by Tim Stead
“I wish to see the servant’s quarters,” he said. “Take me there.”
“But my lord, surely you would like to rest and take refreshment after so long a journey?”
Skal paused before speaking again. He cast a deliberate glance over his shoulder at Tilian; the sort of glance that said: do I have to repeat myself? Tilian dutifully raised an eyebrow, and he did not doubt that the steward and all the servants were aware of the exchange.
“You question me, Parso Elejine?” His voice was quiet, but the threat in it was loud. The steward did not hear it.
“I merely thought…”. He suddenly stopped speaking, as though a memory from long ago had whispered in his ear.
“My man Tilian did tell you that I am the lord of Latter Fetch, did he not?”
“Yes, My lord.”
“The servants’ quarters, then.”
“At once, my lord.”
Skal did not entirely trust his own judgement when it came to people. He had made so many mistakes in the last year, misread so many of those who had changed his life. He needed to talk to Tilian. The boy had a fine touch when it came to people. Skal himself had taken an almost instant dislike to Elejine, but he had no just cause for it. Yet.
The steward shuffled surprisingly quickly towards the house, and Skal gestured to Sara that she should bring the child and follow, and set out after him. Tilian followed, too, the whole party arriving at the servants’ quarters together.
There were clearly grades of habitation. The steward’s own rooms, which Skal insisted on seeing, were surprisingly bare. There was a sitting room with a small desk, but that was clean and showed no sign of the estate papers he would have expected. An unlit fire occupied the wall to the left of the door. The bedroom was also characterless, cold and naked of any signs of life. There was a good sized window in each room, both of which looked out over the woods at the back of the house.
The other rooms declined in size and amenity until at last they saw the rooms of the grooms and maids. These were windowless boxes, each no more that three yards by two, with a narrow bed, a small table and a chair. There was a lamp in each and the ceiling was blackened with soot. They must have been bitter places indeed in the heart of winter.
Skal could not imagine placing Sara Bruff in such a room. He imagined that they were shared with rats, roaches and other vermin. Indeed, he did not think he had ever seen servant’s rooms before, and the conditions shocked him. He stood in the door of one of these holes and glanced across at Sara, who had followed silently throughout the tour. She looked back at him. He could see it in her eyes. This was what she had expected, or something like this. She had lived in a hovel back in the low city, but it had been bigger than this.
A memory stirred. There was something else. He remembered that there was a modest apartment set aside for what his father had called professional visitors – physics, messengers of the better sort, teachers, men and women who lacked position, could not be treated as part of a noble household but never the less could not be treated as servants.
“Show us the guest apartment,” he said.
“Guest apartment?” The Steward seemed confused.
“In the eaves. You know the place.” The man still looked blank, so Skal turned from the door and set off down the corridor, the others hurrying after him. He was sure that he could find it himself. His tutor had stayed in it when they had been here. He remembered going to ask the man a question, knocking on the door. The question and the answer were long forgotten, but he remembered the door, and he remembered that it was at the top of a steep flight of stairs.
There were several flights in Latter Fetch. He was certain that it was not the grand stair. That was a broad, stone creation that allowed a gentle and time consuming ascent. His memory showed him something that twisted with a wooden rail.
He stopped at the servants’ stair and looked at it, comparing it with the badly inked memory of childhood. This was not it. It was too narrow. The risers were too high.
“My Lord, if you would just…”
Skal ignored the steward. He was certain now that the man knew what he was looking for, and thought he knew why he was trying to conceal it. He set off again, slipping down a narrow corridor to the back of the house.
And there it was.
The back stair was just broad enough, just shallow enough to distinguish it from the servants’ flight. He did not hesitate, but bounded up the stairs two at a time. He could hear the others clattering after him on the uncarpeted wood. In moments he had reached the top, and there was the door, looking precisely as he remembered it. Even the paint had not faded. He stood to one side and waited for Elejine.
“Open it,” he said to the steward when he caught up. The old man was out of breath, and took a moment to gather himself.
“I have not the key,” he said.
Skal turned to Tilian. “Open it,” he said. Tilian grinned and stepped forwards. One kick and the thin door split around the lock and burst open. Skal stepped past him into the apartment.
A fire burned fiercely in the grate. Thick rugs covered the floor. This was the parlour, and he could see papers, clothes hung over the back of a comfortable chair. On a small but elegant table there was a thin necked jug full of wine and a glass half emptied. He stepped across and picked up the glass, sniffed at it. Telan wine. Something from the cellars. He recognised pieces of furniture from the main house. There was a small Telan table with blackwood inlay that had stood in the parlour, A clothes chest, iron bound with the figures of birds cut into the iron, that had been in the masters suite.
He stood in the middle of the room, quite still, his arms folded across his chest, staring at the steward. He waited, not speaking, until the old man summoned up his voice and began to speak, but Skal cut him off.
“You have been living here,” he said. The steward nodded, seeming to slump in on himself. Moving into the rooms was a massive breach of propriety, and no lord would tolerate it, no matter how unused the property might be. The steward had his own place. The furniture was almost theft, and some men would think it so, but the wine was clearly theft. This was the firm footing that his dislike for Elejine had needed. Nobody would blame him if he had the man stripped naked and whipped from the property. Yet he could not bring himself to order it.
Elejine was seventy years old, at a guess. He had been steward of this house since before Skal’s birth, and in all that time he had seen it occupied less than a dozen times, and probably for no more than a month all told. What he had done had been done before. So many houses stood empty, so many estates were held by great lords that their houses sometimes remained empty for a man’s lifetime. Skal himself could not bring himself to see it as so great a crime.
There was no question of the man remaining in his position. A steward must be trusted, and he could not trust this man, could not even find a shred of liking for him.
He was aware of Tilian and Sara in the doorway, watching him. He wondered what Cain Arbak would have done in a situation like this. What would Quinnial have done?
“You are dismissed as steward,” he said. “But you will continue to serve until a replacement is found. You will move your belongings back to your own quarters at once, and when you are replaced you will be given lodging in one of the estate villages. You will not starve, Elejine, but you cannot remain in my service.” He glanced at Sara. “These rooms will be cleaned out and prepared for the new librarian.”
He was rewarded this time with an expression of genuine surprise. He would have found the apartment cramped, but he knew that she would see it differently. It had three rooms, a reception room, a private sitting room, and a bed chamber. There were fires in each. The furniture, even the furniture that was meant to be here, was probably better than anything she had owned before.
Skal found it difficult to think of her as a tanner’s widow. Now that she had been outfitted in reasonable clothes, at his own expense, and taken time to see to her appearance she looked lik
e the daughter of a prosperous merchant.
He led them out of the apartment and back down the stairs. At the bottom Elejine fled back to the servants’ wing, and Skal turned into the main house. He hardly had to think to find his way to the library, and pushed the door open to reveal a large room, heavy with shelves and books upon them. A table sat in the middle of the room, and Skal pulled out a seat and sat at it. He indicated that she should sit opposite, but she continued to stand, turning this way and that, looking at the books with quite apparent wonder.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I have never seen so many books, my lord,” she said.
“I think there are around five thousand volumes,” Skal said.
She reached out a hand to touch the books closest to her, then pulled it back and looked at him. The look was a question, and he nodded. She lifted down a volume, a slim, red book not much bigger than a spread hand. She opened it, and he could see her lips move as she read the title.
“It’s about the war,” she said. “The Great War.”
“There are books about every subject you can think of,” Skal said. There was a certain pride in his voice, though he was aware at the same time that neither he nor his father had taken any part in accumulating these books. His father had not been a great reader, and Skal himself had no more than glanced at the books in this room.
“Are there any books about tanning?” she asked. Skal laughed.
“Well, there you are,” he said. “You make a liar of me. No, no books on tanning. Or if there are I should be greatly surprised. Anyway, I will arrange for a ledger to be given to you, and we will discuss the categories into which you will organise the books. I will need to find a clerk to help you, and that may take some time. Not many in these parts are readers and writers.”
“Better to find someone that I can help, my lord,” she said. “I do not know that I am equal to this task.”
“Oh, it is not so difficult,” Skal said. “It is just getting the beginning of the thread that’s hard. After that you will find the whole thing comes along quite nicely.”
Tilian seemed equally awed by the books. He stood by the door and gazed at the shelves until Skal felt quite irritated by the degree of respect flooding the room. He was like to drown in it if he didn’t do something.
He stood.
“Sara. You should stay here for a while. Get to know a few of the books. If you need food or drink pull the bell rope by the fire and a maid will come. Keep the child here with you. Your rooms should be ready in an hour, and I will make sure that your things are taken there. Tilian, we have other things that must be done.”
He went looking for a groundsman. It was awkward not having a steward to rely on, but it would all be sorted soon enough. He led Tilian round the back of the house, past the stable block, and eventually they came upon a man digging in the ground.
“You,” Skal said, and the man raised his grey head. His face was lined and brown, but his eyes were a piercing blue. He nodded a perfunctory bow.
“My lord?”
“Who is landskeeper here?”
“There’s none,” the digger said. “Not for seven year, maybe eight.”
No landskeeper? Then who orders the men? Who says what must be done?”
“Steward, my lord.”
That was wrong. Any great house had a steward and a landskeeper. They were men of equal rank, one tending to the house and the other to the land around it. For one man to have the say over both made him a lord in all but name. Some houses had yet others, a horse master, an armourer, a guard captain. His father had all of these and more. The more he learned about Elejine the more he was glad he had displaced him.
“The steward no longer says,” Skal said.
The digger blinked slowly. He straightened his back. “You’ve ended him, then?”
“He’s on notice. I’ve to find a replacement, then he’ll be gone.”
The digger cocked his head to one side and blinked again, but said nothing.
“Out with it, then,” Skal said.
“Not my place, my lord,” the man replied.
“I say it is.”
“It don’t do to speak against steward,” the digger said. “Not when he’s in the house yet. But there’s many that’ll thank you for ending him, and a few that might take it badly.”
“And you?”
“Oh, I’m glad enough to hear it,” the man said. “But I’ll wait and see.”
“Wait and see?”
“He’s a clever man, and a bad one, my lord. He’ll be looking for a way to stay on.”
“He’s gone,” Skal assured him. “That’s my word. Now I need to know who should be landskeeper at Latter Fetch.”
The digger leaned on his spade. “We’ll, there’s three of us that could do the job, my lord. There’s old Horak who oversees the farms. He’s a good man, but older still than me, and I’m not a boy. Pindarian’s a good man, too. He mostly sees to the forest, but he knows what he’s about. Then there’s me. I do some of each, and mostly I see to the gardens here when I’m not needed elsewhere.”
“And any of you would do?”
“We would, my lord. Better anyway than what’s gone before. You should speak to the others, hear what they say.”
“Well, you seem an honest man. What’s your name?”
“I’m named Welcart, my lord.”
“Put aside your spade, Welcart. You’ll do for now. I need someone who knows the land to come with us into the woods up above the house. I mean to cut some of those black pines.”
“Not fond of them myself, my lord,” Welcart said. He put down his spade and picked up a bow. Skal had not seen it leaning against the man’s barrow.
“You’ll not need that,” Skal said.
“For wolves and such,” the man said. “Those woods can be a bothersome place.”
“Wolves? Surely not this far south?”
“Some wolves walk on two legs, if you take my meaning, my lord.”
Could the man possible be saying that there were bandits around Latter Fetch? Within the walls? He nodded to Tilian. “Bring your bow too, then,” he said, and Tilian dashed to fetch it.
Welcart led him around the front of the house and they stood there waiting for Tilian.
“What was it that you wanted to see, my lord?” Welcart asked.
“I have a building project in mind,” Skal replied.
“In truth it’s all those trees are good for,” Welcart said. Skal decided that he liked the old groundsman as much as he disliked Elejine. He had a stolid air about him, a slow certainty to everything he did, even the way he walked, each step measured and carefully placed. There was no hurry to the man at all.
Tilian joined them with his bow strung and slung on one shoulder, a quiver of a dozen arrows across his back, and Welcart led them up the road, turning from it into the pines. The trees had not been properly trimmed, and the lower branches were an obstacle, so they followed their guide through a series of twists and turns until they came to a place when a few dozen trunks had been felled long ago. It was a surprise to see a clearing, but not for Welcart. He pointed across the open ground.
“Thought you should see,” he said. “So you know it’s there and what it is.”
Skal could see well enough. A large granite stone, five foot high, stood in the centre. It was carved into a spiral, twisting and reaching towards the sky, and he could see gold lettering on it. He walked across the thick carpet of old pine needles until he stood before it. He read the words, still clear after twenty years.
Beneath this stone lies The Lady Marchioness Liara Hebberd, Star of the North, and with her lies my heart.
It was his mother’s grave, his father’s words inscribed upon it. He stood before the stone and wondered what he should feel. The woman who had died to give him life was buried here, and perhaps it was her death, his birth, that had made his father a bitter man, and in the end a traitor to his own land. He was surprised th
at he felt nothing at all. He had never known her. There had been no portrait in his father’s house at Bel Arac, no portrait anywhere that he knew of. He had no face to match to the name. He had no deeds to warm his mind. She was just a name.
“Why is this here?” he asked.
“The lady took her seat here on a summer’s day, often as not, my lord,” Welcart said. “No pines then. Just a good spot to see the house it was. She asked for this.”
“And the pines.”
“Your father. Afterwards.”
Pines grew quickly. He knew that. His father had planted them to… what? To hide the grave? The spoil the treasured view of the house? Why? He looked at the stone again. It was an expensive monument, a gesture of some kind. Perhaps his father would be a mystery to him for ever. For all the twelve years that he had spent in his father’s house he really hadn’t known the man at all.
