High Sorcery (8 page)

“It will grow again,” he consoled.

“To no purpose, except to pleasure my vanity. Yes, we are tied together. But you do not regret it, Ka-rak—”

“Neither do you, witch.” There was no longer any barrier between their minds, as there was none between their bodies. “What destiny will you now spin for the two of us?”

“A great one. Tousuth knew my power-to-come. I would now realize it.” Her chin went up. “And you with me, Ka-rak. By this.” her hand rested lightly on the belt.

“Doubtless you will set us up as rulers over Sampur?” he said lazily.

“Sampur!” she sniffed. “This world is wide—” Her arms went out as if to encircle all which lay beyond the tower walls.

Craike drew her back to him jealously. “For that there is more than (imp enough. This is an hour for something else, even in a warlock's world.”

THROUGH THE NEEDLE'S EYE

I
T WAS NOT
her strange reputation which attracted me to old Miss Ruthevan, though there were stories to excite a solitary child's morbid taste. Rather it was what she was able to create, opening a whole new world to the crippled girl I was thirty years ago.

Two years before I made that momentous visit to Cousin Althea I suffered an attack of what was then known as infantile paralysis. In those days, before Salk, there was no cure. I was fourteen when I met Miss Ruthevan, and I had been told for weary months that I was lucky to be able to walk at all, even though I must do so with a heavy brace on my right leg. I might accept that verdict outwardly, but the me imprisoned in the thin adolescent's body was a rebel.

Cousin Althea's house was small, and on the wrong side of the wrong street to claim gentility. (Cramwell did not have a railroad to separate the comfortable, smug sheep from the aspiring goats.) But her straggling back garden ran to a wall of mellow, red brick patterned by green moss, and in one place a section of this barrier had broken down so one could hitch up to look into the tangled mat of vine and brier which now covered most of the Ruthevan domain.

Three-fourths of that garden had reverted to the wild, but around the bulk of the house it was kept in some order. The fat, totally deaf old woman who ruled Miss Ruthevan's domestic concerns could often he seen poking about, snipping off flowers or leaves, after examining each with the care of a cautious shopper or filling a pan with wizened berries. Birds loved the Ruthevan garden and built whole colonies of nests in its unpruned trees. Bees and butterflies were thick in the undisturbed peace. Though I longed to explore, I never quite dared, until the day of the quilt

That had been a day of disappointment. There was a Sunday school picnic to which Ruth. Cousin Althea's daughter, and T were invited. I knew that it was not for one unable to play ball, race or swim. Proudly I refused to go giving the mendacious excuse that my leg ached. Filled with bitter
envy, I watched Ruth leave. I refused Cousin Althea's offer to let me make candy, matching off, lurch-push to perch on the wall.

There was something new in the garden beyond. An expanse of color Flapped languidly from a clothes line, giving tantalizing glimpses of it. Before I knew it, I tumbled over the wall, acquiring a goodly number” of scrapes and bruises on the way, and struggled through a straggle of briers to see better.

It was worth my straggle. Cousin Althea had quilts in plenty, mostly made by Grandma Moss, who was considered by the family to be an artist at needlework. But what I viewed now was as clearly above the best efforts of Grandma as a Rembrandt above an inn sign.

This was applique work, each block of a different pattern; though, after some study, I became aware that the whole was to be a panorama of autumn. There were flowers, fruits, berries and nuts, each with their attendant clusters of leaves, while the border was an interwoven wreath of maple and oak foliage in the richest coloring. Not only was the appliqué so perfect one could not detect a single stitch, but the quiltinc over-pattern was as delicate as lace. It was old; its once white background had been time-dyed cream; and it was the most beautiful tiling I had ever seen.

“Well, what do you think of it?”

I lurched as I tried to turn quickly, catching for support at the trunk of a gnarled apple tree. On the brick walk from the house stood old Miss Ruthevan. She was tall and held herself stiffly straight, the masses of her thick, white hair built into a formal coil which, by rights, should have supported a tiara. From throat to instep she was covered by a loose robe in a neutral shade of blue-gray which fully concealed her body.

Ruth had reported Miss Ruthevan to be a terrifying person; her nickname among the children was “old witch.” But after my first flash of panic, I was not alarmed, being too bemused by the quilt.

“T think it's wonderful. All fall things—”

“It's a bride quilt,” she replied shortly, “made for a September bride.”

She moved and lost all her majesty of person, for she limped in an even more ungainly fashion than I, weaving from side to side as if about to lose her balance at any moment. When she halted and put her hand on the quilt, she was once more an uncrowned queen. Her face was
paper white, her lips blue lines. But her sunken, very alive eyes probed me.

“Who are you?”

“Ernestine Williams. I'm staying with Cousin Althea.” I pointed to the wall.

Her thin brows, as white as her hair, drew into a small frown. Then she nodded. “Catherine Moss's granddaughter, yes. Do you sew, Ernestine?”

I shook my head, oddly ashamed. There was a vast importance to that question, I felt. Maybe that gave me the courage to add, “I wish I could—like that.” I pointed a finger at the quilt. I surprised myself, for never before had I wished to use a needle.

Miss Ruthevan's clawlike hand fell heavily on my shoulder. She swung her body around awkwardly, using me as a pivot, and then drew me along with her. I strove to match my limp to her wider lurch, up three worn steps into a hallway, which was very dark and cool out of the sun.

Shut doors flanked us, but the one at the far end stood open, and there she brought me, still captive in her strong grasp. Once we were inside she released me, to make her own crab's way to a tall-backed chair standing in the full light of a side window. There she sat enthroned, as was right and proper.

An embroidery frame stood before the chair, covered with a throw of white cloth. At her right hand was a low table bearing a rack of innumerable, small spindles, each wound with colorful thread.

“Look around,” she commanded. “You are a Moss. Catherine Moss had some skill; maybe you have inherited it.”

I was ready to disclaim any of my grandmother's talent; but Miss Ruthevan, drawing off the shield cloth and folding it with small flicks, ignored me. So I began to edge nervously about the room, staring wide-eyed at the display there.

The walls were covered with framed, glass-protected needlework. Those pieces to my left were very old, the colors long faded, the exquisite stitchery almost too dim to see. But, as I made my slow progress, each succeeding picture became brighter and more distinct. Some were the conventional samplers, but the majority were portraits or true pictures. As I skirted needlework chairs and dodged a fire screen, I saw that the art was in use everywhere. I was in a shrine to needle creations which had been brought to the highest peak of perfection and beauty. As I made that journey of discovery, Miss Ruthevan stitched away the minutes, pausing
now and then to study a single half-open white rose in a small vase on her table.

“Did you make all these, Miss Ruthevan?” I blurted out at List.

She took two careful stitches before she answered. “No, There have always been Ruthevan women so talented, for three hundred years. It began"—her blue lips curved in a very small shadow of a smile, though she did not rum her attention from her work—"with Grizel Ruthevan, of a family a king chose to outlaw—which was, perhaps, hardly wise of him.” She raised her hand and pointed with the needle she held to the first of the old frames. It seemed to me that a sparkle of sunlight gathered on the needle and lanced through the shadows about the picture she so indicated. “Grizel Ruthevan, aged seventeen—she was the first of us. But there were enough to follow. I am the last.”

“You mean your—your ancestors-did all this.”

Again she smiled that curious smile. “Not all of them, my dear. Our art requires a certain cast of mind, a talent you may certainly call it. My own aunt, for example did not have it; and, of course, my mother, not being born a Ruthevan, did not. But my great-aunt Vannessa was very able.”

I do not know how it came about, but when I left, I was committed to the study of needlework under Miss Ruthevan's teaching; though she gave me to understand from the first that the perfection I saw about me was not the result of amateur work, and that here, as in all other arts, patience and practice as well as aptitude were needed.

I went home full of the wonders of what I had seen; and when I cut single-mindedly across Ruth's account of her day, she roused to counterattack.

“She's a witch, you know!” She teetered back and forth on the boards of the small front porch. “She makes people disappear; maybe she'll do that to you if you hang around over there.”

“Ruthie!” Cousin Althea, her face flushed from baking, stood behind the patched screen. Her daughter was apprehensively quiet as she came out. But I was more interested in what Ruthie had said than any impending scolding.

“Makes people disappear—how?”

“That's an untruth, Ruthie,” my cousin said firmly. True to her upbringing, Cousin Althea thought the word “lie” coarse. “Never let me hear you say a thing like that about Miss Ruthevan acain. She has had a very sad life—”

“Because she's lame?” I challenged.

Cousin Althea hesitated; truth won over tact “Partly. You'd never think it to look at her now, but when she was just a little older than you girls she was a real beauty. Why, I remember mother telling about how people would go to their windows just to watch her drive by with her father, the Colonel. He had a team of matched grays and a carriage he'd bought in New York.

“She went away to school, too, Anne Ruthevan did. And that's where she met her sweetheart. He was the older brother of one of her schoolmates.”

“But Miss Ruthevan's an old maid!” Ruth protested. “She didn't ever marry.”

“No.” Cousin Althea sat down in the old, wooden porch rocker and picked up a palm leaf fan to cool her face, “No, she didn't ever marry. All her good fortune turned bad almost overnight, you might say.

“She and her father went out driving. It was late August and she was planning to be married in September. There was a bad storm came up very sudden. It frightened those grays and they ran away down on the river road. They didn't make the turn there and the carriage was smashed up. The Colonel was killed. Miss Anne—well, for days everybody thought she'd die, too.

“Her sweetheart came up from New York. My mother said he was the handsomest man: tall, with black hair waving down a little over his forehead. He stayed with the Chambers family. Mr. Chambers was Miss Anne's uncle on her mother's side. He tried every day to see Miss Anne, only she would never have him in—she must have known by then-”

“That she was always going to be lame,” I said flatly.

Cousin Althea did not look at me when she nodded agreement

“He went away, finally. But he kept coming back. After a while people guessed what was really going on. It wasn't Miss Anne he was coming to see now; it was her cousin, Rita Chambers.

“By then Miss Anne had found out some other pretty unhappy things. The Colonel had died sudden, and he left his business in a big tangle. By the time someone who knew how got to looking after it most of the money was gone. Here was Miss Anne, brought up to have most of what she had a mind for; and now she had nothing. Losing her sweetheart to Rita and then her money; it changed her. She shut herself
away from most folks. She was awful young—only twenty.

“Pretty soon Rita was planning
her
wedding—they were going to be married in August, just about a year after that ride which changed Miss Anne's life. Her fiance came up from New York a couple of days ahead of time; he was staying at Doc Bernard's. Well, the wedding day came, and Doc was to drive the groom to the church. He waited a good long time and finally went up to his room to hurry him along a little, but he wasn't there. His clothes were all laid out, nice and neat. I remember hearing Mrs. Bernard, she was awfully old then, telling as how it gave her a turn to see the white rose he was to wear in his buttonhole still sitting in a glass of water on the chest of drawers. But he was gone—didn't take his clothes nor nothing—just went. Nobody saw hide nor hair of him afterwards.”

“But what could have happened to him, Cousin Althea?” I asked.

“They did some hunting around, but never found anyone who saw him after breakfast that morning. Most people finally decided he was ashamed of it all, that he felt it about Miss Anne. ‘Course, that didn't explain why he left his clothes all lying there. Mother always said she thought both Anne and Rita were well rid of him. It was a ten day's wonder all right, but people forgot in time. The Chamberses took Rita away to a watering place for a while; she was pretty peeked. Two years later she married John Ford; he'd always been sweet on her. Then they moved nut west someplace. I heard as how she'd taken a dislike to this whole town and told John she'd say ‘yes' to him provided he moved. “Since then—well. Miss Anne, she began to do a little better. She was able to get out of bed that winter and took to sewing—not making clothes and such, but embroidery. Real important people have bought some of her fancy pictures; I heard tell a couple are even in museums. And you're a very lucky girl, Ernestine, if she'll teach you like you said.” It was not until I was in bed that night, going over my meeting with Miss Ruthevan and Cousin Althea's story, that something gave me a queer start: the thought of that unclaimed white rose.

Most of the time I had spent with Miss Ruthevan she had been at work. But I had never seen the picture she was stitching, only her hands holding the needle dipping in and out, or bringing a thread into the best light as she matched it against the petals of the rose on her table.

That had been a perfect rose; it might have been carved from ivory. Miss Ruthevan had not taken it out of the glass; she had not moved out of her chair when I left. But now I was sure that, when I had looked back from the door, the rose had been gone. Where? It was a puzzle. But, of course, Miss Ruthevan must have done something with it when I went to look at some one of the pictures she had called to my attention.

Cousin Althea was flattered that Miss Ruthevan had shown interest in me; I know my retelling of the comment about Grandma Moss had pleased her greatly. She carefully supervised my dress before my departure for the Ruthevan house the next day, and she would not let me take the shortcut through the garden. I must limp around the block and approach properly through the front door. I did, uncomfortable in the fresh folds of skirt, so ill looking I believed, above the ugliness of the brace.