"You're welcome, Kate," he said.
Everything's relative, he thought silently. Those buckets must weigh eighty pounds, together. But it was saving a good many trips back and forth. At least Dun Fairfax had piped water to everyone's kitchen.
He circled the old two-car garage of the Fairfax house, now a bowyer's workshop and spinning-and-weaving room with the sliding door replaced by salvaged windows for light. What had been the backyard of the house was his wife's herb garden, with roses trained up against trellises on the walls, and a bordering edge of dahlias and peonies; Edain waited with the dogs, suddenly a little apprehensive as he looked down at the state of his shoes and kilt.
"Can't have that," Aylward said, and gave the dogs a bucket of water each and a brush with an old burlap sack; they laid back ears but submitted to the rough cleaning.
"Dad? What about me?"
"Talk to your mother about that."
Man and girl walked down the brick pathway to the kitchen door, savoring the good cooking odors that came out the opened window, and stamping to get the mud off their soles. The leather went splat on the wet brick and Tamar suddenly started kangaroo-hopping down the path, giggling as she landed, her bow held over her head in both hands, and her brother joined her.
"Boots! Boots, all of you!" his wife Melissa cried, sticking her head out a window; she was a comfortable-looking woman in her late thirties, with a halo of yellow-brown curls just touched with the first gray strands. "I cleaned the floors for Ostara while you were gone and I'm not doing it again!"
Aylward snorted. Wipe yer web feet, ninny! he heard, remembering his mother's voice when he came in from the fields with his father.
"And watch out for the hob's milk!"
His mother had put out a bowl too, come to think of it-ostensibly for the barn cats, though, rather than the house hob, but the moggies around here wouldn't mind who got the credit for emptying it.
" Edam! That kilt was clean this morning! You were supposed to be with your father, not rolling with the pigs! Get to the bathroom and clean up this instant. And don't you 'aw, Mom' me, you little hooligan!"
Melissa's own mother was speaking in the background; Aylward groaned a little inwardly at that. Eleanor was:
Not quite stark raving bonkers, but not quite normal, either, since the Change.
"Why potatoes with the meat again, dear?" she asked Aylward's wife. "Wouldn't some nice steamed rice be pleasant for a change?"
Melissa growled, and he heard something heavy slammed down on a counter.
"Mother! Yes, I'd like to use rice. And coffee and chocolate. But we don't have any! We don't grow any. We don't know anyone who grows any!"
Eleanor's voice went on as if she hadn't spoken: "And all this butter with the vegetables, and cooking with all this cream, it's a little heavy, isn't it? You've got to watch your figure, with the baby coming. It's so difficult to lose weight again afterward."
Tamar glanced at him and rolled her eyes as he waited for a second with his hand on the latch, mouthing silently: Grandma's nutsoid today and it's making Mom nutsoid.
Melissa's voice rose and something slammed on a counter, even harder this time. "I got up at five o'clock this morning to milk the cows, including Kathy's cows because she carried the milk for me. Then I helped make breakfast for eleven people. Then I spent the morning working in a five-acre garden. And collecting eggs and feeding our chickens. Then because I'm pregnant, I got to sit down all afternoon in the garage, weaving so we'd have clothes next winter, and in the intervals I can look after Richie and help get dinner for twelve ready, and if I weren't pregnant I'd have been out planting potatoes! And this is the easy part of the year! I need every calorie I eat! And if you can't help, get out of the way!"
He heard the sound of feet rushing off, and Melissa's half-guilty sigh. Tamar and Aylward obediently used the scrapers and brush kept beside the door, then went in and let the spring bang it closed, blinking a little at the bright lamplight and buffing their soles one last time on the interior rug mat. His wife waved from the direction of the stove where she was stirring the soup, and he turned to put his spear in brackets above head-height. His bows hung there too, and the belt with his sword and dirk and buckler, and the rest of the household's weapons-you had to be careful with your killing tools when there were toddlers about.
"Sorry," Melissa said to him over her shoulder from the huge cast-iron woodstove with its attached bread oven and water heater.
It was the envy of Dun Fairfax. Compared to an electric range, it was primitive. Compared to cooking over an open hearth:
"Not your fault she's barmy, luv. She forget the Change 'appened again?" Aylward said.
"She remembers, when she wants to," Melissa said, then made herself relax, with a visible effort. "Sorry if I was sniveling about things. But if I can adjust to this, why can't she? And when she gets like this, it makes me remember, and I don't want to."
"It's all what you're used to. Easier for me, considering the way I was raised."
Melissa laughed. "I should count my blessings, then. Dinner's nearly ready. Everyone should be down in a moment."
He'd knocked down some partitions to make the kitchen larger; it had plenty of room for a table that seated twelve, with benches on either side, a seat at each end for him and his wife and a lantern slung from the roof above. Right now a braided equal-armed straw cross hung not far from it, for the Ostara blessing-the images of the Lord and
Lady over the hearth were year-round. A high chair stood beside one of the seats; Richard Aylward came stumping across the floor, chubby arms outstretched.
"Daaaada!" he caroled. His father swept him up; he wiggled "delightedly, then stretched his arms out to his half sister. "Tama-tamaaar!" Then to the dogs, who stood looking up at him, giving tongue-lolling grins full of the mild benevolence of canines faced with puppies or infants, wagging their tails: "Gri-gri-gri!" which might do for either of their names.
"Well, I can see who you prefer, Dickie," Aywlard said, setting the boy down. "Romp away, then." The two-year-old said his favorite word- No! -and then fell to with a will.
"How did the last lambing go?" Melissa asked.
Tamar played with her brother and the dogs on the floor. Edain came back in, his light hair sticking up in three or four directions, despite last-minute attempts to slick it down with his fingers, then joined them.
"The delivery went well enough, love," he said, wandering over. "After I turned the lamb. Fair bollixed up to start with, it was, and no mistake."
A small wooden keg rested in an X-trestle of boards on the counter, with mugs on shelves above; he took one down and tapped himself some beer. He'd paid Dennis up at Dun Juniper for it with hops and barley, since the man had the true brewer's knack and Aylward didn't.
"Want one, love?"
"Later, thanks, when I can sit still and enjoy it. The ewe's OK?"
"Dolly's fine, and the lamb should live. Larry shouldn't have had to deal with the whole flock, not this time of year, not the way it's grown. He's well enough with a birthing ewe, but Tamar will learn the way of it better, I think. We might put her and, mmm, young Hickock to work helping him when school's out for summer."
She grinned over her shoulder and whispered. "Not matchmaking, are you?"
"Lord and Lady forbid!" he answered, equally quiet. "Though she and Billy Hickock get on well enough. Give it six or seven years, though."
The rest of the household came in, from the other rooms or from work outside, and busied themselves setting out the cutlery and butter and bread and beer amid a cheerful crackle of conversation about the day's work and gossip and the Ostara dance that would be held in the big threshing-barn after supper. There was Eleanor, over her temper now, Aunt Joan-a nice enough old bird, and unlike her older sister, fully functional, thank God-and the aunt's two children, a boy named Harry about eighteen and a girl called Jeanette a little younger; also two unrelated young men from Sutterdown and their wives. Both couples were working for him to get experience while they saved up to start and stock their own crofts; one of the wives had a new baby and the other was expecting, but not as far along as Melissa.