Alain dismounted and flung his reins to a groom. “Move back,” he said to the laborer and the few children who had pressed forward. “Down,” he called to the hounds, who had started to bark and strain against their leashes. They stilled obediently. “Julien!” he scolded, coming up beside his cousin, “you know that’s no way to bring in geese.”
“Yes, my lord,” mumbled Julien, red in the face.
Alain blushed. Had he sounded so proud? But the geese were scattering and the goosegirl had now hunkered down on her haunches and started bawling outright. He squatted beside her. “Hush, child.” He reached out to touch her dirty chin. “This will not bring them back. Now you go stand there, by the gate to the pen, and you shut it tight once they’ve all gone in.”
His fine clothing and his clean face and hands overawed her; he saw that by her expression and the way her gaze darted from hands to face to tunic and back again. Her bawling ceased and, though tears still ran down her cheeks, she obeyed him. He went a few steps into the forest and began the onerous job of coaxing the flustered and annoyed geese back out of the trees and into the pen. But he spoke softly and moved slowly, and in time they came, suspicious and ill-tempered but not, at this moment, intent on inflicting bodily harm. Long necks arching, still hissing at the audience of family and soldiers, they followed Alain to the pen and went inside as meekly as geese were able. At the gate, one gander hissed and retreated. Alain circled him carefully, crouched, and snaked out a hand to grab the feet from behind, sweeping the bird up while he took a firm grip on its neck with his other hand. He deposited the squawking, furious bird in the pen, jumped back, and let the goosegirl slam the gate shut. The geese subsided with a hissing and flapping of wings.
He looked back in time to see Aunt Bel trying not to laugh, the soldiers and laborers staring in outright astonishment, and his father watching with his thinnest smile—the one always linked with his disapproval.
“I see you haven’t forgotten everything you learned here,” said a voice at his side. Alain turned to confront his father—not his father, but his foster father. Henri.
Aunt Bel raised her voice. “My lord count, I hope you and yours will take a meal with us. My own daughters will prepare it.”
Lavastine nodded curtly. He could scarcely refuse. It was practically a sin to scorn hospitality. But after he dismounted, he gestured to Alain to attend him.
“If you will allow me, my lord,” Aunt Bel continued while Stancy and Agnes and the other women hurried inside and the laborers retreated to stand at a respectful distance. Julien followed Henri back to their work on the mast. “Rather than wait inside, perhaps I may show you around the manor. It was your largesse that made it possible for us to improve upon our circumstances and settle here.”
“Indeed.”
Aunt Bel kept a careful distance from the hounds, who growled at her while a padded handler staked them out away from the house. While the soldiers took the horses to graze and water, she conducted Lavastine and Alain on a tour; the cleric attended Aunt Bel much as if Bel were herself a noble lady. It was a fine grand house, although not of course nearly as grand as Lavastine’s fortress, and included a good stretch of ground with fields, two workshops, pastureland and woodland, and a broad path leading down to a sheltered beach where the family’s ship had been drawn up onto logs and covered with a thatch roof for the winter.
“My brother Henri is a merchant, my lord, and we have for some years shipped both cloth and quernstones south to Medemelacha. There is a quarry near here in the hills where we get our stone. With the generous payment we received from you, my lord, we have been able to expand our business in addition to moving to this manor. I have hired laborers to carve soapstone into vessels for cooking and storage. We will ship them to Medemelacha also. In time Henri hopes to sail north as far as Gent, although there is more risk of Eika attacks in that direction, and next year he intends to attempt his first trip northwest to Alba, to the port of Hefenfelthe on the Temes River.”
Lavastine began to look interested. A good husbandman, he was wealthy in large part because of his careful stewardship of his lands and possessions. “One ship cannot sail to three places.”
Aunt Bel smiled. “We are building a second ship this winter. My third son Bruno we have apprenticed to Gilles Fisher, a local man who builds most of the ships hereabouts. In return the shipbuilder will aid my brother with those parts of the ship Henri does not know the secrets of.”
Lavastine surveyed the work that continued on the mast. Henri, sweating even in the chill, seemed oblivious to the visit of the great lord. “But is it not also true, as my clerics have read to me from the commentaries on the Holy Verses, that ‘the farmer must save some of the grain when he makes bread, else there will be nothing for sowing’?”
