Diana felt her jaw dropping open. “You don’t? But…”
He lifted an eyebrow. It was a challenge. She realized he was enjoying her discomfort.
“How can you tell right from wrong, without a god to guide you?” she asked.
“I know in here.” He touched his chest with one big thumb, then straightened from his lean against the table and put her bowl down. “I came to speak to you about the food you have been providing.”
Diana’s heart sank. She had been expecting this confrontation for some time now but wished it was not right now that she must deal with it. “I have provided you with adequate shelter and food besides. That was the extent of our bargain.”
“Gruel and broth is not sufficient for a fighting man,” he growled. “We need meat, bread at the very least and in adequate amounts. It takes much food to keep a soldier strong enough to fight on the battlefield for an entire day.”
“You’re not on the battlefield.”
“It is our duty to remain battle-ready, so that Arthur might call on us at a moment’s notice.”
Diana sighed. “I cannot give you more.”
He looked surprised. “You won’t?”
“I cannot. You eat what we all eat.”
“But you have meat, flour for bread. I have seen it. Are you forcing me to take it from you?”
“You have that power,” she agreed. “But we would all starve while your men eat.”
“Why? Is your management of this place so inadequate that you have failed to make the necessary provisions for winter? Perhaps it would be best if I were to take over here after all.”
Diana bounced to her feet. “How can I provide what is not there in the first place? How much plainer do I need to make myself, soldier? There is very little food left! The Saxons took it all! They left us with barely a sack of grain!” Her anger was making her tremble, so immense did it seem.
“I know of the Saxon raid,” he said at last. “I had assumed it was simply Saxons bent on mischief, on their way to another destination. They took everything? How long were they here?”
“Three days.”
“So…” Alaric crossed his arms. “They came in December, didn’t they? They must have been in dire need to risk a winter crossing.”
“It was a mild winter last year.”
“Why have you not been able to recover in that time?” he asked. “You have had a growing season since then.”
Diana’s anger still simmered but it had subsided enough for her to recognize that once they started discussing her failings as provider, it would be the first step in handing over some of her power to Alaric. “Our bargain does not include discussing my business with you.”
“Our bargain was that you would provide adequate food, which you are failing to do. You are breaking the agreement.” Alaric rested both hands on the edge of the table and leaned toward her. “Need I remind you I can simply take this place by force?”
Diana felt her anger chill into a lump of ice sitting in the middle of her chest.
“If I were to take the estate, the rules of conquest would apply. That would make me the rightful owner,” he added.
“You’re bluffing.”
“I’m threatening, woman!” he roared.
Diana almost cringed—almost. She gripped the edge of the table, her heart skittering.
“You are not providing your side of the bargain,” Alaric continued, “and that threatens the duties assigned to me by Arthur. I take that seriously. If the only way I can ensure my work is done is to take over this miserable estate and run it myself, then that is exactly what I will do.” His face was barely a hand’s span from hers. Diana willed herself not to move back. “Do you understand?” He spoke very quietly.
Briefly, Diana hated him. The hate surged through her, making her head sing and her body tense with the need to lash out at him, to see his face show a hurt like the pain she felt.
A thread of reason stopped her—the knowledge that if she made any physical move at all, he would defeat her in moments and would have an excuse to take over the estate.
“You make yourself perfectly clear.” Her voice was level but ringing with loathing. She was surprised Alaric did not recognize it and immediately take offense but he merely nodded and straightened up to his full height.
“Why were the fields not fully planted?” he demanded.
“There are thirty-one people here and twelve of them are children, including four infants barely three months old,” Diana said. “All the adults are women, some of whom are too frail to work the fields. During spring planting, four of the women were with child.”
“They could do other duties.”
“I assigned them other household tasks. Every other woman does the work of men, here. We’re few and we started out with no experience.”
“How did you learn what to do?”
Diana waved her hand around the library. “From my father’s records. And there is an old man in Eboracum who remembers things. He has been helpful when these books fail me.”
Alaric stood a long time, weighing her words. His anger had gone. “Where did you get the grain to plant the fields, if the Saxons took everything?”
“I swept the barn and sifted through the dirt at the base of the oak tree, where the sacks of grain are stacked each year for planting and threshing. We threshed the hay in the barn the Saxons didn’t burn…” Diana shrugged. “We gained some seed.”
“But not enough,” Alaric said dryly.
Diana forced her answer out. “No.”
Alaric lifted his hand to his chin, thoughtful. The thumb bracketed his mouth. “You say you’ve been keeping records?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Comparison with previous years seemed like the only way to measure how much food we needed to survive.”
“Show me. I want to see exactly what the situation is.” He stepped around the table to her side.
Diana stiffened. Show him? Reveal just how badly off the estate was? It would give him the excuse he needed to take over the estate. Rules of conquest! Against women they would barely have to raise their swords.
He had noticed her hesitation. “I don’t have to remind you again that cooperation with me is the only way you will maintain control of your estate?”
Diana spoke through clenched teeth. “I wish you to hell.”
He laughed. “You are not the first person who has wished me there and if I can survive the curses of the Bishop of Eboracum, then yours will do me no harm.” He tapped the table. “The records. Show me.”
Chapter Five
Roasted lamb, with hot thick gravy ladled on top. Tangy salted beef strips. Yams, cooked until their skin crackled and the flesh inside was tender and steaming. Fresh mushrooms fried with garlic and parsley and drizzled with lemon juice while they still sizzled. Nuts, picked from the forest and salted, roasted and served warm. Dried fruit slowly cooked into a thick stew and served piping hot with aromatic herbs and spices. Round slim loaves of bread, so fresh from the oven that they were too hot to handle, with a thick crusty shell that sounded hollow when tapped but when broken open, soft fluffy bread was revealed. Wine, mixed with spices and warmed with a hot poker.
For Alaric’s men, the food, with its heavy emphasis on herbs and spices, was odd but deeply satisfying.
“Strangers to the tongue,” Rhys had labeled it, after his first suspicious mouthful. However, as a solstice feast it was more than adequate. Alaric could see it on the men’s faces.
They had entered the triclinium in the hour before sunset, washed and presentable—Rhys had seen to that, with curses and pummels. They shuffled in like milling sheep, their eyes wide. It was the first time any of them had stepped inside the public rooms of the villa. The large dining room with its beautiful mosaics, patterned walls and graceful columns, was daunting. They were used to rough round rooms with roaring hearths in the middle.
Tough battle-scarred men they were, but they ha
d sunk down onto the waiting divans like cowed adolescents, while Diana’s women had stood silently waiting to serve them, as was proper.
The food had overcome that barrier. As the meal progressed, the wine began to work. Alaric saw their unease fade and their normal jovial manner return. The more forward of them risked an awkward comment, which was shyly returned. Hesitantly, the conversation had started up.
Now the feast was almost over. The room was loud with merriment. Raucous laughter, banter…it was remarkably similar to feasts at home, except for their surroundings and the appearance of the women, with their graceful long pleated tunics and mantles and their elaborately arranged hair.
One other exception escaped Alaric until Griffin, with the soul of a bard, had pointed it out. “All we need is Merlin at the top table with his harp, plucking out a melody that leaves you weeping, to make the night complete.” He sighed. “It has been too long since I heard music.”
It had been too long since they’d had the luxury of time to feast and afterward, to listen to the singers with their harps and melodic tales of wonder. Even Merlin, who was a master harpist, had been too busy as Arthur’s adviser to entertain the soldiers at night.
But the absence of music was a minor omission. Replete and contented, Alaric leaned back against the pleasantly warm wall with a sigh. His gaze fell upon Diana at the head of the main table.
She lay propped on the large divan there, her figure covering barely half the divan’s length. As was her custom, she wore the short tunic and the pants bound the length of her calves with crossed thongs. Her bound hair trailed along the divan.
Diana had made no attempt to celebrate the feast. She was silent among the talk. Unsmiling among the laughter. She had spent most of the meal watching everyone eat, while she herself had eaten very little. It seemed to Alaric that she begrudged every mouthful of food that had been swallowed.
It occurred to him that the table tonight would not have been so handsomely provided if they’d not discussed food this morning. He recalled again the pitiful state of affairs that Diana’s records had outlined in bold cursive script. She had hated revealing the truth to him—it had swept off her in furious waves each time she had moved to open a new book or to show him another record.
As a soldier, Alaric knew much about survival against the odds. He had seen desperate conditions the length of Britain—people working against time, famine, fever and the ever present threat of Saxon invasion to provide enough food to keep going for one more harvest. Diana’s story was not new to him.
Her records had shown him an indisputable truth, however. Diana’s household could not support his men for the rest of winter. There simply was not enough food.
Alaric reached impatiently for his goblet and gulped down the remains of the warmed wine in a convulsive swallow, trying to rid himself of the uneasy wash of guilt. He had forced his way onto the estate and demanded Diana provide for them. It had never occurred to him that such a large estate, bereft of men with their big appetites, would be unable to sustain them. She might have told him, he reasoned with himself. She had spoken not a single word of the Saxon raid.
You didn’t give her the chance.
Alaric sat up again and reached for the wine pitcher, trying to push away the voice. He focused instead on the problem—there was not enough food to last the winter.
Moving on was unthinkable. Winter had closed in now. The ground was covered in a thin layer of snow and it was still falling in slow, silent, fat flakes. By morning they would have to break ice off the well water.
The beacon was here too – and the road, with its ready access to Eboracum and the fast, easy route south.
They had adequate quarters here, too, now the men had opened up the roof of the unheated slaves’ quarters and built a hearth in the middle of the room as they were used to.
In all matters except for the problem of food, Diana’s estate was ideal. If he was to carry out Arthur’s assignment successfully, he had to find a way of supplementing the food.
So.
Alaric let his gaze linger on Diana’s unhappy face, his mind working, as he sipped the new cup of wine more slowly. When he finished the wine, he refilled the cup and leaned over to tap Rhys on the shoulder. He gained Griffin’s attention and signaled for them to move closer.
“It was a good feast,” he remarked.
Griffin’s young flushed face lit up. “It was wonderful!”
Rhys looked sour. “It’s rich stuff. My stomach protests already.”
Alaric, through seventeen summers’ hard campaigning and living off the land, had seen Rhys chew his way through food even hungry wolves had left untouched. He smiled. The man was not happy if he didn’t have something to complain about. “Enjoy it, my friends. It may be the last such meal for a long while.”
Rhys looked dismayed and Griffin’s joyful expression faded. “Sir?” Griffin prompted.
“They’ve strained their stores to provide this meal. The Saxons who raided here weren’t soldiers on a campaign. They were simply looking to fill their own barns. Remember Merlin warned us that the Saxons had suffered two lean years and would be meaner for it?”
“Aye, the fighting last summer was brutal,” Rhys added.
“How does the lady propose to last the winter then? And quarter us as well? We can’t move now.” Griffin had leapt ahead to the consequences. It was because of this trait that Alaric had promoted Griffin to his lieutenant so young. He was a dreamer but army life had a way of stamping out any of the gentler tendencies in a man.
Alaric watched Rhys, waiting for the older man to see the dilemma of their position. Rhys nodded his head slowly. “That’s true. Winter’s on us…and the beacon’s close by here.”
“We could always go back to Eboracum,” Alaric pointed out.
Rhys’ expression grew even more sour and even Griffin frowned. “You’re jesting, surely, sir!” Rhys said.
“It is an alternative,” Alaric pointed out.
“An alternative to what?” Griffin asked.
“Staying here and paying our way.”
“Paying?” Rhys snorted. “There’d be less than a full bag of coins in Arthur’s entire coffer…and it’s probably not a coin she’d accept, either.” He jerked his head in Diana’s direction.
Again, Griffin’s mind was working faster. “Sir, we already pay our way. They have our protection while we’re here.”
“Protection from what?” Alaric asked. “The seaways are closed and it’s winter.” He realized his words echoed the Bishop of Eboracum’s withering tones when he had offered him the same deal and Alaric winced at the comparison. He hurried on before either of his lieutenants could accuse him of hypocrisy. “Normally, protection for shelter is a fair bargain. But if we are to do what we came here for then we have to help these people get through the winter. Protection isn’t enough.”
“Hunting?” Rhys suggested hopefully. He had failed to catch anything today for Griffin’s feast but he did enjoy the hunt.
“Hunting will help in the short term, but we need to think farther ahead. We can’t live on meat alone.”
Griffin was thoughtful. “Farming. You intend we take over where their menfolk left off.”
“It’s not simply a matter of picking up the reins,” Alaric warned. “We’ll have more than enough ground to catch up. The Saxon raid left them with virtually nothing. Diana was reduced to sifting the floor of the seed stores for kernels to plant…and they still couldn’t sow all the fields.”
Both men swiveled their heads to consider Diana anew in light of Alaric’s revelation. “No wonder we’ve been eating gruel twice a day,” Griffin murmured.
Annoyed at the admiration in Griffin’s expression, Alaric dragged their attention back to him. “Then I have your agreement?”
Rhys turned back to him. “You mean, mucking about in the fields and feeding animals?”
“And more,” Alaric admitted. “There’s more work here than these women could possibly
cope with on their own.”
“It’ll be hard work, then?” Rhys asked.
Alaric suddenly recalled a memory of Rhys standing knee-deep in mud while rain poured in big fat stinging drops only when the wind did not thrust it sideways. He was soaked from head to foot in watery mud—only his eyes and teeth showed white in the dim light that seemed more night than day. A wagon carrying granite stones as big across as a man’s shoulders and as high as his knee, had been mired in the mud. Rhys, as strong as the bullocks that pulled the cart, had thrust a pole beneath the wheel and was attempting to push the cart out of the mud single-handedly. He had been reeling with exhaustion but when Alaric ordered him to rest, Rhys gave his huge belly laugh and waved Alaric away. He’d been enjoying himself too much to stop.
“Yes, it’ll be hard work,” Alaric admitted now.
Rhys grinned. “Good.”
“It seems equitable,” Griffin added. “It’s not like we’ll be working in the coal mines.” That particular venture, among the many exotic types of work Arthur’s men had turned their hands to in between battles, had given Griffin nightmares for months.
“We could start with those gates of theirs,” Rhys suggested.
“Yes, that’s a place to start,” Alaric agreed. “I’ll speak to Diana about it.” He stood.
Rhys eyed the unsmiling woman at the end of the table. “Better you than me,” he muttered and drank hastily.
* * * * *
Diana tried to ignore the three men huddled against the wall, especially after she caught them looking at her. They were talking about her and the knowledge made her want to squirm. She was still smarting from the indignity of handing over to Alaric all the information about the estate. She had seen the disgust on his face when he left the library. It was a condemnation of her.
That condemnation had forced her to put more food on tonight’s table than she had intended. She had watched the feast disappear with an unsteady pulse. She had no idea how she would make up for the shortfall the meal would create. No idea at all. It was the complete lack of ideas that scared her the most.
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