"Now, now, Robie, Gennell's well able to cope with your father's foibles. As I am. He'll simmer a while, and then go on and write it out in more music for me to sing."
Robinton clutched his mother's arm and made her look up at him. "You will be careful, won't you, Mother? And not give too much to his music?"
She patted his cheek lovingly. I'll be good, and rest. How can I not? With Ginia, Betrice and Lorra all at me – and your father. I didn't mean to scare him, but I think I have. He'll be much more careful of me now. He does love me, you know, most possessively.
That's what all this has been about."
Robinton nodded and then embraced his mother, feeling her thin bones and trying not to use his young strength to bruise her. But he wanted to hold her as tightly as possible, for he was fearful he might never see her again.
"Oh, Robie," she said teasingly. "I'm much better. Don't fret. You know things will be easier ... now ..." she added apologetically. "I shall write or drum if I don't hear from you, young man. You hear me?"
"Indeed I do, MasterSinger. They've quite a good network of runners at High Reaches."
"They'd have to," she said with a patronizing sniff. "Living back of beyond like that."
The unmistakable trumpeting of a dragon reverberated through the courtyard. "I believe your transport has arrived," she said, smiling, though her chin seemed to quiver.
He hurried to load up his packs, but was interrupted by the appearance of Masters Gennell, Washell and Ogolly. They immediately pushed him out of the way and shared the packs among them, allowing him only the new harp case.
"I'm honoured – I mean, you don't need to ..." Robinton tried to protest, but he was overruled. Shrugging, he allowed them the duty.
Master Gennell winked at him as they walked out into the hall, and Robinton realized that this display of solid goodwill was as much for his mother's benefit as to make up for his father's absence. Their kindness touched him once again, and he had to swallow back tears.
"You made it, huh?" F'lon shouted as he slid down to Simanith's raised forearm and started piling luggage on the harness.
"Congratulations, Journeyman Robinton! You've got greetings from all your old friends at Benden, Weyr and Hold." To the other new journeymen waiting in the courtyard for their conveyancing, he said, "Your dragons will be along shortly – and congratulations."
Loading took only moments and then Robinton had to make his farewells. His mother pulled his head down for one last kiss and embrace. He shook hands with the Masters and promised them that he'd do his best.
"Give my special regards to Master Lobira," his mother called as he climbed up to Simanith's back. "He may remember me."
"Now who can forget you, Merelan?" Master Gennell said, putting a comforting arm around her shoulders.
That was how Robinton remembered his mother in the trying initial days under Master Lobira's supervision. Fortunately, F'lon deposited him and his effects in the courtyard of the high and windy Hold and departed, seen by relatively few. And especially not Master Lobira.
For that person was unimpressed with having so young a journeyman.
"Don't know what Gennell's thinking about, walking you up at fifteen! Indeed, I don't, so don't go expecting any cosseting from me, young man." Lobira eyed Robinton and scowled at the lean length of him.
It didn't help, Robinton thought, that he towered above the diminutive MasterHarper. The man came not quite to Robinton's shoulder; he was heavy in the chest – he sang bass – and narrowed through the hips to short, skinny legs. His features were pulled together in the middle of his wide face as if they should have inhabited a much narrower one. He had a shock of heavy wavy hair with bands of silver, making him look striped. All put together, he was an almost ludicrous figure. But no one snickered at Master Lobira. He had too much presence, Robinton quickly decided, ever to be the butt of ridicule. His muddy brown eyes were shrewd, and there was no way that Robinton was going to underestimate him.
"I never expected to walk so soon," Robinton murmured, trying to be self-effacing.
Lobira gave him a quick look, as if he thought Robinton was dissembling. "I shall expect much from you then, young man. Where were you raised? Who are your parents?"
Robinton was quite happy to answer since he hoped that would mollify his new Master. But if his mother met with Lobira's approval, his father did not. Robinton was at first shocked – less at the blunt remarks about his father's sort of composing, which Lobira felt was far too sophisticated to be of any use to anyone, than at hearing such criticism voiced, especially in front of the man's son. Not that it didn't mirror his own very private assessment of Petiron's ornate compositions, but to have mentioned such doubts would have seemed disloyal and a betrayaclass="underline" as if his own songs merited more attention than his father's more ambitious works. It came as another shock that it was his music which Lobira used extensively – though Lobira did not know that Robinton had been the composer. That had been a secret kept in the Hall, evidently, and not made public even to Masters outside the Hall.
Robinton knew better than to make something of that approval, but it did much to help him endure Lobira's crotchety behaviour, his temper, his inconsistencies and his general dislike of having to break in a "snot-nosed, wet-eared" novice.
Still, when the old Master saw how patient Robinton was with some of the more backward students, he began to mellow a trifle.
He even delivered a word or two of appreciation. Lobira himself was too short-tempered, and quick with a slap for the inattentive, so Robinton was given not only the slow but the very young, who had to be taught the basic Teaching Ballads. He didn't mind: in fact, it was a pleasure to sing those songs of his which Master Gennell had incorporated in the early Teaching Songs. It was a quiet contentment to him that his songs were used and he could sing them with a clear conscience.
He was also assigned the duty of spending several days of each seven-day going to the distant holds, often the only outsider they would see. These trips would end once the heavy weather settled in
the high hills; so he copied out extra music for the holders to keep and study until his next trip. He had to write a report for each of his journeys; to his surprise, Lobira went over these reports carefully.
Besides Robinton and Lobira's three apprentices, there was another journeyman harper, Mallan, who was High Reaches born, and who handled other Teaching routes and also some of the classes in the big Hold. The two journeymen shared a small inner apartment on the Holder's floor with two bed cubicles and a decent-sized day room, and shared the bathing facilities down the hall with the three apprentices who were quartered in one big inner room. Master Lobira had an outside apartment with his wife, Lotricia, a faded woman with an enchanting smile and a kindly manner reminiscent of Betrice's. She had been an apprentice healer when she met Lobira, but when they had become espoused she had ended her studies and accompanied him to his posting at High Reaches, where she devoted herself to rearing the four children of their union. The one daughter had married a High Reach holder and occasionally visited her parents with her children. The sons had been apprenticed to other trades, although they returned now and again for a High Reaches Gather.
"None of them could carry a tune in a sack," Robinton once heard Lobira say in total disgust. "Took after their mother's side.
But they've done well. They've done well."
Lotricia was always bringing "her boys' – as she called the journeymen – extra food. "You're all growing, and you're all nothing but bones," was her happy complaint, and her offerings were always welcome.
With such constant travel and the busy schedule in the Hold when he wasn't travelling, Robinton had little time to compose. He took to writing the tunes which filled his head while on the road, stopping frequently to note, in tiny cramped script, the measures that he had piped, whistled or sung into being as he trudged up and down steep tracks. He barely missed injuring himself on several occasions when composing so distracted him that he strayed off the narrow runner traces that were sometimes all he had to follow to his destination. The advantage of composing as he walked was that he could sing and play as loudly as he wished – often getting an answering echo from the hills around him.