Disparate Goals
Joel arrived at the Meldorf estate the next morning about an hour before church. Though he now lived in the city—in a plain room shared with three other metalworkers, so he claimed—he continued to spend Sundays with Freia and me. More than once, he had grumbled that many of his coworkers came across as uneducated bums with no ambition. “They just want to spend all night in the taverns drinking themselves silly,” he had told me several weeks before. “The only ones that actually have life goals are the married ones and the ones with girlfriends.”
A small chapel stood behind the manor beside the path to the main well, and a stocky friar held two Sunday masses there for the benefit of the count’s servants and vassals. Joel appeared grateful to be in a reverent place whenever
