“Please, my lord count.” Aunt Bel gestured to the single chair at the table. Everyone else would sit on benches. “If you will be seated.” Now she turned to Alain as well and made the same respectful gesture. “And you, my lord.”
“Aunt Bel,” he began, hating this formality.
“No, my lord.” He knew better than to argue with her. “You’re a count’s son now and must be treated as one. ‘God maketh poor and maketh rich; They bringeth low and lifteth up.’”
“So said the prophet Hannah,” added the cleric.
Aunt Bel turned back to Lavastine. “I will send one of my children to bring your company in to table, my lord.”
“I’ll go,” said Alain, though it was not his place. He should not offer, not without asking his father’s permission. But he knew, suddenly, that he would have no opportunity to speak to Henri, that Henri would not eat with them. None of the family would eat with them; they would serve their guests. That was all.
The soldiers began to stamp in, a flurry of activity by the door.
Lavastine said, “Alain!”
Alain made his escape.
Outside, Julien and Henri were still working on the mast. When Henri saw Alain coming, he straightened and waved Julien away. Then he bent back to his task.
Alain halted beside the older man. Out here, outside the confines of Osna village, it smelled different. There the ever-present smell of drying fish and salted fish and smoked fish pervaded streets and common and even the Ladysday service. In the longhouse, fish and smoke and sweat and the dust of stones and wet wool and drying herbs and sour milk and rancid oil and candlewax all blended into a rich, familiar aroma. At the manor house there was no such ripe blend, for here there was room to store foodstuffs in the shed beside the cookhouse, to grind stone in a separate workshop, to weave in a room set aside for that purpose. Although perhaps thirty people lived on this farm, they were not crowded together except on winter nights when they would all sleep in the main hall.
He smelled the sea foam and heard the cries of gulls. The animal sheds stank, of course, but the smell of earth and wind and the late chill of autumn dying into winter overrode anything else, made all else into a fragrant herbal, the scent of life. The smell of land and opportunity, even though it was only an old steward’s house from the time of the Emperor Taillefer.