Tender Morsels (41 page)

It was the middle of the night; she had just brought Ousel in with us; he was busy and breathing in his nest between us, and above him she watched me, the thoughts pouring out her eyes in the dark.

‘Why is that?’

‘Well,’ she says unwillingly, ‘I thought perhaps the mother had . . . a place in your heart, Davit.’

‘Oh, she does, and she did,’ I said. There is something about talking in the night, with the shreds of sleep around your ears, with the silences between one remark and another, the town dark and dreaming beyond your own walls. It draws the truth out of you, straight from its little dark pool down there, where usually you guard it so careful, and wave your hands over it and hum and haw to protect people’s feelings, to protect your own.

‘The way you spoke of her, when we first talked about it.’

‘Yes,’ I said. I thought about her at the stream there in her prime, much the age of Todda now; I mused upon the sensations and the muddied impressions that come to a man through his bear-fur, through his bear-mind.

Then I realised she was waiting, listening to me muse, not knowing what I were about. ‘You’ve no need to worry,’ I said, and reached across and rested my hand on her hip. ‘So much has come between, so much more: you and these babs. I married
you
, remember?’

‘I should not like to think it were a duty now, and you preferred another,’ she said low.

See? You can bring out the jaggedest feelings—if you are my wife and know how to state them calm—into the night quiet. They will float there for consideration, harming no one.

‘It is no duty, Todda, but a joy and a revelation to me every day. Had I the choice now, I would not go back to that place, don’t you fear.’

‘No?’ she says.

I put it before my mind’s eye again. ‘No.’

Ousel made a small, greedy noise. Todda’s doubt floated over us between the grains of darkness.

‘I said no, Tod,’ I moved my hand on her hip.

‘When she came through, though,’ she murmured. ‘When first she stepped out of that other land; when first you saw her, Davit?’

‘Relief,’ I realised, with a little laugh.

‘I were relieved too,’ she chimes. ‘Why were you, though?’

‘That she had not the same spell over me. That all I felt was worry that she and Branza should be comfortable here, not be too frightened.’

‘I were glad, and this is not admirable of me . . .’

I gave her hip a little shake. ‘Go on. You were glad because?’

‘Because she was older. At first I thought Branza was the one, and that made me think,
Oh, she is beautiful. I am lost
. Maybe I am! How do you feel for Branza?’

‘Todda, I knew the girl as a bab, almost! ’Tis indecent to do more than think,
Well, haven’t she grown up fine from that little sprite?
But go on: then you realised?’

‘Then I realised it were the older woman and . . . I were glad she were older, that’s all. I were glad she were old enough to be a grumma. Not that she is at all ugly or careworn—she is beautiful. But . . .’

‘But no longer the girl I met.’

‘Yes. But then I also thought,
Well, where am I bound, if not for that age too? Do I want women like me, young mams, to be so relieved? Do I want my man to look at me when I am twoscore and more, and feel no desire for me?
’

‘I promise I will not.’

She laughed at how earnest I said it, and how fast.

I hoisted up on an elbow and listened over Ousel. He sucked a little, half woke by my movement, then slipped back into his milky dreams.

‘Here,’ I whispered, ‘give me that bab and I will put him out the way of our husband-and-wifing. Before you is too wizened and ugly for my consideration, eh?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she laughed up at me. ‘We had better move right smartly, I think.’

Towards dawn, I roused myself and shook Noer, who had fallen to weeping and then sleeping on my lap on the hut floor. ‘I must go. They’ll be doing the bones soon,’ I says to him. ‘Do you want to be there for that?’

He sat half up and squinted about, stupid as if he’d been blonked with the constable’s cosh. ‘Whather?’

‘Like her funeral,’ I says.

He looked at me and dragged his answer out from behind some drunken dream. ‘No, Bullock. I coonent. You go for me, though. You pay my respecks.’

So up I went to the hall and joined the procession of the hunters, carrying the she-bear among them—her peeled bones, her scraped and her boiled, her broken for the marrow, her giant skull, her knuckles and backbones in rattling bags—out of the town and up onto the Mount, where they buried her, and rolled a stone onto her that would be rolled off again next spring to set her free, and Wolfhunt said the long prayer that was all about the bear-strength they had eaten, and the threateningness and the savagery of bears. It were awful—I felt the awfulness of it on behalf of Noer-who-had-been-
between-her-paws
, and it seemed hardly dulled at all by the amount of ale I had taken.

When it was done, we went down the hill again and the town rose opposite. I knew that place should be my home, but after my night in Noer’s mind it seemed a peculiar pile, its streets a maze, needlessly crowded, where we slender people, so naked of fur we must make extra skins for ourselves, muddled and ambled and skipped in our dance of alliances and enmities, offences and fancies. We thought too much; we calculated too hard. I would rather have wandered among trees, with their more meaningful conversation. I would rather have been solitary and unharried, never required to speak nor account for myself, to do anything else but what come natural.

But I could not make for the forest now. My friend needed me. He was in that pile, in that town somewhere, sleeping and suffering. I would go and wake him—now was the right time for that. I would see him cleaned and set aright. And then I would go to my own home and sleep myself, and perhaps when I woke, all this stirred-up anger and magic would have gone back to its resting-place, and life would not seem such a strange and sad affair.

Miss Dance tied her bag to the saddle and briskly turned back to them. There was still something skull-like about her handsome face. She had had no more than an hour or two’s rest last night, answering all their questions, and asking many of her own, and spending time aside with both Liga and Lady Annie.

What did she want of you?
Urdda had asked Liga first thing that morning.

Liga had looked patient and sad, and so much older than Urdda remembered her.
Nothing important
, she said.

She wanted to rap
me
over the knuckles
, Annie had laughed, sweeping by with one of Urdda’s white bread-loaves.
And I’ve no rings to protect me no more—ooch, it stung!

‘I am pleased to have set this right, as well as it could be set,’ Miss Dance now said to the assembled women. Ramstrong had hied himself to his wool-merchants, so it was only Annie, and Todda and the boys, and Liga and Branza and Urdda.

‘I wish you would rest a day,’ said Annie. ‘Tea or no brightening tea, you will doze as you ride and fall from that beauteous mount of yours. Even spelling things
im
proper tires a person.’

Miss Dance smiled down and took both of Annie’s ringless hands. ‘Well, I hope you will not tire yourself that way in the future, Lady Bywell.’

‘Oh, I think I had already learnt my lesson, mum,’ said Annie. ‘’Tis years since I done more than brew up herb-messes and shoo the odd wife or child from death’s doorstep.’

‘Keep an eye on this woman, Urdda,’ said Miss Dance. ‘She has more talent than schooling, and a soft heart—and that is always a dangerous combination.’

Urdda was still afizz with the adventure of it all, Ousel on her hip as if he weighed no more than a twitter-will. She bobbed a curtsey. ‘It has been an honour and adventure meeting you, Miss Dance.’

‘And you, my dear.’ Miss Dance seemed about to say something else, but Ousel waggled his hand at her. ‘Bye-bye,’ he commanded.

The sorceress chucked his cheek. ‘Bye-bye, little man,’ she said, and turned to Liga and Branza, who stood together, somewhat faded from yesterday’s excitement and a lack of sleep. ‘Go carefully, Liga, Branza,’ she said. ‘Be kind to yourselves. Much is different here, and you must expect some shocks and confusions.’

‘I wish you would stay a little, as the lady says,’ said Branza impulsively. ‘And . . . instruct us.’

‘Instruct you in what, my dear?’

‘Oh! I don’t know. In the ways of this world, and how to be comfortable in it.’

‘Comfort is not the
aim
, Branza,’ said Urdda with a laugh. ‘Comfort is what we
had
. Here we have . . . Well, Miss Dance calls this the true world. Here we have truth!’

Branza looked chastened and fragile, and Miss Dance took her elbow. Did she do magic on her? Urdda wondered, watching Branza straighten at her touch and risk something of a smile through her uncertainties.

‘Rest and observe, Branza,’ the sorceress said. ‘Things will come clearer with time and thought, I’m sure you will find. Liga, you also. Take matters slowly—as you may, from your vantage point under Annie’s roof.’

‘I will be very careful,’ said Liga, hanging on Branza’s other arm, and Urdda jogged Ousel on her hip and made faces for him rather than look at her mother and sister, for their extra ten years were all too evident in their faces, which strove for politeness through fear.

‘Journey well, mum,’ said Todda to Miss Dance, and Miss Dance mounted the mare in a single efficient movement. She looked down at them, a fine-cut figure against the cloudy sky. Oh, we are so motley, Urdda thought, with all our doubts and frights—how wonderful to be this woman, and know everything!

‘Bye-bye,’ said Ousel. ‘Bye-bye.’ And he wagged and wagged his hand as Miss Dance brought the fine mare round.

‘Good day, ladies,’ said the sorceress. It was clear from her eyes
that her mind had already gone from them to whatever duties awaited her in Rockerly.

‘Bye-bye,’ said Ousel again.

‘And gentlemen.’ Miss Dance flashed him a brief smile. ‘And little gentlemen.’ She released the mare into a walk and, with an arm raised in farewell, rode away from them, down the street.

Liga and Branza slept away the morning. A cracked voice singing outside, warbling from growl to trill, woke Liga around noon, and she lay abed unmoving for awhile, listening and waiting for her situation, her surroundings, to come comprehensible to her. In her hand, under her pillow, was the cloth with the two jewels wrapped in it—or the two seeds, or whatever they were, from which the red-flowered and the white-flowered bushes had grown and perhaps the entirety of Liga’s heaven-place with them. Miss Dance had given them to Liga last night.

They are yours by right
, she had said.
And by the fact that they retain their form in the true world, I would dare to say that that other world might remain somehow accessible to you. But beware!
And here the sorceress had glanced out of her thoughts and her exhaustion with a flash of feeling.
Should you be inclined to return to it, come to me in Rockerly, rather than appealing to any mudwife to help you reach there. There is a good chance, with these gems in hand, of my conveying you to that place, but who knows how Annie might imperil you, imperil us all, meddling with the things?