"Gentlemen." Daniel did not raise his voice. He did not need to. The single word, delivered with ducal precision, cut through the cacophony like a blade.
Both men fell silent, though their chests continued to heave with suppressed grievance.
"Please," Daniel continued, gesturing toward the chairs arranged before his desk. "Sit. Mrs. Gerald will bring tea shortly, and then you will each explain your position. One at a time. Beginning with Mr. Garrett."
This was a calculated choice. Hobbs was the more volatile of the two; giving Garrett the first word would allow the man to present his case while Hobbs was forced to listen rather than interrupt.
They sat and tea arrived. Daniel poured with his own hands, another calculated choice, as it demonstrated that he took the matter seriously enough to serve them himself, and then settled into his own chair to listen.
"Now," he said. "Mr. Garrett. Tell me what has occurred."
Garrett took a breath, visibly gathering himself.
"It is the oak, Your Grace. The great oak that stood at the boundary between my land and Hobbs's. It came down in the storm three nights past, the one that took the roof off the Hendricks’ barn, and now Hobbs is claiming the land where it stood."
"I am claiming what is rightfully mine," Hobbs interjected, unable to contain himself.
"Mr. Hobbs." Daniel's voice remained level. "You will have your opportunity to speak."
Hobbs subsided, though his jaw remained tight with resentment.
"Continue, Mr. Garrett."
"The oak has stood at that spot for as long as anyone can remember, Your Grace. Longer than I have been alive, certainly. My father always said it marked the boundary between our land and the Hobbs’ plot, and so it has been treated for decades. But now that it has fallen, Hobbs says the land beneath it, a strip perhaps twenty feet wide and running the length of the boundary, belongs to him."
"And Mr. Hobbs claims otherwise?"
"Hobbs claims the tree was onhisside of the true boundary, and that my family has been encroaching on his land for years without realising it. He says the tree merely obscured the true line."
Daniel absorbed this information, his mind already working through the implications. Boundary disputes were among the most tedious and intractable problems a landlord could face. The records were often incomplete, the memories of elderly tenants unreliable, and the emotions involved, the deep, almost primal attachment to land that had been worked by one's fathers and grandfathers, made rational resolution difficult.
"Mr. Hobbs," he said. "Your perspective, if you please."
Hobbs leaned forward, his thin hands gripping the arms of his chair.
"The boundary was surveyed forty years ago, Your Grace, when my father first took the tenancy. The surveyor's marks are still there, or they were, until Garrett's sheep trampled them beyond recognition. The tree was always on my side of the line. I let Garrett's family treat it as a boundary marker because it seemed harmless enough, but the land itself was never theirs."
"Do you have the surveyor's records?"
"They were lost in the fire that took my father's cottage, Your Grace. But I remember what he told me. That strip of land is mine by rights."
"And I remember whatmyfather toldme," Garrett countered. "That the oak was planted by my grandfather as a windbreak for our fields. You cannot claim land that has been worked by my family for three generations simply because a tree has fallen."
"A tree that was onmyland."
"Gentlemen." Daniel held up a hand, and silence fell again. "I understand that you both feel strongly about this matter. However, without the surveyor's original records, it becomes a question of memory and interpretation; neither of which is reliable after forty years."
"Then what do you propose, Your Grace?" Garrett asked. "That we split the land between us? That is hardly fair, given that I have been farming that strip for decades."
"And I have been deprived of it for decades," Hobbs countered. "A split would only reward Garrett for his family's encroachment."
Daniel felt the familiar tension building behind his eyes; the headache that always accompanied problems without clean solutions. He could impose a ruling, certainly. He was the landlord; his word was law on estate matters. But any ruling he made would leave one party feeling aggrieved, and aggrieved tenants made for poor neighbors and worse harvests.
There had to be a better way.
"Perhaps," he said slowly, "we might..."
The door opened.
