She glanced over her shoulder at the three men from Sutterdown, and felt all those ancestors behind her.
They didn't often walk away from a neighbor's need- and never backed down from bullies!
When they came to the Hall with its half-completed palisade, Laughton burst out:
"How did you get all this done? There aren't that many of you, and I swear nobody could have worked harder than we have!"
The curiosity seemed genuine. Because of that, Juniper answered frankly: "Apart from the favor of Brigid and Cernunnos? Well, mutual help. You people are trying to live mostly with each family on its own, like they did before the Change, but without the machinery and exchange that made that possible."
"We get by," Laughton growled, then flushed and waved a hand around. "Sorry. You obviously do better than 'getting by.'"
Juniper nodded. "Our clan work together and live close, so we can take turns on sentry-go, or support people doing one thing most of the time… or throw nearly everybody at a job that needs doing, like the harvest, with only a few to cook or keep an eye on the children."
"Sounds like communism," Dixon growled.
"It's more like tribalism, Reverend, with a bit of kibbutz thrown in," she said, keeping her voice neutral. "Call it common sense, for now. Things may be different in a few years… or not. And if you'll excuse me a moment, I need to freshen up while my advisors arrive."
She pulled in before the Hall, finished just before the wheat came ripe; Dennis had already started stenciling the designs he wanted to carve into a lot of it, particularly the tall pillars that supported the wraparound second-story gallery and the new roof.
Eilir came out and took the horses.
It's all ready, Mom, she signed, looking at the three men in the wagon with a mixture of curiosity and distaste. Want me to lay out some ceremonial stuff for you? Scare them green, that would!
Thanks, but I'm trying to get them in a mood to cooperate! she replied. A plain brown around-the-house robe… oh, and just for swank, that moon pendant Dennie and Sally made for me.
She dropped to the ground, and winced a little as that jarred into the small of her abused back. It was almost a pity in some ways that they'd reverted to peasant attitudes about early pregnancy. There wouldn't be time for anything but a quick sluice-down, either.
And they're going to make me miss my soak, too, she signed. We old ladies are wont to get irritable and cranky when we miss our soak… Show them up to the room and get 'em the refreshments, my child of spring.
The loft bedroom-office-sanctum was one luxury she'd allowed herself when the Hall was put back together. It still brought her a surge of slightly guilty pleasure as she climbed up the steep staircase from the second-story corridor to join the waiting Sutterdown men.
The attic space under the steep-pitched roof was brightly lit by the dormer windows on two sides and the bigger one in the eaves. Dennis had pitched in to furnish it; there were hanging bookcases, a long trestle table for conferences or paperwork that could be folded out of the way, shelves for her Craft tools and for the neatly rolled futons and bedding that she and Eilir used, and a little iron wood-stove for winter. Her old loom was set up at the far end.
A big desk held a mechanical adding machine they'd salvaged, and a manual typewriter. There were filing cabinets as well, map boards, all the necessities of administration, which she loathed even as she did her share. And a cradle Dennis had made for her, ready for later in the year, carved all over with knotwork and intertwining beasts.
She was amused to see that the Reverend had a reflex Juniper shared, whenever she went into a new house: checking the bookshelves. You could tell from the slight tilt of his head.
The bulging eyes were probably because of the selection, though. Here, besides books like Langer's Grow It! Livingston's Guide to Edible Plants and Animals, Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living and of course Seymour's Forgotten Arts and Crafts-their most valuable single work-the shelves held references useful to a High Priestess.
Eight Sabbats for Witches-a slightly outdated classic- and the more modern Spellworking for Covens, just for starters. Dixon's face was getting mottled again.
She tried to see the room through the eyes of the Sutterdown men. Judy's cat had managed to get in, for one thing. It was a big black beast with yellow eyes, and it was glaring at Reverend Dixon, who stared back in what he probably didn't know a cat would regard as an insult and challenge.
"Out, Pywackett!" she said, and slung the protesting beast down the stairs, closing the doorway after her.
Then there was a lectern, the top covered with a black cloth that had a golden pentacle-and-circle on it; Dixon would probably guess, rightly, that the square shape beneath was her Book of Shadows. Her personal altar stood below the north-facing window in the eaves, with candlesticks and chalice and ritual tools and small statues of the Lady and Lord. A few prints were pinned up on the log walls, and a ceramic tile she'd bought back in 1986 that showed elk-headed Cernunnos playing on a flute as he skipped through an oakwood surrounded by skyclad dancers…
Well, by the Cauldron and the Wand, if they want to beg our help they're just going to have to take us as we are, she thought, and sat at the head of the table.
Eilir had set out plates of fresh-cut bread, butter, cherry jam and small glasses of mead-they didn't have much yet-along with a big pot of rose-hip tea; she was glad to see that even Dixon had sampled the refreshments.
Because now he's a guest and I can't lose my temper with him.
The food scents went well with the beeswax-paint-and-fresh-wood smell of the building; rather less well with the sweat-and-cows aroma of several of the clansfolk, who'd come straight from the fields without bothering to hit the bathhouse. She hoped they'd remembered to use the wooden boot-scraper at the front door. Keeping clean was hard work these days.
"Let's get going," she said when the last person was seated and the strained attempt at chat ended. "This is one of those no-time-to-waste things, so we'll have to put aside our cherished tradition of talking everything to rags. You're all up to speed on what our neighbors have told me?"
She looked around, checking the nods. "Subject to the voice of the clan assembled, is everyone agreed that if the information proves to be true, we can't tolerate a big bandit gang making its headquarters next to us? Worse, one that tries to set itself up as overlords, and has ties to the Protector in Portland."
Another chorus of nods; everyone had heard a little of what was happening there, and even by the standards of the fifth month after the Change, the stories were gruesome.
"Then the first order of business is what Dr. Gianelli said about guaranteeing against exposure to the plague."
Everyone's ears perked up at that; the silence grew taut.
Gianelli licked his lips. "I said that would have to be in private, Lady Juniper."
She looked at him, her green eyes level under the hood of her robe, which she'd drawn up to cover her damp hair.
"This is private," she said. "These are my advisors. And I'm not a dictator here, unlike some places I could name. Something that important can't stay between the two of us; my people expect to be informed, and listened to, when decisions are made. And I'm not going to expose my clan to the Death on just a hint from you, Doctor."