Responsible was sitting over the last cup of the pot of tea the servingmaid had brought her when the knack came at her door. She set the cup down, made sure her nightgown was decently arranged, and called, “Who’s there?”
“Granny Leeward here, Responsible of Brightwater. Granny Leeward of Castle Traveller. May I come in?”
“You sound nothing whatsoever like a Granny,” said Responsible deliberately. “I do believe you’re a fraud and a sham, whoever you may be.”
There was a silence, time enough for her to have another sip of her tea. It was her favorite cup, emerald-green china with a rim of silver, and sturdy enough to drink from half awake without worrying that she’d crush it, the last unbroken one of a set used for company meals when she was still in Granny School. She despised the cups her mother and grandmother chose to start their days with, delicate white porcelain with the Brightwater Crest on the side, big enough to hold maybe three good swallows, and so frail they felt like eggshells in your hand. She could face those later in the day if need be, but not before breakfast, and at no time did she admire them.
“Responsible of Brightwater, you bar your door to me, you’ll rue it! A fine day it’ll be when a wench of fourteen keeps me standing in a hall saying howdydo to the bare boards, and I’ll thank you to keep that in mind, missy!”
“Ah,” said Responsible, “now I hear you use formspeech, I recognize you for a Granny after all! Please to come in, Granny Leeward.”
The old woman was dressed and ready for the day, all in her customary black, and her pale-blue eyes so cold in her bony face that they put Responsible in mind of two small dead fishes, side by side.
“Have a rocker,” she told her, “and make yourself comfortable. Have you had your tea this morning or shall I send for you some?”
“I’ve been through with my tea this past hour,” said Granny Leeward, chill and snappish, “and waiting till I heard the sound of your cup on your saucer so I’d not wake you. You keep mighty highclass hours, to my way of thinking.”
“Proceedings don’t begin at Confederation Hall till nine,” said Responsible, “and it’s a while yet till it strikes seven. Ample time for what I have before me today.”
“You’ve mighty little before you, this day and some days to come.” The Granny sat down in a rocker, carefully settling her heavy skirts around her, and folded her hands in her lap. “That’s what I’ve come to tell you about-and mind, I’ll have no sass from you.”
Responsible had some more tea and waited the move, and after the silence had stretched a ways Granny Leeward continued. “You’ll recall, I expect, that I was present-and quite a number of the other members of our delegation with me-when you put on your disgraceful performance at Castle Traveller a while back.”
“I do recollect that, yes.”
And you do agree that it was-disgraceful.”
“I messed up your fan a tad,” said Responsible coldly, “but I did you no harm. And I believe Castle Traveller’s budget will run to a fan or two.”
“Sin,” said Granny Leeward, like a stone falling. “It was sin, what you did.”
“No,” said Responsible. “it was illegal. The two things are not the same.”
“Only a Magician of Rank has the authority to do what you did that day,” said the Granny, chopping off every word, “and that’s the illegal part. The sinful part is a woman even knowing what you obviously know, and having no more decency than to use that knowledge, and in full daylight before a dozen respectable people on top of that. And it was an ugly trick, missy, a purely ugly trick!”
“If there was sin-which I don’t admit to-it was in losing my temper and falling into the trap you and your kin set for me. I’d say that was more stupidity than wickedness.”
Granny Leeward gave her a narrow look, and as Responsible had expected, there came a sudden look of understanding in her eyes. She’d be seeing that look a lot oftener than she cared to today.
“I see you’ve added a new wickedness to your inventory,” said the old woman, “You’re a bold hussy, I’ll grant you that.” Responsible sighed, and set her tray on the night table by her bed.
“Granny Leeward,” she said, “you’ve come to chastise me for my foolishness at Castle Traveller-call it sin if you please, I’ll not waste my breath arguing theology with you before breakfast. Well and good; I’m not proud of it. There you sat, leading me on and fanning yourself with that black fan; and all I had to do was heat up its handle a tad to advise you I intended to be treated with respect. There was no call for me to turn that fan into a handful of mushrooms-”
“Black and rotting mushrooms, with the smell of death on ‘em!” interrupted L eeward and Responsible, nodded.
“Quite right,” she said. “The black was appropriate, seeing as how you Travellers find it the only fit color for human use, but there was no call to make them rot in your hand. You caught me with a child’s trick, and I’m well and thoroughly ashamed that I took that bait. But it seems to me you made me pay for that already, Granny Leeward. How greedy for revenge are you?”
The old woman snorted, and her face was stiff with contempt. “I wouldn’t want any misunderstanding between you and me,” she said, leaning back in the rocker and steepling her fingers. “Not any misunderstanding whatsoever. Might could be I should clarify this for you.”
“I’d be grateful,” said Responsible,
Granny Leeward counted the points off one at a time. “What you did to me,” she said, “practicing an illegal act of magic, and a foul one, on my person-that goes unpunished still. You lay for a day with deathdance fever, that the Magicians call Anderson’s Disease, as payment for carrying out your ugliness before the Family-that’s paid. Your offense to me still stands, and I’ll call that in when I choose; I don’t choose just yet, Responsible of Brightwater, not just yet. And that’s not why I’m here.”
“You’re not clarifying much, Granny Leeward, but your narrowness of spirit. Perhaps you could try a little harder?”
“There are six delegates from Castle Traveller as will sit in the Independence Room this day, and as saw what you did,” hissed Granny Leeward, “and they’re ready and willing to denounce you before the entire convention of delegates, the audience in the balcony, and those watching on their comsets. That make it clearer?”
“Mighty gallant, your men,” said Responsible. “It must make you proud.”
“A female such as you, missy, ought not to have the gall to ask for gallantry. Well on the way to being a witch, and clear the other side of being a fornicator, and you talk about gallantry? That’s for decent women, not for your kind.”
“You’re plain-spoken,” said Responsible. “‘That’s useful in a Granny.”
“Didn’t I say I’d take no sass from you? Your memory gone with your maidenhead?”
“A compliment is not sass,” said Responsible, with as much sass as she was able to muster. “I judge Grannys as I judge Mules, and you rank high. Now speak your piece.”
Those pale-blue eyes . . . she had not been surprised to see them like dead fish, but spitting blue fire was surprising. It would have been pleasant to think that the old woman might be tricked in return, brought to a sufficient pitch of fury to lead her into some indiscretion of her own, leaving the two of them in a more balanced position; but it wouldn’t happen. To begin with, they were alone, and if the Granny was being humiliated there was no one to see or know it but herself. And to go on with, Responsible was certain the woman knew nothing beyond Granny Magic, all of which was legal for her to use.
Granny Leeward leaned forward, stabbing the air with her pointing finger, and she laid it out for Responsible so there could be no confusion in any least particular.
“Either you stay clear away from Confederation Hall,” the Granny said, “where you cannot interfere in what’s none of your business and never has been, or my son will stand before the entire assembly this morning and denounce you-leaving out no details, keep that in mind’-and the rest of those as saw you will back him up. Now I reckon that is clear as springwater, but if it’s not I’ll be glad to embroider it for you same.”
Responsible sank back against her pillows and whistled long and low and silent. Now she’d heard it, it was obvious, but she hadn’t expected it. Which was an interesting measure of her strategic skills.
“Botheration,” she said aloud, and thought a word that she’d never heard spoken, though it was claimed to exist.
“Keep your botherations to yourself,” said the Granny, “and the Travellers won’t add to them. We’ve other doings to concern us, and telling that sorry tale about you would only use up another day on top of the one you wasted for us yesterday. But if you insist on coming into the Hall, spite of what I’ve said to you, we will waste that time, I promise you, and I’ll not scruple to stand in the balcony and add my voice to the testimonies.”
“I believe you have me,” said Responsible, taking another drink of tea. “All things considered.”
“That we do,” said Granny Leeward. “That we surely do, and if ever a female deserved it, you qualify.”
“Blackmail doesn’t burden your conscience, Granny?” Responsible asked.
Granny Leeward sat straight and pale. “We walk a narrow line at Castle Traveller,” she said. “We keep the old ways, and there’s none of the rest of you as does. We know, the Gates be praised, the difference between a sin and its name. That’s a difference not to be despised, nor yet forgotten.”
“Explain me that, Granny Leeward-and its application in this matter of you and me. I don’t see it.”
“I’ll explain you nothing! You need moral instruction, you’ve a Granny here, and a Reverend as well, though he’s a poor thing. This universe has one primary law--as ye sow, so shall ye reap and we abide by that. I come here as no instrument of blackmail, Responsible of Brightwater; I come as an instrument of justice!”
“I wonder,” mused Responsible, and the Granny drew herself up in the rocker, bridling all over with outrage. Responsible had heard about people bridling, and read the phrase, but this was the first time she’d ever seen it.
“On Old Earth,” she said casually, “there were those so convinced of their purity, so sure they were instruments of justice, that they put others to the rack and the fire out of concern for their immortal souls. Now I suggest to you that you might want to keep that in mind your self, Granny Leeward. There’s ugly, and then there’s ugly.”
Granny Leeward stood up like she’d sat on a straight pin, shaking all over with a rage she wouldn’t stoop to express, and Responsible made a mental note-this was one who did not handle well any criticism that struck at her morality. It might be useful to know that one day. And while she had it going, she drove it home.
“And it doesn’t burden your conscience that you Grannys are charged to help me, not hinder me?” she demanded. “I find that curious.”
The Granny’s face closed, shut, and if the rage was still there she mastered it. She gave no sign that she’d heard Responsible’s last question.
“I’ll leave it to you to furnish your excuses for your absence,” she said, looking right through the girl. “You lie easy enough, it should cause you no special trouble. Just you stay away from the Hall. And I’ll have your word on it.”
“You have it,” said Responsible wearily. They were tiresome, these Travellers, with their never-ending insistence on guarantees. “And now you do have it, I’ll thank you to leave. I have work to do, and I’d best get at it.”
Granny Leeward headed for the door, but she stopped there long enough to shake her finger some more and say a few sentences on the subject of pride going before a fall, and peace coming to them as deserved it and misery to those as didn’t, and just deserts. Responsible rode this out in silence-she had no intention of easing any wounds she might have inflicted on this one-and the time finally came when the woman had either exhausted her supply of moral justifications or tired her own tongue, and she went out the door, leaving a vast silence behind her.
Responsible lay there and whistled her way through three choruses of “Once Again, Amazing Grace,” as a calming measure, and gave her situation some careful thought.
Under her bottom pillow, for example, there was a cylinder no bigger than a needle, and in it a list written on pliofilm and headed “Things To Do When I Get Home.” Weeks it had been there, shoved out of sight till she could find time to tackle it, and there’d been nights when she’d had the feeling it burned her head right through the feathers and heavy pillowslips. Might could be she’d make her way through some of the items on that list after all, while she was staying away from the Hall.
And then, might could be she’d take advantage of the opportunity to just lie here? She was that tired.
She reached under her pillow, knowing the foolishness of the lying-about idea, and took out the cylinder, unscrewed the top, and pulled from it the sheet of pliofilm. It had been so long curled it wouldn’t lie flat, of course, and she hadn’t any inclination to take it over to her desk where she could spread it on the leather surface to cling properly; she made do with gripping its edges and ignoring the way it wound itself round her fingers.
Eight items she had written there, she noted with disgust. Eight tasks. And when she’d set out on the Quest in February there’d been only the first. Somehow, riding back into Brightwater in April, there’d been the idea in her head that she could get them all out of the way before the Jubilee. Like many another fool idea she’d had lately.
First of all, there was the task she’d set out with: to go over the Castle’s secret account books, those that couldn’t be trusted to the Economist and required her personal attention.
Next came the matter of determining whether there really had been a Skerry seen at Castle Motley; and if there had been-which she doubted even more strongly now than she had when the servingmaid had blurted out the tale to her-declaring a day of celebration separate and special for the event as custom demanded. It’d be a tad late, but better a tardy observance than none at all. Provided she found any evidence that the servingmaid’s story had had a scrap of truth to it.
Third was the promise she had made in the night to the Gentle, highborn T’an K’ib. She had given her word: the Gentles would be involved in none of the Ozarkers’ doings, as already specified by the treaties signed centuries ago. Furthermore, Responsible intended to see that every inch of the Gentles’ territory taken from them by the careless mining operations of the Arkansaw Families was restored, and restored in either its original condition or with improvements to the ancient race’s own specifications. T’an K’ib had not insisted on that, treating it as a minor matter, but Responsible saw it differently. The Arkansawyers knew quite well where the boundaries of their lands joined those of the Gentles, and the temptations of a few tons of ore or a vein of choice gemstones were no excuse for violating those boundaries.
Fourth, she had to see to the matter of the growing prejudice against the Purdys. Prejudice was one of the things that had driven the Twelve Families from Old Earth in the first place. They’d all been white, sure enough, but they’d heard more than they cared to tolerate about “ignorant hillbillies” and “white trash” and they’d seen the black and brown and yellow peoples of Earth suffer at the hands of ignorant and vicious people their own color. And now, somehow without anybody’s remarking on it as it grew, the Purdys had become the “white trash” of this planet. When anybody did a stupid thing, the first remark you heard was “A body’d think you were a Purdy born and raised!” Nasty, that’s what it was, and she would not have it; it shamed her that she had not noticed it sooner.
You didn’t put an end to prejudice by proclamations, though; it grew slow, and it died slower. What was required was for the next few groups of Purdy girlchildren to spend their Granny School time spread all round this planet, clear away from the constant expectation of the grown-up Purdys that they would always fail in whatever they did. A few dozen confident, self-assured Purdy females to go home and do missionary duty-that’s what was called for.
And then, for number five on her list, she had written down “Wommack superstition clear out of hand.” As it was, and no doubt about it. A Wommack cut his finger, it was because of the Wommack Curse. A Wommack spoiled a roast because she had her mind elsewhere, the Curse again. Every mistake, every natural mishap that the universe laid on a Wommack-be it ever so like the mishaps and mistakes that were laid on every other soul on Ozark-lay it to the Wommack Curse. That had to be seen to, and quickly; there had to be a sufficient run of good luck for the Wommacks to put some chinks in their curse consciousness. And thinking of Lewis Motley Wommack, she smiled to herself; she might find it possible to get in a few licks on that job with no strain to herself at all.
Sixth was the trivial task of making certain that nobody but pitiful Una of Clark, lost in her worship of her husband beyond all limits of decency, had been back of the mischief that had plagued Brightwater early in the year. Milk that came spoiled from the goats, mirrors that shattered, Mules that flew like squawkers drunk on fallen fruit fermented in the sun-and the one kidnapped baby, with no harm done to him. Responsible had no doubt this one was trivial, for Una of Clark had been too broken with terror the night she’d confronted her with her crimes not to have cried out the names of anyone that’d helped her-always excepting the husband. Una of Clark would have died unhesitatingly, plunged off the seacliff and into the waters boiling below her, before she spoke any word that might mean the smallest peril for Gabriel Laddercane Traveller the 34th.
Responsible tried, briefly, imagining herself obsessed in that way with Lewis Motley Wommack, convinced the sun rose when he came in the door and set when he went back out it, trembling at his least frown and melting away when he smiled on her. She ran it round her head for a minute or two, checking, but it made no sense to her any way she viewed it. Praise be for small favors.
Next to last on the pliofilm was the Bestowing of two acres of land on Flag of Airy and her husband, in recognition of their service to Castle Brightwater; and seeing that, the guilt did bite at her. Most of the things on the list she could truly say there’d been no time for; they required careful planning and ample time. But not this, this was an hour’s easy work. She had plain and simply forgotten about it.
And finally . . . “See to the feuds on Arkansaw,” she’d written with the stylus.
See to them!
Responsible rolled over onto her stomach and struck the pile of pillows with her fist. See to them, indeed. How was she to “see to” the incredible antics of three Families, bent on feuding, set on feuding, bound and determined on feuding? Guthries, Farsons, and Purdys, bad cess to them all, and the poor Gentles right in the middle of it! Just what she’d been thinking when she’d scribed there so casually “See to the feuds” she could not imagine. Must have been after she crashed into the side of that dockshed and addled her head.
It was a long list, and she figured that to carry it through she needed maybe a staff of fifty Magicians, and fifty more miscellaneous, and far all she knew an army wouldn’t be a bad idea, whatever an army might be like. She could begin with the Castle accounts, and throw in the Bestowing in a hurry, but the rest of it?
She knew an assortment of words she was forbidden to use, and she ran through them as she’d run through the list, all the while she was rolling up the pliofiim and stuffing it back in its case to bury once more underneath the pillows. And she’d only gotten to the tenth of her prohibited pronouncements when there came the thundering at her door that she’d been expecting with half an ear for some time now.
“Come on in, Granny Hazelbide, before you destroy my door for good and all,” she hollered, resigned to what could not be avoided and wouldn’t improve by being put off. “Come on in here and tell me all about my sins!”
The Granny fairly flew through the door, and banged it to behind her. She had on a crackling crisp dress of shiny dark blue, caught at the neck with a brooch handed down in her family all the way from First Landing, if she was to be believed. Her feet were shod in high-heeled pointy-toed black pumps with a shine that hurt your eyes, and so narrow Responsible knew they hurt her. Granny Hazelbide prided herself on the neatness of her foot. And on her head was a black straw hat to match the pumps, and a black veil ready to be pulled down over her face in the latest style, with a cluster of dark-blue violets with velvet petals and velvet leaves and velvet stems wound round wire to top off the headgear. She was a regular fashion plate, was Granny Hazelbide, and she was in a fury.
“Whatever are you doing lying there in that bed like the Queen of the Shebas?” she demanded, advancing on Responsible like a skinny tornado. “You make me late for the Opening Ceremonies, girl, and I’ll take a switch to your bare tailbone, for all you’re near fifteen and fancy yourself full grown! I’ll give you two minutestwo minutes, do you hear?-to make yourself fit to be seen and go out this door with me! Laws and Dozens, Responsible, we’re late this minute!”
“Granny, Granny,” soothed Responsible, “you’ll have a heart attack if you go on like that, and I’ll have to call in a Magician to set you right, and for sure I want no Magician hanging round my bed on a beautiful morning like this! I suggest you calm yourself a tad.”
The old lady’s lips drew tight, and her brows met over her nose, and she leaned over Responsible’s bed like she was ready to whack her with her pocketbook.
“Calm myself!” she said. “When you lie there and face me down, cool as you please, and it half past eight in the morning? Have you taken sick, missy, or leave of your senses-which one?”
“Neither one, Granny Hazelbide,” said Responsible. “Neither one. I’ve just run into a sort of a snag.”
Granny Hazelbide leaned over farther, and tipped the girl’s chin up to look into her face, turning it this way and that till it made her neck ache. And then she let her fall back, suddenly, and Responsible was grateful it was pillows she’d had to fall on. Even so, the resulting thump shook her some.
“You call that a snag, do you,” said the old woman disgustedly. “A snag! What’d you go and catch yourself on it for, if you saw, it as such a hindrance, eh, Responsible?”
“Granny, darlin’--”
“‘Granny, darlin’!’ You mark my words, Responsible of Brightwater, there’ll be a few words from your Granny darlin’ about this, once she’s leisure enough to speak them. But losing your maidenhead, though it’s a disgrace to us all and a piece of foolishness the likes of which doesn’t come by often, it’s no excuse for you to lie in bed and miss the Second Day at Confederation Hall. Now get yourself out of there and into your clothes, and let’s us go, Responsible! Snag, huh! Who, pray tell, was it got past my wards on this room?”
“I’m not about to tell you. Granny,” said Responsible. “Not about to, so you needn’t push it. Nor, I’m sorry to say, is that the snag I had in mind.”
“What you have in mind doesn’t bear repeating before decent folk such as myself, I’ll wager!”
“How you do go on!” said Responsible admiringly. “You’ll outgranny all the other Grannys yet, and think how proud I’ll be then! Seeing as how I had the raising of you.
“However,” she added quickly, before the Granny could catch her breath and start on her again, “if you plan to hear the Opening Prayer you’d best go on, and I’ll explain later. It’s not a short explanation.”
Granny Hazelbide stared at her, and set her arms akimbo. “Responsible,” she said, “is there really an explanation? Worth my being late for?”
“You’d have to tell me that after you heard it,” said Responsible. “Depends on how much you fancy the Opening Ceremonies, I’d say.”
Granny Hazelbide pulled up a chair and sat down in it without a word, as Responsible had known she would; and she listenedher mouth puckering tighter and tighter with every passing minute -while she heard a carefully edited version of the mistake made at Castle Traveller and this morning’s visit from Granny Leeward. And then she spoke her mind, and Responsible was glad she’d only made it a tale of giving all the staff at Castle Traveller toothaches. She’d been afraid that might be somewhat too mild to convince, since many an Ozark woman not a Granny and with no hope of ever being one picked up a scrap or two of Granny Magic, though few would dare use what they knew. Granny Hazelbide didn’t find the transgression a light one; that became clear in a hurry.
“Stupid!” she said fiercely. “That’s the only word for you, missy. Just purely stupid! How could you let yourself be wrenched round to such a state--and the Travellers, of all Families to find yourself beholden to! So Granny Leeward called you a whoredoes calling make it so? Prior to this morning, that is! I reckon she used the word again when she was in here, and this time with good reason!”
“No,” said Responsible, “as a matter of fact the word she used this time was `fornicator.”‘
“And how’d you respond to that? You put warts on all the Mules in the stables? Rashes on all the servingmaids and Attendants? Sink all the boats at the Landing? What kind of conniption fit did you throw over `fornicator’?”
“Well,” said Responsible, “I don’t mind `fornicator’ especially. It lacks the little extra bit; it makes no claim that I sell my favors, you’ll note. I was able to restrain myself.”
“And now there you are, barred from the Hall.”
“So I am.”
“Shame on you, girl!”
“Want me to call her bluff and go, Granny?”
“Great Gates, no! There’s no bluff to that woman. If she said she’d make a scandal of you before the whole world and its brother-in-law that’s exactly and precisely what she would do. You stay away, just as she bid you, and be glad she’s not made it worse.”
“Well, then, Granny, what I need from you is not more tonguelashing. What I need is for you to go on along and be my eyes and my ears. I can watch on the comset, for sure, but it’ll give me only such scraps of what’s going on as the comcrews find interesting. Whoever’s speaking, and a shot of the balcony now and again, and no more. I won’t be seeing who passes notes to who else, or who walks out in a huff, or who falls asleep that you might of expected to pay close attention, or who gets together in huddles in the rows. I need you to watch for me, and listen close, and send word if you see anything that appears to you to be out of line.”
“And what’ll you do if I do see mischief? I’ll see plenty afore this week’s over, you know. What do you plan to do about any of it, missy?”
“That depends on what it is,” said Responsible patiently. “Might could be there’ll be nothing I can do; might could be I can be useful. But unless I have you to report to me, we’ll never know which.”
“And what will you be doing in between my reports, besides lolling in your bed and sniffing the posies?”
Responsible thought of her hateful list of “to do” tasks. “I’ll find a way to pass my time,” she said with assurance.
“Rolling in his arms, no doubt!”
“Granny Hazelbide,” said Responsible, mock-serious, “you have an evil mind.”
The Granny clicked her tongue against her teeth till Responsible wondered the tip didn’t bleed.
“Shiftless and shameless!” she ranted, shaking her finger at the girl smiling up from her pillows. “What would your mother say?”
“That she couldn’t believe any man would of wanted me,” said Responsible promptly. “You know that. Especially when there’s such competition as Silverweb of McDaniels around, all unspoken for and never been kissed. Now do please go on to the Hall, dear heart? Please? It’ll be time soon for the Travellers to begin their move, and I’d be pleasured to know how they open the game. You can come back tonight and lecture me on my morals till you drop in your tracks if that appeals to you; so far as I know, nobody ever talked a maidenhead back into its place, but I’ll listen respectfully if you fancy trying. But not now, Granny Hazelbide, not now!”
The Granny went out of the door, proclaiming woe and thunderations all the way down the hall, and Responsible locked her hands behind her head and stared up at the ceiling until she could hear her nattering no longer. And then she stared a good half hour longer, thinking. She might have put her list away, but she could still see it plain as plain in her mind’s eye.
“This very day,” she told the ceiling at last, “this very morning -what’s left of it-I’ll see to the Bestowing of Flag of Airy’s two acres.
And then what? the ceiling gave her back.
“And then,” she said, carrying it on, “I believe I’m going to need some help. I do believe that I’d better send for my sister.” That silenced the ceiling. What it would bring on in the way of response from other sources, once it was known that Troublesome of Brightwater might be coming down from her mountaintop and into the city, would not be silence. Responsible chuckled, thinking about it.
And realized that, come to think of it, she missed her sister. Mean as she was, outrageous as she was, impossible as she was sure to be, she missed her. And she’d had no idea.