S. Stirling - The Given Sacrifice

“And I,” Rigobert said.

“No better examples,” Rudi said sincerely; Tiphaine had trained him , and if de Stafford wasn’t quite at her level he was still very good indeed.

Delia sighed. “We’ll see in a few years, then.”

The salads were removed, and followed by roast suckling pig with honey chipotle glaze, florets of baked potato with flecks of caramelized onion, steamed colored beets with a delicate cream sauce, and new asparagus. .

Let’s let everyone get comfortably full and into what the Dúnedain call the filling-up-the-corners stage before we get on to the more dramatic part, for all love, Rudi thought.

• • •

“Did you hear that, Herry?” Órlaith whispered. “You can be a knight!”

She whispered very carefully , because the gallery around the hall hadn’t been furnished yet, not even with rugs, and it echoed. They lay on their stomachs side by side, only their eyes over the marble lip, below the carved screens of some pale hard wood that made up the waist-high balustrade. It was densely shadowed now, since the chandeliers hanging from the hammerbeam rafters overhead weren’t lit, only the lamps on the table.

“I knew it,” Heuradys whispered back, or lied. “I’m going to work twice as hard now! I’ll be your liege-knight, Órry, and fight by your side and everything!”

Órlaith nodded solemnly. “Like Da’s companions were, on the Quest,” she said.

Heuradys put a hand on her shoulder for a moment, then said: “Shhh, I want to hear the rest, too. We’re scouting . And it’s funny. . Dad never talks about his parents.”

Órlaith put her finger to her lips; she wanted to hear everything.

“Your harvest looked good,” Órlaith’s father said; the hall was built so that sound travelled well, for during feasts musicians would play up here.

“Thankfully,” Tiphaine said. “Developing this place has been swallowing money, fencing alone costs the earth. About time we got some return.”

Delia nodded. “Sixty bushels of wheat to the acre on the demesne land this season and nearly as well on the tenant strips in the Five Fields, and very well on the barley and lentils. That’s better than we do on Barony Ath out west, though of course there we have the vineyards and orchards and we’re closer to the market in Portland. Fruit trees grow reasonably well here with some watering but there just weren’t any, they didn’t do anything but wheat here apparently in the old days, so we have to start from scratch and you need to find the right varieties just to begin with. I think we can have vines if we select the ground carefully for aspect and frost drainage.”

“We manage in Tucannon, and it’s only a little south of here,” Maugis said. “The Boiseans didn’t damage the vines at St. Grimmond-on-the-Wold, thanks be to St. Urban, though the winery was a wreck.”

“Vines will take a while,” Delia said. “Sheep are much faster and we’re getting twelve pounds per fleece. The bunchgrass here is just fabulous for livestock in general and flocks in particular. It’s a pleasure to watch them eat.”

“Merino?” Mathilda asked.

“Corriedales. The wool fetches nearly as much and the yield is better and they make better mutton carcasses,” Delia said.

“The sheep actually make most of the returns so far-don’t judge the rest of this estate by St. Athena manor, we started here,” Tiphaine added. “Most of the land is still native grazing.”

“I resemble that remark,” Rigobert said. “We’re running six thousand head in our flocks on Barony Pomeroy this year.”

The silent Sir Julio spoke for virtually the first time: “You haven’t worked as hard at your grant as Lady Delia has on this.”

“I’m leaving something for Lioncel to do, now that he’s a belted knight and his father can put him to work,” Rigobert said. “When he gets back from visiting Huon Liu at Gervais. He’s there to attend his friend’s knighting vigil.”

“When he gets back from mooning over Huon’s sister Yseult, you mean, Rigoberto mio ,” Julio said dryly.

“She’s a nice girl, well-dowered, and beautiful. Smart, too,” Rigobert said.

“She is. She is also too old for him, she has an acknowledged lover who carries her favor in the tournies and whom she will almost certainly marry soon, and she does not squash his tender young heart like a bug beneath her shapely foot solely for her brother’s sake because Huon is Lioncel’s brother-in-arms.”

“Hopeless passion is good for a knight’s soul. They say,” Helissent de Grimmond said.

The adults all found that funny, for some reason.

“Lioncel and Huon both did very well in the war as squires,” Mathilda said, and Lady Tiphaine nodded. “And afterwards in the San Luis expedition-that was more diplomacy than fighting, of course. It’s a pity about Yseult in a way, but there you are.”

Maugis de Grimmond spoke: “I’m surprised at how much both of you have gotten done, starting from nothing with land mostly abandoned since the Change or at least since the Foundation Wars or the border skirmishes with Boise back in the old days. We’re only now getting back to where we were before the Prophet’s War on Barony Tucannon, and we brought nearly all the people through, which is the important thing.”

“We moved some younger peasant families in from our manors in the west,” Delia said briskly. “One’s not in line to inherit holdings if we didn’t assart land from the waste or common, which we’re not doing there for obvious reasons.”

“And there were broken men, refugees from the interior, looking for a place where someone would lend them the price of the tools and seed. That’s drying up, now,” Rigobert added. “Lioncel really will still be working on this when he’s my age, particularly since we can’t neglect Forest Grove.”

“And Diomede will be working here,” Delia said. “At least when Yolande and Heuradys come of age they’ll have manors on the estates. That will make it easier for them whatever they decide to do. A girl who’s heir to three manors is in a different position from one with an annuity.”

Órlaith’s father leaned back and cleared his throat as the desserts were brought out; she wiggled a little and nudged Heuradys with her elbow, knowing that was something he did before he surprised people.

There was an ice-cream cake carved into the shape of a ship, which she knew was deliciously studded with hazelnuts and fruits; a smaller but identical one had been served at the children’s dinner earlier. She had gotten an extra two servings to bribe Yolande to watch John while they were supposed to be playing quietly in the nursery-Yolande was nice, but she didn’t like sneaking around as much as Órlaith or her own older sister did.

“You’re both of you”-the King nodded towards Lady Tiphaine and Lord Rigobert-“doing the Protectorate and the High Kingdom well here. Still, this County is mostly a wasteland.”

“Tell me,” Tiphaine said.

“There are still bandits, too,” Rigobert said. “I think some of them may even be deserters from the Cutter army still at large, at least the core of them. There aren’t enough people living here to keep eyes on all the likely pockets where the scum can hide. And you can tell Fred Thurston from me that his patrols don’t do enough in the hill country east of here over the old border. There are jurisdictional bunfights over hot pursuit both ways all the time, and there have been what, four Crown castellans at Campscapell since the war? As soon as one learns his business and the country here he gets reassigned. I’ve lost livestock, and we had a shepherd killed last year.”