Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change (46 page)

His mother Melissa, came in through the vestibule with a draft of cold wet air and a jug in her hand; she’d just poured the evening dish of milk for the house-hob, one of a householder’s duties. She gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“And one for me, too, love. Since you’re by the barrel,” she said.

His elder half sister Tamar was sitting at the table nursing her latest, while instructing her other boy and girl as they plaited mats out of barley straw; her man Eochu was beside them, his hands busy with awl and
waxed thread on a piece of harness whose seam had come loose, and Edain’s younger brother Dick was helping him when he wasn’t trying to use a stick to scratch inside the plaster cast that marked where a war-horse had trod on his right shin. Symbols stood on it, from healing spells to a bawdy promise from his latest girlfriend as to what they’d do when it came off.

Their sister Fand was sitting cross-legged on the rug before the fire, cracking walnuts from a big plastic bowl with the pommel of a dirk and using the stone of the hearth as an anvil. She dropped the nut-meats into a glass jar, the ones she didn’t absently eat, and ignored the younger children nearby reading aloud from a big modern leather-bound and lavishly illustrated version of the
Táin Bó Cúailnge
. That from the lofty height of her fifteen years and experience as an
Eoghan
-helper on the latest campaign, which was, Edain thought, doubtless why she was wearing her rust-red hair warrior-style in a queue down her back bound with a bowstring. Though strictly speaking she shouldn’t, not until and unless she
took valor
and could stand in the First Levy’s bowline.

As he watched she stood, carefully holding up the front of her kilt to contain the empty shells, then tossed them into the hearth before taking the full jar to their mother.

“Good work,” Melissa said to Fand. “Now whip this. Get it stiff but not churned, mind, we want whipped cream and not butter.”

The teenager uttered a silent sigh and took the bowl of thick cream skimmed from the day’s milk. A machine carefully carved and turned from hard cherry-wood by Sam Aylward stood on one part of the counter, strongly clamped. She inserted the bowl and turned a crank, and beaters whirred within the thick liquid; she dropped in a little heated honey as they did.

The barrel Edain headed for held his da’s prized Special Ale, and he tapped three pints into mugs turned from maple wood. The clear, coppery-coloured liquid flowed from the tap, a thin head forming on top.

“My first taste of
grown man’s beer
was this,” he said.

He handed one to his father, set the second by the stove near his mother’s hand to her absent
cheers, love
and took a first swallow from his
own. He sighed at the subtle overtones of fruit and caramel, with a bittersweet aftertaste like whiskey. Stronger than it tasted too—a beer to treat with respect.

“Now, that is beer, by the blessin’,” he said with a contented sigh. “Even better than I remember and sure, I remembered it as very good indeed.”

“It is better!” his father said. “Oi’ve been workin’ with young Timmy Martins—”

“Who’s been a man grown and a master-brewer with children of his own a good many years now,” Melissa pointed out, taking a mouthful of her own. “And if by
working
you mean
drinking
.”

Sam nodded. “When Oi came’ere I knew bowyerin’ well enough, but me brewin’ was from the point o’view of the consumer rather than the producer, as yer moight say. It took years but now Oi reckon as Oi’ve got as good a drop of Old Thumper as ever came out o’Ringwood in ’ampshoire. As best Oi can with these Willamette ’ops anyway. Which Oi reckon weren’t the same as they ’opped with back ’ome, but bitter it up noicely all the same.”

As Edain turned away he nodded to the boar’s head carved above the tap to mark the Special Ale barrel. A boar’s head clearly not on a plate, but very much attached to the rest of the beast and a very much alive and bellicose beast at that.

“The insignia o’Ringwood Brewery used ter be on the Old Thumper beer taps,” his Da said, “and if I ever got a letter from the Brewery in ’ampshoire tellin’ me ter stop infringin’ their trademark, Oi’d be deloighted!”

“Sure, we had some fine beer on the Quest, if not up to this or Brannigan’s Special,” Edain said. “I mind in Readstown…what did Ingolf’s sister-in-law the brewmistress call it…
hefeweizen…”

“Bavarian style, then,” Sam said. “Wheat beer, top-fermented. They could do good brew, if a bit chewy. And a bit loit on the ’ops for my taste.”

Just then Edain’s wife Asgerd came up the stairs from the cellar with a basket of apples in her hands.

“My, and aren’t you fine, darlin’,” he said admiringly.

She pirouetted, grinning with an uncharacteristic openness. Edain had seen Norrheimer women’s garb before in her homeland, but he hadn’t seen her wearing it much. When they met she’d been about to swear vengeance on the killers of her intended husband and pledge her God ten lives for his, which to her folk’s way of thinking required breeks and jerkin. And she’d been a maiden then, while this was the married woman’s version. The basis was a long sleeveless hanging dress of blue wool over a sleeved shift of saffron-yellow linen, with her hair done up in braids and mostly covered by an embroidered kerchief, and a long white apron in front held by two silver brooches at the shoulders. It wasn’t fancy exactly, but the cloth was finely made, tight-woven of excellent yarn and colored with good fast dyes, and there were touches of embroidery here and there in patterns of gripping beasts with interlaced tails. It showed off her sweetly-curved athletic height well.

Though she looks even better in nothing at all but the Goddess’ sweet skin,
he thought with satisfaction.

Melissa smiled from near the stove, a tasting spoon in one hand and her mug in the other; there was more gray than dark-blond in her hair now, but the light eyes in her tired, lined face were kindly on Asgerd’s pleasure. And proud, since it was her work.

“I was going to give it as a Yule gift, but sure, then I thought
why not let my daughter-in-law enjoy it for the whole of the season?
It’ll be back to the war-trail for you two soon enough, and folded up and back in the chest that dress will go, where it does little good.”

“It’s lovely,” Asgerd said, extending a foot and looking admiringly at the embroidered hem. “Fine weaving and fine sewing too—better than mine; my seams are always just a little crooked
somewhere
. It lacks nothing but my own set of keys at the belt.”

“I helped sew!” Fand called from over by the fire. “And I went up to Dun Juniper and looked through the books for the patterns and drew them!”

“And I thank you for it,” Asgerd said to her solemnly. “They are a touch of home.”

Asgerd and Melissa exchanged a glance and the older woman half-winked.
Edain nodded and raised a silent mug to his mother. They hadn’t gotten on all that well when he first brought Asgerd home that summer, and he was glad to see the final peace-offering made and accepted.

It wasn’t a small gift, either; there was a reason most common folk, even prosperous ones like his Clan, had only three sets of clothing—one to wear, one to wash, and one for festival days. Turning out a bolt of cloth needed a good loom, a skilled worker, and many long days of labor, besides the raw materials. His mother was a weaver of note, too, who didn’t waste her time on ordinary rough homespun or blankets, which was all a young girl like Fand could aspire to as yet. The household sold or swapped most of his mother’s cloth and used that to get plainer stuff for everyday.

Softly Asgerd went on: “I only wish my mother could see me so, to know I was settled, and the rest of my family.”

“Tell you what, acushla,” Edain said, drawing another mug and setting it by her. “We’ll have one of the limners up to Dun Juniper
draw
you so and send it back with King Bjarni. He can hand it on to your family with your letters when he returns. Things will travel more easily after the war, and it’s not at all unlikely or beyond hope that they’ll be able to reply someday. The more so as the High King and your folk’s Bjarni are guest-friends and blood-brothers, and sure, neither will deny you a letter or two among any bundle he sends.”

Asgerd nodded silently as she set down her apples and peeled and cored them with swift dexterity, dumping the refuse in the bin that would go to the pigs. Then she arranged them in a pan with their centers full of butter and honey, broke in some of the walnuts, and added a coating of spiced crumbs over all.

“That’s a wonderful idea,” she said a little wistfully after the task was begun. “And maybe…drawings of your family and the house and the farm? That would be a comfort to them.”

Edain nodded. His mother tasted the stew again, picked up another thumb-and-two-fingers’ pinch of salt mixed with dried herbs from the bowl beside the stove, dropped it in, stirred, and nodded.

“This is ready; that it is. Where are the twins?”

“Bedded down with Garbh and Drudwyn and Cochnibar in the workshed by the stove there,” Edain said. “Garbh won’t let them wander.”

Melissa snorted. “And she won’t wash or dress them either,” she said. “A grandmother I may be, as well as a mother again unexpected, but I remember how to do
that
well enough.
And
that men are like bears with houses for dens, when it comes to remembering such details. Rather than like human beings.”

“Oh, but she did wash them, and that thoroughly and well.” Edain grinned, and his father snorted a laugh as well. “Holding them down with a paw the while.”

“I’ll attend to it,” Asgerd said, as she took a fold of her apron around her hand to swing open the cast-iron door of the stove and slide the tray of baking apples inside. “They are not puppies, nor kittens nor colts nor yet bear-cubs, to be licked clean.”

“But sometimes I’m thinking they’re part all of those,” Melissa said. “And if there were an
Óenach Mór
of dogs, Garbh’s vote would be for
puppy
, for sometimes she forgets she didn’t bear them herself, and that’s a fact. Now shout out the others, someone, and we’ll eat.”

Asgerd brought Nola and Nigel in looking even cleaner than Garbh had left them, and wearing their shifts as well as their kilts; the dogs followed and flopped down in a corner each on their favorite bit of rug, and several of the household moggies picked higher spots to watch the intensely interesting sport of humans eating, with an especially keen eye on the bowl of whipped cream. None of the two-footed dwellers had to be called twice. His mother did the blessing, as hearthmistress—

“
Harvest Lord who dies for the ripened grain—

Corn Mother who births the fertile field—

Blesséd be those who share this bounty;

And blessed the mortals who toiled with You

Their hands helping Earth to bring forth life.
”

Edain joined in, signing his plate and in setting aside a crumb and a drop; he noted that their guests from the CORA lands mostly did too, though a few murmured Christian graces instead or just waited respectfully. He suspected that there would be a fair number of new covensteads
founded east of the mountains when the war was over and the folk who’d taken refuge with the Clan went back to rebuild their homes. Asgerd hammer-signed her plate and added:

“Hail, all-giving Earth, and hail and thanks to Frey of the rain and Freya of the harvest.”

Nobody objected. The Old Religion didn’t have a problem with anyone’s names for the Powers, and he knew a few Mackenzies over towards Sutterdown who preferred to thank Demeter and Adonis.

There was a clatter as plates were passed and serving-spoons wielded with a will, while loaves were torn open. The food was plain enough; the stew was notionally venison, and had enough of it to give more than a mere taste, but it was mainly winter vegetables like carrots and parsnips and kale by weight, though the thick gravy was savory with onion and sage and thyme and paprika. The other main dishes were crocks of potatoes sliced and simmered with layers of onions and pats of butter and bits of bacon and topped with grated cheese and bowls of steamed cabbage. Harvest had been good enough the year that had ended this Samhain, but the Mackenzie
dùthchas
was feeding more mouths than there had been hands to work lately. The war had gone on for years, with levies at all seasons, and it wore things down and used them up.

Still, there’s enough
, Edain thought.
And enough bread and butter, come to that; for there’s strength and life in good bread, and nothing tastes better than a hunk of it still steaming.

There was a special satisfaction in eating the loaf baked from grain you’d reaped yourself and putting your own feet under your own table on your own kindred’s land to eat it; it was something he’d missed on the Quest. For that matter, he’d taken the buck whose meat and marrow-bones had gone into the stew with one sweet painless angled shot that drove a broadhead through lungs and heart.

“How do you get the crust so firm on this bread while the crumb is so soft, good mother?” Asgerd asked Melissa. “We don’t make much bread all from wheat flour in Norrheim. More barley and rye, and oatcakes, and mixed grain, save at the great feasts.”

“Ah, the secret’s to brush a little water on the skin of the dough when
you set the loaves to start the second rising, and then a little egg-white across the top just before you bake. Then a dish of water set in the oven with it,” his mother replied. “Sealing the top makes it strike high in the oven’s heat, and the water keeps the crust firm.”

Edain mopped at his plate with a heel of it and crunched it down, remembering innumerable tasteless flat-cakes cooked on griddles by countless camp-fires. The youngsters stared eagerly and clutched their spoons as the plates were cleared and the baked apples were brought out and topped with dollops of the sweet cream. Tamar’s man Eochu was laughing at a joke of hers, and brushing a little of the cream across the babe’s lips with the tip of a finger; she licked her lips and looked dubious, then brightened. Edain laughed himself as he looked down the table at his kin and his father yawning and nodding a little over his second mug of beer.