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proud of their cook room, warmed by a fire in the hearth, over which a cauldron bubbled, proud of the long table at its center now displaying a line of shallow wooden troughs in which bread dough was rising, proud of what they called glass in the window. They knocked on it with their hands, and suggested Elske do the same, but she did not wish to. She watched through it, to the yard, where Tavyan had an arm around his wife’s waist as he spoke to her, and two cats strolled out of the shed, one with a bellyful of kittens.
    The sisters called her into the shop at the front of the house, to admire its windows and its empty shelves. At the back of this room, a narrow staircase climbed up.
    Elske had heard from Tamara that there were such dwelling places, one level resting on top of the other; so she was not surprised. Each of the three rooms above held a bed, with a mattress as deep and puffy as a summer cloud, and each had a small window under the low roof. Elske could not take it all in at first sight, the wooden floorboards, the whited walls; and the sisters enjoyed her amazement.
    Back in the cook room, she stood to the side while the mother ladled out wooden bowls of stew and Dagma set them around the table, and Karleen sliced off chunks of pale bread and set out metal spoons. By the stone hearth, Tavyan crouched low and looked into a little box where a baby slept. A cradle, they called it, used only for a baby to sleep in.
    They ate seated on benches facing one another across the wooden tabletop. Elske ignored the talk and ate until she could eat no more, however much her mouth still longed to taste the tastes of meat and broth and onion, carrot, turnip and other flavors she had no names for. “Ouff,” she said, at the fullness of her belly, and looked up when the others laughed.
    She had forgotten they were present. Her bowl was empty and theirs were still almost full. “Oh,” she said, and put down a half-eaten chunk of bread.
    Bertilde now seemed pleased with her. “We Trastaders have forgotten the taste of hunger. I think we do not enjoy our food as much as Elske does.”
    â€œI do,” Nido asserted, and dipped bread into his bowl, and they all laughed again.
    The baby fussed then and Elske went to quiet it. This was an easy task, with only one baby, and he well-fed and warm, his swaddlings dry, and with a lap to himself. Tavyan, his wife and children talked among themselves and she could listen unobserved as she gently rocked the baby back to sleep. “I’ve not coins to spare for a servant,” Bertilde said, so now Elske knew that a servant belonged to a wife. “And it will be many years before we have no daughter’s hands to work beside mine,” she said, so Elske knew what work a servant would do. “We’ll give her one of Sussi’s worn dresses. She looks little more than Sussi in age, just a child, but she can’t stay. However good-tempered she might be. However skilled a nursemaid, if you look at her now.”
    â€œWhere would we keep her, besides?” Dagma asked. “On the floor in here?”
    Elske felt as fat and contented as the baby on her lap, and thought the cook room floor would make a fine bed.
    Nido couldn’t be long distracted from his own interests, and announced, “Tomorrow, at first light, I will apprentice myself to the ship carpenter. You’ll give me the coins, Father? Elske,” he called to her, “I am going to become a builder of ships. And now, when my father and my new brother, Keir, who will inherit my father’s trade, wish to have ships of their own, I will be a partner in their growing riches. Until we will be so wealthy, father and brothers, such great Vars of Trastad, that Taddus will be chosen one of the Councillors—won’t you, Taddus?”
    â€œIt’s not impossible,” Taddus said, “when I represent two such merchant families.”
    â€œWhen do you go to Idelle,