HOME | DD

Description
--41--

If Nicholas had understood the true severity of his situation, he would have realized that the manor servants had his life in their hands. As it was, he understood enough that when Aimeric took him to the study for a serious discussion of the next stage of the extended plan, he knew he could not keep the identity of the manor's first paying guest to himself.

After two more discussions with his far wiser Steward, Nicholas broke the news carefully to Mardet alone, trusting that his own uncertainty with the revision would make him sound as though he still had thinking to do. Later, Aimeric mentioned it casually to a Fieldman, and between him and the Cook, word spread to everyone else by dinnertime.

Nicholas hesitated when he stepped out of the kitchen that evening and saw the rows of stony faces on either side of the tables. He had to swallow his nerves before finding a seat, and by then Mardet had come to his rescue.

"No politics during dinner tonight," she said, threatening the irate-looking Houseman with her steaming spoon before reapplying it to the stew. Accordingly, everyone cleaned and cleared their trenchers in record time, and as soon as the last servant finished in the kitchen, Marn brought up the business.

"Boy, I know you're a few bushels short of a harvest, but I thought everyone at least had a brain."

"I have got a--"

"Marn," Aimeric interrupted. "We're going to discuss this like civilized people or we're not going to discuss it at all. Now, I've already started planning prep--"

"I beg your pardon, Steward," Housemaid snapped, "but you have no idea what kind of mischief that woman will bring to this manor."

"The Lady is an old, blind, widow!" Nicholas protested. "How could she possibly be much trouble?"

"Mardet said you weren't sure about bringing her yet," a Fieldman said accusingly.

"I'm not, really, but--"

"Good, then this is over before it's begun," Marn said. "So you can stop looking to Steward to save your sorry Merchant hide."

"Actually, Marn," Aimeric said, sounding vaguely amused. "Offering the Lady widow permanent lodgings with us was my idea."

"Well then, forgive me, Steward. I'm sure the fact that you thought to invite her will change the matter a great deal."

The Housemaid, Sallin, glared at Marn in warning.

"How can you all be afraid of one old woman?" Nicholas asked, perplexed. "If she's blind, she won't be able to move even as much as someone her age could, so she shouldn't get in the way too much, should she?"

"You have no idea," Elya said, and the gravity of her pronouncement brought Nicholas up short. "Back when Thomas hired us all, he didn't bring us right to the manor. He arranged with the Lady for us to stay at her house until he had filled all the positions." Nicholas nodded, remembering Darin's speculation that Thomas wanted to keep word of his takeover from spreading. "We should have just stayed there quietly, doing a few chores in thanks and keeping out of the way, but the Lady put us all to work."

"Coming to Thomas was a relief," Mardet murmured, quiet enough that Nicholas would not have heard if he had not been sitting right next to her.

"She had the Fieldmen weed all her untended fields," Marn continued for the Weaver. "She had to try every dish that Cook knew how to make before we moved out, Weaver had to mend all the torn furniture and ripped curtains that the Lady could still see, and Sallin and I had to mend, patch, polish, sweep, and clean everything. She wanted Herdsman to breed her barren old hound and Groundsman to get rid of every rabbit, gopher, mole, wasp, and ant on her property. Marshal had to tend to a horse and barn that hadn't been used in years. What else have I forgotten?"

"That does sound rather excessive," Nicholas conceded before someone else could take up the litany of the Lady's demands. "But this time you'd be under Aimeric's--"

"We didn't get a scrap of pay or thanks, just dissatisfaction and demands for more work. We would've dropped if her sight hadn't been slipping enough to let us cut some corners to get it all done."

"But like I said, Aimeric's in char--"

"She hit mama." All eyes turned to Licia. "The Lady hit mama with her stick."

"She hit all of us," Mardet muttered, flushing at the attention.

"And she's not gonna stop just because she's a guest in your house," Marn finished.

Everyone was silent. Nicholas did not know what to think except that his plan was falling apart now, after so much planning and waiting, now, when he was so close to getting back everything he deserved.

"How old is she?" Aimeric asked from the depths of his own thoughts.

"On past eighty," the Groundsman offered.

Nicholas's eyebrows shot up and Aimeric whistled one long, low note. "I'd be lucky to see sixty," the Steward said in awe.

"And her Housemaid forty, at the rate the Lady wields her cane," Elya said.

"Well then..." Aimerc rubbed his thumb over the edges of the scars along his jaw. "If she's that old, surely she can't live much longer."

Warm gratitude rushed into Nicholas's heart. "That's right. At most we'd only have to deal with her for a few years."

"She'll go on living just to spite you," a Fieldman snorted.

"And why do we have to deal with her at all?" Marn demanded. "What about those nobles who were going to stay with us?"

"We can't afford it," Aimeric said. "We need good candles, finer spices for food, salt, good soap--"

"Let the Master speak for himself," Marn snapped. "If he wants us to keep quiet, he'd better have good reason--"

"Nick didn't come up with the Lady widow." Aimeric sounded more annoyed than angry, to Nicholas's confusion. "His 'Master's plan' was to pull in any rag Lordling and try to get a fair price out of each one, but I see more sense in taking steady rent from one person who we know has money."

"And how do we know that?" the Marshal said mockingly.

Aimeric smirked. "You forget that the old Master had more than adequate reason to hire me. Aside from the regular skills of Stewardship, I happen to know a great many people--or people who know people--who live in this part of the Forest's edge. One of those is an old friend's cousin--"

"How old?" Nicholas asked, worried about involving someone related to a royal guard.

"Older than you, so lace your lips. Anyway, this friend's cousin is the Lady's Housemaid and, as it happens, her last remaining servant."

"Oh, and we all knew everything about the old Master's expenses," Marn sneered.

"She's the Lady's only servant, sheep brain. She's doing all the jobs there are to do in a manor, and with a blind mistress, that means she's also managing the money…and she had goldens with her at the spring market." This piece of news impressed the servants enough for Aimeric to explain, "The Lady moved out to the Forest with her Lord when they were Mardet's age, and they never left again. Some of you must have heard the stories from her old servants at Scholars' week, at least! They were good business people, and they had enough money when they were young to buy half the country if they ever took their eyes off each other and grew some ambition, so the old king bribed them with land to get them out of the way. This isn't just any old Lady--this is both the wealthiest and most unknown woman in Tollan."

"How do we know the King isn't still watching her?" Nicholas asked.

Aimeric shot him a withering look. "Aside from having served in the King's personal guard and befriended the oldest gossipy guard master? Really, Nick?

"So to sum up," Aimeric said, raising a fist to count off each point. "Our potential client is a widowed woman without a friend in the world, she's more than wealthy enough to pay a substantial living fee, has a single servant who could prob'ly use our help, and is so old that she can't last much longer. But," he said, raising one finger of his other hand, "she's crazy."

"What if she does die?" the Herdsman asked suddenly. "What do we do then?"

"We'll skin that wolf when it's dead."

"Aimeric!" the Herdsman cried, shocked.

The Steward rolled his eyes. "Fine, fine," he sighed. "Then we'll cross that creek when it's dry. Is that saying any better?"

As when Nicholas had presented the extended part of his first--what should have been his last--plan in the family burial clearing, most of the servants seemed ready to consider their options. Houseman Marn, however, was not ready to back down.

"I still don't see why it has to be that woman," he grumbled.

"Look..." Aimeric's annoyance seemed more appropriately directed now, Nicholas thought. "There aren't any nobles just passing through this area. There's nothing in this part of the country except the road to Rhin, and hardly anyone uses that. And even if they did, any noble who stayed here would expect the same comfort they had in their own manor, so we'd need to buy supplies before we could accept anyone. But the Lady'll pay by the month, and by the time we could even get word out to nobles, we'll already have twice as much off her as our whole harvest would bring in."

"Marn." Mardet reached across the table to lay her hand on his. "It sounds like this really is the quickest way."

Marn yanked his hand from hers. "Just because it's easiest," he said as he stood and stepped out from the bench, "doesn't mean it's best."

--42--

"You wouldn't have won that vote if it wasn't for Aimeric," Mardet pointed out a few days later while she washed dishes.

"I wouldn't have needed that vote if it wasn't for Aimierc," Nicholas grumbled. "Honestly, what's the point of being a manor Master if I can't make the important decisions?"

"You have to earn that right," Mardet said softly. "Don't stop drying."

"No other manor Master has to do it."

"No other manor Master had to come so far back around into his own house," she pointed out. "Really, Nick, you should be proud of how far you've come."

"But it's gotten me nowhere. I'm back home, but it's still not mine... and it might be even less mine if I can't pull off a venture in two years."

Mardet sighed as she handed off a small plate, but when Nicholas took it, she did not let go. He met her eyes, confused, only to see her smiling.

"Nicholas, I can tell you with confidence that I am not the only one working here who would far rather have a kind and wealthy manor master than try to figure out how to share a huge house that we can't fill and land that we can't work if we divide it." She let the dish go and looked him up and down before turning her face back to her washing. "You're a decent young man, so far as we know. Just do what's right and you won't go wrong."

"I just wish Aimeric didn't have to be the messenger to the Lady and leave me to answer everyone's questions about his idea."

"Why, Nick," Mardet said with a teasing smile. "Don't you know that an inferior can only pass on commands, never give them?"

Nicholas frowned as he put the dish back in its place on a shelf. He had never heard that rule spoken out loud before, but as he thought about it, he supposed it must be true.

--43--

The night before the second plan, Nicholas ransacked the desk in the study for the key to the library cabinets, opened the case near the floor in the corner, and removed the ledgers one by one until he at last withdrew the Book of Tales. For the illiterate people who had worked on the manor, it looked no different from any of the other volumes in the cabinet, so it had been returned to the very same place and position once the renovation was complete.

The book was smaller and lighter in Nicholas's arms than he remembered, but it still felt right when he held it tight against his chest to bring it to the room that held his childhood memories. Placing it on the bed, he retrieved Thomas's book of etiquette and pulled out the two folded pages. He tried to smooth the crease with his hand, stopped when he realized that it might hurt the ink, and picked up the Book of Tales, holding it with care as he turned the pages one by one in search of the incomplete stories. When at last he found them, he picked up the two torn pages and slipped them back where they belonged, lining them up with the rest of the pages as he slowly closed the book.

Done at last, he took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh and a smile, then looked out into the hall to survey the master's room door on the other side of the landing. He had moved in deference to the Lady's title, and because it would have been unseemly for a manor master to sleep with the servants. Now everything was in place, just as it should have been. The old furniture, books, and display goods mingled with the new in just such a way that Nicholas thought he might own a piece of perfection. He did not know why he felt so content--with the coming week's planned move-in, he certainly had no right to--but he did. And that feeling, he knew, was the one thing that his brother had wanted so badly and failed to obtain.

Thomas had tried to defy tradition by stealing the family business from the youngest child and all he had done, in the end, was to delay it a little. Nicholas was the heir, just as he was supposed to be; the manor was as much his home as it had always been, if not more so; the servants he had considered beneath him were helping raise one of their own to raise themselves; the pages Thomas had torn from the Book of Tales were back where they belonged. Nicholas's smile widened with each thought. It was a good thing he had gone ahead and killed Thomas. If he could have seen what his little brother was doing with the manor, he would probably have died in a fit of rage. And that, Nicholas thought smugly, would not be nearly so satisfying.

Description
--41--

If Nicholas had understood the true severity of his situation, he would have realized that the manor servants had his life in their hands. As it was, he understood enough that when Aimeric took him to the study for a serious discussion of the next stage of the extended plan, he knew he could not keep the identity of the manor's first paying guest to himself.

After two more discussions with his far wiser Steward, Nicholas broke the news carefully to Mardet alone, trusting that his own uncertainty with the revision would make him sound as though he still had thinking to do. Later, Aimeric mentioned it casually to a Fieldman, and between him and the Cook, word spread to everyone else by dinnertime.

Nicholas hesitated when he stepped out of the kitchen that evening and saw the rows of stony faces on either side of the tables. He had to swallow his nerves before finding a seat, and by then Mardet had come to his rescue.

"No politics during dinner tonight," she said, threatening the irate-looking Houseman with her steaming spoon before reapplying it to the stew. Accordingly, everyone cleaned and cleared their trenchers in record time, and as soon as the last servant finished in the kitchen, Marn brought up the business.

"Boy, I know you're a few bushels short of a harvest, but I thought everyone at least had a brain."

"I have got a--"

"Marn," Aimeric interrupted. "We're going to discuss this like civilized people or we're not going to discuss it at all. Now, I've already started planning prep--"

"I beg your pardon, Steward," Housemaid snapped, "but you have no idea what kind of mischief that woman will bring to this manor."

"The Lady is an old, blind, widow!" Nicholas protested. "How could she possibly be much trouble?"

"Mardet said you weren't sure about bringing her yet," a Fieldman said accusingly.

"I'm not, really, but--"

"Good, then this is over before it's begun," Marn said. "So you can stop looking to Steward to save your sorry Merchant hide."

"Actually, Marn," Aimeric said, sounding vaguely amused. "Offering the Lady widow permanent lodgings with us was my idea."

"Well then, forgive me, Steward. I'm sure the fact that you thought to invite her will change the matter a great deal."

The Housemaid, Sallin, glared at Marn in warning.

"How can you all be afraid of one old woman?" Nicholas asked, perplexed. "If she's blind, she won't be able to move even as much as someone her age could, so she shouldn't get in the way too much, should she?"

"You have no idea," Elya said, and the gravity of her pronouncement brought Nicholas up short. "Back when Thomas hired us all, he didn't bring us right to the manor. He arranged with the Lady for us to stay at her house until he had filled all the positions." Nicholas nodded, remembering Darin's speculation that Thomas wanted to keep word of his takeover from spreading. "We should have just stayed there quietly, doing a few chores in thanks and keeping out of the way, but the Lady put us all to work."

"Coming to Thomas was a relief," Mardet murmured, quiet enough that Nicholas would not have heard if he had not been sitting right next to her.

"She had the Fieldmen weed all her untended fields," Marn continued for the Weaver. "She had to try every dish that Cook knew how to make before we moved out, Weaver had to mend all the torn furniture and ripped curtains that the Lady could still see, and Sallin and I had to mend, patch, polish, sweep, and clean everything. She wanted Herdsman to breed her barren old hound and Groundsman to get rid of every rabbit, gopher, mole, wasp, and ant on her property. Marshal had to tend to a horse and barn that hadn't been used in years. What else have I forgotten?"

"That does sound rather excessive," Nicholas conceded before someone else could take up the litany of the Lady's demands. "But this time you'd be under Aimeric's--"

"We didn't get a scrap of pay or thanks, just dissatisfaction and demands for more work. We would've dropped if her sight hadn't been slipping enough to let us cut some corners to get it all done."

"But like I said, Aimeric's in char--"

"She hit mama." All eyes turned to Licia. "The Lady hit mama with her stick."

"She hit all of us," Mardet muttered, flushing at the attention.

"And she's not gonna stop just because she's a guest in your house," Marn finished.

Everyone was silent. Nicholas did not know what to think except that his plan was falling apart now, after so much planning and waiting, now, when he was so close to getting back everything he deserved.

"How old is she?" Aimeric asked from the depths of his own thoughts.

"On past eighty," the Groundsman offered.

Nicholas's eyebrows shot up and Aimeric whistled one long, low note. "I'd be lucky to see sixty," the Steward said in awe.

"And her Housemaid forty, at the rate the Lady wields her cane," Elya said.

"Well then..." Aimerc rubbed his thumb over the edges of the scars along his jaw. "If she's that old, surely she can't live much longer."

Warm gratitude rushed into Nicholas's heart. "That's right. At most we'd only have to deal with her for a few years."

"She'll go on living just to spite you," a Fieldman snorted.

"And why do we have to deal with her at all?" Marn demanded. "What about those nobles who were going to stay with us?"

"We can't afford it," Aimeric said. "We need good candles, finer spices for food, salt, good soap--"

"Let the Master speak for himself," Marn snapped. "If he wants us to keep quiet, he'd better have good reason--"

"Nick didn't come up with the Lady widow." Aimeric sounded more annoyed than angry, to Nicholas's confusion. "His 'Master's plan' was to pull in any rag Lordling and try to get a fair price out of each one, but I see more sense in taking steady rent from one person who we know has money."

"And how do we know that?" the Marshal said mockingly.

Aimeric smirked. "You forget that the old Master had more than adequate reason to hire me. Aside from the regular skills of Stewardship, I happen to know a great many people--or people who know people--who live in this part of the Forest's edge. One of those is an old friend's cousin--"

"How old?" Nicholas asked, worried about involving someone related to a royal guard.

"Older than you, so lace your lips. Anyway, this friend's cousin is the Lady's Housemaid and, as it happens, her last remaining servant."

"Oh, and we all knew everything about the old Master's expenses," Marn sneered.

"She's the Lady's only servant, sheep brain. She's doing all the jobs there are to do in a manor, and with a blind mistress, that means she's also managing the money…and she had goldens with her at the spring market." This piece of news impressed the servants enough for Aimeric to explain, "The Lady moved out to the Forest with her Lord when they were Mardet's age, and they never left again. Some of you must have heard the stories from her old servants at Scholars' week, at least! They were good business people, and they had enough money when they were young to buy half the country if they ever took their eyes off each other and grew some ambition, so the old king bribed them with land to get them out of the way. This isn't just any old Lady--this is both the wealthiest and most unknown woman in Tollan."

"How do we know the King isn't still watching her?" Nicholas asked.

Aimeric shot him a withering look. "Aside from having served in the King's personal guard and befriended the oldest gossipy guard master? Really, Nick?

"So to sum up," Aimeric said, raising a fist to count off each point. "Our potential client is a widowed woman without a friend in the world, she's more than wealthy enough to pay a substantial living fee, has a single servant who could prob'ly use our help, and is so old that she can't last much longer. But," he said, raising one finger of his other hand, "she's crazy."

"What if she does die?" the Herdsman asked suddenly. "What do we do then?"

"We'll skin that wolf when it's dead."

"Aimeric!" the Herdsman cried, shocked.

The Steward rolled his eyes. "Fine, fine," he sighed. "Then we'll cross that creek when it's dry. Is that saying any better?"

As when Nicholas had presented the extended part of his first--what should have been his last--plan in the family burial clearing, most of the servants seemed ready to consider their options. Houseman Marn, however, was not ready to back down.

"I still don't see why it has to be that woman," he grumbled.

"Look..." Aimeric's annoyance seemed more appropriately directed now, Nicholas thought. "There aren't any nobles just passing through this area. There's nothing in this part of the country except the road to Rhin, and hardly anyone uses that. And even if they did, any noble who stayed here would expect the same comfort they had in their own manor, so we'd need to buy supplies before we could accept anyone. But the Lady'll pay by the month, and by the time we could even get word out to nobles, we'll already have twice as much off her as our whole harvest would bring in."

"Marn." Mardet reached across the table to lay her hand on his. "It sounds like this really is the quickest way."

Marn yanked his hand from hers. "Just because it's easiest," he said as he stood and stepped out from the bench, "doesn't mean it's best."

--42--

"You wouldn't have won that vote if it wasn't for Aimeric," Mardet pointed out a few days later while she washed dishes.

"I wouldn't have needed that vote if it wasn't for Aimierc," Nicholas grumbled. "Honestly, what's the point of being a manor Master if I can't make the important decisions?"

"You have to earn that right," Mardet said softly. "Don't stop drying."

"No other manor Master has to do it."

"No other manor Master had to come so far back around into his own house," she pointed out. "Really, Nick, you should be proud of how far you've come."

"But it's gotten me nowhere. I'm back home, but it's still not mine... and it might be even less mine if I can't pull off a venture in two years."

Mardet sighed as she handed off a small plate, but when Nicholas took it, she did not let go. He met her eyes, confused, only to see her smiling.

"Nicholas, I can tell you with confidence that I am not the only one working here who would far rather have a kind and wealthy manor master than try to figure out how to share a huge house that we can't fill and land that we can't work if we divide it." She let the dish go and looked him up and down before turning her face back to her washing. "You're a decent young man, so far as we know. Just do what's right and you won't go wrong."

"I just wish Aimeric didn't have to be the messenger to the Lady and leave me to answer everyone's questions about his idea."

"Why, Nick," Mardet said with a teasing smile. "Don't you know that an inferior can only pass on commands, never give them?"

Nicholas frowned as he put the dish back in its place on a shelf. He had never heard that rule spoken out loud before, but as he thought about it, he supposed it must be true.

--43--

The night before the second plan, Nicholas ransacked the desk in the study for the key to the library cabinets, opened the case near the floor in the corner, and removed the ledgers one by one until he at last withdrew the Book of Tales. For the illiterate people who had worked on the manor, it looked no different from any of the other volumes in the cabinet, so it had been returned to the very same place and position once the renovation was complete.

The book was smaller and lighter in Nicholas's arms than he remembered, but it still felt right when he held it tight against his chest to bring it to the room that held his childhood memories. Placing it on the bed, he retrieved Thomas's book of etiquette and pulled out the two folded pages. He tried to smooth the crease with his hand, stopped when he realized that it might hurt the ink, and picked up the Book of Tales, holding it with care as he turned the pages one by one in search of the incomplete stories. When at last he found them, he picked up the two torn pages and slipped them back where they belonged, lining them up with the rest of the pages as he slowly closed the book.

Done at last, he took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh and a smile, then looked out into the hall to survey the master's room door on the other side of the landing. He had moved in deference to the Lady's title, and because it would have been unseemly for a manor master to sleep with the servants. Now everything was in place, just as it should have been. The old furniture, books, and display goods mingled with the new in just such a way that Nicholas thought he might own a piece of perfection. He did not know why he felt so content--with the coming week's planned move-in, he certainly had no right to--but he did. And that feeling, he knew, was the one thing that his brother had wanted so badly and failed to obtain.

Thomas had tried to defy tradition by stealing the family business from the youngest child and all he had done, in the end, was to delay it a little. Nicholas was the heir, just as he was supposed to be; the manor was as much his home as it had always been, if not more so; the servants he had considered beneath him were helping raise one of their own to raise themselves; the pages Thomas had torn from the Book of Tales were back where they belonged. Nicholas's smile widened with each thought. It was a good thing he had gone ahead and killed Thomas. If he could have seen what his little brother was doing with the manor, he would probably have died in a fit of rage. And that, Nicholas thought smugly, would not be nearly so satisfying.