Robinton managed to stifle a laugh. He had counted up the number of offspring she had presented to Lord Maidir in the Turns since Rob and his mother had been at Benden Hold: she was a fine one to talk about large families, with seven more in the intervening Turns, making a total of ten. Small wonder that Raid said little to her. She was presenting him with problems; although undoubtedly Raid would delegate the more responsible males to assist him, while espousing the girls as creditably as possible. Robinton just hoped there wasn’t an ambitious and scheming nephew in Benden Hold, too.
Then, his klah finished, he said that he would go to the schoolrooms and see if he could help Master Evarel.
“But you’ve just arrived from a long and terrible journey. He won’t be expecting you to pitch in … right away!”
“I shall see what Evarel wishes, Lady Hayara, but I assure you that I have travelled at a leisurely enough pace and been well treated by everyone on the way.”
So he thanked her again for the welcome and the refreshment and would have used the back stairs when she called him sharply back and pointed to the main ones at the side of the hall.
“Journeyman Robinton, kindly remember your new status,” she said with a hint of dismay. “You are not a child any more.” It was the closest he had ever heard her come to disapproval.
He bowed and, muttering something about old habits dying hard, strode across the floor to the appropriate staircase.
Master Evarel was quietly delighted at his arrival – and at his willingness to get right to work if that was required, for the older man’s hands were badly gnarled with the joint-ail and obviously paining him.
“Maizella usually plays for me, but she’s away this morning,” Evarel said in a gruff tone, leading Robinton to suspect that the harper’s voice was also going. He had sung bass: it was the tenor range that was apt to go first. “That is, if you’re not fatigued…”
“I’m fine, Master Evarel. I’d be happy to assist. Perhaps I should have pushed on last night…”
“No, no, the last part of the track could be dangerous at night.” Evarel put up a hand to reassure Robinton even as he passed the gitar over.
The youngsters in the room giggled and squirmed in their seats at the change-over, looking at the lanky journeyman with eager expressions.
Just as he was singing them through the first verse of the first Teaching Ballad, he heard the drums and paused to listen to the brief message: “Harper Safe.”
It took him a moment to realize that the message concerned him.
That made him feel even more welcome than ever – to be the subject of drum talk.
And thus began Robinton’s second stay at Benden Hold.
At Evarel’s request, Robinton’s effects had been put in the room he had shared with his mother during their previous stay at Benden Hold. It was Evarel’s apartment, which he apologetically offered to share, if Robinton had no objections. His spouse had died some Turns back and he felt odd about having such a large apartment all to himself. Robinton was more than pleased because, while the inner rooms at High Reaches had been only one corridor away from outside, he much preferred having outer wall accommodation.
It was silly to feel the constraint of rock when that was actually all he’d known in his life, and when so many folk lived long, healthy lives quite contentedly in the inner passages of the bigger Holds and Halls, but he did like to be able to look out whenever he chose. He also felt closer to his mother in rooms they had occupied together in one of the happiest spells of his boyhood.
Being journeyman in a busy Hold was a considerable change from that earlier time, and yet Robinton was not the sort of personality who could abide idleness. If he wasn’t instructing, taking his Drum Tower watches – Hayon, the oldest of Hayara’s brood, was technically in charge of that part of the Hold’s routine duties -or taking a few days to travel to the corners of the Hold to tutor small holder groups, he busied himself mending instruments, repairing music sheets and copying those which Evarel’s pain-racked hands had been unable to keep in good shape.