Session 3: Under the Sallow Hills

Narrative Recap

The Wardens went up the Brisk to the Founder’s barrow, sang their way past its clay guardian, and read the rent at last: one new song, made by the vale and given freely. They came home to find Queen Hesper’s composer gone.

Up the Brisk

On day 5 the Wardens took a hired boat up the Brisk. Kit poled for most of the day and complained for all of it. At dusk they tied up at the Holt End landing and climbed to the hamlet, where Gammer Tansy Holt, hayward of the barrow path, met them with a crook and a lantern and asked their business before she asked their names.

Gammer Tansy’s fireside

Tansy fed them mutton and barley and listened to the whole story. Then she sang them the barrow-verse, which her family has sung to the thing in the door every midsummer for two and a half centuries. Odda Quarrel had it by the third time through, in harmony. Tansy corrected her third note.

The chorister’s verse

On the morning of day 6 Tansy walked them up to Maudry’s Barrow and waited outside with Kit. When the others stepped onto the door-stone, the Barrow Chorister lifted its clay head and sang the first line. Odda answered with the rest, bells and voice together, and Beatrix Holloway sang along a beat behind. The chorister listened, bowed, and stepped back into its niche. The stone door swung open.

The counterpart

Past a painted passage of shepherds and sheep and one very large yellow shape, Queen Maudry lay on a stone bier with her sword on her breast and a sealed case under her hands. Iveth Ammerly opened the case and read the counterpart aloud by lamplight. The term. The bounds of the vale. The quiet enjoyment. And then the rent: one song that has never before been sung, made by the vale and given freely, to be sung to the lessor on the stone where the lease was sealed.

Odda laughed out loud. Below the rent clause a bar of amber wax lay across the rest of the leaf, with a heading just showing at its edge: Of Default, and of Tender. Iveth would not let anyone cut it. Beatrix asked the Founder’s leave, aloud, to carry her sword, and took Fair Terms from the bier.

Lamps at dusk

They came out at dusk. Kit, who had watched the hill path all afternoon, had seen two carriage lamps on the valley road far below, coming north out of Summerhythe faster than anyone needed to. Somewhere by the Brisk, well short of the hills, the lamps stopped and went out. He mentioned it at supper.

Home

On day 7 the Wardens came back downstream in a single day. At the Keep’s west gate the warden told them that Emlyn Crewe, Queen Hesper’s composer, had left at dusk the evening before, with his lute, two bags and a patron’s carriage, and had not come back. The carriage had a cloth over its crest, the warden said, but its lamps were green.

What the Party Learned

• The rent is a song. One never sung before, made by the vale and given freely, sung to Orpiment on the signing stone.
• There is more under the seal. A clause headed Of Default, and of Tender is still under the Founder’s wax.
• Emlyn Crewe has gone. He left the Keep at dusk on day 6 in a patron’s carriage with green lamps and has not returned.

Where We Left Off

Day 7, evening. Thirty-three days to the Lammas moon. Iveth has the counterpart on her worktable at The Glad Kettle with a warming lamp under the seal. Odda has started writing. Kit is thinking about green lamps.

The Party

• Beatrix Holloway (Hana), Paladin 3
• Iveth Ammerly (Theo), Wizard 3
• Kit Farrow (Mei), Rogue 3
• Odda Quarrel (Luis), Bard 3