Lora of Two Worlds

Seeing Physician Zachary enter, Lora and Carl took their leave together. They had just reached the court gate when a voice hailed them from the side:

”Young master, a moment!”

The two looked back. A man was hurrying up the gravel path, thirty or so, in a wine-red riding tunic, a black leather girdle trimmed in wine-red, short black leather boots, a soft cap beneath a black head-wrap, the livery of an Odenheim man-at-arms.

”Captain Derrick, you wanted me?”

Denton Quinn had been running; before he stood still he said: ”Young master, Lord Gareth bids you come at once to the barracks.”

”Has he a lead?”

”The second young lord brought back some arms; he’s a lead, he’d have you come and match the men from the boat.”

Lora’s heart leapt, and she said at once: ”Truly? So soon a thread? Then I’ll go with Carl.”

”Heh,” Denton Quinn lifted his sleeve and wiped his brow, grinning: ”The young lord knew you would say so, he told me to remind you: my lady is still confined by the Count’s order, she can’t go anywhere.”

Carl laughed, clapped her on the head, and strode off after Captain Derrick.

Margaret, seeing Lora pouting, said with a smile: ”You mustn’t think Lord Gareth never laughs with you, he’s you much on his mind. Once the Countess told him the carriage was too wide; you got in and out at the outer yard, and had to walk past the men-at-arms every time.

”Lord Gareth said nothing, but he turned about and had a narrow-axle carriage made over for you, so you could ride through the postern and alight in the rear courtyard.”

”Alvin is Father’s right hand, Gareth is rough outside, fine within. And Roland? He seems the liveliest of the lot.” Lora was calling up the faces she had met only yesterday, in her mind.

”Lord Roland is closest to cousin Felix next door. The two went together to the royal academy in Augustburg, took their university honors together, and wouldn’t stay in Augustburg, they came home together. He was long away from the house; of course he can’t be as close as Lord Brendan and Lord Carl and you, who see her every day.”

”True, we three are much of an age. Mother has had a hard time of it, six of us in a breath... Come, let’s go see Mother.”

The two had just turned a corner when they came on a man of middle years, in a fine black linen houppelande, scolding a boy of ten or so:

”Is this how you waste the Count’s house? Young master? The my lord doesn’t keep house; he tells you to throw the fish away, and you throw them away, and what do we’ve for supper tonight?”

”The my lord is young, but he’s a master of the house, isn’t he?” the boy muttered, then asked: ”Then should I go to the South Market and buy some to make up?”

”Buy, my foot! Get a net and quietly fish them out of the water-lily pond!”

”But if my lady and the my lord see, I is dead...” the boy still hung back, muttering.

The man lost his temper and brought the rolled-up ledger in his hand down hard on the boy’s head. Another boy beside him stepped up at once to court favor:

”Steward, don’t be angry, I will go and fish them out; I’ll warrant we’ll have more than we began with.”

The man gave a cold snort, kicked the fish-dumping boy, flung his cloak, and strode off.

Lora was about to step out and stop him, but Margaret caught her arm.

”Why not? It was I that called those perch pretty, that was why Carl had the boy take them to the water-lily pond to free them. Who’s this man, to be so high and mighty in our house!” Lora was hot with it.

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Margaret looked that way, the man was gone, and let Lora go. She curtsied and said, smiling:

”Don’t be angry, my lady, Margaret will tell you. That was the steward of the house, Steward Webb; every matter in the house that touches money passes through his hands.

”But that’s not why he carries himself so. He was the Count’s own body-servant in his youth; on the field he took a sword-blow for the Count, and the whole scalp of his head was sheared away, a finger lower and he’d have been dead.

”They say the skin on his crown is paper-thin, not only will no hair grow, you can see the bone through it. The Count, in gratitude for the life saved, trusts him utterly; all these years Steward Webb has had the whole management of House Odenheim.”

So that was it. Lora’s anger cooled a little, and she asked, surprised:

”Does Mother not keep house?”

”The Countess is meant to, but in her young years she was ever with child or in her lying-in; when you were born she fell into a weak constitution, with thin blood, and had no strength for so great a house. So long as nothing goes badly wrong, she’s glad to leave it to Steward Webb.”

Margaret glanced at Lora’s face, and went on: ”The Countess has bidden us, unless it’s some great matter, don’t cross Steward Webb; he saved the Count’s life, and we should bear with him.”

Lora thought of what Brendan had said, and asked again:

”Our house, even Carl holds an ensign’s commission; the men are all out earning. But Brendan’s room looked plain enough, are we not so well off?”

”That you must ask the Count himself. The money of our house, every month a part of it goes to relieve the old men-at-arms whose families are in want. That cost isn’t fixed; it’s the Count’s will, and the Countess has never reckoned it.” Margaret pointed to a small court half hidden among the trees, and said softly, smiling:

”Here we’re, the Countess lives there. The Countess is oft in worry, though, she says the young masters’ marriages are a separate cost of the house; and your marriage may be in a year or two; and on top of that she must add her own dowry, lest you lose face.”

”I won’t marry, I’ll save Mother the money!”

Lora dipped her head, gathered her skirts, and ran into the court; Margaret, smiling, hurried after her.

”Why aren’t you lying down? I just had Pearl send some broth to your room, by the time you’re back it will be cold; you’ll have to heat it.” The Countess, Lady Margaret, saw her daughter coming and drew her to lean against her on the daybed. Beside them, Helen laughed:

”This broth is the Countess’s own apothecary’s recipe, she put in her own pin money, and bought restorative cordials for it...”

”She’s a child, why tell her all that?”

Lora leaned on her mother’s shoulder and played the coaxing daughter: ”I’m nearly fifteen, I ought to learn a little. If I keep house one day and know nothing, how will that do?”

Everyone laughed. Margaret ran a finger down her own cheek to shame her:

”And here was one just now saying she’d save Mother the money, and not marry.”

”Silly, money is for spending; spend it when you should, what’s the use of hoarding?” The Countess stroked her loose hair: ”Our house may not match a prince’s or a duke’s, but we’re not so poor that we must scrimp on you and Carl.”

”By the bye, Mother, apart from Father’s and the brothers’ pay and stipend, have we no other holdings?”

”How should we not? The Count twice put down rebels and won great merit; the King’s reward came in chests of gold florins and silver marks, carried in box by box. With that money the Countess has, over the years, bought up five or six manor estates, are these not the house’s holdings?”

Penny counted on her fingers:

”Add the two manors that came in with the Countess’s dowry, and we’ve seven or eight. These are all on the outskirts of town, and a little farther off, two wooded hills.”

”Wooded hills?”

Lora asked it idly, in her head she was running over the mineral lands near Lohenheim; in her old life she had followed the metals sector for a while, and her memory of it was sharp.

Only, a thousand years had passed, and many a name had changed; she would need a map, and follow the rivers, which didn’t move.

At the thought of rivers, the Countess said, by chance:

”Those two wooded hills were your great-grandfather’s. He had never in his life left Augustburg; when I married and came to Lohenheim, he gave them to me, saying his great-grandsons should have a place to hunt. Your brothers once went out to hunt there, they said it was up a tributary of the Loene, against the current...”

”The, the Loene tributary! I know it, our hills... are they by the Loene tributary? Is it near Lornmere?”

Lora was so excited she stammered. The state’s heavy-metals cleanup project, one of them had been on the Alz Valley river; she had personally done the due diligence on the project.

”Lornmere? I’ve never heard of it. I only recall Alvin telling me, past Aldmoor, some dozen leagues on, or it may have been more, you come to it.”

Aldmoor, in the old days an Aldmoor township; in her modern world the Lornmere region.

It was her own fault, what was she doing, naming places? Was she not supposed to remember nothing? Lucky Mother hadn’t noticed.

Lora scolded herself, and at the same time was grinning from ear to ear:

Good Lord, there’re untapped gold and iron mines near Lornmere. Even if they’re not ours, we can find a way to buy them.

I’m a lady with a mine in the family hills!

That great-grandfather she had never met, Prince Jasper, must have been a walking treasury.