Rocher de la Garde Stew

One chopped onion

One chopped leek

Four cloves garlic

Two chopped tomatoes

Herbs to taste:

Thyme, parsley, fennel fronds and basil

Saffron (if you can get it)

Sea salt

Fish heads, bones, trimmings,and shrimp shells to make the stock

A pound peeled shrimp

A pound white fish, chunked

A pound mussels or clams, scrubbed

Fresh Cream

☀

10th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC

The servants had indeed made it to Clarisant’s rooms first, and two maids were busily engaged in the task of drawing a bath when she and Trist entered. A new fire had already been built in the hearth, and an iron cauldron of water swung over it to heat. A long tub of oak slats, bound with copper hoops and lined with linen, had been carried into the room and set next to the fire. Trist placed his helm and gauntlets down on the floor, careful to avoid the carpet that covered much of the room, and set them down on the stone, where blood would not stain. A pair of boys not much older than Yaél came in through the door, carrying buckets of water in either hand.

“Here, let me help you,” Clarisant offered. By the time the maids had emptied the first cauldron of boiling water into the tub, and set the second to boil over the fire, she’d managed to get all the various steel pieces off Trist, and lined up against the wall. He leaned forward, wriggling his shirt of chain over his head and then off his arms, until it finally came free and collapsed onto the stone floor with a ring and a rustle. Then, he stripped off his gambeson, leaving only a linen shirt, breeches, and boots.

“Do we still have the sage soap?” Clarisant asked the serving girls, one of whom nodded. “Good. Leave us,” she said, and the maids curtseyed before departing. Trist saw there were now eight full buckets around the fire; the boys must have come and gone while he’d been getting his armor off. He sat down on a convenient chair and pulled off his boots, one after the other. Claire followed the maids to the door, where she lifted a metal key on a large ring from a hook on the wall, and turned it in the keyhole. “There,” she said, replacing the keyring. “We can talk - and bathe - in peace.”

“I should not have lost my temper with your brother,” Trist admitted.

“Gareth gets upset easily,” Claire said, with a shrug. “He always has. Help unlace my bodice?” She turned her back to him, and pulled her hair over her shoulder to hold it against her chest. Trist rose from the chair, stepped up behind her, and set to work untying knots. The work was made easier by the fact he’d been the one to tie them only a few hours before, and he hadn’t done a particularly good job of it.

“He will calm down, then?” Trist asked. “It will not be a problem?”

“The city needs you,” Claire assured him. “And I will make certain it does not become a problem. If you could avoid giving him any further reason to be upset, it would make my job less difficult, however.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Trist said, pulling her dress down off the shoulders to expose the linen shift beneath. “And I will be careful what I say.” He lowered his face to press his lips against the nape of her neck.

“You could at least wait until I am clean,” Clarisant said, but she did not seem to actually be displeased.

“Let us see to that, then,” Trist said, leaning forward to kiss the side of her neck. Then, he stepped away and strode over to the fire in his wool socks. Using a towel the maids had left, he swung the boiling cauldron off the fire, lifted it, and dumped a second load of steaming water into the bathtub. He set the cauldron back on the hinged hook secured to the hearth, and dumped one of the buckets into it before swinging it back over the fire so that it could heat. “This won’t be enough to fill the tub,” he warned his wife, looking over the remaining half dozen buckets lined up on the floor.

“That’s fine. We don’t have enough time for that anyway.”

When Trist turned back, he saw that Claire had thrown aside not only her dress, but her shift and stockings as well. He sucked in a breath and couldn’t help but stare for a moment, at the way the flickering light of the candles illuminated her skin, at the fall of her hair, at the sparkle of her eyes.

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“I never thought you would look at me like this,” she admitted, walking across the room to the tub. “I’m glad I went to Falais, Trist. We hardly knew each other,” Claire continued, stepping over the rim with her right leg, and testing a toe in the water. “Oh! One of the cold buckets, please. Too hot.”

Trist shook himself, lifted a bucket, and poured it into the tub. The linen lining seemed to inflate a bit, to lift with air trapped beneath it. He set the bucket aside and reached down to stir the water. “It shouldn’t burn now,” he said. “I’m glad you came too.”

“If I hadn’t,” Claire said, stepping into the tub with both feet, now, “I don’t think we would be here. What I mean is… we wouldn’t be like this. We would have missed a chance. Hand me the soap?”

Trist took up the bar of tallow, oak ash, and sage, and dipped it in the water. Instead of giving it to his wife, he began to rub it over her body, producing a froth on her skin, which pebbled with goosebumps. Claire closed her eyes, and practically hummed, like the string of a lute, as he cleaned her. He felt closer to her now than he had on their wedding night, when they’d slept together as near strangers.

By the time they were both clean and dressed, and had made their way down to the Great Hall, most of Rocher de la Garde must have been asleep, save for the soldiers keeping watch on the parapets of the city walls. Clarisant had brought her wooden comb down, and was still working out the tangles in her hair at the high table, when platters of leftover food from an earlier supper were brought out for them. She had also carried down her notes from their research at Falais, and spread them over the table.

Trist wore his longsword, sheathed and belted around a linen shirt with delicate blackwork at the sleeves. It was one of the shirts Claire had made him, during her time at Camaret-à-Arden, and then brought first west to Falais, and then along on the march back east. Most had been left in the trunks with the carriage and her maid, but she’d stuffed a few into saddlebags, and they’d been freshly laundered here at her family’s ancestral home.

Sir Gareth had brought a map of the city and the surrounding countryside, inked on a large piece of vellum. “You must have seen somewhat of the enemy camps,” he pressed, “Since you rode through them.”

“Little enough,” Trist admitted. “They had raised a wooden stockade, facing the city, here,” he pointed out on the map as best he could. “Not so tall, yet, that a horse cannot jump it, but give them time. I expect they will dig out a trench, as well, over the next day or two.”

“Here, let me,” Blasine said, taking the comb from her daughter and setting to the task of working out tangles. Trist watched them for a moment, imagining a much younger Claire sitting still while her mother did her hair.

“The greatest problem is not the enemy camp,” Trist said, shaking himself. He hadn’t had more than an hour or two of sleep over the past two days, and he was beginning to feel it: his thoughts were vague and indistinct. His wife must have been feeling even worse. “It is the daemon Bathin, in particular, one of the three which were bound in the Barony du Champs d'Or, and which have been freed. Vinea is defeated, thanks to your sister and the faerie Acrasia, and I have taken the measure of Zepar; I am confident I can defeat him, if given the chance.”

“My sister?” Gareth asked, with a frown, but Claire simply waved his concern away with her hand.

“Acrasia did the fighting,” she said, “and in any event, that is a tale for another time. Let us continue.”

“What is it about this particular daemon, then, that is so difficult?” Trist’s cousin, Lucan, asked. Sir Florent had come, as well, and Dame Etoile, forming an impromptu war council.

“This,” Clarisant said, holding her head steady but reaching forward to take up one of the pieces of parchment covered in her neat and careful hand. "The Marian Codex said that the Serpent of Gates can take men from one country to another, wherever they wish to go. We saw that on the road east, and again earlier today during the attack on Camaret-à-Arden.”

“Somehow,” Trist explained, “The daemon uses a Boon to unravel the world itself, and open a sort of door or gate between one place and another. It is not so large that you could ride a cavalry force through it, nor even march a unit of infantry, but it is large enough for men to come through two at a time, on foot. Perhaps one rider, I would guess.”

“And they can place it anywhere?” Florent asked, lifting an apple from the table and taking a bite. “That’s going to be hard to deal with. What’s to stop them from coming out in someone’s cellar? Move men through in the middle of the night, kill everyone in the house, and use it for cover. By the time we knew anything was happening, they’d have two dozen, three dozen soldiers inside the city.”

Trist’s stomach rumbled at the sight of the older knight eating his apple, and he began to fill his plate with food. There was a dip of blended olives, capers, olive oil, and spices, with bread baked earlier in the day to scoop it up. Better yet, there was half a great large tureen of a creamy stew, which he spooned into two bowls, one for himself and one for Claire. He took a taste, and found the soup had a thick, creamy broth, and was full of a variety of local seafood, including shellfish, as well as vegetables and enough herbs and spices to spoil him for days.

“I don’t actually think that will happen,” Claire said, in between spoonfuls from her own bowl. “At the village, they came out on the road south. When they attacked the army on the march, Trist, you said the portal was at the top of a hill, didn’t you?”

“Aye,” he said with a nod, after swallowing.

“And even in the notes Marius wrote in the Codex, the accounts of battles where the daemon moved men, there is never any account of enemies coming out of a building,” Clairsant continued.

“You do not think they can do it,” Trist guessed, and she grinned.

“No, I don’t,” his wife said. “I think perhaps they can’t be sure of exactly where it’s going to be placed. What if they tried to place it in a basement, and missed, like an arrow from a bow? A portal under the earth wouldn’t do them much good, or set inside a wall.”

“That would explain why they have always chosen clear, open spaces to place these gates,” Sir Florent said.

“Still, we do not have much experience to base this on,” Sir Gareth protested. “Two examples?”

“I think we have to assume your sister is right,” Florent argued. “Look, we simply can’t guard every basement. It isn’t possible. But we can put a watch on every courtyard, every square, the docks. Any place that would give them enough room to come through.”

“It would also explain why they have not tried it yet,” Trist pointed out. “It is not nearly as useful to bring men behind the walls if we see them coming. No,” he continued, after thinking about it, “What they need to do is feint.”

“Hit the walls,” Florent said, following the line of thought. “And while we are throwing them back, that is when they send a force into our rear. That is what I would do.”

“Then that is what we watch for,” Gareth said. “And when they come?”

“We make it a bottleneck,” Trist said. “Wherever and whenever a gate comes, we have to be prepared to hold it - no matter what else is happening at the walls. If they can keep it open for five minutes, without resistance, we are done. That will be the end of the city.”