had induced in them. Rather than showing off, he had taken a simple tale, one which had been translated into the spoken language so that Callan could understand it. This was not the place for a virtuoso display. It was not a first-level telling, nor a second, nor even a third; indeed, it fitted no proper category that he knew of.
It was not as he had imagined his first telling. He had thought it would be in a formal setting, after weeks of preparation and coaching and rehearsal, to make sure every vowel, every weighting, every intonation was correct, that the movements of his hands and body fitted the words he spoke, emphasising but not distracting. It was to have been in a grand hall, advertised in advance, witnessed by his friends, his teachers — and those who were there to sit in judgement. On it his future reputation would have depended. Many failed through nerves, many more were sick beforehand and collapsed afterwards. It was said to be the single most terrifying event any man could endure.
It could not have been more different. He sat, rather than stood; his audience was two people, rather than two hundred. They wanted to hear the story, not to spot his mistakes. At the end, they didn’t even need to applaud. He loved it, once the nervousness passed. He adopted a tone that was conversational rather than declamatory, only rarely raising his voice, sometimes almost whispering the words. Occasionally he did drop in a few sentences of the old language, for emphasis, but only when the meaning was obvious. They loved the words, loved the story, loved him. For the first time in his life, Jay felt what it was to be respected, to use his skill to obliterate the loneliness of life. He became the story, and through it he merged with his audience, by instinctively responding to them.