Tender Morsels (28 page)

‘I have not seen the bear with you in several days,’ said Liga. ‘In . . . in many more than several, now I think of it.’

‘No,’ said Branza calmly, as if it hardly mattered. ‘I have not met him hereabouts. He may be following some lady-friend up to the higher hills. Who knows? I have seen many bears about, this season. I am sure he will be back as usual.’

But she knew she would not see him again, and she did not. And Liga, whether she noticed or no, never mentioned his absence again, never referred to his former presence, so that he vanished entirely from every part of Branza’s world except for the store-chest of her memory. There he stayed, among all the objects bright and dark, and she pondered him as she pondered them, growing womanwards.

‘What we ought to do,’ said Goodwife Ramstrong at her loom the next morning, ‘is visit on Leddy Annie Bywell.’

‘We ought?’ Urdda was walking baby Ousel up and down, keeping him quiet while the goodwife worked. She searched the baby’s cloudy bluish eyes by the light at the window.

‘Muddy Annie, she used to be,’ said Todda.

‘A mudwife? As in a story?’

Todda laughed. ‘Just so. But she does no herbing or mudding since she made her fortune; just sits up in that fine house and doesn’t come out to say boo. But maybe she has heard of this land of yours. I know Ramstrong is searching out Teasel Wurledge this morning, to have his story from him. But Leddy Bywell is one you and I can approach. She might know what machinations brought you here, and how to reverse them.’

‘Reverse them? But I don’t want to go
back
,’ said Urdda. ‘Not yet, at least. I want to look about here—this place is full of all kinds of odd things that we do not have at home.’ She was much more reconciled to her new situation since sleeping a night in a comfortable bed.

‘Odd is not of necessity good,’ said Todda gently. ‘Odd is not always kind.’

‘But odd is always odd, the same,’ said Urdda. ‘I cannot just turn around and go back to Mam and Branza—I’ve hardly anything to tell them yet!’

‘Well,’ said Todda, ‘when you have. It’s as well to know what you might do, then, and what is closed to you. Where you stand, you know, in relation to your circumstances and your family’s in that other place. I will go up with you, when Anders wakes.’

‘This one is slipping to sleep.’ Urdda swayed, rocking Ousel. ‘I might visit her myself and not disturb your working.’

Todda raised her eyebrows. ‘You may not move quite so freely as that, here in the real world. Not alone.’

‘Why not? I ran all about the streets on my own, day-before-yesterday, after that Mister Wurledge, and I saw plenty a girl doing the same.’

‘Yes, but that were Bear Day,’ said Todda. ‘That were the one day of the year you might do that. The rest o’ the time, you must go out at least with another girl, if not a grown woman is better. That’s in part why we were so worried for you, standing out in the market on your own.’

‘That’s tiresome, though. Especially for girls who have not sisters—what do they do?’

‘They go with their mothers. Or with friends. Or they bide at home. Who would want to go out alone? What would people say to you?’

‘Well, what
would
they say?’

‘Why, they would shout things. Boys, you know. They would call you bold and a trollop. You might get things thrown at you, you know. A little stone, or a flick of mud on your clean dress.’

‘Truly?’

‘Truly. You would be asking for that.’

‘I would not be asking.’

‘Just by going out alone, I am saying, is asking.’

‘That is terrible! We have no such strictnesses at home.’

‘Your home,’ said Todda with the thump of a treadle, ‘sounds like a very, very wonderful place.’

I found Wurledge at his home abed—’twas nearly noon!—still sleeping off the Day’s effects.

‘For saints’ sake, come in!’ His grumping reached me at the door. ‘Don’t stand there, shouting and bashing!’ I had knocked the timidest of knocks—he must still be in quite a state of sensitivity.

When he saw me at his chamber door, he came up a little politer. ‘Mister Ramstrong! Feller Bear, now!’ He elbowed himself up, swang his feet off his pallet. He had washed himself, at least, or
been
washed, of the state I had last seen him. He pulled his shirt into place around himself and pressed his sleep-cocked hair down. ‘What kin I do for you?’

‘Only speak,’ I said. ‘Only tell me whatever you got up to, Bear Day.’

‘I’n’t never laid a finger on Henny Jenkins, whatever Applin says. I were out cold under Keller’s table by then. Never heard a whisker about it till yestiddy.’

‘Hmm,’ says I. It did not look as if he were going to stand and come out to talk civilised to me, so I crouched in the doorway, one shoulder to the post. ‘It is not that distasteful business I am about.’

‘Well, that’s a relief. Ev’one else has their trews tied in a Franitch blood-knot over it, I cannot think why. ’Tis not like she ha’n’t had a hand up her before, and more.’

He expected me to laugh at that. This is what we have come to, the Bears we are putting up these days. ‘No, it is another matter. It is the matter of a lost girl my wife and I are accommodating.’

Out of his what-the-feck-have-that-to-do-with-me look came another, more realising. ‘Ha!’ he said. ‘I’m guessing her name is Urdda.’

I did not even like the sound of it from his mouth, but I must find out the worst, and waste no time about it. ‘She tells me you spent three years away, in the course of Bear Day.’

‘That is what I was thinking, when I talked to her. Now I am beginning to realise it were likely some kind of . . . of vision I had, or fever-dream, brought on by overexcitement, and thirst, and that costume, which—you know what it’s like, Ramstrong, man: you’re stewing in the thing! It boiled my brain, I’m thinking.’

‘Where did this Urdda girl come from, then?’ says I, as patiently as I could. ‘You know her name; you called her by it on sight, yet you had never set eyes on the girl in this world, because she had never been here. By process of reasoning, she and I have pinned you down to a Bear that got there and immediately ate up some little nuisance of a man that were bothering the girls.’

‘Feck me! It did happen, then? But how could it, all that time and yet I pops back into the twitten there the same moment I jumped out? Only the maid was there before me. I don’t understand how
that
works.’

‘Three years. So you’re a man of twenty now.’

‘So it seems!’ He rubbed his raspy chin in high amusement. ‘Though everyone still treats me as a Bear-age lad.’

I had to work to keep my voice polite. ‘So how did you occupy yourself, those three years?’ I said it so softly, it were sinister.

He heard all that. He looked like a lad that a landlord had told:
I saw the whole thing from my upper window, you and your gang-boys emptying my best tree of apples
. The guilt and the effort to look innocent were painted on his face, bright as pox-spots. ‘What you mean?’ he said. ‘What have she told you? She were not even there!’

‘Except when you ate that dwarfish man.’

‘Except then.’

‘Which were hardly nothing, are you telling me?’

‘Well . . .’

‘Which makes me wonder: how did you fill the rest o’ the time? Did you eat anyone else?’ What a question to have to ask a person!

‘No, I did not! I only et
him
because I had been asleep all winter and were half mad with hunger. After that I were calmer, and found barks, you know, and honeys, and all what a bear
should
eat.’

I was dizzy a moment with the memory of it, the jealousy I felt of him—three years in that place when I’d only had a matter of months. I’d a whiff of that bark, with a bear-appetite behind my nose, the forest my playground, and the cottage awaiting me, end of every day.

‘But you associated with them—the girl’s sister, Branza, and the mother?’ I said, keeping the wretchedness out of my voice as far as I could at the thought.

He glanced at wall and floor. Across his face—I realised I must stay calm, feeling how intently I watched, how ready I was to leap up and lam the lad, any excuse he gave me—amusement passed again, then something shady and sly, then careful concealment.

‘Yes, I “associated”. Am I to believe you of been to this place too, Mister Ramstrong?’ he says smoothly.

‘I have visited,’ says I.

‘You will know what temptations they have set up for us, then, them two fine women unguarded by any man, and friendly toords beasts as you please. You is a married man now, but you was not when you were Bear; you surely cannot have not noticed that they was fine and shapely women.’

‘They were but bits of girls,’ I said sharp, ‘when I was there.’

His eyebrows rose, and he chewed like a sheep on cud for a while. ‘Oh, then,’ he said softly, almost to himself. ‘Did you have of that mam, then? I did not think she liked bears.’

‘ “Have of’”?’ I was on him with a fistful of his nightshirt. ‘What is this “having of ”? What have you gone and done?’

‘Nothing, nothing! I never touched her! She come to
me
, that Branza, she did! Always flinging herself on me and rubbing up. She wanted it more than I did!’

I threw him away, like the piece of rubbish he was. He gave a bab-whimper and rearranged his shirt to cover his man-parts again, should I take it into my head to tear the things off with my bare hands.

‘Tell me true,’ I says, each word like a quarrystone falling out the wall on his head. ‘Did you despoil that girl?’

Guilts twitched his eyes. I hung over him very much like a bear, and he cowered very much like bear-prey.

‘Did you?’ I pushed his chest, and the air whooshed out his lungs.

He shook his head and held his shirtfront, all terror now, gasping. ‘I did not. I tell you true, Ramstrong, I would of liked to; you know how she smells! But she were a modest girl; all she would do were lie with me sometimes, without no touch-and-pokery. Three year I were there; if I had not expended myself on the she-bears of that world, I would of gone mad at the sight o’ the girl.’

I turned from him to stop myself doing worse to him.
The she-bears of that world
. Oh my gracious!

‘She thought I was a bear, you know; she would swim with me, in her wet shift, clear to the eye as if she wore nothing at all. Where were a man supposed to look?’

‘Away!’ I said. ‘A man, a civilised man, is supposed to turn away, and walk away, not sit and slobber over the sight of a girl’s nakedness, shown him in all innocence!’

‘I never slobbered!’ he said; then, ‘I never did,’ more doubtfully, sulkily.

I stood at the door with my back to him, trying to be calm.
The she-bears of that world!
Three years, for heaven sakes.
All she would do were lie with me sometimes!
You are only enraged, Ramstrong, because this accords too close with what you felt toords the mam there yourself. And you are jealous, of what you might have made of three years in that cottage, when this girt clod had that luck himself.

‘Well, you have not harmed them,’ I said. ‘That is the main thing. And I am not the only man of St Olafred’s has found himself to be a bear in that place, which is what I came here to establish.’

‘You are not.’ He still sounded sulky. He looked like what he was: a child admonished, hairy legs, broad chest, and prickly chin notwithstanding.

‘One more thing, though,’ said I—and he managed to cringe using just his head. ‘When I come back from there, I spent some time trying to return to it; to find that cottage again, that land. You may be tempted the same.’

‘As I said, I thought it a dream. Now that I know it were not,
mebbe I shall be tempted, should things go bad for me here. I had a very pleasant time there.’

‘You will give me your word’—I turned fully to face him—‘that if you discover a way—’

‘I will tell you it?’ he says with a crafty grin, which falls off his face like a hallows-mask when he catches my expression.

‘You will give me your
word
,’ I says, stepping towards him, ‘that you will lay a finger on neither Branza nor her mam.’

‘I don’t
have
fingers there,’ he says, resentful. ‘I have paws. If the leddies don’t mind my pawing, I don’t see why I should not paw them.’

‘Content yourself with beasts when you are there,’ I say. ‘I will have your solemn promise not to ruin that girl Branza, however affectionate she treats you.’

He shrugged, the insolent lump. ‘Should she come and sit on me, I would not be pushing her off. And you might not be there to stop me.’

My arm were so ready to hit him, it shivered in its socket. He blinked and flinched at that, though he were eye to eye with me. ‘Your word, Teasel Wurledge,’ I says very low.

He set his lips closed. I held his gaze, and he wavered; then he said, ‘I do not see why I should promise you anything.’

Because I am an honest woolman and respected, and you is the dregs our Bear Day is reduced to. Because I were Bear before you and always will be. Because I am a steady citizen, married and with sons of my own, and you are a feckless drunkard what soiled the skins with your vomit. I might say all this and he would still look at me the same way.