sixthiterationlogs | † ad meliorem mentem voluntatemque esse conversa

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† ad meliorem mentem voluntatemque esse conversa

WHO: Gaius Gracchus
WHERE: The Inn
WHEN: Backdated to February 2
OPEN TO: Kate Kelly
WARNINGS: Historical sexism, references to slavery
STATUS: Ongoing

There had been much that was discouraging in the previous day's meeting. Not simply the attitude of the people here that government, even so much as a guiding council, was something to be feared, but also the way the arguments had driven home that he is nothing here. He has never before in his life been nothing. Even at the height of the Senate's odium, or in the months after his brother's death when espousing his politics could mean exile from the city, he'd still been the son of a man who'd been twice consul and twice triumphant, the grandson of the man who'd saved Rome from the Carthaginians. His presence, his vote, his voice, had strength based on the men he could claim as his ancestors as much as on the gifts of his eloquence, education, and intelligence.

Not a single person here has recognized his name. But this is exile, or whatever it is, and the whole point is that it's not Rome, and not being Rome means that none of what had made him briefly the brightest star of a political generation matters.

There has, though, always been more to Gaius Gracchus than simply his parentage and his education. However easily his experience could be dismissed, he knows its value. He'd kept an entire army in supplies and winter clothing through three years in Sardinia, with the Senate turned against him and willing to do whatever it took to thwart him. If he cannot turn that experience to helping the people of this village stay warm, fed, and supplied, then he was never worth his election as quaestor in the first place.

So, once lunch has been served and cleared away, Gaius goes in search of the one person who'd asked for his assistance and advice the day before: Kate Kelly, the innkeeper. He brings with him the pen and the book of lined paper he'd received in the gift-giving shortly after his arrival; though many of the pages are already filled with Latin cursive, there are still plenty of pages left to fill.

He seeks Kate out in the kitchen, first, and if she's not there, will make his way back to the main room, then the sitting room the guests use upstairs.

"Miss Kelly? Are you there?"

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It takes some time for the kitchen to clear: there is, after all, so much work to do. Scrubbing, scouring, sand and soap and water and the chatter of people who are now used to this. Who now have hands like Kate's, reddened and hardened by work.

(And she'd been so vain of her hands, whenever she gets out of work long enough for the marks of labour to fade.)

But Kate stays. She doesn't have to, today. There are other things to do, or even she could find an armchair in the little common room, or go back to her own room, and take some time to herself. Read, after all those books that Mr Rogers gifted. She could. She's not. Even aside from her normal inability here to stay still for very long, yesterday's meeting rankled.

Anarchists, she thinks sourly as she brings her rolling pin down hard on the dried out tubers on the table. At least she can work out frustration by grinding, by turning all of this into flour. What she needs is... Well, what she needs is the mill to work, but she'd settle for an actual piece of grinding equipment.

Still, she hears her name and looks up.

"That I am, Mr Gracchus! Just, take a seat, please."

He had never been used to the sort of things that Kelly does in her daily routine as the innkeeper here. A man of his status expected food to be served to him, and never to require the inside of the kitchen himself. That was what the cook, the steward, and the other household slaves were for. But since there are no slaves here, it has to be done by someone, and he is appreciative that there are people here who know what needs to be done to ensure that the villagers get their midday meal.

There are many men of Gaius' time who would object even to Miss Kelly's polite request for him to take a seat, believing a man is ruler of his own household, and his wife should be subservient. He'd always thought such men to be shortsighted in failing to understand the influence a woman could hold. He'd learned to appreciate such strength before he can even remember: he'd been raised by a widowed mother, an older sister and brother, and Cornelia had been the sort of woman to demand respect were she ever denied it.

So while seeking Kelly's advice and offering his assistance may have been improper to his dignity in Rome outside the confines of the family, here he has no hesitation. She's a woman like his mother in her determination, though she lacks much of the advantage of society and education that Cornelia has.

He'll take his allies where he can get them, here, when they seem so few.

So he nods his head in acknowledgment, and approaches the table, watching with some curiosity whatever it is she's doing to those root-like things she has. His dark eyes keep watching with obvious amiable interest as he finds a seat and settles down in it, smoothing his coat out in substitute for the folds of a toga.

"You wished to discuss some matters, I believe."

This is something Kate has had to teach herself to do. Normally, she'd just buy flour. Normally, as in, back home. But here, aside from the supplies their captors give them, she has to do it herself. Make it up as she went along, although so far it is working well enough and she's glad for the muscles that laundry and farmwork have already given her.

That all said, Mr Gracchus deserves her full attention, so she pauses what she is doing and then starts to handsweep what she's been doing into a large porcelain bowl for later.

"I did. But, first, would you like some tea?"

Kate is frequently pushy, but she has been raised to know her manners.

Tea is one of the strange things that people drink here, not the only one, but one of the ones that is prevalent. It's a strange thing to Gaius, never even heard of in Rome, Spain, Africa, Sardinia, Italy, any of the places he'd been before he came here. But there are niceties to be observed. More than that, he needs her on his side, and he knows the value of experiencing the unfamiliar in understanding people whose lives are different to his. (One important difference between him and his opponents in the Senate; they knew little of the people whose lives he'd wanted to improve.)

He's drunk very little tea in his time here, but he's learned its value as a ritual among the people here, and where his own rituals and experiences have no currency, he must learn the new ones around him.

So Gaius nods, leaning a little forward to smile at her.

"Truly, I would."

Tea is a familiar ritual, and the smile with which she answers him is tinged with gratefulness. Something familiar to steady her, to also give herself some space to collect her thoughts. Such things, she thinks, civilisation is truly built on.

Water is kept almost always hot now she's taken over the kitchens - at least one pot, at all times - and she moves about to gather the things. Cups, saucers, water, tea leaves. A tiny bit of sugar on a plate to be shared, which she sets down carefully.

"For sweetening," she explains. "If you'd like."

(She puts a little less than half in her own tea.)

"Sugar was a gift, the day of all the boxes," Kate goes on, wrapping her fingers around her cup more to warm them than anything else. "It's been a nice little pick-me-up, sometimes."

The importance of a ritual as a background for social interaction is one thing that does seem to still stand true here. In Rome, it might be a banquet, a dinner party, a morning greeting between patron and client, a visit to the baths. Here, the rituals are different, and he's still learning them, but he has identified that this one offers some comfort and structure. Both important things in a meeting between a man of his status (or who had been of his status, and has no intention to give it up) and a woman he barely knows.

He watches her use of the sugar, then copies what she does: Gaius is used to honey as a sweetener, not this dissolving powder that looks so much like some sort of salt. But this is where trust begins to build, in small acceptances of another person's experience, and once he takes a sip, the difference between the unsweetened tea he's had previously and the sweeter version is obvious.

"I owe you my thanks for the introduction. I had never seen sugar before I came here."

Or tea. Or paper. Or a pen. But he chooses not to see that ignorance as any sort of weakness, but an opportunity, when acknowledged with a smile, and a genuine appreciation for the new experience.

"Never seen it?" Her tone is surprised, but light, charmingly so. Conversational, which is something she can do and do well. When the occasion calls for it, as she feels this does. "I suppose it must have been introduced at some point, much like the potato. It's been such a staple, the idea's surprisin', though."

Then Kate's smile turns a little wry, a little impish and resigned all at once.

"But that's the thing 'bout this here situation. All kinds of assumptions, and even the supplies we get, are all a jumble of times and cultures. Back home, even the explorers, or the miners or stockmen, their basics would include sugar. Mind if the money's startin' to be light, it's the first thing to be dropped.

Tea's one of the last," she adds.

Gaius knows nothing about cooking: he'd had a slave for that, and his cook had been Licinia's responsibility, not his, like the slaves who'd managed so many of the things that are basic required skills in this place. But he can, at least, speak for one thing, about sugar.

"We use honey to sweeten and drink wine in social situations."

The cultural exchange is also familiar to him, as a man who'd served alongside Rome's allies, who'd negotiated with them, who'd tried to find a way to see them brought fully into the fold of society. Respect for the differences of others, while still maintaining belief in the rectitude of Rome, had been a powerful tool as he lobbied for the rights of the Italians.

He searches for a word for a moment, then strikes on the closest English has.

"But fish sauce is one of our staples, and none of the people here but me seem to miss it."

There's a gentle sort of charm in the way she speaks, and that's familiar to him. More than familiar, it's been something he lived and breathed for years. As controversial as he is, he's also taken care to cultivate his support with a touch of charm as much as with the passion of his beliefs.

"I suppose that here it's less money than it is supply."

As a man who's never known economic hardship, but is generous with his money and his possessions, it's a strange situation to be in. Were money the issue here, he could provide.

"A fact that has deeply vexed some," Kate says, thinking of Byerly and Ivan with amusement. Maybe it's a bit unkind of her to be so entertained at their dismay over no wine, but sometimes a girl just has to take what light can she find in the circumstances she's in.

"You could ask some of our fishermen, they might know of something like it? Odair and his red-headed sweetheart, or maybe Captain Jones?" Partly, it's a comment because this is sometimes what she tries to do: find a solution. But another part of her mind is turning it over, looking at potential. If the sauce uses up scraps, it could potentially be another way of using food and resources rather than wasting.

Still, it's a mild enough idea. It's something she can put aside, easily enough.

"If there is one thing this whole dreadful experience is, it is an adventure in different cuisine and makin' do with what we have."

Edited 2017-02-25 07:01 (UTC)

Finnick Odair, he knows of, and if he hadn't, the description of the young woman who's so often with him would have been enough. Killian Jones he hasn't met, but the name is familiar as the man who had given him the collection of useful English phrases translated from a dialect of Greek. He knows the importance of names, and of the collections of facts and impressions that go with the names. Knowing clients, and their clients, and the people who might vote for him, has always been a vital part of his success, even if that waned in the face of Drusus' demagoguery. He'd been good at it, before he'd been undermined.

"I will consult them," he agrees, nodding in both concession to her suggestion and thanks for the advice.

He has to respect her ability to make do, as her idiom puts it. He'd been listening keenly to what was said in yesterday's meeting, not only to allow him to passionately make his case, but also to get the feel for the people of the village he'd been unable to develop earlier when almost everything they said was indecipherable to him.

"I have to admire your ability to make do with the things you have here. But if I can assist or advise, I would happily do so. I know where by abilities lie, and they are not as a hunter or fisherman or farmer."

And while he's famous in Rome for the sharpness and persuasiveness of his voice, he also knows that he's very, very good at organizing, and getting things done. He'd achieved more in two tribunates than most men did in entire political careers, though much had still remained to do when the election had been stolen from him.

"Truthfully, there are not as many here who have the skills to survive. It just looks that way because some of us have put in the work," Kate comments. "And there is a lot of manual labour which is easy enough to learn, if you want."

Or if you have to, she doesn't add. He looks a healthy enough man, but she can recognize a wealthy gentleman even without his trappings.

"You mentioned you were a quartermaster, Mr Gracchus. So you know how to organise supplies, and calculate how much a village or a camp might need, correct?"

There's a risk that whatever he says is a pile of horseshit, of course. But that's true for anyone here, and despite all his lofty manners, there's something of the underdog to his rankled pride yesterday, and she responds to it. A little.

She's in over her head, but she knows it could be worse. She isn't about to spill everything until she has more of a measure of him.

He nods at her words.

"In truth, we all have a responsibility to assist in making the system here work more smoothly and efficiently."

He's not certain learning to farm is that way for him, though he's not afraid of the idea of manual labor. He'd always coordinated more than undertaking physical work himself, but he'd been deeply involved in that coordination, not like so many of Rome's leading men who undertook projects by hiring foremen and workers and leaving it there. He'd always been involved in his projects, understanding them as best he could from the craftsmen, workmen, foremen, inspecting and managing the work himself. But the times of Cincinnatus, personally plowing and harvesting his family's fields, are gone, and Gaius hires free men to work his land.

He understands, though, more than most of his order, some of the needs of the small farmers of the Italian countryside. He'd made himself learn and understand their experiences while he was working on the land commission, and he'd done it by meeting the farmers themselves. Another thing worth thinking about. If there are no slaves here, no foremen, nobody to pay for their work, perhaps this place is suited to a new Cincinnatus.

Kelly, though, moves on from that topic, and he's still smiling with the inoffensive charm he'd so long cultivated when she moves on to the topic of his service with Orestes.

He sips his tea, noting the strange combination of sharp and sweet in its taste, then sets the cup down carefully.

"I do. I served as the quartermaster to Lucius Aurelius Orestes for two years on campaign. I was responsible for the supplies and stores for his army, while my enemies did everything they could to sabotage my work."

All those men in the Senate had been quaestors. They should have known the danger their obstruction put a Roman army in, but they'd been more interested in Gaius and what threat he might pose to them then subduing the Sardinian rebels.

If some of the heat of impassioned resentment simmers into his voice, tightens across his brow, he does his best to avoid letting it overshadow the account of his achievement.

"I performed my duties well, and honestly."

Even the censors had agreed on that.

"Your experience with sortin' out such things while counterin' sabotage might be useful than you might think." It's said wryly, but no less honestly for all that.

"Our captors like to play tricks on us, sometimes. Spoil the water, change the weather, give us things, trick us, all of that. It's been one part of why it's hard to try and sort out our supplies and... predicting. Predicting how much we need."

She can see that restrained passion, and it gives his words a ring of truth. It could be the truth, or it could be delusion. Either way (and she thinks it is more the former) they'll find out soon enough.

"As I mentioned yesterday, I had to manage our family farm. 'Cept we had no workers unless I could rope our cousins in, and it's not anythin' like this." Kate bites her bottom lip, worrying at it awkwardly. "I had to leave school early, too," she continues, although it's clear her pride doesn't like this. "I don't know the mathematics to do what we need, here."

Or, honestly, the spelling, but her pride can only take so much.

"It's not just food, but clothes, tools, resources, although food is a large part. So I'm askin', can you help with that? Organise our supplies better, see gaps, or when we're goin' t'run out before we actually do?"

The Senate had conspired to keep him in Sardinia. He knows it. He'd been told in the letters that had alerted him to their moves that it was the reason they'd ordered Orestes to stay. They'd refused to allow levies of the clothing the troops had needed to stay alive in the hard winter that had been such a threat to the army, and he'd had to seek out the supplies himself, individually visiting each city and pleading his case in the name of Rome and his father, for them to do what was right.

He listens to what Kelly says, and as she speaks, the pen in his hand taps gently onto the surface of his note-taking book. He misses tablets, like so much else that he'd been so used to before he came here that he'd not truly appreciated them.

"So we need to be sure we build up enough supplies to sustain us if such things happen again."

It's interesting, to him, that she seems almost ashamed to admit to the lack of an education that might allow her to do those tasks. Women, in his experience, need the skills to manage and maintain a sometimes quite large household, including its supplies. (Licinia would have been able to help her, too, though she'd never had to manage supplies for as many people as this place has.)

He pauses only a few moments after she's spoken.

"I can," he tells her. "Without those things, an army cannot fight, just as without them, a village cannot thrive."

He flicks open the book to a clean, unused section. "It's seemed to me that many of the food supplies used by the village are received and used here, at the inn. Are there other stores for general use, or only what you manage here?"

"And they will, most likely, happen again. They don't like letting us get too comfortable without something comin' along to get us worked up." Or scramble to find drinking water: she has nightmares about if the Captors decide to mess with the food.

"There other big stress-inducin' thing is that we have a few more arrivals overall than disappearances. Population increases, sometimes in dribs and drabs and other times with a flood. Come the spring, we'll be able to grow crops again, but you get my point."

She's been keeping up, but mostly only due to the supplies they were given over the strange gift box day. The day Karen was killed.

"Stores, uh, some have been put in the storage building. Crops, from the harvest. Otherwise it's mostly here, or been divided up among the inhabitants."

He's started to take notes as she speaks, and though he's able to speak with her in English now, his hand is a quick, expressive Latin cursive. It's his native language, still the most comfortable for him, though it makes no sense to most people here.

"If we have no way of predicting the population, it makes planning more difficult."

They have no backup here, no ability to requisition supplies they need. Everything they have, they've found, made, or received in those strange boxes people are sometimes given.

"Grain is the most reliable food to store for a long period of time. We usually provided fruit and vegetables fresh from the local area for the army, but they can be pickled or honeyed. Meat is more difficult, but it seems we have it in greater supply because many of the inhabitants hunt. Is any of the meat preserved?"

She says nothing about his commenting about predictions, or the lack of the ability: her expression says it all. A slant of her full mouth, a quirk of eyebrow, all adding up to, you're telling me.

"We've been keepin' track of who comes and goes, it's an a logbook in the main room here," she says. "You're free to read it and analyse what you find there.

Meat's been preserved. We have a few methods, mostly dried or smoked. I get some salt, sometimes, and that helps. It's not remotely enough to do large quantities, but I have it.

We've also been dryin' out some of the vegetables, and some of that I grind down into flour. There's a mill, other side of the river? But ain't exactly been fixed yet."

The logbook she's speaking about will be one of the many things he'd seen in that main room when he'd first arrived. Seen, tried to read, found it impossible to understand. He makes another note to himself, though he's not likely to need the reminder. His memory for the things that need to be done has always been good.

It's increasingly plain the longer she speaks just how concerned she's become over the state of their food supplies.

"It will be difficult to store large amounts of meat, then, unless it's dried or smoked."

He doesn't know much about the practical details of that, but he's thinking in terms of storage, not of the immediate task of drying or smoking meat. He needs to see the storehouse and what remains of their harvest, before he can determine just what the gaps in their supplies are and how long it would last were the food from the hunters and fishermen to peter out.

"Even without a working mill, grain is a useful staple."

He pauses, taking a few moments to go back over what she's already said in his mind, and glances back down at his notes, eye running rapidly along the lines of Latin.

"Is there any other clothing, or only what people are given when they arrive, or find in their gifts?" She'd mentioned that, and many weeks into a snowy winter, it's an important thing to know.

"There's some at the butcher's, that's where a lot of the meat gets processed. I haven't been out there much." No apology in her voice here: she's busy. She's busy in the Inn.

Keeps herself that way, too.

And besides, it's cold outside.

"Clothes... What we're not given, we have to make. I make most of my own clothes, and Miss Margaery and Miss Sansa and I have been making some gloves and hats for those who lack them. If someone stays at the Inn and then vanishes, I collect their clothes and put them in the Inn's storeage room, upstairs. We've got no way to order anythin', and gotta use what we find in the houses."

That makes good sense, and he nods in acknowledgment of the information as she says it. Good that some of them are thinking ahead to these things, and it adds a level to the overall impression that so many people had given in the meeting yesterday, that many things have been done already, without being organized or told. The others seemed to think that was reason not to enforce any additional structures on the little community. Gaius wouldn't interpret the existence of some structure as a reason to eschew more, but at least it is some indication that many people here are contributing.

It's frustrating, even a little alarming, though, to know how far they are from the reach of assistance. He'd never been on a situation where he couldn't requisition of petition for what he needed if supplies ran low.

"That would only be a small supply at the Inn, wouldn't it?"

It's no criticism, simply the clear, efficient tone of information-gathering.

"Difficult to control the supply when we are so isolated. Are there sheep for wool?"

"Correct. Other people, their friends seem to take claim of their belongings. I can't guess at what we might all actually have, or how it's been used. We can tan leather, preserve furs, but I..."

She hates saying this, she does. It's just begging for more work, and for all she wants, needs, craves more work, she keeps stumbling into this. As if, somehow, playing seamstress is just too much.

"Not much has been done with that, yet. We have keep those up. Every time an animal is killed. We'll need more clothes for everyone soon, after these months."

Kate worries at her bottom lip before stopping, as if mentally chiding herself for the childish action. She's twenty, she's an adult.

"Miss Margaery's rounded up a fair few, they're bein' kept in the police barracks over winter. Had one lot of wool from them, helped some."

Kate sips her tea, thinks over it all. "We ain't desperate," she says, finally. "Not yet. Just, we could do better and we're goin' have to, to get through all this longer term, you know?"

There's an uneasy conflict in this, something that had been hinted at in the meeting, and now again in Kate's words, the difference between what the community has and what people have.

It's too familiar.

I wouldn't wish for it to please you do divide up my goods to each man, Gracchus, Piso had once sneered at him, and that was in Rome, where he'd had the authority of the people to back his distribution of cheap grain. Here, unless things change, there will be no such authority. No way to gather what they need for the community from the people who've claimed it as their own.

That, too, is familiar.

"Furs will make good warm clothing," he says, making another note, "and so will wool."

Licinia would know what do do with the wool, though he does not. An ache settles into his stomach at the thought of her, so far away. They'd parted badly; the last he'd seen of her had been a collapse into despairing fear that left her incapacitated. She could have helped, here, and he could have been less lonely.

He shakes his head.

"There is much that still needs to be done. I would have preferred to be granted some authority in acknowledgment of the need."

Still, he's not going to let that stop him, and the slight wistfulness in his tone also has something fiercer under it.

"I believe I can help in establishing the stores better. You speak truly that we will need more to be done for the future safety of the people here."

It's a conflict she herself has been circuiting around, worried where the limits of her friendship-authority start and end when it comes to what she knows, when it comes to resources. She makes suggestions and tries not to worry at the bit. It's... It's all a mess.

Still, when Mr Gracchus says, I would have preferred to be granted some authority in acknowledgment of the need, she laughs.

It's not unkind, her laugh. It's bright and entertained, the kind of laugh which lights the face and lights the room. But, still, she laughs.

"Here, there's no one to give authority, and they all voted that down yesterday besides," Kate says. "You have to work at somethin' first, and then you'll be acknowledged as the person who handles it. That's what I did, with the meals at the Inn."

Look at her, she thinks, giving some upper-class gent advice on authority. But she's never had anything like that given to her, she's had to fight. All of the Kellys have.

"But if it makes you feel better, anyone gets in your face about it, you send them to me."

It's not that he isn't familiar with the concept of hard work and its rewards. His entire political career has been based on needing to win over the people against opposition. But the idea that who someone is doesn't grant them some weight in the community is completely strange to him.

Yes, politicians make promises, they win over friends and clients and the people who are impacted by their plans. But they also bring with them their family's friends, relations, associates, clients, the people who owe favors based on past good deeds. Members of some families are almost guaranteed election to any position they desire, unless there is some career-ending scandal or act of cowardice of which the public can be convinced.

He, himself, son of a man who'd been twice consul, censor, triumphant in Spain and Sicily, not to mention maternal grandson of the great Scipio Africanus, should have had anything he'd wanted, had it not been for the enemies who'd fought against his every political move.

It rankles that neither the respect owed to a distinguished family, nor that owed to a former magistrate are apparent here. It shows in a flash in his dark eyes, a reflection of the resentment he feels.

He should not have to rely on a woman, nor an innkeeper, but he's also aware after his months here that the rank and accoutrements he's so used to mean nothing here, either because of the strange nature of his exile here, or because, as so many others seem to suggest, this is a completely different time and place to his own.

"It is a generous offer," he acknowledges. "You have my thanks."

Still, a man of his skills should be able to do this, by his own abilities and his own determination, and he's well aware of that.

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† ad meliorem mentem voluntatemque esse conversa

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