Merelan laughed. "My love, I wouldn't be that child for all the diamonds on Ista's beaches. Washell's right, you know. She won't have a voice left if she keeps on this way."
"He is right," Petiron admitted, and scowled more deeply. "Well, she is not..." he paused dramatically "... mining either the duet or the aria. I shall make some changes in both that will put the music at a level she should be able to sing."
Merelan merely nodded.
When Petiron held his next session with Halanna, she was so insulted that she tried to walk out on him. The argument that ensued was heard by nearly everyone on the rectangle as the two voices, one baritone and one contralto, rose in volume and piercing clarity.
"You can't do that!" Halanna began, an astonished screech in her voice.
"Oh, yes I can! You're incapable of singing what I wrote."
"Incapable? How dare you?"
"How dare you address a Master in such a tone, young woman! I don't know what Maxilant taught you, but it wasn't manners and it certainly wasn't how to read a simple score."
"Simple score? You're notorious all over Pern for the complexity of your music. I never hear anyone singing what you write. No one can!"
"The first-year apprentices have no trouble. But then, they can read music and know the value of the notes they're singing."
"I do know how to read music."
"Then prove it."
"No!"
"You will sing."
"You can't force me!"
Many agreed that they had heard the crack of flesh hitting flesh. And it was true that the right side of Halanna's face was darker than the left when she was finally allowed to leave the studio. But she did begin to sing in a much muted voice. And she continued to sing the music as written until she did so correctly, sometimes until she was hoarse.
"I hope he didn't push her too far," Merelan murmured to Washell.
"Perhaps it might be better for all of us if he did," he replied uncharitably.
After that session, Halanna hurried out of the studio and disappeared.
She was seen a little later on her way across the great Fort Hold courtyard to the cottage where she slammed and bolted the door of the room she still shared.
What they didn't realize until the next morning was that she had bribed a Drum Tower apprentice to send an urgent message to her father, Halibran, saying she was being abused. Petiron admitted that he had slapped her, to stop her hysterical ranting – to which everyone in the Hall had been audience. Any Master was permitted to chastise a student for inattention or failure to learn assigned lessons.
When MasterHarper Gennell and Healer Journeywoman Betrice interviewed her about the impropriety of her actions, not to mention the content of the message, she was defiantly tearful.
"No one understands me in this place. I'm being humiliated at every turn, and I had expected so much from you!" she said. "So much, and you're like everyone else after all!"
Betrice later told Merelan that she almost laughed out loud at such a performance.
"No one has humiliated you, young woman," Gennell replied, as stern as Betrice had ever seen him. "You were welcomed, and the very best instructors assigned. You have been paid a high compliment by Master Petiron, who wrote a part especially to show off your voice – scarcely a humiliation, but an honour you seem unable to appreciate. You will apologize to Master Petiron for your unresponsiveness--"
"Apologize?" Halanna rose from the stool in amazement. "I am the daughter of a Holder, and I apologize to no one. He's to apologize for slapping me, or--"
"That's enough out of you," Gennell said, and turned to his spouse. "She's to be quartered in an appropriate room and given only basic rations."
That was more easily said than done. It took Gennell, Betrice and Lorra to get her, screeching and straggling, up to the third storey of the Harper Hall to one of the spare rooms used by messengers or overflow guests. She refused to eat the food supplied at mealtimes and actually emptied the first three pitchers of water until her thirst got the better of her histrionics. Since it took nearly six days before her clandestine message brought results, she got hungry enough to devour what she was given, though she refused to apologize or promise to remedy her attitude. Such interviews usually resulted in her hurling threats and promises of just retribution at those trying to talk sense into her. Even MasterHealer Ginia had no luck in trying to talk sense into the girl.
The sentry on the Fort Hold eastern tower spotted the ten armed men racing up the harbour road and blew the alarm, which alerted both Lord Grogellan and the Harper Hall. Having been informed of the illegal drum message, Grogellan assembled a larger force from his sons, nephews and armsmen to meet the newcomers just as they turned into the Harper Hall quadrangle. Master Gennell, Betrice, Ginia, Petiron and Merelan were waiting on the broad steps, while every apprentice, journeyman and Master had found some vantage point from which to view the confrontation.
As Halibran and his troops halted their runners, he had no trouble locating his "abused' daughter who was screeching at the top of her lungs from an upper window.
"She's been at it again, Father," one of Halibran's riders said in disgust. "She was the one abusing, I've no doubt." The resemblance to his sister was obvious, and he was not the only young blond male in the group with a similar cast of countenance.
Halibran, dismounting, waved the young man to hold his tongue. Not a major holder, though a wealthy one from the produce of his lands and the mines under them, he had none of his daughter's arrogance as he mounted the steps and held out his hand to the MasterHarper.
"Since she is sequestered, I assume that Halanna has not seen fit to apologize. Let me do so in her stead," he said, allowing everyone to heave sighs of relief.
Master Gennell, however, shook his head slowly. "It is her place, not yours, Holder Halibran, to make restitution for her behaviour and her refusal to accept the usual necessary disciplines of the Harper Hall. She has much to learn."
The screeching, which the new arrivals were pointedly ignoring, took on a shriller note.
"The fault lies in me," Halibran said with a weary sigh. "Her mother died at her birth, and with six brothers she has been much cosseted."
The brother who had spoken gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head and then looked away. The other two managed not to grin, but it didn't escape anyone that they had probably tried to get their father to school his daughter's behaviour.
"What did happen that made her send such a message?" Halibran asked.
Gennell opened his mouth, but it was Petiron who stepped forward and answered.
"She is musically almost illiterate, Holder Halibran," he said in a flat and firm voice, "although I know Harper Maxilant to be a competent musician."
"Maxilant did suggest that the Hall might succeed where he was failing," Halibran said, raising both gloved hands in helplessness, his answer directed more to Gennell than to Petiron. "I should not
have sent you our problem." He turned back to Petiron. "And?" "When she repeatedly refused to learn a simple score ..."
No one of the Harper Hall group so much as batted an eye at Petiron's remark.
"... and started to rant in an hysterical fashion, I slapped her. Once." And Petiron put up one finger in emphasis.
Everyone on the steps nodded.
"We all heard the entire argument," Master Gennell said, pointing to the studio windows. "And the single slap."
"She'd need more than one," a brother said.
"We shall take her off your hands," her father said in an almost meek tone, though it was obvious that he was probably not one whir less proud than his daughter.
"Nonsense," Master Gennell said, just as Petiron stepped forward to protest. "With your permission, we shall continue to discipline her – firmly – until she realizes that such behaviour gets her nowhere in either her relationships with others or in learning the lessons you asked us to teach her."