Exile's Song (7 page)

Who do I look like? Not my stepmother, of course. We aren’t related at all, though she has always treated me as if I were her real daughter.
Margaret let herself dwell affectionately on a mental image of Diotima Ridenow-Alton, a picture many years out of date. She saw a tiny woman, with pale hair like yellow silk, and laughing green-gray eyes. By the time Margaret was ten she was almost as tall as her petite stepmother, and had always felt like a great lummox beside her.

Her last night at home, years before, drifted into her mind. The Senator had been crouched in his great chair, looking across their lanai at the raging sea. Thetis was a tranquil planet, but sometimes storms came up and roared along the shore—beautiful and frightening. The Old Man had often watched the wind and water, fascinated. “I never saw anything like this until I left Darkover,” he had muttered, curling his one remaining hand around his cup.

Margaret hated him when he drank, when he watched the sea rage, when he raged inside himself over some unspoken and unhealed grief. She could always feel it roaring inside the man, this stranger she called Father, and it made her skin crawl. He sometimes seemed as if he wanted to tell her something, and she knew somehow that she didn’t want to hear whatever it was. It was almost as if she could read his mind, hear the words he had not yet spoken.

This train of thought made her too uncomfortable. Margaret pushed back the warm covers reluctantly and got out of bed. As she removed her nightdress, the chill of the room made her skin gooseflesh a little. She put on one of her other uniforms with mild reluctance, black trousers and the tunic that came to her knees. The material slithered against her skin, unnatural but warm. She pressed the closings into place and sighed.

Today she would find something more suitable to the climate and less obviously Terran. She didn’t want to spend all her time answering questions for the curious. She brushed her hair and braided it, hardly glancing at her image in the mirror. She rarely liked to see her reflection, even in shop windows. There was something about mirrors that made her nervous, and had for as long as she could remember.

As she tidied the flyaway hair, Margaret wondered why she wanted so much to get into the local clothing. It was not just that she despised the synthetics—she had been wearing this garb for over a decade, and was extremely proud to be a recognizable Scholar of the University. It was a privilege she had earned, and she valued it highly—what it represented, not the thing itself. She did not want to be noticed here, she decided. It felt almost as if she were afraid to be seen, as if some danger lurked in the crooked streets of Thendara. Nonsense, of course, but she could not escape the feeling entirely.

Margaret coiled the braid into a flat chignon, covering the nape of her neck neatly, and pinned it into place.

This was how Dio wore her thick yellow hair. Once, when she had been about nine, she had yanked her hair up on top of her head, and the Senator had gotten enraged for no reason she could understand. Dio, ever the peacemaker, had explained that displaying the nape of her neck was considered unseemly, and she had blushed along her high cheekbones as she spoke, so that Margaret had been left with the impression of some naughtiness associated with both unbound hair and a bare neck. Later, when she went to University, she realized that there were literally hundreds of things that were taboo on some world or other—eating with the wrong hand or eating the wrong-shaped food. It did not have to make sense. Custom was custom.

At the same time, there had been no mention of this custom on the disks she had gotten. Indeed, now she thought about it, as she shoved in extra pins, there had been very little information about anything especially useful. She knew, for instance, that such government as existed on Cottman IV was feudal in its organization, but details of it were sparse. There seemed to be a king, or a regent of some sort, and there was mention of powerful families. The study disk she had viewed said more about Terran prejudices than it did about actual Darkovan culture.

Sighing, Margaret got out the recorder and her transcriber, and dictated notes on the conversation between Master Everard and Ivor the previous evening. She didn’t think she had left out anything important, but she played it back just to be certain. Then she clipped the little machine to her belt and went downstairs.

In the kitchen Anya greeted her with the odd, almost deferential manner she had shown the night before, when Margaret had been too tired to do more than take mental note of it and add it to the ever-lengthening list of questions and puzzles. The woman had not acted that way toward Ivor. She put a bowl of fragrant porridge in front of Margaret and rubbed her worn hands on her apron, looking apprehensive. Then she bobbed her knees slightly.

Margaret’s hunger made her curiosity fly away. She thanked the woman and fell to like a healthy young wolf. It was delicious.

Professor Davidson came downstairs as she was finishing a second bowl. He looked rested and fresh, but a little off-color beneath his Relegan tan. He had misbuttoned his Scholar’s tunic, and forgotten—or failed, anyhow, to comb his thinning hair. When she had first known him, they had been almost the same height; their eyes had been level. Now, he was so stooped, he barely came to her shoulder. But he flashed her a smile, and she tried to ignore the little voice that told her that something was very wrong.

Master Everard arrived just as they finished breakfast. “I trust you have slept well?” he asked after greeting them.

“Very well, thank you.”

“Room not too cold? Sometimes off-world guests find it so. As a boy I was schooled at Saint Valentine’s monastery, and we would wake up sometimes, and find snow lying on our blankets. I resolved then that no guest of mine should ever be cold.” His voice was a resonant baritone, and Margaret thought he must have been a fine singer in his youth. It was a surprisingly deep voice for such a slender man. He looked as if a good stiff wind might blow him off his feet. Still, he was tall and erect despite his years, not shrunken like poor Ivor. She had taken his measure in the first five minutes, for he was very like some of the academics she knew and whose company she enjoyed. He had a square chin and lots of little laugh lines around his pale gray eyes, white hair, and lots of
good
wrinkles, the sort that come from doing something that, however difficult, was deeply satisfying. She hoped she would look like that when she was old.

She was lost in her thoughts, and almost missed a question from Ivor. “Master Everard, that instrument maker across the street. I was struck by the shape of the eff-holes . . . damn it, you tell him, Magpie. I wish I didn’t have so much trouble learning new languages!”

The use of his pet name for her touched her. He hadn’t used it often since she stopped being an undergraduate. She regarded him affectionately as he spooned porridge into his mouth. How fortunate she was!

Master Everard was waiting for her to tell him what Ivor had asked, from the look on his face, with a slight degree of confusion. She sighed. She hoped it was not going to be last night all over again. Margaret drew some lines on the tabletop with her fingertip, showing how the holes on a Terran violin looked.

“Are you sure, he asked, after a moment’s thought. “I never saw holes like that—does it make good music?”

Margaret laughed softly. “Well, the Terrans have been making music with this configuration for several thousand years, so I think you could say so.”

“Astonishing. I see that I will learn a great deal during your visit. And that is a wonderful thing for me.”

“What did he say,” Ivor asked.

“He says he’s surprised you can make good music with eff-holes of that shape—well, he was more polite than that. He likes his star-shaped ones. And he says he thinks he will learn a lot from us. I think he is tickled pink about that.”

“Is he?”

“Well, he is no youngster, and he probably knows as much about Darkovan music as anyone alive—so the chance to learn new things might be very attractive.”

“I had not thought of that.” Ivor seemed satisfied, and his color was improving as he ate. Margaret felt a sense of relief, because she wasn’t sure she could cope with him being ill.

“When you have finished your morning meal, we can continue our discussion,” the Master said slowly. Margaret dutifully relayed this reply to Professor Davidson, and watched him bolt the rest of his bowl, heedless of his somewhat delicate digestion. It was good to see him eager, but she still wished he would take it easier.

At last, when the porridge was gone, the warmed cider drunk, Everard led them into a front room in his house. It was a large chamber off the entry hall, and when Ivor saw it, he almost beamed with delight. He was much too dignified to clap his hands together and jump for joy, but the glint in his eyes was almost the same. It was a room to warm the heart of any musicologist anywhere in the galaxy. The floor was polished wood, the walls paneled and gleaming, and everywhere the eye went, there were musical instruments. Margaret was almost glad, for the first time, that Professor Murajee had gotten himself into trouble, since without that she would never have seen this wealth of instruments. The room was a veritable museum of the instruments of Cottman IV. Everard was evidently a man with a sense of history. He explained that the collection had been begun by his own grandfather, but modestly added that it had been more a muddle than a collection when he was a boy.

He began an unhurried tour of the room, and the professor submitted to being shown around with as much good grace as he could muster. Odd—she had never seen him quite so impatient, almost trembling with eagerness. She was kept so busy translating she hardly had time to enjoy the various instruments herself, and was sorry she had not brought the camera with her when she came down to breakfast. More, she regretted she did not have the opportunity to try the several lutes, or the small harp not unlike the one Margaret herself carried.

It became evident that Master Everard had a museum curator’s attitude toward the collection, though not the stuffy sort that sometimes made visiting such places a boring experience. Each instrument was treated like an old friend. Margaret turned on the recorder, and listened to stories of makers long dead, or stories of pipes carried into battles so long ago that Everard himself did not know if they were history or legend. She had never seen an actual bagpipe before, though she knew about them from courses in early music at the University. Here the art of playing them, she understood, was still known. It had died out on Earth, and nobody alive could play one. “It makes a hell of a racket,” Master Everard told her. “I’ve heard they were invented to scare the foe away—and I reckon a war pipe played loud enough would scare off a banshee.”

Margaret asked on her own accord for details of their playing. If she learned nothing else, this piece of scholarship would make their trip worthwhile. The bagpipe was the only wind instrument, however, except for a few wooden flutes; and there were no brasses except for a couple of Terran imports, clearly included because the Darkovans perceived them as exotic. It made sense that a world as metal poor as the teaching disks had insisted Darkover was would not waste any on tubas or trombones.

Much of the morning was gone, and the question of the strange eff-holes remained undiscussed, what with trying to describe the sorts of woods used to make the lutes, and how the tuning was arranged. At last Everard reached into a niche in the wall and took out a small harplike instrument which Margaret had been eyeing with curiosity. He called it a harp, but Margaret heard, like a whisper beneath his breath, that it was called a
ryll.

“You know,” he rumbled, “that they die if they are not played.” He seemed to have forgotten that neither Margaret nor Professor Davidson knew anything of the sort, and realized he was speaking almost to himself lost in some remembrance. “You will, perhaps, think me a foolish old man. The old makers understood these things better than this generation does. They would tell you it is the spirit of the tree in the wood that gives life to the instrument. A tree is a tree, you might think. Perhaps—but wood is living stuff, not like stone or clay. Then the maker himself puts something into it, as well. And if it’s associated with one person for a very many years, it takes on something of his touch also.” Then, as if noticing them, he looked mildly embarrassed.

Margaret smiled. “Anyone who knows anything about instrument making would agree with you, Master. I am often certain my own harp is quite alive, and Ivor has a relationship with his guitar that would make his wife jealous if she were that sort of woman.” She was surprised by her eloquence, but so pleased at her growing ease with the local language that she hardly noticed.

“My wife was jealous, too,” replied Everard, sighing a little. “But she was born in Tanner Street and did not grow up with wood shavings in the soup, as the saying goes. Now, this
ryll
. . .” he used the native term in his eagerness to tell the tale, “is a real problem child. It once belonged to a woman of great talent, and more than a little madness—they say she was of
chieri
blood—a woman who has her own place in the history of our world. It is not a pleasant story. But that is the way of life,” he went on, again lost in his own thoughts. “If you win, or succeed in what you try to do, you are a hero; if not, a villain. That is the way of history.”

Chieri
blood? The word was not one she recognized, but it made her feel peculiar. “But what is so strange about this—
ryll
?” Margaret asked, her fingers itching to caress the silky wood, and she banished her unease and curiosity at the same time. The instrument had fascinated her since she came into the room.

The old man gave another sigh. “This
ryll
was given to me by a student of mine, some twenty years ago by our reckoning. How he came by it I do not know, but he traded it for a wooden flute—an unequal exchange—and I was too eager to have it question him as I should have done—as I might have today, if he came again. I believe it was crafted by Josef of Nevarsin. He was perhaps the finest
ryll
maker who ever lived. He has been dead now for more than a hundred and fifty years, but I know Mestra Melora Alindair, who is one of our best lyric performers, paid a hundred
reis,
which is a very substantial sum, for one of his signed instruments. She is, after all, one of the MacArans, and they know musical instruments. Of course, I know that there are such things as forgers, even on our world. But if this was not made by Josef himself, it must have been made by one of his apprentices. Josef had a way of cutting the wood which is lost now, neither on the grain nor on the cross. See here.” He pointed to the upright, where the grain seemed to spiral up as if it grew that way. “Anyone who could duplicate it today would make his fortune. It looks like the rapids running in the river. But for all of that, no one can coax a tune from it. I am no mean harpist myself, but it cannot be played. Oh, when there is a high wind it sighs a little, but so do many instruments; and if there is lightning, as there often is in summer, it moans—almost as if something were trying to get out.”