Authors: Suzette Haden Elgin
“Where is that woman?” demanded one of them, and called over his shoulder: “Tambrey! Tambrey of Motley! What’s keeping you, woman? Responsible of Brightwater at your gate half-frozen, and dropping with hunger and entirely tuckered out, and what are you doing in there, counting your fingers to see if you’ve lost one? Will you get
out here?
”
“I’m not that tired, Attendant,” I said sharply, “and not that cold, and not that hungry. I’ll last the night.”
“That doesn’t excuse her, miss,” he said firmly. “She knows her duty, and she’s expected to do it.” And he turned his head again and shouted “Tambrey!” and then made a remarkably expressive noise of disgust.
“It’s all right,” I said, “never mind the woman. One of you to take my Mule to the stables, and two to see me to my host and hostess—I can surely make do with that?”
But they wouldn’t have it that way, and we stood there in the wind while a soft rain began to fall in the deepening darkness, and I knew that I was up against it. The famous Lewis propriety, for which only the Travellers’ could be said to be more extreme. I could stand there and drown, for all they cared, I’d not enter their Castle attended by other than a female, and I envied my Mule. At least she was going to be warm and fed and dry, any minute now.
When Tambrey did appear, which to give her credit was not many minutes later, she didn’t come from the gates but out of the cedars that bordered the Castle lawn. She was a pretty thing, too, and I couldn’t see her being a servingmaid long; her hair was hidden by the hood of her cloak, but her face was perfection, and I was willing to place my bets on the rest of her
The men grumbled at her, but she paid them no mind at all, and from the way they dropped their complaining I was reasonably certain they were used to that, too.
“Welcome to Castle Lewis, Responsible of Brightwater,” she said, “and let’s get you in out of this damp this minute and a mug of hot cider in your hand!”
Oh yes. I had forgotten. I’d get nothing stronger than cider from the Lewises unless it came from a Granny’s own hand and was vouched for as being the difference between my total collapse and my blooming health. And not hard cider, either; it would be the pure juice of the Ozark peachapple, mulled with spices, and hot as blazes, and innocent enough for the baby that still hung safe outside the Brightwater church. The Lewises kept to the old ways with a vengeance.
We went through the gates into a small square courtyard, planted with low flowers in neat square beds, and raked paths between them, and on to where the Castle door shone wide and welcoming. In the door stood two I’d heard a great deal of, but knew hardly at all: Salem Sheridan Lewis the 43
rd
, and his wife, Rozasham of McDaniels.
“Here she is.” said Tambrey, handing me through the door like a package, so that the Lewises both had to step back a pace to avoid me running them down, “Responsible of Brightwater; safe and sound! Miss, Salem Sheridan Lewis the 43
rd
; and the Missus of this Castle, Rozasham of McDaniels.”
“Thank you kindly, Tambrey,” said the woman Rozasham, and the beauty of her voice caught my ear. I hoped she would sing for us, later, if the quality of her speech was any sign of her ability.
Salem Sheridan was another matter: His wife gathered me into her arms as if we’d known each other all our lives; but he snapped his fingers and ran everybody through their drill. Had my Mule been seen to and stabled? Good. And had my bags been brought in and taken up to my room? Good. And was the mulled cider ready in the east parlor? Good. And would Tambrey see to my unpacking? Good—and I was to have extra blankets, mind, it was going to be cold. And would supper be on the table in
precisely
one hour? Good! And it was all “Yes, sir!” coming the other way. It said something for Tambrey of Motley’s ingenuity that she’d been able to find her way past this one and into the cedars—there’d be no sloppy staff here.
I had time only to wash a bit, tidy my hair, and change from my traveling costume into something less elaborate, before suppertime, the cider still burning my throat. I was traveling light, as was necessary; there was the splendid traveling outfit, the blue-and-silver party dress, the gown of lawn for magic, some underclothes and a nightgown, a sturdy black shawl, and one plainer dress that I’d not yet had an opportunity to wear. And that was all.
I held up the last dress and looked it over dubiously; it had alternating narrow stripes of the Brightwater green and scarlet, with a neck cut low in front and rimmed in back by a high ruff of ivory lace that would require me to put my hair up. It had long sleeves caught at the wrists with lace-trimmed wide cuffs as well, and the stripes themselves were shot with silver-and-gold threads.
I’d seen nothing like it here; only modest high-necked round-collared gowns without ornament even to their cut. The Lewis crest was a green cedar tree on an azure field, with a narrow border of cedar-trunks russet round, and except for a button or two that bore that device I’d seen only the plain and the spare. Even Rozasham, presumably dressed for company, had been wearing a dress of a heather blue with a skirt scarcely full enough to swing with her hips as she walked, and plain little round white buttons down its high front.
True, I was a guest. And true, the conditions on a Quest demanded a certain amount of spectacle, and I had to abide by them. But I could see nothing in the garments that Tambrey had hung for me that would not of looked foolish at the Lewis supper table.
Well, there was my nightgown ... it was moss green flannel and had the proper cut and simplicity, and I couldn’t see that the Lewises would recognize it for what it was if I could keep my own face straight. I belted it with a narrow braid of gold cord, since it had no proper waist, and added a single silver pendant—a small flower meant, I believe, to represent a violet, but innocuous enough for any occasion—on a narrow green velvet ribbon. Then I used a matching ribbon to tie my hair back simply at the nape of my neck and looked at the effect in the long glass mirror in my guestchamber.
My grandmother would of been scandalized, my
mother
would of fainted, but I was of the opinion that I could get away with it. I only had to remember not to let a servingmaid see me in it tomorrow morning when she brought up my pot of tea. That would have meant the word going out that I’d either been too lazy to change into my nightgown and had slept in my dress, or that I’d been so addled I’d worn my nightgown to supper, neither of which would do.
Kingdom Lewis had just one product for sale—cedar; cut from the progeny of the three seedlings the family had somehow managed to nurse through the whole trip to this planet, and which now they alone seemed to have the skill to grow. Under any other touch the trees turned brown and died, like grass not watered, but the Lewises had the green thumb, one and all of them, and the rows of cedars grew stately in every spare field of the small Kingdom and all along its narrow roads. Even in the great Hall inside Castle Lewis, a giant cedar grew out of earth left open for its roots in the time of building, dropping its needles everywhere for the staff to sweep up but smelling like heaven, and every windowsill had a small seedling growing in a low bowl.
Nor had they stinted themselves in the use of the timber; The Castle gleamed with it, and the table at which I sat down to supper was a single massive slab of russet cut from the heart of an ancient monster of a tree and rubbed till it glowed like coals burned low in a hearth. They had had sense enough not to cover it up with some frippery cloth, either, and had set chairs round it of the same glowing wood.
Me in my nightgown, I drew one up and sat down, spreading my napkin in my lap, and I said, “This table is beautiful, Rozasharn of McDaniels. I’ve never seen anything to match it.” Nor had I.
“My husband’s great-great-grandfather made it with his own hands,” she answered, “and I do its polishing with mine.”
“It
was
a single plank?”
“That it was; they waited a very long time for a cedar to grow the proper size for this, and while they waited the Lewises ate off plain boards laid across trestles. Then the one bee made this table and all the chairs ... and no polish or oil has ever been set to it except by a Missus of this Castle, all these years.”
“I’ve seen a few housethings made from cedar,” I said. “Chests, usually.” And I stroked the satiny wood. “But nothing like this.”
“Magic-chests’” breathed a child at my right hand, and aimed my head to see him better. He was young, and his chair not tall enough to bring him much above the edge of the tabletop, but not young enough to be willing to submit to the indignity of sitting on a stack of pillows; he made do by craning his neck.
“My son, Salem Sheridan Lewis the 44
th
, called Boy Salem,” said his father from the head of the table, and he introduced the other five children that had joined us for the meal. And the Granny, the youngest on Ozark and one of the sternest—fifty-nine-year-old Granny Twinsonel. I bid them all a good evening, and helped myself to the soup.
Salem was a patient child; when the introductions had gone all the way around and the grownups were eating, he said it again, but this time he was asking.
“Magic-chests?” he asked me. “All of cedar?”
“Usually,” I told him. “Because it keeps everything so safe.”
His dark blue eyes shone, and I found him a handsome child despite the lack of three front teeth and the presence of a crazy-quilt assortment of scrapes and scabs and scratches. I expect he had fallen out of one or more of the cedar trees recently.
“What’s in a magic-chest, Responsible of Brightwater?” he asked me then, and he held very still, waiting for me to answer. Which meant he’d asked it before, and it had done him no good. It would do him no good this time, either.
“Herbs and simples and gewgaws,” I said casually. “And garlic.”
“In a
cedar chest?
” The child was shocked, and I chuckled.
As it happened, the Magicians
did
keep their garlic in their magic-chests, but they saw to it that the smell of the stuff was on hold while it was in there.
“That’s right,” I said. “Garlic.”
“When I am a Magician of Rank,” said the boy with utter solemnity, like a Reverend pronouncing a benediction, “I won’t do that. Or I’ll make a Spell to take the smell off so it doesn’t spoil the wood.”
Smart little dickens, that one. I could tell by the twitch at the comer of his stern father’s lips that this was a favorite child— the name told me that in any case—and that his promise was noticed. But the Master of the Castle spoke to him in no uncertain terms.
“When
you
are a Magician of Rank!” he said. “Many a long, long year of study lies between you and that day. Boy Salem, if it ever comes—
which
I doubt. And many a difficult examination. You had best get your mind off garlic and concentrate on learning the Teaching Story you were set this week—you didn’t have it right yet last night, as I recall.”
“Or,” added a sister who looked to be about thirteen, with the same pansy blue eyes but considerably less scuffed up and battered as to the rest of her, “you’ll end up like your cousin Silverweb.”
“I’d not be such a ninny as
that
,” scoffed the boy, “not ever! You know that, Charlotte.”
“Silverweb of McDaniels?” I set my soup spoon down and used my napkin hastily. “Has something happened to her?”
“Nothing serious, Responsible,” said Rozasham of McDanieIs, “and nothing that can’t be mended. She’s been left too long unmarried, and this is where that sort of thing leads to.”
“I hadn’t heard,” I said. “What’s happened?”
“Well,” said Rozasham, “as I understand it Silverweb decided you needed somebody to be guardmaid—or companion, who knows? to be company at any rate—on your Quest. And that young one packed a pair of saddlebags, stole a Mule from the McDaniels stables, and started off after you.”
“She didn’t get far,” observed her husband, handing the meat platter down the table. “Her daddy caught up with her before noon the following day and took her straight back to Castle McDaniels.”
“For a licking,” said the one they called Boy Salem.
“Not for a licking,” corrected Granny Twinsorrel. “Boy Salem, you’ll never make a Magician if you don’t learn to turn on your brain before you begin rattling off at the mouth. Young women of fifteen don’t get lickings, it wouldn’t be proper.”
The boy snorted, and wrinkled up his nose.
“Not fair,” he said. “Not fair atall.”
“What
did
they do to her?” I asked reluctantly, not really sure I wanted to know. I had high hopes for Silverweb, and I bore a certain guilt for having ranked her when I was at Castle McDaniels.
“Packed her off to Castle Airy in disgrace,” said Salem Sheridan. “And to the tender care of all three of the Grannys there. Seven weeks and a day, she’s to be servingmaid to those grannys. I do expect that will have some effect on her.”
Poor wretched Silverweb ... I knew what that would mean. She’d hem miles and miles of burgundy draperies, and then be made to take the hems out and do them over till her fingers bled. She’d boil vats of herbs half as tall as she was, stirring them for hours at a time with a wooden staff. And she’d pick nutmeats—they’d have her doing that with
bushels
of nuts, staining her fingers black where they weren’t bleeding. And scrubbing the Castle corridor floors with gritty sand. And worse.