The master of Victrix Farm was about the same height as his son, but older than Rudi had expected-in his sixties, with only a fringe of cropped white hair around a bald dome. His spare frame was erect and vigorous, though, and his eyes bright as turquoise in a seamed, tanned face; he wore the usual bib overalls and cap of a Hawkeye gentleman.
"A pleasure to see you again, sir," Ingolf said.
"Always a pleasure to see the man who hammered some sense into my boy Jack, Captain Vogeler," the older man said. "It was more than I could ever do."
"You couldn't put him on the latrine detail for a month. That helped."
The master of Victrix turned to take in the rest of the party, blinking a little at Rudi's kilted height. When he shook hands it was a brisk no-nonsense gesture.
"Come on in," he said. "Plenty of room at dinner."
Showered and in his set of clean clothes, Rudi felt much more human. The room he'd been given was larger than his at home in Dun Juniper, with a window that overlooked the gardens behind the house; it smelled pleasantly of rose sachets, and there was even a shelf of books above the desk, and the luxury of a private bathroom. The floor was interesting; he recognized broad heart-of-pine planks, worn but beautifully fitted-they must have been there since the house was built a century or more ago.
Our host's kin are old in this land, he thought. Good for folk to have roots.
A servant girl knocked at the door. "Dinner, sir," she said, poking her head around it and smiling with her yellow-brown braids swinging on either side of a freckled face.
"In a moment," Rudi replied, made a last adjustment to the lie of his plaid, and walked out.
Dinner was to be served on a screened-in veranda at the rear of the house, pleasantly open to the breeze as the sun set on this hot summer's day, with a view of a rose garden blossoming with white and crimson, and a stretch of lawn with a swinging chair. Garbh was out there beneath a huge oak that had a tractor tire slung from one branch by a rope, gnawing on a bone and surrounded by several cautiously curious local dogs.
Rudi's nose told him what awaited the humans just before his eyes could.
Now, don't be drooling down your plaid, Rudi Mackenzie, he told himself. You must do the Clan credit among strangers!
A cold roast suckling pig lay at one end of the long table in brown-glazed glory on a slab of carved oak, with an apple in its mouth; a sirloin of beef rested at the other, pink at the center where a thin slice had been shaved away. Between them were breads and hot biscuits and yellow butter, salads of greens and cherry tomatoes and onions and peppers and radishes dressed with oil and vinegar, potato salad with its creamy whiteness flecked with bits of red, deviled hard-boiled eggs with their yolks replaced by minced ham forcemeat, platters of fresh boiled asparagus, cauliflower and eggplant baked with cheese, sauteed mushrooms, glazed carrots…
Well, so much for being afraid we'd impose, Rudi thought, and wrenched his attention away for the introduction to his host's wife, Alexandra, and his daughter-in-law, Cecilia.
"Padre, will you do the honors?" Abel Heuisink said to Ignatius; from the crucifixes, Rudi assumed the family were Catholics.
They all bowed their heads, and then the pagans murmured their own graces, which got them startled glances.
Mrs. Alexandra Heuisink must have been around twenty at the Change; in her early forties she was still very attractive, in a full-figured way which her cotton dress showed to advantage, and it was obvious where Jack had gotten his reddish brown hair. Jack's wife, Cecilia, was dark-haired and quietly pretty with very pale blue eyes; her children were apparently too young to sit at table. Besides the married daughter off towards Dubuque, the other children were Jack's twelve-year-old younger brother, George, agog for the travelers' tales, and sisters, Andrea and Dorothy, quiet and grave at first with so many strangers present; they were about two years apart, alike enough with their russet ponytails to be twins at first glance.
Rudi gave them an account of the buffalo hunt with the Sioux, and got wide-eyed wonder; Virginia Kane told a story of Coyote Old Man, and got a laugh.
"I wish I'd been with you!" George burst out, when he'd heard a bit more of the band's passage.
His father gave him a stern glance, and his elder brother an exasperated one; obviously having run away to soldier in a free company himself undermined any prospective words of wisdom to a youngster with his head fermenting full of romantic yeast. Rudi grinned at the boy.
Time to deflate his enthusiasm a wee bit, he thought. No danger of doing it too much, not with a spirited lad like him. Heroing is something fate and duty inflict on you, boyo, not a grand game you seek out for the fun of it.
"Not while we were holed up in that cave, and my sister"-he nodded towards Mary-"and I were like to die."
"Did it hurt?" the boy asked with ghoulish enthusiasm; no normal lad that age really believed in agony and death.
I did, Rudi thought. But then, I met them earlier than most. Aloud he went on with malice aforethought:
"It wasn't that so much, as not being able to go to the latrine by myself, and having to be swaddled and cleaned like a baby."
The two younger girls made disgusted faces, and George looked as if he'd like to; he also went thoughtful for a while.
" This hurt," Mary added, tapping her eye patch. "But that wasn't as bad as knowing I'd never get it back."
Jack winked at Rudi behind his sibling's back, and the two elder Heuisinks gave him slight, silent, grateful nods.
He didn't let conversation interrupt his eating more than he had to until well into the meal. It concluded with apple and cherry pies and ice cream with walnuts, and then the children were sent off; Cecilia shepherded them away. The two blond maidservants cleared the table, and everyone moved to softer chairs around a low settee where they set out a pear brandy much better than the indifferent wine which had accompanied the meal, and real coffee in an old-looking silver service and bone-china cups.
"Thank you, Francine, Marian," Alexandra Heuisink said. "That'll be all."
The girls looked a little startled, but went. Alex went on to the group:
"They're perfectly trustworthy, but what you don't know, you can't blab."
Abel nodded: "I'm not in as good odor with the current Bossman as I was with his father."
"Dad's head of the Progressives," Jack explained, nibbling a biscuit. "He's the Vakis' Friend-sorry, Dad, but that's the word people use. Anthony Heasleroad's a Ruralist."
"Anthony Heasleroad is a Heasleroadist first, last and always," his mother said, as she poured the coffee. "And his father was a strong-arm artist who got into office by what amounted to a coup d'etat. And murder, in my opinion."
"We did what had to be done, 'Zandra," her husband said. "I know your father was a good man-"
"-who had a convenient accident," she replied. "He was also the legitimate Governor, and he wouldn't have tried to make the position hereditary."
"Yeah. But he would have let us be swamped instead of closing the Mississippi bridges. We certainly couldn't afford a civil war then, things were too close to the edge. We all saw what happened in Illinois. And we don't want one now."
"Maybe Tom Heasleroad was a necessary evil, but damned if I can see why Tony's necessary at all."
"He's got the State Police and the Ruralist Party on his side, Mom," Jack pointed out. "It's necessary not to get sent to the mines for sedition and violating the Emergency Legislation."
"True," his father said. He turned to the travelers. "Sorry, but if you're going East, some of this local politics is relevant."
"Some of it sounds unpleasantly familiar," Fred Thurston said. Virginia Kane nodded beside him.