“Food,” Raoul said after a moment. “Labor. Safe passage upon the roads.”
Darcy listened as I repeated the answer, then glanced toward the stores, her mind visibly moving ahead of the conversation.
“How many men?”
Raoul answered. Then she asked how often his patrols passed through the region, how many horses required fodder, which roads the Normans meant to hold through winter, and whether they intended to rebuild the bridge south of the ridge.
By the third question, Raoul no longer looked amused. By the fifth, two of his men had dismounted and moved closer. By the seventh, Godwin was grinning openly.
I stood and translated while Darcy bargained away everything we could spare and nothing we could not. Three measures of grain now. More after harvest, provided the fields remained ours to plant.
Labor to repair the southern road. No forced quartering within the settlement. Safe passage for women and children moving between the nearby villages.
No burning.
Raoul refused that demand immediately as Darcy folded her arms.
The Norman commander rubbed one hand across his beard. “You ask much.”
“So does he.”
Raoul did not understand the words, but he understood the tone, and for the first time he laughed.
The sound startled everyone, even Darcy.
At last he held out his hand. His grip tightened around mine, a reminder and a warning both.
“Do not mistake tolerance for freedom.”
“I do not.”
That, more than anything else I had said, seemed to satisfy him, perhaps because conquerors expected hatred and submission, but understood clear eyes.
The terms were not a victory. England remained conquered, Ashford had been burned to the ground, and we would give grain to men who had crossed the sea with horses, fire, and steel. Someday a Norman lord might still arrive to claim every bit of ground beneath our feet, and there would be new bargains, new threats, and perhaps battles we could not yet imagine.
But the children would sleep beneath roofs that night. Fields could be planted, bridges could be rebuilt, and people who had spent weeks running might finally remain in one place long enough to set down their tools and make something that would still be there tomorrow.
I had once believed a lord’s duty was to hold the ground his fathers had held, no matter the cost.
Now I looked at the settlement we had all built and understood that land was not made sacred because dead men had owned it. It became home because living people stayed.
When the Norman riders finally disappeared beneath the trees, silence held over the clearing for several breaths, as though no one quite trusted the fact that the danger had truly passed.
Then Gilda spoke loudly from near the fire. “Does this mean we have to feed them?”
Darcy turned toward her. “Yes.”
Gilda scowled. “I liked them better as enemies.”
Wystan appeared beside her, as boys often did when food or trouble was mentioned. “You said the pottage was too thick.”
“It is.”
“We could give them that.”
Darcy pointed at him, a smile on her face. “An excellent idea.”
Laughter moved across the settlement, quiet at first, then gathering as one person passed it to another until even Godwin was wiping at his eyes.