The Spinner and the Slipper (21 page)

In my youth I never felt the pressure of time. I never understood what it was that mortals suffered, constrained as they are by moments, by years.

But now I feel it. As I watch her walk away, across the fields, almost beyond the reach of my voice, I feel the crush of Time all around. And I wonder . . .

Is it worth it?

Is he worth it?

It is a question I have asked myself since the beginning of this endless ending. I can only pray the answer in my heart proves true.

I will continue to call to her. There is nothing else I can do until Le Sacre Night.

SEVEN

Grandmem sat in the doorway of the Flaxman cottage, watching Rufus the Red strut about the chicken yard and listening to the clamor of her two young grandsons, who were attempting to make themselves taller by hanging each other upside-down by turns from the loft. Grandmem supposed there were more profitable ways they could spend their time, but she was too tired from her walk to come up with any.

Her daughter-in-law, Cerf’s wife, was locked away in the spinning shed as though she hadn’t a care or concern in the world besides the endless spinning of flax. But that was Berthe for you. She’d never been quite so strong in heart, limb, or mind as she needed to be. And since that day nine winters ago, well . . .

But Grandmem, other than a brief, growling judgment muttered between thin lips, had no time to concern herself with Berthe and her troubles; no more than she had time to bother with Clovis and Clotaire and their elongation attempts. She kept her eyes fixed on the path, watching for any sign of her youngest granddaughter.

Because today was the day. How well she remembered it! Today was the day, and Grandmem had to speak to Heloise. She must find out if it had come upon her yet.

“Good day, Mistress Flaxman,” said a smelly young man who suddenly seemed to be standing in her sunlight, twisting a handful of limp wildflowers in his hands. “I—I hope you’re well?”

Grandmem scowled up at the lad. If he wasn’t Galehot Pigman’s grandson, he wasn’t anybody, she decided. Her scowl deepened. She’d never liked Galehot Pigman. He’d spent most of one summer, ages ago now, calling on her with wilted posies and struggling to comprehend the meaning of simple words. Like “no,” for instance. Or “go away.”

“Um,” said the young Pigman, “is Evette around?”

Grandmem, lacking a carrot to gum, sucked on her one tooth instead. She eyed the young man until she could see she’d made him twice as nervous. Then she said, “Probably not.”

There was a crash inside then a shout. A moment’s silence. Then one of her grandsons whispered, “
Do you think she heard that?
” answered by his brother’s hasty, “
Shhhhhhhh!
”

Grandmem leaned back against the doorpost, slowly stretching her stiff legs out before her. “You can wait inside if you like.”

The young Pigman stared into the huddled silence beyond the cottage doorway. “I’ll just, um . . .” And he scuttled away to wait by the cottage gate instead. Grandmem watched him go, her old eyes narrowed. For a Pigman, she decided, he was almost articulate. Too bad for him. He didn’t know what was coming.

He never would know.

Grandmem listened to the clatter of something being scraped into a pile inside, followed by further sounds of some destructive sin being hidden. She watched Gy Pigman kick his heels as he sat on the gate, and saw when he was eventually joined, first by a second Pigman (Pigmen were easy to spot or, as it were,
smell
a mile away) and then by a dyer-boy (which were even easier to distinguish). Tensions swiftly heated among them as each tried to hide his own clutch of wildflowers from the other two. Grandmem half wondered if she’d have a nice little brawl to entertain her while she waited.

But before things reached an interesting crisis, Evette’s neat white cap appeared on the horizon and, bobbing along beside it, the robin’s-nest tangle of Heloise’s curly head. The two came down the path, empty baskets swinging from their elbows, chatting the way sisters do, always just on the verge of either giggles or a spat.

Sisters. Never was such a bother as a sister. Never was such a bother or a love . . .

Both girls spotted the waiting youths at the same moment. Though she was too far away to hear it, Grandmem could see the irritable sigh as it left Heloise’s body, slumping her shoulders. Evette, however, only smiled sweetly and curtsied to the lads. From that distance Grandmem couldn’t tell if her smile was especially sweet for any one of them. She doubted it.

As Evette remained by the gate to visit, Heloise shouldered her way through the gathering and stomped across the cottage yard. Lights Above, what an ungainly thing she was! But then—and Grandmem smiled ruefully at the thought—had she herself been any different?

“Hullo, Grandmem,” Heloise said, scarcely looking at her old grandmother even as she spoke the greeting. She peered over Grandmem’s head into the cottage and saw Clovis and Clotaire sitting quietly in the pool of light coming through the back door and twisting rough flax into twine, as demure as two smut-faced angels. She wondered what they’d broken. They were only ever this quiet after working some destruction.

“Heloise,” said Grandmem, reaching up and catching the girl by her wrist. “Heloise, sit with me a moment, will you?”

Heloise huffed another sigh. Her grandmother was a strange old lady and not the best conversationalist in the world. But she was her grandmother, and her grip was remarkably strong. So Heloise took a seat on the doorstep, setting her basket off to one side. From here they had a fine view of the three ardent suitors striving to impress Evette.

Heloise put her chin in her hand. “The swains are sighing,” she muttered into her palm. “They all want to escort her to Le Sacre.”

“Aye,” said Grandmem. “They do that.” She turned one eye upon the girl beside her, the other eye squinting against the sun. “But they’ll forget her soon enough.”

“Pffffph,” said Heloise, a less than genteel sound.

“Mark me,” Grandmem insisted. “They will. They’ll forget all about her, as will everyone else. Just like they forgot about Cateline.”

A chill swallowed up Heloise’s grouchiness. She suddenly felt that the ragged person beside her was too close. She tried to slide away, but there wasn’t much room on the doorstep, and her grandmother still had a hold on her wrist.

“They sighed for Cateline like that,” Grandmem went on. “They came to woo her by the dozens, or so it seemed to me. I was jealous. Yes, I was. As jealous as you are now.”

“I’m not jealous,” Heloise growled.

“You are.”

“I don’t want stinky Pigmen bringing me handfuls of weeds!”

“Never said you did.” And there was that one-eyed stare again. The one that was just a mite too keen for Heloise’s comfort. The one that said,
We’re too much alike, girl, for you to hide anything from me. I know your secrets inside and out. I know them better than you do.

Heloise squirmed. It wasn’t a nice thought, the thought that she and her crazy old grandmother were anything alike. Because . . .

Well, because Grandmem was crazy. Everblooming crazy, as the saying went.

“Cateline was much like your sister,” Grandmem went on, still staring at Heloise, “save that she had a special smile for one young lad, Marcel Millerman by name. Sometimes I almost thought he might remember her, even though the rest forgot. I thought he might remember that smile. I’d watch Marcel now and then as the years went by. He’d get a look about him that made me wonder. But I never did ask him. I was afraid it might break his heart, which was already so full of unremembered sorrow.”

“Grandmem,” Heloise said, “I need to get to work. I have to fetch the water, and Gutrund needs—”

“There’ll be no one else to remember your sister,” Grandmem continued as though Heloise hadn’t spoken a word. “They’ll all forget her. Just as they forgot Cateline. You’ll be alone with your memory.”

Once more that dark chill rippled through her, strong enough that Heloise forgot her sulk, forgot her strange experiences of that morning, forgot even her mother sitting in the spinning shed, spinning away the day as though it could not end soon enough. She felt the tightness of her grandmother’s fingers on her wrist, the intensity of that one old eye fixed upon her face.

But Grandmem was crazy. She always had been. Heloise’s father had explained this to Heloise years ago, very carefully. Grandmem was crazy because she always talked about her sister, Cateline.

And Grandmem had never had a sister.

“It has to be you,” Grandmem said, leaning in so that her carroty breath blasted in Heloise’s face. “When the other one died, I knew then. I told myself, ‘It’s settled now. It’ll be young Heloise.’ But I always thought it would be you, even when
she
was alive. You were the stronger of the two. But that doesn’t always mean—”

Suddenly Heloise found herself indeed much stronger than she’d been only a moment before. She stood up, wrenching herself free of her grandmother’s fingers. She held herself together, very still, very controlled; it was marvelous to her just how controlled she was. If only they knew, they’d be so impressed. Everyone. Everyone would admire all this fine control with which she kept herself from slapping that old woman’s ugly face.

She said, “They’ll never forget Evette. They’ll never forget Hélène. And they’ll never remember Cateline, because there never was such a person.”

With that she turned, took a few steps, realized she was not going anywhere, and turned again, this time toward the stream. She stopped again, realizing she didn’t have a bucket. The bucket was in the cottage, on a peg beyond Grandmem.

She froze, her hands clenched into fists, not wanting to face her grandmother.

In an elaborate performance of crackles and groans, Grandmem stood up from the doorstep, drew herself as tall as she could, and tugged her shawl tight. “Heloise,” she said, “I came to ask you one thing. I came to ask . . . have you met yourself yet?”

Heloise didn’t answer. She couldn’t. At the moment her ears were roaring with too much rage to comprehend the words.

“You have to meet yourself,” said Grandmem. “You have to face yourself. Or you’ll fail. Just like I did.”

Heloise heard her grandmother’s shuffling footsteps. Then she felt the claw-like hand on her shoulder.

“When they’ve forgotten,” said Grandmem, her whiskery chin close to Heloise’s ear, “come to me. I won’t remember either. But I’ll believe you when they don’t. And I’ll tell you what I can.”

She let go. Heloise heard the same shuffling steps, this time moving away. The shuffling paused. Grandmem said, “Bring the mirror with you when you come.”

Mirror.

With that, she left the cottage yard, shouldering between Evette’s admirers on her way.

Papa and the older boys had already eaten and sat relaxing in front of the fire before Meme finally came in from the spinning shed, baby Clive asleep in his sling on her back. She glanced around the cottage, saw that Evette had already fed everyone and built up the kitchen fire to keep away the cold, and nodded her approval. She passed silently through the room to the lean-to where she and Papa slept and disappeared inside with the baby.

She didn’t look at Heloise.

Heloise, involved in a game of stick-back with Clotaire and Clovis, pretended not to notice. She hadn’t looked up when Meme entered the cottage door. She said not a word, but kept on smiling and even teasingly jabbed Clotaire, causing his stick tower to topple and both boys to roar at the unfairness.

But through it all, every sense of her body and being was fixed upon her mother. Her mother who never spoke to her on this particular day. On her birthday.

When Meme disappeared into the lean-to, Heloise dropped the smile from her face. Sitting back, she let the boys continue the game and pretended to watch. But she couldn’t see what went on right before her eyes.