My father drew a breath and paused, his mouth open as if he would continue. Then a wide, wicked grin spread across his face and he bent to tuck his lute safely away. There was an outcry and a great deal of complaining, but everyone knew they had been lucky to hear as much as they had. Someone else struck up a song for dancing, and the protests faded away.
My parents danced together, her head on his chest. Both had their eyes closed. They seemed so perfectly content. If you can find someone like that, someone who you can hold and close your eyes to the world with, then you’re lucky. Even if it only lasts for a minute or a day. The image of them gently swaying to the music is how I picture love in my mind even after all these years.
Afterward, Ben danced with my mother, his steps sure and stately. I was struck by how beautiful they looked together. Ben, old, grey, and portly, with his lined face and half-burned eyebrows. My mother, slender, fresh, and bright, pale and smooth-skinned in the firelight. They complemented each other by contrast. I ached knowing I might never see them together again.
By this time the sky was beginning to brighten in the east. Everyone gathered to say their final good-byes.
I can’t remember what I said to him before we left. I know it felt woefully inadequate, but I knew he understood. He made me promise not to get myself into any trouble, tinkering with the things he had taught me.
He stooped a bit and gave me a hug, then tousled my hair. I didn’t even mind. In semiretaliation I tried to smooth out his eyebrows, something I’d always wanted to try.
His expression was marvelous in its surprise. He gathered me into another hug. Then he stepped away.
My parents promised to steer the troupe back toward the town when we were in the area. All the troupers said they wouldn’t need much steering. But, even as young as I was, I knew the truth. It would be a great long time before I saw him again. Years.
I don’t remember starting out that morning, but I do remember trying to sleep and feeling quite alone except for a dull, bittersweet ache.
When I awoke later in the afternoon I found a package resting next to me. Wrapped in sackcloth and tied with twine, there was a bright piece of paper with my name fixed to the top, waving in the wind like a little flag.
Unwrapping it, I recognized the book’s binding. It was Rhetoric and Logic, the book Ben had used to teach me argument. Out of his small library of a dozen books it was the only one I hadn’t read from cover to cover. I hated it.
I cracked it open and saw writing on the inside cover. It said:
“Kvothe,
Defend yourself well at the University. Make me proud.
Remember your father’s song. Be wary of folly.
Your friend,
Abenthy.”
Ben and I had never discussed my attending the University. Of course I had dreams of going there, someday. But they were dreams I hesitated to share with my parents. Attending the University would mean leaving my parents, my troupe, everyone and everything I had ever known.
Quite frankly, the thought was terrifying. What would it be like to settle in one place, not just for an evening or a span of days, but for months? Years? No more performing? No tumbling with Trip, or playing the bratty young noble’s son in Three Pennies for Wishing? No more wagons? No one to sing with?
I’d never said anything aloud, but Ben would have guessed. I read his inscription again, cried a bit, and promised him that I would do my best.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Hope
OVER THE NEXT MONTHS my parents did their best to patch the hole left by Ben’s absence, bringing in the other troupers to fill my time productively and keep me from moping.
You see, in the troupe age had little to do with anything. If you were strong enough to saddle the horses, you saddled the horses. If your hands were quick enough, you juggled. If you were clean shaven and fit the dress, you played Lady Reythiel in The Swineherd and the Nightingale. Things were generally as simple as that.
So Trip taught me how to jape and tumble. Shandi walked me though the courtly dances of a half dozen countries. Teren measured me against the hilt of his sword and judged that I had grown tall enough to begin the basics of swordplay. Not enough to actually fight, he stressed. But enough so I could make a good show of it on stage.
The roads were good this time of year, so we made excellent time traveling north through the Commonwealth: fifteen, twenty miles a day as we searched out new towns to play. With Ben gone, I rode with my father more often, and he began my formal training for the stage.
I already knew a great deal, of course. But what I had picked up was an undisciplined hodgepodge. My father systematically went about showing me the true mechanics of the actor’s trade. How slight changes in accent or posture make a man seem oafish, or sly, or silly.
Lastly, my mother began teaching me how to comport myself in polite society. I knew a little from our infrequent stays with Baron Greyfallow, and thought I was quite genteel enough without having to memorize forms of address, table manners, and the elaborate snarled rankings of the peerage. Eventually, I told my mother exactly that.
“Who cares if a Modegan viscount outranks a Vintish spara-thain?” I protested. “And who cares if one is ‘your grace’ and the other is ‘my lord?’”
“They care,” my mother said firmly. “If you perform for them, you need to conduct yourself with dignity and learn to keep your elbow out of the soup.”
“Father doesn’t worry about which fork to use and who outranks who,” I groused.
My mother frowned, her eyes narrowing.
“Who outranks whom,” I said grudgingly.
“Your father knows more than he lets on,” my mother said. “And what he doesn’t know he breezes past due to his considerable charm. That’s how he gets by.” She took my chin and turned my face toward her. Her eyes were green with a ring of gold around the pupil. “Do you just want to get by? Or do you want to make me proud?”
There was only one answer to that. Once I knuckled down to learn it, it was just another type of acting. Another script. My mother made rhymes to help me remember the more nonsensical elements of etiquette. And together we wrote a dirty little song called “The Pontifex Always Ranks Under a Queen.” We laughed over it for a solid month, and she strictly forbade me to sing it to my father, lest he play it in front of the wrong people someday and get us all into serious trouble.
“Tree!” The shout came faintly down the line. “Threeweight oak!”
My father stopped in the middle of the monologue he had been reciting for me and gave an irritated sigh. “That’ll be as far as we get today then,” he grumbled, looking up at the sky.
“Are we stopping?” my mother called from inside the wagon.
“Another tree across the road,” I explained.
“I swear,” my father said, steering the wagon to a clear space at the side of the road. “Is this the king’s road or isn’t it? You’d think we were the only people on it. How long ago was that storm? Two span?”
“Not quite,” I said. “Sixteen days.”