Tender Morsels (48 page)

Their business began to prosper too. The wedding of the ale-man Keller’s daughter Ada in early June was really the making of them. It was a fine occasion, with Keller laying on a feast for the greater part of the town to come to, for Ada was his only daughter and he wanted all his customers to celebrate with him. And the bride looked so well in the raiment Liga and her daughters had made, both father and groom were brought to tears at the sight of her there in the
dappled sunlight under the wedding-laurels, and several matrons of the town decided then and there that when the time came, their daughters would be clothed by those Cotting women.

Midsummer came. Liga had only vague memories of these celebrations: of hanging at the edges with her mam, too shy to join in the dancing and games. Urdda and Branza, from about nine years of age, had gone up to town to join in, but Liga never quite assembled the courage, preferring to sit out the long evening at home, with the town bonfire a distant flare, a distant scatter of flying sparks, and the shouts and music gusting partial and insubstantial on the warm breeze.

This year Branza and Urdda would not hear of her staying indoors; they gathered a group of Ramstrongs and Threadgoulds in the middle of which Liga could be comfortably swept along through the masked and garlanded town and out onto the Mount, and deposited near the bonfire. And there, seated on a blanket next to Todda, who was big and beautiful with child now, Liga hugged her knees and watched and watched, the dancing on one side and the games on the other. Everyone, from infants just walking to old grummas and grumpas, raced and threw at marks, and balanced eggs on their noses, and everyone danced. Liga had never seen—had never allowed herself to see, at home—husbands and wives, and men and women of marriageable age, dancing together, though she and her mam had danced, and she and her girls, a little. She saw the girls’ hands in the boys’, the men’s hands on the women’s hips as they spun and promenaded them, and—she hugged her knees tightly—she hardly knew how to feel, that this was public and permissible, that no harm was meant by it. How blithely the girls moved, her own daughters among them! They talked as they danced, and they laughed, with the men and across to one another—they stumbled and missed steps sometimes and scrambled to catch up, and still they laughed! Girls danced with their fathers—she had not seen this, had not known this—gloriously carefree, with no fear of beatings or bedtime. Such lives they had! Such lives she had given her daughters, she reminded herself—look at them! beautiful, the both of them!

Here was Ramstrong, damp-shirted and pretending exhaustion
after the loopings and passings of the clover waltz. ‘Liga, you’ve not yet danced a step!’ he cried, approaching her and putting out his hand.

‘Yes, have a dance, Liga,’ said Todda. ‘I cannot partner him; ’twould be like his dancing with a fatted goose!’

Liga resisted at first, but Ramstrong urged her: ‘Come, ’tis a simple enough step, the simplest,’ and Todda: ‘Go on, Liga; I promise he will not trip over your feet,’ and the music was very easy-rhythmed and enticing, and before she knew it, her hand was in a man’s and she was being led, heart pounding, in among the couples.

Oh my Gracious, she thought, but the music and the chatter and fire’s roar and crackle hid that whimper she gave, that gasp. And Ramstrong turned to her, all kindness and relaxment, the most reassuring face in the world, and caught her other hand, and then she was dancing with a man for the first time, held by a man for the first time in her life without any force or evil intention. The fire made the faces around them glow and the eyes sparkle; she knew she must be as kindly lit, and she knew her hair, dressed and beribboned by her excited daughters that afternoon, was more becoming than it had ever been. Terrified, dazzled, and elated that she could dance in company and no one could discern that she did not belong, did not deserve this, she followed the steps she had learnt with her mam; danced with her giant mam; danced with her tiny girls on the grass around the cottage, on the matting on the cottage floor, but which were meant—didn’t she know? couldn’t she see now?—for nights such as this: warm, dark and sparkling and glowing with bonfire light, with music all around like a spell, like a magical cordial, to be drunk in deep drafts from the air, with people all around, their voices one over the other, their smells—now sharp sweat, now the cedar and lavender of gowns stored year-long just for this dancing.

‘You do not dance like a bear,’ she ventured to Ramstrong, with a laugh.

‘I do not,’ he said, smiling back. ‘But you and I know, Liga, how much of a bear I am at heart.’

This delighted her, that he would confess to that bulk and
clumsiness when here he was, as tall and strong as a man could wish to be, and yet so slender and fine-made in contrast to that beast.

She danced two dances with him, but then a round dance was called and she could not bring herself to be passed from stranger to stranger, especially as she felt herself to be too overwrought, and the light too patched and poor, to identify whether any of
those
men, Cleavers or Foxes or such, were among the partners assembling. Ramstrong returned her to Todda’s side, and took up Branza and was gone again.

‘He have not shamed me and crushed your toes?’ Todda said, passing Liga a water-cup, and she drank gratefully.

‘I did not use my toes, I think, but only floated above the ground!’

And she sat to calm herself and watch Branza turn and greet the others and move through the stately dance. Perhaps I have not spoiled her life utterly, she thought to herself, by keeping her so sheltered for so long. Perhaps Miss Dance has brought us back in time for the girl to devise her own joys and desires. And look at Urdda there, talking to Widow Tems and making her laugh so. Need I be anxious on either of them, really?

Not on a night like this, she decided, surrounded by kind friends and with all the townfolk aglow and celebrating before her, with Anders running up to his great-uncle to plead for something and Ousel curled in a nest of blankets beside his mother. On Midsummer Night, I may put my worries aside, I think. I may have as much pleasure from Midsummer Night as the next woman.

‘Ah. I see.’

Lady Annie watched for a while as Branza went at the ground with a stick. She made as if to sit on the cottage step and enjoy the morning sun, and rest after her walk here, but then she changed her mind and went to the far end of the stone, and poked at the ground there with her walking stick until she found the soft place. ‘I see what you have been up to.’

She wandered off to find a better tool than her walking stick.

Branza stayed, diligently digging, her jaw set. Rainshowers had sealed over the surface and compacted the dug dirt a little, but they were only six weeks’ rainshowers, not a decade and more’s interspersed with baking sun.

Annie returned and began to dig. And to hum, the warbling wandering song she always sang when she was busy. It was an awful sound, hardly music at all, but still it was a comfort for Branza to hear it, and to have the old woman working beside her.

They dug on, and Annie hummed, and also cursed occasionally. ‘Nawp, a little farther,’ she said, drawing a dusty hand out of her excavation. ‘You’ve wedged it in well, girl.’ She wore a town dress, which she now cheerfully wiped her hands on, leaving pale paw-prints. She flashed Branza a neat ivory smile and went on working.

A little later, as Branza sat on the end of the step wiping the dust from the ruby’s splendour, Annie cried, ‘Ah, there she is!’ And she held up the clear jewel.

‘Can you feel any magic in the thing?’ said Branza. ‘Or was it all drained quite away by Mam’s desirings?’

‘Oh, I would not know how to use such a thing, or even assess its powers.’ Annie stood and turned the crystal in her dusty hands. ‘All I can tell you is that it is of improbably good quality, for a stone its size. If that makes it magic, then it is magic.’ She laughed. ‘Of course, that it were guv your mam by a sprite would indicate too!’ And she brought it and gave it to Branza.

‘Could you speak to that sprite, Annie, if you had need?’

‘Might be, my love. I have seen one or two creatures similar. Moody things, they are, though; hard to make ’em take substance. They must decide for theirselves. And my need have never been as great as your mam’s that time.’

‘Why, what was her plight? “I was very unhappy,” is how she puts it to me; no more than that.’

Annie wiped her hands on her dress again and sat close behind Branza on the step. ‘Ah, ’taint for me to tell you, poppet. You will have to press her.’

‘I don’t like to. It might distress her, the telling.’

‘It might well,’ said Annie blandly.

Branza looked sidelong at her. ‘Are you telling me to press her, or telling me not?’

‘I am telling you to do whatever you will do, my sweet. ’Tis your business and hers, between you.’

‘But it will distress her.’

‘Ah.’ The little witch wagged a crooked finger. ‘But you ain’t in her heaven now. Things are
allowed
to distress her here.’

‘But I do not
like
to distress her.’

‘Then, you silly, you have to weigh up, don’t you, which is the better: to not distress and never know, or to know and mebbe set her a-weeping.’ And she tipped to one side and then the other, under the weight of the two imaginings.

‘Make Mam weep! What a terrible thing!’

‘Oh, ’tis not so terrible, a tear dropped here and there. ’Tis all part o’ the match-and-mix of life. There are mams have told me that babs were
put on earth
to make mams cry! If that is true, I would say you have been failing in your function some.’ She looked up at Branza through her eyebrows.

Branza laughed at her.

‘Far too good a girl, you have been. You need to kick up your skirts and kiss a boy or two, I’m thinking.’

‘Oh, I am too old for that, I think.’

‘Old! You with your golden hair and that skin, that skin! Why,
I
would not say no to a man’s lips if they were offered me. I would rather they were not age-withered, though, nor surrounded by grey beard.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘But then, I cannot expect much, guv the state of my own mouth.’ And she cackled ivorily.

‘Enough of this silliness.’ Branza smiled down at the glowing jewels in her hands. ‘Tell me, Annie: if you wanted to, could you send me back there, the way you sent Lord Dought?’

‘Back to your mam’s heart’s desire, my darling?’

‘Yes, or to my own, where everything would be just as pleasant, that being how I wanted it?’

‘I might be able to,’ said Annie with a shrug. ‘But very likely I would bugger things up again, and mightier than I done before. I tell you, it near split my brain athwart just remembering what
I done for Dought, when Miss Dance come along and tried spooning it out of my head. All the intricacies and the work-arounds. If you have powers, you’ve got to find help in your youth; someone with stronger magic and practice have to advise you, someone who knows their ears from their onions. And I never did. I just blundered along in the dark with a few thumb-rules from that gypsy, and look what happened. I broke that thing, that time key, and Miss Dance had to practically kill herself pulling things as back to rights as she could get ’em. And your mam and you lost ten years out of my doings—or gained them, if you think of it that way.’

She searched the weeds next to Branza’s feet for the insect that was shrilling there. ‘What’s more,’ she said, ‘I promised the woman I wouldn’t. Time was, I would of gone against that promise for convenience or silver, or
copper
if enough had been offered me. But nowadays I am a woman of my word.’

Branza smiled at her glum tone. ‘That is a great pity, Annie.’

‘It is, int it?’ said the mudwife, and cackled again. ‘You need to find yourself a fresh-sprouted witch, just crossing from girl to woman, and have her use her more-power-than-sense on your behalf. I know an orph’nage where you might start your looking.’ She stood up in the weeds and laughed down at Branza. ‘You’ll want money, enough for the makings and to lure the girl, but I can help you wi’ that. You won’t require much—just enough for a pair of blue satin shoon for dancing, I should think, and a sugar-fig or two.’

‘Who knows where I would end up, Annie, with that girl’s help?’ Branza got up too, tying the jewels to her belt by their cloth.

‘Some wastrel’s heaven, or some murderer’s.’ Annie pushed through the weeds towards the path, throwing the words back cheerfully over her shoulder. ‘Much the same as this world, really. Hardly worth your while, sweet girl!’