The squire turned avid. “Where is this treasure?”
“It’s not that much,” Matt warned. “He said that once his carcass is back in Athens where it belongs, he’ll make one last visit on his way to Purgatory, to tell you where it’s buried.”
“I may have my summerhouse still!” The wife clapped her hands. “I wouldn’t go that far,” Matt cautioned. “He said it is no treasure-belike enough to cover no more than the shipping and reburial of the coffin-and it may be a lie, to induce us to do what old Spiro wishes. Still, it is worth the gamble,” the squire said. “But there should be enough for redecoration,” Matt said. “There should,” the squire agreed, then turned back to Matt. “ ‘Tis a noisome task, digging up a coffin that is two centuries old.”
“Lots of wormholes,” Matt agreed, “and probably falling-apart rotten. If I were you, I’d have a new casket waiting that was large enough to hold the old one-and I’d dig double-wide, so that you can set the new coffin right next to the old one before you try to lift it.”
“A coffin inside a coffin? The notion will bear thought,” the squire mused. “I’ll leave you to think about it, then.” Matt finished his last bite and stood up. “You’ll pardon me if I have to eat and ran-but I’m bound for the king’s court; I hear he’s generous to musicians.”
“He is?” the squire said blankly, and Panegyra’s eyes lit. “Surely, Father! His court is always filled with music! You do not think his courtiers dance to their own singing, do you?”
“Please!” Matt shuddered. “Amateurs are bad enough in their own homes!” And he managed to make it out the door while the squire’s wife was still trying to decide whether or not to be offended. They swung down the road with a long, easy stride. Matt was pushing the pace a little, hoping that sheer exertion might pull Pascal out of the doldrums. “Buck up, squire’s son! At least she didn’t tell you that she doesn’t love you!”
“No,” Pascal admitted, “but she did not say that she does, either.”
“The fortunes of romance,” Matt commiserated. “I had that problem with a girl, too.”
“You did?” Pascal looked up, eyes wide with hope. “What did you do?”
“Everything I could,” Matt told him. “Made it clear that I was doing my best for her and wasn’t planning to stop.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, she finally admitted that she loved me.”
“What did you do then?”
“I married her-after a very long wait. So do your best to prove your worth, and you never know what could happen.” From what Matt had seen of Panegyra, though, he thought he knew-but at least the effort might give Pascal a new interest in living. The young man was frowning, though. “If you have married a wife whom you love, what are you doing wandering the roads so far from your home?”
“Who do you think sent me?” Matt retorted. “Look, just because she loves me, doesn’t mean she wants me hanging around the house and getting underfoot all the time. Say, who are those kids on the road up ahead?”
Pascal turned to look, and stared at the large, boisterous group coming into sight around the next bend. “None that I know-but why are there so many of them?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Matt replied. “Well, let’s go ask.”
They caught up with the happy songsters, who were passing a bottle of wine from hand to hand-and if one of the boys occasionally paused to sip the wine from a girl’s lips, who minded? Not even the half-dozen middle-aged couples who swung along a little way in front of the pack of juveniles, with occasional glances back at their traveling companions. Matt left the young folk to Pascal and went ahead to the nearest mature pair-who, he noticed, were holding hands, but not wearing wedding rings, not even the little brass circlets most peasants wore. “G-” He was about to say “Godspeed,” but caught himself in time. “Good day, good folk! Where are you bound?”
“Why, to the capital, of course!” said the man. “To the king’s town of Venarra!”
“Why should we languish in the hamlets of our births?‘ the woman asked. ”There is nothing but boredom and grinding labor there! We shall go to Venarra, where all are paid in gold for their work, and there is continual revelry!“
Matt had a notion they were due for a severe disappointment, but it wasn’t his place to say so. He did notice the use of the plural, though. So they had come from different towns-which meant that, in a society like this one, they had probably never even met before. Was he looking at the saturated end of a long-delayed love story? Or a tale of double adultery? He decided not to stay too close, in case there was an angry husband following with a knife-not to mention an angry wife. “I take it this gaggle of overgrown children are bound toward Venarra, too.”
“Oh, let them enjoy life while they may!” the woman said, and the man agreed. “Before they must settle into the traces, let them kick up their heels awhile.”
Matt knew from his own generation just how long that while could be-but surely not in a medieval society! “You sound as if you speak from experience.”
A shadow crossed the man’s face, and the woman said, “Which of us does not?” She held up her hand for display. “See the wrinkles, the shriveling, the calluses? I do not rejoice in them, believe me! But any woman who has reared a family shall show you the same. Unless, of course,” she said bitterly, “she is wealthy enough to have servants, who may then ruin their hands for her!”
Matt guessed that he was speaking to a former chambermaid and mother. “Ah, yes, sweet lady, but what would any of us do without mothers to care for us?”
“Then there should be fewer of us,” she retorted, “so that a woman might have fewer years of drudgery. Nay, let the husbands bear the children, if they want them so badly! Let the husbands rear the ones they claim to treasure, but would as soon kick as feed when they come home o‘ nights! And let the women go free!”
Not all women enjoyed mothering, Matt knew-and the more often he heard diatribes like hers, the greater he thought their number must be. But that was in his own world. In this world, it was a very new idea indeed. “Have you done that, then?” He forced a grin. “Left a husband to take care of his children?”
“I have,” she said with a defiant toss of her head. “If he wants them so badly as to beget one after another upon me, then let him care for them! For myself, I shall seek excitement and adventure-and, aye, revelry and pleasure!”
“You, too?” Matt asked the man. After all, it was kind of a logical conclusion.
The peasant shrugged. “My wife was at me night and day to cease trying to order her about and order the children about. At last she cried that she would be better off alone, for all the good I did.”
The woman frowned, moving a little away from him. “She did not say that she wished you to go!”
“Not in words, no,” he said, “but in her looks, in the tone of her voice, in the hatred flashing from her eyes, she did”
“So you think that you should lord it over your wife?” The woman’s tone was dangerous. “A wife, yes.” The man grinned and caught her close around the waist. “But a woman who comes with me for revelry and delight, and the pleasures we may give one another-nay. I have no claim upon her, nor she on me, but only company, while we are agreeable to one another!”
He pulled her close for a kiss, and she yielded, but without quite as much zest as she had before. At a guess, Matt decided, this was the first time the two of them had discussed that particular issue. Pascal showed up beside him with a grin, eyes shining. “They have all left their parents and the labor of the plow and the kitchen, to seek wealth and gaiety in the king’s capital of Venarra, friend Matthew!”