The Wilful Eye (6 page)

M
oth's father was a foolish, impulsive, prideful man. One day he decided to go before the king with some other men, to propose a festival. He was a miller and the other men were variously a grain farmer, a cow herder, a baker and an orchardist and each of them called himself the master of his trade. Their idea was a festival that would involve an orgy of breadmaking and cake-devouring from which they would reap the profits. The king would have a goodly cut for his coffers. The trouble was that none of the masters had given much thought to what the festival should celebrate. Their sole desire was that as much bread and cake and butter and jam and cream be consumed as humanly possible.

When Moth heard them plotting in the parlour, she begged her mother to intervene. ‘They cannot go and dither before the king,' she said urgently. ‘He will not stand for it.'

‘You know your father, Moth,' her mother said, making a coy moue at herself in the looking glass in her bedchamber as she tried on a new hair ornament which her husband had bought her from a traveller.

She meant he would not listen to her, Moth supposed. It was true that her father listened to no one unless their opinion agreed with his own and then he thought them marvellously clever, though less so if it was a woman, for women were not of much account in the Middle Kingdom. Her father was not a cruel or hard man and it might have been different if her mother had spoken with gravity from time to time, but she did not trouble herself thinking much at all, claiming it produced wrinkles and constipation. Certainly Moth's father had not wed her for her wit, but for her beauty, which was admittedly considerable. Her figure was the sort men desired, being softly full at the hip and bosom with a dainty waist between. Her skin was rosy pink and white as a naked breast, giving her a soft, exposed look, and her limpid eyes were as blue and guileless as a summer sky. Her crowning beauty was her hair: it hung to the floor in a warm, rich, honey-gold fall, which her husband described as the lovely colour of wealth. That the weight of it gave Moth's mother endless headaches and neck aches did not trouble him, nor that when she walked, it literally swept up dust and twigs and even the odd spider. Not that she had to wash or brush it, of course. She had a servant for that, though as a girl Moth had liked to brush it herself.

Now she had the uncontrollable urge to shake her mother, for truly she was like a big, soft, stupid doll.

‘Moth, do not frown in that ferocious way or you will give yourself lines,' her mother said, catching the grimace in the looking glass. But even before she got to the end of the sentence she was distracted by a freckle at the corner of her eye, asking Moth if she would call it a beauty spot or a freckle. Moth had no idea what to say. As far as she could see, such a mark was a beauty spot if it was on the face or form of a beauty and a mere freckle if the wearer was plain.

‘If my father gets his head chopped off you will be sorry,' she muttered under her breath, and went out to try to waylay him, for while he could not be told a thing, he could be influenced if a matter were handled carefully. Sometimes Moth thought she had become clever to compensate for the foolishness of her parents.

‘My pretty thing,' said her father, rising from the table and looking at her with a faint dissatisfaction. Her cleverness troubled him and he was always afraid she might produce some gnomic utterance that would humiliate him, not that she had spoken so since she was very small. Yet he loved her, too, with a baffled helpless love that did not know what to do with itself. The other men had risen, smiling, but with less judgement in their looks since she was not their daughter.

‘I heard you talking about a festival,' Moth said. ‘What will it celebrate?'

The men looked at one another in consternation and Moth crossed to the window, pretending not to notice as they drew into a little clot by the fire to talk in soft urgent voices.

She leaned on the sill and saw the old, bow-legged beekeeper who dwelt on the land next door. He was in the farthest field from his cottage where he kept his hives, talking with the traveller who had sold the hair ornament to her father. Moth recognised the young man by his green breeches, for though she had not seen his face, she had seen him departing. She could not see it now because aside from the distance, both men wore hats with nets over their faces. Her father had told her the traveller had come down from the mountains to look into trade possibilities on the peninsula, which jutted in an elegant green and gold finger into the sea. Moth had never heard of anyone coming down from the Mountain Kingdom, much less a trader, but her father said he had a note marked with the seal of his king authorising his travel and recommending him as an honest man.

She wondered if her father had actually read the note.

Probably the beekeeper was showing the traveller the new hive with the removable frame that he had got from Oranda. There was a little cloud of smoke coming from the smudge pot under the hive, which stupefied the bees so that they would not swarm or sting or hurt themselves. Maybe he was interested in the secret of the special honey that the Middle Kingdom produced, which was famous for its unusual fragrance even in the lands beyond the lacy scalloped shores of Oranda. Dougal could not tell him the secret of the fragrance but Moth knew. The bees collected their pollen from wild roses and the rare black lavender that grew high on the cliffs that rose up on either side of the peninsula like wings, hiding the sea.

At length Moth's father and the other masters went out of the parlour towards the mill which was built on a bend of the Esker River. The river ran down from the mountains, and flowed away to the salt sea at the endmost point of the peninsula in Oranda. Moth watched them until they were out of sight, crossing her fingers that they would come up with a sensible idea before they faced the king.

In any case there was no more she could do. If she had tried to suggest the sort of festival that might be had, they would have laughed indulgently and patted her head. Camber the wheat farmer, a pale-faced man with pockmarked skin and eyes like leeches, would more likely have pinched a buttock if he could manage it without her father seeing. He was a sly lustful man but her father would hear nothing against him. If Moth had told him bluntly that the man molested her every time he could get his hands on her, she was just as likely to find herself shut up in a tower, no matter what he did to the wheat farmer. That was the fate of young women who were put upon by men; somehow it was their fault. Nor could she tell her mother, who took every opportunity to have hysterics. She fainted so often that she had a special swooning couch for it.

Moth was pragmatic and sensible. With such parents, anything else would have been impossible for her, especially since, like the bees, she had her own secrets.

She went out to talk to the beekeeper.

‘Was that the traveller who is supposed to have come from the Mountain Kingdom, Dougal?' she asked.

He nodded. ‘Hearit I got a new sort of hive and wantit a look,' he said in his toothless garble. ‘I was showing him how the frames need not be fixit. He said it was a marvel. But lookit . . .' He began to explain how the new sort of hive exceeded the previous fixed-frame hive, and Moth listened though she had heard it all before. She liked the beekeeper because he told her all sort of things her father would have thought too difficult for her to bother her pretty head about. Indeed what she liked most about the old man was that he did not seem to think of her pretty head at all when they spoke. He liked her because his beloved bees liked her.

She stayed a while talking to him and when the sun began to wester, she thanked him for the candles he pressed on her, and went to pick some beans and carrots from the kitchen garden for supper. She carried the basket of vegetables into the shed and fetched Lavender in to be milked.

‘You smell good,' Lavender told her, as they came in together.

Moth's father had given her the mauve-brown cow as a calf, when she was seven and Lavender had been the first animal ever to speak to her. At first Moth had thought the cow was special and tried to get her to speak to the other children and to the farmhands but it soon became clear that she alone could hear her. For a time the other children teased her and she learned to pretend it had been a game. Pretending that an animal could speak was acceptable, but having an animal speak to you was not.

Not that the cow said anything more than mild bovine pleasantries but all the same Moth loved her and loved milking her, resting her forehead against the cow's soft hide and listening to her occasional patient sigh. Bees now, she thought, bees were interesting to listen to because of the habit people had of telling them secrets, and because of the bees' habits of making songs of the secrets and singing them over and over.

Moth had just finished the milking when she heard the sound of a horse galloping so fast she thought it might be in a bolt. Setting down the brimming pail, she ran outside to see. To her astonishment it was her father, his cape all awry and his wig blown off so that his bald pate shone with perspiration. He pulled up the horse and leapt off, throwing down the reins. Moth hastened to catch them up and opened her mouth to reproach her father, for the mare was gentle and well-mannered and his brutality might have ruined her temperament. Then it struck her that there must be something badly wrong if her father would ride a valuable horse so carelessly.

‘What has happened, Father?' she asked, and noticed with a little thrill of fear that his face was the colour of whey. She took his arm but he shook her off and then, as if for a moment he saw her properly, horror seeped into his eyes. Moth was so amazed she did not go after him when he turned and staggered towards the house.

The mare asked plaintively if she could have a mouthful of water, and that broke Moth out of her daze. Apologising, she led the poor beast into the stable, brushed her down and gave her water and a dollop of molasses in her oats, all the while telling her what a fine brave creature she was. Horses were always very receptive to praise and the mare nuzzled Moth gratefully. Closing the stable door, she went to get the pail of milk and the beeswax candles Dougal had given her. He had been gifted them by the traveller, who told him the wax was perfumed with oil extracted from heather along Oranda's shore. When set alight, the candles would give off the scent of the sea. The traveller was seeking a market for the candles in the Middle Kingdom before he returned to the mountains. The trouble was old Dougal, who had no sense of smell but had not wanted to admit it to the young man.

Moth had promised to try them and let him know in time for him to pass her judgement on to the traveller. But candles were the last thing on her mind as she went into the house and poured the milk into a bowl, setting it in a cool place to let the cream rise. She washed her hands and, taking a deep breath to steady herself, she went into the parlour where her father was sitting in his high-backed chair, staring at the parquetry in front of him. Her mother was standing beside him wringing her hands, but it was only when they both looked at her so tragically that Moth's heart gave a hard little rap at her ribs.

‘What is it?' she asked.

Her mother gave her father a piteous look and he heaved a sigh. ‘We were waiting in the audience hall to make our proposal for the festival when a young fellow came in, a troubadour with golden curls that the king has made his pet. He sings and reads the future using cards or smoke or bowls of black ink, that sort of mummery. He sang a song about a clever young woman who outwitted a sorcerer and then he burst out laughing and said was it not a wondrous silliness for he had never in his life met a single woman who was not like every other woman he had ever met. The king agreed and said if he ever met a woman who had any wits, he would wed her. I told Camber standing next to me that I had a daughter who had more wits than most men, and was unique in the three kingdoms if not the whole world and no man but a king deserved her.'

‘Father,' Moth whispered, suddenly terrified.

He made a little abortive clawing gesture in the air. ‘Camber said you had a touch of magic in your blood for certain sure, since you had snared the good opinion of all the men who knew you.'

Moth shivered, wondering that her father could not see the nasty sliminess in the other man's words.

‘There was no harm in it,' her father insisted. ‘But Camber has that booming voice and the king heard and . . . a king is not as other men. He bade me bring you to him and he would taste your magic.' There was a sick, pleading look in her father's face.

‘But I have no magic,' Moth said. ‘Whatever he wants I can't do it and he will kill me.'

Her father strangely gave a little strangled laugh. ‘You must try to do whatever he asks and then tell him the power has left you. Your beauty will protect you.'

‘I am not my mother,' Moth said.

Moth's father gave her a look of furious anguish and lurched to his feet. ‘Your mother will instruct you,' he said, and swept out.