"You are going to marry me, aren't you?" Talaysen asked plaintively, picking his now-dry clothing off the rocks beside the stream and packing it away. There was no sign of last night's storm; even most of the debris had been washed downstream. And as if in apology, the day had turned bright and sunny around noon. Rune had caught a fish, using some of their soggy bread for bait; he'd managed to get a fire going, so they could cook it. The rest of the day they'd spent in laying out everything that had gotten wet to dry, and figuring out just how badly Rune had gotten hurt.
She'd gotten off fairly easily, as it turned out. She had gotten a bad knock on the head, but nothing a lot of valerian couldn't help. They were now a day behind, of course, but that was better than being lightning victims, or confined in the elven-king's hall.
Rune looked over at Talaysen's anxious face, and grinned wickedly, despite the black eye and bruises the tree limb had gifted her with. "Isn't it supposed to be me that's asking that?" she mocked. "You sound like one of the deflowered village maidens in a really awful Bardic Guild ballad."
He flushed. "I'm serious. I-you-we- We can't just go on like this. You're going to get harassed enough if we're legally wed! If we aren't-"
She looked at him with an expression of exasperation, and carefully folded one of her shirts before answering. "Is that the only reason? To make an 'honest woman' out of me? To protect me from disgrace?"
"No!" he blurted, and flushed again. "I mean-I-"
"Ah." She put the shirt back into her pack. "That's just as well, since protecting a nameless bastard from disgrace is pretty much like protecting a thief from temptation. Why don't you just tell me why you're so set on this, and let me think about your reasons."
For a moment, he sat back on his heels and stared at her helplessly. For all that he was a Bard, and supposed to be able to work magic with words, he felt suddenly bereft of any talent with his tongue whatsoever. How could he tell her-
She waited patiently, favoring her left side a little. He marshaled his thoughts. Tried to remember what he always told others when they were tongue-tied, when the gift seemed to desert them.
Begin at the beginning. . . .
So he did.
She listened. Once or twice, she nodded. It got easier as he went along; easier to find the words, though they didn't come out of his mouth with any less effort. He'd lived for so long without telling people how he felt-how he really felt, the deep feelings that it was generally better not to reveal-that each confession felt as if he was trying to lift another one of those trees. Only this time, the back he was lifting it from was his own. The logical reasons: why it was better not to give the Guild another target; how being legally married would actually cut down on petty jealousy within the Bards; how it might keep petty officials of the Church not only from harassing them, but from harassing other Free Bard couples who chose to perform as a pair.
The reasons with no logic at all, and these were harder to get out: that he not only loved her, he needed her presence, that she made him feel more alive; his secret daydreams of spending the rest of his days with her; how she brought out the best in everything for him.
The reasons that hurt to confess: how he was afraid that without some form of formal tie binding them, one day she'd tire of him and leave him without warning; how he felt as if her refusal to formally wed him was a kind of rejection of him, as if she were saying she didn't feel he was worth the apparent sacrifice of her independence.
Finally he came to the end; he had long since finished his packing, and he sat with idle hands clenched on stones to either side of him.
She let out her breath in a sigh. "Have you thought about this?" she asked. "I mean, have you really thought it through? Things like-how are the other Free Bards going to react to a wife? You think that it will cut down on petty jealousy-why? I think it might just make things worse. A lover-that would be no problem, but a wife? Wouldn't they see me as some kind of interloper? I'm the newest Free Bard; how did I get you to wed me? Wouldn't they think I'm likely to try interfering with you and the rest of them?"
"I can't read minds," he said, slowly. "But I truly don't think there'd be any problem. I know every one of the Free Bards personally, and I just don't think the kinds of problems you're worried about would even occur. Marriage might make things easier, actually; I can't be everywhere at once, and sometimes I've wished there were two of me. And there are things the females haven't always felt comfortable in bringing to me-they tell Gwyna a lot of the time, but that really isn't the best solution. With you there-my legal partner-there's a partnership implied with marriage that there isn't with a lover. Stability; they aren't going to tell you something then discover the next time we met that there's someone else with me, and wonder what that means to their particular problem." He relaxed a little as she nodded.
"All right-I can see that. But we should try to anticipate problems and head them off before they become problems. For instance: divided authority. Someone trying to work us against each other. If you give me authority, it should be only as your other set of ears. All right?" She waited for his nod of agreement before continuing.
"What about children?" she said, surprising him completely.
"What about them?" he replied without thinking.
"I want them. Do you? Have you thought about what it would take to raise them as Free Bards?" She held up her hand to forestall his protest that it would not be fair to her to saddle her with children she might well have to raise alone. "Don't tell me that you're old, you'll die and leave me to raise them alone. I don't believe that for a minute, and neither do you."
He snapped his mouth shut on the words.
"Well?" she said, rubbing her head to relieve the ache in it. "Is there a way to have children and still be Free Bards?"
"We could settle somewhere, for a while," he suggested tentatively.
She shook her head, and winced. "No. No, I don't think that would work. You have to be visible, and that means traveling. If we lived in a big city, we'd have to leave the children alone while we busked-no matter how good we were, we would still be taking whatever jobs the Guild Minstrels didn't want, and that's pretty precarious living for a family. And the Guild would be only too happy to flaunt their riches in the face of your poverty-then come by and offer you your old position if you just gave all the Free Bard nonsense up."
She watched him shrewdly to see if he'd guess the rest of that story. "And of course, that would mean either giving you up, or persuading you to turn yourself into a good little Bard-wife and give up your music." He shook his head. "What a recipe for animosity! You know them better than I thought you did."
She snorted. "Just figured that if there was a way to make people jealous of each other, and drive a wedge between them, they'd know it. I imagine there's a lot of that going on in the Guild."
He pondered her original question for a moment, and emptied his mind, waiting to see if an answer would float into the emptiness. He watched the dance of the sunlight on the sparkling waters, flexing and stretching his fingers, and as always, waiting for the tell tale twinges of weather-soreness. His father had suffered terribly from it-
But then his father had also shamelessly overindulged himself in rich food and wine, and seldom stirred from his study and office. That might have had something to do with it.
"There's another way," he said suddenly, as the image of a Gypsy wagon did, indeed, float into his mind. "We could join a caravan of Gypsy families; get our own wagon, travel with them, and raise children with theirs. If there are older children, adolescents, they watch the younger ones, and if there aren't there's always someone with a task that can be done at the encampment that minds the children for everyone else."
She raised an eyebrow skeptically. "Mind you, this is all nasty tale-telling from evil-mouthed, small-minded villagers, but-I've never heard anything about Gypsy parents except that they were terrible. Selling their children, forcing them to work, maiming them and putting them out to beg-"
"Have you ever actually seen any of that with your own eyes?" he asked. She shook her head, carefully. "It's not true, any of it. They know how to prevent having children, so they never have more than they can feed-if something does happen to one or both parents, every family in the caravan is willing to take on an extra mouth. The children are tended carefully, the encampment is always guarded by dogs that would take on a wolf-pack for their sakes, and the children loved by everyone in the caravan. They grow up to be pretty wonderful adults. Well, look at Gwyna, Raven and Erdric."
She gave a dry chuckle. "Sounds too good to be true."
"Oh, there're exceptions," he admitted. "There are families other Gypsies refuse to travel with-there are families that are hard on their children and a general nuisance to the rest of the adults. Any child that doesn't learn how to get out of the way of a drunk or a serious situation is going to be on the receiving end of a cuff. You must admit, though, that can happen anywhere. Mostly, Gypsy children are the healthiest and happiest I've ever seen. The drawback is that they won't learn reading, writing, or the Holy Book-the Gypsies don't hold with any of the three."
"Reading and writing we can teach them ourselves," Rune countered. "And the Holy Book-they should read it when they're old enough to understand that what they're reading is as much what the Church wants you to believe as it is Holy Words." She thought that proposition over for a long moment. "That would work," she concluded, finally. "Having a wagon to live in eliminates one of the biggest expenses of living in a town or city, too."
"What, the rent?" He grinned. She'd already told him about her job at Amber's, and he knew very well they could always find something comparable if they ever cared to settle in one place for long.
"No," she countered. "The damned tithe and tax. If they can't catch you, they can't collect it. And if you leave before they catch you-"
"Point taken," he admitted. "Though, I'll warn you, I do pay tax; I've been paying both our shares. If you want decent government, you have to be prepared to pay for it."
He saw a shadow of something-some remembered pain-pass across her face. "Point taken," she said, quietly. "Tonno-felt the same way as you, and lectured me about it often enough. But the tithe serves no damned purpose at all. If it got into the hands of Priests like your cousin, that would be different. Most of the time, though, it ends up in the hands of men that are no better than thieves."
He snorted, and tried not to think too hard about most of his dealings with the Church-those that hadn't involved Ardis seeking out someone specific for him to speak to. "I've known thieves with more honor-and Ardis would be the first to agree with you. But we weren't talking about Ardis."
"No, we weren't." She leaned forward, intently. "Talaysen, what do you intend to do with the Free Bards?"
"Do?" Was she really asking what he thought she was asking? "What exactly do you mean?"
"What I said," she replied. "What are you going to do with them? Oh, it was enough to form them, to keep the Bardic Guild from getting rid of them when there were only a handful of you, I'm sure. But there are nearly fifty of you now-not counting the ones that didn't come to the Midsummer Faire. And there are more joining every year! They think of you not only as the founder, but as the leader-now what are you going to lead them to? Or is this just going to be a kind of Gypsy Clan with no other purpose than to live and play music?"
Of all of the Free Bards, Rune was the only one that had asked him that question, the question he had been asking himself for about three years.
"There are a lot of things I would like to do," he said, slowly, "but all of them involve having more power than we do now. That's why I've gotten the rest involved in trying to ingratiate ourselves with the Sires and Guildmasters outside the big cities."
"So that when you come to demand a change, there will be someone backing you." She nodded enthusiastically. "What's the change?"
"Mostly, we-I-want to see some of the privileges and monopolies taken away from the Bardic Guild," he replied. "I want them put on a completely equal footing with us. I don't want to set up the Free Bards in place of the Guild, but I want any musician to be free to take any place that's been offered him. I want the Sires able to hire and fire members of the Guild the same way they can hire and fire Free Bards and traveling minstrels. And there are some abuses of power within the Guild that I want looked into."
She sat back on her heels, and smiled. "That'll do," she replied. "That's enough for anyone's lifetime. Let your successor worry about the next step."
"Are you going to marry me now?" he asked, trying to sound plaintive, and actually sounding testy. She laughed.
"Since you ask me so romantically, I think so," she said, tossing a shirt at him that he had forgotten. "But don't think that you can go back to being aloof until the bonds are set." She bared her teeth at him, in a playful little snarl that was oddly erotic. He restrained himself from doing what he would have liked to do. For one thing, he wanted a more comfortable bed than the boulders of the stream-bank, sun-warmed though they were. . . .
"I don't know why I shouldn't," he replied provokingly. "After all, you've been hurt, your head probably aches and I'm sure you couldn't possibly be interested in-"
She pounced on him, and proved that she could, most definitely be interested in-
And he found that the rocks weren't as bad as he had thought.
Rune would have laughed at her lover, if she hadn't been so certain that she would badly hurt his feelings by doing so. Now that they were lovers, she was perfectly content. But he was heading them into Brughten, despite the fact that there was no Faire there and the pickings would be slim, because he wanted to find a Priest to marry them. Immediately. Incredible.
Well, there was a Priest and a Church, and the town was at least on the road. It wasn't the road they had left; this one they'd struck after following the stream for a couple of days rather than backtrack over the elven-king's territory. And they might be able to get lodging and food at one of the town's two inns. . . .
Talaysen left her at the marketplace in the center of the town, and she was grateful for a chance to find some fresh supplies. The storm had washed away or ruined most of their food, and they had been living off the land thanks to the fish in the stream and her scant knowledge of forest edibles. That had been mostly limited to the fact that cattail roots could be eaten raw, knowing what watercress looked like, and recognition of some bramble-bushes with fruit on them.
Their money hadn't washed away, but it was hard to get a squirrel to part with a load of nuts in exchange for a copper penny.
She had just about completed her final purchase, when she turned and caught sight of Talaysen striding towards her through the light crowd. Most people wouldn't have noticed, and he was being quite carefully courteous to the other shoppers as he made his way past and around them-but she saw the set jaw, and the stiff way that he held his head, and knew he was furious.
"What's wrong?" she whispered, as he reached her side. He shook his head.
"Not here," he said quietly, and she heard the anger in his voice. "Are you done?"
"Just a moment." She turned back to the old farm-wife and quickly counted out the money for another bag of traveler's bread without stopping to bargain any further. The old woman blinked in surprise, but took the coins-it wasn't that much in excess of what the real price should have been-and gave her the coarse string bag full of rounds of bread in exchange.
"All right," she said, tying the bread to her belt until she got a chance to put it in her pack. "Let's go."
He led her straight out of town, setting a pace that was so fast she had to really stretch her legs to keep up with him, until he finally slowed when they were well out of sight of the last of the buildings. She tugged at his arm, forcing him to slow still further. "All right!" she exclaimed, catching sight of the rage on his face, now that he was no longer having to wear a polite mask. "What happened?"
"I was told by the Priest," he said, tightly, "that we were vagabonds and tramps. He told me that trash such as you and I weren't fit to even set foot on sacred ground, much less participate in the sacrament of marriage. He further told me that if we didn't want him to call the Sire's watch to have us both pilloried, even though you weren't even there, that we'd better take ourselves out of town." He took a deep breath, and let it out in a long sigh. "There was a great deal more that he said, and I won't repeat it."
The look on his face alarmed her. "You didn't do anything to him-"
"Oh, I wanted to throw him into the duck pond on the green," Talaysen replied, and the rage slowly eased out of him. "But I didn't. I did something that was a lot worse." He began to smile, then, and the more he thought about whatever it was that he'd done, the more he smiled.
She had a horrified feeling that he had done something that really would get them pilloried, and her face must have reflected that, because he tossed back his head and laughed.
"Oh, don't worry. I didn't do anything physical. But it will be a very long time before he insults another traveling musician." He waited, the smile still on his face, for her to ask the obvious question.
"Well, what did you do?" she asked impatiently, obliging him.
"I informed him that he had just insulted Master Bard Gwydain-and I proved who I was with this." He reached into his pocket and extracted the medallion of Guild membership that she had only seen on satin ribbons about the necks of the Guild Masters at the trials. This medallion was tarnished, and it no longer hung from a bright, purple satin ribbon, but there was no mistaking it for the genuine article.
A Master's medallion. The Priest must have been just about ready to have a cat.
He handed it to her; she turned it over, and there was his name engraved on it. She gave it back to him without a word.
"I don't think it ever occurred to him to question the fact that I had this," Talaysen continued, with satisfaction. "I mean, I could have stolen it-but the fact that I had puffed myself up like the proud, young, foolish peacock I used to be probably convinced him that it, and I, were genuine. He started gaping like a stranded fish. Then he went quite purple and tried to apologize."
"And?" she prompted.
"Well, I was so angry I didn't even want to be in the same town with him," Talaysen said, with a glance of apology to her. "I informed him that if he heard a song one day about a Priest so vain and so full of pride that he fell into a manure-pit because he wouldn't listen to a poor man's warning, he would be sure and recognize the description of the Priest if he looked into a mirror. Then I told him that I wouldn't be wedded by him or in his chapel if the High King himself commanded it, I shoved him away, and I left him on the floor, flapping his sleeves at me and still babbling some sort of incoherent nonsense."
"I wouldn't be wedded by a toad like that if it meant I'd never be wedded," she said firmly. "And if that's the attitude of their Priest, we'd better tell the rest of the Free Bards that Brughten is probably not a good place to stop. The Priest generally sets the tone for the whole village, and if this one hates minstrels, he could make a lot of trouble for our folk."
"I'm sorry, though-" he said, still looking guilty. "I never meant to deprive you of your wedding."
"Our wedding. And I really don't care, my love-" It gave her such a thrill to be able to say the words "my love," that she beamed at him, and he relaxed a bit. "I told you before. Amber showed me a lot of things; one of them was that there are plenty of people who have the 'proper' appearance who aren't fit to clean a stable, and more who that fat Priest would pillory, who have the best, truest hearts in the world." She touched his hand, and he caught hers in his. A delightful shiver ran down her back. "I don't care. You love me, I love you, and if a ceremony means that much to you, we'll get one of your Gypsy friends to wed us. It will be just as valid and binding, and more meaningful than anything that fat lout could have done."
She looked up at his green, green eyes, now shadowed, and started to say something more-when a dark cloud behind his head, just at the tree line, caught her eye. And instead of continuing her reassurance, she said, "What's more, we have a bit more to worry about than one stupid Priest. Look there-"
She freed her hand to point, and he turned. And swore. The cloud crept a little more into view.
"How long have we got until that storm hits us?" she asked, motioning to him to turn his back to her so she could free his rain-cape from the back of his pack, then doing the same so he could get hers and stow the bread away so it wouldn't get soaked.
"As quickly as that blew up?" He handed her the cape with a shake of his head. "I don't know. A couple of hours, perhaps? Would you rather turn back?"
"Not for a moment," she declared. "I'd rather have rain. I'd rather be soaked than take shelter in a place that has people in it like that Priest. Let's see how far we can get before it hits us. If we spot a place to take shelter along the way-"
"No deserted farmhouses!" he exclaimed.
She laughed. After all, if it hadn't been for that farmhouse, he'd still be avoiding me like a skittish virgin mare! "No," she promised. "No deserted farmhouses. Only ones with farmers, wives, and a dozen children to plague us and make us wish we were back with the elves!"
Just as the storm was close enough for them to feel the cold breath of it on their backs, Talaysen spotted a wooden shrine by the roadside. Those shrines usually marked the dwelling of a hedge-Priest or a hermit; a member of one of the religious Orders that called for a great deal of solitary meditation and prayer. Rune had seen it too, but after Talaysen's earlier experience, she hadn't been certain she ought to mention it.
But Talaysen headed right up the tiny path from the shrine into the deeper woods, and she followed. This time, at least, the trees weren't reaching out to snag them. In fact, the path was quite neatly kept, if relatively untraveled. Thunder growled-to their right, now, rather than behind them-and lightning flickered above and to the right of them as the woods darkened and the clouds rolled in overhead.
She caught a glimpse of the black, rain-swollen bellies of the clouds, and a breath of cold wind snaked through the trees. This is going to be another bad one-
Talaysen had gotten a bit ahead of her, but abruptly stopped. She just about ran into him; she peeked around him to see what had made him halt, and stared straight into the face of one of the biggest mastiffs she had ever seen in her life. The dog was absolutely enormous; a huge brindle, with a black mask and ears-and more teeth than she really wanted to see at such a close range.
She froze. Talaysen had already gone absolutely still.
There was another dog behind the first, this one tawny-and-black; if anything, it looked even bigger. The first dog sniffed Talaysen over carefully while the second stood guard; when it got to his boots, Rune quietly slipped his knife from the sheathe and pressed it into his hand, then drew her own. Knives weren't much against a dog the size of a small pony, but if the creature took it into its head to attack, knives were better than bare hands.
The dog raised its head, turned, and barked three times, as its companion watched them to make certain they didn't move. It waited a moment, then barked again, the same pattern, but this time there was no denying the impatience in its voice.
"All right, all right, I'm coming!" a voice from the path beyond the dogs called, sounding a little out of breath. "What on Earth can you two have-oh."
A brown-robed man, gray-brown hair cut in the bowl-shaped style favored by some of the Orders, and a few years older than Talaysen, came around the turning in the path that had blocked him from their view. He stared at them for a moment, as if he hadn't expected to see anything like them, and stopped at the second dog's rump. "You great loon!" he scolded affectionately, and the first mastiff lowered its head and wagged his tail. "It's just a couple of musicians! I would have thought you'd cornered an entire pack of bandits from all the noise you were making!"
The dog wagged its tail and panted, grinning. Talaysen relaxed, marginally.
"Oh, come off, you louts!" the robed man said, hauling at the second dog's tail until it turned around, and repeating the process with the first one. "Go on, be off with you! Back home! Idiots!"
The dogs whuffed and licked his hands, then obediently padded up the path out of sight. The robed man turned to them, and held out his hand (after first wiping it on his robe) to Talaysen. "I'm Father Bened," he said, shaking the hand that Talaysen offered in turn vigorously. "We'll save other introductions for the cottage-" He looked up as a particularly spectacular bolt of lightning arced over their heads. "If you'll just follow me, I think we might just out-race the rain!" Without any further ado, he picked up the skirts of his robes and ran in the same direction the dogs had taken without any regard for dignity. Talaysen wasn't far behind him, and Rune was right at Talaysen's heels. They all made the shelter of the cottage barely in time; just as they reached the door, the first, fat drops began falling. By the time Rune got inside and got her pack and gear off, the storm was sending down sheets of water and thumb-sized hailstones into the bargain. She pushed forward into the room so that the Priest could get at the door, but things seemed to be a confusion of firelight, shadows, and human and canine bodies.
"There!" Father Bened slammed the door shut on the storm outside and took Rune's pack away from her, stowing it in a little closet next to the door, beside Talaysen's. "Now, do come in, push those ill-mannered hounds over, and find yourself a bit of room. I'm afraid they take up most of the space until they lie down. Down, you overgrown curs!" The last was to the dogs, who paid no attention to him whatsoever, being much too interested in sniffing the newcomers over for a second time, in case they had missed some nuance on the first round of sniffs.
After a great deal of tugging on the dogs' collars and exasperated commands which the beasts largely ignored, Father Bened got the mastiffs lying down in what was evidently their proper place; curled up in the chimney corner on one side of the hearth. Together they took up about as much space as a bed, so it wasn't too surprising that the Father didn't have much in the way of furniture, at least in this room. Just three chairs and a table, and cupboards built into the wall.
Father Bened busied himself at one of those cupboards, bringing out a large cheese, half a loaf of bread, and a knife. He followed that with three plates and knives, and a basket of pears. Very plainly he was setting out supper for all three of them.
Talaysen coughed, and Father Bened looked over at him, startled. "Excuse, Father," the Bard said, "but you don't-"
"But I do, son," the Priest said, with a look of reproach. "Indeed I do! You've arrived on my doorstep, on the wings of a storm-what am I to do, sit here and eat my dinner and offer you nothing? I am not so poor a son of the Church as all that! Or so niggardly a host, either!"
While he was speaking, he was still bringing things down out of the cupboards; a couple of bottles of good cider, three mugs, and in a bowl, a beautiful comb of honey that was so rich and golden it made Rune's mouth water just to look at it.
"There!" he said in satisfaction. "Not at all bad, I don't think. The bread and honey are mine, the cheese is local-I trade honey for it. I can trade the honey for nearly everything that my local friends don't give me. Here, let me toast you some cheese-there is only one toasting-fork. I fear. I'm not much used to getting visitors-"
There didn't seem to be anything they could do to stop him, so Rune made herself useful by pouring cider, while Talaysen cut the bread and cheese. The dogs looked up hopefully at the proceedings, and Rune finally asked if they needed to be fed as well.
"The greedy louts would gladly eat anything that hits the floor, and look for more," Father Bened said, as he laid a second slab of toasted cheese, just beginning to melt, on a slice of bread. "I've fed them, but they'll try to convince you otherwise. I could feed them a dozen times a day, until their eyes were popping out, and they'd still try to tell you they were starving."
"What on Earth do you feed them?" Talaysen asked, staring at the dogs as if fascinated. "And where did you get them? They're stag-hounds, aren't they? I thought only Sires raised stag-hounds."
Father Bened ducked his head a little, and looked guilty. "Well-the truth is, they aren't mine, really. They belong to a-ah-a friend. I-ah-keep them for him. He comes by every few days with meat and bones for them; the rest of the time I feed them fish or whatever rabbits I can-ah-that happen to die."
Rune began to get a glimmering of what was going on. It was a good thing no one had ever questioned the good Father; he was a terrible liar. "And if the meat your friend brings them is deer, it's just really lucky that he found the dead carcass before it was too gone to be of use, hmm?" she said. Father Bened flushed even redder.
"Father Bened," she said with amusement, "I do believe that you're a poacher! And so is this 'friend' of yours!"
"A poacher? Well, now I wouldn't go that far-" he said indignantly. "Sire Thessalay claims more forest land hereabouts than he has any right to! I've petitioned the Sires and the barons through the Church I don't know how many times to have someone come out and have a look, but no one ever seems to read my letters. My friend and I are simply-doing the work of the Church. Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked-"
"With venison, cony, and buckskin and fur," Talaysen supplied. "I take it that a lot of the small-holders out here go hungry in the winter, else?"
The Father nodded soberly. "When the Sire claimed the forest lands, he also laid claim to lands that had been used for grazing and for pig-herding. Many of the small-holders lost half their means of support. You're Free Bards, aren't you?" At Talaysen's nod, he continued. "I thought you might be. A year ago last winter one of your lot stayed with me for a bit. A good man; called himself 'Starling' if I mind me right. I told him a little about our problem; he went out with my friend a few times to augment food supplies."
"I know him," Talaysen replied. "From a small-holder family himself."
"I thought as much." Father Bened shrugged, and laid out the third slice of cheese, then wasted no time in digging into his portion. Rune picked up the bread and nibbled gingerly; the cheese was still quite hot, and would burn her mouth if she wasn't careful. It tasted like goat-cheese; it was easier to raise goats on marginal land than cattle, especially if your grazing lands had been taken from you.
"I'm city-bred, myself," the Father continued. "When I was a youngster, the Church was very special to me, and I grew up with this vision of what it must be like-full of men and women who'd gotten rid of what was bad in them, and had their hearts set on God. Always felt as if the Church was calling me; went straight into Orders as soon as I could."
He sighed. Talaysen nodded sympathetically. "I think the same thing happened to you that happened to my cousin Ardis."
"If she had a crisis of conscience, yes," Father Bened replied sadly. "That was when I found out that the Church was just like anyplace else; just as many bad folk as good, and plenty that were indifferent. Since I hadn't declared for an Order yet, I traveled a little to see if it was simply that I'd encountered an unusual situation. I came to the conclusion that I hadn't, and I almost left the Church."
"Ardis decided to fight from within," Talaysen told him. "She got assigned to the Justiciars."
"I decided the same, but to work from below, not above," Father Bened replied. "There were more of the bad and indifferent kind when you were in the city, in the big cloisters attached to the cathedrals, or so it seemed to me. So I got myself assigned to the Order of Saint Clive; it's a mendicant order that tends to wayside shrines. I thought that once I was out in the country, I'd be able to do more good."
"Why?" Rune asked. "It seems to me if you were city-bred you'd have a hard time of it out in the wilds. You must have spent all your time trying to keep yourself fed and out of the weather-"
"I didn't think of that," he admitted, and laughed. "And it was a good thing for me that God takes care of innocent fools. My Prior took pity on me and assigned me here; this cottage was already built, and my predecessor had been well taken care of by the locals. I simply settled in and took up where he'd left off."
"What do you think of the Priest in Brughten?" Talaysen asked carefully. Father Bened's face darkened.
"Father Bened can only say that his Brother in the Church could be a little more charitable," he replied carefully. "But I am told that there is a poacher of rabbits who roams these woods that has called him a thief who preys on widows and orphans, a liar, and a toady to anyone with a title or a fat purse. And the poacher has heard that he goes so far as to deny the sacraments to those he feels are too lowly to afford much of an offering."
"I'd say the poacher is very perceptive," Talaysen replied, then described his encounter with the Brughten Priest, though not the part where he revealed himself to be Gwydain. Father Bened listened sympathetically, and shook his head at the end.
"I can only say that such behavior is what I have come to expect of him," the Priest said. "But at least I can offer a remedy to your problem. Friends, if all you wanted was to be wed-well, I have the authority. I don't have even a chapel, but if this room will suit you-"
"A marsh would suit me better than a cathedral right now," Rune said firmly. "And that fat fool in Brughten may have joy of his. This room will be fine."
Father Bened beamed at her, at Talaysen, and even at the dogs, who thumped their tails on the floor, looked hopefully for a morsel of cheese, and panted.
"Wonderful!" he exclaimed. "Do you know, you'll be my first wedding? How exciting! Here, finish your dinner, and let me hunt up my book of offices-" He crammed the last of his bread and cheese into his mouth, and jumped up from his chair to rummage through one of the cupboards until he came to a little leather-covered book. "I should have some contracts in here, too, if the beetles haven't gotten to them-" he mumbled, mostly to himself, it seemed. "Ah! Here they are!"
He emerged with a handful of papers, looked them over, and found the one he wanted. It had been nibbled around the edges, but was otherwise intact. He placed it on the table next to the cider, and leafed through the book.
"Here it is. Wedding." He looked up. "I'm supposed to give you a great long lecture at this point about the sanctity of marriage, and the commitment it means to each of you, but you both strike me as very sensible people. I don't think you need a lecture from me, who doesn't know a thing about women. And I don't expect you're doing this because you don't have anything else to do tonight. So, we'll skip the lecture, shall we, and go right into the business?"
"Certainly," Talaysen said, and took Rune's hand. She nodded and smiled at Father Bened, who smiled back, and began.
"Well, did that suit you?" Talaysen asked, as they spread their blankets in Father Bened's hardly used spare room. There was no furniture, the light was from one of their own candles, and the only sounds were the snores of Father Bened's mastiffs in the other room and the spattering of rain on the roof.
"Practical, short, to the point, and yes, it suited me," Rune replied, carefully spreading their blankets to make one larger bed. It practically filled the entire room. "There's a duly signed sheet of parchment in your pack that says we're married, and the next town we go through, we'll drop the Church copy off at the clerk's office." She stood up and surveyed her work. "Now, are you happy?"
Talaysen sighed. "If I told you how happy I was, you probably wouldn't believe it-"
Rune turned, smiled, and moved closer to him, until there was less than the width of a hair between them. "So why don't you show me?" she breathed.
He did.
It was a long time before they slept.