Chapter 215: Smooth Departure
When Alexis did finally show up, it looked like she had half the Paladin Order with her.
"We should have known that you were stopping for one last drink with the Paladins, little sister." Josephine laughed.
Alexis rolled her eyes. It was barely dawn, she hadn’t been drinking with them, just saying goodbye. Plus, she was only younger by half an hour.
"Is everything ready? It looks like everyone has come out to say goodbye." Alexis noted.
"Pops will be joining us at the estate. He has resigned his Royal Commission as Forge Master. But yes, everything is ready to go as soon as you are." Dominic agreed.
"Well, we’ve got nearly three days worth of travel, even if the weather holds, so we might as well get a move on. I am certain that we will return before too long.
After all, it’s custom for all Royals to return at least once a year, unless they’re out of the country." Alexis agreed.
Josephine pulled her into a hug, then whispered in her ear.
{Thorvald’s insane tactic worked. Father changed the marriage arrangement.}
That made Alexis giggle.
"Keep him close. He’s kind of dumb, in an adorable way." Alexis agreed.
That made the Royal Guards laugh. Everyone took Thorvald as a somewhat loveable buffoon, with a penchant for letting his mouth get him in trouble. Josephine knew better, but she still agreed with Alexis.
He was the adorable sort of dumb.
With one final round of well-wishes, Alexis’ Royal Guards loaded into the trucks, and they began making their way out of the Palace for a very long cross-country journey.
Until the old Castle City, they would have good upgraded roads to drive on, so they would make pretty good time. But after that, it was just country dirt roads between villages.
They were far from straight, usually muddy and soft, and never suited to high-speed travel.
Nobody cast the convoy a second glance as they left the city, as nobody recognized the emblem that had been created for the Duke of Wistover. It was clear that it was an important position by the level of decoration, but nobody knew it.
They didn’t have the royal emblems for the Princess on the carriages, and a random convoy of Nobles and gear was so common these days it wasn’t even worth noticing.
All day long, open fields, small towns and forests passed outside the windows as the convoy trundled down the stone road. There was very little traffic on the road, and what they did find was mostly farm wagons, who simply moved off the road rather than risking a confrontation with a Noble who might unreasonably declare that they were in the way and insulting his position.
"Our stop for the night will be Skipington. Normally, we would go through the night, but we thought that it might be better to try to get a few final supplies that weren’t available in the Capital." Colonel Wilkes, who was driving their truck for the evening shift, explained.
Princess Alexis nodded. "That sounds good to me. I’m sure that everyone could use a good rest if you can find a proper Inn to park at, where we can keep guard on the caravan. If not, we can set camp outside the city, and send someone in tomorrow morning to get supplies."
The Colonel looked out at the fading light and sighed. "I think that we will be setting up outside the city tonight. By the time that we get there, it will be long past dark, and I don’t want to hunt for somewhere with space when we’ve got a fully loaded caravan."
Long past dark was an understatement. By the time that they stopped at Skipington, it was nearly midnight. They had made good time, thanks to the relatively light loads in the trucks, but it was a long trip, and the road had been in worse condition than expected.
With so much else going on, nobody had done any maintenance after the spring floods, or during the summer rains.
The Royal Guard set up camp for everyone, including the large round tent usually reserved for senior officers and travelling upper Nobles. They had the process down to an art form, and the camp was set up within half an hour, but most of their passengers didn’t need anything.
The three ladies and Pops were all asleep along the benches of the carriage, so Dominic didn’t bother to wake them, he just moved the sleeping form of Alexis to the tent with him and set a barrier over their bed, for secure rest.
If someone was looking to attack them, there would be no reason to look any further if they found the Princess and Dominic in the tent as expected, and that would help keep everyone else safe.
But nothing was coming to bother them in the dead of the night, and Dominic woke to the smell of oatmeal and cinnamon as the Royal Guard made breakfast, with the help of Beth, their new cook.
"Give it just a few minutes and I will have biscuits. I mixed them up first thing, and they are baking over the fire." She explained as Dominic came out of the tent to check on the situation.
Liz rushed into the tent, and Dominic cast her a curious look, then realized that she was taking on the role of Lady’s Maid to Alexis, as the ones she had at the Palace had been Palace staff, not her own.
That seemed odd to Dominic, but Alexis surely had a reason that she hadn’t kept a trusted retainer or two with her in the Palace.
Unless the only ones she trusted were her Royal Guard.
Biscuits didn’t take long to bake, and Beth had made them in a huge square cast iron pan with a thick lid that had coals from the evening’s fire stacked on top.
Dominic assumed that was to help with even baking, and it certainly worked, as the entire tray of biscuits came out perfectly.
A rare skill when cooking over a campfire.
"Who are we sending in for supplies? I have a short list of things that will make life easier. I don’t think that we should grab new staff yet. Once we are within a hundred kilometres of the estate, start looking for unwed daughters, widows and others who need the work.
It will make my kitchen run much more smoothly if we don’t have to deal with the resentment of locals versus outsiders." Beth suggested.
The woman had been working a kitchen longer than anyone else in the group, excluding Pops, had been alive. Not arguing with her was definitely the best way to get the kitchen working at maximum efficiency.