didnât fight, didnât want to. They married their daughters to the Lords of other keeps, to put a stop to the fighting.â Father laughed. âOr to increase their holdings. It went on until there was only one Lord left.â
âIn Dorn-Lannet.â
âAye, in Dorn-Lannetâjust as the Uplander Lord has done, he fought them all until there was only him left. Now, he didnât want the other keeps making trouble for him, this Lord of old, so he had them pull down their walls and disband their men-at-arms.â
Graceful thought of the men sent home after the war, men she had seen pass through Kayforl, heading south to their own villages. They had a look to them, the same look . . . Was it war that gave them that look, or was it being set adrift by their Lord to find their way home, having left it in the first place to fight for him?
Graceful thought of Cam Attling, sent back not by the old Lord but by the new, they said, with a horse, as if that could make up for his arm. But he wasnât adrift, was he? He had his family to come home to, their holding.
âAnd so . . .â Father took her hand and helped her down the side of the hill. âSo, the keeps became farms, the men-at-arms took up holdings, and all together they made up villages.â
âI see,â said Graceful, and she did. But there was something else there for her to see, and she couldnât quite.
âThere, Daughter.â Father stopped, pointing to the edge of the forest, where the land was newly cleared. âWhat will you name it, this new field?â All the fields of Fenister Fort Farm had names.
Graceful put the seedling down. It had grown heavy during the walk down the hill. âThe woods look different.â It was not just because of the trees that had been felled around the base of Fenister Fort Hill. Farther into the woods, the knotted mess of saplings and shrubs and fallen branches had been cleared. Father had hired a woodsman. Now there was space among the trees that no longer looked to hide goblins or wolves, space she thought she might like to walk in.
âI thought Wildwood.â Father walked to the edge of the cleared ground and stood looking into the forest, hands stuck in his belt under his belly.
âWe should call it Merrydance, for Stepmother.â
Merrydance had been Stepmotherâs name, until she had married Father and become a Fenister.
âMerrydance is a fine name.â Father set his spade at the soil.
âIsla says plants grow better if you talk to them.â
âGar.â
âPlants grow or they do not, and talking has no part of it.â Graceful started. It was Fatherâs woodsman, whoâd come silently from the trees to stand behind them. He was not a Kayforl man, but an outsider, from Apstead. (Apstead being a dayâs ride away southward.) It wasnât just his being an outsider that no one liked, Isla had said to Gracefulâit was that he didnât smile except at Father, and Graceful. When he saw them, he lifted his hat and put a friendly mask over his more usual surly one.
âThem Coverlasts are seeing I donât get to the trees about their cot, right. They set their traps and what-all and I near walk into them, right, and I break them up but they make more and set them again.â
Father leaned on his spade. His face had a look on it that Graceful knew but saw only if she had been very naughty.
âDonât come to me with this; you should know what to do. Theyâll want work, they always want work, that lot. Put them to it, clearing the land.â
Graceful watched the woodsman trudge back in among the trees. Then, with Father helping, she set the seedling in the ground. âI name this field Merrydance,â she said, and Father threw his hat in the air.
Â
AGERST THE DRAFT horse was trotting. âCome up. Come up, sir.â Father slapped the reins and Agerst sped up. His great hooves beat