† ad meliorem mentem voluntatemque esse conversa

[ad_dicendum]

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?"

Comments

[lastofthekellys]

"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."

[ad_dicendum]

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?"

[lastofthekellys]

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."

[ad_dicendum]

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.

[lastofthekellys]

"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."

[ad_dicendum]

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?"

[lastofthekellys]

"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?"

[ad_dicendum]

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."

[lastofthekellys]

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."

[ad_dicendum]

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.