Chapter 2086: A Life by the Hearth (Part Three)

"It won’t be much longer, now..." Ollie’s voice called from the kitchen.

Jocelynn shivered when she heard it. For a moment, the simple words sounded much more dire. But the feeling left as quickly as it came. She always looked forward to Ollie’s cooking, whether it was something simple from his days cooking for Lothian soldiers or something fancy that he’d learned from Georg; it made her happy just the same.

Though, if she was honest, she was happiest when she was in the kitchen, working beside him. She still struggled with raw meat and butchery, but she was happy to shell peas, peel potatoes, or do anything else he needed help with. Except beets... Beets bled too much for a vegetable, and she was perfectly content to leave those to him.

Ollie’s parents arrived just as the sun touched the hills, walking up the path from their own little cottage at the end of the lane. Jamys moved slowly, pausing to glance in the stables at the horses that Charlotte and Adala had ridden over from Vale City, but Lilee grabbed a fistful of his tunic and pulled him toward the door before he did something silly.

It wouldn’t have been the first time Jamys had greeted the horses before he greeted the guests, and Lilee clearly had no intention of letting him do so tonight.

"Oh, look at you," Lilee breathed as she walked through the door and straight to her daughter-in-law’s side. "Look at our grandbaby. Is he feeding you properly? Our boy? You’re eating enough?" Lilee asked in a series of rapid questions.

"More than enough," Jocelynn promised solemnly before she burst into laughter. As if Ollie would ever let her go hungry! "He even gets up in the middle of the night to make snacks for me when I can’t sleep. Last night he stuffed cabbage leaves with farro and mushrooms for me because I was craving something earthy..."

"Good," Lilee said contentedly. "He should treat you like a princess while you’re carrying his little one, and after the birth too. Don’t let him shirk off, you hear?"

"Lilee," Jamys said gently as he gave his wife of many years a playful poke in the ribs. "Jocelynn is a princess. He should treat her like a princess all the time," he said with a rich, rolling chuckle.

"He takes very good care of me," Jocelynn said with a light laugh that cut off when she felt her child shifting in her belly. "Your father is a perfect gentleman and a great knight," Jocelynn told her child softly. "You’ll get to meet him soon."

"Supper’s ready!" Ollie called from the kitchen doorway, and the room erupted in activity.

The house had a long table. It ran nearly the length of the great room, with enough room for a dozen people and broad enough to hold a feast. It had been built by Heartwood carpenters back when the whole village had still been pretending to Ollie that they were building him a meeting hall.

Tonight every seat was filled, and Dalwyn and the children had dragged in benches from the garden for the young ones who gathered at one end of the table under the squire’s watchful eye.

Ollie and Milo carried out the platters together.

The grouse came first, roasted golden on the spit at the kitchen hearth and basted with butter and fresh chives until the skin crackled. Each bird rested on a thick round trencher of bread that had caught every drop of the drippings.

Then there was a large earthenware crock of green pottage, sweet with fresh peas and spring onions and wintermint, finished with a swirl of cream. A wooden bowl of young greens followed, endive and watercress and sharp wild sorrel with thin-sliced radishes, scattered with pale yellow primrose petals.

A dish of baby beets, roasted in the coals until their skins slipped off, sat heaped beside their greens wilted in butter and dill. Juni’s flatbreads went around the table in a stack, still warm from the hearthstone.

"The petals are for Jocelynn," Ollie said, setting the greens down in front of her. "Since she can’t have any of Milo’s mead."

"You could have just brought the honey," Jocelynn teased. "Even if it’s just honey on flatbread, the honey from Juni’s bees is the best in the village."

"It’s still too wild," Juni said as she shook her head modestly. "The orchards are just starting to be old enough and big enough to make real apple-honey or pear-honey. I still have to move the hives around all the different gardens and fields. In a year or two, when your little one is ready to enjoy sweet treats, then I should have good honey..."

"Don’t worry," Ollie said as he slid into the seat next to her, bestowing a gentle kiss on the crown of her head before he sat. "Samira made sure we had something sweet for you tonight, and the little ones too."

Ollie glowed with a paternal sort of pride as he started piling food on Jocelynn’s plate. A full leg of grouse, with tight, crispy skin that smelled of butter and herbs, neatly carved and perfectly seasoned, was enough to set Jocelynn’s mouth watering, even before he piled on the greens and beets and everything else that had gone into their late-spring feast.

Conversation flowed freely at the table. Whether it was gossip that Adala brought back from the latest meeting of the High Table in Vale City or advice from the mothers in the room on how to recover after the birth, the differences in status and station between the guests didn’t seem to matter at all. Everyone sitting at Ollie’s table was a friend close enough to call family, and they all acted as such.

For the last course, Samira brought out a bowl of fresh curds, white and soft, and Ollie spooned the first wild strawberries of the year over them and drizzled them with some of Juni’s honey. The strawberries were tiny and fragrant and so sweet that Jocelynn closed her eyes on the first bite. By the time the bowl was empty, Olver had a red smear from ear to ear, and Saku’s whiskers were stained pink.

Jocelynn leaned back in her chair with a contented sigh and let her gaze wander down the long table, savoring the sight of it. Every face she loved best in the world was there, flushed with food and firelight and laughter.

Then her eyes stopped at the far end.

One place at the table had been set and never touched. The trencher sat whole and dry in front of an empty chair. The grouse that rested on it had gone cold, and the cup beside it was still full to the brim with Milo’s mead.

"Ollie," Jocelynn said, touching his sleeve. "Who was that place for?"

Ollie followed her gaze and frowned. "I’m not sure," he said slowly. "I set a place for everyone who said they’d come. Milo and I counted twice."

Jocelynn counted the faces around the table, and then she counted them again. Juni, Milo, Lako and Old Nan. Noomi and Samira with both of their boys. Lilee and Jamys, Adala and Charlotte...

Everyone she expected to attend was here.

Everyone had a plate. No one was missing.

And yet, all night long, not one of them had sat in that chair, as though every soul at the table had known, without ever being told, that the seat was already taken...