Their hut was shaped like a cross, with a long room that served as both an eating room and a kitchen, and then two chambers off each side where family members slept. All of the girls were in one chamber while their father, now widowed these past few years, slept in the other.
Antillius’ cottage was cozy and well-kept thanks to three daughters who were as meticulous as their mother had been. This cottage was at least one hundred years old, probably more, built on the foundations of another cottage before it that had also stood for many years. The floor was hard-packed earth in the long room but in the bedchamber where Antillius slept, long ago, someone had laid down colored stones to make a mosaic. It was the portrait of a woman although no one knew exactly who the woman was. Antillius suspected it was another ancestor of his, for the woman was pale and fine-featured like he was.
Lygia, Verity, and Atia rushed into this neat little cottage on a mission. Old Pullum, the crone who was the physician of the village, had asked them to help a wounded woman, and help they would. There was very little excitement in their world so they were most eager for something new and different to accomplish, even if the lady had come with a contingent of several of the largest men they had ever seen. The men were dressed in sheets of metal, with big weapons hanging from their waists, and they were of curious interest to these isolated women.
Lygia, the eldest, was the taskmaster. She had seen twenty years and three, having lost her husband and infant daughter to a sickness two years before during a particularly bad winter. She’d moved back into the family home where her sisters, Verity and Atia, brought her some comfort. They were good sisters, even if they were a little flighty at times – Verity was tall, elegant, and with long copper curls, and Atia, the baby of the family at nineteen years, was a shorter, lighter-haired version of Lygia. But she was extremely bright, and helpful, and as Lygia gave the orders, Verity and Atia followed them precisely.
In the young women’s chamber, chests were opened and items brought forth. Lygia was rushing about, finding drying linens, while her sisters were pulling forth other things needed for cleaning. Linens in hand, Lygia came to a halt in the midst of her rush.
“Why must the lady remain in Pullum’s cottage?” she asked thoughtfully. “Why can we not bring her here? Our chamber is big enough to accommodate her. I should not like to leave the lady with old Pullum.”
Verity had a bar of soft tallow soap in her hand that smelled heavily of the violets they harvested in the forest. “But Pater said we should help, not bring the lady to our home,” she reminded her. “She is an allii, after all.”
Lygia frowned at her sister. “She is a wounded woman who requires help,” she said firmly. “Are you so cruel that you would leave a her with Pullum and not try to take her away from that old witch?”
“Did you see those warriors?” Atia interrupted her sisters’ discussion with her rather dreamy question. “I have never seen men so tall and strong. Where do you suppose they come from? They do not look like Saxon warriors to me.”
Lygia could hear the wistfulness in her youngest sister’s tone. “It does not matter where they come from, dear Atia, because they are not for you,” she reminded her quietly. “Phirinius is your chosen one. He would not like it if you paid attention to another man.”
Atia frowned. “Phirinius is a boy. Those warriors… they are men!”
“And you will put them out of your mind,” Lygia scolded, waving an impatient hand at her sister. “Gather the wash for the hair and find some clean clothes we can lend to the lady. From what I saw, she was wearing rags.”
Unhappy that her conversation about the strange warriors was thwarted, Atia turned back to what she was doing, pulling forth all of the things they used when they bathed – a skin scraper to scrape away the dirt, precious oil from the almonds they collected and pressed last month, and flat ale to wash the hair. Holding up the phial of the almond oil, she looked at it in the light, noting just how much they had left.
“Lygia is right,” she said. “We should simply bring the lady here. We have our tub here and Pullum has not the room for such a thing. Her cottage is very tiny. We should simply bring the lady here to tend her.”
Lygia considered Atia’s support a majority vote. She set the drying linens down. “Then let us go and get her,” she said. “If she cannot walk, we will have one of her men carry her here.”
The thought of seeing the strange warriors again had Atia heading from the chamber rather quickly. “Do you think she is a princess?” she asked. “She has many men with her. Mayhap she requires them for protection.”
Verity, too, seemed to be following her sister at a clipped pace, leading Lygia to believe that Verity might think something of these handsome strangers, as well, even though she’d not said anything. She was the quiet one at times. Lygia was on the heels of her eager sisters.
“It does not matter what she is,” she said. “And you will not ask her, Atia.”
Atia made a face at her sister. “Can I at least ask her about her warriors?”
“Nay!”
“Can I speak with her at all?”
Lygia cocked an eyebrow at her. “Only if you are polite and do not ask foolish questions.”
Quitting the cottage, the young women emerged into an open area beneath the massive tree canopy. Their cottage was set off from the rest, for privacy, and they even had their own bread kiln and stock corral for their pigs and goats. But in heading towards old Pullum’s hut, they had to pass by the central meeting area where the strange warriors and the lone lady had first entered, and Atia was very eager to see if those men were still around. Verity was only slightly less obvious about it, which gave her interest away completely. The two of them were searching eagerly for the strange warriors when they caught sight of the men over near the convening house. Atia grabbed hold of Verity.
“Look!” she hissed, pointing discreetly. “There they are!”
Lygia, who had been walking ahead of them at this point, came to a halt and waited for them to catch up to her. When the pair also came to a halt, gawking at the warriors in the distance, Lygia reached over and grabbed hold of Verity, pulling her and Atia along.
“Stop looking at them as if you’ve never seen men before,” she said. “You are making fools of yourselves.”
Verity was trying to walk but Atia was dragging on her, making the entire procession go quite slowly. Suddenly, their father came into view from behind the convening house and Atia began calling to him, jumping up and down and waving until Lygia grabbed hold of her.