0945820950924859

Chapter Three
The porridge was wretched. Thin, cold, with bits of grey clotted against the side of the black iron
pot. Rayley scooped out a clump into a chipped bowl and selected a spoon from the cluster thrust
into a drinking glass before looking around for a place to sit.
Constable Brown had been right in his prediction that arriving at Hever with food would make them
popular. The colonists – some twenty or so people, mostly young men – had fallen on their offerings
without ceremony, ripping hunks of ham from the bone and dipping dirty fingers into the pots of jam.
Trevor and Rayley had exchanged a glance of amazement at the melee, both of them wondering the
same thing: How have these people managed to stay alive? And what sort of suffering will the
coming winter bring them?
It had not been difficult to pick LaRusse and Anne out of the crowd. He was apparently king of this
group of paint-splattered gypsies, which made Anne his queen consort – at least for the time being.
The others deferred to him, allowing LaRusse and Anne the head positions at the long table. It was
clear that LaRusse came to the colony frequently and that the monies he collected for his London
portraits were the main source of income for the place. It was also clear that his personal beliefs set
the philosophy for the entire group, for as he had chewed his bread and sipped his tea, he had airily
laid out the law of the land for the newcomers.
Food, LaRusse had informed the silent Rayley and Trevor, was a gift of nature and could only be
accepted if nature had willingly offered it up. That meant no meat, of course, and – since even plants
were conscious beings in the world of Hever Castle – fruits and vegetables could not be yanked
cruelly from their source. Fruit fallen to the ground, and thus freely released from the tree, was fine,
as were eggs dropped from hens or vegetables gone fallow, including any wheat and hops gleaned
from the recent harvests in nearby fields. It was hard to fathom how LaRusse managed to reconcile
this preposterous philosophy with the fact he was now devouring everything Trevor and Rayley had
brought – including ham rendered from a presumably unwilling pig. But evidently anything donated to
the colony by the toil of others was the philosophical equivalent of manna falling from heaven and
thus fair game.
Anne had sat beside him during this grand speech, picking at her own bread and cheese. She was
slender, silent, and pale, although not knowing the girl, Rayley had been unable to decide if such
delicacy was her natural state or if she was already showing signs of strain from life in the colony.
Yes, it was quite easy to see why she had come – the romantic promise of life within a castle, the
thrill of serving as muse to an admittedly talented man who commanded an army of creatives, the
chance to spit in the eye of London society, which could wrap a young girl in all sorts of restraints.
But it was harder to imagine what might cause her to stay, for the reality of this dream seemed far less
appealing than the fantasy. Pigs and chickens and sheep wandered among them as they ate, having
entered through the front doors which LaRusse commanded must always stand open in symbolic
greeting to the wayward traveler. The castle had been stripped bare of any ornamentation and most of