Lord of Mountains

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

TIMBERLINE LODGE

CROWN FOREST DEMESNE

(FORMERLY NORTH-CENTRAL OREGON)

HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL

(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)

NOVEMBER 6TH, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

Timberline Lodge was on the southern slopes of Mt. Hood, a sprawling handsome thing of native stone and huge hewn logs, steep shingle roofs and cupolas. It was high enough that the breath of humans and horses smoked in the cold air as they came up the road from the east, and the moss-grown roofs were dusted with snow. More lay on the boughs of the Douglas fir that coated the steep mountain slopes behind, upward and upward to the towering white cone of glacier and snowfield, glowing red now as the sun set behind it. The air smelled slightly of conifer woodsmoke from the tall chimneys, and more of a wild damp green scent, the tang of early highland winter, trees and earth, rock and water and ice.

The lodge and a million acres of wilderness was an ancient possession of the Lords Protector of the PPA, which was to say that Norman Arminger had grabbed it off not long after the Change.

Which meant in practice that from that moment it belonged to the other kindreds, to Brother Wolf and Sister Tiger, not to mention Cousins Doe and Elk, he thought, smiling a little to himself. With humankind stepping lightly upon it, more so than for many a thousand years, while Earth heals Herself. So the Powers have their little jokes with us!

Rudi Mackenzie had been a frequent guest here since the end of the War of the Eye fifteen years ago, as the peace treaty’s terms meant he spent part of every year in the Association’s lands, just as Mathilda spent part with the Clan. This was where Rudi had learned to ski, and he had many a happy memory of hunting these cathedral forests, or hawking and fishing, or just enjoying the beauty of the flower-starred mountain meadows and hidden lakes and waterfalls.

He’d been curious enough to look into the history of the place a little, despite the fact that the last century of the old world had never been his favorite when he had the time and inclination to glance into stories of the past. The Lodge had been built nearly a long lifetime before the Change by a high ruler of the old Americans called Franklin, to give his laborers and craftsmen work and bread in a time of drought and dearth. They had produced not only the sturdy bones of the place but a wealth of carving and tapestry, fine wrought iron and whimsical copperwork.

Which was good lordship, sparing their pride and nourishing their honor by giving them something real to do rather than just a loaf tossed as to a beggar, he thought, and went on aloud as the royal party drew rein:

“They did their work honestly here, the ancients.”

“And it doesn’t look weird and ugly and useless,” Mathilda said. “The way a lot of their stuff from just before the Change does. It looks like a real building and fit for what it’s supposed to do.”

“And not like the uninhabitable bastard offspring of some mad smith’s affair with a glassblower, good only for salvage and forging and hammering into something comely or at least useful.”

She nodded. “Almost modern, in fact.”

They dismounted a little cautiously. Both of them were still stiff and bruised and feeling the minor cuts and scrapes that even the luckiest carried out of a long hard battle and pursuit. It was the way you felt when you could function at ten-tenths of capacity if you had to…but you didn’t want to unless you did have to, from inescapable necessity. He looked at her and made mock-puppy eyes, and her strong-boned face replied with a grin-cautiously, again, because one side of it was bruised where a shield had hit it with the visor up. They’d planned on a bit of a honeymoon here…

Sure, and we’d be rubbing wounds on wounds.

Even if you were young and hugely fit as they both were, recovery took a little time; and they’d be back in action soon enough.

A steward and helpers hastened up to hold the horses of the mounted and open the doors of the carriages; besides Rudi and Mathilda, there were delegates from all the more important communities in the High Kingdom. The attendants who greeted them were either very young, very old or very female, with none of the ranks of green-clad foresters he remembered from earlier occasions. Mathilda held out her hand and the ancient steward leaning on his white staff of authority bent to kiss it.

“Goodman Kohnstamm,” she said, smiling affectionately. “Your grandsons send their greetings, and they’re all well, no serious wounds.”

“Thank you for the news, Your Highness…I mean, Your Majesty…It’s very good to see you again, and you as well, Your Majesty. My lords, my ladies, please enter and be welcome. We’ve done our best, but…”

“But it’s wartime, and it’s acutely aware of the fact I am, Goodman,” Rudi said. “You’re a perfectionist, I fear. I’m a bit clipped and battered by the war at the moment myself, and so I don’t object if the same is true of the Lodge.”

That got him the ghost of a smile, though he suspected the old man wouldn’t really be happy until he got his people back. Maintaining a place like this took a considerable labor force, and apart from timber, stone, wild produce and game, all the supplies had to be brought in during the short summer season. Doubtless they’d been cutting back to a minimum and all working very hard indeed with most of their strong young men and skilled artisans away at the war, though it would help that few nobles were visiting either.

There was a heliograph tower built into one corner of the Lodge, a tall framework of fir-trunks erected after the Change with a round cabin atop its pyramidal shape. It was manned by a military signaling party sent on ahead by Chancellor Ignatius, connecting them with the PPA’s network in Odell, and from there throughout most of western Montival.

Looking at it, Rudi murmured: “I find myself feeling itchy when I’m out of reach of those things the now. Yet it’s also like having a piece of uncomfortably energetic machinery rammed up your arse, so it is. I grow nostalgic now and then for the Quest, when we were alone together and with our friends. Or for a quiet winter in Dun Juniper, when you had only your thoughts and neighbors for company and solitude was always a short walk away.”

And is it the heliograph net I’m complaining about, or the Sword? he asked himself. Then: Best not to think of that.

Mathilda snorted as she took his arm; she was in an Associate noblewoman’s riding dress today, a green fur-trimmed affair with a divided skirt.

“And off in the Midwest and the Wild Lands wilderness we worried about what was going on at home all the time. Not knowing drove me crazy when I thought about it. What’s more, the enemy can…send messages, somehow. That’s how they followed right at our tails all across the continent.”

They both grimaced a little at that. The means the CUT used were gruesome. The word Christians used for them most often was diabolist; not being given to dualism, the Old Religion didn’t usually think in those terms, but he could see their point with regard to the Prophet’s followers.

And I don’t understand the Power behind them, he thought. I do understand it’s no friend to humankind.

“I’m not saying I’m against the network,” Rudi said. “Indeed, and your mother was farsighted and wise to insist on linking so much of her domains together so, and when we have the time I’ll be pushing all the realms to do likewise for Montival as a whole. Just…there are drawbacks.”

They passed through the great doors in the stone entranceway; within was a wall panel in cast bronze, showing two men kneeling to a stag with a cross between its antlers. Mathilda signed herself and genuflected to Saints Hubert and Eustace, the patrons of hunters. Rudi clapped his palms together softly, then held them before his face as he bowed.

And if my reverence is to Cernunnos, Horned Lord of the Forest and Master of Beasts, who’s the worse for it?

The huge main hearth inside was already blazing, and the great hall of the lodge was already pleasantly scented with dinner as the guests were shown to their rooms to settle in before they assembled again.

The rustic theme was continued in the common chambers, with massive stone walls giving way to man-thick timbers above, and a great hammer-vaulted roof above. Much of the wood was carved with patterns and whimsical beasts, some of it pre-Change work and more added since; House Arminger had rescued a set of good makers and turned them loose here with nothing to do but play with their craft on a vast canvas for years.

Strange man, Matti’s father, Rudi thought as he handed his long fur-lined coat and gauntlets to an attendant with a nod and smile. And a bad one, on the whole; but there’s no denying he dreamed grandly and that much of his work will live.

Sandra Arminger shed her enveloping ermine cloak into the hands of one of her ladies-in-waiting. She hadn’t been listening too overtly, but her brown eyes twinkled a little under the silver and diamond-bound wimple, one of fine bleached wool for outdoor wear. She’d always been uncomfortably good at following his thoughts.

Also you, good mother-in-law, have a knack for turning dreams into shaped timber and dressed stone, money and grain-silos and men-at-arms, heliograph stations and bonds of allegiance and fear and obligation.

There wouldn’t have been any prospect of winning this war if she hadn’t left the PPA rich, well-governed and its armories and magazines stuffed to overflowing with every reserve such a conflict needed, from boot-grease and dried beans to crossbow bolts. But…

I love you dearly, foster mother-you saved my life from your bachlach of a spouse, and you helped raise me all those years-still I don’t know if you’re all that much better a human being than he. All these preparations weren’t aimed at the CUT; we didn’t know they’d be a menace to us until a few years ago. Maybe you were just being thorough and, what was the old word, paranoid…or not. Yet you reared Matti to be better than either of her parents, but not less in her abilities. And you taught us both much of kingcraft; as witness the way you embraced the idea of Montival-seeing that your grandchildren would rule it and being just as satisfied with that as with hammering everyone into obeying you, or more so.

The trip to Timberline Lodge had been nothing much for the moiety of the guests who were warriors and used to living rough; nor so very hard on the others, since for them it had been by rail-car to Castle Odell and then by carriage and sleigh to the Lodge. Rudi was still grateful for the tub ready in their quarters, with wisps of steam rising from water scattered with dried rose-petals. It was of a strange smooth stone he didn’t recognize offhand, salvage from some mansion or other, and more than big enough for two.

“Sure, and it was thoughtful of your mother to insist we take the royal suite,” he said as the aches and chills soaked away, and sighed. “After she spent so many years getting it just as she wanted it.”

Mathilda stuck out her tongue at him, then sank under the surface and scrubbed at her hair. Rudi did likewise. He wore his shorter-shoulder-length as opposed to the way hers was approaching the small of her back again-but he felt the same ghost-presence of sweat and oil from weeks in the field, even if it wasn’t really there anymore; they’d soaped and rinsed under the showers like civilized people before they got into the actual bath.

You always did that, even if it meant throwing buckets of the water at each other rather than standing under a cut-bronze showerhead as they had here. Nor was this the first hot water and soap they’d dived for once they weren’t sleeping on the ground and spending their days in armor anymore. But somehow you didn’t feel really at ease until you’d made up for all the washing missed while bath meant a helmetful of cold water and a well-used cloth.

“Mom put us here because it makes you feel out of place and embarrasses me,” she said when they had surfaced, raising her arms to wring out her hair. “I love Mom, but her sense of humor…sometimes…”

Rudi watched the play of light on glistening skin and sweet curves for a moment with enjoyment, and the more so as a deep blush ran up from breasts to neck to face.

“Rudi!”

“I have permission from your God!” he said, grinning, letting his hands drift under the surface of the water. “Father Ignatius said so at the wedding!”

They’d been the closest of friends since they were ten; they’d sworn the anamchara oath then, despite their parents being at war, or possibly because of it. Her father had killed his, for that matter, and vice versa. Becoming lovers had made it even better, he found, but Mathilda was still a little shy of that.

Well, he thought tolerantly, as she purred and wriggled a little. Strange folk, Christians.

“Ummmmm…no. We’re due at dinner,” she said reluctantly. “Plus I’m sore. In strategic places.”

“Alas, we’re both sore, though if we’re very careful…”

“Rudi!”

He laughed and swung out of the bath, extending a hand to help her do likewise, and they made use of the fluffy heated towels on each other instead, also carefully. The royal suite didn’t follow the rustic scheme of the rest of the Lodge; Sandra Arminger had had it redone to her specifications over two decades, and she regarded hunting as wrestling in the dirt with animals and skiing as falling downhill at speed and on purpose.

Her concept of healthy exercise was using a pre-Change instrument of torture known as a Steppercizer, which she subjected herself to doggedly but strictly in private and for a set number of hours every week. She tolerated and used the sports of the Protectorate’s nobility as part of her system of rule without pretending to like them or take them seriously.

And for fighting, she has people like me or d’Ath, he thought ruefully.

Hence the cool beauty of glazed tile on the floor, pale mottled blue edged with flower patterns, the silvery marble sheathing on the walls and the incandescent-mantle gas lamps behind holders of silver fretwork. The windows showed a yellow glow from a few lanterns outside, and beyond that a steady drift of white flakes out of the dark sky.

“Brrr!” Rudi said. “I’m not sorry to have an honest excuse to be indoors this day, rather than trying to get a fire going in a winter bivouac.”

“It’s mud so far in the war-zone, not snow, mostly, but I know what you mean,” Mathilda said, coming up beside him and laying an arm around his waist. “I could even pity the Cutters. They’re a lot hungrier than our men and we torched a lot of their baggage train here and there. Including the tents.”

“Threefold return, acushla. They stole a good deal and burned even more and now they’re in want. Let’s go eat, if the prospect of word-fencing with all those folk over the meal doesn’t put you off your feed.”

“No it doesn’t,” Mathilda said cheerfully, then winced a little as she smiled; she touched the left side of her face gingerly. “I was careless. He got me with the shield-boss; I should have had my visor down and my shield up. Thank St. Apollonia I didn’t lose any teeth, but I even have to chew carefully, dammit!”

“The fellow who did it is accounting for his own carelessness to the Guardians,” Rudi pointed out; she’d stabbed him up under the chin and into the brain before the blow fully landed.

He used one of the towels on her seal-brown locks, darker now with the water.

“There, that’s got your hair more-or-less dry.”

“The wimple will cover it,” she said, winding another around her mane. “There, that’ll help.”

The bedchamber was equally splendid, with a ceiling of fine plaster subtly carved in willow patterns and a cheerful fire crackling on the andirons in a hearth whose surround was of marble done in Venetian-Gothic fretwork. The pale décor was broken only by the vivid colors of the Portland rugs with their patterns like wildflower gardens in spring, and the air was subtly scented with sachets of dried lavender and roses and meadowsweet.

Not even a hair remained of the Regent’s cherished Persian long-haired cats, but the rooms somehow reminded him of them and made him feel a little rough-hewn and uncouth. His clothes had been laid out on the four-poster bed. He disliked attendance when he dressed, and fortunately Mackenzie formal gear could be donned without help beyond what Mathilda gave.

Linen drawers-it was a slander that clansmen went bare beneath the kilt-and long saffron-dyed linen shirt went on first; then the kilt, of course, in the green-brown-dull orange Mackenzie tartan; short, tight green Montrose jacket with a double row of silver buttons; silver-buckled shoes and green knee-hose; brooch of curling silver-and-gold knotwork and turquoise at his shoulder pinning the tartan plaid wrapped across his torso and falling almost to his heel behind; more fancywork in wrought bone and precious metal on the hilt of his dirk on its tooled-leather belt and the little sgian dhub tucked into the left sock; badger-fur sporran…

“There,” she said, adjusting the flowing lace jabot at his throat and the cuffs of the same material. “You look splendid. In a barbaric backwoods way, of course.”

He grinned at her, took her head between his hands and kissed her between the eyebrows and on the tip of her nose and on her lips.

“And you will look splendid in your cotte-hardie, mo chroi. Though you’d look even better as you do now in nature’s garb, and a deal more comfortable.”

She stuck out her tongue again and donned her own underwear; then she rang a small bell. He sat in one of the spindly chairs-which took his solid somewhat-more-than-two-hundred-pounds without creaking-and crossed his arms. He wasn’t a bulky-built man, but he was two inches over six feet of long-limbed height, and not slender either. Except the way a leopard was.

“Welcome, mesdames,” Mathilda said to the three who came in answer. “What do you have ready, Yseult? You’ve got a very good eye.”

The young woman-she was just about seventeen-frowned and flushed a little.

“I think the pink, Your Majesty.”

“Pink?” Mathilda said dubiously.

“The deep wild-rose pink. Cotte-hardie and sideless surcotte both, the surcotte with your arms in silver and onyx. And that would go very well with the collar of plaques, the moonstones and white jade. The wimple…iron grey. Deep rose or maroon would do, but I would pick the grey, Your Majesty.

“Grey it is.”

“Jaine, why don’t you get started on Her Majesty’s hair, just a Dutch braid down the back I think, I showed you that. Finish it with the coral bead snood, the bamboo coral, it’s that lovely pale gold color-and tourmalines for the headpiece, the watermelon tourmalines in electrum with the niello clasps.”

“That sounds lovely, Yseult. I put myself in your hands.”

His position let him watch while Jaine and Shawonda helped Yseult off with her towering double-horned headdress and they went to work; you couldn’t put on a cotte-hardie by yourself, any more than you could a suit of plate armor…to which it had other similarities. He was privately amused at the sight and at the rather odd Protectorate idea of rank. In most places where there were masters and servants, such would be servant’s work, albeit an upper servant’s. Among nobles, Associates pages and well-born girls such as these thought it an honor to serve so those of higher rank, for all that their families held estates and manors and castles themselves.

There’s a deal to be said for it, if you’re going to have a nobility at all, he thought.

Mackenzies had no rank of that sort unless you counted the Chief, being in the main crofters and craftsfolk living in a rough equality.

The younger generation of lords up here are the better for learning to serve before they command, the Changelings, compared to their elders. Many of whom were not much more than bandits in fancy clothes, at seventh and last.

Aloud he said: “Your brother Huon won great honor for himself in the battle, Lady Yseult. And for House Liu.”

The girl blushed and curtsied without missing a beat as she arranged the complex forms of the silk wimple. Her father’s father’s heritage showed in the tilt of her eyes and the high cheekbones, but those eyes were a deep blue and the hair that fell beneath a maiden’s open wimple was thick and fine and corn-yellow. Three small scars on the left side of her face accentuated her comeliness rather than detracting from it.

“And the white suede leather belt and scabbard, I think under your sideless surcotte. The sword hangs more elegantly and drapes right along with the surcotte, Your Majesty,” Yseult said seriously.

Mathilda nodded soberly. It wasn’t a knight’s weapon; wearing one of those to a banquet would be a bit conspicuous. The eighteen-inch blade was quite functional, though, and probably just as effective at close quarters. The Church Universal and Triumphant favored assassination of enemy leaders as a tactic, and they’d tried to kill both Rudi and Mathilda at banquets before. It was violently unlikely here…but not altogether impossible.

Fortunately dirk and sgian dubh are expected to be part of my formal dress, Rudi thought. Aloud he went on:

“And you two and Fred together did still more, Jaine, Shawonda,” he said to the two younger maidens; they were sisters, dark-skinned and curly-haired, one a teenager and one just on the verge of it, looking a little unaccustomed to Associate dress. “There are thousands of your people alive today, walking upon the ridge of the world, who the Red Hag would have reaped upon the bloody field, if your brother had not been. And if you had not risked your lives to aid him.”

He tactfully didn’t mention their other brother Martin, for most of this war General-President of the United States of Boise, parricide, tyrant, and until his recent death at Rudi’s hands, a puppet of the Prophet Sethaz.

They nodded shyly, busy about their task but darting him glances now and then. Both had adapted to exile with the flexibility of youth; he thought they also found their stay in the PPA romantic, exotic and colorful, a welcome distraction from the civil war within their family that was rapidly spreading to their country as a whole.

They’d probably have adapted just as well in Sutterdown or Dun Juniper. Nor was he blind to the fact that he was tall, handsome, dashing and a great warrior with a charming smile…and for that matter, a good singing voice. Those were some of the assets that luck or the Powers had gifted to him. Schoolgirl crushes were among the results, sometimes amusing, sometimes annoying, sometimes both; and the Thurston sisters were basically too sensible to be annoying.

Though when we liberate Boise and get them back home, they’ll probably be glad to shed the cotte-hardie and wear pants or a housedress again! Hmmm. Nor would it do to make them appear too much like Associates in front of their own folk before then. Castles and fiefs don’t appeal, there…which is natural enough. They seem better from the tower looking down than the ground looking up, to most.

When they’d finished, the three young ladies-in-waiting stepped back, admiring their handiwork; Yseult took an extra moment to apply a very slight touch of a yellow-based face-cream, with rice powder over that, which disguised the color of the bruises a little. Then she looked at Mathilda and sighed with her hands clasped beneath her chin.

“Lovely, Your Majesty!”

Mathilda smiled at her, and for a moment her strong-boned, slightly irregular features were beautiful indeed.

“You’re far prettier than I’ll ever be, Yseult, no matter what the milliners and jewelers do, or even skilled ladies-in-waiting.”

“I respectfully disagree,” Rudi said, coming to his feet and waving off their curtsies as he swept back his plaid and settled it with a shrug of the shoulder.

“And now you might as well be off to visit your brother, Lady Yseult, and you two to see Fred before he’s locked up in the debate disguised as a meal we face; we’ll be up late, I think. Forbye I apologize that the State dinner is for principals only, but the food will be the same and the merriment better among the rest of the household.”

Jaine and Shawonda helped Yseult back on with her own headdress, and she sailed ahead of them-a metaphor the more fitting for the height and trailing gauze, a daring fashion statement that would make going through some doors awkward-and opened the double slab of worked teak starred with silver rosettes and birchwood inlay that closed the royal suite. Rudi picked up the sheathed Sword in his right hand; sometimes that still felt more natural, despite all the practice he’d put in since the wound made his right just a trifle slower and weaker. That let him extend his left arm, though, which was the courtesy side in the Protectorate. Mathilda tucked her hand through it.

In the corridor outside they were back in the ruder splendor of the Lodge proper, lit by alcohol lanterns that flickered slightly in the occasional draught, casting restless shadows on the high beams of the ceiling and fluttering the hangings; the score of archers standing along the walls with their longbows grounded before them seemed entirely in place, for all that the most of them were in Mackenzie gear. There were a trio of dogs as well, the huge mastiff-wolf breed that the Clan often took to war for scouting and guard work, as silent and alert as the bowmen.

Rudi stopped for a moment before their commander. “And how’s your brother?” he said.

“Young Dickie will be fine, Chief,” Edain Aylward Mackenzie said.

He tapped his helmet with his bowstave. “The mace rang his bell good and proper and sprang a few ribs through his brigandine on the backstroke. For the rest, just a straight crack in the shinbone where the horse stepped on him. The healers say he’ll be ready to be shipped back to Dun Fairfax in a week or two. And then he can be fussed at by the mother and Tamar while he bangs about on crutches and swears as the little ones crawl over to chew his plaster cast and he listens to the father’s tales of his old wounds and lies right back at him. The which will be a pleasure to them both,” Edain finished with a smile.

“They both will like that,” Mathilda said with a laugh and nod. Then, thoughtfully: “Though I never did know exactly which of old Sam’s stories were true.”

“The grim ones, I think,” Edain said, and added: “Your Majesty,” dutifully as he remembered.

The head of the High King’s Archers was a few years younger than Rudi and a handspan shorter, around Mathilda’s five-eight, but thick in the arms and shoulders, with curly light-brown hair beneath the light sallet helm and steady grey eyes. The big square hands that gripped the yellow yew-wood stave of his bow looked strong enough to crack walnuts between thumb and fingers, scarred and already a little battered by hard use.

“Good to hear Dick’s in no danger!” Rudi said sincerely; he’d been in and out of the Aylward household all his life, and Edain had been his companion on the Quest as well as a boyhood friend. “They’ll be the better there for the letters.”

“Letters, Chief? I sent one, but Dickie’s not much of a writing man, even when his few wits haven’t been scattered with a mace.”

“I wrote to old Sam myself,” Rudi said with a grin. “Suspecting as I did that your letter would leave out a bit of this and that. An arrow in and out of the throat of a certain man standing over me with a spear, for instance.”

Edain scowled and blushed. “Just doing the job, Chief,” he said. “As the father would expect. I wish I’d been in time for Epona…”

Rudi rested a hand on his shoulder for a moment: “It’s fully aware I am that a battlefield is a dangerous place, brother, and what can and cannot be done. Didn’t your father train me to the bow as well, and to the hunt and many another useful thing? Besides the times,” he added with a grin, “he gave me a smack across the backside or later a clout to the ear, as needful.”

Edain grinned back. “Remember the time we were scuffling in the dairy like a pair of hound pups and got dung in each other’s hair?”

Rudi laughed outright. “And he took us each by an ear to lead us on howling tiptoe and pitched us into the Dun Fairfax pond and stood with his arms crossed while we scrubbed and scrubbed and all the folk laughed! Yes, I remember it, fearful lèse-majesté that it was.”

Then he went on in a professional tone: “All’s well here?”

“Good barracks and good rations, Chief, and we’ve got the guard rosters set up with the Lady Regent’s household men. Naught for you to worry about.”

Rudi shrugged. “Best to make sure. Carry on, then.”

Carrying on included detailing a half-dozen of the archers to follow the High King and Queen, but they tactfully stayed out of conversational range, if you spoke softly. All of them had a shaft on the string, and the last two took turns walking backward.

Mathilda frowned slightly. “Rudi…this is a pretty good place for the conference…isolating everyone from their hangers-on and factions can help…but why did you pick Timberline especially?”

She glanced at the Sword, and he shook his head. Still slightly damp, the darkened red-blond locks swirled around the shoulders of his jacket.

“Did the Sword tell me to, you mean? Possibly. Possibly not, the puzzlement of it, for it’s often difficult to tell what’s…that and what is my own soul’s promptings.”

He frowned as well; there were times when he didn’t feel like himself anymore. And other times when he did, but like a house that had had a whole new suite of rooms added. “I…just felt that it was right, somehow. There’s something here that I…we…need.”