Cross leisurely cut a small piece of beef with his knife and fork, savoring it carefully.
This Marquis of the South had experienced something in his youth.
Back then, a farmer on his father's land got into a dispute over the ownership of an ox. The other party was an old farmer who served a neighboring Lord, one with whom his father had a tense relationship.
Both sides insisted they were right, each claiming the ox was theirs and calling the other a despicable thief. Lacking any definitive proof, the matter reached a stalemate.
From Cross's perspective at the time, the worst-case solution would have been to simply compensate the farmer who didn't get the ox with an equivalent sum of money.
But he never expected the situation to escalate as it did. His father arbitrarily awarded the ox to his own subject, and the other farmer went crying to his Lord to complain.
