09c - A Dark Quiet Place
"No, you just keep to what needs done first thing, the stores will surely wait 'til midmorning," is Hugh's easy reply. He leans on the table to continue talking about local concerns with the other servants whilst Sam finishes eating.
Afterwards, they wend up into the Criddle outfields, shortcutting along the Saxon path whose route still scores the landscape despite the comings and goings of eras and kings. Tiny chickweed stars and the delicate blues of speedwell bloom along the way and a skylark shouts of his virility with the sound of summer somewhere high up in the cloud-dashed sky. It's easy walking, even if there's a little longing tension when watching the swing of Hugh's hands or the shift of muscle under his stockings. Rabbits flee them in their crossing and a hare lower down stands up to watch.
They catch up with the men at a point where Carl's part of the saplings are almost unloaded; Sam gets assigned to passing down stob rods and withies and instructed to help distribute them to where work will be taken up tomorrow whilst Harry and Hugh head to the furthest point the gear is needed, two fields along, and work back.
Carl's characteristically silent as he shoulders stakes and gathers withies, leaving Sam to pick up a matching number of sprouted twigs with wet globs of earth and roots below, just barely recognisable as the start of trees. Carl looks back and pauses when they reach the lowest part of next day's work site, however, then indicates Sam should set his burden down and paces back to where he'd been clearing dead brush and ditch growth the night before (Sam remembers what had happened after that day's work was laid by, and the moments Carl's calloused hand had caressed his throat).
Following him down that way, Sam sees both how well the ditch work hides any incidental flattening of the vegetation in there, and that what's being indicated to him is an oddly fecund patch of wildflowers. Odd enough, that red clover, hedge woundwort, corn spurrey, yellow rattle and poppies should appear so early and in bloom, never mind on a ditch-side otherwise trodden down, but Sam knows for certain they were not there last night. He would have been right on top of them. Carl gives him a questioning look, as though Sam might know more about the impossible blooms.
"...?"
[[let's have a Spot Hidden here, too.]]