She was as nosy as I was! “I seek an apprenticeship as”—I put force into my hoarse, seasick voice—“a mansioner.”
“Ah,” she said again. “Your parents sent you off to be a mansioner.”
I knew she didn’t believe me now. “To be a weaver,” I admitted. “Lambs and calves!” Oh, I didn’t mean to use the farm expression. “To stay indoors, to repeat a task endlessly, to squint in lamplight . . . ,” I burst out. “It is against my nature!”
“To have your hands seize up before you’re old,” the goodwife said with feeling, “your shoulders blaze with pain, your feet spread. Be not a weaver nor a spinner!”
Contrarily, I found myself defending Father’s wishes for me. “Weaving is honest, steady work, mistress.” I laughed at myself. “But I won’t be a weaver.”
The boat dipped sideways. My stomach emptied itself of nothing.
She gave me another mint leaf. “Why a mansioner?”
“I love spectacles and stories.” Mansioning had been my ambition since I was seven and a caravan of mansions came to our country market.
Then, when I was nine, Albin left his mansioning troupe and came to live with us and help Father farm. He passed his spare time telling me mansioners’ tales and showing me how to act them out. He said I had promise.
“I love theater, too,” the goodwife said, “but I never dreamed of being a mansioner.”
“I like to be other people, mistress.” Lowering my pitch and adding a quiver, I said, “I can mimic a little.” I went back to my true voice. “That’s not right.” I hadn’t caught her tone.
She chuckled. “If you were trying to be me, you were on the right path. How long an apprenticeship will you serve?”
Masters were paid five silver coins to teach an apprentice for five years, three silvers for seven years. The apprentice labored for no pay during that term and learned a trade.
“Ten years, mistress.” Ten-year apprenticeships cost nothing. Our family was too poor to buy me a place.
The cog dipped lower than ever. I sucked hard on the mint.
“My dear.” She touched my arm. “I’m sorry.”
“No need for sorrow. I’ll know my craft well by the time I’m twenty-two . . . I mean, twenty-four.”
“Not that. In June the guilds abolished ten-year apprenticeships. Now everyone must pay to learn a trade.”
I turned to her. Her face was serious. It was true.
The boat pitched, but my stomach steadied while a rock formed there.
Chapter Two
What will you do?” the goodwife asked.
“I will think of something.” I sounded dignified. Dignity had always eluded me before. I excused myself from the goodwife’s company and found a spot on the deck closer to the cows than to the human passengers. My curiosity about them had faded. I removed my cloak from my satchel, spread it out, and sat.
If our farm weren’t so out of the way, we’d have learned the apprenticeship rules had changed and I would still be home. I’d probably have stayed on Lahnt forever.
Word might reach Mother and Father in a few months or a few years. When they found out, they would be wild with worry.
I hadn’t enough money for passage back, nor did I want to return. I would send word as soon as I was settled. No matter what, I would still be a mansioner.
Perhaps a mansioner master or mistress would take me as a fifteen-year apprentice. No one but me would give free labor for fifteen years. Who could say no?
My mood improved. Curiosity returned, and I watched the people on deck. The rowers rested their oars when the cog master’s attention was elsewhere. The oddly clothed mother and daughter were squabbling. The goodwife had recovered from her nausea and joined her husband. I liked best to watch the two of them. Sometimes she leaned into his shoulder, and he encircled her with his arm. Her expression showed peace, eagerness, and patience combined. If I were ever to play a wife, I would remember this goodwife’s face.
Night came. I curled up, hugged my satchel close, and wished desperately for home. But why wish? I mansioned myself there, under my woolen blanket in my pallet bed on a floor that didn’t roll, with Albin only a few feet away and Mother and Father in their sleeping loft over my head. Yes, that was their bed groaning, not the mast.
Soon I was asleep. In the morning I felt myself a seasoned mariner.
At intervals the animal owner walked his beasts around the deck. “Come with Dess,” he’d say in his sweet voice. “In Two Castles Dess will buy you fine hay, feed you fine grass. How happy you will be.”
I decided that he and the goodwife were the most worthy passengers on the cog.