Authors: Robin McKinley
“Oh, Beauty,” Hope said; “but that’s not all, Ger only stays in the city for love of me; he doesn’t really like it here, nor ships and the sea. He was born and raised north of here, far inland. He misses the forests. He wants to go back, and be a blacksmith again.”
I thought about this. It seemed like the waste of a first-class ironworker, I was also, for all my scholarship, not entirely free of the city-bred belief that the north was a land rather overpopulated by goblins and magicians, who went striding about the countryside muttering wild charms. In the city magic was more discreetly contained, in little old men and women with bright eyes, who made up love potions and cures for warts in return for modest sums. But if this didn’t bother Hope, there was no reason it should bother me.
I said at last: “Well, we’ll miss you. I hope you won’t settle too far away—but it’s still not an insurmountable obstacle. Look here: Stop wringing your hands and listen to me. Would you like me to talk to Father about it first, since you’re so timid?”
“Oh, that would be wonderful of you,” my bright-eyed sister said eagerly. “I’ve made Gervain promise not to say anything yet, and he feels that our continued silence is not right.” It was a tradition in the family that I could “get around” Father best: I was the baby, and so on. This was another of my sisters’ tactful attempts at recompense for the way I looked, but there was some truth to it Father would
do anything for any of us, but my sisters were both a little in awe of him.
“Umm, yes,” I said, looking longingly at my books. “I’ll talk to Father—but give me a week or so, will you please, since you’ve waited this long. Father’s got business troubles, as you may have noticed, and I’d like to pick my time.”
Hope nodded, cheerful again, called me a darling girl, kissed me, and slipped out of the room. I went back to Sophocles. But to my surprise, I couldn’t concentrate; stories I’d heard of the northland crept in and disrupted the Greek choruses. And there was also the fact that Ger, safe and sensible Ger, found our local witches amusing; it was not that he laughed when they were mentioned, but that he became very still. In my role of tiresome little ii sister, I had harassed him about this, till he told me a little.’’ Where I come from, any old wife can mix a poultice to take off warts; it’s something she learns from her mother with how to hem a shirt and how to make gingerbread. Or if she can’t, she certainly has a neighbour who
can, just as her husband probably has a good useful spell or two to stuff into his scarecrow with the straw, to make it do its work a little better.” He saw that he had his audience’s fixed attention, so he grinned at me, and added: “There are even a few dragons left up north, you know. I saw one once, when I was a boy, but they don’t come that far south very often.” Even I knew that dragons could do all sorts of marvelous things, although only a great magician could master one.
* * *
Shipments were canceled, crops were poor, revolutions disturbed regular commerce; Father’s ships were sunk in storms, or captured by pirates; many of his warehouses were destroyed, and the clerks disappeared or returned home penniless.
The final blow was a message brought by a weary, footsore man who had set sail as third mate on the
Stalwart
three years ago. The four ships had been driven apart by a sudden storm. The
Stalwart
and the
Windfleet
had been driven up on the shore and destroyed; only a handful of men survived. The
Fortune’s Chance
was later discovered to have been taken by pirates who found it lost and disabled after the storm. Of the
White Raven
there was no word, of ship or crew, but it was presumed lost. The captain of the
Windfleet
had survived the wreck of the two ships, but at the cost of a crushed leg that refused to heal. A year ago the sailor who stood now, shredding his hat with his hands, had been sent by that captain with one other man, to try and work their way home and deliver their messages, and an urgent plea for assistance, since written letters seemed to have gone astray. There had been a dozen men
left alive when the pair had set out, but their situation, alone in a strange country, was precarious. The sailor’s companion had died by foul play, and he had heard nothi ng of the men he had left since shortly after his departure.
I don’t remember the next few weeks, after the sailor’s arrival, too well; nor do I regret that vagueness. I remember only too clearly that Father, who had been young and hearty, in a few days’ rime came to look his age, which was past sixty; and poor Grace turned as white as cold wax when she heard the news, and went about the house like a silent nightmare, like the poor pale girls in old ballads who fade
away until they are nothing more than grey omens to the living. Hope and I took turns trying to persuade
our father and eldest sister to eat, and making sure that the fires in their rooms were well built up.
Father made plans to take what little remained to him and us and retire to the country, where we could make shift to live cheaply. His rapid rise in business wealth and success had been based on his ability to take calculated risks. He had run ventures very near to the line before, and always come about, and so he had refused to believe that he would not come about at the last moment this time too.
Consequently, our ruin was complete, for he had kept nothing in reserve. What little he had available to him he used to try and cushion the fall for some of his best men; most of it was sent with the third mate from the
Stalwart,
to try and find the men he had left behind him and help them out of their difficulties.
The man left on his return journey less than a week after his arrival, although Father urged him to stay and
rest, and send someone else in his stead. But he was anxious to see himself how his fellow crew members
fared, and he would have the best chance of finding them again; he did not say it, but we knew that he was also anxious to leave the sight of us and the ruin he had brought to us, although it was none of his creation or blame.
The house and lands were to be auctioned off; the money resulting would enable us to start again.
But start what? Father was a broken man; he was now also labeled jinxed, and no other merchant would have anything to do with him, if he could have brought himself to work for another man. He had done no
carpentry but trinkets for his daughters since he had given up shipbuilding for more lucrative business over thirty years ago; and he had no other marketable skills.
It was at this low ebb in our thoughts and plans that Gervain came to visit us; this was about a week after the man from the
Stalwart
had told his story. The four of us were sitting silent in the parlour after dinner; usually we talked, or Father or myself read aloud white my sisters sewed, but we had little heart for such amusements now. The auction had already been set, for a day late next week; and Father had begun looking for a little house somewhere far from the city.
Gervain was announced. Hope blushed scarlet, and then looked down quickly at her clasped hands.
She had told me two days before that she had refused to see Gervain since the news of our downfall had
come. There was no question of his not knowing; the whole city was talking about it. Father’s shipyard was being sold first of all to pay off business debts, and all the employees were wondering what their new
master would be like, and if they would even still have jobs. Father had been both liked and respected by
the men who worked for him—and admired for his daring in business ventures.
Gervain explained the reason for his visit without preamble. He had looked forward, a few weeks ago, to making an offer, soon, for Hope’s hand. He understood that everything was suddenly changed; but he thought that he knew his own heart, and dared to trust that he knew Hope’s. When he had first wished to marry Hope and she had given him to believe that she would be willing to leave the city for a humbler life if her family consented, he had begun to look for an opening suitable to his skills as a blacksmith, through friends he still had living in the town of his childhood. He had heard just this afternoon
of a house, with a shop and a forge and work waiting, in a small town only a few miles from the village he
had been born and raised in.
His suggestion was this: that he would be honoured if we would throw our fortune in with his. The house would be a bit small for five, but it could be enlarged; and, he added with a bow to Father, there was a bit of a carpenter’s shed with the blacksmith’s shop, and work for a good craftsman. He would not press his suit now, and we were not to think that any obligation fell on Hope to marry him as a reward for any trifling service such as he might be able to render us. He was sure that while such service might now seem more than might honourably be accepted, he knew that we only needed an introduction
to a new way of life for us to make our own way, with honour. He would be deeply grateful to us if we allowed him to make that introduction.
Father sat silent for a long moment after Gervain had done. Ger had been offered a seat when he first entered, and had refused it; now he stood as calmly as if he were in his own home waiting for dinner to be served. He was a good-looking man, though no beauty, with brown hair and serious grey eyes; I put his age at around thirty. He had worked for Father about six years, and was proved a steady and honest craftsman.
Father said at last: “Hope, what this young man has said of you is true?” and Hope, blushing and paling by turns like an autumn sunset seen through wind-shaken leaves, nodded and said, “Yes. Father.”
He raised his head then and looked at Ger, who had not moved but to breathe and follow our father with
his eyes. “Gervain, I do not know if I do the right thing in my reply, for it is a heavy task you ask the burden of, for all your pretty words. But indeed I and my daughters are in sore need of help.” He looked round at us. “And we will, I think, be most grateful to accept what you offer.”
Gervain bowed his head. “Thank you, Mr. Huston. I will, if
I
may, call on you sometime tomorrow, that we may discuss arrangements.”
“Anytime that is convenient for you,” said Father, and with a touch of grim humour, added, “You may be sure of finding me here.”
I don’t know what we would have done without Gervain. Since we had fi rst known that the worst had happened, our lives had seemed to come to a halt; We could see no farther than each bleak day’s dawning, and the thought of the auction and the end of the life we had known seemed the end of life itself.
We drifted through the hours like abandoned ships on a sea without horizon. Gervain’s plans, which, after a long afternoon’s conversation with our father, he was careful to explain to all of us, gave us something to think about. He was patient with everything but gloomy forebodings; encouraged questions,
told us stories about the hilly, forested land we were going to that he loved so well; and, by his quiet enthusiasm, struck answering sparks of interest in our tired hearts. We had known that we would leave the city and travel, probably far away and out of reach of old friends and associations. Now we knew that we were bound for a little four-room house in a town called Blue Hill, with the deep hills on one side
and forests at front and back, and that our journey there was likely to take between six weeks and two months. We even began to take some interest in the practical aspects of the trip as Gervain described horses and wagons and roads.
It was easiest for Hope and me. I was the youngest, I
was in Love with no one except perhaps Euripides, and while I grieved deeply for my father and for Grace, there was little in the city or our life there that I loved for itself—although rather more that I took for granted, like my own maid and all the books that I wanted. I was frightened of the unknown that we faced, and of our ignorance; but I had never been afraid of hard work, I had no beauty to lose, nor would there be any wrench at parting from high society, I didn’t relish the thought of sleeping in an attic and washing my own clothes, but then it didn’t fill me with horror either, and I was still young enough to see it in the light of an adventure.
Hope had told me weeks before that Gervain’s original plans had included a maid to do the heavy work, and four rooms would have been sufficient if not ample for the two of them (our house in town had
eighteen rooms, including a ballroom two stories tall, plus kitchens and servants’ quarters). These latter days she was subdued, but there was an air of suppressed excitement about her. Once started on a task that could be finished in one effort, she would accomplish it efficiently enough; but she was absentminded
about messages, or about remembering to return to a task only partially completed. She confessed to me
one night that she felt guilty for feeling so happy: It was very selfish of her to be glad that she was going with Gervain, yet would not be moving away from her family.
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “Seeing your happiness is what’s holding the other two together.” Nearl y every night, after Grace and Father had gone to bed, Hope and I met, usually in my bedroom, to discuss how “the other two” were doing, and whether there was anything further that might be done for them.
And for Hope to ease the tension of being quiet during the day for her father’s and elder sister’s sakes by
babbling at length to me about how wonderful Gervain was. “Besides,” I added after a moment,
“washing your own floors will be enough and plenty of reality for you.”