The Falcon in the Barn (Book 4 Forest at the Edge series) (49 page)

But there she stood in multiple layers of
silk fanning herself so rapidly she could have taken flight. “Oh,
Perrin! I’ve—Wait.” She stared at Radan. “You’re not the
colonel.”

Radan offered her his hand. “No, ma’am. I’m
Lieutenant Radan, the one who wrote to you about Captain Thorne
falling ill? He and I are good friends, ma’am. I’m sure he’s
mentioned me—”

“
No. Never.” She looked up
and saw someone who did make her smile. “Now,
there
you are,
Colonel Shin!” She took Radan’s hand only to get down the steps
more quickly. “What a horrible ordeal! A terrible drive! I do feel
a bit faint . . .”

She tried to fall dramatically into Perrin’s
arms except that he didn’t unfold them. Instead, he used his
shoulder to nudge upright again.

“
Yes,” he said casually,
“the drive is a bit long and hot. Radan can show you to your
quarters and get you something to drink. He’ll be at your disposal
while you’re at the fort—”

“
Fort Shin
, as it’s
been renamed,” she beamed at him, suddenly quite recovered from her
‘horrible ordeal.’ “What an honor,” she gushed. “You realize no
one’s ever had a fort named after him?”

She took his arm, even though he hadn’t
offered it, and turned him to the buildings. “Show me everything,
Perrin—and I mean
everything
—about Fort Shin!” She squeezed
his bicep and released a giggle that sounded appropriate coming
only from girls younger than fourteen years old.

He unhooked her grip from his arm and tilted
his head to Radan. “I’m sure you understand,
Mrs. Thorne
,
that with the pox outbreak we are short on manpower, and I am
needed in about three other places right now. Therefore Radan is to
take care of your needs and see you to
your son
.”

“
Oh, yes!” Versula
exclaimed, as if remembering why she’d come all that way. “How’s
our Lemuel?”

“
Your
Lemuel is
recovering, slowly. The pox seems to take at least two
weeks—”

“
How about dinner?” she
whispered, taking his arm again and ignoring Radan who stood on her
other side, patiently waiting.

“
The lieutenant will bring
it to you—”

“
No, Perrin, I meant you
and me—”

“
And
my wife
Mahrree? No, I’m sorry. She’s still recuperating. She fell ill last
week, lost her mother to it . . . I need to stay by her
side.”

Something in Versula’s eyes registered a
slight level of panic, as if she were trying to communicate
something
else
but it was being missed.

That’s because Perrin was purposely dodging
it. He pried her hand, none too gently, from off of his arm and
clapped it onto Radan’s.

“
Captain Thorne’s expecting
you, Mrs. Thorne,” and he strode back to the tower just as sweat
began to bead on his forehead.

Chapter 19
~
“Who will go next?!”

T
he next three weeks
were unlike anything the Shins, Edge, or the world had experienced
before, which was why each morning Mahrree forced herself out of
bed, a difficult daily ritual.

“
I’m healthy enough that I
can help,” she reminded her weak muscles. At this point, she wasn’t
sure if she felt drained every day because of the pox, the extra
work, or because her mother had died. Anyway, lying around didn’t
help. Moving, however, did.

This morning Perrin was already up, judging
by the sounds coming from the kitchen downstairs. He was trying to
make breakfast again which Mahrree wholly appreciated but needed to
prevent. In his earnestness to get her strong again, he’d cook more
bacon than the entire neighborhood could consume, then wondered why
she didn’t finish it all. Peto did his best, but even a growing
teenager had his limits.

Mahrree dressed and made her way down the
stairs to find Jaytsy putting on a battered straw hat which—may
Joriana’s spirit forgive her—a few years ago was a pricey piece of
art from the hat district of Idumea.

“
I was just on my way out,”
Jaytsy told her. “Porridge is ready, but I think Father’s adding
sausage to it.”

Oh dear
, was what Mahrree was tempted
to say, but instead she smiled. “Thank you, all, for helping. I
think I can manage from here on out now.”

“
Good!” Peto said, coming
out of his room. “Let’s just say that Father and Jaytsy don’t have
Grandma Peto’s knack for cooking.”

Jaytsy glowered at him. “If Mother would let
me have Grandmother’s recipe file, I might!”

“
Later, I promise,” Mahrree
told her. “I just need to organize it a bit. With so many loose
pages, I’m afraid something will fall out of it if I don’t sort
them all first.”

But Mahrree wasn’t worried about losing a
recipe. She’d sent Jaytsy to her grandmother’s as soon as she was
coherent enough to explain where the recipe file was hiding—in a
false bottom of Hycymum’s underwear drawer. So exhausted was
Mahrree that it took her a few minutes to understand why her
children thought that description was funny.

Hycymum’s recipes were her most prized
possession—probably the only thing Mahrree wanted of her mother’s,
along with a few good serving forks and a wide platter—and Hycymum
never wanted anyone else to have her recipes but her family.

And Mahrree knew why. Secured in the middle
of them, between some seemingly mundane descriptions of how to use
herbs that everyone else would likely skip over, was a fragile,
ancient piece of parchment written in a small, careful hand over
130 years ago.

Mahrree couldn’t let even her husband or
children know she had forbidden documents that were to have been
handed over to King Querul, then to be destroyed—accidentally,
of course
—in that great fire. Mahrree had already memorized
the document in the middle of the day when everyone was gone,
feeling the force of ancestors, and wondering where she should
secure it next.

And she really did want to sort the rest of
the recipes. Hycymum was a wonderful cook, but why she thought
“pork” and “pickles” should be clustered together, Mahrree couldn’t
fathom.

“
There she is, up and
about!” Perrin boomed cheerily as he brought a big pot of something
steaming from the kitchen and set it on the table.

“
My, but you’re in a good
mood,” she grinned. He’d been quite chipper for the last couple of
days, ever since Versula Thorne left.

“
The message arrived last
night; she’s arrived in Idumea and therefore we’re all safe!” he
informed them.

Jaytsy sighed in relief. “So I don’t have to
worry about running into her at the market again, where she can
tell me all about how sitting next to her
dear
Lemuel
all day is boring, books were boring, and how she’d still prefer to
have my company.”

Perrin nodded. “Nor do I have to hear her
hint for any more dinner invitations—”

“
And I’m
so sorry
I
kept having relapses,” Mahrree sighed dramatically as her children
snorted.

“
Oh, yes,” her husband said
soberly. “And it was quite convenient that I had to run home to
check on you the day she discovered there are a couple of inns in
the village that could have fed us—”

“
Just the
two of
you
,” Mahrree clarified. “I’m sure that’s what she was thinking
when she invited
you
.”

“
Yes, subtle,” he rolled
his eyes. “Eating alone with another woman in public. And guess
what just opened up again?”

“
The dress shops?” Jaytsy
said. “Not that I wished for the owners to get ill, but it was good
timing so that Mrs. Thorne couldn’t take me to buy ‘something
decent’.”

“
It’s because she saw you
wearing that in the market.” Mahrree gestured to Jaytsy’s dress,
another Idumean one-of-a-kind pale blue linen sewn specifically for
Joriana Shin, now with a few mud stains and the sleeves shortened
by removing several inches of ruffles.

But since it was created by Kuman, neither
Mahrree nor Jaytsy had any qualms about letting it become Jaytsy’s
favorite battered work dress. Jaytsy had earlier torn off the
ruffles in order to tie up tomato plants in a neighbor’s garden—a
phrase Mahrree still wasn’t too sure of, but didn’t feel like
showing her ignorance about.

Peto merely shrugged as he peered into the
pot. “I don’t know what all of you are going on about. I never saw
the woman.” He gave the porridge and sausage mix an experimental
sniff and bobbed his head. He’d eat it. He’d eat anything.

“
Well, of course you
didn’t,” Mahrree said, scooping out the slop for Peto that reminded
her of something she used to clean up in his changing cloths. “She
had no interest in you, and since none of us have any interest in
Idumea, I think we can forget all about Mrs. Versula
Thorne.”

Something in Peto’s gray eyes darkened when
Mahrree said that none of them had any interest in Idumea, but he
dug into his breakfast anyway.

“
So where are you off to
this morning?” Mahrree asked brightly.

Peto recovered, swallowing down his
breakfast. “Rector Yung said a family on the west side needs
someone to look after their goats. It seems today I’m learning how
to milk them,” he grimaced. “Yung had a lot of other tasks and
families needing help on that list of his, but no . . . I’m
destined to be a goat milker.”

Jaytsy took her seat next to him. “They have
a baby, Peto. She needs the milk. If you want, you can join me in
gathering eggs at five different houses, and weeding at the
Briters’, and—”

“
All right, all right,” he
sighed loudly. “Yung’s got a list all ready for me. I don’t need to
share in yours.”

Mahrree sighed as well. “It’s become Needing
Season this year, instead of Weeding Season. So many people ill, so
many needing help . . .”

“
And here I thought I was
lucky for being immune,” Peto grumbled.

“
You are,” Perrin said
sternly. “People aren’t just being ill, Peto; they’re dying, too. I
have soldiers digging mass graves in the burial grounds to
accommodate them all. If this continues we may lose up to ten
percent of the village. You can certainly milk a goat or two, and
learn a few more tasks.”

“
I know,” Peto murmured
apologetically. “I was just—”

“—
being your usual,
obnoxious self, I know,” Perrin said, a bit calmer. “I was like you
at your age, and I wished I hadn’t been.”

“
Me too,” Mahrree
confessed.

Peto looked up at them. “So I’ve inherited
this? Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“
And today,” Mahrree
announced, “I’ll try to get my mother’s house in order.”

Her husband winced. “That sounds like a lot
of work, Mahrree.”

She shook her head. “I already took what I
wanted. I was just going to throw open the doors and let the
neighborhood have what they wanted.”

“
A lot of those old ladies
are still sick, though,” Jaytsy pointed out. “I think Grandma Peto
infected a third of her friends.”

“
She did,” Mahrree agreed
sadly. “I’ll check with them to see which ones want her collection
of carved painted bugs, who might want her stack of cloth
scraps—may be a riot for that—who wants to claim her dish
cloths—”

“
First best, second best,
third best . . .” Peto murmured.

Mahrree exhaled, realizing it did sound like
a lot of work.

“
Some people sell it all,”
Jaytsy suggested.

“
But we don’t need to take
anyone’s silver,” Mahrree told her. “We have enough. Let others
enjoy all the things my mother felt necessary to acquire over the
years. I have no problem giving it away.”

“
And I thank you,” Perrin
said as he served himself breakfast, “that you’re not bringing home
her collection of porcelain purple chickens that whistle when you
blow into them.”

“
We’re all thankful for
that!” Peto declared.

Perrin shook his head sadly. “I never had the
heart to tell her that chickens don’t whistle. And aren’t purple.”
He hesitated and turned to Jaytsy. “They’re not, right?”

She giggled. “How is that my parents can be
so smart and so ignorant at the same time?”

“
I know,” Peto mumbled as
he swallowed his breakfast. “Chickens whistle all the time. Parents
know nothing . . .”

---

Jaytsy hurried over to the Briters after
breakfast to get an early start on thinning the carrots before the
day grew too hot; she’d take care of Yung’s list of families
requesting assistance later.

When she approached the Briters’ farm she
noticed unusual activity. Mr. Briter was hitching their horses to
their wagon, and Mrs. Briter was rushing to put a basket in the
back.

Jaytsy broke into a run to reach them.
“What’s happened? Where are you going?”

Sewzi Briter set down the basket and turned
to Jaytsy, distraught. “It’s our son,” she said tearfully. “We
received word late last night that he’s been taken with the pox.
Mr. Briter’s brother and his wife have been tending to him, but
Jaytsy, they don’t think he’s improving.” She wiped away a few
tears, and Jaytsy put a comforting arm around her.

“
I’ll pray that he’ll be
fine,” she said. “If my mother can beat it, surely your son can.
Just don’t worry, Mrs. Briter.”