The Demon of Darkling Reach (The Black Prince Book 1) (50 page)

“Look at the ground, here.” He pointed to where pieces of rock, the tips of huge points that no one had yet been able to dislodge, thrust up through the dying grass. “This is a rock called shale. It’s soft, and can be split with a pickaxe. I won’t bore you with the details, ma’am, but beneath our feet is something called an
aquifer
: a water-bearing layer of porous rock.”

“Satan!” John shrieked. “Water doesn’t come from rock; that’s the workings of evil!”

“Water
does
come from rock, you pestilent old bag!”

“Water comes from
rivers
and
lakes
, you ham-fisted northern giant!”

Isla rested her head in her hand.

“And where do you think the water in the rivers and lakes comes from? It comes out of the ground!” Silas thundered, answering his own question. “From
springs!
And a well is a man-made
spring
. There’s nothing of Satan, I can assure you, in using water to cook that you haven’t just pissed in.”

“The church says—”

“Is your priest here, drinking your water?”

“Enough!” Isla had finally reached her limit. She didn’t speak loudly, but even so her voice carried. “Quit it, both of you, or I’ll have you both in the stocks. And then I’ll tell His Grace what I think of your self-control.”

Both men shut up instantly.

Silas, it seemed, was aware of a process wherein water rose from a well under its own pressure and without pumping. This process was used in the North. Which, with its craggy peaks, was ideally suited. If the pressure was great enough, Silas explained, then the water would rise straight to the surface and flow freely from the well. He proposed to dig the well and, around it, a deep basin that he would then line with tile. The basin would serve as a continuous source of fresh water, and the action of the well would keep it from freezing too deeply. All one would have to do would be to breach the surface of the ice with a pick. “We can also use the same process to fill irrigation channels,” he finished.

“That sounds brilliant,” Isla said.

“I asked John to help me oversee the project,” Silas replied. Quite tactfully, Isla thought. He was, sensibly, trying to include the earl’s own men in his projects so that they’d feel as though the projects were their own. No one wanted the manor’s residents to feel as though they were being taken over. Tristan’s men weren’t here as an invading force, however much old hands like John might think otherwise. “John didn’t want to, which I respect, but when I proposed using my own men he felt left out.”

“You’re going behind our backs,” John grumbled, just loud enough to be heard. “Making changes.” He said
changes
like Silas had proposed bringing the plague. But John had lost his audience; hearing the new overseer’s explanation, heads in the crowd were nodding. Isla felt grateful that she’d been present to diffuse a potentially dangerous situation.

With a final word to Silas, Isla left him explaining how and where water could be found. Even John had begun to ask questions, and she paused for a minute to listen. If the two groups, Northerners and Highlanders, could learn to get along then Enzie Moor’s future was assured. She didn’t know exactly how many of the duke’s men proposed to stay, or how many more had been summoned. She certainly hadn’t realized that Silas had been, although she’d figured out who he must be readily enough. She’d known that
someone
would be appointed to the position.

Part of her was pleased, and part of her was a little sad. This had been her home, her baby, and now it was someone else’s. Isla’s presence had been so vital for so long; her whole identity had been wrapped up in being
the only responsible one in the manor
. Now that was changing. She was growing irrelevant, and she wasn’t sure entirely how that made her feel. She
was
relieved; this was what she wanted. But when she left, she’d do so as someone else’s bride. And in the North, she’d be someone else’s wife. Caer Addanc was, she was sure, well enough run that however much her input was valued no one would rely on her the same way. No one would rely on her the same way again. The knowledge was bittersweet.

Someone else’s wife
. Wasn’t that what she’d wanted?

Sometimes she was sure of the answer and sometimes she felt like the walls were closing in on her. She’d grown so used to her freedom, to acting as an independent adult and to making her own decisions. As Tristan’s wife, she’d be expected to obey him—
his
rules and
his
commands, whether she agreed with them or no. Could she? After living as a free spirit for so long? Could she rein herself in, constrain herself to someone else’s will? Forever? Even someone she loved as much as Tristan?

Lost in these unsettling thoughts, she didn’t notice Rowena until she almost ran into her.

“O
h,” she said, startled. “Good morning.”

Rowena looked radiant, as always, her skin flawless and her hair glittering in the sun. And today, too, she looked something like her old self: not the aloof ice queen she’d become in recent weeks but the near-child she was, happy to be outdoors and alive. Seeing Isla’s change in expression, she smiled wanly.

“Good morning,” she replied. She’d worn one of her simpler dresses today, and the cloak thrown casually over one shoulder revealed a kirtle bare of ornamentation. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” she added, by way of apology. She looked a little shame-faced. And then, “have you had breakfast?”

Isla’s stomach grumbled at the thought. “Actually no,” she admitted ruefully.

“Walk back to the house with me? I haven’t eaten, either.”

“Alright,” Isla said, although she really did need to get down to the dairy. But she wasn’t going to miss out on this opportunity. That Rowena wanted to talk to her filled her with hope. Even now. As she walked back down the path, visions of them reconciling danced in her head. She’d be gone, soon, and so would Rowena. In a few short weeks, they’d only be able to communicate by letter. Perhaps for years.

It was a fact of life that women married and moved away and men took service with foreign lords. That Isla had kept her family together this long was rare. Even if Hart did come north with her, she doubted that they’d see much of each other. Certainly not as much as they did now. Darkling Reach was a huge place, and he might be sent to any part of it. Moreover, as Tristan’s wife, Isla would have her own responsibilities—to him and to the castle. Even if Hart remained at Caer Addanc, depending on his rank, they might not even eat dinner in the same hall.

She stole a quick glance at Rowena. No, their days of easy camaraderie—such as they were—were coming to an end. Families, like the manors they lived on, moved to the seasons. And her family was splitting up, perhaps forever. She turned her eyes back to the path.

“I was coming to find you,” Rowena said. “But I found John and Silas instead. I went to the spinning shed next, but you weren’t there either.” There was a note of humor in Rowena’s voice, and for a few minutes the easy feeling between them returned and it was almost like old times. Isla smiled to herself as Rowena gave her opinion of Silas and John. The former was handsome but too opinionated; the latter, loyal but in strong need of retirement.

Around them, voices called out and hammers rang as the manor worked. It was a hive of activity like Isla had rarely seen, and she felt again that strange-sweet pinch at her heart. She wasn’t needed here anymore. If she ever had been. The world of a Morvish manor was, of necessity, self-contained. The bandits that Silas had killed were probably decent men, after their own fashion; the woods were full of men, and women, and even sometimes children who robbed and killed just to get enough to eat. The high walls that enclosed Enzie Hall, and every manor, were as much for protection from them as from an actual enemy invader.

No Chadian army or northern barbarian was as desperate as the man who’d lost his farm to war or taxes. And while the king was doing his best to see that those who deserved to be so were resettled, the kingdom was in turmoil and progress would take years. If it ever came at all. Many factions, including the strongest faction of all, the church, opposed progress and had no desire to see the manorial system change. The yeoman farmer, who owned his own land, was a threat; church revenues came, in large part, from church-owned land. Church-owned, and serf-farmed.

They passed the blacksmith’s stall, the heat from the forge baking Isla’s skin from six paces distant. The blacksmith’s apprentice stood at the bellows, working them back and forth at a measured pace to keep the coals burning at a consistent temperature. The blacksmith labored, his hammer ringing out. Sparks flew, as he slowly flattened a lump of iron into a dangerous-looking plow blade.

Sparks flew, and Isla gasped from the sudden increase in heat. She didn’t know how Adon, the blacksmith, stood a work environment that surely made the fires of Hell seem preferable. Turning, Adon yelled at his apprentice to keep the bellows steady. The bellows, a massive double-chambered contraption standing as high as Adon, were both the most vital part of the forge and the most difficult to manage. A complicated system of weights and pulleys kept each chamber open to a certain degree, depending on the air flow that was desired. Swords were forged at one temperature; plow blades another.

The apprentice mumbled an apology and Adon turned back to his work.

Isla and her sister walked on.

There was so much to do between now and the onset of true winter. Just thinking of it all in her mind left Isla feeling overwhelmed. Food had to be preserved, so they’d all have something to survive on. Meat and fish would be smoked, dried, or salted. Vegetables would be pickled with vinegar; fruits would be dried or candied. On other, richer estates, meat was packed in oil or brine to preserve its flavor; dried meats were spiced, to compensate for the flavor they’d lost. Spices, too, helped to mask the ever-present tang of salt that Isla had grown to associate with the colder months.

She’d spent more than one winter night gnawing on a leather-tough piece of meat in front of the fireplace while a storm raged outside and rain blew in through the window slits. Rudolph’s family’s manor, Cavanaugh Moor, was famous for its smoked meats. Smoking imparted a delicate flavor to both meat and fish, as well as leaving it tender enough to chew without fear of losing a tooth. But smoking required wood for fuel, a precious commodity in even the wealthiest of houses. Drying was a cheaper alternative, especially when trout caught in the river could be gutted and laid on the rocks at the shore to dry.

But there had been little enough hot, dry weather this summer, a summer that had felt more like a fall—and now that had left them with a fall that felt more like a winter. Some in Ewesdale saw the poor weather as a sign of disfavor from the Gods; to others, it was a premonition of worse disaster. Still others claimed that nature herself was out of balance although these naysayers were largely ignored; everyone knew that the Gods, and not the winds, controlled the weather. Their talk of changing tides had been outlawed by the church as heresy. The good weather would return if and when the people of Morven became sufficiently pious. Or, barring that, when a new king sat the throne. The current king was no friend of the church; Piers Mountbatten, like his ostensible brother, saw it as nothing more than a hive of corruption and deceit.

Enzie Hall had a roof made from overlapping slates, but its outbuildings were all wattle and daub covered with thatch. Birds nested in it; mold grew on it; squirrels and other rodents nestled in it, pissing and shitting and fucking. The manor grounds stank to high heaven, even in this brisk wind. A carter put down his wheelbarrow, unlaced his breeches and unleashed a stream of urine against the kitchen wall. A squirrel gnawed on a cabbage at his feet. Each, about his own pressing business, ignored the other.

Isla and Rowena exchanged a look. And then, simultaneously, both exploded into gales of laughter. Around them, life continued on as usual.

Rowena opened the kitchen door, and Isla stepped inside. She got herself a piece of bread and a mug of ale, and sat down at the currently unused kitchen table. Between breakfast and lunch, not much happened in the average kitchen. The cook was probably out back having a smoke in the kitchen garden, and his underlings were off doing other chores until they were needed. They might be serfs, bound to the manor by duty and law and sworn to serve, but nobody had told them that.

Rowena sat down opposite, with her own breakfast. Isla was almost surprised to see her eat, after all Rowena had carried on about staying trim for her wedding. She had some crazy idea in mind for a dress, Isla was sure. Undoubtedly one of which their father would not approve.

Isla nibbled her cheese. It tasted alright, but the ale was sour. She watched as a mouse ran across the floor.

“I am sorry,” Rowena said.

Isla looked up. “Thank you,” she responded cautiously, mindful of what had happened last time they’d had this conversation. Rowena’s
apology
had been nothing of the kind. She waited to see if this time would be any different and, of course, it wasn’t. Rowena had done a remarkably good job of fulfilling Isla’s worst expectations, lately.