Come tomorrow the village woke up on a joyful bell. It had rained a bit during the night, leaving puddles everywhere but now the sky was breaking open and even before the first lights it felt as if the land had brightened.
People were carrying tables and planks out of their workshops to head into the fields where the last of the enclosures were being set along with poles along the road for animals.
For now it was only just the village and its hamlets, with people converging while others finished chores around their house. Farms carried their first goods to the fair and children hurried to meet around the first fires.
They were bringing music instruments, the sheperds in particular, and set up there.
At the castle a comparable agitation had the first groups cross the gate, mixed with patrols heading out in force. But for many the mood was festive as they prepared, tired of the many days of labor and boredom.
At the stables waited Ophelie and Adele. People came and went to ready horses around them for the patrols, but Corentin's steed was already waiting, all harnessed, along with a quiet mare.
At the noble's arrival, the dog they were playing with ran away.
"Hop on, no reason to wait." He gestured.
The twin had been in a sour mood all day and night; dawn had hardly improved it. But still, as they approached the mare they had to ask.
"What about sir Abelard and lady Joan?"
"My brother will stay." He pulled Ophelie to him and toward his own mount. "It will be the three of us for the whole day."
She let him get on, took his hand and mounted behind him. It made him pause.
"What is it milord?"
"Nothing." He sighed. "Just enjoying the normalcy."
He took the mare's reins as well and soon they were past the gate, down toward the village and joining the groups headed downstream.
Behind them followed a silver dog, at some distance. It was lost among other dogs and goats mixed with their owners, but still both women kept glancing at it, not sure why that stray animal was so attached to them.
It was, they admitted between themselves, a bit intimidating.
But soon enough they had reached the fields where people, still too few to truly fill this space, huddled around the fires and clapped at the music. Most were still installing their stalls, with pigs and cows pushed around, so that it had yet to feel like anything.
On the roads the first carts and wagons arrived, those who ironically came from farther away and had paused for the night.
They were coming from domains close and far, farmers and merchants alike but also travellers, singers, hunters and priests as well as some knights.
The muddy roads would not lighten for the whole day.
And so halfway through the morning the fields had turned into a proper fair, filled with its crowds and dances, drunk peasants singing with the men-at-arms around barrels of beer. They were cooking meat and cheese, fruits and bread while singing their hearts out.
The loudest were the farmers busy bartering for their cattle and grain.
Amidst all this rode the noble from the Pivert family, breaking through with ease lest people wished to get trampled. He was looking at the new stalls for what trinkets were on offer.
"Wood, copper and stone." He shook his head. "Is there really no jeweler left in the realm?"
"What do you seek?" Asked Ophelie behind him.
"I don't know yet, but surely not this!"
"There will be more choice in the afternoon." She hugged him. "Let's dismount and dance."
They crossed a sister who was holding a silver cup filled with water and blessed those who came to her. She wasn't alone and so the silver dog was crawling under the carts, away from sight.
At the treeline they found a place dry enough to dismount. The noble, however, was in no mood to dance and told them to go without him. He would watch from there, let them head by themselves among the circle of drunks and youth that plowed the ground with their feet.
Sir Corentin felt neither like drinking nor joining them. He stood there for minutes and, even when they came back to invite him, declined again.
Boredom took over.
"Let's check the wares again."
But as he turned a peasant bumped into him, a young farm girl who, at his sight, had the reflex to flee. He held her back, checked his purse and as she begged the noble let her go.
Maud walked away not believing her luck.
But already she was searching again and seeing that, the silver dog abandoned that noble to follow her instead.
The farm girl was erring from fire to fire, fleeing the cups and the invites to keep searching for a familiar face. She was again losing heart, one person lost in the mass, but each time she saw a man with brown hair, no matter how unlikely she found herself hoping.
Only to be proved wrong again.
"Maud!" Roland called her.
The apprentice took her hand and pulled her close. He could see how her excitement had, over the hours, turned to anguish.
"Roland!" She felt relieved at his sight. "I can't find him, I can't find Brenin anywhere!"
"It's too early, he will brobably come later."
"When is later?" She retorted. "Everyone is already here, he should be too!"
"He will really have made us see everything, that rascal! Look, it's best to just wait for him at a fire. He will find us soon enough."
"You don't have to lie. He is not coming is he?"
Roland protested at her protest. It was Brenin, he had to come but he himself, no matter how hard he tried, could not sound that confident. Still, he convinced her to come with him, dragged her to a circle where she was offered to drink.
Kids came and crowded around the apprentice, calling for him to join their game. They wanted their wolf.
"Come! Come, Roland! It's not fun without you!"
"You have to do it, no excuse!"
She pushed him to go too. She had calmed and would dance while he entertained the children.
So he followed them nearby, at the edge of the fair where a teenager was pursuing other kids, wearing a mask and paws of a beast.
"I'm here, Bertrand!" Roland greeted him.
The man stopped, removed the mask and passed it to him along with the gloves.
"Good thing you are here! I don't do the wolf so good."
"You're not drunk, that's why."
He tapped his back, then put the mask on and the children regrouped around him, all excited. They let him add the gloves and once ready, he hunched and growled.
They immediately dispersed and he gave chase.
The silver dog did not understand how that game worked. It looked to her like the apprentice was the one being played with more than anything.
She was not the only one who was watching him play. Maud too, after a brief dance, had approached the trees to look at him, her head against the bark. Her eyes followed the wild black hair of that young man and she sighed.
Noon was approaching and with it an invisible moon would culminate.