You have many hours alone with your thoughts and your bunions afore a brisk fanfare up ahead catches your ear. Who would be blowing a buisine in courtly style out here in the countryside?
The road afore you is hilly, so your breath is fast in your lungs when you ascend the next rise and see a surprising confabulation before you. Two banners planted in the soil bear the rosy emblem of Duke Ruffino's domain. A score of your countrymen and their children are gathered there, attending a speaker who addresses them from atop a crate or tall stool—'tis hard yet to see for certain.
She who speaks is a courtier girt in a fair riding-dress of red and charcoal, with a plumed cap and a silken sash. As you draw closer you see she is accompanied by a soldier with a high-peaked helmet, who holds the long horn you heard at one side while his sword hangs from the other.
"Who among you will take fortune in your hands?" the woman calls out in a fine voice. "I would fain yield this stage to the first of you who cares to contemplate a life of mirth-making and jest for His Grace. Believe me true when I say you will not care to watch me sing, or cut a caper."
She apes a bit of dance with a comic face, to the crowd's delight. You press into the throng as if drawn by a lodestone. Luca told you that His Grace the Duke had dispatched his servants to seek out promising performers. What inestimable good fortune to have come across them so early into your journey!
Onward