“Clean shirts inside,” called someone from within. Gird pulled off his filthy one and used it to mop himself with water. Someone had left a chunk of soap—real soap—on the rim of the trough. He scrubbed, feeling more human by the moment. For that matter, he might as well be clean all over; he shucked his boots and trousers, and scrubbed himself all over. Yesterday’s gash on his arm reopened, stinging, but it looked clean, a healthy pink. When he was done, he replugged the pipe, and looked for somewhere to lay his wet clothes. Rahi was standing in the kitchen doorway, chuckling and holding out a blue shirt.
“You!” He could not have said why it bothered him then, but somehow being found wet and naked, alone in a walled yard after his bath, was not the same as bathing with others in a creek or pond. He dropped the wet clothes, snatched the shirt, and then held it away. “Blue? But I don’t have a blue shirt—”
“You do now. Go on, put it on; they’re asking for you, a whole gaggle of them.” She had brought trousers as well, somewhat too large but clean and whole. As he dressed, she picked up his wet clothes, sniffed them, shook her head and dumped them back in the trough. “These’ll need more than rinsing.”
That day Gird found himself having to explain in more detail than he had yet devised just how he thought the law should work. He discovered men of law, who explained at great length why his simple measures would not do, and why the law had nothing to do with justice, and a great deal to do with precedent, custom, and the maintenance of commercial stability. Gird listened until he could not stand it, and then roared at them; they turned pale and disappeared, and he thought no more of them. He let each craft, each kind of merchant, present an appeaclass="underline" Selamis sat beside him and wrote them all down. Brightwater had plenty of clerks who could read and write, but Gird trusted Selamis more than the strangers. He was not surprised to notice that Selamis talked easily to the merchants, even the richest, or that they seemed to prefer him to Gird.
Then he gave them all his plan, which combined (he thought) absolute common sense with absolute fairness and honesty. When everyone complained, he was sure he’d gotten it right: it pleased no one completely, but everyone slightly. Somewhat to his surprise, the grumbling died off, and the townsfolk and traders went back to their work. He had expected more trouble, not shrugs and winks and return to business as usual.
Many of his yeomen had never been in a town as large as Brightwater. Gird spent the next several days straightening them out, and insisting (until his voice nearly failed) that his rules applied to them, too. It was always possible that a townsman’s gift of a pear or meat pasty to the man patrolling the street was not intended—or taken—as a bribe, but Gird could see clearly where it might lead. If someone wanted to give supplies to the army as a whole, as the farm villages had done with their gifts of food and tools, then Gird insisted it had to be done openly. Selamis had to record the gift, and then Gird would distribute it among all the cohorts as needed. Only a few yeomen were obviously looking for bribes, or extorting gifts, whichever way it could be described. Gird shocked his followers and the townsfolk by discharging those few, publicly, and explaining why. After that, the problem seemed to disappear.
He himself had a chance to see inside a rich man’s home for the first time, when the surviving master merchants and craftsmen invited him to dine. He had never really thought about what would go into all those rooms, had envisioned even a king’s palace as a glorified peasant cottage, but with everything whole and in abundance. The guard barracks had reinforced that notion: it was larger than his cottage, but the furnishings were much the same. Now, when he stepped onto glazed tiles of blue and white, when he saw the tapestries hung from walls, the carved and inlaid chairs and tables, the shelves crowded with things whose purpose he could not even guess, he realized how wrong he had been. The dining hall lay at the back of the house, facing a walled garden—but a garden made more for viewing than using. No cabbages, no redroots, no onions or ramps—but bright ruffles of color he did not even know. Two fruit trees were trained against opposite walls; their fruit gleamed like jewels among the leaves.
The meal itself surprised him as much as the house. He had assumed rich men ate more of the same food that he ate—what else was there? He peered suspiciously at a translucent yellow-green liquid in a glossy blue bowl, and waited until the others had dipped their spoons (their silver spoons) into it before trying it. It tasted like nothing he had ever imagined; he could have drunk a kettleful of it. That was followed by a stew of vegetables and fish, then a roast of lamb, rolled around a grain stuffing flavored with herbs. He had not known lamb could taste like that. Then came a dish of fruit with a honeyed sauce, then an array of cheeses, white, yellow and orange.
By this time, he had had more food than his belly would hold with comfort. The merchants nibbled on, watching him covertly. He wondered if they knew he was calculating how many of his yeomen just one such meal would feed. They might—and they might be worrying about it, too. He looked around the room, noticing the soft-footed servants who had brought and removed all those dishes. One of them met his gaze with an angry challenge; Gird gave him a slight nod. He refused the last three courses, explaining that he never ate so heavily in the midst of the day, and when he left he felt as if he should take a bath and wash it all off.
“And that’s an honest one, they say,” Gird reported to Selamis and several of the marshals that evening. “Not so rich as the one the mob killed, not cruel or unfair to his laborers and servants. I saw just that one part of the house, from the entrance to the dining hall—but if the rest is anything like it—”
“It would be,” said Selamis, the corners of his mouth twitching. Gird glared at him.
“You know all about it, I suppose; you may even know what that green stuff was that looked like ditch-water and tasted—oh, gods know how it tasted, but it was good. But men like that, they have a lot to lose. They’ve done well under the lords; they won’t stick with us if they don’t do well under us. But if we bend the rules for them, we’re betraying our own people.”
The marshals nodded seriously, but Selamis lounged in his seat, almost smirking. Gird wanted to clout him. It was hard enough making the marshals accept him when he was invisibly efficient; when he put on airs, it rubbed everyone’s hair backwards. Gird glowered at him.
“I suppose you think you should have gone to that dinner? You, who would know all the names for that land of food, and which of those pesky things on the table were for what use? I see the way they talk to you first—maybe they should’ve asked you.” Gird paused for breath, puffed out his cheeks, and made a rude noise. “But they didn’t ask you, Selamis: they asked me. They know where they stand with me, even if they don’t like sharing table-space with a big stupid peasant who doesn’t know what to do with a silver spoon. You’re in between: not one nor t’other, not true peasant nor true lord. We don’t care if you’re a bastard or not, but they do. Yet you push it in our face that you’re more like them.”
Selamis had gone first red, then white, then red again. “It’s not my fault,” he said, glaring at Gird. “I can’t help it that I know figan soup when I hear of it, or what the things are. Or that the better—the merchants and such are comfortable with me.”
“No, I suppose not.” Gird was half-ashamed that he’d let his temper loose, but the silent support of the marshals, who had never liked Selamis that much anyway, stiffened him. “What is your fault is the way you use it. If you’re one of us, be one of us; don’t be smirking in your ale when you know something we don’t.”