The Robin and the Kestrel (21 page)

Rodrick finished his first mug of beer before replying. "It's all on account of one Priest," he told them, his eyes thoughtful, as if he was putting things together for himself right there on the spot.
"Very
persuasive. They say the birds come down offa the trees t' hear his sermons. He
was
a Count, Count-Presumptive, that is. Count Padrik he woulda been, if he'd waited till his papa died 'fore he joined the Church. But—likely he made the better choice, if ye read him as a man with a bita ambition. He's been a-risin' in the Church like a lark in the mornin'. Fact is, he can't be no older'n me, an' already he's been made High Bishop of Gradford."

Kestrel's brow furrowed. "Isn't th-that a p-p-post th-that g-goes t-to a g-g-graybeard usually?"

Rodrick nodded. "Never heard it go to a man under the age of fifty, that's sure. Well, now he's High Bishop, and seems like all Gradford's gone mad for his notions. Inns—they're closing, 'cause they got no business. Trade in fancy-goods is way down. People are act'lly taking
vows,
an' doin' it like they thought the Second Cataclysm was this Midwinter! Only one trade's doin' any good, an' that's the trade in religious stuffs."

He nodded to himself with smug satisfaction, and Robin took a few bites of her neglected dinner while he basked in his own cleverness.

"I took m'self home, gathered up ev'ry book on the Church list, an' I've got 'em all loaded down on m'poor little donkey. Havna been able t' unload the half of 'em all these years—if Gradford's gonna come down with a plague'a piety, I'm gonna use the chance t' be rid'a this stuff!"

He beamed at them, and Robin chuckled. "Good for you, Rod, and thank you for telling us about this. It may not make us change our travel plans, but we're going to have to change our trades, I can see that."

Rod drank the last of the beer in his pitcher, and stood up to leave. "So long as it be religious, Gypsy Robin, ye'll profit," he said with a nod. "An' on that note, I'll be takin' m'leave."

"And a good night and fair profit to you." She returned the traditional trader's greeting. "And once again, thanks."

"Glad t' be of service," Rod replied, and took himself off, up the stairs to the sleeping quarters used by those who had no wagons to sleep in.

"Well," Robin said, turning to Kestrel as soon as Rod had taken the stairs out of sight and hearing. "Now what do we do?"

Jonny glanced around, quickly, to make certain there was no one near enough to overhear their conversation. He needn't have bothered; they were the only two patrons left in the common room, and since Robin had already paid for their meal, the serving girls were gone. The barkeeper polished the top of the counter and put clean mugs up on the shelf, obviously there only in the hope that they might order a drink.

If this common room was typical of the rest of the inn, it was one of the better such places Jonny had seen in all of his travels.

Then again, my pocket wasn't up to bearing the price of inns when I was on my own,
he thought wryly.

But this was a good, solid place. Immaculately clean, the simple wood furniture was scarred by use and dark with age and many years of cleaning, but sturdily made; the floors were covered with clean rushes, and the smoke-blackened beams above were free of cobwebs. A few lanterns burned along the walls, but most of the light came from the fireplace. There were more lanterns along the walls, but they were not lit, perhaps in the hope of saving a little money on lamp oil.

"Eat," Robin advised him. "No one is going to hear us, or care what we say. They've heard everything in a place like this. They know we're Gypsies and Free Bards, and I rather doubt that the innkeeper is very fond of the Church and the High Bishop of Gradford. Right now, they're more concerned that their custom has dropped off than in anything we might say or do. We're just ordinary musicians, remember? What possible damage could two musicians do to anyone?"

He shook his head, and followed her advice. There was no point in wasting a perfectly good meal, especially not one as tasty as this; the cook had a good hand with pastry, and the tender, flaky crust covered a meat pie rich with brown gravy. But his stomach was a trifle uneasy and it took concentrated effort to calm it; Rodrick's information frankly disturbed him.

It appeared that the Ghost might have been right; certainly this High Bishop was an excellent candidate for the source of the sentiment against Free Bards. An ambitious man—as Padrik clearly was—could look for no better and quicker road to power than through the Church, and no quicker way to rise in the Church than to find
something
to get people upset about on religious grounds.

There aren't too many things that can get people aroused the way religion can,
he observed,
and with this outbreak of "piety," sooner or later someone is going to find a "cause" to expend all their energy on. Unless Padrik is a fool, he'll be that someone; it will be the only way he can continue to control his followers. And if the "cause" turns out to be the control of music and musicians by the Church, it's going to be a bad day for the Free Bards.

There his thoughts might have ended, if he hadn't spoken with Harperus and T'fyrr, but those conversations had opened his eyes to the fact that an attempt to control would not end with music. Control had to begin somewhere, and the best target for the initial stages of control would ideally be someone who was very obviously different, someone who was in the minority. An obvious set of targets for that method of control were the nonhuman citizens of the Twenty Kingdoms.

"So," Gwyna said, as he finished his dinner and pushed the wooden plate away. "We obviously need to go to Gradford even more now than before. What are we going to do? We can't go in as musicians. I have the feeling that we'd better have an obvious reason for being there, or we might find ourselves the center of some unwelcome attention."

"B-but we c-can g-go in as t-traders," Jonny replied. "Even th-the Gh-Ghost's silver won't l-last f-forever. W-we n-need t-to support ourselves s-s-somehow. Th-the only q-question is, wh-what do we s-s-sell?"

She toyed with a bit of bread, and a stray lock of hair slipped over her eye, curling in a most distracting and charming manner. "Religious goods. That would be the most obvious reason to be there. And it would be the safest, really. I don't think anyone is going to accuse a peddler of religious goods of impiety." She tucked the flyaway lock of hair behind her ear, and dropped the bread on the plate. "The quickest and easiest things for us to come up with on short notice are jewelry and display pieces; God-Stars are very easy to make, they're just tedious. And they're the kind of thing that only common, country folk display, so very few craftsmen ever bother with them. If no one in Gradford has thought of selling them, we'll have a temporary monopoly."

Jonny nodded; he had never seen God-Stars until he had arrived in Rayden as a child, for no one of noble blood would ever be caught wearing or displaying one. As wall-decorations, they were simply four-armed crosses, with colored yarn woven about the arms to form a solid square. The colors used varied with the prayers of the owner. Red, yellow, and white, for instance, meant the Star was a prayer for prosperity. Blue, green, and white meant a prayer for health, while blue, green, and
brown
was a plea for good harvests. He had never heard of anyone making God-Star jewelry, however.

"How d-do you make S-Stars as j-jewelry?" he asked.

"It isn't often done, because real jewelers and silversmiths can't be bothered," she replied, with a wry twitch to her mouth. "You can make them of embroidery thread and twigs, or metal and wire. With the wire ones, you have to be very careful so the wire doesn't break—but you use iron, copper, brass, and silver wire, and two nails for the Sacrificed God as the cross-pieces. Easy enough, and they make rather pretty little pendants."

He brightened. "Th-that would w-work. B-but where c-can w-we g-get materials?"

She thought for a moment, sipping at her mug of beer. "Well, Grad-ford's a center for metals and gems; I'd bet that we can find someone making wire outside the town and buy up a stock. Nails are easy. It shouldn't be too hard to find a weekly market to get dyed wool yarn, and linen embroidery thread, and sticks are under every tree."

"Wh-why not ask th-the innkeeper?" he asked, with a sudden inspiration. "W-wouldn't he know the b-best p-places t-to find things around here?"

She licked her lips, and nodded. "He would, and if he's like any other innkeeper I've ever met, he'll probably have a relative only too pleased to sell to us. That's fine; we'll make him happy and get our stock with a minimum of effort. The amount of money we'll save looking around for ourselves won't be worth the time we'll waste."

She shoved her stool away from the table, and trotted across the common room to consult with the barkeeper. After an exchange of a very few words, the barkeeper went off, and returned with the man Jonny had seen supervising the stable hands. Gwyna spoke with him for a little, and returned to her seat beaming.

"There!" she said. "It's taken care of. I told him part of the truth, that we were headed for Gradford and just heard we wouldn't be welcome there as musicians, so we need to continue our journey in another of our trades, peddlers selling handcrafted holy objects, since we couldn't afford the loss that going back would mean. He snorted, said, 'Religious trinkets, you mean,' and I knew he'd be willing to help us. He has a brother-in-law who can supply us with wire, and a cousin who can bring us the wool yarn and linen thread. He'll sell us horseshoe nails himself. So we're set."

Jonny shared her grin, and took her hand for a congratulatory squeeze. "S-so far," he replied, "s-so g-good. It's a g-good s-start, anyway!"

Four days later, thanks in no small part to the Ghost's gift, they left the inn with a full stock of God-Stars in several forms. They had bought all of the supplies that the innkeeper's relatives had brought, and still had some of the Ghost's silver left when they were done with their bargaining. There were several trays'-worth of the tiny Stars Robin had made up as pendants, from the cheapest Stars of linen thread and tiny twigs, to inexpensive copper Stars through Stars of mixed metals, to ones made entirely of silver wire and thin silver bars. Jonny had learned the knack of turning out wall-hanging Stars at a goodly clip, and he had used up all their yarn at about the same time Gwyna had run out of wire.

He was glad to pick up the reins and drive for a change; they had worked for as long as daylight lasted all during those four days, and his hands and wrists were sore from twisting yarn around sticks in movements he was not accustomed to making. He knew that Gwyna's hands hurt just as much; working with the wire was enough to try the patience beyond bearing, for it broke when flexed too often, and then it was impossible to mend without the mend showing. She'd been pierced with the sharp ends of nails and wire so often that her finger-ends looked like pincushions, and it was just as well that they were not going to be playing their instruments for a while, for her fingers needed to heal before she picked up her gittern or harp again.

They drove off into the dawn, with a friendly farewell from the helpful innkeeper (who had, without a doubt, skimmed off a commission from his relatives). The road was going to take them through a series of steep hills, and if they were going to get to Gradford before the gates closed at sunset, they needed to get this early start.

For a price, the cook had provided them not only with fresh rolls dripping with melted butter for their breakfast, but a packet of meat-pies for lunch on the road. With so little traffic about, Kestrel was able to eat with one hand and drive with the other. He enjoyed the fresh, hot bread, but Robin was in heaven over it, sensuously licking the dripping butter from her fingers until he warned her that if she continued in that fashion, they were going to have to make an unscheduled stop!

She laughed, and pouted at him, tossing her long hair over one shoulder in a flirting manner, and he growled at her playfully.

"Ah, well," she sighed. She popped the last bite into her mouth, and wiped her fingers carefully on a bit of rag. "I suppose we'd better behave. If we make an unscheduled stop, we
won't
get to Gradford before the gates close."

"P-precisely," he said, with mock-sternness.
"One
of us h-has t-to have s-some s-self-control!"

She laughed, and folded her hands modestly in her lap under the protective warmth of her coat, looking about with interest. It was a breathtakingly beautiful day, in a stark, monochromatic fashion, but there was no doubt that winter was only a breath or two away. Frost was so thick on the branches and dead, dry grasses that they looked as if they had grown white coats of fur; the cloudless blue sky held a sun that gave very little besides light. As the road wove its way onward, they passed streams that had rims of ice at the edges, and their breath and the mares' puffed out in white clouds whenever they talked or breathed. Crows called occasionally, off in the distance. The hills themselves were covered with forests of hardwood trees that had long since lost their leaves, and made a mist-like haze on the hillsides with the interweaving of their gray-barked, barren branches.

"If it looks like we can pass as 'Church-approved,' we
might
actually be able to play some music," she remarked, when the inn had receded from sight.

"I th-thought about th-that." While they had been hard at work on the God-Stars, in order to get themselves into the proper mood, they had polished up all the ballads about heroes of the Church that either of them knew. If nothing else, those songs were often used as teaching aids by the Priests, and singing them made a painless refresher course in theology and accepted doctrine, not to mention providing a good source of pious quotations to sprinkle over their conversation. "P-purely instrumental m-music ought t-to b-be safe, if it isn't a d-dance t-tune. And even d-d-dance t-tunes c-can b-be
made
s-safe."