Courtly nodded firmly. “Can you please start the fire, Papa?” she asked, handing the man the flint and stone as he ducked into the low-ceilinged room. “When you’ve done that, I will need help. Mayhap you can track down a serving woman or two. Also, Issie and I are in desperate need of soap. We smell like smoke and I cannot greet our guests smelling like a fire pit.”
Kellen knelt down and expertly started the fire where his daughter had struggled. As the rather large hearth began to burn, he lay a good deal of wood and peat on top of it to spark up the blaze. The kitchen began to fill with warmth and light, illuminating a rather cramped and evidently well-stocked kitchen. There was food in its raw form everywhere.
“I will see what I can do for you,” he said. “If I cannot find any soap, then I will send one of my men into town for it.”
Courtly pleaded with him. “Then why not do that now?” she asked. “Do not waste time searching Kennington when Auntie has probably hid all of the soap, anyway. She knew we needed it.”
Kellen nodded as he headed for the door. “Very well,” he said. “Is there anything else you require?”
Courtly began to look around the kitchen. Fowl hung from the ceiling overhead, tied with hemp to the beams, and there was a massive, cooked leg of pork propped on a table that was shoved into a corner of the room. Furthermore, she could see sacks of something underneath another table and she went to it, opening the sack to find dried multi-colored beans inside. Another sack had sand-colored flour, half-empty. Quickly, she began calculating what she had to work with.
“Give me a few moments before you send the man off,” she said to her father. “I may need something from town but, as of yet, I am not sure.”
Kellen stood in the doorway. “Then I will wait,” he said. “What do you intend to do?”
Courtly pointed at the leg of pork. “I can boil that with the beans to make a stew,” she said. “There is flour here to make bread, but I need a few more things for the bread before I can actually make it. Papa, would you check and see if you can find a store of wine or ale? If not, then we will have to find some quickly.”
Kellen went on the hunt as Courtly began pulling out the sacks from beneath the table. Isadora still stood over near the hearth, uncertain as she watched her sister work, and Courtly turned to the girl.
“Issie,” she said. “Go and see if you can find any cheese or butter or even milk. I would hope there is some. And I need eggs. Find as many eggs as you can. Will you please do this?”
Isadora nodded and began her search, sticking her head under tables and into crevices as Courtly pulled a very large pot out from underneath a table and dragged it over to the hearth. There was a big, iron arm affixed to the mortar of the hearth, made to hold big pots, and she heaved the pot onto the arm. Now, it was time to go to work.
The well for the manor was just outside the door and Courtly filled several buckets, pouring the water into the pot and putting several pounds of beans in to soak. She managed to find great bunches of vegetables near a half-filled bowl of dirty water, baskets of carrots and little, brown onions that had been harvested but not cleaned. They were covered in mud. She set about cleaning them in the water she had drawn from the well, washing and re-washing until the dirt came off.
With the only knife she could find, she then chopped up the carrots and onions, putting the chunks of vegetables into the pot along with the beans. As she worked on the stew, Isadora returned with her hands full of small, brown eggs. She had located the chicken coop and had collected all of the eggs she could carry, but Courtly sent her back for more. Isadora fled out the door, frenzied, as only a young girl could be.
It was fortunate that Ellice’s kitchen was well-stocked. Courtly was very thankful to come across a bag of salt and another sack half-full of peppercorns. Salt and peppercorns, smashed with the bottom of a small, iron pot, went into the stew pot, which was now starting to steam. The feast was on the fire but Courtly was feeling a distinct sense of urgency as she turned her attention towards the leg of pork. The guests would be arriving at any moment and the stew would take time to cook, so she fed off her sense of urgency, hurrying to put the meal together.
Using the dull knife she had used to chop up the vegetables, Courtly began cutting pieces of pork off of the leg and putting it all into the pot of beans and vegetables. The meat was shriveled and looked as if the household had been eating off of it for some time, but she didn’t care. At this point, some meat was better than no meat, and she hoped that cooking it with the beans would give the pork new life. Throwing in more salt, she watched as the pot began to bubble.
As she watched the roiling in the pot grow livelier, she couldn’t even think about disappointing a man she wanted to impress. She simply had to move onward and hope she could produce an appetizing and even tasty meal. As she continued to cut off more pork and Isadora shuffled back and forth between the chicken pen and the kitchen, bringing in more eggs, a timid servant girl appeared and declared that she had been sent by Kellen. Courtly put the woman in charge of making the bread, something she evidently knew nothing about, so Courtly switched places with her. As the servant gingerly cut away at the pork leg and threw the meat into the pot, Courtly went about trying to remember how to make bread.
Although Lady d’Umfraville had instructed her charges in how to run a kitchen and even how to cook items, Courtly’s strong point had never been making bread. She knew that bread needed to be made with two- or three-day-old bread dough, so that it would rise, but neither she nor the servant girl could find anything that resembled old bread dough. The woman that usually worked in the kitchen was missing, obviously kept away by Ellice, so there was nothing to do but try to make a fair semblance of bread. Courtly prayed it would be acceptable. She had one chance to impress Sir Maximus and everything in the world seemed to be against her– her dress, her lack of an opportunity to clean herself or even brush her hair, and now the food. Everything was against her. But she wasn’t going to give up, not in the least.
Pushing up the sleeves of her smoke-scented surcoat, she went to work.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Thisbelongs tode Lara?” Tiberius asked as they came upon the compact manor house, the windows emitting a glowing light in the dark of night. “This hardly looks like a property for the great marcher lords.”
Maximus’ gaze moved over the house. Surrounded by a wall that was part timber and part stone, the house itself was oddly shaped and rather small. There was a two-storied structure that he could see and then another single-storied wing that attached to it. He pulled his black and white Spanish Jennet to a halt and the knights around him followed suit. He and Tiberius sat a moment, looking at the distant structure, the only point of light and shelter in miles of darkened landscape.
“This has to be it,” Maximus finally said. “The priest on the south side of Oxford said he knew the house and directed us down this road. There is nothing elsebutthis house, so this has to be it.”
Tiberius shrugged. He was hungry and somewhat irritable, so he spurred his big, brown warmblood forward.
“Come on, then,” he said. “I am famished. I must eat before I collapse. But from the looks of that place, I don’t suppose they will provide us more than a crust of bread and the dregs of the wine.”
Maximus and the knights followed, loping down the road and closing the distance between them and the manor house. As they drew closer, the structure seemed to become somewhat bigger,but certainly not what they had expected from a great marcher lord. It was run-down and the walls seemed hardly enough to hold back an army of children, much less men with wicked intentions. The gate itself was very large and seemed to be made strictly of wide, hammered, iron strips that were held together with big, iron bolts. One could see right through the slats into the yard beyond, which would have been a horrible feature in the event of an attack. Arrows, arms, and weapons could come right through the gaps at the inhabitants inside.
Maximus and Tiberius dismounted their horses and approached the odd gate, looking inquisitively at the gathering of men beyond. There were a couple of fires and men milling about, tending horses or sitting by the fire mending clothes or weapons. It was all quite casual, as if they hadn’t a care in the word. No sentries on duty, no guards. Tiberius and Maximus looked at each other curiously, shrugged, and then Maximus called out to the men.
“Greetings,” he bellowed in the loud, deep voice that Maximus was so capable of. “I am de Shera. I have come at the invitation of Kellen de Lara.”
Every man in the ward looked over at the gate as Maximus’ voice echoed off the buildings. A few of the men even stood up, as if a challenge had been issued. Clearly, Maximus’ voice was loud enough that it could be startling and he always sounded as if he were bellowing commands in battle. It was just his nature. But one of the men broke off from the group, a big, blond devil, and headed to the gate at a clipped pace. As he approached, he lifted a hand in greeting.
“Lord de Lara is expecting you,” he said. “You will leave your weapons at the gate.”
