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They both chuckled. "If you can call what he's got a real choice, and not just wittering," Rudi went on. "After all, Matti, you have a choice too. You could run off and be a sailor in Newport, or a nun in Mt. Angel. Or to the Mackenzie lands and take up a croft!" he added slyly.
She thumped his shoulder. "I can just see myself putting out milk for the house-hob… and leaping naked over a bonfire on Beltane!"
"There are Christians in the Clan," he said righteously. And that latter is a rather attractive image, sure.
"Yeah, both of them," Mathilda said in a pawky tone. "But anyway, that's not a real choice. Portland's my home, I can't run out on it. .. Things would go to hell… And what sort of an example would it be, shirking my duties? God called me to a task when He made me heir to the Protectorate."
"That's what I said to young Fred, more or less. Struck him with the force of a sledgehammer, so it did."
"I'm worried enough about coming on this trip. And there's a lot better reason for doing it than just because I don't want to sit around in a cotte-hardi listening to petitions and arguments over who gets seizin of what or whose vassal stole whose sheep."
She put an arm around his waist and leaned her face against his upper arm. Rudi looked down and batted his eyes.
"And here I was thinking it was the sweet charm of me and my beautiful eyelashes that brought you on the journey… yeak! Those bruises still hurt!"
It was getting a bit chilly; he unpi
Admittedly a bit of a gamy fragrance, but we have been on the road for weeks, and it's exceedingly female.
Odard had launched into another song; Mary and Ritva sang it, in two-part harmony:
"I hear the horse-hoof thunder in the valley below;
I'm waiting for the angels of Avalon-"
He looked up at Rudi and Mathilda as he finished, then aside to the twins with a charming smile:
"And I'd like to thank whichever of you beautiful ladies was considerate enough to bring along my lute. Perhaps it's not quite so essential as the dried beans, but I'm fond of it."
"It was her idea," Mary and Ritva said in perfect unison, each pointing at the other.
Odard's smile grew a little strained. "All right; thank you to whichever evil, teasing bitch preserved my lute. I'm fond of it."
"She's evil teasing bitch Number One," one of them said, pointing to the other. "And I'm evil teasing bitch Number Two."
"You are not! I'm evil teasing bitch Number Two!"
Ingolf laughed, which did Rudi's heart good to see. The big Easterner extended a hand.
"That's a pretty instrument," he said. "Could I see it for a moment?"
"It's not a guitar," Odard said in warning as he handed it over.
The man from Wisconsin touched his strong battered fingers to the strings with a tender delicacy.
"I know. My mother's sister was a luthier. Aunt Alice loved the oldtimey music. She was a bit touched after the Change-she was in Racine on the day of it, showed up nearly dead at our door in Readstown six months later, never talked about how she came through-but she could make ones almost as fine as this, and play them too. Taught quite a few people."
Odard's instrument had a spruce sounding board with a carving of vines over the sound hole, and touches of mother-of-pearl and rose-wood along the edges of the swelling body. It was actually his second-best lute, of course; you didn't take the finest on a trip like this. Ingolf began strumming.
"You don't have fireflies out here, do you?" he asked. "Not that I've seen, anyway."
"No," one of the twins said. "We've heard of them… bugs that glow?"
"Glowing bugs? Like the stars are little lights in the sky," he said, and his fingers began coaxing out a tune from the six-course instrument, plaintive and sad. "It's a pity you've never seen 'em. There's nothing prettier than fireflies on the edge of a field in a summertime night, with that sweet smell off the corn, and a little mist coming up from the river. Like stars come to earth, winking at you…
"Like the lights I shall never see again
The fireflies come and sing to me
Of trains and towns and friends long gone-"
He had a deep voice, a little hoarse but true; the twins began to sing along after a while, and then some of the Mormons joined in. Most people were happy to learn a new tune, since it was about the only way to increase your stock of music.
"Alice made that one; she surely did love the fireflies, and it was a pleasure to hear her singing while she watched them from the veranda. We kids caught some in a jar once and gave them to her, but she cried until we let them go. She was a bit touched, like I said, but good-hearted."
He passed the lute back to Odard, who gave him a considering look and played another tune. Rudi rested his chin on Mathilda's head while they listened. Yawns signaled the end of the impromptu sing-along.
"Did you bother to take a bath?" he said teasingly, sniffing loudly.
"And on that note!" she replied, and headed off for her bedroll.
Rudi yawned himself and stretched, looking up. The stars grew as his fire-dazzled sight adjusted, even more thickly frosted across the sky than they would be at home; the air of this high desert was thin and dry, and the Belt of the Goddess shone in red and yellow and azure blue. A little away from the fire Ingolf sat looking at the embers, rubbing his hands across his face occasionally. The relaxed pleasure that had shown while he sang was gone.
There's a man who's afraid to sleep, Rudi thought with concern. And he isn't a man to be governed by his fears, usually. I wish I were better at mind healing, or that Mother or Aunt Judy were here!
Father Ignatius came back from an inconspicuous tour around the outer perimeter of the camp, left hand on the hilt of his sword and the right telling his beads. He bent to speak softly to the man; Ingolf shook his head with a moment's crooked smile, and the priest went to his own sleeping place. A little way from that, something flashed in the dying light of the fire. Rudi turned his head and saw Mary snatch a gold coin out of the air; Ritva looked a little put out, and watched carefully as her twin slapped the little ten-dollar piece on the back of her left hand and uncovered it.
Rudi wouldn't have been entirely satisfied with letting that stand. Both the sisters were cat-quick, and they practiced sleight of hand for amusement and use as well, and while both were honorable neither had much in the way of scruples-you had to know them well to know how they saw the difference. Evidently Ritva felt the same way. The two young women spoke a moment more, then faced off and did scissors-paper-rock instead. Ritva lost two out of three, shrugged and rolled herself in her blankets.
I wonder what that was about, Rudi thought. He looked up; they'd take the third watch together, when that star was there. So they couldn't be settling that.
His own would start in three quarters of an hour, which was not enough time to be worth sleeping. Instead he pi
It stretched on every side, dark beneath the stars, pale where the green of sage or the bleached straw of the summer-dried grass caught a little light, the shapes of the conical hills curiously regular, and there a glitter on a stretch of obsidian. He controlled his breathing, deep and steady, and opened himself to the land, to the smell of dust and rock and the coolness of night.