Fiddler Fair (anthology)

Eventually the crowd thinned out a bit (though not before she’d felt a ghostly hand or two try for her pouch and give it up as a bad cause). She followed her nose then, looking for the row that held the cookshop tents and the ale-sellers. She hadn’t eaten since this morning, and her stomach was lying in uncomfortably close proximity to her spine.

She learned that the merchants of tavern-row were shrewd judges of clothing; hers wasn’t fine enough to be offered a free taste, but wasn’t poor enough to be shooed away. Sternly admonishing her ­stomach to be less impatient, she strolled the length of the row twice, carefully comparing prices and quantities, before settling on a humble tent that offered meat pasties (best not ask what beast the meat came from, not at these prices) and fruit juice or milk as well as ale and wine. Best of all, it offered seating at rough trestle-tables as well. Rune took her flaky pastry and her mug of juice (no wine or ale for her; not even had she the coppers to spare for it. She dared not be the least muddle-headed, not with a secret to keep and a competition on the morn), and found herself a spot at an empty table where she could eat and watch the crowd passing by. The pie was more crust than meat, but it was filling and well-made and fresh; that counted for a great deal. She noted with amusement that there were two sorts of the clumsy, crude clay mugs. One sort, the kind they served the milk and juice in, was ugly and shapeless (too ugly to be worth stealing) but was just as capacious as the ­exterior promised. The other, for wine and ale, was just the same ugly shape and size on the outside (though a different shade of toad-back green), but had a far thicker bottom, effectively reducing the interior capacity by at least a third.

“Come for the trials, lad?” asked a quiet voice in her ear. Rune jumped, nearly knocking her mug over, and snatching at it just in time to save the contents from drenching her shopworn finery (and however would she have gotten it clean again in time for the morrow’s competition?). There hadn’t been a sound or a hint of movement or even the shifting of the bench to warn her, but now there was a man sitting beside her.

He was of middle years, red hair going to gray, smile-wrinkles around his mouth and grey-green eyes, with a candid, triangular face. Well, that said nothing; Rune had known highwaymen with equally friendly and open faces. His dress was similar to her own; leather breeches instead of velvet, good linen instead of worn silk, a vest and a leather hat that could have been twin to hers, knots of ribbon on the sleeves of his shirt—and the neck of a lute peeking over his shoulder. A Minstrel!

Of the Guild? Rune rechecked the ribbons on his sleeves, and was disappointed. Blue and scarlet and green, not the purple and silver of a Guild Minstrel, nor the purple and gold of a Guild Bard. This was only a common songster, a mere street-player. Still, he’d bespoken her kindly enough, and the Three knew not everyone with the music-passion had the skill or the talent to pass the trials—

“Aye, sir,” she replied politely. “I’ve hopes to pass; I think I’ve the talent, and others have said as much.”

His eyes measured her keenly, and she had the disquieting feeling that her boy-ruse was fooling him not at all. “Ah well,” he replied, “There’s a-many before you have thought the same, and failed.”

“That may be—” she answered the challenge in his eyes, “but I’d bet fair coin that none of them fiddled for a murdering ghost, and not only came out by the grace of their skill but were rewarded by that same spirit for amusing him!”

“Oh, so?” a lifted eyebrow was all the indication he gave of being impressed, but somehow that lifted brow conveyed volumes. “You’ve made a song of it, surely?”

“Have I not! It’s to be my entry for the third day of testing.”

“Well then—” He said no more than that, but his wordless attitude of waiting compelled Rune to ­unsling her fiddlecase, extract her instrument, and tune it without further prompting.

“It’s the fiddle that’s my first instrument,” she said apologetically, “And since ’twas the fiddle that made the tale—”

“Never apologize for a song, child,” he admonished, interrupting her. “Let it speak out for itself. Now let’s hear this ghost-tale.”

 It wasn’t easy to sing while fiddling, but Rune had managed the trick of it some time ago. She closed her eyes a half-moment, fixing in her mind the necessary changes she’d made to the lyrics—for unchanged, the song would have given her sex away—and began.

“I sit here on a rock, and curse

 my stupid, bragging tongue,

And curse the pride that would not let

 me back down from a boast

And wonder where my wits went,

 when I took that challenge up

And swore that I would go

 and fiddle for the Skull Hill Ghost!”

Oh, aye, that had been a damn fool move—to let those idiots who patronized the tavern where her mother worked goad her into boasting that there wasn’t anyone, living or dead, that she couldn’t cozen with her fiddling. Too much ale, Rune, and too little sense. And too tender a pride, as well, to let them rub salt in the wound of being the tavern wench’s bastard.

“It’s midnight, and there’s not a sound

 up here upon Skull Hill

Then comes a wind that chills my blood

 and makes the leaves blow wild”

Not a good word choice, but a change that had to be made—that was one of the giveaway verses.

“And rising up in front of me,

 a thing like shrouded Death.