A Meeting at Corvallis (76 page)

Tiphaine's mouth quirked when she spoke. “You should have thought about that before you asked me to take a look at your embroidered underwear, sweetie.
I
might have been cruel as well as evil, you know, and you'd have been stuck with me regardless.”

“I didn't think so.” Delia's spirit bubbled back. “And it was you or Keith, the bailiff's son; his dad had been dropping these awful, heavy hints and Keith wouldn't go
away,
and my dad's scared of them, they're the bailiffs, after all. And he has pimples and crooked teeth and bad breath and he's mean and his father's worse, and oh, God, he's boring!”

She picked up her own Chinese-style straw hat and mimed throwing up in it. “Besides being a guy.”

“Well,
I
don't have halitosis or pimples, and…” They kissed.

After a moment Delia sighed. “I don't like having to
hide,
though. We wouldn't have had to do that before the Change, would we?”

Tiphaine laughed grimly. “OK, someday I'll have to tell you about being the ‘Designated Homo-Loser-Goat' in Grade Nine at Binnsmead Middle School, 1997–8. I wanted the world to end—and then it did!”

The excursion party was forming up in the courtyard when Tiphaine and Delia came down; Rudi, Mathilda, two men-at-arms and four mounted crossbowmen, and a varlet with the two packhorses that carried picnic panniers, fishing rods and her lute, spare clothing in case it got cold…The rest of the midmorning bustle of the castle was well under way, the noisiest part of that being Sir Ruffin leading most of the garrison in full battle kit on circuits that involved running up the inner stairs to the top of the wall and around and down and up again, over and over, clash and clatter and clank. Ruffin waved to her as he passed, face streaming sweat; the rest kept their heads down and concentrated grimly on putting one foot ahead of another, panting like bellows…

At least none of them are falling down and puking now,
she thought. Although two had quit over the past month, and been replaced with farm-boy recruits, both of whom were shaping well despite some—unstated—trouble with their families.

“I was out to Hag Lake myself once before,” Mathilda burbled to Rudi. “We went sailing; it's real pretty. My dad says it has the best spring trout fishing anywhere near here, too.”

Rudi nodded. “Is it called
Hag
Lake after the Wise One?” he asked.

Mathilda frowned. “I'm not sure,” she said. “I don't think so, not here.”

Tiphaine grinned to herself. It had been named
Henry
Hagg Lake, after a politician, when the stream was dammed back in the seventies; of course, that was before she'd been born. God alone knew what local folklore would make of it eventually, back-filling from the suggestive name with a legend; Lady Sandra called it mythogenesis.

“They say—” Delia began.

It was a
good
idea of Lady Sandra's to get the brat away from Castle Todenangst or Portland, though. And away from the Holy Father; it's painfully obvious Rudi just never learned to watch his mouth.
That was amazing in itself, if you'd been brought up in the Household.
I'd hate to see him get—

Then she stopped for an instant, surprised.
You know, that's the truth. I
would
hate to see the Mackenzie brat get hurt. How odd.

Rudi whistled rather than sang as they rode; it was a hymn to the Horned Lord, so it might not be too tactful to use the verses here where they followed a face of God they thought jealous. Mathilda, who didn't know the words, whistled along with him as she caught the tune; Delia, who did, joined in. Then they all started to do counterpoint, topping each other until they were laughing too hard to go on.

It was easy to laugh, on a bright morning like this, with the sun breaking off on polished metal and bright on dyed cloth as pennants snapped, and he had a good little Arab under him—though nothing like Epona of course—one of a pair Mathilda's mother had brought out last week in a brief whirlwind visit…

Matti's still happy with it,
he thought.
And I miss Mom and home
so much. He squared his shoulders.
Well, you're a warrior of the Clan. Act like it!

They rode northward down towards Carpenter Creek from the castle gate, along a dirt road that ran through sloping orchards of pear and peach, plum, nectarine, cherry and apple. All were in some stage of their blossom-time now, in a froth of pink and white, drenching the mild spring air until they were almost giddy with the scent and the buzzing of countless bees, and petals drifted over them like snow with every gust of wind. The crimson clover beneath the trees was in blossom too, and the grassy verges by the side of the road were thick with wildflowers, the daffodils fading but camas bright blue, chicory the darker color of the eastern sky at sunset; taller bracts of henbit reddish purple, all thick with hummingbirds and sphinx moths feeding on nectar.

Birds of all kinds swarmed, familiar friends from Dun Juniper; a red-tailed hawk watching them pass from the branch of a roadside tree, the majesty of a bald eagle wheeling high overhead, jays calling raucously from the bright new leaves of the cottonwoods and alders and bigleaf maples beside the stream, pintail ducks on the spring-swollen waters that tumbled down from the low mountains to the west…

They turned upstream, in a clopping of hooves and clink of horse harness, creaking of saddle leather and the rhythmic rustling chink of chain mail, the bright morning sun casting their long shadows ahead of them. Past the orchards the field on their left was plowed and harrowed dirt, raked every two feet with furrows where a team was planting quartered potatoes, along with dollops of fertilizer. That was familiar from home too, and the oxcart full of the seed stock and another bigger one of stable-muck, and even the cauldron bubbling over a fire.

The workers who had been at it since dawn weren't homelike at all; glum and quiet, though they'd stopped to eat the morning meal, a score of scarecrow figures—even those who owned better clothes now didn't wear them for field work. Many wore pre-Change clothing, ranging from rags to overalls still fairly intact, if frequently patched. They stopped and rose and bowed or curtsied at the sight of the lady of Ath and her party, leaving a litter of spades and hoes and buckets where they'd been sitting.

Rudi winced at the look they gave the well-dressed riders and the armored men behind them; he recognized hopeless fear and throttled anger, and something like dull awe among the teenagers, and even the young children brought along so their parents could mind them as they worked. A few looked excited at the break in routine—except for a couple still at their mothers' breasts, of course. One ginger-haired, pug-nosed young man of about twenty was rather cleaner than most and much better dressed, in modern Portlander linsey-woolsey breeches and shirt, t-tunic and knit cap; he had a broad smile that didn't reach his eyes as he swept the cap off and bowed, and his nostrils showed like caves.

Tiphaine reined in and turned her white courser aside; Rudi noted how its hooves sank silently in the soft turned earth once they were off the packed dirt and gravel of the roadway, and how much deeper the destriers of the mail-clad men-at-arms did as they followed; the crossbowmen spread out behind them in a semicircle, leaving him and Mathilda and Delia to peer between. A couple of short spears and the bow allowed free-tenants—no stave longer than four feet, no pull heavier than thirty pounds—leaned against one of the carts. That and farm tools would do against coyotes, dog packs and sneak thieves; there were no bandit gangs within striking distance, and tigers would rarely attack a group of humans, though they were dangerous to lone travelers in the wild. A few bundles or backpacks lay there as well, one with the heel of a loaf sticking out of the cloth wrapping, another with a dead rabbit beside it, probably shot on the way to work in the gloaming before dawn and intended for lunch. It wouldn't go far among twenty.

“This field is demesne land,” Tiphaine said, in that water-over-smooth-rocks tone. “And these are tenants doing boon-work, aren't they? And you're Keith Anton, son of the Montinore bailiff?”

He nodded and bowed profoundly, cap in hand. “Yes, my lady,” he said, the same fixed smile on his face. “I'm overseeing the planting of this field for you.”

“Then stop grinning and hand me up a bowl of that and a spoon,” she said crisply, flicking the riding crop she held in her right hand towards the cauldron.

The young man looked surprised, but he ran to obey. “Not bad oatmeal porridge,” she said, handing it back to him after a considering mouthful. “There's some milk in there.”

One of the fieldworkers, an older man with a graying brown beard, spoke: “There wasn't before you got here, miss. Uh, my liege.”

A man-at-arms sitting his mount behind her stirred, and lifted the butt of his eleven-foot lance from the ring riveted to his right stirrup-iron.

“Watch your manners, dog!” he barked, the voice blurred and menacing through the mail coif whose flap covered his mouth; only his eyes showed, dark and angry on either side of the helmet's nasal bar. “And keep your place!”

Tiphaine held out a hand in a soothing gesture as the farmers cringed. “Easy, Bors, easy. His village hasn't had a resident lord. They're old-fashioned. You can't expect them to know modern manners yet.”

She turned her face back to the tenant-farmer, who was looking as if he wished the earth would swallow him, or as if he wished very much he'd kept his mouth shut.

“You don't say
my liege
…” Tiphaine paused and raised a brow.

“Uh, S-s-steve Collins, mmm, Lady Tiphaine. Bond-tenant.”

“—to me, Collins,” she went on, and used the crop to point around at the armed men behind her. “
They
say ‘my liege,' and their families do. They're Association warriors and my vassals, my
menie,
my fighting-tail. You bond-tenants just say ‘Lady Tiphaine' or ‘my lady d'Ath,' or ‘your worship.' I prefer ‘my lady,' plain and simple. Now go on.”

The man licked his lips; he had glasses on, clumsily patched where one earpiece had broken, the hinge replaced by a lump of sugar-pine gum. “Uh…I hold sixteen acres on Montinore, and my due is three days a week on the demesne, and this is the first month in the last ten years we haven't done our boon-work hungry. It used to be just oatmeal and water and salt, and only two bowls of it in a damn long day at that. Anything extra you brought yourself. Now it's better and we can get seconds. I think this…Keith…and his father had some sort of deal cooked with the steward, Wielman, to keep what we should have gotten, until you came and they were too scared. Thanks, uh, my lady d'Ath.”

“You're welcome, Collins.” She turned to the bailiff's son. “I'm not going to ask too many questions about what happened before I took seizin of the fief,” she said carefully. “But the law says that peons, and tenants doing boon-work, are entitled to be fed twice a day when they're working demesne land, fed ‘full and sufficient' meals.”

He bobbed his reddish-sandy head and his hands made unconscious washing motions around each other.

“Yes, your…my lady. You can see, there's plenty for everyone here, good and hot, and a barrel of clean water. And a break at nine for breakfast and an hour for dinner at one-thirty, and a rest every couple of hours, and nobody kept past the time you can tell a white thread from a black.”

She nodded. “That's all very well, Goodman, but men aren't horses; you can't expect them to work all day on oats. I don't want a harvest-home feast laid on every day—

An anonymous snort said that the harvest feast hadn't been much to talk about, either. Tiphaine ignored it.

“—but there should be soup or stew for midday, lentils or beans or barley with vegetables and some meat in it for the taste—sausage, or salt pork, or chicken. And a two-pound loaf of whole meal for each grown worker, and butter and cheese. And some beer; enough for a pint or two each. It's your family's responsibility to organize things like that; it's what you give for the reduced dues. See that it's done starting tomorrow. Draw on the Montinore manor storehouses as needed.”

“You should check on whether he does it, my lady,” Delia called suddenly from the rear. “He'd skin a louse for the hide, that one, and his dad's no better.”

Keith Anton evidently hadn't realized who it was behind the iron wall of the men-at-arms and under her broad-brimmed straw hat; he went white as he recognized her, flushed, started to say something, then looked at the ground again, crushing the cap between strong, calloused fingers.

“Look at me, man,” Tiphaine said quietly. When he did: “Do
not
let me hear that I've been disobeyed, or you'll get a whipping and a day in the stocks, with your father beside you. Steal from me and it'll be worse. Understood?”