Ever (30 page)

The cog dropped into a slough in the sea, and my stomach dropped with it. We rose again, but my belly liked that no better. I leaned against the hull for better balance.

My mouth filled with saliva. I swallowed again and again. Nothing in the world was still, not the racing clouds nor the rippling sail nor the pitching ship.

The son in the family pointed at me and cried, “Her face is green wax!”

My stomach surged into my throat. I turned and heaved my breakfast over the side. Even after the food was gone, my stomach continued to rise and sink.

Next to me, a fellow passenger whimpered and groaned.

I stared down at the foamy water churning by, sicker than I had ever been. Still, the mansioner in me was in
glory. Lambs and calves! I would remember how it was to feel so foul. I wondered if I could transform my face to green wax without paint, just by memory.

The cog rose higher than it had so far and fell farther. I vomited bile and then gasped for breath. The hull railing pressed into my sorry stomach.

The person at my side panted out, “Raise your head. Look at the horizon.”

My head seemed in the only reasonable position, but I lifted it. The island of Lahnt had vanished. The horizon was splendidly flat and still. My insides continued bobbing, but less.

“Here.” A hand touched mine on the railing. “Peppermint. Suck on it.”

The leaf was fresh, not dried, and the clean taste helped. “Thank you, mistress.” My eyes feared to let go of the horizon, so I couldn't see my benefactress. Her voice was musical, although not young. She might be the old goodwife.

“I've crossed many times and always begun by being sick.” Her voice lilted in amusement. She seemed to have found respite enough from her suffering to speak more than a few words. I'm glad I looked. “I've exhausted my goodman's sympathy.” She sighed. “I
still hope to become a good sailor someday. You are young to travel alone.”

Mother and Father didn't have passage money for more than me. “Not so young, mistress.” Here I was, contradicting my elders again. “I am fourteen.” Contradicting and lying.

“Ah.”

I was tall enough for fourteen, although perhaps not curvy enough. I risked a sideways peek to see if she believed me, but she still faced the horizon and didn't meet my eyes. I took in her profile: long forehead, knob of a nose, weathered skin, deep lines around her mouth, gray wisps escaping her hood, a few hairs sprouting from her chin—a likeable, honest face.

“Conversation keeps the mind off the belly,” she said, and I saw a gap in her upper teeth.

The ship dropped. I felt myself go greener. My eyes snapped back to the horizon.

“We will be visiting our children and their children in Two Castles. Why do you cross?”

She was as nosy as I was! “I seek an apprenticeship as”—I put force into my hoarse, seasick voice—“a mansioner.”

“Ah,” she said again. “Your parents sent you off to
be a mansioner.”

I knew she didn't believe me now. “To be a weaver,” I admitted. “Lambs and calves!” Oh, I didn't mean to use the farm expression. “To stay indoors, to repeat a task endlessly, to squint in lamplight . . . ,” I burst out. “It is against my nature!”

“To have your hands seize up before you're old,” the goodwife said with feeling, “your shoulders blaze with pain, your feet spread. Be not a weaver nor a spinner!”

Contrarily, I found myself defending Father's wishes for me. “Weaving is honest, steady work, mistress.” I laughed at myself. “But I won't be a weaver.”

The boat dipped sideways. My stomach emptied itself of nothing.

She gave me another mint leaf. “Why a mansioner?”

“I love spectacles and stories.” Mansioning had been my ambition since I was seven and a caravan of mansions came to our country market.

Then, when I was nine, Albin left his mansioning troupe and came to live with us and help Father farm. He passed his spare time telling me mansioners' tales and showing me how to act them out. He said I had promise.

“I love theater, too,” the goodwife said, “but I never dreamed of being a mansioner.”

“I like to be other people, mistress.” Lowering my pitch and adding a quiver, I said, “I can mimic a little.” I went back to my true voice. “That's not right.” I hadn't caught her tone.

She chuckled. “If you were trying to be me, you were on the right path. How long an apprenticeship will you serve?”

Masters were paid five silver coins to teach an apprentice for five years, three silvers for seven years. The apprentice labored for no pay during that term and learned a trade.

“Ten years, mistress.” Ten-year apprenticeships cost nothing. Our family was too poor to buy me a place.

The cog dipped lower than ever. I sucked hard on the mint.

“My dear.” She touched my arm. “I'm sorry.”

“No need for sorrow. I'll know my craft well by the time I'm twenty-two . . . I mean, twenty-four.”

“Not that. In June the guilds abolished ten-year apprenticeships. Now everyone must pay to learn a trade.”

I turned to her. Her face was serious. It was true.

The boat pitched, but my stomach steadied while a rock formed there.

W
hat will you do?” the goodwife asked.

“I will think of something.” I sounded dignified. Dignity had always eluded me before. I excused myself from the goodwife's company and found a spot on the deck closer to the cows than to the human passengers. My curiosity about them had faded. I removed my cloak from my satchel, spread it out, and sat.

If our farm weren't so out of the way, we'd have learned the apprenticeship rules had changed and I
would still be home. I'd probably have stayed on Lahnt forever.

Word might reach Mother and Father in a few months or a few years. When they found out, they would be wild with worry.

I hadn't enough money for passage back, nor did I want to return. I would send word as soon as I was settled. No matter what, I would still be a mansioner.

Perhaps a mansioner master or mistress would take me as a fifteen-year apprentice. No one but me would give free labor for fifteen years. Who could say no? I conjured up an imaginary mansioner mistress, in middle age but straight and tall as a youth, with a round, echoing voice. She would recognize her younger self in me. My determination would move her, and she would grant me my fifteen-year apprenticeship.

My mood improved. Curiosity returned, and I watched the people on deck. The rowers rested their oars when the cog master's attention was elsewhere. The oddly clothed mother and daughter were squabbling. The goodwife had recovered from her nausea and joined her husband. I liked best to watch the two of them. Sometimes she leaned into his shoulder, and he encircled her with his arm. Her expression showed
peace, eagerness, and patience combined. If I were ever to play a wife, I would remember this goodwife's face.

Night came. I curled up, hugged my satchel close, and wished desperately for home. But why wish? I mansioned myself there, under my woolen blanket in my pallet bed on a floor that didn't roll, with Albin only a few feet away and Mother and Father in their sleeping loft over my head. Yes, that was their bed groaning, not the mast.

Soon I was asleep. In the morning I felt myself a seasoned mariner.

At intervals the animal owner walked his beasts around the deck. “Come with Dess,” he'd say in his sweet voice. “In Two Castles Dess will buy you fine hay, feed you fine grass. How happy you will be.”

I decided that he and the goodwife were the most worthy passengers on the cog.

Master Dess's heavy basket turned out to contain kittens. He'd reach in for one at a time, stroke it from head to tail, and speak softly to it. Early in the afternoon of the second day, when even the gentle breeze died away, the cog master let Master Dess release them all.

The seven kittens, each striped black and white,
burst out to chase one another between legs, around the mast, up and down the deck. A kitten played with the end of a coil of rope, batting it to and fro. The tiniest one climbed the rigging to the top of the mast and perched there for half an hour, lord of the sea. My heart rose into my throat to see it, so tiny and so high.

On its way down, it lost its balance and hung upside down. Frantically I looked around for something to help it with—a pole, anything. No one else was watching, except Master Dess and the goodwife, whose hands were pressed to her chest.

An oar might reach the kitten. I rushed toward the rowers just as the kitten scrambled upright and minced down the mast with a satisfied air. I returned to my cloak. Soon after, Master Dess collected that kitten and its mates.

When they were all in their basket, the goodwife came to me, bearing a small package wrapped in rough hemp. I jumped up.

“May I sit with you?”

I made room for her and she sat, tucking her legs under her. She placed the package in her lap.

What a pleasure to have her company!

“May I know your name, dear?”

I could think of no harm in telling her. “Lodie. I mean, Elodie.”

“And I am Goodwife Celeste. My goodman is Twah.”

“Pleased to meet you.” I rummaged in my satchel. One must show hospitality to a visitor, even a visitor to a cloak on the deck of a cog.

She was saying, “You and I both feared for that brave kitten.” She paused, then added, “Have you heard of the cats of Two Castles?”

I shook my head, while drawing bread and cheese and a pear out of my satchel. With the little knife from my purse, I cut her chunks of the bread and cheese and half the pear.

“Thank you.” She tasted. “Excellent goat cheese.” She unwrapped her own package.

“Cats in Two Castles?” I said to remind her.

“The townspeople believe cats protect them from the ogre. There are many.”

“Many cats or ogres?” How could a cat save anyone from an ogre?

She laughed. “Cats.” Her package held bread and cheese, too, and a handful of radishes.

We traded slices and chunks, observing custom, ac
cording to the saying,
Share well, fare well. Share ill, fare ill
.

Goodwife Celeste's cheese wasn't as tasty as mine, but the bread was softer, baker's bread. I wondered where my future meals would come from, once my food and my single copper ran out.

Goodwife Celeste returned to telling me about cats. “You know that ogres shift shape sometimes?”

“Yes.”

“Cats know they do, too. The cats sense that an ogre can become a fox or a wolf, but they're not afraid.”

Our cat at home, Belliss, who weighed less than a pail of milk, feared nothing.

“They're aware that an ogre can also turn into a mouse.” She finished eating. “More?” She held out her food.

“No, thank you.” I offered her more of mine, too, and she said no.

As I wrapped my food and she wrapped hers, her sleeve slid back. A bracelet of twine circled her left wrist. Were twine bracelets the fashion in Two Castles? She probably wouldn't have minded if I'd asked, but I didn't want to reveal my ignorance.

“Can an ogre shift into any kind of animal?” I said.
“A spider or an elephant?”

“I believe so.”

“Can an ogre shift into a human?”

Her eyebrows went up. “I doubt it.” She returned to the subject of cats. “A cat will stare at an ogre and wish him—
will
him—to become a mouse. They say one cat isn't enough, but several yearning at him, and the ogre can't resist.”

I pitied the ogre. “Is that true?”

“Many believe it. What's more, people train their cats. They don't train them to try to make an ogre become a mouse. It is in the cats' nature to do that, and the ogre must cooperate by giving in. But folks train cats to perform tricks and to stalk anything, including an ogre. Some make a living at cat teaching. With the flick of a wrist . . .”

She showed me, and I imitated her—nothing to it.

“With this gesture, anyone can set a cat to stalking.”

“If there were no cats, what would the ogre do?”

“Nothing, perhaps. Or dine on townsfolk.”

Chapter Two continues . . .