Baron Matthew Quire

Lord of Stone Oast, rich in grazing, short of ready coin and determined to remain nobody’s man. One of the free lords most likely to hire outsiders when a quarrel touches House ground.

Baron Matthew Quire of Stone Oast holds one of the old Wold dignities, left standing after the country ceased to need a small warlord every twelve miles. He holds directly of the Crown and is therefore, in law, free of the four Great Houses. In practice he spends much of his life refusing invitations that would make him somebody’s man in fact, so that his independence is something he has to keep defending rather than something he simply possesses. He is rich in grazing, short of ready coin, and exact about hunting and water rights.

Stone Oast is a fortified hall rather than a modern fort: a square old tower, a short wall, barns inside the circuit, a deep well, a gatehouse rebuilt after the last Baron War, and enough sound masonry to make a bad local week survivable. Ownership of the hall is not command of it. His constable, Captain Hugh Deane, keeps the keys, the powder room, the four swivel pieces over the gate and the household watch, and decides who may sleep within the wall. A letter from the baron is an argument rather than an open gate if Deane believes the hall is under threat, and the division of authority among lord, steward, bailiff and constable is common enough in the larger country houses.

Companies meet him as an employer. He is one of the free lords most likely to hire outsiders when a quarrel touches House ground, and a lord who holds of the Crown and belongs to no House has reason to prefer hands that belong to no House either. A company seeking employment asks Quire; a company seeking entry after dark asks Deane. One that learns which piece of Stone Oast’s authority it needs is already halfway to getting it.

In person

Matthew Quire is thirty-seven, very tall at about six foot four, a narrow-waisted and athletic horseman. His almost-white blond hair falls long below his shoulders, loosely tied, and he wears a narrow pale-blond moustache. His face is long, sharp and aristocratic, with high cheekbones, a pointed chin, dark-brown eyes and a thin diagonal scar across the bridge of his nose. He dresses in a dark blue fitted coat, silver-grey waistcoat and crimson sash, and in the field wears a cuirass and helm with white engravings, with a cavalry sabre at his side. Riding gloves, campaign maps and sealed reports are his usual companions.