Tender Morsels (55 page)

She could feel the magic there, in some other level of the world, the wellspring and the whirlwind of it. She had used a little drib of it only, scotching Anders’ fever the other night, under Lady Annie’s instructions. (
This I caint get wrong
, the mudwife had said.
This I’ve been doing correct since I first come to womanhood, no doubt of it
.) Now Urdda fairly tingled with all her unused powers. She was going to Rockerly, to live and to work with Miss Dance, the person she most admired in the world! She was apprenticed to a real magic-worker—and she was a sorceress herself! Who knows, she thought, what I might find it in myself to do?

She wrapped her shawl closer around herself and sat back in her seat. At the coach window, out in the fine autumn day, the trees flung past their sunlit leaves of red and gold, like brightest jewels thrown and thrown again from a treasure-box, which, itself being magic, would never be exhausted, never emptied, never spent.

Winter came, and Liga was grateful to be kept indoors by the weather so that she need not meet and greet and converse with complicated true-world people so much, who were always unnerving her with unexpected remarks, and requiring her to devise suitable responses. But she was charmed, too, by the pleasantries and efforts people made at Midwinter, to sing and bring light to the town, if only by torches and lanterns; to bring greenery from the pines on the Mount and warm it to sweet-scentedness in firelit rooms; and to enliven the plainer winter fare with this pie and that preserve, this taste of summer and that, brought carefully through to winter’s depths in wax-sealed pots.

February arrived, and the world lifted slowly to wakefulness again, the streets unmuffling themselves of snow and becoming first grim and treacherous, with ice between the cobbles, then drying, surprised, in the gentler air that came rushing along them, promising nestlings and flower buds and greenery.

Liga and Branza and Annie spent the Day of the Bear as guests of Widow Tems, whose house was on the market square, where every
Bear must pass at least once during the chase. From an upper window they could gain a fine sense of the madness and festivities, and see clearly the wild, roaring Bears in their flapping skin costumes and the maids screaming away ahead of them.

‘How can they stand it?’ said Branza, clutching Liga’s arm, shocked to laughter by the sights below. ‘How terrifying! And then to be caught so roughly, and dirtied so! I would think it would feel so shaming, somehow.’

‘Shaming? Never! ’Tis grand fun!’ Lady Annie hung over the window railing and shook her little fist. ‘Show me your cheeks, Tossy Strap!’

And the girl turned up her laughing face, slime-striped by Bear fingers. ‘Come and run with us, Leddy Annie! I’ll bet you could put on a turn of speed if you wanted!’

The year warmed and flowered and warmed some more. Midsummer came and St Olafred’s bonfire burned high, the sparks spinning off among the stars as the townspeople danced below.

Liga danced with Ramstrong.
You do not dance like a bear
, she thought, and remembered his answer:
But you and I know, Liga . . 
.

Todda had been dead a year, and of course Liga had not been responsible for her dying—how could she ever have thought that of herself?—and the whole town was saying,
Who is he going to take to him, to look after those three children?

They were part of each other’s lives now, the Ramstrongs and the Cottings and Annie. And they were balanced out in what they owed each other, with Ramstrong’s and Todda’s kindness to Urdda paid for by all the women’s assistance after Todda’s death. Liga, Branza, and Urdda were like extra aunts to the children, Annie like an extra grumma, so comfortable were the little ones with them.

And here she was, dancing with him, in the couple-dances and, more bravely, in the round dances this year. Around the circle she went, from hand to hand, and all the men greeted her most politely, and some with that courtly care that made her think, Oh . . . you? And she felt she was beginning to see how matters were organised, how attractions made themselves known, how people sought each
other out and entertained the thought of each other as courting couples, as married ones.

Then she arrived back at Ramstrong and the final part of the dance began, the reunited pairs in procession up the middle. Imagine, always to have this arm at your waist, the arm of a good man and kind, who had been to your heaven and loved it too; who had seen your daughters in their childhoods there and begun wanting daughters himself.

That hand there—as a paw it had once rested against her cheek. If that was a man-gesture, and a man looked into you the way Bear had looked, or spoke to you and abased himself as Bear had rumbled and bowed, that would be a man who felt some attachment, no? That would be a man who had some hopes towards you.

The fiddlers played on and the bonfire roared in the midst of the dancing and games, in the midst of the town in its finery and feasting. I do belong here, Liga told herself at the edge of the field, among friends, and with a daughter nearby. It is where I began, after all, before Mam died, before Da spoiled me. I ought to feel I have come home, and that the life of these goodwives, whirling in their husbands’ arms, is mine to claim too. Surely I have worked hard enough to prove myself deserving? Surely I have raised my daughters happy and healthy enough for their origins not to matter? Her eyes sought out Branza, who was with Sella over there, helping Aran into a woolsack for the men’s race. She feels at home, that is clear; she has no need to inquire after how she was begot, but takes her place quite calm and confident now, in this world. Perhaps I should follow her lead and put past pains behind me, scrub away their last traces and look outward from my workroom somewhat more, and try not to resist whatever joyous events await me, that the true world has in store?

He came to her in the early autumn, almost a year to the day after Urdda left.

‘May I speak with you private?’ he said softly at the door, and
all seemed so right and clear that her heart did not even quicken, as it had tended to lately when he was near.

‘Come into the workroom,’ she said. ‘Branza and Annie are out visiting.’

‘I saw them near the Ash. I thought I would take the opportunity.’

She went around the table to her work. ‘Look, the town have given me bear-pennants to make; the old ones are going to tatters. Six portraits of Ramstrong, they want, all sewn onto yellow silk.’ She laughed and sat in the engoldening afternoon light.

‘Oh, no,’ he said, his eyes on the bear-face that she had embroidered with eye-whites and teeth and a pink pillow of tongue. ‘Bearness is bigger than only me.’

‘Bear of Bears, I have heard them call you,’ Liga said. ‘Should we not give the young men of this town something to aspire to?’ She laughed again—she was laughing too much. She should get her chatter out of his way so that he could say what he had come for, and make her life in this true world all right and complete.

He waited until she had sewn a few stitches. ‘I have come to ask you, Liga.’

The sunshine was warm on her back and shoulder; the yellow silk shone it out, making all corners of the room glow, making Davit’s face glow. There was much in his eyes, but now he had a man’s mouth to speak it; he need not nudge her with his great furred head, or snuff and grunt and cry out, voicelike but inarticulate. ‘Yes?’ she said, and smiled up at him, his face always so kind and thoughtful, so familiar now—the face that anchored her in the true world, that told her she had returned, and why. Then she looked to her stitching hands again, because he was finding words difficult and she wanted to give him peace and time to phrase it however he wanted, without her looking expectant.

‘I have come to ask you for Branza’s hand.’

Her needle stopped in the cloth. Everything stopped—all sound, all movement, life. Just for a moment it stopped, while her hope, while her illusions, detached themselves from the cliff-face of what
was real, what was likely, and collapsed around her. And upon her, crushing her, deafening her, raising a suffocating dust.

Bruised, breathing very carefully, she made another stitch—a poor one that she must undo directly, a black thread straying out into the yellow like a spider’s leg, like a loose hair of the bear who, though wild, must be heraldic, must be better-groomed, less shaggy, than . . . than bears Liga had known.

‘Branza’s hand,’ she said wonderingly, slowly drawing out the errant stitch.

She had not thought Ramstrong could be so cruel. But look at him, speaking there, glowing, his face not a whit less kind than usual. He was
not
cruel; he had no idea what—with that blur of words from which words darted to stab her:
affection, beautiful, protect her and take the best care, feels the same towards me
—what he was disassembling within her, what he was condemning her to live without. How he was embarrassing her! Because of course! Even Branza was somewhat older than he; Liga was old enough to have
mothered
him. How could she ever have thought it possible?

But she had. She had thought he would remember their little time together. She had thought that in his recollection of that day at the streamside, of all those days, all those scratchings and strokings, he would somehow—but how would he ever, in this harsh world? why, everyone would laugh at him!—he would somehow overlook the years between them, would be able to see in her, to love in her again, that younger woman she had been—and still was, here inside; still was! She felt she was crying it out to him, in her slow, careful stitching. She still was that girl, the age that he was now, inside this older body. She had had a good life—nothing had broken or embittered her. He had only to accept her as that girl and she would be that girl again, full of vigour and laughter. Anders, Ousel, Bedella—they all loved her; they did not think her beyond their consideration. How could he—Why did he not—

Still he was talking. They were thinking of wedding before next Midsummer.
Midsummer
. She nearly choked on the thought of the word, on the thought of the time, on the thought of herself dancing, overexcited by the touch of a man, knowing nothing, stupid as ever,
turning her own head with fantasies a woman of twoscore years and more ought to be ashamed of. She sewed, slowly and unsteadily, up the bear’s cheek towards his ear. She had drunk too much dandwin that night; she had lost her senses. But that did not account for the weeks since, when, cold sober and in the clear light of the softening summer days, she had continued to hope—to
expect
, idiot woman!—that Davit Ramstrong intended to marry her.

‘That is,’ he said now, ‘if we have your blessing, if you are happy for us to proceed.’

‘Of course I am, Davit,’ she said, careful not to speak too coolly, or too sweetly either. ‘Of course you have my blessing. We are so much like family already, it is . . . it is wonderful that we truly will be.’ She nodded gravely across the table. It was the most she could do; she could not assemble anything like a smile onto this face of stone.

He thanked her; his voice was uneven from the strength of his feelings, from the strength of his love for her daughter. There was a small silence then, in which everything Liga must not say seemed to clang around the room, ragged and noisy as Strap children:
But I shall be your mother-in-law! You know, of course, that she is my
sister
as well as my daughter. But did you ever feel for me, there by the stream, or anywhere? Oh, tell me I was not mistaken, not such a great fool!

She put the bear-pennant on the table. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I will fetch us some dandwin, and we shall toast your betrothment.’

This they did. Ramstrong’s eyes glistened a little. An actual tear fell from Liga’s, though had he tasted it—had he licked it from her cheek!—he would have known it to be a bitter one, not a tear of joy. And they sipped their wine and talked of many things, true-worldly things: children, and living arrangements, and the timing of the ceremony, and how the marriage would look to other people. He had given her her part:
You are to be my wife’s mother
, he had said. And, always easily directed, Liga slipped straight into what she must do, offering payment for this and for that, keeping always to the practical side of things and away from the subject of her heart, and Branza’s, and most of all, Ramstrong’s.

They talked so long that Annie and Branza came home and found them still talking, and Liga had the exquisite pain of seeing the news
broken to Annie, of seeing Branza radiant with the announcement, bending to kiss Ramstrong’s cheek as he sat there, standing behind him with her hands on his shoulders as if claiming him—but of course she was not!—from her mother, a look in her eye that of course was not triumph, but only happiness spilling over, soured and spoiled into something else only in Liga’s jaundiced eye. And of course Ramstrong did not mean by that smile, by that laugh at Annie’s teasing, to say
Ha! I have escaped you, old-woman Liga!
It only struck that wrong note and distorted itself because Liga’s ears, along with the rest of her, had stiffened with the nightmare she was enduring, and everything was being misshapen on its way into her.