The Secular Wizard - Wis in Rhyme - 4 by Christopher Stasheff Page A

wove with the wool they bartered for with the shepherds; about their new tunics, for they could keep more of the flax they grew-indeed, about all the things the people of Merovence had been looking down on them for lacking.
    Now it was the Latrurian relatives who could brag, and they were making up for lost time.
    No wonder the peasants of Merovence were grumbling-and meaning it. Matt decided he had just about had enough of this disguise. He was ready for something a bit more genteel, and a little smoother on the skin. Time to check up on the moods of the aristocracy.
    Accordingly, he ambled out of the fair and the rudimentary town that had grown up around it-only a couple of blocks of houses and more permanent shops. The houses were long and low, built of field-stone, but large enough for four big rooms-more than your average peasant expected, but just about right for town dwellers. The shops were two-storied and half-timbered, with the living quarters upstairs and the shop downstairs-the pride of their owners, no doubt, until their cousins from Latruria had started bragging.
    That was all there was to it; two blocks of that, and he was out of the town. No city wall or anything-this was a burg that hadn't really decided to be permanent yet. Of course, Matt could have taken the road, but he had reasons to want to avoid any undue amount of notice. He hiked across the fields, being careful where he stepped, heading for a barn he saw in the distance.
    It turned out to be a communal barn-the townsfolk ran some live-stock of their own, at a guess. It was certainly big enough for a knight's estate. Fortunately, the cows were all out grazing at the moment, and the pigs were wallowing in the spring mud and the May sunshine. Matt ducked into a stall, found a patch of clean straw, and pulled a doublet and hose out of his pack. Okay, they were wrinkled-but what would you expect, for a minor lord who had been on the road for a week? Which was exactly what Matt planned to claim, and it was true enough, in its way.
    He changed clothes, packed his peasant's tunic and leggings away, and sauntered out of the barn, feeling a bit more his old self, in spite of the pack slung over his shoulder. Now he wanted to meet the owner-or whoever was in charge.
    There he was, or at least a likely source of information: a middle-aged peasant, chewing a stalk of hay while he leaned on his shovel, surveying the pasture and counting cows. Matt sauntered up to him. "Ho there, goodman!
    The man looked up, startled. "Ho yoursel-uh, good day, milord." But he darted a suspicious glance at the peddler's pack. Matt swung it around to the ground. "I found an old packman hard up on his luck. I took pity on him and bought it all for three pieces of gold. " The herdsman stared; the sum was enough for retirement, if you didn't mind living skinny.

"However, I've no mind to go lugging it about," Matt said.
    "Would you store it for me? And if I don't come back for it by Christmas, give it to some deserving lad who wants an excuse to travel for a bit." "To be sure, my lord." The gears were grinding inside the peasant's head; Matt could have sworn he could hear them. If this foolish lord had given three pieces of gold in charity, what might there be in that pack that could even begin to justify such a sum?
    Matt had a notion that if there were anything of real worth, it wouldn't make it to Mid-summer, let alone Christmas.
    "My horse went lame," Matt went on, "and someone told me I might be able to hire one here."
    "Well, not hire," the man said slowly, "but Angle the Cartwright has a colt he is willing to sell for five ducats."
    "Five?" Matt stared. "What is it, a racehorse?"
    "It is high, I know," the peasant said apologetically, "but the beast is still too young to discover if he will be worth anything as a warhorse, and Angle does not wish to chance losing money. Myself, if the colt were mine, I would bargain-but since it is not, I can only direct you to Angle's