Jack Frost: King of Thieves

CHAPTER XXIX: Beyond My Hopes

Jack caught up with Elsa at the edge of town. She regarded him oddly as he pulled abreast of her once more, but she didn't ask what he had said to North. She led him back around the town and up onto the hill so that soon they were riding through the fields just outside of Burlington Manor. As before, Jack was struck by the richness of the surrounding lands. It all looked lush and fertile. Had he been a farmer, he would have been drawn to the deep living green of these lands. He looked around him, his puzzlement growing by the moment.

"This is rich country," he said at last. "Where are your cattle? Your sheep?"

Elsa took a breath, looking over the lands in turn. "Sold," she said. "Eaten, stolen, traded. We have had seven lean years in the Shire. Our meat is rabbit, or a wild pig on a lucky day."

Jack looked toward the forest. "And deer?"

"If you're willing to risk your neck to the king's executioner!" Elsa said. "Every deer in the land belongs to his majesty."

He hadn't known. That didn't seem anymore just then the church claiming these people's grain. No meat, no bread. How were they supposed to eat?

"The lives of kings and bishops depend on their people," Jack said, as much to himself as to Elsa. "So why do the people believe it's the other way about?"

Elsa eyed him curiously, clearly not knowing what to make of what he had said. In truth, Jack wasn't sure what to make of it either. He had never said such a thing before, at least not so that others could hear. It wasn't really the kind of thing he was used to thinking. He'd spent the last ten years as a soldier, worrying about his own survival and that of the men fighting beside him. He took Overland's sword and armour as much to get himself back to the Southern Isles as to honour Sir Jackson last request. But this ... this had been an odd day. First, he had ridden through town as a lord and had found himself warming to the feel of it. Now he had spoken as if trying to incite a rabble. Who was this Jackson Overland he had become? For that matter, who was the Jack Frost whom Sir Sandy claimed to know?

Jack turned to look back down at Dorfeld below them. And doing so, he saw the grain carts rattling away along the road, the bishop's guards riding on either side of them. The kernel had sprouted roots and taken hold.

He and Elsa resumed their ride. Passing through the fields, they saw two men working the land, one of them bent and ancient looking, the other only slightly younger, with a ruddy, pleasant face. Elsa whispered their names to him as they drew near the pair: the younger man was known as George; the old one was Smee, a farmer who had worked the Overland fields for years upon years.

When they had drawn even with the men, George took off his hat.

"Welcome home, sir!" he called.

Smee raised a gnarled knuckle to his forehead. "An honour, sir!"

Jack nodded back to the men, and as they returned to their labours, Jack and Elsa continued their ride. She told him more about the history of the land and the Overland family. Jack listened, trying to hang on to every bit of information she offered. All the while, they kept to the hill, so that every few moments Jack was offered a different perspective on the town below and fields around them. Eventually, Elsa's narrative came around to her own story.

"I was an old maid when Jackson courted me," she told him with a smile. "Twenty-four! And ripe for a nunnery. The daughter of a respectable widow with"—she held her thumb and forefinger just a little bit apart—"a thimbleful of noble blood. He saw me in the church at Ely and I was betrothed in a week. A week later, he was seduced by King Manny to join the ship for Alsace-Lorraine and Theocracy. So we were wed, and he left at daybreak to ride south. That was my married life, with a man I hardly knew."