Neveryona (57 page)

‘Come on, come on!’ Juni waved at Pryn.

Because the wagon was going north on the road, Pryn went over to it. Juni and someone else helped her climb up over the side. (One of the things they’d apparently had to stop for already was for Juni to take off her apron and bring it back into the hall. She wasn’t wearing it now.) ‘All right, all right!’ Juni called to the driver when Pryn was still half over the rail. ‘We can go!’

The wagon started.

Everyone cheered.

As Pryn settled on the straw, Juni leaned close to her. ‘I hope you’re satisfied! I
told
you not to go back there – oh, don’t look so sullen and suspicious!’ She slapped Pryn’s knee playfully. ‘Try to remember that it’s a holiday.
I
want to hear all about what it’s like to dine at his Lordship’s. What did you eat? Was it marvelous … ? I know it was, because I’ve heard rumors among the slaves –’

‘Juni,’ Pryn said, ‘why would they do that to that poor woman? She’s all tied up back there. She’s been whipped. She’s just lying there, like she’s half dead. I mean, just because she read my – well, she
didn’t
read it. She only recognized it.’

Juni made a disgusted face as though she were not going to discuss it. Then her hands flopped together in her lap and she sat back, ‘It
is
sad. But slaves are not supposed to drink. Bruka knows that. And from the earl’s own mug … ? It was just spiteful breaking of the rules. Even Rorkar agreed it was the kind of thing that
couldn’t
just be let pass … And Bruka’s half mad anyway. It’s the kind of thing she’d do!’

Pryn was frowning again.

‘Well, they
said
you saw it!’ Juni declared. ‘The earl was in the back, talking to you that day. He put his mug down on a bench – you know, the fancy one he carries whenever he comes to visit here? Bruka just picked it up and drained it. He said you were right there.’

‘Yes, but –’ Astonishment worked its way through the numbness that had enclosed the morning. ‘But her
father
had –’

‘– drunk out of the same mug?’ Juni closed her eyes and raised her chin. ‘That’s what she was shouting and screaming when they dragged her in the back.’ She looked at Pryn again. ‘Then his little Lordship boomed out – he’s got quite a voice when he’s riled – yes, her father
had
put his foul lips to that mug, and he too had been strung up and whipped for it. Then Bruka screamed she didn’t
know
about that part. Nobody had ever told her
that
part before – which I have to admit I didn’t believe, because slaves, you know, remember everything. But by then, of course, they’d got her tied up in the back. And Tetya had returned with the whip –’

‘Juni –’ Bewilderment joined astonishment – ‘that
can’t
be the reason … I heard him
tell
her to –’ But she did not want to draw more of Juni’s thoughts to her real reasons for outrage. ‘I mean, why didn’t his Lordship say something about it yesterday –
two
days ago, when it happened?’

‘Cyka said it to me.’ Juni looked dour. ‘Rorkar said it to his Lordship. It’s what anyone would have thought. But his Lordship said that when it happened
he’d
thought to let it pass, because, after all, she was just a crazy old slavewoman who had belonged to his father and who still had a malicious streak. But he had forgotten about the Labor Festival. And in his father’s day, this was the holiday when good slaves were rewarded for their obediences and bad slaves punished for their defiances. Precisely because it
was
the morning of this particular day, he’d felt obliged to come by and say
some
thing. After all, rules are rules. And even Old Rorkar said, yes, that was true.’ She blinked at Pryn. The wagon jounced. The workers on the other side had started a song. ‘She didn’t deny it, you know. Still, after two days, and with a crazy old woman …’ Juni shook her head. ‘You know, it’s just like his Lordship to do something like that. Nobody around here trusts him.’ She gave a small
humph
. ‘Not know it was the Labor Festival, indeed! It happens every year, and always on the same day. Myself, I don’t believe it any more than I believe Bruka.’ She glanced up. ‘I hope it doesn’t rain again.’

Of course Pryn had not known it was the Labor Festival either. The why was simple. The area’s most important holiday of the summer and held on the longest day of the year, it was an occasion every local knew about and assumed everyone else knew, too. No one had thought to mention it directly to Pryn any more than anyone had thought to mention, ‘There’s sky overhead,’ or, ‘There’s earth underfoot.’ What references she’d overheard were all oblique enough so that, without knowing what they
referred to, she’d had no way to interpret them and so hadn’t really heard them at all.

Pryn tried to reassess the morning in terms of what she’d seen and heard last night, what she’d seen behind the eating hall, what she’d just heard from Juni. No doubt you have put together a more or less coherent explanation for what occurred at the inlet under the moon. Because it was a long time ago, and because the fashions in such explanations change, Pryn had put together a possibly very different one – though no less coherent to her. No matter how different the explanations, however, she had reached some conclusions from it that should be understandable to you and me. Either the greater explanation she was seeking was too complex for what was merely simple and ugly; or that greater explanation which would encompass all these jumbled details was of a complexity beyond any she could presently conceive. In either case, she did not like it here. She was glad she’d freed the old woman, and hoped she got to Kolhari – though to think it was to doubt it.

She was glad to be leaving herself.

Which is when the wagon turned from the north highway onto a narrow road. Trees lowered over.

Pryn seized the wagon’s side.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Juni said. ‘You look like you’re about to jump out!’

‘Where are we going – ?’

‘To the Labor Festival. Down at the beach … ?’

‘Will Rorkar and Tetya be there? And Yrnik?’ But she had seen Yrnik that morning; nothing had happened. ‘Will his Lordship and his family come?’

‘Oh, Tetya and Yrnik will wander by about two or three. Rorkar will arrive at four – though I wouldn’t be surprised if Tetya
didn’t
show up this year. When he left the hall this morning, he didn’t look like a young man
ready for a party. I don’t think he has much of a stomach for slave whipping.’

‘Tetya
did the actual whipping?’ Broken welts, smeared stone, splattered weeds …

‘Oh his Lordship was
very
insistent about that! The younger generation and all.’ Juni put on a pompous voice and a practically death’s-head leer. “If
your
nephew isn’t up to it, my man, I can always call in
my
son. Inige is waiting for me in the carriage … ?” She brushed straw from her lap. ‘Drinking. It’s so stupid – for Bruka, I mean. Today she could have drunk herself silly if she’d wanted – on Festival day, everyone’s allowed. Oh, even some of these good people around us now will behave quite disgracefully before the day’s over. That’s why I go home early. I mean when everybody’s sick and falling all over the beach, I can tell you
I’m
ready to leave! I’ll stay for the first
three
fights. After that, I’m gone – though I’m always back an hour later!’ She giggled. ‘You asked when the earl will come? His Lordship and his lady will drive by for a bit, just at sunset – to gloat over the remains and watch the torches reflected in the water. That’s pretty, as long as it’s too dark to see what a mess everyone’s made on the sand. The earl’s children may come earlier – they like this sort of thing. Did you meet them last night?’

Pryn nodded.

‘I think Jenta’s as handsome as they make a man – though I hear he’s
quite
strange.’ Juni raised an eyebrow. ‘The daughter’s supposed to be a bit of a character, too. I heard something about her having a baby … ?’ Sighing, she reached over to pat Pryn’s knee. ‘But don’t worry. It’ll be fine this morning. Oh! Stop the horses!’ And she was half up, waving at the driver. ‘Come on, stop! Stop, up there! Just once more? Please!’ Steadying herself first on this man’s shoulder, then on that woman’s, Juni made her way across to the other side of the wagon.

Pryn turned.

Trees fell back from the wagon’s far side.

Grinning over his shoulder and shaking his head, the driver pulled up before a thatched shack.

In the yard, beside some pots and baskets, an old woman had set up her loom. She pulled back on the tamper, thrust her shuttle through the strings, tamped again, then leaned forward in her threadbare shift and twisted the intricately ridged and ribbed stick that reversed the height of the alternates. The shuttle shot through shaking strings.

‘All right, Auntie!’ Juni called. ‘Will you come with us? I told you I’d stop by for you again. Here we are!’

‘Go on,’ the old woman said. ‘The Festival’s for young people. Not for me – nobody wants me there. Besides, I have too much to do.’ She bent down to turn over a handful of coarse yarn in one of the pots.

‘But it’s a holiday, Auntie,’ Juni said. ‘You’re not supposed to work today.’

‘I’ll work if I want to. It’s the Labor Festival. I want to labor.
You
young people don’t know what work is. Go on, now. You don’t want me around. I don’t know
how
to have a good time – I hear you say it. And you’re right.’

‘Well, you might learn if you’d come!’

‘I don’t like jouncing in wagons. My bones are too brittle.’ She tamped, sent the shuttle back, leaned forward, and gave a sharp twist to the separator.
‘You
won’t stay past three o’clock yourself – I know you. You’ll be back early; you always are. Who wants to watch a bunch of drunken men, impertinent slaves, and crude forest folk all pretend they like each other till they can’t keep it up any longer and fall to fighting – when they’re not getting sick all over themselves! There’s bound to be an accident. You know, there was a drowning down there three years ago. People get careless at these things, go drown themselves, if not each other.’

A man leaning on one knee said: ‘I was there three years ago. obody got drowned!’

‘It was seven years ago,’ a woman near him whispered. ‘No, eight –
nine
years now, I think! But she always says three. She doesn’t really remember. She says it every year.’

There was a drowning three years ago. I haven’t gone since, and I’m not going now. Thank you for your trouble. Now get on your way!’

‘Are you
sure
. Auntie?’

‘I
said
I wasn’t going.’ She leaned, she twisted. ‘How sure does a woman have to be … ?’

Juni sighed loudly and sat back from the rail.

The driver had watched it all. Laughing, he turned to the horses and started the wagon.

The shuttle shot.

Juni turned from the rail on her knees. ‘Well, I tried.’ She crawled back between grinning workers across the straw to Pryn’s side. ‘Everybody saw me. She just won’t come.’

From the yard the old woman called: ‘You can tell me about it when you come back this afternoon!’

Juni closed her eyes. ‘Yes, Auntie! Goodbye, Auntie!’ She opened them and sat back. ‘Well, I
did
try. But there’s no changing her.’

With some assurance that she was not being pursued by omnipotent powers, Pryn let herself smile.

‘She’s not really my aunt, you know,’ Juni said. ‘She’s my older cousin – but
I
didn’t know that till two years ago! She’s really a good sort. You wouldn’t believe it, but she used to have a reputation as the girl who always danced till moondown. But that was a long time ago, and such things change. I hope
I
don’t – though I suppose I will. It’s bound to be a family thing, don’t you think? But then, she’s only a cousin – even if I didn’t know.’

Pryn thought: I’ll stay a few hours at the beach, then
head back for the north road. Maybe I’ll only stop a day or two at Kolhari, before I make my way further north … ? No, Kolhari deserved at least a week. A few weeks, even; or months … She didn’t want to return to Ellamon. Somehow, though, it was easier now both to be here-and to leave.

Trees dropped back from Pryn’s side of the wagon. Beyond dense brambles, she saw the thatched roofs of several distant buildings.

Juni leaned toward her. ‘The dyeing houses …’ She nodded at the far structures, ‘I worked there for a summer, before I came to the brewery. It’s
harder
work – I suppose you make more money. But Nallet, who owns them, is much more of a stickler than Rorkar. I guess that’s because he’s younger and feels he has to show he won’t take any nonsense. Nallet’s workers will be at the Festival too, of course. But I didn’t really like it there. I’m glad I’ve got the job I have now. Still –’ She held up the hem of her dress for Pryn to see. Sun through the trees played over the night-dark blue. ‘They do nice stuffs, don’t you think?’

Pryn nodded.

Trees closed around; trees opened. The sun had burned off the overcast. They came in sight of the crowded wagon ahead. Soon they almost overtook it. Someone there started another song. Some people in Pryn’s wagon joined. Juni got into a conversation with some other women.

Pryn looked over the rail at passing pines.

Again trees fell back. On a rocky field where she thought there might easily be the same kind of caves as on Rorkar’s property, Pryn saw a number of long buildings. Beside one stood a dozen plows. Some were small and single-handled; others were large enough to need an animal or a person to haul through the ground.