Been meaning to get back to the Arren & Co. AU for a while now, especially as it's been over a year since "Knave of Swords" ended with the party having successfully gotten past the Landsmeet and the end of the DA:O portion of the AU rapidly approaching. But every time I think I'll finally finish off something and be able to get back around to it, some new idea blitzes my brain and jumps into the queue ahead of it. Enough of that! Too many WIPs already in progress or not, it's time to let Arren and his motley crew reach the front of the line at last.
Their farewell with Arl Eamon was rather strained. Arren and the Arl were both being exquisitely polite with each other as Arren's group prepared to depart the Arl's estate, but there was a certain thunderous-nous about the Arl's expression that made it clear that he was still very unhappy about the outcome of the Landsmeet, and Anora's confirmation as Queen of Ferelden. Alistair managed to look solemn as he said his own farewells to the Arl, but as soon as they walked out the gate to the Denerim market, a relieved grin lit his face.
"I am so glad that's over with," Alistair said fervently. "So where's this townhouse, anyway?"
"Not far from Bann Teagan's townhouse," Arren said. "Where we need to stop first anyway, and pick up Fergus. He'd like to see what condition the place is in, now that the Queen has returned all the Cousland properties to him."
They all knew the route to Teagan's house by now, even Tria having been there once. She walked in the centre of their group, with Wynne and Mara to either side of her and Owen and Zevran behind her, looking much calmer about the long walk than she had the other day. Arren and Morrigan led the way, with Alistair, the two mabari, Sten, and Oghren behind him, while Shale brought up the rear. All of them carried their packs of belongings. It was quite the procession, but thankfully they'd left the estate early enough in the day that the streets weren't particularly crowded yet.
Teagan, Gemma and Fergus were standing talking together outside of Teagan's townhouse when Arren and his group arrived, and welcomed them with smiles. "Will you be accompanying us as well?" Arren asked Teagan.
He smiled, and shook his head. "No. I'm escorting Gemma to the palace to visit with the Queen. We thought we'd wait to say hello to you all before departing," he added, smiling warmly at the two Grey Wardens and their group of companions. "You'll be staying quite close to here, so let me take the opportunity to invite you all over for dinner this evening; Fergus isn't sure if the kitchens at the townhouse he's loaning you will be in usable condition or not, and I'd be more than happy to enjoy your company again."
Arren smiled, and gave Bann Teagan a deep cross-armed bow. "We would be delighted to join you," he said. "Thank you very much for the offer."
"Excellent! Than we shall expect to see you this evening," Teagan said.
That sorted out, Arren's group continued on, Fergus walking alongside him and Morrigan, the two talking amiably. It was a very short walk to the Cousland townhouse; an older holding of the Cousland family, Fergus explained to Arren, acquired when the family had been considerably larger, a generation or two prior to the occupation. It had of course been taken by the Orlesians and given over to a noble of the occupying forces; it had changed hands several times during the occupation, and been returned, along with other Cousland holdings, during the restoration following the end of the war.
"As the holders of the Terynir of Highever we of course have a much larger estate near the castle; the townhouse was mainly used as a dower house, before the occupation, and has been little-used by us since the restoration, though my mother often preferred to stay there when making trips by herself to Denerim, rather than having to travel with a large enough train of servants to open up the estate. And Orana and I made use of it when we'd first returned to Ferelden after our marriage, and wanted to enjoy some privacy for a while," he added regretfully. "I hate to think of what state it must be in after being occupied by Howe's soldiers over the last year."
They turned a corner onto a side-street. The townhouses here were larger and finer than the ones that lined the street Bann Teagan lived on; they also had considerably larger grounds, each neatly fenced off from its neighbour with high, smoothly-plastered walls. Fergus led them to the second house from the corner. It was a tall, rather elegant-looking building, with the somewhat haphazard appearance of a something that had been added onto several times over the many years of its existence. Most of it was built of good solid stone, though the uppermost floors and several of the projecting bits were of half-timbered construction.
The gate to the small courtyard in front stood open. The yard itself still showed signs of its recent occupation by Howe's men; what must have been lawn and flowerbeds once was now trampled mud with a few archery butts and practise dummies scattered about. The front door was closed, the few steps leading up well begrimed with mud. Fergus a pair of large keys from his belt pouch, handing one to Arren and then using the other to unlock the door and let it swing open.
It was clear immediately that Howe's men had made little effort to keep the place clean; mud was tracked all over the stone floor of the entryway, and from there to elsewhere in the house. It was equally clear that the house had been ransacked; there were paler patches on the walls where hangings or paintings of some kind had been removed, and the hallway was empty of the sort of decorative furnishing – rugs, small tables, decorative objects and the like – that could be expected to be on display in the entryway to one of the homes of the richest noble family of the realm.
Fergus was frowning as he looked around, clearly unhappy about the condition of the place. "Let's take a look around," he said. "Hopefully there's nothing worse here than mud and missing furniture."
He led the way on a tour of the ground floor; what had been a sitting room, a small library, and a large dining room, and were now echoing, empty rooms, their floors tracked with mud and dry grass. What little furniture remained had been badly mistreated, once-polished surfaces now dull with scuffs and scarred from blows, some of it reduced to kindling. The kitchens were in little better condition, still retaining most of the basic furnishings, but smelling of rotting scraps of food and buzzing with flies, the soldiers having been no more given to cleanliness here than elsewhere.
"This will need a very thorough cleaning," Wynne said, looking around the room with a look of distaste on her face.
"Perhaps some fire magic to purify it," Morrigan said, in an only half-joking tone that won her an amused look from most of the party.
"It will certainly have to be near the top of our list of priorities for cleaning. Is there a well somewhere, Fergus? We should make sure we have clean water available first of all," Arren said.
Fergus nodded. "There's a well in a small courtyard out back of the kitchen – through that door – and both a cistern and a boiler up in the attic spaces."
"A boiler?" Zevran asked, interest clear in his voice.
Fergus grinned. "Yes, most of the house is plumbed. Including the kitchen," he added, pointing out a tap in one corner over a drain set in the floor, the tap high enough up that even the largest of pots could be filled from it. "Only a cold water tap in here and in the servant's quarters, but the living quarters have both cold and hot water in the bathing chambers, as long as the boiler is kept filled and heated anyway."
"Might want to get someone in to check it if it's been allowed to go dry or go out," Oghren spoke up. "They can be a bit finicky to restart safely. And don't look at me for it, I was warrior caste, not a maker. I know just enough about them to be dangerous," he added with a grin.
Arren smiled, and exchanged a look with Fergus. "We'll keep your advice in mind," he agreed.
"Speaking of living quarters, should we not go make our selections of rooms? Judging by what we have seen so far, we will all have considerable work to do just to sleep comfortably this night," Morrigan pointed out.
Arren nodded. "That sounds like a good idea – no need for all of us to accompany Fergus around. Fergus, is there anything upstairs you want to check for before we begin moving in?"
Fergus frowned and shook his head, lips a thin line. "Nothing I can think of offhand – it's clear that Howe and his men carted off or destroyed almost everything that was here. There is a vault in the cellars and a smaller one off of the master suite upstairs I'll need to check, but I'll be surprised if they were missed – Howe knew of their existence, being such a close friend of my father's," he added bitterly.
Arren nodded. "Morrigan, can you see that our things make it to the master suite?" he asked, and handed over his pack to her at her nod. "The rest of you, divvy up the remaining rooms among yourselves."
They all nodded or made sounds of agreement, and headed off upstairs to investigate the upper reaches of the townhouse, while Arren and Fergus continued on with their tour of the building.
Oghren announced he had no desire to climb any more stairs in "this blighted heap of poorly-stacked rocks" as soon as they reached the top of the first set of stairs, and threw open the closest door, peering into the small room thus revealed. "Bed, fireplace... look, even a window. Mine!" he said, and stumped into the room, tossing his pack onto the narrow bed – more than large enough for the dwarf – along one wall.
The group of them wandered through the upper floors of the building, peering into rooms. Only a few of them had any of the original furniture left; most had been stripped bare, the fine furnishings replaced with camp cots for Howe's soldiers to sleep in. Most of the rooms were filthy, the floors coated in mud and moldering straw, what little bedding had been left behind smelling of old sweat. The soldiers had apparently made little if any effort to keep the place clean. The bathing chambers were especially foul, the earth closets overfull and stinking.
The master suite was one of the few habitable sets of rooms in the place. It had still been stripped of anything of value that was small enough to be carried away, but most of the furnishings were huge pieces of age-darkened old wood, too heavy to easily remove, and presumably they, and the rooms, had been the purview of one of the officers; the rooms were actually clean, and the furniture in far better condition than anything else they'd yet seen in the house.
"We should all leave our things in here for now," Morrigan said firmly. "And plan to share these rooms tonight; we will likely need most of the day just to render the kitchen usable, much less make any real start on cleaning out quarters for everyone."
Wynne nodded. "That sounds sensible. Though as many people as we are, I'm sure we don't need everyone to work on the kitchens; perhaps some of you big strong men could undertake the job of removing all the cots and soiled bedding? That would take a good step toward improving the atmosphere in here."
"We'll have to ask Fergus what needs to be done about the earth closets," Morrigan said, frowning and wrinkling her nose.
"Oh, I know that," Alistair spoke up. "The err... the buckets need to be taken off and the slops in them emptied out. There should be some large lidded jars out back somewhere to dump them into, and a man comes around with a cart each morning to take away the filled jars and leave empty ones." He flushed a little when everyone stared at him. "I was a servant until I was ten, you know. And Arl Eamon's estate still uses the same system, since dumping in the canals was outlawed years ago, though he keeps saying he's going to get the estate properly connected to the new sewers one of these years. Anyway, it's going to mean a lot of very smelly hauling. I'll help with it," Alistair added. "It's no worse than mucking out stables and kennels. Well, not too much worse, anyway," he added, making a face "Different smells."
Sten, Shale, and Owen also agreed to help with the carrying out and emptying, all being large and strong enough to manage carrying the heavy buckets, and Shale in particular being unaffected by any qualms related to the smell or the material in question. The remaining mages, Zevran, and Tria headed back downstairs to deal with the kitchen clean-up, dragging Oghren out of his bedroom en route. He took one look at the mess in the kitchen, pointed out he was too short to be of much use cleaning the counters, tables, and shelves, and escaped out the back door.
Dealing with the slops was a nasty, smelly job, even with vinegar-soaked rags tied over their mouth and noses to block the worst of the smell. Shale was given the especially unpleasant job of emptying out the heavy buckets into the slops jars, then rinsing them clean, and Oghren was assigned to haul water to her to use in the cleaning, as well as stacking the cleaned buckets to dry.
Once all the buckets had been carried outside, the three men switched to removing the cots and bedding. The cots, simple folding wooden frames with a rope network strung between the two side rails, they piled in one corner of the yard, while the bedding was heaped in the small kitchen courtyard, near a small shed that was set up with a boiler and tubs for doing laundry.
It was early afternoon before they finished all the hauling. There was still a considerable amount of washing that needed to be done, but they were all tired and hungry. All three men and the dwarf elected to make use of one of the bathing chambers to give themselves as thorough a wash as they could manage with a bucket of cold water and some lye soap; none of them complained about the harshness of the soap, since it at least left them feeling clean again.
The others had made sizable inroads on cleaning up the kitchen; the rotting food scraps were all gone, consigned to a compost heap in a corner of the gardens. The fireplaces had been cleared of their accumulations of ash, and many of the pots and pans had already been cleaned, with more sitting filled with water to soften the crusts of old food within them.
Wynne had fetch their own clean and much-used stew pot from upstairs at some point during the day, and had made soup out of some of their remaining supplies. The three men were glad to accept bowls full of it, and sit down with the others to rest for a while.
"Where's Zevran?" Owen asked after a minute, frowning as he noticed the elf was missing.
"He's outside helping Shale to wash off," Wynne said. "The golem is badly in need of a cleaning before it comes back indoors."
"He's scrubbing a golem's back?" Alistair asked, grinning in amusement.
"Yes," Jowan said, and smiled crookedly. "Apparently he felt that helping a golem to bathe was less injurious to his reputation than scrubbing pots."
That made almost all of them grin.
"Where's Arren?" Alistair asked, noticing that their leader was also absent. "Cleaning between Shale's toes?"
Morrigan sniffed, trying not to look amused and failing. "No," she said. "He went off somewhere with Fergus – a woman arrived, that Ser Cauthrien, with a note from the Queen and a key. Apparently there's a warehouse down near the docks that is full of Howe's ill-gotten gains. Fergus has gone to look for and claim anything that is a Cousland possession so that it can be returned."
"And Arren went with him because...?" Alistair asked.
"Because they were in the middle of a conversation which neither saw any reason to end. Anyway, Arren said he'd be back here before it was time to go over to Bann Teagan's for dinner. How is work progressing upstairs?" Morrigan asked, changing the subject.
Owen made a face. "It's progressing. We've dealt with the worst of the mess, but everything will need a very thorough scrubbing and rinsing – and likely a good airing as well – before many of the rooms will be habitable again. And we'll need to do a laundry, if we intend to use any of the bedding we just hauled out."
"Well, we don't need everyone for cleaning pots this afternoon... some of us could help with the scrubbing. And start a laundry going," Wynne pointed out. "I'd prefer to remain working in the kitchen; scrubbing out pots is kinder on old bones than sweeping and washing floors, or doing laundry."
They quickly divvied up the jobs, Wynne, Morrigan, and Jowan to continue work on cleaning the kitchen, Mara, Tria and Oghren to start doing a laundry, while Alistair, Owen, Sten, and Zevran would beginning cleaning the rooms upstairs now that they'd been emptied of most of the soldiers' detritus.
Zevran returned from outside just in time to hear what job he was ending up with, and made a face. "Well, I suppose it's better than washing pots, though not by much."
They would, they decided, start with the lowest floors and work their way up. It would likely take several days to get the house mucked out, but as Wynne pointed out that would at least give them something productive to occupy themselves with while waiting for all the political manoeuvring to be completed so that they move on to the more important task of fighting the Blight.
When Arren finally returned, he was very pleased to see the amount of progress they'd all made on cleaning up the house. He himself had clearly been doing more than just standing around; his clothing was smudged with dust and cobwebs. "Fergus has located a lot of the furnishings that used to belong here, as well as a considerable number of items that were pilfered from the larger Cousland estate. He's given inventories to the guards, and as soon as everything has been released back to him, he plans to hire workers to deliver everything back where it belongs. That will likely take a few days, so we'll have to make do with whatever cots and bedding are already here for now."
"It will be easier to clean up with so little furniture around, at least," Morrigan pointed out.
"And speaking of cleaning up, we should begin getting ready to go over to Bann Teagan's for dinner," Arren pointed out. "Are any of the bathing chambers in usable condition yet, or will we be needing wash basins?"
"We're cleaned three well enough to bathe in, and the one off of the master suite was still in usable condition," Alistair said. "Cold water only, until the boiler has been seen to, but that should suffice for now."
Arren nodded, then grinned. "The cold water should help prevent any tendency toward lingering, at least," he said. They all headed upstairs to wash and change, looking forward to their dinner.