Hobby (4 page)

They were two days traveling, wonderful days for Hobby. He felt content, caring little if they ever arrived at the city. At night he did not dream.

In between the two travel days, they spent one day resting the animals by a bright pond rimmed with willows.

"Carmarthen is over that hill," Ambrosius said, pointing. "But it will wait. The fair is not for two days yet. Viviane has costumes to tidy and we, my boy, we have fishing. A man—whether a mage or a murderer—can always find time to fish."

He took Hobby down to the pond and there, Ambrosius proved himself a bad angler but a merry companion. All he managed to catch was one angry turtle, but the stories he told until dark more than made up for his incompetence. It was Hobby who pulled in the one small spotted trout they roasted over the fire that night and shared three ways.

"Did you know," Ambrosius said as they banked the fire, "that the Celts in Eire believe little spotted fish can rise up out of the water prophesying? Who knows what this one might have told us." Viviane suddenly burst in with a bubbly song:

 

"
The warrrrrrrrrrters are cold,
But crystal clearrrrrrrr;
I rrrrrrrise to the fly
And so appearrrrrrr
..."

 

"You appear to be interrupting the story," Ambrosius said, and they all laughed.

"Hobby, take these plates to the stream and rinse them. This old man needs to be taught his manners," Viviane said.

Hobby took the plates and went down to the stream. With his hands in the cold water, he began to dream. It was a dream in which he was a child again, with a mother and father rocking him to sleep, the
creak-creak-creak
of the cradle sounding suspiciously like the wheels of the green castle cart.

When he woke, his hands were like ice, and an almost full moon was reflected in silver shards in the water.

 

Theirs was not the only wagon on the road before dawn, but it was the gaudiest by far. Peddlers' children leaped off their own wagons to run alongside, begging the magician for a trick. He did one for each child and asked for no coins at all, even though Viviane scolded about it.

"Each child will bring another to us," he said, "once we are in the town. They will be our best criers. And those who come in Carmarthen will not get away free." He made a showy pink musk mallow appear from under the chin of a dirt-faced tinker girl, this trick even more remarkable—thought Hobby—because musk mallow was long past season. The girl giggled, took the flower, and ran off.

Viviane shook her head. It was clearly an old argument between them.

At first each trick made Hobby gasp with delight. At twelve he was still child enough to be guiled. But partway through the day he began to notice where the flowers and scarves and eggs really appeared from—out of the vast sleeves of the mage's robe. He started watching Ambrosius' hands carefully through slotted eyes and, unconsciously, began to imitate him.

Viviane reached over and slapped his fingers so hard they burned. "Here!" she said sharply. "It is bad enough he does tricks for free on the road, but you would beggar us for sure if you give his secrets away."

So, Hobby thought,
there are secrets of the hand as well as the tongue. Sotto voce, indeed.
He was both embarrassed and elated by Viviane's attention, and by his discovery. And, to be truthful, a bit upset that the mage's magic had less to do with some real power and more to do with imagination. Still, his quiet concentration on the mage's tricks and the constant rocking of the wagon soon combined to put him to sleep. Again he dreamed. It was a wicked, nasty dream in which Viviane was as young as he and a whitethorn tree fell upon her. When he awoke, he was suddenly afraid that the dream would come true. He wanted to warn her, but then remembered that his dreams did not seem to come true literally, but only
on the slant.
It would do no good to tell her if he did not understand the dream. That thought lent him a small amount of comfort.

 

If Gwethern had been a bustling little market town, Carmarthen had to be the very center of the commercial world. As they neared it, Hobby saw gardens and orchards laid out in careful squares outside the towering city walls. Some of the trees along the northern edges were ruined, the ground around them raw and wounded. There were spotty pastures where sheep and kine grazed on the fall stubble. The city walls were made up of large blocks of limestone, though who could have moved such giant stones was a mystery to him. Above the walls he glimpsed crenellated towers from which red and white banners waved gaudily in the shifting winds.

Unable to contain himself any longer, Hobby scrambled through the door of the wagon and squeezed in between Ambrosius and Viviane.

"Look!" he cried.

Viviane smiled at the childish outburst, but Ambrosius shook his head. "Not enough just to look, my boy," he said. "You must use all your senses here if we are to prosper. The eyes and ears are different listeners, but both feed into magecraft."

Viviane rolled her eyes up. "What makes an old man want to
lecture
all the time?" she said, not quite to herself.

Ambrosius ignored her. "What do you hear?"

Once Hobby had been used to listening, the year he had been alone in the woods. He had listened for danger: for the sound of dog and bear and wolf. He had listened for changes in the weather: leaves rustling, the grumble of the sky. And then for four years he had learned to listen to the sounds of the farm—to the needs of dogs and hens, horse and cows, and to make out the different cries of falcons in the mews and on the wing. But listening in a city was of a different nature altogether. "I hear noise."

Laughing, Viviane said, "
I
hear carts growling as they roll along. A tinker's cart is all a-jangle with pots. A farmer's cart groans under its load. And I hear voices, many different tongues. A bit of Norman, some Saxon, Welsh. Ah yes, and Frankish, too. There is a hawk screaming in the sky." She imitated its sound. "Ah—and a heavy clamor from behind the walls. Something being built, I would guess. And from the cursing, not going well."

Hobby listened again. He could begin to sort out the carts now, and the voices, though he did not know the tongues as Viviane did. The hawk, which he would have recognized, was either silent now or beyond his ken. But because Viviane had mentioned it especially, he could hear the heavy, rhythmic pounding. It was like a bass note grounding the entire Carmarthen song.

"Yes!" he said. "I can hear it. I can hear it all!"

"And what do you
see?
" Ambrosius asked.

Determined to match Viviane's ears with his eyes, Hobby began. His litany included wagons and wagoners, beasts straining to pull, birds in cages. He described farmers and weavers and cup makers and their wares. As they passed through the great city gate, under the portcullis, and into the street where burgess houses stood together in rows, he described them as well.

"Well done," Ambrosius said. "And what of the soldiers to your left?"

Hobby turned.

"No!" Viviane spoke the one word sharply, and Hobby turned back. "Never look directly on soldiers, highwaymen, or kings. Especially kings. It makes them nervous. You do
not
want any of them nervous. Look through the slant of your eye.

Hobby did as she instructed. "There are ten of them," he said.

"And..." Ambrosius prompted.

"And what?" Hobby was puzzled.

"What do they wear?"

"Why—their uniforms. And their helms. And swords.
Big
swords."

"What
color
uniforms? What
color
helms? And what
kind
of swords?" Viviane asked, exasperated.

Hating the tone of her voice, Hobby was quick to answer. "Six are in red, with red plumes in the helms. Four in white." He took a deep breath. "I do not know what kind of swords."

"The swords are unimportant," Ambrosius said. "At least for such as we. But we need to ask ourselves why. Why are some of the soldiers sporting red plumes, and some white? Why are they in two different colors? Are there two armies here? Do they serve two different lords? And if so, why?" "I do not know," Hobby said.

Ambrosius laughed. "I do not know either. Yet. But it is something odd to be tucked away. And I collect oddities."

Viviane laughed, too. "Thus endeth the lesson, master hawkling."

Hobby thought about the strange lessons. With Master Robin he had learned about farming, about the rounds of endless caring, a straightforward life. Mag had taught him cleanliness. And Nell—games. But Ambrosius and Viviane's lessons were more twisty somehow. And full of lies. Still, he liked being part of their company. They made him laugh.

Viviane clicked to the mules, who had slowed, and slapped their backs with the reins.

"Once around the square, fair Viviane," Ambrosius said. "Then shall we choose our place. Things are already begun. I have seen a juggler, Hugh of the Reeds, I believe. And a pair of acrobats, young but enthusiastic. And several strolling players are trying their tricks. But none, I wager, anywhere near our range. We shall do very well here, I smell it." He tapped his nose with his long right finger and smiled. "Very well indeed."

IN A SUIT OF GREENS AND GOLDS—THE GOLD
a cotta of the mage's that Viviane had tailored to fit him, the green some old hose sewn over with gold patches and bells—Hobby strode through the crowd with a tambourine collecting coins after each performance.

"Our boy Hobby will pass amongst you, a small hawk among the pigeons," Ambrosius had announced before completing his final trick, the one in which Viviane was shut up in a box and subsequently disappeared, appearing again with a great flourish at the wagon's door.

Hobby had glowed when Ambrosius pronounced his name and claimed, aloud, possession of him.
Our
boy, the mage said, as if they were a family, just the three of them. As in his dream. Hobby repeated the phrase
sotto voce
and smiled. That infectious smile brought coins waterfalling into his tambourine, though he was unaware of its power.

 

On the third day of the fair, after their evening performance, when Viviane had sung in three different voices at the wagon's door, a broad-faced soldier with a red plume came up to them and stood carefully at attention.

He waited for the crowd to dissipate, then announced to Ambrosius: "The Lady Renwein would have you come this evening to the old palace and sends this purse by way of a promise. There will be more if the performance is satisfactory." He dropped the purse into Ambrosius' hand.

The mage bowed low and then, with a wink at Hobby, began drawing out a series of colored scarves from behind the soldier's ear. They were all shades of red: crimson, pink, vermillion, flame, scarlet, carmine, and rose.

"For your lady," he said to the soldier.

The soldier relaxed, laughed, and took them. "They are her colors. She will be pleased. Though not, I think, his lordship."

"The white soldiers are his, then?" asked Ambrosius.

The soldier grunted. It was all the answer he gave. "Be in the kitchen for dinner. You shall eat what the cook eats."

"Then let us hope," Viviane said, taking the purse from Ambrosius' hand, "that we like what the cook likes."

 

They packed up all they would need for the performance in two large baskets and walked toward the old palace at six of the clock, the bells ringing out the hour.

Along the wall of the old palace were ranged guards in pairs, one red and one white. Ambrosius pulled on his beard thoughtfully.

"Hobby," he asked, "when you went through the fair between our performances, did you hear any of the guards talking?"

"Not talking exactly," Hobby said. "But matching names."

"What names?"

"The red guards called the white guards things like ‘Dirty Men of a Dirty Duke.' "

"And the white?"

"Must I say?" Hobby asked. "It touches on the lady's reputation."

"You must," the mage answered. "What touches her, may touch us."

"She was called Dragonlady."

"Ah," Viviane said. "And that is no good thing? I have been called worse in my time." She laughed.

Hobby felt his cheeks sting with embarrassment. "And the red guards called the Duke ‘Draco.' Two dragons in the same nest might make for a difficult marriage."

"A difficult performance for us at any rate," Ambrosius said. "But hush. We near the palace gate."

THE CASTLE WAS INDEED OLD. ITS KEEP, FROM
the time of the Romans, stood mottled and pocked. The newer parts of the building, while colorful, were of shoddy material and worse workmanship. Ambrosius remarked on it quietly as they passed along the corridors.

"The sounds of construction we heard are not from here but for a brand-new castle," he said. "One hopes it is better built than this."

But when they reached the kitchen, the cook—with a stomach as round as a drum and a mouth that seemed always open—told them how badly that building was going. "The lady's father, the old Duke, fair beggared us fighting off imagined invaders. But then he married off his daughter to the worst invader of all, a man who fancies himself king. At least the Romans knew how to build roads and baths. We still use those that stand. But now..." He made the sign of horns with his right hand and spat through his fingers to ward off bad luck. "Now the countryside's in tatters from armies marching through; and the crops are hardly planted before they're thrashed down by the horses; and the new Duke making it worse building a great new house on the site of the old Roman barracks."

Viviane appeared not to listen but Ambrosius urged the cook on to more revelations. Hobby stopped attending after a while and turned his mind to the food, which was plentiful and rich. He ate so much he nearly made himself sick and curled, like a dog, three times around before settling on a cushion near the hearth. The cook's voice followed him where he lay.