“Oh, Great Gates,” said Jewel of Wommack. “I’ll never manage it.”
Her brother looked down at her and grinned.
“Afraid you’ll fall in the water, are you?” he teased. “Tell you what, dear heart, I’ll carry you down the landing ramp.”
“You touch me, Lewis Motley Wommack,” she said between her teeth, “and I’ll scream you a scream they’ll hear all the way to Castle Brightwater.”
He leaned one elbow on the gunwale, set his chin in his hand, and looked at her sideways, considering. She had a scream that was deservedly famous, did Jewel, and the potential scene had a certain appeal for him. There they’d be, pulling up to the mooring, the great ship easy in the calm water of the harbor, and all the passengers crowding politely onto the ramp three abreast. And there’d be all the elegant citizens waiting on the landing in their Sundy best-Jubilee best!-standing under the ancient trees that shaded them and watching the delegations and their households disembark. And there he’d be, carrying his screaming squalling sister through all the decorous lines of pleasant people . .
“Don’t you think it,” she said firmly. “Don’t you even think it! You’ll rue it, I swear you will.”
“Will you set a Spell on me, little sister?” he asked, mock-terrified before her prowess, and then he gathered her against him and held her close to his side. It was a good deal like holding a sapling whipping in the wind, if you’ll allow a sapling the skill to curse without ceasing; but she was no more trouble to him than the buttons on his cloak. He could have held half a dozen more like her, all screaming and spitting, and not begun to exert himself.
Jewel was fighting him only for the principle of the thing, having learned in the course of her twelve and a half years that it was a useless activity for any other purpose. She had seen her brother lift a full-grown man over his head and throw him into a tree, and he hadn’t even been angry at the time, just slightly fussed. And then she had an idea.
The wicked point of the broochpin that she’d had at her throat took him right in the armpit, where there was little clothing and less muscle. The group behind them stepped back hastily at his roar of pain, and Jewel braced herself to be flung over the side. It would spoil her gown and her cloak and her fine new shoes, and she would lose her hat and her travelbag in the process. It would mean being hauled in dripping wet before the grave watching eyes of Silverweb of McDaniels, that she could see standing among those waiting on the Landing, and somebody near enough her age that she’d half hoped to have her for a friend. But it would be worth it all. She’d happily have swum ten miles before all the Grannys of Ozark assembled, in a full set of winter clothes and wrapped in a quilt to top it off, if it would of gained her one point against Lewis Motley Wommack the 33rd. For all that she worshipped the ground he walked on and the air he breathed.
“Well?”
“Well what, Jewel of Wommack?”
“Well, aren’t you going to pitch me overboard?” She braced herself again, and then felt her cheeks flood crimson as he patted her on the bottom like a Mule colt; right in front of all those people.
“No, Little Wickedness, I’m not going to do any such thing,” he said. “Smile pretty now, there comes the land-and I expect you to walk that ramp like a highborn lady, which you are, and if you do fall in and shame us all I’ll put you over my knee right there under those trees soon as you’re fished out. Provided I don’t let you drown, that is.”
The men had tied the lines, and the First Officer secured the gleaming ironwood steps that would allow the passengers to walk up to where the ramp met the gunwales instead of scrambling over on a rope ladder like the crew was used to doing. There were a few cheers from the younger children, hastily hushed by their elders, and Jewel heard the resounding smack of a sturdy hand against someone’s backside. That, she thought, would be a Purdy female, and a Purdy child; neither Wommack nor Traveller would of laid hand to one of their offspring in public-or needed to. “Why?” she demanded softly, still clutched to her brother’s side -and then she realized that in the noise of the landing, everyone talking quietly but everyone talking at once, she didn’t have to be quiet, and she shouted it at him. “Why?”
“Why what?”
She wiggled violently, and he set her aside with a courtly smile, not scrupling to tickle her ribs as he did so.
“Why aren’t you going to throw me overboard?”
“One, it would give you far too much satisfaction,” he said promptly. “Two, I’ve already told you-a dozen times, if I’ve told you once-I intend to be careful of the Wommack reputation at this Jubilee. I’m tired to death of being only one cut above the Purdys-they’re stupid and we’re cursed, that’s a fine bedamned arrangement! And I’ll not risk a scandal before ever we set foot to Brightwater land, Jewel of Wommack. Not if you run a sword through my armpit instead of a pin.”
She would of liked to say she was sorry, but she didn’t dare. If there was one thing that made her brother furiouser than somebody doing something outrageous, it was that somebody saying they were sorry, afterwards. She stood shaking in her finery and trying to get her breath back, and she held her tongue.
“All right now,” he said, and gave her a gentle push toward the steps. “Here we are, and this is the famous Brightwater Landing, and I’m right behind you. No simpering, no giggling, no lollygagging, sister mine. Move!”
She moved. The press of people behind her would have moved her in any case. Up the nine shining steps; and then, with a hand from the First Mate to steady her against the gentle rocking of the ship, across the narrow space and her foot on the landing ramp that stretched out into the harbor. And down the ramp between the rows of flags brilliant in the May breeze, in front of all those staring people-not that they stared openly, but she knew they watched her, all the same. She turned an ankle once, but no one would of guessed; Lewis Motley was at her elbow and he steadied her instantly.
“It’s miles long, this ramp!” she fretted. “Suppose that’s to give the Brightwaters ample time to look everybody over as they land!”
“No,” he told her, “it’s so the ramp will reach out into the harbor far enough to let people land from an oceangoing ship with a deep draft. You have a mind, Jewel, and known to be spectacular; use it. Nobody’s looking at you.”
“They are!” she insisted.
She knew they were, in her bones. She was not quite sure when it had begun; one day she was a child, fresh out of Granny School and not caring if the whole world looked at her nor even thinking they might care to. And the next she knew herself the center of everyone’s attention, at all times. For the women at Castle Wommack to tell her that this carne of being twelve and would disappear with turning thirteen, approximately, was no help to her. Thirteen might as well of been ten years away as four months, for every day stretched out long and lanky before her full of ordeals. They had told her who knew how many times. Her nose was not too pointed; her freckles were not ugly; the copper-colored hair that fought its way instantly out of any attempt she made at bringing it to order was not untidy; her breasts and hips were not too big; her legs were not too long. It didn’t help any. Her days were a misery and she endured them, that being a woman’s place in this world; but she defied anyone to expect her to enjoy them,
“Jewel, sister Jewel,” he said as they stepped off the ramp onto the stones of the Landing-sure enough, each one was a good four feet square, and blinding white, just as she’d been told!-”I am counting on you.”
She would have clung to him in despair and hidden her face against his chest; but he knew that, of course, and he was gone in an instant. He disappeared into the clusters of talking people like thread into a needle’s eye, and was out of her sight.
“Jewel.” The voice at her elbow was like a blessing pronounced twice; she turned joyfully to greet it. There stood Gilead of Wommack, Jewel’s niece despite her seventeen years; and Jacob Donahue Wommack the 23rd, Gilead’s father and the Master of Castle Wommack; and there stood Grannys Copperdell and Goodweather, both bristling with impatience to get on with it, whatever it might he; and all the rest of her homefolks.
“Oh, I am so glad to see you!” she declared, doing her best to disappear into the middle of the group, and she meant it most fervently. Whatever it was that her beloved brother was “counting on” her for, she intended to postpone it as long as possible.
“Lewis Motley’s upset her,” said Gilead to the others. “I knew he would.”
“She’s no business letting him,” snapped Granny Copperdell.
“Granny,” objected Jacob Donahue, “the child’s only twelve!”
“When I was twelve I had a babe at my breast,” said the old lady, “and it would of been a cold day in a warm place before any nineteen-year-old lout such as that one would of upset me.”
Jewel had no doubt that was true. Indomitable twelve-year-olds such as that make good Grannys, and Granny Copperdell was one of the finest,
“If I had a babe at my breast,” said Jewel staunchly, “I’d have it hind-end to, and youall know it.”
“Jewel of Wommack!” Gilead was shocked, and the Dozens only knew what the Attendant and the servingmaid bringing up the rear with the smaller children thought. But both Grannys cackled with appreciation, and Jewel saw that as a good sign and took up her position between. them. She could think of few safer places to be than flanked an either side by a Granny in a good mood.
A Brightwater Attendant, splendid in his livery of emerald green piped with narrow silver braid, the crest on his shoulder looking to be embroidered only yesterday, stepped forward then to greet them, making his proper salutations with a flourish.
“If you’ll follow me,” he said pleasantly, “I’ll take you to your lodgings at the Castle and see you settled in.”
Lewis Motley, popping up as unexpectedly as he’d disappeared, spoke from the back of the cluster of Wommacks.
“All of us?” he asked.
“Beg your pardon, sir?”
“I said, all of us? That is, is there room for all of us?”
“At Castle Brightwater?” The Attendant was clearly flabbergasted.
Lewis Motley Wommack shrugged politely, and made it obvious that he was being too well bred to mention the four hundred some odd rooms at Castle Wommack, or its vast acres of land.
“Ignore him,” said Jacob Donahue immediately, “and accept my apologies. He has no manners whatsoever and never did have. And keep an eye on him while he’s under your roof, because he can’t be trusted. I’ve done my best with him, poor orphan that he is, but it’s been a hopeless and a thankless task. He grows wickeder with every passing year.”
Lewis Motley chuckled, and Jewel wondered grimly how he’d of been behaving if he hadn’t been concerned for the Wommack reputation; and the Attendant, confused but doggedly set on his duties, explained that although Castle Brightwater was nothing like the size of Castle Wommack, it could surely manage to put up the delegations of the other eleven Families of Ozark without strain. Gilead moved forward smoothly to soothe the poor man with a steady flow of distracting questions, and Granny Goodweather leaned back and pinched the unruly younger brother’s cheek-a Granny’s privilege, however much it might hurt, and however much the red wheal it left might mar the effect of the young man’s splendid beard.
They were handed into five of a long line of gleaming carriages, each with the Brightwater crest on its door and harnessed to a matched team of four Mules, and Jewel began to enjoy herself in spite of everything. It was one thing to watch the doings at Castle Brightwater on the comset while she sat at home at Castle Wommack, and it was quite another to actually be here. The carriages were a fine touch, and she could tell she wasn’t the only one to think so. Lizzies would of taken them up to the Castle far more quickly, twelve at a time, but a lizzy had none of the elegance of a four-Mule carriage. They were speckledy Mules, a soft gray flecked all over with a darker shade of the same; their harness was gray leather with silver fittings; and their tails had been done in an intricate five-strand braid, not just looped up and fastened in the usual way. And their hoofs! Jewel had never seen Mules with their hoofs, that were naturally a kind of nothing clayey color, stained a jetty black. It was purely splendid, and polite of the Mules to allow it done.
And then there were the crests; a crest on the door of a lizzy would of been like a lace collar on a goat. It was well carried out, and a few points for the Family Brightwater.
Somewhere down the line the remark came-”Waste, waste, and never an end to it!”-and nobody had to look back to identify the source. That would be someone from the Traveller delegation, going through the obligatory rituals in his thrifty suit of coarse black cloth and his plain black coat. The Travellers considered anything either pleasant or attractive to be a “waste.”
“They are going to be a nuisance,” said Gilead, and her father nodded.
“Fiddle,” said Granny Copperdell, “they just make for balance. Everybody else says `how nice’ and the Travellers come in all together with `what a waste’ and it evens it all out. Keeps us from getting carried away with delight and debauchery. Right useful of them, if you want my opinion on the matter.”
“The eeeeequilibrium of the yuuuuuuuniverse is a fraaaaaail and-”
“Lewis Motley Wommack!” The Granny’s voice whipped through the air in the open carriage, and Jewel tried not to wince. “You mock the Reverend, and on a Sundy at that, and I’ll see you pay dearly for it!”
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.
“Responsible of Brightwater,” demanded Granny Hazelbide sternly, “why are you shivering?”
“You said `trouble’ your own self, ma’am. And I respect your opinion.”
“There’s more to it than just mischief,” said the Granny. “Like I said, I have a funny feeling.”
“Think she’ll strangle me in my bed?” ventured Responsible, her voice careful and light. It wouldn’t do to have the Grannys feuding.
“I’ll wager she could, without leaving her own.”
“Ah, but she wouldn’t! She’s a Traveller born, Granny Hazelbide, and she’d be drawn and quartered naked before she’d use illegal magic.”
“I’ll grant you that much, but you mark my words-”
“Mark mine,” put in Responsible. It wasn’t polite to interrupt a Granny, but when Granny Hazelbide said to mark her words you were in for a good hour’s worth to mark, and she just simply didn’t have the strength.
“Mark mine,” she said, “the woman’s done it to torment me, purely because she delights in tormenting me. Nothing more. And I don’t intend to let her have the satisfaction of thinking she’s achieved her purpose.”
“It’s possible,” said the Granny. “I suppose it’s possible.”
“And you, I’ll thank you to help me rather than hinder me in this. All I need is that woman thinking she has you upset; it won’t do, Granny! I need you serene, not al1 in a fidget.”
Get in a staring match with a Granny, you can wear your eyes out, and Responsible’s eyes already burned from no sleep and the hours poring over papers. But she held firm, and it was the old lady who gave way first.