were now acceptable – within certain rather tightly controlled limits.
Then, shortly after Celane’s seventeenth birthday, he and his radiant
Enalla were married. The entire courtship had been rather Plodding
and pedestrian, but this was Sendaria after all, and the local society
of merchants and craftsmen was conservative. Conservative people
don’t like surprises – like the ritual kidnaping of the bride-to-be by
her adoring bridegroom and several of his half-drunk friends that’s
common in some of the rowdier clans in Algaria.
After the wedding there was the ceremonial wedding supper
the traditional lavish feast which insures the attendance of just about
everybody in the neighborhood. After he’d eaten his fill – and then
some – Gelane’s grey-haired employer drew me aside for some
serious discussion. I always rather liked Osrig. He was a Sender to
his fingertips, the kind of man who made me proud of the part I’d
played in creating Sendaria. He was sober, practical, and eminently
sensible. He paid his taxes, didn’t cheat his customers, and abstained
from some of the more colorful aspects of language so admired by
Chereks and Drasnians. He was a solidly-built man in his mid-fifties,
and he was probably the one who really raised Gelane. Sometimes
that task does fall on the shoulders of a young man’s first employer.
‘Well, Mistress Pol,’ he said to me with a slight smile, ‘we seem
to have gotten our boy married off.’
I looked across the crowded room filled with chattering guests at
our bride and groom, who seemed oblivious of everything going
on around them. ‘Why, I do believe you’re right, Master Osrig,’ I
replied.
‘I just had an idea you might want to consider, Mistress Pol.’
‘Oh?
‘Why don’t we go ahead and give him a wedding present?’
‘What did you have in mind, Master Osrig?’
‘You didn’t come right out and say it, Mistress Pol, but when we
first spoke about my taking Gelane on as my apprentice, you sort
of suggested that if things worked out, you might consider buying
my shop and the business.’
‘I wasn’t exactly suggesting, Master Osrig. As I remember, I was
fairly specific about it.’
‘Why, so you were. Anyway, Celane’s quick, and he makes good
barrels. Here lately, I’ve been giving him some instruction in getting
along with customers, negotiating prices, and chasing down the
ones who are slow to pay – you know, the business side of the
craft.’
‘Oh, yes, Osrig, I know all about dealing with customers.’
‘Gelane does that very well, too. I’ve been watching him, and I’d
say that he’s ready. It seems to me that his wedding today gives us
the perfect opportunity to change his status in the business world
as well. He’s a married man now, and that’s fairly important to
businessmen. Bachelors can be unreliable, but married men are solid
and dependable. I know my customers, and that sort of thing is
very important to them. To cut all this short, why don’t we go ahead
and complete our arrangements this very day? I like Gelane, and
I’ll make you a good price. I’ll stay around for a few months to
guide him along, and then I’ll start to slowly fade back out of
sight.’
‘You’re very generous, Master Osrig. If we can agree on this, we’ll
make this day one that Gelane will never forget.’
He coughed, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘I have got a slightly
ulterior motive, Mistress Pol,’ he confessed.
‘Oh?’
‘As a part of our arrangement, I want it clearly understood that
I won’t open the shop any more. It’ll be his now, and it’ll be his job
to open for business every morning.
‘I’m not sure I understand, Master Osrig.’
‘I’m ashamed to admit it, Mistress Pol, but I absolutely hate getting
up early in the morning. If we can agree on all the other details, I
want it firmly established that I won’t be coming in to work until
noon. I’ve hated getting up early for forty years now. when you
buy my shop, you’ll be setting me free, Pol. I’ll still.wake up just
about dawn out of habit, but then I’ll be able to roll over and go
back to sleep again.’
‘Why don’t we go ahead and set you free, Osrig? We can draw
up the papers right now, and then I’ll go get your money for you.
We should have it all taken care of in just a few days.’
‘I’ll accept your note for the time being, Pol. Then we can give
Gelane the keys to his business this very afternoon, and when the
sun comes knocking on my door tomorrow morning, I’ll tell him
that I’m not taking orders from him anymore.’ He chuckled. ‘I’m
even going to make a special point of staying up late tonight, just
to make going back to sleep that much more delicious.’
And so it was that Gelane became a husband and a shop-owner
on the very same day. Osrig stayed up late that night, and Gelane
didn’t sleep very much, either. It was for entirely different reasons,
however.
Despite his youth, Gelane gained a certain celebrity that day.
Good fortune had positively rained down on him all at once, and
that’s a very rare occurrence. It was rare enough, at any rate, to
arouse a great deal of envy among the other apprentices in Seline,
and there was a fair amount of spiteful gossip among them on the
fairly frequent occasions when they slipped away from work for
those quick visits to the local taverns. Nobody pays much attention
to the idle backbiting of assorted mediocre apprentices, but even
the more substantial merchants and craftsman noticed what had
happened. I heard one burger put it rather succinctly. ‘the lucky dog
married a beautiful girl and became the owner of his own business all
on the same day. I’m going to keep my eye on that one. He’s a
comer, mark my words.’
Looking back, I think I might have been wiser to have deferred
the transfer of the barrel-works to Gelane for a year or so. I’m sure
Osrig would have agreed to such a delay had I given him my
word that from that day forward Gelane would open the shop every
morning. Maybe the chance to get everything all accomplished in
one day seemed just to good to pass up. Sometimes my sense of
economy gets ahead of me.
Celane’s celebrity wore off, of course, and after a year or so he
was merely ‘Gelane the cooper’ instead of ‘that lucky dog’. People
bought barrels from him because he made good barrels, but other
than that, no particular fame attached itself to him,
That brief time when he was ‘special’, however, reawakened
Celane’s sense of his own importance, and that’s very dangerous for
someone whose major goal is supposed to be staying out of sight.
In retrospect, I’m sure that Brand’s attempt to cleanse the world
of Angaraks hadn’t succeeded nearly as well as he’d hoped it would.
There weren’t any Murgo ‘merchants’ sitting in nearly every tavern
in the west, but the Murgos weren’t the only Angaraks on our side
of the Sea of the East. Chamdar had access to the Dagashi, and
they’re a lot less visible than Murgos.
Anyway, after a year or so, Master Osrig had quietly faded out
of our lives and Gelane converted the loft over his shop into living
quarters. That’s when Aravina suffered a recurrence of that deep,
incapacitating melancholia, and I was forced to devote all my
attention to her. After the initial crisis had passed, I noticed that our
usually sunny Enalla was showing some signs of discontentment.
‘What is your problem, Enalla?’ I asked her pointedly one morning
after Gelane had gone downstairs to open the shop for business.
‘I don’t think Gelane loves me any more, Aunt Pol,’ she replied
disconsolately.
‘Don’t be absurd. He adores you.’
‘Why does he find excuses to go out every night then? If he isn’t
“looking into a new place to buy oak boards to use for barrel staves”
– after all the lumber yards have closed, he’s “trying to find a fellow
who hasn’t paid his bill”. He’s so obvious sometimes. Do you know
what I think, Aunt Pol? I think some tavern wench – or worse – has
taken his eye. He doesn’t even seem interested in -‘ she suddenly
blushed. ‘Well, you know – that.’
I knew exactly what she meant by ‘that’. ‘I’ll look into it, Enalla.
how long’s this been going on?’
‘Almost two months now. You and I were both very concerned
about mother Aravina, and something happened to Gelane while
neither of us was watching.’ She paused. ‘Do we always have to do
that, Aunt Pol? – keep an eye on them every minute of the day or
night, I mean?’
‘Usually, yes.’
‘Don’t they ever grow up?’
‘Some do. Some don’t. My father hasn’t managed it yet, and he’s
much, much older than Gelane. Does our boy go out every single