blackens in the mud," one old peasant geezer said to Dohni Ganderlay in the field the next morning. All the men and gnomes who had gathered about Dohni broke into mocking laughter.
"Should I be tithing you direct now?" asked another. "A bit of this and a bit of that, the feed for the pig and the pig himself?"
"Just the back half of the pig," said the first. "You get to keep the front."
"You keep the part what eats the grain, but not the plump part that holds it for the meal," said a pointy-nosed gnome. "Don't that sound like a nobleman's thinking!"
They broke into peals of laughter again. Dohni Ganderlay tried hard, but unsuccessfully, to join in. He understood their mirth, of course. These peasants had little chance of lifting themselves up from the mud they tilled, but now, suddenly and unexpectedly, it appeared as if fortunes might have changed for the Ganderlay family, as if one of their own might climb that impossible ladder.
Dohni could have accepted their teasing, could have joined in wholeheartedly with the laughter, even adding a few witticisms of his own, except lor one uncomfortable fact, one truth that nagged at him all the sleepless night and all that morning: Meralda hadn't wanted to go. If his girl had expressed some feelings, positive feelings, for Lord Feringal, then Dohni would be one of the happiest men in all the northland. He knew the truth of it, and he could not get past his own guilt. Because of it, the teasing bit hard at him that rainy morning in the muddy field, striking at raw nerves his friends couldn't begin to understand.
"So when are you and your family taking residence in the castle, Lord Dohni?" another man asked, moving right in front of Dohni and dipping an awkward bow.
Purely on instinct, before he could even consider the move, Dohni shoved the man's shoulder, sending him sprawling to the mud. He came up laughing, as were all the others.
"Oh, but ain't he acting the part of a nobleman already!" the first old geezer cried. "Down to the mud with us all, or Lord Dohni's to stomp us flat!"
On cue, all the peasant workers fell to their knees in the mud and began genuflecting before Dohni.
Biting back his rage, reminding himself that these were his friends and that they just didn't understand, Dohni Ganderlay shuffled through their ranks and walked away, fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles were white, teeth gnashing until his jaw hurt, and a stream of mumbled curses spewing forth from his mouth.
*****
"Didn't I feel the fool," Meralda said honestly to Tori, the two girls in their room in the small stone house. Their mother had gone out for the first time in more than two weeks, so eager was she to run and tell her neighbor friends about her daughter's evening with Lord Feringal.
"But you were so beautiful in the gown," Tori argued.
Meralda managed a weak but grateful smile for her sister.
"He couldn't have stopped looking at you, I'm sure," Tori added. From her expression, the young girl seemed to be lost in a dreamland of romantic fantasies.
"Nor could his sister, Lady Priscilla, stop mudding me,"
Meralda replied, using the peasant term for insults.
"Well, she's a fat cow," Tori snapped back, "and your own beauty only reminded her of it."
The two girls had a giggle at that, but Meralda's proved short-lived, her frown returning.
"How can you not be smiling?" Tori asked. "He's the lord of Auckney and can give you all that anyone would ever want."
"Can he now?" Meralda came back sarcastically. "Can he give me my freedom? Can he give me my Jaka?"
"Can he give you a kiss?" Tori asked impishly.
"I couldn't stop him on the kiss," Meralda replied, "but he'll get no more, don't you doubt. I'm giving me heart to Jaka and not to any pretty-smelling lord."
Her declaration lost its steam, her voice trailing away to a whisper, as the curtain pulled aside and a raging Dohni Ganderlay stormed into the room. "Leave us," he commanded Tori. When she hesitated, putting a concerned look over her sister, he roared even louder, "Be gone, little pig feeder!"
Tori scrambled from the room and turned to regard her father, but his glare kept her moving out of the house altogether.
Dohni Ganderlay dropped that awful scowl over Meralda, and she didn't know what to make of it, for it was no look she was accustomed to seeing stamped on her father's face.
"Da," she began tentatively.
"You