"Well," Master Heron said, leaning back against the hearth, so that the firelight caught all the angles of his face, "it's like this. On the second week of Kingsford Midsummer Faire, the Guild comes and sets up a big tent, hard by the cathedral-tent. That's where they hold trials, and they go on for three days. Anyone who wants can sign up for the trials, but there aren't many that make it to the third day."
"You didn't make it, then?" said Ralf, the candle-maker, insolently.
But Master Heron only laughed. "I never tried," he said, "I'm too great a coward to face an audience all of musicians!"
The others laughed with him, and Ralf had the grace to flush.
"So, here's what happens," the minstrel continued. "The first day, you sing and play your best instrument, and you can choose whatever song you wish. There's just one catch-as you play, the judges call out a kind of tune, jig, reel, lament-and you have to play that song in that style, and improvise on it. The second day, you sing and play your second instrument, but you have to choose from a list of songs they pick, then you drum for the next to play. And the third day, you go back to your first instrument, or on to your third, if you have one, and you play and sing a song you have made. And each day, the list of those that get to go on gets shorter by half." He laughed. "Do you see now why I hadn't the courage to try? 'Tis enough to rattle your nerves to pieces, just thinking on it!"
The mayor whistled, and shook his head as the crowd fell silent. "Well, that's a poser. And all that just to get in as an apprentice?"
"Aye," Master Heron replied. "When I was young enough, I didn't have the courage, and now-" he spread his hands. "Wouldn't I look foolish now, as an apprentice?"
The men nodded agreement, as Rune went back to the kitchen, aflame with ambition, but half-crushed as well. She could compose, all right-yes, and she played her fiddle well enough, and drummed too, and sang-
But he'd said quite distinctly that you had to have two instruments, or even a third, and be proficient on all of them.
Even if she could find someone with a lute or mandolin to sell, she could never afford it. She could never afford the lessons to learn to play it, either-and that was assuming she could find a teacher. And if she waited for minstrels to come along to teach her, the way she'd learned fiddle, she'd be an old woman of eighteen or twenty by the time she was ready to go to the Midsummer Faire and the trials.
Well, she could play the shepherd's flute, and even she could make one of those-
No. That was no kind of instrument for the trials before the Guild. These were people who played before princes and kings; they'd hardly be impressed by someone tootling simple shepherd's jigs on a two-octave pipe.
Then the mayor put the crowning touch on her ambitions, placing it out of the realm of "want" and into "need." For what he told the rest, told her that this was the way out of all her problems. Apprenticeship to the Guild would not only get her out of this village, out of danger, but it would place her in a position where no one would ever threaten her again.
"I heard that no one touches a Guild Bard or a Guild Minstrel, am I right, Master Heron?" he asked.
The minstrel nodded, though his face was in shadow now, and Rune couldn't read his expression. His voice held no inflection at all. "That's the truth, sir," he replied. "Only the Church has a right to bring them to trial, and if anyone harms a Guild musician, the Church will see to it that they're found and punished. I'm told that's because a good half of the Guild apprentices go into the Church eventually-and because musicians go everywhere, sometimes into dangerous situations."
No one could ever harm her again. She was so involved in her own thoughts that she hardly noticed when Master Heron resumed playing, and had to forcibly drag her attention back to the music.
There had to be a way to get that second instrument, to get to the trials. There had to be!
CHAPTER THREE
The customers stayed later than usual, and only left when Master Heron began pointedly to put his instrument away for travel. By the time the evening was over, Rune was exhausted, too tired to think very clearly, arms aching from all the heavy trays and pitchers she had carried all night, legs aching from the miles she'd traveled between kitchen and tables, bar and tables, and back again. From the look of him, Master Heron wasn't in much better shape. There were hundreds of things she wanted to ask him about getting into the Bardic Guild, but she knew from experience how his arms must feel after a night of non-stop playing, and how his tongue was tripping over the simplest of words if they weren't in a song.
So she left him alone as she carried the heaps of dirty plates and mugs into the kitchen again-and predictably, was recruited as dish-dryer and stacker, for Granny couldn't cope with putting the plates away. So she walked several more miles returning mugs to the bar and dishes to the cupboard. By the time she was able to leave the kitchen, he'd gone up to his room and his well-earned rest.
The common room was empty at last, fire dying, benches stacked atop tables, and both pushed against the walls, shutters closed and latched against the night. She didn't see her mother anywhere about, which in itself was predictable enough. Stara did not much care for kitchen and clean-up work, and never performed either if she had a way out of doing so. Rune expected to find Stara up in her own attic cubicle next to her daughter's.
But when Rune reached the top of the attic stairs, the moonlight shining through the attic window betrayed the fact that Stara's bed was empty.
Odd. But she'd probably gone to visit the privy before turning in. Rune stripped off her shirt and breeches, and slipped into an old, outworn shift of Rose's, cut down to make a night-shift just before Rose had taken sick, expecting to hear her mother coming up the stairs at any moment, and hoping this wasn't going to be another night of complaint.
But as Rune crawled under the coarse sheet of her pallet, she froze at the sound of murmuring voices in the hall outside Jeoff's rooms below.
One was certainly Jeoff. And the other, just as certainly, was her mother.
Suddenly Rune was wide-eyed; no longer the least bit sleepy.
She had only time to register shock before the closing door below cut off the last sound of whispers.
Stara-and Jeoff. There was no doubt in Rune's mind what was going on. Stara had been unable to get Jeoff to marry her by simply tempting him, but remaining just out of reach. So for some reason, tonight she had decided to give the man what he wanted to see if that would bring him before the altar.
She must be desperate, Rune thought, numbly. She'd never have gone to him otherwise. She must think that if she lets him sleep with her, guilt will make him want to make an honest wife of her in the morning. Or else she thinks she can seduce him into marrying her, because she's such a fabulous lover. Or both.
Whatever was going on in Stara's mind, there were a number of possible outcomes for this encounter, and they didn't auger well for Rune.