Matt eyed him narrowly. “You sound like you think they’re doing the smart thing.”
“Well, they may not have found wealth,” Pascal said, “but they have surely found gaiety! If you will excuse me, friend Matthew, I find their company quite enjoyable!”
He dove back into the happy, singing throng. Matt gazed after and saw him flirting with a pretty girl. Well, it certainly did pull him out of the doldrums over Cousin Panegyra-but it didn’t say much for his fidelity to her. Admittedly, the treatment she’d given him was only one step from a brush-off, but more vicious, in its way, since it was designed to keep him bound to her-no doubt she was one of those girls who rated her worth by the number of boys she kept on strings, which boded ill for her future as wife to an older man. Pascal was ripe to lose himself on the rebound, for better or for worse. Matt hoped it wasn’t worse. On the other hand, the merry band did afford excellent cover for Pascal, and Matt wasn’t exactly going to be glaringly obvious with the middle-aged adventurers.
Okay, he was a little young, being only in his thirties, whereas everybody else looked to be in their late forties or early fifties-though in a medieval society, that meant they were probably late thirties, or younger; sometimes peasants looked positively ancient by thirty-five.
Okay, so being right between the two groups, he stood out a bit-but he was a minstrel, and nobody would be surprised to see him attaching himself to such a festive crowd.
Matt, however, was a little concerned about this southward migration. These village kids just didn’t know enough to be able to cope with the big city-and none of the elders were wearing wedding rings; he suspected they had all kicked over the traces, just like these first two. “All” because he could see more of them ahead, as the roadway straightened out-two groups of youths, laughing and passing a skin of wine from hand to hand, and several smaller groups of older people, talking and jesting and flirting just as baldly as their juniors. Was half the countryside migrating to Venarra? And what was the other half doing at home, abandoned? Besides taking care of the kids, of course-if they were even bothering to do that. He found out when their band stopped at a wayside inn for lunch-along with half a dozen similar groups. “We are full inside!” the harassed landlord said, standing in the doorway, waving them off. “We will gladly sell you meat, bread, cheese, and ale-but there are no more places to sit!”
In a few minutes he and his serving-girl staff had a thriving business going in take-out orders-but as the older folk stepped up for service, a middle-aged woman came out of the inn door and berated them. “You clods, you lumps of earth! You have no more heart than a stone! Would you leave your wives and children to the wolves, then? Would you sacrifice them to your own greed and lust? For shame!”
The older travelers looked up in surprise. Then one buxom matron threw back her head and laughed. “I have not left a wife, I assure you!” The whole crowd joined in her laugh, with a note of relief. The woman flushed. “But you have left children! The pretty little ones who sucked at your breast-you have left them to the blows and rages of their father! You have left your husband to fend for them all, trying to plow the fields and somehow manage to care for the little ones! Can there be anything but disaster for any of them?”
“It would have been disaster for him if I had stayed,” the errantwife retorted. “I doubt not he will find a woman to fill his bed-let her care for the children!”
“Care for your own!” another woman called, and the whole crowd broke into angry hooting and insults. Red-faced and trembling, the woman went back inside the inn. Matt put a coin in Pascal’s hand. ‘Two of those little meat pies and a flagon of ale, okay? I think I want to go inside and hear the rest of this.“
“Nay, then, I’ll come with you,” Pascal said “Suit yourself.”
“I cannot-I am no tailor.”
Matt gave him a doubtful look. “Maybe I could work you into the act, after all. Well, let’s venture.” He stepped up to the doorway. The landlord spun to block his way. “All full, I said. No entry!”
“Not even for a minstrel?” Matt brought the lute around and struck a chord. The landlord’s eye lit, but he said, “There is no seat.”
“I usually stand while I’m working, anyway.”
“I will not pay!”
“It’s okay-my partner will pass the hat.” Matt nodded to Pascal, who yanked off his cap. The landlord gave him a quick look that weighed him and found him harmless, then stepped inside and nodded. “Enter, then.”
Matt stepped in with Pascal right behind him. A few of the other travelers saw and surged toward the door with a yell of delight, but the landlord stoutly blocked their way. “Only the minstrel, so that he may entertain!”
The crowd grumbled and groused, but didn’t try to push their luck. Matt stepped into the comparative gloom of the common room, to hear the woman who had been standing in the doorway still running her stream of invective. “Poltroons and adulterers! Abandoners and jilters! They deserve no better than hanging, any of them!”
“They shall learn the error of their ways.” The man sitting across from her clasped her hand, gazing at her with concern. “They shall come straggling back in grief, I fear, Clothilde. They shall come straggling back, begging for alms to take them to their homes, where they shall pick up the traces they have kicked aside, sadder but wiser-all of them. As my Maud shall, and your Corin.”
“I shall not take him back, not if he comes crawling! Not after he has left us without so much as a word of parting!”
“We must forgive,” the man murmured. “We who remain must be steadfast.”
“Not too steadfast, I trust.” Clothilde raised her eyes to his, her bitterness transforming into a hot-eyed stare. The man goggled, then squirmed, taken aback. “We are both married, Clothilde!”
“Does your Maud care about her bond? Does my Corin care about his ring? Nay, call him mine no more!” Clothilde angrily pulled her ring off her finger. “If they will not keep faith, why should we?”
The argument hit the peasant hard, you could see it in his face, and for a moment his longing was written naked on his features. Matt glanced at Clothilde more closely, and could understand the man’s desire-she was still a fine figure of a woman, and he could imagine what she must have looked like twenty years before. At a guess, the man had burned for her when he was a teenager-but when she married someone else, he had fallen hard on the rebound, then settled for second best. Could that have had anything to do with why Maud had left? “If they do not feel bound to us, we should not feel bound to them!” Clothilde gripped his hand with both of hers, eyes burning into his. “Nay, this could be our revenge upon them! What harm could there be in it, Doblo?”
“What harm indeed!” he said deep down in his throat, and his hand trembled as he clasped hers and he rose. Together they turned away to mount the stairs. That brought Matt’s attention to the sounds he was hearing overhead. Now he knew what the stay-at-homes did in Latruria. Pascal was looking around and frowning. “Are there none here of my own age?”
“No,” Matt said. “All the young folks are out there, joining the crowd that’s heading south. Take off your hat and get ready to pass it, Pascal. I’m going to have them rolling with mirth in a few minutes. They won’t start thinking about the lyrics until after I’m gone.”
But then, they would start thinking. He knew that. An hour later, as they came out to join the other travelers, who were finishing up on lunch and preliminary encounters, Pascal shook the cloth bag they had bought from the innkeeper and shook his head, marveling. “Make them roll with mirth you did, and made them generous into the bargain! But where did you learn that song about man’s slavery to sex, or his lying when he sought to resist temptation, or the moon over the street by the docks?”