The Kadin - Bertrice Small [195]
When Lord Hay arrived that night his mistress greeted him affectionately.
“Were ye ten years younger, sweetheart, I might suspect ye. What on earth did ye do to get Charles an earldom?”
“Spent forty years in a Turkish harem” she laughed.
“Witch!” He tumbled her onto the bed and kissed her soundly.
“His majesty said that I had given forty years to my country. I suppose he meant that had his father not sent mine as his ambassador to San Lorenzo, I should have remained home and not been kidnapped and sold as a slave. When ye think of it Colly, the royal Stewarts did owe me something.”
“Were they bad, those years away, my hinny?”
“No, Colly. There wasna a bad year in all the forty, except when my husband died. And that my love, is all I’ll say about it”
The following morning the weather turned from unusually warm, to wet and cold. Within a few days the colorful trees were stripped bare. Janet organized an expedition of children from the village to go nutting, for she suspected it would be another long and cold winter. She was a good liegelady and took care of her people. The barns at the castle were full with provisions—wheat, rye, and oat flours; salted and smoked meats and fish; edible roots and apples; sugar; and dried peaches, pears, plums and raisins. Days had been set aside in season for the village women to make their preserves, comfits, cordials and soaps. Those who went without did so due to their own laziness. No one, however, on Sithean lands would go hungry. The food would be given as needed monthly. Milk was given daily, and each family owned several chickens thanks to their lady’s generosity.
The countess of Glenkirk remonstrated with her husband’s sister, the dowager countess of Sithean, for what she called “foolish wastefulness.” Janet laughed to herself. Anne was like so many of the old nobles. She did not understand that well-fed decently housed and clothed peasants worked better than half-starved half-frozen wretches. Hunger and cold bred despair, rebellion, and physical weakness that was called laziness by both the church and the rich. Janet had no patience with this kind of attitude but kept silent and went her own way. If her family grew rich, it was because of her clever management and her policy of putting out her own effort as example to the peasants, a lesson she had learned from the Ottoman.
At New Year’s, Lord Hay presented his mistress with a heavy gold ring set with rubies and a golden brown velvet cloak lined in dark brown sable. On Candlemas he became a grandfather for the first time when his eldest son’s wife bore a son to be called James. On March sixth Janet became a grandmother for the twelfth time when Fiona presented Charles with a third son, Andrew.
In mid-spring word came at last from Istanbul. Young Aaron Kira had personally taken Janet’s message, going a shorter, albeit more dangerous way. Normally one would sail from Leith down into the English Channel, across the Bay of Biscay, through the straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean. The ship would then sail through the Mediterranean, the Aegean, the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, and into the Bosporus to Istanbul.
Instead this brave and resourceful youth had shipped out on a Kira-owned vessel for the Baltic port of Hamburg. In Hamburg he had bought a smaller boat and recruited some half a dozen young and adventurous Germanic Kira cousins to help him. They had sailed along the Baltic coast to the mouth of the Vistula River and then up the Vistula to its headwaters. Here he left five of the boys and the boat awaiting his return, taking only one cousin, Moishe. Buying horses in a nearby Cossack village, the boys rode to Gran, They were now safe in Suleiman’s empire, and here the Kiras had a network of posting houses to supply horses to their messengers. Within a few short weeks Aaron Kira and his wide-eyed cousin arrived safely in Istanbul.
Esther was astounded to see her nephew so soon, but when she read Janet’s message she understood. Enlisting the aid of Janet