‘I hope you are talking to yourself,’ my Lord of the Bees smiles, ‘because no one is listening.’
Others, dukes and earls alike, chortle or turn their faces. Unlike them, he, the freshly-appointed Master of the Clay, comes from no real family at all. His blood is not far from the mud that his grandfather’s pigs rolled in.
He smiles, gracious. ‘These are dull matters, I concur. Nonetheless, the dullness will not compare to the surprise when the king’s new forts collapse from under our feet because the mortar was done on the cheap.’
Mention of the king always does him well. Mention of the king’s things do him even better. That sobers them a little, because they all have a stake in the king, and further stakes in the king’s things. Like a hedgehog, he ambles across this land with all these hangers-on attached to his person by their many stakes. He is liable to shake them loose any time, should he find something to his displeasure. Something like having a fort collapse.
The lords do not recall their manners, but they do recall their positions. They sit and half-listen to the Master of the Clay as he intones the list of purchases, who will make them and why, from who they will buy bricks from, to where they will fire them and with whom they should entrust to mix their mortar. The Lord of the Bees keeps his honeyed words close to hand, but as Clay is careful to remember, the stinger is never far either.
Paddy Dobson
4th April 2021