Trial of Intentions (65 page)

From more than one table she heard whispers, all generally saying the same thing:
The Maesteri's here. It's gonna heat up tonight.

He stopped three times to exchange pleasantries and clasp hands with men and women. These folk struck her as being rather like Belamae, probably music instructors. Or perhaps they were simply fixtures here at Rafters—like the Maesteri himself, it seemed. Soon they reached the stage, and moved to the right, where they passed a large slate, written on in cream-colored chalk. The night's playbill. It looked like nine different performances were scheduled. Belamae read down the list with excitement. Behind them, the room buzzed with anticipation from patrons a drink or two into their evening. She couldn't help but smile, and began tapping her own foot.

Then he led her up a short set of stairs and around to the side stage. Tucked just out of view from the crowd sat a table adorned with a small wicker basket filled with baguettes of pumpernickel, rye, and dark-grain breads. A generous bowl of whipped butter rested beside the basket. And behind it all, two empty chairs.

Belamae motioned in a gentlemanly manner for her to choose a seat. After she'd done so, he sat beside her and exhaled with delighted expectation. “Here we are.”

“Wouldn't it be better out front?” she asked, more than a little confused.

“Oh, no, no. Out there we'd get caught up in the enthusiasm of the crowd. We'd hear the resonances of the room. We'd be more inclined to share a word with the next table. We'd miss the musicians' faces when they fret before taking the stage.” He pointed across from them, stage right, where several musicians were tuning and running scales.

A dozen questions jumped to mind. But before she could ask, the Maesteri smiled and explained. “Back here, we get the unencumbered view and sound of the performance. No enhancements. Just whatever music they're making. We hear it
flat
.” He ran a straightened palm through the air in a slow horizontal motion. “This way, we pick up intonation. We catch the places where the musician struggles. And when it's good from backstage”—he tapped the table, indicating the little nook they now occupied—“it's superb.” He showed her a beaming smile.

Wendra nodded, as a mandolist began taking the stage.

A moment later, two glasses of a velvety, sharp-smelling brandy were brought without the need of an order. Hardly looking away from the onstage musician tuning his mandola, Belamae said, “Board says Goffry's back in the city.”

Their server leaned down, putting his head squarely in Belamae's line of sight. “So he is, you strummer.”

“You know I only pick my strings,” Belamae replied.

It sounded like a rote greeting, as the two men settled into shared chuckles. Wendra assumed some metaphor at work in the exchange, but whatever it was escaped her. It gladdened her, though, to see Belamae in such fine spirits. He had color in his skin and the glimmer back in his eyes. He seemed truly at home here.

“Wendra, this is Ollie, Rafters proprietor, rag-handler, insatiable gossip, and music … er, tone-deaf aficionado.”

The man made a shallow bow. “A right fine pleasure. Though, you could find better company in a barn. You see where we sit him.”

Wendra smiled.

Then Ollie turned back to his old friend. “Goffry spent some time down in Dalle, I hear. Comes back to us with some tricks, he thinks. All he gave me for his set selection was notation keys. A bit o' pomp in 'im now. All Dimn-like.”

Belamae nodded. “He'll draw a crowd, though. You're not hating that. Man's got a talent for loud.” He patted Ollie's elbow. “The slate also says there's a pair of pageant wagon players taking the boards. What's the story there? One of them offer you a kiss?”

Ollie's smile brightened briefly then fell down quite a lot. “Said they wanted to sing something from the Slaternly Cycle. I haven't heard that since I was a kid. League won't allow it anymore, neither. I wrote 'em up on balls alone.” He mimed putting their names on the slateboard.

“Good news is the Reconciliationists have stopped recruiting sopranos out of the Quarter. Bad news is it seems their own music conservatory is doing right well. Can't say how many good voices are now singing to dead gods, but it makes one want to weep.”

“Or convert,” Belamae quipped.

Ollie laughed hard twice. “Well, hold your praise. I've had more than my share of Rykian Church fellows in here scouting for canters. The whole world's turning their music skyward. Whatever happened to a good ole dirty-time jam-all?”

The Maesteri sat back for a moment, looking into his friend's face, as though the question had been a serious one. “Most musicians are too
rehearsed
these days. They play a thing to death before they stand up to play it for someone else. They know all the songs, and so haven't anything of their own.”

A strange silence settled over them in their little backstage nook. Then Ollie's brows rose, his lips pursed, and he nodded as if it was the truest damned thing he'd ever heard.

“Harnell's closing it out tonight, I saw.” Belamae nodded, approving of each selection as another man might test and approve of his glass of wine. “And Cris is first, I see,” he said, motioning toward the mandolist.

“He's gonna make another run. You sittin' here's not gonna do much for his stage hands.” Ollie held out his hand, splay-fingered, and made it all trembly.

The Maesteri shook his head. “I think that part's behind him.” He then handed Ollie a coin. “Don't argue on the change. You're a damn sight better to these kids than they get on the main roads. That matters. Now get off the stage, I can't see.”

Ollie stared at the full handcoin in his palm, looked like he meant to argue, then smiled and did as he was asked, nodding to Cris that he could begin whenever he liked. The lad thanked Ollie, and continued to tune.

“Tonight's lesson, my dear: sound versus meaning. Lend an ear.” Belamae leaned forward in his chair, ignoring his glass, awaiting the song.

The mandola player finished tuning his instrument, then looked up tentatively at the large crowd. In a broken voice he announced, “‘Green Fields,'” before quickly returning his eyes to his fretboard. He fingered his first chord and took a visible breath as the tavern quieted.

He strummed once. Let it ring out to silence. Then began a fingerpicking pattern across the twelve coursed gut strings. Wendra could hear the pairs of gut had been tuned mostly in octaves. Though she thought she heard a few tuned to harmonic fifths. The young man began to move through a progression of chords, his right hand continuing to pick a rhythmic pattern with each new combination of notes.

But as focused as he seemed to be, the player made a bad job of his song. Wendra could see his heel bouncing, not in time to his music, but with a nervous twitch. And he missed more than a few notes, unintentionally playing muted strings and striking some that sounded sour against the rest.

Perhaps worst of all, he seemed unable to find a tempo. And quickly the crowd began to call for him to get off the stage.

Wendra stole a glance at Belamae, and saw an intensity in him she couldn't name. Perhaps it was the Maesteri's patience for bad musicianship from earnest musicians. But she couldn't quite read him.

A wet rag flew out from somewhere on the floor, hitting the boy in the face. A patron wouldn't likely be carrying a rag; this would have come from a tavern worker.

“Why doesn't he stop?” Wendra asked. “Before they get more hostile?”

Belamae didn't answer.

A few of the patrons had walked near the stage and begun to heckle the lad. “Go home to your mother's teat and your ‘green fields.' The city's no place for such poor fingers.”

Then a glass hit the young man in the side of the head, breaking apart and splattering him with liquor. A deafening roar of laughter followed.

Wendra shot to her feet. “It's a damned song. What right have you—”

Belamae pulled her gently but firmly back to her seat. Her anger continued to mount, even as the Maesteri said, “It's a performance tavern. The crowd is what the crowd is. The boy knew what he was up against. Now, patience yet.” And he returned his attention to the mandolist.

The player had stopped plucking his strings. Liquor soaked his shirt and instrument. A small runnel of blood ran from his ear into his collar. The mandolist's dejection seemed only to cause greater ridicule and mocking laughter.

She wanted the young man to slip away and save himself the embarrassment. It was then that she noticed the hems on his clothes. While she couldn't be sure, she'd have wagered that the wide gathering stitch and rough weave belonged to a field hand. Not someone who'd grown up on Recityv streets. She'd have bet her last coin he was here trying to improve his lot. Get into Descant and out of the muck fields.

Another thought then struck her. Maybe he wasn't doing any of this for himself. Maybe he was doing it for his family. Wendra's coarse music began to rush in her blood.

Then the boy's heel stopped shaking. And in the midst of the shouts and laughs, he started once more to play.

His first notes couldn't be heard above the noise. It took several moments for the crowd to realize they hadn't shunned him from the stage. The silence that followed had the feeling of a serpent ready to strike a hapless animal.

But this time, and with liquor dripping from sodden hair across the strings he played, the young man did not falter. She knew “Green Fields.” It was a common tune, an old one, meant to strike a contemplative tone. She'd always taken it as a song men and women of the field sang to convince themselves that their lives weren't dire. A kind of self-deception, perhaps.

However, the young man ran at the tune with abandon. The fingers of each of his hands worked in a complicated dance that hastened, exposing the lie of the song's composition. It might take a simple theme, but the song itself was anything but.

After several refrains, the feeling in the crowd's silence changed. No longer did they wait for the lad to falter, but now sat in growing wonder at how the plain song had been given fresh life, the frantic pace of it seeming to express a common angst.

Belamae began to tap the table in front of him in half notes, striking a rhythm to the lad's song. The crowd began to do likewise, softly knocking on tables or clapping their hands—one beat for every eight notes the boy played.

Wendra joined them, feeling as though she were helping the young man create, while showing support and approval. The lad looked up with surprise in his eyes, drawn momentarily from the world that had become him and his mandola. When he settled his focus back to his instrument, he widened his feet beneath him, as though he'd need the added balance, and hunkered more deeply over his fretboard.

And he played like Wendra had never seen a man play.

She heard frustration and loss and anger and disappointment in his notes. She also heard hope just beneath the music itself. His hands flashed over his strings, and when she heard the occasional erring note, it sounded appropriate, as if to say a field hand makes bad choices in a hard life.

But those were few. The song became a blur, and the pounding and clapping became a clamor. It all spiraled together, feeling like a song offered by them all, rising, quickening.

Until the young man began to falter. Not a lot. Just missing a note here and there. Dragging the rhythm, but not in a purposefully musical way.

Wendra spared a quick glance at Belamae, whose eyes showed a resigned concern. She looked back at the mandolist, listening closely through the din. The pace he'd played up to was remarkable. And slightly beyond his ability to control. The rhythmic dance of his two hands fell out of time. The boy pushed on, fighting through his performance, making his efforts all appear purposeful. There was a strong measure of raw emotion in what he did, how he played. And most of the tavern was alive with the energy of it. Only a few seemed unmoved, watching the way Belamae watched.

Finally, the young man stopped, panting, and clasped his hands together as if he might squeeze rhythm back into them. It left him looking like one in prayer, or perhaps begging alms. His face, though, held a hint of confusion, as if he asked himself how he'd lost control. But only a hint, as the crowd erupted in praising shouts and applause.

Under his breath, Belamae whispered, “Oh, my boy.”

“What?” she asked. “They were all clapping. All he did was falter a bit at the end.”

Belamae's reply surprised her. “He'll have no offer to study at Descant. Not yet. Not from this performance.”

“But he moved this crowd. You saw it. He's got talent. Why no invitation?”

He turned to her, a thoughtful expression on his face. Then he showed her a patient smile. “Of course moving an audience is a fine aim. A very good thing in and of itself. But don't confuse that with being a musician. Some pluckers do well in front of a crowd. They seem to shine a titch brighter when folks are watching. Nothing wrong with that. But I care more about the music you make when no one is watching. Is it honest then? Is it right?” He paused a moment, as if clarifying his thoughts. “A musician, some would argue, can sell a song with more than notes. But you can't fool yourself. When you make song in your private chambers, there's no thrum and rattle of the tavern, no flowing liquor, no ready mind for escape. In your own rooms, there's just you and the song.”

“Meaning what?” Wendra argued. “That you must be perfect in private?”

“Of course not.” He patted her hand warmly. “Some call it the difference between musician and musicianship. I think it's closer to say the difference between musician and performer. Both are a treat. But they're not always the same. Mind you, I'm not saying one is best.”

“Then what
are
you saying?” Wendra was now watching the young man under the scrutinizing eyes of the tavern crowd.