Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [18]
“Grabar’s a good man. The quarter respects him … and you. When something happens, people come to the stoneyard to talk about it. Just like Batty Dol did this morning.”
Mina swiped her eyes with her sleeve, but not because Cauvin had calmed her. Grabar himself had come through the door, and not two steps behind Grabar came Bec with the egg basket. She wouldn’t let her boy see her crying.
Grabar got the biggest bowl and rashers of crisp bacon laid one by one atop the porridge until the man of the house said stop. Bec would get bacon, too. If there were any rashers left when those two were through, then Cauvin would get another taste. Cauvin’s eyes were on the bacon; he almost missed Bec grabbing for his empty bowl.
There were bowls enough on the sideboard, but the boy would rather have Cauvin’s. Every chance she got, Mina made froggin’ sure Bec knew that Cauvin wasn’t kin, wasn’t even an apprentice or a journeyman with a claim on the stoneyard. The sheep-shite boy was too young still to care about kinship or inheritance. He wanted Cauvin’s bowl for the same reason he wanted Cauvin’s cast-off shirts: anything was better if Cauvin had used it first. When Cauvin looked at Bec, he saw the trust and love he’d never had for himself.
He teased the boy a moment, then surrendered the bowl with a grin.
Bec darted past his father, who sighed heavily but kept hold of his porridge and mug of small beer.
“‘S’gonna be a dead-slow day,” Grabar groused while straddling a table bench. “The Dragon’s loose on the Processional. Even if a man wanted to do an honest day’s work, we can’t get him the stone. And you know that if Mioklas hears about our little problem with bodies piling up at the crossing, there’s no way he’s coming up to settle his account. He’ll ask us to risk our damned necks getting bluestone to him, but that’s different than him paying for it.”
“I could knock on his high door,” Cauvin offered.
He’d been persuading the stoneyard’s laggard customers to pay their debts since Grabar brought him home from the palace. The good people of Sanctuary didn’t know half of what had gone on in the palace while the Hand held it, but they knew better than to argue with anyone who’d survived it.
Grabar waved him off between bites of bacon. “Not today. Mioklas can keep his coin box locked for another day, and we’ll keep our stone. You harness up the mule, instead, and take the wagon out to the old red-walled place. I’ve got a hunch Tobus the tailor’s going to be marrying off his son this winter. His wife won’t take another woman into her kitchen, so Tobus’ll be needing a new house next door to the one he’s got. Sure he’ll want the fronts to match, so you break out ten or twelve paces of those red walls and bring ‘em here.”
Cauvin nodded and tried to hide his disappointment. He’d rather knock on Mioklas’s high door.
“You know the place?” Grabar misinterpreted Cauvin’s hesitation. “I showed it to you once. The roof’s been down for years, and there’s trees older’n you growing in the master’s bedroom.”
“Where we got the bricks for Mistress Glary’s garden?”
“The very same. No sense letting those bricks go to waste in the sun and rain. You knock out enough of those bricks to front Tobus’s new house.”
Cauvin calculated the work and suppressed a groan. As bad as breaking out old stone was, breaking bricks was worse. Stone was harder than mortar, but bricks weren’t. For every hour he spent swinging the mallet, he’d spend three or four chipping mortar away with a chisel.
“There’s bacon for you,” Mina called, as if any number of rashers would make any difference to Cauvin’s shoulders by the end of the day.
Yet, Cauvin would have to be dead before he’d turn down bacon. He left the table to retrieve his treat from the hearth.
“How about me?” Bec asked, and not about the bacon. “I want to help Cauvin smash bricks. Please, Poppa? Please—I’m big enough now.” The boy preened with his skinny arms and mimed a swing with