Authors: Suzette Haden Elgin
Jewel listened to the laughter in his voice, tucked under the charming apology that came properly and without a second’s hold-back, and wished she could stick him with her broochpin again. There was nothing in all the known universe that her brother feared, and nothing so far as she knew that had ever bested him-excepting perhaps Responsible of Brightwater, who’d run away from him and left him laughing till the tears poured down into his beard on the steps of Castle Wommack, and she hadn’t the least idea what all
that
had been about . . . but his own brash fearnaught ways were no reason to risk bringing down the wrath of the Powers That Be on the heads of all the rest of the household.
At her side, Granny Copperdell touched her wrist. “You’ll be having your hands full, child,” she said. And Granny Goodweather on the other side, though she didn’t leave off looking round her at the fields and farms of Brightwater, so much a park by comparison with the rough-hacked land at home on Kintucky, nodded a sturdy agreement.
“
My
hands full? Why? Of what?” Jewel’s heart sank-here it came. Holiday or no holiday, Jubilee or no Jubilee, there’d be something; there always was. Botheration!
“Keeping Lewis Motley Wommack the Thirty-third in order, child,” said the Granny solemnly. “Not a job
I’d
fancy.”
Jewel was absolutely silent. Not a word entered her mind that she dared give voice to. But the Grannys went on, and spared her the trouble of trying to frame the questions without the broad words.
“You keep in mind, now,” said Granny Copperdell, “you are the only woman in your brother’s line. Your parents both dead since you were only babies, no other sisters, and him not married -that makes you responsible for his doings. You may well find out that you’d abeen better off with a half
dozen
babies, time this is over.”
“It’ll grow you up some,” said Granny Goodweather calmly, and patted Jewel’s knee. “And high time. You’re near on marrying age, we can’t have you shirking your duties and hiding in grannyskirts forever.”
“It’s not fair!” Jewel announced, her outrage sufficient at last to let her speak. “And I don’t fancy it either!”
“Fair!” scoffed Granny Copperdell. “I ever tell you this world was fair, Jewel of Wommack?”
“No,” she said, speaking sullen into her own collar. “No, I can’t say as you ever did.”
“Well, then,” said both the Grannys together. And then the carriage pulled up at the gates of the Castle and everyone was suddenly moving about, gathering up what they’d laid down for the ride, and there was no more time for discussion.
Inside the Castle, Responsible of Brightwater sat at the desk in her bedroom, going over for the tenth time the welcoming speech that she would be giving to open the meeting tomorrow morning, including the elaborate agenda she was counting on to give her time to see how the wind blew. There must be no smallest niche of time left over tomorrow in the scheduled activities to allow the anti-Confederationists to begin their moves. She could count on their obsession with manners to keep them from tampering with that agenda on Opening Day; and good use she’d best make of it, seeing as she could count on nothing for the other four days. The only possibility she could safely exclude was murder-there hadn’t been a murder on the continent of Marktwain in the entire one thousand years of its history-but that left a mighty long list of other kinds of disorder and disarray.
“Keep ‘em busy!” she said out loud, and made herself jump.
She was nervous, that was for sure. Her mother had remarked on it. Her uncles and her uncles’ wives and all the children, and even the Housekeeper, had remarked on it. Until Granny Hazelbide had told them all to leave her be, in no uncertain terms.
“She has enough to think of now,” the Granny’d said, shaming them all-and they deserved it--”without you forever tormenting her. The Confederation of Continents might go down for good and all this week, after five hundred years of nursing it along, and she has that to think of. And if it doesn’t fall, the Twelve Gates only knows what shape it’ll be in after the Travellers get through chopping away at it. If she wasn’t nervous I’d be calling in the Magician of Rank to see to her
head,
and I’ll thank youall to
hush!”
Responsible grinned, remembering. It was rare that a Granny, or anybody else, came to her defense. It had been a pleasant experience, and one she wouldn’t mind repeating a time or two.
“You really worried, Responsible?” her grandfather had asked, sounding sorry for his teasing.
“Some,” she’d said.
“They’re not such fools as to think that without the Confederation things’d be even half proper-they’ll just make the usual noises, and then back down like they always do. No need for you to fret.”
She surely did hope he was right . . . And he ought to be. He ought to be!
On the wall before her hung a battered map of Ozark, the six continents set out in their oceans, and a pin stuck firmly at the site of each Castle. Black pins for those Families she knew to be dead set against the Confederation and ready to bring it down, come what may-Travellers, Guthries, and Farsons. And the Purdys thrown in, seeing as they’d not have the courage to stand against the other three. Red pins for those she knew to be loyal-Castle Airy, Castle Clark, Castle McDaniels, Castle Motley, Castle Lewis, and her own Brightwater. Green pins for those as might move either way, depending on what happened over the next few days-the Smiths, and the Wommacks. Six months ago the pin that marked Castle Smith had been a red one, but no longer. Their behavior had grown more and more odd, and the Attendant set to watch had told her half an hour ago that every one of the other Families was arrived and safely settled in the Castle, but no sign of the Smiths and no word from them. That did nothing to reasure her.
It looked, providing you were ignorant, as if things were fairly safe for the Confederation, Six for, only four against, and two undecided: sway those two and it could be eight to four and an easy sweep; lose them and it would be six to six, a standoff. But that would be your impression
only
if you were ignorant, and Responsible of Brightwater was not. Castles Lewis and Motley could be as loyal as they liked, there was little they could do to help. Two tiny kingdoms sharing one continent not much more than an oversized island, the total not much bigger than Brightwater Kingdom alone. The great bulk of Arkansaw loomed to their east, all of Kintucky to their west, and Tinaseeh-largest of the six continents and held by the Travellers-to their south. If the Confederation did not stand, the Lewises and the Motleys would be hard put to it to do more than make speeches. They could not survive without the help of their neighbors.
And yet, she could not bring herself to believe that there was really any danger beyond that of the anti-Confederationists wasting this precious week in stalling and wrangling so that none of the necessary work could get done. They had a lot to say about independence, but she was inclined to agree with her grandfather; they must have sense enough to know the terrible price of isolation.
Responsible sighed, and stamped her foot in frustration. She had cast Spells half the night, she’d done Formalisms & Transformations till her hands ached, and she’d gotten only one answer. An answer she could of gotten with Granny Magic alone, reading leaves in a teacup.
Trouble
ahead, she kept getting-as if she didn’t know that! Something was wrong with her data, or something had been wrong with her methods, she had no least idea which; and there was no one she could ask for their opinion, seeing as how everything she was doing was illegal or worse. It fretted her, having no idea what
kind
of trouble.
There was a knock at her door, and she called “Come in!” expecting an Attendant telling her it was time for the banquet in the Castle Great Hall, but it was her own Granny Hazelbide.
“Granny!” she said, laying the thick sheets of paper down on the desk and resigning herself to the fact that there’d be no more reviewing of that speech. The Granny would of come to fuss at her about something, or perhaps a dozen somethings, then there would be the Banquet and the Dance, and then she must sleep or she’d not be fit to give the speech. She was so tired now that the words on the paper blurred when she looked at them.
“Responsible,” said the Granny back at her.
“What can I do for you?”
“Do for me, indeed!”
“Well, then, what can you do for
me
?” asked Responsible patiently. “What is it, Granny Hazelbide? Has the Housekeeper run off? Is the food spoiled? Do we expect a hurricane off schedule?”“Mercy, you’re the cheery one,” said Granny Hazelbide.
“If something weren’t fretting you, you wouldn’t be here, Granny, and we both know that. And if something’s fretting you, then for me to be cheery would be foolishness. What’s gone wrong?”
The Granny sat herself down in a rocker where Responsible would have to turn her chair around to look at her, and folded both arms across her narrow chest.
“For one thing,” she said, cross as a patch, “the Castle’s full of every kind of devilment ever invented.”
“Granted,” said Responsible. “And?”“For another, it’s so crowded you can’t find a place to sit nor a place to stand, nor much air to breathe-and the Smiths aren’t even here yet. And if I know
them,
they’ll bring every piddling relation they can scrape from under a rock, and three dozen Attendants, and a servingmaid to every chick and child-a delegation of one hundred even, I’ll wager you my smallest thimble and my oldest shammybag!”
“More nearly fifty, Granny,” said Responsible. “You exaggerate.”
“Still too many,
I
say!”“Granted,” said Responsible. “But it’s their way, and none of our business to object to it.”
“I-dislike-it-all,” said Granny Hazelbide, each word separate and alone as it left her mouth, like a solemn pronouncement; and Responsible couldn’t help but laugh.
“Granny,” she chided, “you’ve known these last twelve months and more that this was coming. And you’ve known how it would be. We’ve gone over it and over it, and my mother has not held back
her
comments at any time. I don’t know how it is her voice hasn’t worn grooves in the floors by this time, complaining. There’s been ample time to mope and moan and carry on over it, and we’d all come to an agreement that it was worth the trouble. Why are you bothering me about it now?”
“I have a funny feeling,” muttered Granny Hazelbide, rocking slowly and staring at the floor.
“A funny feeling.”
“That’s what I said.”
“What does your funny feeling tell you?”
“That there’s trouble coming.”
Responsible shrugged.
“And what were you expecting?” she asked patiently. This conversation was wearisome, and a waste of time as well, unless the Granny knew something that might be useful. If she did, she was going to make Responsible work for it.
“Know who’s in the room next to yours?” asked the Granny suddenly.
“For sure,” said Responsible, surprised at the question. “Anne of Brightwater, and her boring husband, Stewart Crain McDaniels the Sixth. And if I know Anne, and I do, they’ll have the youngest tadling they brought along sleeping in their bed with them for safekeeping.”
“Wrong,” said the Granny.
“I arranged it myself.”
“So you did, but it’s been changed, and your uncles both approved it and remarked as how nobody should bother checking with you since you were so busy, bad cess to ‘em both.”
Responsible reached both arms above her head and stretched. Law, but she was tired! And asked the Granny, as politely as her strained tolerance would allow, to tell her what she’d come to tell.
“Who’ve they given me for nearest neighbor, dear Granny Hazelbide?” she pleaded. “Leave off teasing, now, and tell me.”
“Don’t sass me, missy!”
“Granny, tell me!” said Responsible. “Or I’ll go back to work on my speech. Notice that it’s on paper? None of your pliofilm sheets for this ceremony-I’d put it on a set of stone tablets if I could carry them.”
“Granny Leeward,” said the old woman abruptly, and left it at that.
Responsible took a deep breath before she tried answering, and folded her hands in her lap where they wouldn’t betray her. And then she said, casual as she could make it: “They’ve put Granny Leeward in the room beside mine?”
“That they have. It seems she wasn’t comfortable where she was, and it seems the air is better on the side of the Castle nearest you, and it seems she can’t abide the view where the rest of the Traveller delegation has their rooms because it reminds her of a tragic experience she had as a child, and it seems the beds in none of the other rooms will suit her back, which she declared to be frail, though the woman has pure steel for a backbone. But she faced me down and butter wouldn’t of melted in her mouth-and the upshot is that you’re one side of the wall and she’s on the other.”
Responsible thought about that for a while, and the Granny rocked.
And then she asked, “And what do you think it means?
““Trouble.” Granny Hazelbide’s mouth was a little puckered line.
Responsible’s mind, despite the control she tried for, took her back to the long table at Castle Traveller, and the black fan in Granny Leeward’s hands, and then the jetty mushrooms, where the fan had been, rotting on the table.