Here is memory #3 from Chapter 4. This one is from his childhood and is very sweet to him. If you've read An Epiphany Gift for Robin, you'll be familiar with this lute. :-)
“May I see it?” Marguerite asked.
He removed the lute from its case, and set it in her lap.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “The design of the rose is lovely”
Robert felt a surge of pride at her pleasure in the intricate grillwork over the sound hole. “My father carved it,” he said. “He fashioned the entire instrument for my mother and gave it to her on Epiphany when I was seven years old. I helped him gather the wood late at night while old Lord Simon slept. A minstrel who was passing through the village told us which wood was best: ash for the soundboard, boxwood for the neck, strips of maple for the ribs on the back.”
She had pushed off her hood as he spoke and listened with her gaze flitting alternately between the instrument and his face, but she tilted the lute now to examine its deep, rounded body. He admired the graceful turn of her cheek, the whimsical freckles dusted across her small nose as he continued.
“The minstrel showed my father the thickness to cut the wood and showed him how to bend the ribs to form the belly so that the sound would be the sweetest. Father let me slide the pegs in their places after he had carved their notches before he attached the strings. In truth, my contributions were small, but at the time, I felt for all the world as though I had labored over the gift quite as much as he.”
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