Chapter 448: For A Taste Of Home
For days, an oppressive gloom had settled over Lothian March. The rains often came in the morning, filling the air with a sodden mist that seeped into everything, clinging until well past midday and casting a pall over the entire day. Tempers grew short across the march, and in Lothian City, the ale-houses quickly became overcrowded with people looking for a place to warm their bellies and escape the gloom.
Along one wall, a dark-haired youth moved with surprising grace as he dodged the press of wagon drivers, off-duty soldiers, and merchants that filled one of the most popular ale houses in the shadow of Lothian Manor.
His clothing was neat and well maintained with a dark maroon tunic that had been unlaced enough to reveal a hint of his pale, muscular chest and black breeches so tight that they left some patrons who glimpsed the youth wondering if he’d come to advertise ’services’ that the Church was known to frown apon.
Thankfully, few people were paying attention to the young man who seemed to fade in and out of the dark shadows at the edges of the ale house while someone at the bar was garnering significantly more attention, though if the young man was going to learn anything useful this evening it appeared that he would have to pull the man at the bar away from his currently floundering venture.
"I’m telling you," a coarse man with a broken nose was yelling at the hostess behind the counter. "I have two short casks, fresh from Blackwell City. Pear wine! Genuine Blackwell County pears, aged over a year. You don’t know how hard it is to get them all the way here when every wagon is loaded up full for the journey. A sovereign each is a steal! You’ll get a silver penny a cup or more for them."
"Hogs piss," the woman behind the bar spat, snapping a wet rag at the broken-nosed man. "No one ’ere will pay a silver penny for a cup of anything. ’Sides, you think this lot can tell the difference ’tween hard apple cider and Blackwell Pear wine? Ey boys!" the woman shouted. "Three snips for a cider, two snips for an ale, or a penny for some fine, lordly wine? Who wants t’ pretend t’ be a rich man t’night?"
"Booo!"
"Fer a silver penny, does the wine come wit you, Bonnie?" a drunken man at the bar said, raising his head up and fumbling for his purse. "I’ll buy two cups if it buys your bed to go wit’ it!"
"Oy!" another man at the bar shouted, slamming a fist into the drunken man’s ribs. "Don’t go is-sulting Bonnie that way. Five silver pennies at least! One for your wine, one for her wine, one for her bed, one for her..."