Everything's changed again, but really, nothing has. I'm still keeping to myself, still working hard, still doing the same thing every day, still hardly ever seeing anyone. Only now I'm doing it up at Hengstacer Farms, as a journeyman.
For most folk when they finish apprenticeship and become a journeyman, it's a big change. An apprentice in a trade starts young, maybe as early as their eighth year. They leave their family and live with a master what works them hard, and don't pay them in coin. They get a place to sleep and they get fed, and that's it. What they're getting from it is learning a trade what'll make them prosperous later in life, so a few years working hard ain't no high cost for that. But when they finish, when the master figures they learned all the basics and they're ready to do real work as a journeyman, they leave and work for other masters, learning different things. As a journeyman suddenly they're getting paid in coin, and they got some freedom to make their own place to live, provide their own meals, have free time of their own when work is done. In fact, many folk work as a journeyman the rest of their lives and make a comfortable living at it.
I came to being an apprentice in an odd way. Very late, I were already twenty of years. I came on as a stable-hand as much as an apprentice, so I got paid in coin, and didn't get given room and board (though Hookworth did let me use a house until I could afford to pay for it), and Miss Brynleigh didn't work me harder than she probably worked the stable-hand what was there afore me, or the one she's no doubt hiring now. But she did teach me, though she said as I didn't got to learn as much as most apprentices, on account I'd already had years tending Kestrel, plus animals from the farm back in the Mark. So while I've been an apprentice, it's almost more like I were a journeyman already in some ways.
Not long after Hazel foaled and gave birth to a healthy young colt, Miss Brynleigh told me I were ready to become a journeyman. It were a bit rushed on account of the time of year. It's foaling season, and Éogar up at Hengstacer Farms needed a journeyman to come on to work at all the breeding, foaling, and training that's going on now. I figure she called my apprenticeship completed a little early to let me take that opportunity afore it got away.
One of the reasons a journeyman goes to other masters is that every master will focus on a different part of the trade. Miss Brynleigh taught me all the basics that any ostler would know, but Hookworth's stables run one way, and others will run other ways. In Hookworth, most the horses stay all the time, except when they're taken out, so you care for the same horses over their whole lives. But in a stable like the one at the Prancing Pony, you got horses coming in for one night and leaving in the morning, so you care for them different. And at Hengstacer, you don't get a lot of horses coming through at all; instead, they do a lot of breeding and training. A journeyman will spend a season with one master and a season with another, learning all facets of the trade, and choosing which one suits him best.
I always planned that, one day, when I done enough turns as a journeyman, I'd look to buy a master's license. The gold I didn't got to pay the Beornings is most of what I'd need to buy a license and maybe a stable to run. A master can work for someone in their stable, the way Bob works for Master Butterbur at the Prancing Pony, and that don't cost as much to start, and don't got as much risk. But someone what can buy the license and the stable can be right prosperous, and I always hoped that that's what I'd do, so's I could provide well for a family. Now that I'm not going to have a family, I don't know what I should be aiming for. Maybe journeyman's good enough. I suppose we'll just see what opportunities come along.
Truth is, I don't even like to think about the question. There's too much regret and hurt behind it. Éogar says as I ought to be thinking about it now, so I try. But mostly I just work. Work makes the time go by, and keeps it too full for thinking about things what hurt.
