“That is your man, Evarra! One would think the woods were a-fire!”
“Assuredly, he would set them a-fire when he is in that state if he did not find me.” She made a sign to me. “Come,” she said; “now we shall hear what it is all about.”
The Council, so Evarra’s husband told us, was not the immediate outcome of the incidents of the Meet. Matter for it had been growing these ten years past, ever since the unearthing and reburial of the Treasure had been undertaken on Trastevera’s account. It had been so long since they had any feeling of its reality, except as the point on which their honor hung! But after Noche had seen the Treasure, the craftsman’s soul of him was forever busy with the wonders of it, brooding on the fire of its jewels as a young man on the beam of a maiden eye. All the children who had come to maturity these ten years past had been nourished on the Treasure tale, livened and pointed by Noche’s account. With the advent of the hostage, interest in the King’s Desire as a possession had rather increased through the awakened appreciation of smith’s work among them. Ravenutzi had made curious ornaments for the women of bits of metal found in deserted summer camps, the patterns of which reproduced, so far as the Far-Folk remembered them, the wrought gold of the King’s jewels.
Both the items which were responsible for this liveliness of curiosity—the exemption of Trastevera and consequent reburial of the Treasure, and the acceptance of the hostage—had been strongly opposed by part of the Council. Now they thought themselves justified by the turn of events. They thought further that the incident of Daria and her lover called loudly for measures which should stem this current of departure from old usage. A Ward had been released from her obligation of forgetfulness; another had ventured to plead for it. A young man had loved a Ward and dared to avow it during the term of her Wardship. Here was one of the Far-Folk teaching smitheying to the Outliers. Here were House-Folk going about among them talking of forbidden things. Matter enough for Council if ever Council was. More disconcerting, here was Mancha, Ward of the Outer Borders, Mancha of the Hammerers, who had opposed the hostage and stood for the inviolateness of obligation, come out suddenly as the leader, the precipitator, of revolt. Evarra’s man fumed over this and the probable reason for it. Upon which point, though I was at no loss myself, I did not see fit to enlighten him.