Free The Summer's King by Cherry; Wilder

buttered oat cakes along with it.
    â€œAnd you think this is a bonny Eildon lass?” Buckrill asks cheerfully.
    â€œHush,” says Hazard with a wink. “You are speaking of the morning star and the daughter of the sea otters . . .”
    â€œDiscretion,” says Buckrill. “Secrecy. Eildon loves secrecy. Slip in a few lines on the princess. Rich, of course, with vast estates. Beautiful, so they say. Eighteen years old, gently reared and so on.”
    â€œA bride,” says Hazard softly, “fit for king.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” asks Buckrill.
    There is a queer light in his eye, but perhaps it is only the sun of early afternoon stealing into the cabin past the drawn curtains.
    â€œAs I have said, Denwick will have this troth gift . . .”
    â€œAh, but who will win the lady? I may just take a copy of these poems and Chyrian conceits, together with your lines concerning the princess, and bring fair Moinagh’s name to a more worthy bridegroom.”
    â€œNo more of your wild talk!” cries Buckrill, covering his ears. “I hear nothing, I know nothing. I cannot hinder you if you take a copy. I will collect your scripts, have them approved by Denwick, fairly printed, and bound in a jeweled book. This is all my undertaking.”
    â€œI must have an advance!” says Hazard.
    â€œI can see that you are becoming your old self again,” says Buckrill. “I’ll be plain with you. The entire sum was a hundred and fifty royals in gold. I paid out fifty to get you from the Wells . . . including a payment to the players who assisted. I will not receive a penny from Denwick until the work is done. Then I will keep ninety. Here I have ten of your remaining sixty. You are lodging free aboard this ship. Guard your advance well.”
    â€œPens and paper from you . . .”
    â€œYes, yes,” grumbles Buckrill.
    â€œI am content,” says Hazard.
    The bond is signed, and Buckrill tucks it away and pays over the money. So the making of the troth gift is arranged and goes forward almost from that hour. When Taranelda returns to the cabin, Hazard already has the distant look she remembers. His head is full of strange numbers and wild figures of speech from the Chyrian. When she is rowed back to the city with Buckrill for her evening performance at the Tumblers’ Yard, Hazard is already sharpening his first bunch of pens and balancing an inkhorn on the edge of his bunk.
    Buckrill is pleased to see, in the days that follow, how quickly Hazard regains his health. Freedom, work, Taranelda’s love and care restore the poet to something of his former swaggering self. His translations from the Chyrian, in prose and verse, forming “Songs for the Morning Star,” are very fine and of the six or seven original lyrics he appends to them, one at least, “Returning to Balufir in Autumn,” is his best work.
    At some point in his brief “return season” Hazard has a package sent off in the care of Starling Brothers, a firm of cloth merchants and tailors who regularly send fine stuffs, patterns and made-up garments into Achamar, for the use of Sharn Am Zor and his court.
    As he grows stronger, life on shipboard chafes Hazard a little. He steals into the city by day and by night roams the streets. For the first time he notices the presence of the brown brothers, going about collecting alms and preaching in the open spaces of Balufir. He disputes a little with a scrawny fellow who stands before the Tumblers’ Yard urging the passersby to forgo worldly pleasures and turn to the light of the spirit.
    One day Hazard and Taranelda picnic in the Wilderness, and there, among the bright maples, beside the artificial ruins, they are passed by another pair of lovers. It is one of the memories of this “false summer” that the poet will always cherish. They come softly through the golden haze of late afternoon like an elf king and his queen, a