to see the humour, and his neck reddened again, his face puffing out. “The joke’s on Petiron! That conceited, condescending, consummate composer hasn’t half the talent of his own son!” He rose then, chuckling and chortling; he managed to slap Robinton on the back and, taking charge of the music he had brought with him, he started out through the door. Then he saw he had taken the unfinished sheet and, chuckling, he handed it back to Robinton. “Let me see it when you’ve finished, will you, Rob lad?”
He was still laughing when he closed the door on his own quarters.
“What was all that about?” one of the journeymen Woodsmiths asked Robinton, still mystified.
“A Hall joke,” Robinton said, smiling inanely and trying to close the door.
“Oh?”
After that incident, his relationship with Master Lobira altered dramatically to an equal footing – or at least Lobira treated his journeyman with the respect he would give a peer. Robinton was delighted, astounded, and quite humbled by the compliment. His Masters at the Hall had been benign taskmasters, encouraging and supportive, but they had treated him as a student. Now Lobira treated him as an equal, despite the difference in age and experience.
It was heady stuff for Robinton and he schooled himself never to abuse this status, working even harder at all the tasks Lobira assigned him. However, this respect generated an unexpected side effect: it made him realize all the more keenly the relationship which Petiron had been unable to give him. In order to abate his bitterness, Robinton began mentally to refer to him as Petiron rather than “father’. Maybe one day he could forgive the slights and the terrible hurt Petiron had inflicted on him – but not yet. Meanwhile, in his growing pleasure in Lobira’s continued good favour, painful memories of striving for an acceptance which had never come began to fade.
There was one last blast of winter in High Reaches, and then the spring melt occurred, turning the hills and tracks into rivers of mud.
Trees budded out, and in the Valley farmers began seeding their fields. And Master Lobira set up the schedules for his journeymen.
That was when Robinton noticed that there were no pegs on a
wide area at the south-western end of High Reaches.
“Surely that’s where Fax has his hold,” he said.
“It is,” Lobira said in a flat voice.
Mallan gave a droll grin.
“He has not requested a harper,” Lobira added in an acerbic tone.
Robinton sat up straight in surprise. “But … why not?”
“He doesn’t like us muddling the minds of his holders with unnecessary information,” Lobira explained.
“Unnec … But everyone has the right to read and reckon.”
“Fax does not wish his holders to be educated, Rob,” Mallan said, crossing his hands behind his head and tipping his chair back.
“Simple as that! What they don’t know won’t hurt them – because they also won’t learn their rights.”
“That’s … that’s …” Robinton struggled to find the appropriate word. “Can’t Lord Faroguy insist?”
Lobira grunted. “He has suggested that reading and figuring are considered assets …”
“Suggested?” Robinton shot out of his chair in protest.
“Now, lad, calm down. It isn’t that we don’t have more than enough students …”
“But he’s denying them their rights under the Charter!”
“He denies there is a Charter, you mean,” Mallan put in.
“The Charter also guarantees that a holder has autonomy within
his holding,” Lobira pointed out.
“But his holders have rights.”
“Don’t be so naive, Rob. That’s exactly what he’s denying them access to,” Mallan said, dropping his chair to all four legs for emphasis. “And don’t go putting your head in that snake’s pit.
You’d never match him in a right, and you come on strong to him on that point and he’s every right to challenge you. And be sorry that he just happened to break your neck!”
Robinton turned to Lobira for support, but the MasterHarper shook his head.
“I’ve warned Faroguy often about allowing Fax to have so much control. I’ve also warned both young Farevene and Bargen, Faroguy’s eldest sons, to be on their guard. I’ll say this for Farevene: he’s a good wrestler and keeps himself fit. Bargen relies on the fact that the Council is unlikely to approve a nephew as long