Within Mother stood tiny and in awe of the giant. Her Spanish piety, tinged with her Mexican superstition, shone in her brown eyes and her luster of hair under the lamp light. “Welcome to Grim Hall, Holy Knight,” she whispered so that all could hear from where she stood over the Housewife and maid as they potted meat for the morning stew, put on peas for noon soup, and set smoked meat along the east wall.
The giant took a knee, bowed his head, rumbled, “MiLady,” and rose to consider the canvas-covered pallet the men had set before the hardware stores and dry goods under the stair. The sculler, Breed, was in awe, slack-jawed, and stopped his pot-scraping. As the Housewife was raising her hand to send the back of it across that wide tan cheek, Thirteen, asked, “Madam Housewife, might the sculler assist in this work?”
The woman was thunderstruck, stopped the muttered curse on her lips, and answered, “He may,” and hurried to her cloths and rags.
Breed ambled over to Thirteen as Father called Mother over with eager silent hands to sit on his lap, and Young Peter followed his tutor.
As the iron furnace, the size of a Lord’s trunk, was uncovered, along with light, blued piping, the tutor narrated: “From the College of Alchemy at the Holy See, under patronage of Archangel Urial, a furnace stands, where ancient swords, nigh even the lance head that pierced Christ’s side, have been reforged. This is but a copy.”
The canvas and rope was handed to Peter, “Sculler, clear the flags of the hearth to the north of the fireplace of those pots and pans.”
The Housewife gasped with indignation and Thirteen assured her, “Goodwife Mansehold, the iron top of the furnace provides two cooking irons for pot, pan and kettle.”
The giant then lifted the thing and carried it over to sit on the flags, saying, “Like stove must be on stone a cloth yard from wood wall.”
Setting it down lightly, and opening the two iron doors, “Behind these doors is the iron box, lined with bricks, its chimney the top pipe, which shall be vented with yon joint pipes upon the pallet into the fire place. It will not draw warm air from the hall, but put only smoke up the flu and radiate warmth outward and upward.”
Peter picked up the pipes and brought them, thinking quick, “Breed you let the fire burn out so we may fit this wonder overnight and have meat fry come morning.”
The giant nodded to the Goodwife, soothing her with status, “Madam, some call this a stove. Only the great houses of Italy and Tyrol posses such. In severe cold it may be run alongside the fireplace, which assuredly bakes your cakes in the brick oven above. When baking is done, only this oven needs run, to burn half the wood for the same warmth as the fireplace, its grandfather of sorts.”
Breed danced a brief jig and smartly ducked the back hand of the Housewife, then hugged the giant’s knee as Thirteen knelt to demonstrate, “Baffles on each corner, hung with springs, regulate air to breathe life into fire.”
Looking to Mother, “Within these doors, MiLady, be screens of Toledo steel, to emit light but not hazard of spark, when it is wished to sit by firelight.”
On his left knee, Breed still hanging on the right, “Sculler, help with the piping. Young Master, let us bucket the burning wood to the snow and let these feminine doubts be put to rest.”
The kettle of moose stew formerly in Peter’s hands, set down before he moved the piping, remained unserved on the floor rugs. With a nod from him, the maid put it up on the hearth hook.
‘Does the man eat at all?’
Two hours to midnight, according to the hour glass turned by the maid every hour, the stove was piped up the left side of the chimney, with water set to boil on the fire box, it would be called.
“This one shall return at midnight,” declared Thirteen, yet to eat, and strode out the door. It could not be said that Thirteen merely walked.
Peter Grim chuckled, “That African grew not cold in the blast, nor, with the same dreadful duds on his back, got in here hot!”
“Peter, come sit and let us talk while that strange tinker-smith knight retrieves what will surely put these girls to fright.”
“Yes, Father,” sat Peter, not touching the whiskey offered by Father, who grinned and took it to his own purpose, “God Son, I have—ye brain ‘ill unsodden remain.”
“Father, he slew a wendigo, set it up where you marked off the gate as a scarecrow—that great sword is alive with fire and acts as the spine of that hideous hide, beaming might at a pack of wendigo—I counted twelve, thirteen to include the slain.”
“His name is Thirteen—so strange,” mused Peter Grim.
Mother shivered and hugged her broad husband, who sighed, “So, all of us, shall have been overrun, having come up from the sea otherwise than with your terrible tutor.”
“We might have killed one, two, maybe three, Father…”
“Yet without walls, Son, we should have been quickly undone.”
Mother spoke in her lustrous voice, “My son should not leave the side of the Pope Knight. Husband, I love you, despite your slaying my father and brother, but…”
“I know, dear,” he squeezed her, “for all my charm you could easily light my pyre without a tear.”
She kissed his lips under that thick mustache over that bush of beard, and peered into his eyes in such a way as to agree.
Peter Grim opined, “Our family—mine—has been named in some weird feud now that we alone on the Back Tier remain. Son, unless in this hall, or behind the wall Thirteen says will rise by Christmas Eve, if I count our days right, you will not leave his side. Learn what you might from that weird knight.”
“Yes, Father,” and breed tugged at Peter’s shirt, rolling his eyes at the empty pallet, where he had lain the canvas, and dragged a few deer hides he used for bedding, asking without a word, “My bed, Master?”
“Breed,” he petted him on this thick-haired head, “you will slumber with greatness.”
Over the next two hours Father drank and sang, calling for his wife and the maid to dance, not obliging the dour Housewife whose knees were getting loud and stiff, her ankles shot with pain.
At five minutes to midnight, according to Young Peter’s pocket watch, his finest possession, more so than his Toledo sword and Solingen dirk, Breed went to the door in great expectation, working his hands together, knowing something grand was coming.
The women looked at those double doors in dread. At midnight the doors opened, Breed skipped back, Thirteen entered with the coffin on his shoulder, and Breed clapped. The women gasped at what seemed a sarcophagus of Egypt, as such are told of by escaped Christian slaves to the Muslims.
Breed skipped over to the bed he had made and bowed. There Thirteen marched with three steps covering twenty-one feet, knelt, laid out the coffin faced with the carven image of a knight of old, folded his hands, imitated by Breed, tiny by his side, and prayed, as Breed mumbled in gibber jabber imitation, “Here abide thee, Thy Count of Christian Account. Rest easily, Oh Roland, to rise upon Christnight, served by this Knight.”
The man stood and doffed his great boar hide robe, covering the coffin with it, and declaring, “The Bier of Roland. Should I perish before Christmas Eve, nine days nigh, do you, Young Master, open it at dusk, Christnight, not before, not after.”
Peter Grim mumbled, “Thank God for whiskey,” and his son, rose, “Yes, Thirteen, as you instruct.”
Mother was praying into her hands in Spanish.
Breed was looking up lovingly at the giant, who rumbled, “Yes, ye may share Roland’s bed ‘til Christmas Eve, not beyond.”
Breed eagerly rolled under the boar hide cloak as the women gasped, confident he was, that the Housewife would no drag him forth for chores from that ominous bedstead.
