The mule's long furry ears, aflop to each side, rose to attention, and its tired plod quickened. Up ahead, Pico had paused to let down the bars to a pasture gate. He led his pack train within. Judging by their puling, the eight mules were familiar with this stop, though it was all new to Thur.
"Keep them moving to the grove," Pico, pointing to the stand of trees shading one end of the pasture, shouted over his shoulder to his two sons and Thur. "That's where we'll camp. We'll take their packs off first and then turn them loose."
The mule tried to nudge Thur toward the green grass and the little stream, but Thur dutifully dragged it to the grove and tied it to a tree. "You'll be happier to have your pack off first," he told it. "Then you can roll." It waggled its absurd ears at him in disagreement, and snorted through its cream-colored nose, and Thur grinned.
He pulled off its heavy pack, loaded with copper ingots and hides, and the pack of its work mate who followed on a rope, and turned both beasts loose. They thudded away toward the stream, squealing happily. The pasture's only other occupant, a sway-backed, old white horse, regarded the invasion with both interest and suspicion. The look on its long gray face made Thur think of the old scholar, Brother Glarus, presented with a troop of rowdy new students. Thur turned to help Pico's younger boy, Zilio, with his mules' heavy packs, which threatened to crush the lad. Zilio smiled gratefully and sprang about rather like the released mules.
Pico, his sons, and Thur lined up the packs and set the bright striped saddle pads atop upside down to dry and air. The boys began to unload their meager camp gear, and Pico started to build a fire in a charred circle from a handy stack of wood. Thur stared around with interest. On the other side of the road rambled a big two-story stucco house, whitewashed a pastel pink, with outbuildings in a yard behind. The whole was surrounded by a high pink stucco wall with broken glass and rusty nails set in its top frosting of cement, but a wide double wooden gate stood invitingly open to the road.
"You could take a room at the inn if you liked,"
Pico, seeing Thur's gaze, nodded across the road. "If you're tired of sleeping on the ground. Innkeeper Catti's beds are good. But I warn you, he's a great greedy-guts, and charges plenty for his linen. He really prefers prelates to muleteers for customers, when he can get them."
"Will you sleep there?"
"No, I always stay with my beasts and my load, unless it's pouring rain or snowing. He charges me enough for the pasture and the firewood, Tis a good stop, though, and good fodder, and the beasts like it. And with an early start, I can usually push all the way home to Montefoglia by dark, in the summer. Catti's wife sets a good table, on the nights when the rain makes my fire too miserable. She smokes the most excellent hams. Which reminds me, I promised to bring one home to my neighbor who watches my place when I'm away. Don't let me forget, when I go over there to settle my charges."
Thur nodded, dug out his bit of tallow soap, and went to wash his hands and face upstream. The brook was icy, but refreshing, and the evening air so warm he was lured into washing his hair and upper torso, and then, much more quickly, his lower half. Pico's older boy Tich, a gawky fifteen-year-old, came over to watch. Intrigued, he shuffled off his boot and stuck an experimental foot into the brook, then yelled with the cold.
"It's not that bad," Thur said mildly.
Tich hopped in a circle, shaking the drops off. "Mad mountain man!" He stuffed his foot back into his boot.
"The water in the mines is much colder."
"God save me from the mines, then," said Tich fervently. "I'm for the open road. Isn't this the life?" He waved a possessive arm at the encroaching spring evening, as if he owned it all to the horizons. "You should join us, Thur, not shut yourself up in some nasty little dark shop."
Thur shook his head, smiling. "It's the metal, Tich. Hundreds of men labor to get metal like the copper we're carrying into the hands of some fancy smith, and who gets the credit? The artisan, that's who. Besides ...," Thur paused, hesitating to confide his heart's hope to a possibly unsympathetic ear. "I want to learn to make splendid and beautiful things. " Besides, it can't be any darker or more nasty than the mines.
"It's all in what you're used to, I guess," Tich allowed, too amiable to argue.
Pico strolled over to redirect Tich's energy. "Come on, boy, you've got mules to curry."
Thur shrugged his dusty wool tunic and leggings back on. Those must last till he reached Montefoglia, and found a washerwoman. Perhaps he could strike a deal, split firewood or something in exchange. Working his way with Packmaster Pico, Thur had not yet had to tap his little store of coins, and he hoped to make them last as long as possible, so as not to be wholly dependent on the charity of his brother Uri.
He shared his soap with Pico, while Tich attempted to dragoon the ten-year-old Zilio into helping with his assigned chore, and Zilio protested. Their squabbling faded in the distance as Thur and Pico walked across the road to the inn. The men's shadows lay long in front of them, as the sun reached for the rim of the hills to their backs. Thur's stride lengthened. The pink inn seemed poignant with some undefined promise drawing him on. Thur decided it must be his thirst.
He shouldered through the front door after Pico, who called cheerily for Catti. The whitewashed front room was set up with tables on trestles and benches. A few coals glowed in the banked fireplace, ready to ignite a neat stack of wood waiting to be piled on later as the evening cooled. Several promising kegs with taps sat on more trestles against one wall.
Master Catti emerged from the back of the building, wiping his hands on a grimy linen towel. He was a graying man, his waist thickened more with age than living, and he stumped along quickly on short
"Ah, Pico," he greeted the packmaster eagerly. "I saw you come in. Have you heard the news from Montefoglia?" His smile was welcoming, but his eyes looked strained.
Pico, arrested by the hushed tones, dragged his gaze from the kegs to his host. "No, what?"
"Duke Sandrino was assassinated, four days ago!"
"What! How did it come about?" Pico's mouth gaped. Thur's happy warmth washed from his belly in an instant, to be replaced with a cold knot of ice.
Catti rocked on his heels, grimly satisfied with the effect of his gossip. "They say he had some sort of quarrel with the Lord of Losimo at the betrothal banquet for his daughter Julia. Daggers were drawn, and ... the usual followed. A terrible mess, by the accounts I've heard so far from people coming up the road. Lord Ferrante's troops have captured Montefoglia, at least for the moment."
"My God. Have they sacked the town?" asked Pico.
"Not much. They still have their hands full with—"
"My brother is in the Duke's guard," Thur interrupted urgently.
"Ah?" Catti raised his eyebrows. "He's just botched himself out of a job, I'd say." And, a little less tartly, "I hear some of the guards fled with little Lord Ascanio and their wounded behind the walls of Saint Jerome, with the Abbot Monreale."
And some of the guards, presumably, had not. Yet Thur could picture Uri, defending the boy-lord, getting him safe behind the monastery's stones. Being last through the gate, no doubt.