Brickie shook his head. “One meal only,” he said. “In the night. All they can eat.”
“What do you usually serve?”
He was calming by this point, not so entirely enraged that she was in his kitchen, and actually answered the question. “The lord likes to feed the men well,” he said. “Always bread, and lots of it. Always something like beans or peas or carrots, something of substance. And always meat—pork, mutton, or beef. The lord has his own pigs and cows. Sometimes he trades them for sheep.”
“And you roast the meat here? In this kitchen?”
Brickie shook his head and began to walk, motioning her along. She followed him to a small, extremely fortified door in the wall. She had to duck to move through it, and the door was about a foot thick, but it emptied out into a yard on the north side of the castle. It was surrounded by a great stone wall, andit hugged the keep so that the yard itself was long and skinny, but she could see an entire herd of pigs off to the right, tucked into a shelter with a sod roof on it. There were also chickens running around, and a coop, as well as two goats that looked at her curiously.
One of them was a very pregnant female.
“Goat’s milk,” she muttered thoughtfully.
Brickie heard her. “Aye,” he said. “The lord likes it.”
She looked at him, surprised. “Does he?” she said. “That is a strange thing for a man to drink.”
“Not when he has a nervous stomach,” Brickie said. “Ask the lord. He’ll tell you.”
As Brickie wandered over to an area that had two enormous spits, both of them already speared with a side of pork, Mattie was still thinking on the goat’s milk.
“Brickie, do you sell anything from the castle?” she said. “What I mean to ask is if you sell meat or milk or anything.”
Brickie was checking the fires underneath the sides of pork, which were low at this time of day because the meat needed to be cooked slowly and thoroughly all the way through to reduce the risk of anyone becoming ill from eating it. He may have been a grumpy old man, but he was competent in his duties.
He shook his head to Mattie’s question.
“Nay,” he said. “We buy meat and vegetables sometimes because we have a lot of men to feed. Sometimes they eat more than we have.”
Mattie was still looking at the goats. “What about cheese?” she said. “Do you make goat cheese?”
Brickie stirred up the embers. “There’s a woman in the village that makes cheese,” he said. “We purchase it from her. Why?”
Mattie pointed to the goat. “Because I can milk that goat and make cheese,” she said. “I also know how to make soap fromtheir milk. Both are products we can either use or sell. We would not have to buy them elsewhere.”
Brickie looked at the goat and shrugged, turning back to his fire. He didn’t seem particularly interested in her proposal, but Mattie was. She had a lot of ideas now. She went over to the pregnant goat and petted her head, though the animal was more interested in whether or not Mattie had something to eat for her. Thoughts lingering on goats, and what they meant for the economy of the castle, Mattie headed back into the kitchen with determination.
She had a man to see.
*
“And if wedon’t eat it, we can sell it,” Mattie was saying. “You have a dozen pigs out in the yard. Why not a dozen goats? They are much more useful.”
Gar was sitting on a stump in the bailey, listening to Mattie chatter on about goats and cheese and soap. She was very excited about it, but he found that all he could do was watch her. She was such a fascinating creature when she spoke, her sweet voice with a very slight lisp that was incredibly charming. She was convinced they could have a goat empire right on the Scottish borders and corner the market on cheese.
“You have an enterprising mind,” he said. “In fact, my Uncle Tommy’s wife has much the same mind. She has a foundling home near Kelso and that is how the foundlings make money—by making goat cheese. It is delicious.”
“Truly?” Mattie said, her face alight with the possibilities. “Then mayhap she would help us build our own goat herd.”
He nodded. “Possibly,” he said. “But the truth is that we are not a castle that sells products, like cheese. This is a militarycastle, Queenie. What we have here, we eat. What we need, we buy. Our sole purpose is war.”
She nodded patiently. “I know,” she said. “But how do you make the coin necessary to buy what you need?”
He shrugged. “It is a de Wolfe garrison,” he said. “I am provided with a monthly stipend to manage the castle. That stipend pays for whatever we need.”
“Then you do not have any wealth of your own?”
He nodded. “I do,” he said. “I am also paid a yearly wage as a garrison commander.”
