by Alma Boykin
“Godown be with you,” he said at last.
“May He protect you on the road and after.” She raised her hand to salute. Instead Lewis caught it, caressing her palm and squeezing. She felt the rough hide of his riding gauntlet and the warmth of his hand through the leather before he released her. The older man swung into the saddle and rode off.
Once his party’s last wagon cleared the gate she turned. Lady Ann stood behind her, a heavy brown shawl pulled tight over her shoulders. She frowned, dark eyes almost black with sorrow and worry, and shook her head. “Oh Elizabeth, he’ll burn you. Beware.” Ann turned and hurried back into the house and out of the wind. Confused, Elizabeth looked from Ann back to the gate. What does she mean?
8. Harvest and Winter
Elizabeth found little time over the next month to worry about Ann’s strange comment. Harvest hit Donatello Bend like a storm, leaving everyone too tired to waste energy on anything besides preparations for winter. Even the bridge project had to wait, although Lewis made good on his threat to have a word with the Peilov family about their efforts to relocate the bridge.
Harvest began not long after Archduke Lewis’s departure, starting with the apples. The men and boys picked fruit, while the women and younger children either sorted the fruit for storage or collected windfalls for cooking and cider making. Even the theoretical Lady of the Manor worked, and for once Elizabeth found herself thanking Sister Amalthea and Lady Orrosco for insisting that she learn stillroom and kitchen duties. That is, she thanked them after the work ended. I had no idea Godown made so many apples, she thought as she stirred the cauldron and wiped her dripping face. And all of them different!
The manor produced four main types of apples: red, green, yellow, and blue. The herb garden near the manor house also sported pink and white apples, luxury and medicinal fruits. People ate the red apples, sweet and crisp, fresh or as unfermented juice, or dried. Green apples, too tart to eat out of hand and firmer than the reds, got turned into dried apples or pies, tarts, and other baked goods. As soon as enough had been gathered, two wagonloads of green apples creaked east to Vindobona, the first of the supplies destined for the palace kitchens.
Elizabeth preferred the yellow apples to the blue, at least when she did not have to cook them serself. The light flavor and soft texture of the yellows reminded her of custard. Coal fires burned under pots of yellow apples as the women worked to preserve as many as possible, filling rows and rows of crockery jars with the soft fruit. Blue apples got pared, pitted, and pounded before being dried into fruit leather or added to the meat-fruit-biscuit emergency food for the army. During her first apple harvest, Elizabeth had tried to eat one blue apple raw, but the syrupy-sweet flavor overpowered her taste buds and the mealy texture reminded her of dry maize bread. Added to the other windfalls, blue apples gave cider and applejack such a powerful kick that some priests complained about the results. Or so a note in one of the older farm books said. However used, Elizabeth became very tired of apples.
Godown must have a sense of humor she thought, wincing at the pain in her lower back from bending over an enormous pot of barble berry and blue-apple butter. It felt like she’d been stirring for hours, and she probably had been, as thick as the mixture had become. Godown be praised for coal. I’d hate to be trying to do this with a wood fire. The fruit butter took so long and required such even heat that the cost of the coal vanished when compared to the labor required to manage a wood fire, given the kinds of wood found at Donatello.
Lady Ann, her hair stuffed under a white kerchief and flour on her skirt, appeared from around the corner, followed by two children and a donkey cart. “Is it done?”
Elizabeth picked up the test plate and dripped a little butter on the dish, then tipped it. The paste barely flowed, even with the plate on end. “Godown be praised, yes it is. You brought help?”
“Yes.” As the children kept the donkey quiet, the two women used a block-and-tackle and chains to lift the cauldron off the fire and swing it into the cart. A temporary box built into the cart held the pot steady for the slow, cautious trip up to the house, where crockery jars and slabs of pastry waited to receive the season’s bounty. As the women fastened a piece of wood to the top of the pot to keep things covered, Ann warned, “Another batch is on its way down. And then a laundry pot. We need more pastry clothes, so we’re going to wash this batch as soon as we get the plank-bread into the oven.” She wiped her hands on her skirt and shooed the children and the cart to the manor house.
Elizabeth sat down on a stump that had been turned into a seat, complete with cushion. We need more people here. If we had more people, I could be reading and keeping accounts and doing my work instead of cooking. None of the men work this hard! And none of those romance books and ballads say a word about gentle ladies stirring pots for a month at a time. She should have been giving thanks for the amazing harvest thus far, but her aching back, legs, and shoulders made her long for a hot bath and bed. She’d burned her fingers twice with splatters of the thick fruit concoction. She dipped a cup of water from the bucket beside the stump and drained it, then drank another. After one of the cooking women had suffered an attack of bladder rocks, everyone working near the fires drank more water, beer, or juice and tea than usual. She heard another cart creaking towards her and she groaned. I’ll just wait here until they come into sight. I am the manor lady, after all.
“Do you want the good news or bad news first,” Ann asked at supper the next day.
“Good news.”
“We’ve finished with the apples and berries, except for a few odds that we can add to whatever we’re eating already.” Elizabeth, Ann, and the housekeeper Annie Lei raised their cups and tapped them together.
“Thanks be to Godown. I had no idea He made so many apples,” Elizabeth admitted. “And the bad news?”
“The men are back and the wheat and quinly are ripe. Axel says they need to hurry. It feels like rain.”
Annie Lei shook her head a little. “Begging your pardon my ladies, but it always feels like rain to Axel unless it feels like a drought.” The housekeeper sighed.
“The truth is no offense, Mistress Lei,” Elizabeth told the older woman, chuckling. “What do we need to do?”
“Cook things that can go without attention, my lady, in case we need to sew more grain bags, or help in the fields. And since we have a good harvest, we should reward the men and their families with a meal.”
“What say you Ann? Can we?”
Lady Ann nodded, mouth full. She swallowed and told them, “We can. Not today or tomorrow, but by the end of harvest, the shahma will be here.”
Something nagged Elizabeth’s memory and she stuck her tongue out as she tried to remember what it was. “I need to check with Axel, but I think there’s an ox he said needed to be retired. I think the ox needs to be roasted and jerked, instead.”
“Roast meat would go down well, my lady, and I think Master Kim would part with that half cask of vinegar he’s been complaining about, if someone wants a sauce to tenderize the meat. The vinegar’s not bad,” Annie assured them. “It’s just stronger than he wants, since we don’t raise heavy meat or game here.”
“We’ll do that, then,” Elizabeth decided. “And I’ll see how we are for grain sacks.” She poked at the pile of bitter greens on her plate. Greens before a good frost tasted horrible, but eating them made her feel stronger. “There has to be a better way to move grain than in sacks. Surely someone could build a grain wagon, one with tight sides and waterproof.”
“And then what?” Ann pointed out, “You still have to unload and store the grain after you get it to Vindobona or wherever it is going.”
“Please stop poking holes in my wonderful ideas,” Elizabeth begged, smiling.
“Yes, my lady.” Ann pretended to be contrite. Mistress Lei smiled as well. She did not eat with the ladies as a rule, but Elizabeth had invited her to come, as a reward for her hard work.
Although willing to do he
r share elsewhere, Elizabeth refused to help harvest the grain. The men used a machine to cut and thresh the wheat, but quinly still had to be done by hand, and both required more skill than Elizabeth possessed. “I don’t know how, I don’t know what, and I have other duties,” she announced. Instead of field or kitchen work, she caught up the accounts, adding the fruit inventory to the lists for her next report, and prayed four times a day for the safety of the harvesters and for Godown to hold back the fall rains long enough for them to get the grain under cover. And she and Ann had a talk about Archduke Lewis.
They’d been working in the office, deciding if they could add another medicinal herb garden inside the walls around the manor house complex. Finally Elizabeth threw down her charcoal drawing stick and sat back in her chair, clean hand over her eyes. “I give up. We can’t fit it in unless we tear out the poultry runs, but we need poultry to get rid of ticks and weeds.”
Ann sighed and shook out stiff hands and sore fingers. “Agreed. Unless we knock down the wall on that side and enlarge the hill and rebuild the wall.”
“Tayyip the Invincible will be received into Godown’s faith, my mother will take vows of celibacy and poverty, and Archduke Lewis will marry Laurence V’s half-sister before that happens.”
“Does Laurence have a half-sister?” Ann leaned forward, attention locked on Elizabeth.
“Not that he acknowledges. I suspect he does.” You don’t know that, so don’t say that, she scolded herself yet again for unkind thoughts about Laurence IV’s morals.
“If he does, it could solve so many problems,” Ann breathed, eyes wide.
“So would marrying Prince Gerald André to Laurence’s daughter, if he has one. I’m surprised he hasn’t been forced to marry yet.” Elizabeth leaned to the side, retrieving her glass of juice and tea from the small table beside the desk.
She almost splattered juice over her papers and Ann both when Ann announced, “We have to get Lewis married to someone.”
“Wha— ?” Elizabeth set the cup down and stared at her.
“I’d hoped he might find someone acceptable to his majesty in Polonia, but no. And the Duke of Tivolia has no daughters.” Ann ran a hand over her tightly braided, dark brown hair. “We have to find him a wife.”
“We? Ann, that’s for his majesty to sort out.” And it just might be that Lewis took a private vow. It would not be the first time someone from a large family vowed his or her chastity to Godown while remaining in public service, then finished the vows later. “We have more important things to deal with here and now. Godown will provide a spouse for his grace if it is His will.”
Ann leaned farther forward, planting her elbows on top of the scattered papers on the desk. “You don’t understand, do you? Those books he sent you. What are they for?”
“The last ones? They are copies of two manuals on logistics and a treatise on fortifications and defense in place. Plus he sent a scarf to see if we have anyone who can spin fine enough thread to duplicate the material.” Ann rested her head in her hands, shaking it, and Elizabeth asked, “What’s wrong?”
“You don’t see it, do you, my lady?” Ann looked up, her eyes almost overflowing with unshed tears. “He’s courting you and he can’t do that. You’ve got to stop him before he ruins you.”
Elizabeth rocked backwards in her chair. “How is sending me professional books courting me? He’d be sending, oh, sweets and fluffy things and the collected poems of, ah,” she waved one hand. “Bah, Simone Lovelady, that’s the one.” Sister Amalthea needn’t have worried about my morals with those poems. She should have worried about my getting sugarpiss disease. Some forbidden fruits are too sweet by half. She snorted in a very unladylike way. “Her verses would give a honeymaker sugar poisoning.”
“My lady, I’m serious. He took your hand, in the courtyard, in front of everyone. He’s sending you gifts. There are rumors that he persuaded their majesties to provide the property for the convent you want. Elizabeth,” and now the tears began in earnest, “we have to stop him. You’ll be dishonored. He knows Rudolph will never allow him to marry you. He’s playing with you and the rumors will ruin you, even if he doesn’t, he doesn’t…” She buried her face in her hands once more, weeping.
Elizabeth stared at Ann, aghast. All at once she heard in her memory Aquila Starland saying, “I’ll send your dower portion, in case a miracle happens and you find someone suitable.” I thought that was a dig at the lack of eligible men of rank, or that she’s rejected suitors. What if… Oh, St. Sabrina, and if Marie thought that Ann had… and Marie didn’t want her around Quill’s daughters in case… “Oh… rosemary and pickles!”
Ann sniffed and looked up, her utter confusion as plain as her tears. “What?”
“I said rosemary and pickles. Your brother is an insensitive boor and your sister-in-law needs to realize that mistakes are not contagious unless strong drink or youthful follies are involved.” Elizabeth handed her speechless chatelaine a handkerchief. “I may be sheltered, as it were, and I may not know the first thing about courting in the Empire, but I know that there’s a reason for all the books and ballads about love gone wrong and bad choices. And I know that I’m no better than my mother and that I have a heart of stone and loins of,” she felt herself blushing, “pardon me. Let’s just say that I’m not, shall we say, loveable. And that I’m one of those people that St. Galen warned his followers about. And I follow St. Jenna.” She took another drink before adding, “And all that at once yet. I wish people could keep their stories straight.”
Ann’s jaw had sagged open during Elizabeth’s recitation. “My lady, I, I had no idea, that you’d heard…” She covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes wide. “Such improprieties, my lady, I—”
Elizabeth smiled a little and stared at the wall above Ann’s head, at the small shelf holding the miniature portrait of her father and the best of her collection of Lander trinkets. “A confession to a sworn postulant of Godown is valid in an emergency. It is not something we talk about, because it is far, far better to go to a priest if you are in need, but a postulant can hear confession and grant absolution at death if there is no priest available. Therefore, all postulants must learn about the darker side of the world.” Elizabeth looked back at Ann, “I’m sheltered but not ignorant of the ways of man and maid.” And then there was Mother and her ideas of a proper education for me. She shuddered. But Ann does not need to know about that. “And servants talk, especially when they are unhappy with the tales being told. So do soldiers.”
When Ann finished wiping her eyes and nose, she folded the handkerchief, placed it in her lap, and rested her hands on the small square of unbleached fabric. “That is true.”
“Do you want to tell me?”
“No, but you might as well hear the truth from me.” Ann closed her eyes and Elizabeth waited. “I’ll call him Leo. He’s married now and there’s no point in hurting his wife. She’s had enough pain in her life.” Ann opened her eyes again, revealing old hurt. “He’s not gentle when he’s angry.
“I was fifteen. He was older. Quill knew him from their military training and court. Godown rest their souls, our mother had died and our father… his mind never came back after a horse kicked him in the head and he took wound fever. Quill already knew that he’d marry Lady Marie Peilov, so Father’s legal incompetence had no effect on that, thanks be. But it left me at loose ends, except that with Quill trying to mange all of the Starland, I had to take over Starheart. And then the raids got worse as the war shifted to the south.” She spread her hands in a shrug. “Who has time to worry about finding a husband when they are running a duchy and caring for a dying father?
“That was how things stood when Quill and I went to winter court. I’d never been to court, and Quill had matters to attend to, so he couldn’t be with me. I didn’t know anything about the young men, who to trust or who to avoid, or that I needed a chaperone. Leo.” Ann stopped and took a deep breath, twisting the handkerchief back and forth. “Leo, he
offered to help me learn court manners and ways. And he did. But he also gave me little gifts, petted my hands, made me feel as if the sun rose and set in his smile.” She smiled as she spoke and Elizabeth wondered just how charming this Leo must have been.
“Well. I did not know that his parents had already arranged a match for him, or that he was playing with me, trying to see if he could—” She stopped. “Quill found out. He couldn’t confront Leo in public, because he couldn’t risk alienating Leo’s family. So he told me about Leo being engaged. Told me to return his gifts and to stay at Starland House until we returned to Starheart. I couldn’t do it. I confronted Leo in private, in one of the side rooms at Peilov House during a dance. He hit me, shook me so hard his grip left bruises on my arms. Then he laughed at me, called me a foolish little ninny and a lightskirt. Said I should remember what he’d given me, because no one else would ever touch me.
“Two of his cousins were listening outside the room and told everyone at the dance that I’d seduced Leo in order to marry him.” Now Ann snarled, shaking with pure rage. “I didn’t understand what they meant until one of the dowagers took me aside and told me. She sent me to Starland House with one of her maids, so I wouldn’t have to face the crowd.
“Quill never said a word. Not then, at least. He didn’t realize how much damage had been done to my name. Not until the other noble families rebuffed all of his efforts to find me a husband. Maybe it was Godown’s will. Lady Marie was very young; she needed help and her first pregnancies were hard. Now?” She slumped and spread her hands.
Elizabeth told her, “Now we get through harvest, find out what condiments go with roast ox, prepare for winter and for the summer campaign season, unless Laurence thinks he can fight in winter, and see if Lazlo might be interested in marriage.” She was teasing, just a little.