Shelagh was still hovering just inside the door. "Well?" I asked. "Are you not going to enter? Is my house to be feared?"
"No, not feared, but perhaps fretted over. You lack your servant very visibly, Cay."
Donuil, who had been my servant and my adjutant until I refused his services upon our arrival here in the north-west, began to flush and moved to stand up from the seat into which he had subsided on entering. I waved him back into his seat, keeping my eyes on his wife and smiling because I knew she had a point she wished to make.
"Lack my servant? You mean my adjutant, I presume? Not so, then. I have no need of servants here and am more than capable of looking after my own needs."
She threw me a look of bright-eyed scorn, and her Erse temperament flashed at me. "Oh, I don't doubt your capabilities, Caius Merlyn. It's your concentration that I worry about—that, and your sense of priorities."
I frowned at her through a grin, mocking her fierceness. "What do you mean, woman? Am I going to have to warn you again that your shrewish tongue is for your husband and that I need never hear it? What is wrong with my sense of priorities?"
She flicked her eyes around the room again, a lightning- quick glance into which she managed to compress a world of disparagement. "Exactly the same thing that is wrong with every other man's priorities: they are male priorities."
I raised my hands and brought them together, applauding slowly, knowing it would exasperate her into laughter. She glared at me with narrowed eyes for several long moments, but then she stepped forward into the room and stooped to run her finger along the top of my main table. A long, glowing line appeared where she had stroked, gleaming richly through the dust.
"There you are, look at that! Have you ever seen the like of that before, in the quarters of Commander Caius Britannicus?"
"No, Shelagh, I have not. But there are no military commanders here. These are the quarters of plain Master Cay, a landless farmer, currently inhabiting an ancient and abandoned Roman fort. Who is this Commander Caius Britannicus?"
"Someone I used to know." She stroked her fingers again through the dust that blanketed the highly polished surface of the table. "But I must say the landless farmer Cay owns some very fine furnishings." She looked about her again, sighing. "You need help, Cay, in your simple day-to-day living, as do most of us here in this little, bustling and much-demanding place we have built for ourselves. You are far from unique. But, since you refuse to accept assistance from either myself or Donuil, or from any of the others, I have a suggestion to make."
I placed the lamp down on the table top with exaggerated care and bowed to her, waving my open hand in the direction of an empty chair. "Please, Shelagh, sit down. You'll find you can speak just as clearly from a seat as you can when you are standing, and you will find that I listen with more care when I attend a seated speaker."
She looked at me sidewise, but moved without further protest to sit beside her husband, who sat silent, smiling gently at me. When she was settled, I leaned back in my chair with a smile of my own.
"So, you were saying I need help, as do some others, and you have some suggestions. I would like to hear them."
"Good. Our party needs new blood and new incentives. We are eighteen, here in our high-perched fort: four children, three wedded couples, one unmarried woman and seven single men—you, Lucanus, Hector, Dedalus, Rufio, Jonathan and Mark. Ten men to four women— those proportions are unhealthy. Even removing Rufio, who spends enough time with Turga to be considered wedded, that still leaves six men with requirements that demand attention."
I sat smiling at her. "So, what are you suggesting, Shelagh? That we six who remain should all rush out and find wives for ourselves?"
"Hmm. It would not be a bad idea, were it achievable. But no, that is not what I am suggesting. My suggestion is that when we travel into Ravenglass tomorrow, we make an effort to increase our numbers by judicious recruitment—" She held up one hand to cut me off before I could begin to reply. "I know we decided we've no need of anyone other than ourselves, and that we need to keep our heads low, Cay, but think of this: could there be any better way of hiding among these folk than hiding among these folk?"
I sat staring at her, hearing what she had said but failing to understand it. Finally I squinted at her, to show my incomprehension.
"What?"
"Think, Cay! We are alongside them, separate now, not among them, and they're not among us. I'm saying let's bring some of them up here, men and women, to live and work with us. Derek talks about his town being overcrowded, and we have just discovered, during a mild winter, that we are few and would be glad of others to spend time with us in the short days and the long, dark nights. Here is opportunity to benefit everyone. We could ask Derek to send some of his people up here to live with us, and we could have the right to pick those who would come."
"Hmm." I could see the rightness of what she was saying, and I glanced at Donuil. "It sounds reasonable, put like that. What think you, Donuil?"
Donuil grinned and stretched, yawning elaborately. "I think I'm hungry and I'm glad it's dinner time. I also think my wife is a very clever woman and her suggestion has great merit and I know I couldn't have come up with it."
"Hmm." I looked back at Shelagh, who sat watching me, and nodded to her. "I agree with Donuil. I'll talk -to Derek when we get to Ravenglass. Have you thought about how many of his people we could use?"
"I have. We need craftsmen, and skilled women. I think couples should be counted as one, provided both halves have usable skills. Then we'll need sawyers and more tanners, and we could use a cooper. We are eighteen, but that is really only fourteen, since four are children. We could be fifty, easily. We have no lack of space and accommodation, and there are no problems with feed or water or hunting."
"And you feel sure about being able to select only the kind of people we would require, according to our own criteria?"
"Oh, aye. This place has much to recommend it to folk who live in crowded towns ... especially in spring, summer and autumn. I think we'll have no shortage of volunteers, and strong young men."
"And strong young women, too, eh?"
She looked at me, a look of wide-eyed innocence. "Of course, strong young women. We've lots of work here for strong young backs. And our own young men, like Jonathan and Mark, need to be challenged."
"Challenged. Aye." I sighed, aware that I'd been bested. "Very well, Shelagh. So be it. But we'd best speak to Hector tonight about it, and not leave it till the morning. He has the right to know this information before anyone else. Now, let's go to dinner. He'll be there already."
There was a festive air about our group as it wound its way along the road to Ravenglass the following day. Some of us—myself, Dedalus, Donuil, Shelagh and Rufio—were mounted singly, the boys rode on their matched, piebald ponies, and the other nine occupied our little train of four horse-drawn wagons, empty on the way down but intended to be laden for our return. The day had dawned bright and sunny, warm with more than a mere intimation of the spring to come, so that our sense of well-being expanded remarkably as we came down from the heights, off the flanks of the hills and into the fertile vale of the Esk amid welling bird-song that seemed to hang over the valley like a fluttering fabric.
I rode to the head of the column and then drew my horse aside to watch the remainder of our group as they passed, shaking my head in discouragement to several who would have stopped to talk with me and waving them on in the understanding that I wished to be alone for a spell. The boys, on their ponies, were on the move constantly, ranging far along the road to the west ahead of the slower, more sedate adult party, but returning continually to check our progress, warned as they had been not to roam too far ahead.