Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 365 of 619

The grower had said thirty days. Ajax counted twenty gone. He walked to the cellar behind the workhouse to check her progress and found the woman standing among her presses, arms crossed, looking at the plum fruit as if it had wronged her. Ajax had learned to trust her judgment. He asked what was wrong. "Your trees gave too well," she said. "Chalam's charm rushed them. The fruit came in three times what I planned. I have two vats. I need six. And this cellar holds cool for four vats, no more. Press the rest and it spoils before it works." Ajax stood in the low stone room and did the sum. He had built the cellar to Aldric's design, sized for the harvest they expected. The dryad's roots had made a mockery of that plan. Good fruit would rot for want of a vat. He sent for Aldric. The scholar came with his chart already rolled under his arm, as if he had guessed the trouble. He looked at the fruit, then at the two vats, and said nothing for a moment. "You want the wine to sell to captains," he said. "You cannot sell spoiled must. We need vats and cold both. A wider cellar cut deeper into the hill holds cold better than a shallow one." "How long?" Ajax asked. "Bran and Chalam cut the first in two days," Aldric said. "A deeper room takes three. Four vats become eight. But we have no cooper. Vats want a cooper." Tucker leaned in the doorway. He had followed the noise the way he followed everything worth coin. "There's a cooper at the port," he said. "Makes barrels for the fish trade. Cheap and quiet. I can have him and his staves here by tomorrow night." He looked at the fruit and grinned. "Be a shame to let that rot. Rot doesn't fill a ship." Ajax weighed it. A cooper meant another stranger inside the walls, another mouth to swear or wipe. But the wine was the thing that would keep captains docking, and captains were the road to the northern city. He would not let the harvest die in the press. "Do it," Ajax said. "Bring the cooper. Marco vets him at the gate. Aldric, cut the cellar deeper. Bran and Chalam start at dawn." The grower uncrossed her arms. "Six vats and a cold room," she said, "and I make you wine no port on this coast can match." By the third day the new cellar ran deep into the hill, cold as a winter stream. Eight vats stood in rows. The cooper worked shirtless with Bran, bound to silence by a silver chain, and the grower filled the first vat before dusk. Ajax watched the plum must settle. He had his cellar. But a new stranger now knew the way through his canal, and the ship still had no keel.