WolfeBlade: de Wolfe Pack Generations by Kathryn Veque (reading an ebook txt) 📕

at least thank you for your efforts and try not to cost you more than necessary. It is really as simple as that.”

He calmed, a little. He put his big mitt over hers as it rested on his arm. “If I did not want to do this, I wouldn’t,” he said simply. “It has been a very long time since I have been in the company of such a charming lady and allowing me to pay for your meal and entertainment is truly a pleasure. Please do not take that away from me.”

When he said it so nicely, of course, she couldn’t. After a moment, she sighed, resigned. “As you wish,” she said. “What are we to eat?”

He flashed a smile at her as he lifted her hand, kissed it, and put it back on his elbow. “I am not sure,” he said. “But it had better be beef.”

So much for thinking she wasn’t good enough for him, that she couldn’t let this situation go any further. The kiss to her hand erased any sense of determination she’d had about that. She was putty in his hands. He was so sweet and, God only knew, she needed that sweetness. She needed for someone to be kind to her.

It had been such a long time since anyone had been.

Andreas ended up leading her over to the stall where a man and woman were serving up big bowls made of bread, hollowed out and filled with boiled beef and peas and carrots in gravy. Andreas paid for three of them – two for him, one for her, and they went over to the shade of a yew tree to eat it with crude wooden spoons that had been provided.

Gavriella realized she was famished as she plowed into the food, listening to Andreas speak on the meal he’d had in the city of Bath when he had visited there not long ago. There was a great Roman influence in Bath, still with the great hot springs that the ancient Romans had built their big temples around. He’d had eggs drizzled with honey and chicken with a sauce made of fermented fish, honey, and vinegar. It sounded awful but he assured her that it was quite tasty.

When they’d finished with their meal, including eating the bread bowl, he bought them sweets that were flat rounds of dough that had been fried in fat and basted with honey. They were delicious and as they ate them, they walked along the avenue to their very first entertainment.

It was taking place on the bed of a large wagon, a movable stage that had a painted wooden backdrop. There were two men on the wagon bed, but six or seven in a group standing next to it. The group of men were singing the plot of the play as the men on the wagon bed acted it out, and Andreas took Gavriella’s hand again as they watched the biblical story of Cain and Abel play out before them.

The actors portrayed the brothers and when Abel hit Cain over the head, he really brained the man, who fell over the side of the wagon and bloodied his nose. Infuriated, he jumped up on the wagon bed, punched Abel in the face, and a full-scale brawl erupted. That was not part of the play. Gavriella started laughing as Andreas shook his head at the antics and led her away to the next, and hopefully less violent, entertainment.

The next wagon had a good-sized crowd around it. It was a play about Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture, among other things, but in this play she was killing everything that moved. There were three men in this play, each one assuming several characters, and they watched Demeter kill crops, kill a goat and eat it, pull flowers out of the imaginary earth and then throw them to the audience. Andreas, being quite tall, caught one of the flowers, a white rose, and handed it to Gavriella. She held her rose quite happily, watching a play that was very depressing.

But they watched the entire thing and it had been long. Demeter ended up getting swallowed up by the underworld. When the crowd broke up, looking for the next spot of entertainment, Andreas and Gavriella wandered down the avenue to a stage that had been built from the ground up. There was no wagon here and groups of children surrounded this stage as two actors, made up as a dog and a cat, chased each other around, foiled by a third actor dressed as a rat.

The cat, the dog, and the rat ran around the stage, biting each other much to the delight of the children. Gavriella thought this play was much more fun than the other two and she laughed right along with the children. The rat was conniving, the dog stupid, and the cat frantic. It was hilarious to watch. At one point, the rat offered the dog a bowl of what was presumably dog food, but the cat smacked the bottom of the bowl and the contents went flying into the audience.

The children screamed with delight as pieces of hard honey candy rained down on them. Gavriella managed to catch two pieces and she gave one to Andreas. Together, they ate the honey candy that tasted like cinnamon. It was quite delicious. But once the honey candy sprayed out over the audience, the play was apparently finished and they clapped enthusiastically.

They moved on.

There was so much to see that time passed swiftly. The day became midafternoon, and soon it was nearing dusk. Andreas and Gavriella had seen several plays, the last one being two men beating each other with padded clubs and anyone else in the audience who strayed too close. It was quite humorous, or so Gavriella thought, but Andreas wasn’t entirely sure it was proper entertainment for a lady. He walked back to the street, trying to coerce her to come with him, but she was enjoying watching the men