Tender Morsels (31 page)

‘Good, good.’ Lady Annie had begun climbing the cellar stairs; her eyes were now level with Urdda’s. ‘I will tell that sluttern what comes and does for me to take her slops and go. You shall light my candles for me every night. You shall draw the curtains, and open them of a morning. You shall bring me my bloom-tea upon a tray, like a lady, and cook me little lovely-things to tease my tastebuds. I shall have a lady’s maid as befits my station, just as Collaby always said and I refused it. We shall play at ladies together; we will stroll
about the town, a lady and her companion. You shall have bed and board and . . . some money. How much is sensible? More than that cook, because you will be doing more.’

‘I . . . I do not know how much. I will have to ask Todda,’ said Urdda breathlessly.

‘Yes, she will know. Now let us go and choose you some quarters from the many rooms I have, all knocking about empty, and think about how we will furnish it for you.’

Urdda retrieved her own candle and followed the lady’s brisk figure up the stairs.

In the spring after second-Bear left, Branza came upon two wolf-cubs, starving and staggering in the forest.

She brought them back to the cottage. ‘I cannot think what has happened to their mother,’ she said, opening her apron to show them to Liga. ‘Will they take goat’s milk, do you think, or will it kill them?’

‘It must be better for them than nothing,’ said Liga.

Branza went to their care with her usual diligence. Both cubs grew well at first, increasing in energy and playfulness and then in bulk and strength. Branza asked of a shepherd how he commanded his dogs so that she could tame her new charges to sit and lie when told, and behave themselves in and about the cottage, and come to her call or whistle when they were farther afield. But no sooner were they of an age to reliably trot at Branza’s heels when they were not stalking and pouncing on one another, than the larger, girl-cub caught a fever from playing too long in swamp-water, and after a night’s shivering and burning, she died.

‘Oh, little one,’ said Branza to the brother as he pawed the earth in which she was digging the wolf-grave, ‘now you will be like me, won’t you? Always missing someone, sister or sweetheart or bear.’

She fetched the dead wolflet and laid her in the ground, and the brother went down there too, and sniffed all around her as if to assure himself she was positioned right. When he was satisfied,
Branza lifted him out, and he sat, quite sober and respectful-seeming, as she pushed the earth in, and covered the she-wolf, and patted the grave flat.

For several days he did not understand that his sister was gone. Branza took great care to engage him in play just as much as the dead wolf had used to, and at the times when the brother and sister would have rested together she carried him about in her arms, or had him in her lap as she sat holding wool for Liga to wind, or only resting herself, noting the weathers as they passed across the window.

And from that time, the two spent every hour together. The wolf slept in the house, even when he grew full-sized, on the floor beside Branza’s bed where she could reach down and touch him whenever night thoughts woke her, or bad dreams. And during the day he companioned her, whether she gathered or gardened, laundered or fished, snared, strode the hills and heaths, or wandered singing in the forest. He even sang himself, after a fashion, if Branza prompted him right, and in this, as in everything he did, he delighted her.

He was welcomed as she was when they went into the town. He would submit to pats on the head and scratches on the belly most willingly, and even would suffer some of the smaller children to ride on his back a few steps, held on by their bigger brothers or sisters. Branza was careful to keep him obedient when the market was on, and Wife Sweetbread sometimes gave her a piece of this or that meat to reward him with. Others remarked on his fine coat and intelligent face, or greeted him as if he were as much a person as Branza herself—which indeed she grew to think of him as.

Liga, too, approved him.
Most suitable friend
, she called him,
for my angel child
, but only when she thought Branza was out of hearing. She too enjoyed to command and reward him, and to have him draped over her feet as she sat working in the sunshine at the doorway in autumn and spring.

Wolf was not nearly as close a spirit or as complex a companion as Urdda, Branza thought, but he was warmth and consolation. He was not nearly as mysterious and alluring as second-Bear had been, but then he was not nearly so troubling either. He had his touch of wildness, his fondness for howling to his fellows on still nights under
a full moon, but in the main he stayed content to brighten their cottage, their days, their world, with his extra ration of beauty and youth; to come to their call and play when life grew overly quiet; to prompt them for touches and attention when either of them was tempted to regard herself as lonely.

Urdda reached the top of the tower before Annie did, and crossed to the castle wall. The icy air was not quite as still here as it had been below; its pauseless breath chilled Urdda’s neck and hands and ankles, and made her eyes water.

St Olafred’s was almost silent below, everyone huddled at their hearths except the smith, from whose cosy shop echoed up his hammerings, like a dulled bell. The forest around was a vision of lifelessness, leaflessness—a black mist barely moved by the breeze—and snow rimmed the view, painted thickly on the distant heights.

Urdda’s gaze fell, as it always did eventually, to the southwest beyond the town, to a curl of smoke there. Well she knew that it was from the wildfolk’s fire at Gypsy Siding, yet her heart still wanted to believe that Mam and Branza were out there in the cottage among the trees; that the smoke was from the cottage chimney; that she’d only to run down the town and out along the road past the Font to join them there and tell them of her new life: of Annie and her customers, their ills and remedies; of Ramstrong and Todda and their families. Most of all, she wanted to tell about, and thus relive, the carriage ride she had taken with Annie to Broadharbour at summer’s end to see the ocean’s hugeness and flatness and wildness at the edges; to help Annie choose fabrics (such fabrics!) for her winter clothing; to buy herbs and dried creatures, ground horn and such for Annie’s mud-makings, which she had got up the spirit to begin again; to order furniture and cartage. To exchange, in fact, as much of Annie’s wealth from the strongboxes, in as many different places as possible, for items of real and lasting value.

So I can bring you there, Mam
, Urdda might say, shedding her shawl with the heat of the soup, with the heat of the cottage fire.
You
and Branza both
.
As soon as I have got all her wealth exchanged, she’s promised me, we will make some effort towards bringing you there
.

Annie muttered and puffed at the top of the stairwell. ‘Blemme, that’s warming,’ she said, emerging. ‘Ooh, and just as well!’ She pulled her cloak closer at the neck. ‘We mustn’t stay too long up here. We shall freeze to the stones like a pair o’ gargoyles.’

She came and stood close at Urdda’s side, pushing her chin into the breeze. ‘Gawd, there’s a joyless prospect.’ Her sharp eyes in their nests of wrinkles took in the leaden sky, the mournful forest, the snow-white line, irregular, dividing them. ‘Look at that miserable streak of gypsy-smoke,’ she said. ‘They will be down there in their dark little dugouts of houses. I nearly starved out there myself, a winter or two. We must take them down a side of bacon, the next week or so. And some roots, and cabbages. Mebbe some wool blankets. They shared their scraps of food with me once or twice.’

She shifted her teeth and noticed Urdda watching her. ‘I had forgot those people,’ she said with some embarrassment, ‘since I got my wealth. I had sat up here in the town like the leddy I am, like the only person in the world, until you come along. You nuisance.’ She poked Urdda’s arm with her crooked twig of a finger. ‘Making me
do
things. Making me
see
things again.’

Up from the millrace I chased those slutty girls—me, Bullock Oxman, as before would never meet a girl’s eye. ‘I am Bullock!’ I roared. ‘And I am Bear! Aargle-argle-argh!’ Spirit of the spring, I roared and ran after them.

They crowded and screamed and funnelled and flooded up Laundress Lane, around the well and the slap-rocks, their mad noise racketing off the walls. I caught the skirt of one and kissed both her cheeks black. ‘Eeh, you devil bear!’ she cried. But I’d run on before her slap could connect.

Some went straight, but several swerved off up that cut-through to Murther Lane, behind the convent there. All I needed was for one to stumble and they would all fall in a pile and I’d be the top one, slapping soot on them all.

And joy! even better!—there were Filip and Noer in the lane-top, rushing down, Noer in his hat that was a mask too, and covered his eyes.

‘Eee!’ went the girls, and turned back; then ‘Eee!’ again, seeing the me-Bear blocking the lane-bottom. And wild they were, finding
themselves trapped. Dodge and peer, shove and scream—it was like uncovering a nest full of rat-babbies all squeerming and squeaking.

I spread my arms to catch as many of them as I could.

As I pitched myself forward, there came a flash, as if someone had struck my mind with a shoe-hammer made of silver, or of ice, or . . . Then, as Filip and Noer cannoned in from above and pushed the whole ruck back, it came again; the flash, the blow, the cold and silveriness.

‘D’ye have to shout in my ear?’ screeked the maid in front of me, though I had no memory of shouting. And then, as we were still pushed and staggering, first Noer ‘Yowp!’ and then close upon him Filip ‘Yowp!’ they both said, like dogs clipped by the wheel of a wagon. And the juice of fear ran hot all through me, the juice of discombobulement from that strange silvery shock. What had it been? Stop a moment and let me think.

But there’s no stopping of a Bear Day, not till the bakers stop you. We had to run ourselves to rags, dint we? And then Noer, half blinded by his mask-hat, blundered pretty much straight into their arms—out the end of Mittenhead I seen them
blonk
! him with a flour-bag and the white go everywhere. I were free to run on, though I almost wished it were me that had been blonked, I was so hot and weary.

‘’Twasn’t long till another brace of them come after me. I put up a good last spurt of running, but in the end, of course, there was the
thwap
at the back of my neck, and the world shot white ahead of me. My nose was rubbed into cobbles and my head was rolled upon them, and Pader the pastry-man were bouncing the breath out of my ribs.

Then there was drinking, vast drinking, at the Whistle, and I thought of nothing but shouting the next jibe at Noer and laughing, and singing all the verses of ‘The Thin Soldier,’ with the rude bits especially loud, and cooling the tip of my nose in the good white foam that quilted Keller’s ale so thickly, which underneath was as golden and smooth as honey, as cold and bitter and pure as the Eelmother herself.

Then it was along to the mayor-hall for the feast we rolled. Oh my! There was foods I had never had in my life. There was shellfish brought all the way from Broadharbour that were like spindles and coin-cases that you hammered open for their white meat. So sweet! Sweet and rich, with sauces such as my tongue were startled and bewitched by.

Somewhere there, with the band playing and the wines also, somewhere in the tantara and the rataplan of the whole thing, I fell to sleep. Well, it were hardly surprising; I had been running most of the day, I had been overexcited beyond sleep for two nights before that; it was only to be expected. The feast went on, but it were a dream-feast, mixed up with the shine and flash of rushing cobblestones, the beam and stretch of faces afeared and thrilled, the whole day’s memories tipped and stirred, blurred and misshaped in the mixing-bowl of sleep.

Next I knew, someone reamed out the inside of my head with a burst of noise and light, that was the curtains being rattled back from a window vicious with spring sunshine, each pane packed over-fully with warped and bubbled clouds.