Word Usage Key is at the end. The brackets after a character eg CLAIRE (4nc) indicates Claire is a character who is 4 years old. nc indicates new character not encountered before.

29th of Towin Day 2

“Ah, why me?” thought Yew. His third observation was with Lovage chairing assisted by Bram. The meeting was between Livette Mistress seamster(1) and Janet, a prim, strait-laced looking woman of sixty-three with a tight disapproving looking mouth. Janet was tall, thin rather than slender, had a thin bordering on non-existent bosom to match, and had her full, gloriously, if not riotously, coloured auburn hair, which had no trace of gray, in a tight unattractive bun on the back of her head. From the look on her face and the austerity of her clothes she looked as if she had maekt(2) a craft out of misery. The situation wasn’t helped by Livette being a young looking thirty-two year old, a new mother of two lunes with aught but a thin bosom, and whose joy in life clearly shewed. She had two children besides the last, and she was devoted to her husband, Gordon Master stillman, who crafted for Joseph the brew Master in his brandy house.

Livette started to spaek(3) to Janet who objected right from the start by remarking, “Let me make it quite clear at the outset, I have never been touched by a man in any way, and I am not going to go to what I can only presume is going to be an orgy tonight.” All in the chamber knew what she meant by tonight and even orgy, but both sounded odd to them. “I was told I should be meeting with a senior member of the craft.”

Yew gave Lovage a spaeking(4) glance who promptly said, “Janet, Mistress Livette is a very senior member of her craft. With us seniority is baest(5) on skill and knowledge not age.”

“Nonsense, I don’t see how she can be,” said Janet, “she can’t have had the time to acquire either.”

Enough is enough, thought Lovage looking sideways at Yew, “Janet, you don’t seem to have understandt(6) the situation at all. Right now, you are the one with no seniority, and the one whose opinions have no worth. Mistress Livette is here to evaluate whether you are, in her opinion, of sufficient stature as a seamster to warrant an invitation to join her craft as a Mistress crafter. She’s representing her craft, and as far as you are concernt(7) she is the craft. If you antagonise her to the point where she walks out on you her craft shall waste no further time on you. You won’t have a second chance. I suggest you start behaving in a manner beseeming(8) to the supplicant you are, or bethink you of another craft that will keep you alive on Castle.”

Janet didn’t or wouldn’t understand the import of Lovage’s words. She bristled and demanded, “And who are you, young woman?”

“I am the senior member of the Master at arms staff who in a few moments, unless you coöperate, and by that I mean do exactly what you are telt,(9) is going to order the guardians outside to take you back to the camp and leave you there to die, and as with Livette’s craft you shall see none other than me. My office shall waste no further time on you either.”

Less insistent, but still not coöperative, Janet turned to Yew and demanded, “And who exactly are you?”

“I am Yew,” he replied mildly. Bram nearly fell out of his chair with mirth at this point.

“I am not used to being ridiculed,” she said, her voice as cold as ice.

“It is not necessary,” continued Yew, “you make yourself ridiculous.” All his life Yew, as his father and grandma(10) before him, had thought of his Lordship as his craft. He thought of it in the same way his boyhood friends Will and Thomas considered being the Master huntsman and the Master at arms, he just knew what his craft would be before they did, though they taken up their respective Masteries long before he taekt(11) up Lordship. For the first time in his life, he wielded his Lordship as a title and not as a craft.

“I am Yew, Lord of Castle. I am the ultimate authority on Castle. If you don’t cease your ridiculous carping, whining and refusal to coöperate with my servants,” Yew mentally winced as he said this, still he would apologise for it later, but it may keep this dried up, shrivelled, crafter virgin alive, but now he was thundering at Janet rather than just shouting, “Lovage won’t have to send for my guardians. I shall drag you down to the camp myself and leave you to die. And moreover, I shall take you to the men’s tent and make certain someone has some use out of you before you freeze and starve to deadth.(12) Make your decision, you have ten heart beats, the orgy or the men at the camp.”

As Yew had anticipated Janet collapsed at once, and she was reduced to babbling incoherent apologies to Lovage and Yew all at once. Bram was awed by Yew who in a matter of seconds had produced the desired result: coöperation. Young as he was, even he knew why Yew had done what he had done, but it was so out of character. Yew said quietly to him, “Fetch a healer and explain,” before going to the door and shouting, “I will two guardians in here and I will them now.” Two astonished looking guardians arrived to be telt, “Ward that doorway.” Yew turned his back on the guardians, so as not to have to explain.

Realising something strange was happening the guardians stood one on each side of the doorway and drew their knifes.

Bram went at the run, and he had a healer back there within two minutes having explained on the run too. By now, having been ignored by Yew, Lovage and Livette since Yew’s tirade, Janet was sobbing and shaking with fear. The healer, a middle aegt(13a) man called Pim, was stopped by the guardians who let him and Bram in on Yew’s nod. Pim went to a side table where he taekt a mug and quarter filled it with cool leaf before dropping something in it from his bag which he stirred briefly. He caught Janet up in his arms and putting the mug to her mouth poured its contents. He constrained her movements and ignored her protests as she gagged and swallowed its cloyingly sweet contents. Within seconds she was limp, and in a few more unconscious. He turned to Bram, “Tell a couple of our staff to bring a stretcher will you, Bram, please? You can take your time she’ll be asleep for hours.” Bram left less precipitously this time, and Pim turned to Lovage, “Good man there.”

“Yes, we’ve hopes of him,” said Lovage. Yew was nearly chewing his tongue in his efforts to apologise to Livette, Lovage and the guardians for what he considered to be grossly poor taste and even worse bad manners. “Don’t give it a thought, Yew,” said Lovage. “I’d allow you a lot more comfort (13b) than that to have hearet(14) that little spaech(15) of yours. It was beyond aught the entertainers have ever createt.(16) What say you, Livette?”

Livette started quoting, “ ‘And who exactly are you?’ ‘I am Yew!’ ” The two women collapsed into their chairs holding their sides. Bram had arrived back with the healers carrying the stretcher, who were now taking Janet to the infirmary, in time to hear Livette quoting further from Yew’s tirade. “ ‘Make your decision, you have ten heart beats, the orgy or the men at the camp.’ ”

Yew was trying to apologise to Bram, but Bram was shaking with laughter and holding his hands up in front of him in surrender, “No, Yew, worth it, Friend. Definitely worth it.” Suddenly serious, he said, “She’s alive isn’t she? And belike(17) to stay that way. That’s worth any price. You deserve all respect for that.”

Pim and the guardians demanded to know what had happened. Yew telt them, and added, “I wasn’t proud of what I sayt.”(18)

“You should be, Yew. You keept(19) her alive, and that’s part of your craft as well as mine. A laudable achievement. I have to go.” Pim left still chuckling, and they could hear him repeating the quotations.

As the guardians left one could be hearet saying to the other, “I will two guardians in here and I will them now.”

Then the response was hearet, “Ward that doorway,” along with the two guardians’ laughter.

“I suppose the entire Folk will had hearet of this by thiseve,”(20) complained Yew.

“I intend to tell any who’ll listen,” said Lovage.

Bram and Livette both said, “I too.”

Yew left with the thought he’d started with. “Ah, why me?”

Several hours later Yew was surprised when Rowan repeated the incident to him, kissed him with passion and said, “Your care to Folk you do not even know is why I love you, man of mine.” Which he recognised as a major apology for their recent differences.

Knowing some kind of response was necessary to mitigate Rowan’s difficult admission, he said “And I love you because you help me to be the man I need to be. I can only be Lord of Castle, because I have you, and I am grateful, Love.”

After making love, Rowan telt him, “I love you, Yew. I always have, but I am still grateful that Dad continually reminds me that you love me.”

“There is no need, Love. I am sure without Dad’s help you would know I lovt(21) you, even if we did have a little more dispute.”

Rowan was an intelligent woman, and she decided that it was necessary, for the first time in a while, that Yew needed the extra self-esteem that her expressed love could provide. “I do love you, Yew, and I am grateful for your love. I have been happy to have birtht(22) your children and their children make me happy too. I should like it much if you holdt(23) my hand as we sleep.”

Yew, grateful for their accord after their recent dispute, kissed his wife and said simply, “My gratitude, my love.”

29th of Towin Day 2

Will had gone to watch Raoul and Ymelda meeting with Josh Master boot maker and Vincent a man in his middle forties who described himself as a maker of shoe trees using a lathe. By the time he arrived, the meeting was nearly over, and Vincent had agreed to join Josh’s craft in an apprentice training capacity. To start with, he would have three apprentices. Raoul was exploring personal placement, and Vincent was saying, “I left my wife behind, and we’d been together a long time. I know I’ll want to marry again, but I think not for a long time. We had wanted children, but it never happened. I think I’d still enjoy having children, but I don’t think it’s likely I’ll meet any one young enough who’d be interested in me.”

Raoul thinking Vincent hadn’t yet absorbed enough of the Way, and in particular of adoption, decided to say naught for the moment, but invited him to the Greathall thiseve. Vincent expressed gratitude to him for the invitation, said he would be there and left. Ymelda, a ten year member of Thomas’ office deeply versed in the records and in her early thirties, said, “He’s a good man. Make sure he mixes with enough women seeking a man and he’ll be snapt(24) up so quickly in five days he won’t have enough time to grief(25) too badly over the wife he left behind. He is obviously unaware that the fertility of Folk women does not decrease with age as dramatically as it does for Earth women, and that a wife of his own age could give him not just a child but a family. He will be a good father, and were I seeking a man I should have maekt sure of him before he left this chamber.”

Raoul lifted his eyebrows, and Will said to him, “That’s why she’s here.”

29th of Towin Day2

Douglas was a big man, not just six feet and two and a quarter spans tall, but deep and broad in the chest too. He had cautiously admitted at his initial interviews to having had a little experience of building and operating stills. Will had stayed with Raoul and Ymelda to observe his interview with Joseph the brew Master and Gordon still Master. Initially, Douglas was reluctant to add to what he had previously said, but after Joseph had explained there were no regulations on Castle concerning stilling, but to make a craft living out of it, you had to be a good enough crafter to produce a palatable product, Douglas finally admitted his experience was over many years, and he regarded himself as an expert stillman capable of producing not just clean, pure spirits ready for flavouring and instant consumption, but also spirits that would age in the wood to superb whiskies and brandies.

He had been reluctant to say too much, he explained, because there were very heavy penalties for pursuing what was an illegal activity whence he came. Gordon asked a number of highly technical questions, and Douglas was clearly very knowledgeable indeed, even arguing with Gordon on some aspects of operating a still. As Will understood it, it was a matter of quality versus quantity that was the issue. Joseph was interested in whiskies.

“It is really a question of definition,” Douglas explained, “where I come from from brandies are considered to be made from fruit and whiskies are made from grains, though there are spirits made from other raw materials too.”

“In your terms we still a wide variety of brandies,” Joseph telt him, “though apricot accounts for over half our fillth(26) because they are hardy enough to crop reliably every year. The concept of spirits from grains, distilt(27) crude ale I take it?” Douglas nodded in agreement, “is new to us. The stills take two hundred gallons, but we usually run a thousand gallons of five hundredths through before taking the stills apart for cleaning, so as to produce a hundred gallons of fifty hundredths for instant use, or using a less clean run nigh on sixty-three gallons of eighty hundredths for long term ageing. Would you like to organise a whisky making arrangement as a trial? I’m thinking of a run of each.”

“Yes, I should, but clean stuff for immediate use is as easily made from fruit as grain, and after all clean’s clean what ever the starting materials. I should also like to breed a yeast capable of rapidly producing better than five percent, surely your wine yeasts must be able to approach twelve or fourteen which would be where to start?”

Joseph replied, “We can brew wine to may hap fiveteen,(28) but its slow, too slow for still feed, so we use a faster yeast that can only tolerate five hundredths with diluted wine which brews out fast enough to get sufficient still feed in a reasonable time. Bethink(29) you you could improve on that?”

“Certainly. You’re already most of the way there if you can achieve fifteen percent and you have a fast acting yeast. It’s not difficult it just takes time. We’d need a lot of small fermenting vessels for experimental batches and a small scale still to see how much each produced. We should have a noticeable improvement in two years, and a considerable improvement in five. We could then start with much better than five percent, ten to twelve is typical for me, though sixteen is not unheard of where I come from and I have heard of twenty-three, but I’m not sure I believe it. I’ve never bothered to try for more than ten or twelve because it takes far too long to brew much beyond that, and it’s easy to brew the sugars completely out prior to stilling at ten or twelve percent in no time at all. I should also like to make a Coffey column still which runs continuously without need for batch processing, which would be especially suitable for producing clean spirit from a relatively low percentage feed.”

Joseph and Gordon were fascinated by the concept of a continuous still, and after a few minutes further discussion concerning high quality whisky Joseph offered Douglas a craft placement working with Gordon, which delighted both of them. When the conversation turned to personal placements Douglas said he was still thinking of such matters, and he would doubtless return to spaek to them when he had thought of something to say. Douglas left with Gordon to look at the still house.

29th of Towin Day 2

Will’s next observation was chaired by Gareth assisted by Willow. Harris, Master well digger and the newfolk well digger Alec spake for less than two minutes, at the end of which the later had a craft placement. Alec was a man of sixty, but he was a fit and strong looking man. When Gareth raised the issue of a personal placement he was blunt, “I left a good wife behind me. I am a man who needs a woman, more for me to care for than the other way about. It gives a man a reason to go home and not the tavern.” Seeing the lack of comprehension on the four faces, he said, “The inn. I heard about the thing in the Greathall, and I’ve been told why. I’ll go if I have to, but I’d rather not. I’d prefer go to Alice’s and discuss our arrangements for Quarterday. She’s a pastry cook in the Keep kitchens, and it’s all fixed except the formalities. If that’s agreeable to you?” he asked looking at Gareth.

“Congratulations,” was said by all.

“Yes, if that’s the way it is, you should be with Alice, and well come(30) to the Folk, Alec,” added Gareth.

After Alec had left Willow remarked, “He didn’t waste any time did he? I can’t say I know Alice, she’s a lot older than I and rather formidable, but I know Knott her son, and I suspect she’s a lucky woman.”

Harris, who was a few years older than Alice, laught at Willow’s description of her and said, “Alice is a good woman, but she’s met her match in Alec.” He smiled at some thought or memory, which he didn’t share, and continued, “Proper Folk that one, he digs wells right and he’ll treat her right. A good man,” he remarked in conclusion.

Word Usage Key

1 Seamster, a needle crafter. The seamstresses is an umbrella craft that encompasses many others as well as the seamsters.
2 Maekt, made.
3 Spaek, speak.
4 Spaeking, speaking.
5 Baest, based.
6 Understandt, understood.
7 Concernt, concerned.
8 Beseeming. Beseem is used in two ways in Folk. The first, as here, is to be appropriate or befitting, and the second to have seemed to be or to have appeared to be.
9 Telt, told.
10 Grandma, specifically paternal grandmother.
11 Taekt, took.
12 Deadth, death.
13a Aegt, aged.
13b Comfort, in this context leeway.
14 Hearet, heard.
15 Spaech, speech.
16 Createt, created.
17 Belike, likely.
18 Sayt, said.
19 Keept, kept.
20 Thiseve, this evening.
21 Lovt, loved.
22 Birtht, in this context given birth to.
23 Holdt, held.
24 Snapt, snapped.
25 Grief, grieve.
26 Fillth, volume.
27 Distilt, distilled.
28 Fiveteen, fifteen.
29 Bethink, think.
30 Well come, welcome.