David Farland - Beyond the Gate

For one moment, no one spoke, then suddenly everyone was talking.

Thomas hurried Maggie into the kitchens, and began pulling sacks of flour and sugar out onto the mixing table. He said urgently, “Old John Mahoney must have had someone who helped out during his busy season. You’ll need to round up those folks-anyone who’s handy at cooking and serving. Then you had better go to the butcher and buy a pig and a goose and get them roasting. We’ll need dinner for a hundred tonight.”

“A hundred?” Maggie said in astonishment.

“Aye,” Thomas said with a wink. “At the very least. I know you resent me, but I promise you, Maggie, I’ll make you a fortune at this inn. Between my singing, and heavenly hosts on display-this place will be a madhouse within a fortnight!”

And Maggie said in frustration, “The larder is empty and I don’t have coin to buy so much food. The shops are closed or closing for the night-” Thomas reached to his belt and pulled out his purse, heavy with coins. “Hurry, then, and buy what you can for tonight and tomorrow.”

Then he rushed into the night, out the back door. Maggie grabbed her shawl and ran to the butcher’s and the miller’s. She saw Thomas and four men go rumbling off into the dark in a wagon moments later, and half wished that the wights would take them all.

In an hour the town was bustling and the inn was deluged. Whole families who had never set foot in the inn were too flustered to fix dinner for themselves, and they pounded on the tables. Maggie muscled a hundred-pound pig onto the spit, planning to carve off the meat as fast as it roasted. Ann Dilley came in of her own accord and began cooking potatoes and loaves of bread, while Ann’s daughters waited tables.

Gallen came in just after dark, and he took Maggie’s hand, went into the kitchen with her, and stood beside the woodbox. “What is this I hear? You’ve got an uncle who has called off our marriage-and brought the bodies of a Vanquisher and one of Everynne’s guards into town, all in the same afternoon?”

“Aye,” Maggie said angrily. “The jolly old bugger. He’s paid Father Brian to call off the marriage!”

Ann Dilley rushed into the room at that moment, hurried past them. “You might as well bring the ale and wine out front and save us some trips,” she said, grabbing a small keg of whiskey, then she hurried out.

“I’ll have a word with your uncle,” Gallen said.

“Don’t stab him!” Maggie said, suddenly fearful at the note of anger in his voice.

Gallen looked at her askance. “Stab him? What do you take me for?”

Maggie realized it had been an unwarranted thought, but tried to explain. “You never know.” She shook her head. “He’s the damnedest man I’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting. I’ve thought of stabbing him today-more than once!”

“Well, don’t!” Gallen laughed. Ann Dilley plodded back into the room, frowned at Maggie as she got a flagon of wine and pulled some rolls from the oven. “Look, I can tell you’re busy,” Gallen said. “Let’s talk tonight, after you close up. It’s important.”

Gallen left.

Maggie was grateful when the wagon rolled into town moments later, and for a while nearly everyone cleared out while Thomas displayed the corpses in the stable. That gave time for the meat to cook. And yet, it was only the beginning of the night. Soon the tables began to fill with villagers from An Cochan, three miles away. They were coming as fast as they heard the news, walking over the mountain road by lantern light, the wights be damned, bringing whole families by wagon.

Thomas raised the price on his rooms and food and liquor and stabling, and by eleven he was selling sleeping space on the floor of the common room, and he’d rented out the lawn to campers.

The amount of work to be done piled up like snow before an avalanche, ready to topple at any moment. There was more work than twenty people could do. Maggie was forced to just grit her teeth and bear it. She cooked and served dinner, took money, cleaned the cooking pots, churned the butter, and prepared the ingredients for breakfast. By twelve-thirty the common room was more crowded than she’d ever seen it, and Gallen came to help her wash dishes, while every other person who’d ever lent a hand during the traveling season helped prepare food for the morrow.

Maggie could sense that Gallen wanted to speak to her as he worked, but with a dozen people bustling in and out of the room, he didn’t dare. There was a certain tenseness in his movements, and twice she put her wet arms around him to hug him, give him comfort, wondering what was on his mind.

By two in the morning, the place was a madhouse-folks had come from twelve miles away, and Maggie wondered at how they were all making the trip so fast, on such a dark night.

They closed the common room then, with four dozen folks asleep on the floor, and every bed in the house taken. Thomas came to the kitchens. “Leave the rest of those dishes until morning, darlin’,” Thomas said. “I’d like you to lock up the stable. I don’t want folks mucking about there in the middle of the night.”

“And what will you be doing, your lordship?” Maggie asked. Thomas hefted a bag of coins-more money than Maggie had ever seen in one spot. “I’ll be tallying receipts.”

“Uncle Thomas,” Maggie said angrily, “what will you be doing with all that money? It’s a shame before God for a man to make so much in one day! Why, it would serve you right if someone knocked you in the head and danced off with your purse!”

Thomas laughed. “As the good Lord said, ‘The poor you have with you always’-and might I add, they’re always red-faced indignant when someone else falls into a bit of money. So don’t go getting all self-righteous on me, Maggie Flynn. After all: you own this inn. I’m just helping you run it, until you’re eighteen. I’ll take a cut for showing the demon, but the vast majority of this fortune is yours!”

“And you can have it all, for all that I care!” Maggie said. “And the inn with it!” For I’m going away, and plan never to return, she wanted to say. Thomas grinned. “Oh, you’re speaking out of your anger and weariness. Get some sleep, and your head will be clearer in the morning.” Thomas looked at Gallen as if he’d just seen him. “This purse would make a fine start for a dowry, don’t you think, Mr. O’Day?”

“Aye,” Gallen nodded. “A start.”

“I meant to have a talk with you, Mr. O’Day, about your intentions toward my niece-”

“Let’s talk, then.” Gallen pulled a worn chair away from the cutting table. The cooking fire was nearly out, and the oil lamp above the sinks was burning low so that Gallen was just a shadow moving in the dark.

“I know you’re in a hurry, young man. In a hurry to talk, in a hurry to marry my niece. But it would be impolitic to hurry the marriage, and as for the talk-I’m afraid I’m all stove in for the night,” Thomas said. “Besides, it wouldn’t be proper to discuss the matter in front of her … you know.” He nodded toward Maggie.

“I’m not some heifer that you’ll be bartering over,” Maggie said. “I should have a say in any deals you go making. It’s my money you’ll be spending for the dowry!”

“I didn’t say you were some heifer,” Thomas growled. “But you’re young. You’re just too damned young, and your mind isn’t as fully developed as”-he waved vaguely toward her breasts-“the rest of your body. So I’d like to have a delicate talk with Gallen, man-to-man, and I don’t need your meddling!”

Maggie stared hard at him, and she could feel her face burning. She wanted to scream or shove him into the big baking oven in the corner till his skin turned black, but she only glared at him.