S. Stirling - A Meeting At Corvallis

A crowd was already gathering from the homes and cottages along the single patched asphalt street of the settlement below Montinore Manor, drawn from wheel and loom and garden hoe and workbench by the noise and the gear and the prospect of a break in the dull round of days. There were three hundred souls in the village, a little more than average, most of them here on the Saturday half-holiday: holiday meaning for most it was time to do for themselves and their families instead of the landholder. A few in the crowd were probably servants from the manor or castle from the embroidered tabards, and a pair were off-duty soldiers in the padded gambesons usually worn below armor for protection, and now keeping their owners warm against the spring evening. She looked around, deliberately waking her memories; when you moved every couple of days that was necessary, or you could get lost because your mind used its map of some other familiar place.

Yes, there was a glimpse of white off to the north and west, over low, rolling hills covered in leafy rows of vines-the manor house, a pre-Change mansion that had been the center of a vineyard estate. A little more west of north, and the brutal exclamation point of the tower of Castle Ath reared over a low hill, flying the black-and-red of the Lord Protector and the more complex heraldry of the new baronet; mountains green and forested rose beyond, and to the west. That was all demesne land. South more vineyards, east the old railroad tracks and the five open fields where the tenants had their strips of land, looking more settled every time they visited as the trees planted along their edges grew.

Hmmm, Estella thought, considering as she danced. They're better-dressed than last time. Especially the peons. More shoes, too. And the place looks tidier, the church has been painted. As we heard, there's a new broom here:

The fiddle squealed on as Papa unrolled the awnings above the slanted steplike trays of their goods. He claimed to have a little gitano blood, but it was probably not true, though she and her brothers looked the part-which in his rare moments of candor he admitted was what you got when you crossed Sonoran mestizo with small-town Arizona Anglo. The half-believed claim had gotten them help that let them live through the Change-she remembered little of that, since she had been barely ten-and nowadays some of the other tinerants were the genuine article, and it was the fashion among the rest to imitate it. Hiding in plain sight; if you were suspect and despised because you were a tinerant and a gypsy, you'd be less likely to be suspected of witchcraft.

Other than size Montinore village was similar to hundreds of others in Portland's territories, which was no accident; they were built to a standard pattern out of the Lord Protector's history books. The church was brick, and a few of the free-tenant houses were pre-Change, ordinary frame structures covered in clapboard. Others had been moved here, hauled with ox-teams or disassembled and rebuilt. The peon cottages were all new-built from salvaged materials, one room and a loft, with a toolshed and chicken coop attached. Each house was on its own garden plot, a long narrow rectangle stretching back from the road; the tenant farmhouses had barns and byres attached on their larger allotments. There was a mill here, built on a water-furrow from a dam on the creek a few hundred yards away; the wheel wasn't turning right now. The bailiff's house stood near it, and the miller's, the two best in the village with the priest's cottage right behind.

"Come buy!" Estella shouted again. "Come buy!"

Suddenly an off-duty soldier grabbed her around the waist from behind, hands groping at her breasts. "I'll buy!" he said, laughing.

You think that's funny, pig? Let's see how you laugh at this. But no, better not be too emphatic.

Fortunately he wasn't wearing his hauberk, which would make it easier to reach behind and grab so: and then he howled and let her go.

"That would be renting," she said sweetly, as he bent and rubbed at himself and laughed-it had been more of a playful tweak than a real wrench-and-twist. "Ask someone else, soldier, and don't believe all the stories you hear about tinerant girls."

Then the steward was there holding his white staff, with the fat bailiff in tow; she let the tambourine fall silent along with the fiddle. Both were looking more sour-faced than usual, and the bailiff's even more loathsome son looked more like a sulky boar than he had the time before.

"You have your permit?" Wielman said.

Her father bowed-the whole family did, except for Estella and her mother, who curtsied. Then he produced the stamped, signed authorization they had for travel and petty trade; it was countersigned by a bishop and several priests, all of them deceived by the ostentatious piety of the Maldonado family. Such permits were something the PPA gave out only grudgingly, and only because they knew that otherwise swapping and barter would go on underground.

Which they do anyway, Estella thought. Along with a good deal else, by the Lord and Lady!

"You can stay four days and nights," he said at last, after checking that the signatures were up-to-date and taking the bag of "gifts" her father offered, along with the regulation fee; the bailiff got another. "We have a new lord: lady: here, so be careful. I don't have the right of the High Justice, but she does."

And nobody would care if she used it on tinerant trash, Estella thought, grim behind her smile.

Later that night Estella walked away from the bonfire where a sudden ah from the gathered crowd said her brother Carlos had swallowed the sword. They had done well today, in coin and in supplies and barter-the miller had sold them three bolts of the lovely woolen twill that his daughters wove and two great sacks of shelled filberts in return for a set of big metalworker's files salvaged from the ruins of Olympia, and they'd picked up enough flour, spuds and flitches of bacon and hams to last for two weeks in trade for sundries. Tomorrow they would start repairing pots and making shoes:

And speaking of the miller and his daughter, she thought with a smile. It will be good to see Delia again. I could use cheering up, and she is fun.

Delia waited behind the millrace scaffolding, where deep shadow made the night even blacker, and the fires and noise were comfortably distant; if anyone noticed she'd gone from the crowd around the wagon, they'd suspect the reason, though hopefully not the person, for she'd cheerfully flirted with half a dozen, including the undiscouraged soldier. Water gurgled by overhead, making the spring night chilly and damper than elsewhere, with a scent of wet earth and soaked wood; Estella pulled her shawl over her shoulders.

But she can get us in the mill, which has a nice comfortable pile of grain sacks, she thought with a warm glow of anticipation.

They exchanged the murmured recognition signals, as much to cater to the younger woman's sense of drama as from real need-both had been raised witches-and the ritual kiss of greeting; both were tailored to be meaningless to someone outside the hidden Coven network. When she tried for a real kiss, though:

Estella laughed ruefully at the dodge; a relationship conducted at month-long intervals just didn't have a long shelf life.

"Well, you've found someone at last," she said, taking the other by the hands and giving them a squeeze. "Alas!"

"Yes, I have: can we still be friends? You're not angry?"

"Of course we'll be friends! We always were, for years before we were lovers. And I always said I couldn't be here for more than visits, remember. We were lucky to have what we had; the memory will always be warm."

Delia grinned in the darkness. "Well, now maybe I should be angry! Aren't you sad at all? Disappointed?"