The Ozark trilogy (44 page)

It was over. Over!

Not done properly, of course. Few of the delegates had had their opportunity to speak, and no rebuttals had been offered. Any one of the neglected men could of cried “Point of order!” and demanded that the procedures be observed, that had been their right; but they had not. The Travellers had no doubt been holding their breaths for fear someone
would
come to his senses enough to halt what Delldon Mallard had set in motion. And the Brightwaters, like everyone else, had been vacant-minded with amazement, and miserable with embarrassment, and had let the opportunity pass by and the ayes fall from their mouths as if they didn’t matter . . .

“Men!”
shouted Responsible then, outraged to the point of physical sickness, and she kicked the ailing comset with all her strength. “Bad cess to every last
one
of them!”

She was not alone in her opinion.

Down the center aisle of the Independence Room strode a figure that ought to show Delldon Mallard Smith and his Dukes and Princes what majesty was. She stood almost six feet tall; she was slender as a blade of grass, but there was no hint of frailty to her; a black braid was wound round her head in a coronet that was natural in its magnificence and needed no gold to set it off. And her beauty! In the long periods of time that passed between her rare opportunities to see her sister, Responsible tended to forget the almost awesome beauty that Troublesome of Brightwater carried so casually. She wore a riding costume of plain brown leather, faded and worn, and the heels of her riding boots rang against the polished marble floor, and there was no ornament on her anywhere. She needed none, and Responsible hoped the Smith women were aware of the contrast, them in their gleaming crowns, and their necks and hands hung with baubles like something up for sale on the cheap!

Troublesome needed nothing to carry her voice, either. She gave the Chair-Donald Patrick Brightwater the 133rd, him of the popular name--one glance of contempt that should have withered him into fragments right then and there, and turned to face the remnants of Ozark’s government. And while she shouted at them, her voice echoing back from the walls, Responsible wept and clapped and cheered, and so did the Grannys, one and all.

“Now you’ve done it, you cursed fools!” shouted Troublesome of Brightwater. “Now you’ve gone and done it! I’ve seen foolishness in my day, I thought I’d seen all the kinds of foolishness there were, but you have topped it all! The year three thousand and twelve, this is; a time when we could if we so chose travel from star to star across our skies; a time when the marvels of magic have taken from the backs of our people the burdens that other ages thought the natural lot of humankind forevermore. A time of wonder-if we chose that it should be . . . But you, you Smiths!
You Smiths!
You choose to throw us back into the darkest of Dark Ages; shall we have the pox, too, to make our Kingdoms more authentic? Eh,
Your Majesty?”

She waited, and when nobody challenged her, she went on.

“And I’m a fool, too,” she said, “to stand here wasting my voice on youall. My fellow fools, I should be saying. My dear, fellow fools . . . You’ve done it, you’re a Confederation no longer; you’ve thrown away five hundred years of striving toward a respectable system of government, thrown it away for a mass of confusion and a pile of chaos, thrown it away for a cheap parlor trick that left you all gawking at the funny man and his funny hat and his funny scepter . . . I speak for Brightwater-no, dear Uncle, you stood and let this pass without a word, don’t you interfere with me now, and don’t you
presume
to speak for us!-I, Troublesome of Brightwater, l speak for this Castle and this Kingdom, and I tell you to get out of this room and out of this Hall and out of my sight! You sicken me, you disgrace this ancient building . . . Goats have more sense than you, I’ll let them in here; Brightwater will stable its Mules in here, they have an intelligence that merits it. But you! Fools! In the name of the Twelve Bleeding Suffering Gates, begone from here before I take a whip to your pitiful
backs . . .
and don’t you think, don’t you think for one breath, that I wouldn’t! You deserve whatever happens to you now . . . and Brightwater will weep no tears for you!”

Her voice ran them from the room as surely as if it had been a whip, and in the magnificence of her rage she was as sure a scourge as an earthquake or a flood would have been, and even the Magicians of Rank went scurrying out of the Hall with all the speed they could manage.

As for the Royal Family . . . they were a tad encumbered in their heavy velvets, and no doubt suffering greatly from the heat in them. And Responsible cackled like a squawker in its coop to see two of the Baronets-Baronets! they could at least have gotten the titles right!-chasing down the aisles after the little golden circlets that had fallen from their unaccustomed heads.

Granny Hazelbide came straight to Responsible’s room to tell her about what she’d missed.

“Law, you’d of been proud of your sister!” she said, rocking fast. “You saw her order that pack of cowards and ninnies out of the Hall; you should of seen ‘em scurry, like something was yapping at their tailfeathers, and all the `royal’ Smiths tripping over their purple trains!” The Granny smacked her knee and chortled deep in her throat. “And then your sister went all around that Hall, child, and she locked every window in every room, all three stories of them, and she locked the back door and the side doors, and then she threw the bolts and slammed the front door as well. Left the place tight as a cast iron egg, she did. And then she marched out to get her Mule-know where she’d hitched it?”

“To the statue on the lawn, I expect,” said Responsible.

“Quite right,
quite
right, and tied up to First Granny’s left ankle! She untied that Mule and rode it right down the street and out of town with never so much as a look back at anybody, but there was no trouble atall reading what she was thinking purely from the look of her back! Not to mention the Mule’s, but we’ll leave that lie. I never thought to see such a sight as I saw today, never in all my life-and I’m sorry you weren’t there. Your delegates were damned fools, which comes as no surprise; but your feisty sister! Law, Responsible, she was a privilege to behold and an honor to observe!”

“I didn’t even get to say hello to her,” said Responsible slowly. “And I wanted to, Granny-I realized, the other day, I’ve been missing her.”

Granny Hazelbide stretched out her hand and tucked in a strand of the girl’s hair that had come loose from the ribbon binding it back. “She came when you sent for her, child,” she said gently. “There’s nobody else alive she’d do that for.”

“I suppose I’ll have to make do with that.”

“I reckon you will-and appreciate it.”

“Granny?”

“Yes, child?”

“Tell me how that happened.”

“Tell you where one end of a wedding ring starts and the other ends, you mean? It’s that kind of question.”

Responsible ignored her, and kept worrying at it.

“
How,
” she demanded, “after all the planning, and all the discussing, and all the saying what we’d do if this happened and how we’d do if that happened, and all the rest of it . . .
how could such a fool thing happen?”

“You’ve put your finger on it,” said Granny Hazelbide. “We had all our preparations made, like you said, for many a different comealong; but we never thought to prepare against a fool thing! And that is how they got us. You can use all the logic you like, seeing what this cause will do for this consequence . . . but nobody’s so wise they can plan for fools. There’s no logic to a fool, Responsible, just no logic atall-remember that.”

Responsible swallowed hard, and nodded, not that it would do her much good to remember it.

“What’s happening now, Granny Hazelbide?” she asked. “I don’t have the heart to go see for myself.”

“Just about what you’d expect to be happening,” said the Granny. “As fast as they can pack up, the Families are riding out of here, flying out of here, sailing out of here. They can’t look each other in the eye, and for
sure
they can’t look at the Brightwaters! They’re stuffing their faces in the diningrooms, making their hastiest excuses to your mother, and then heading for their homes like the sorry shamed creatures they rightly ought to consider theirselves.”

She fanned herself briskly; she’d come as close to a run on her way here as a woman of ninety could get, and she was feeling the warmth.

“It’d of been a mighty different thing if it’d been done
right,”
she went on. “Say the Confederation
had
fallen, in spite of the speeches and the rebuttals, there’d still have been the other three days of the Jubilee. Jeremiah Thomas Traveller would of organized it all so each of the Twelve Kingdoms could of met in smaller rooms of the Hail, and he’d of had trade treaties going, and plans drawn up for Parliaments or some such all around, and brand-new Ambassadors flying back and forth from room to room, feeling important . . . It wouldn’t of been what we wanted-but it would still of been a Jubilee, and done with dignity! This was a Mule of a different breed, Responsible. None of ‘em quite realizes yet what’s been done, none of ‘em wants to admit they behaved like tadlings deciding who’s to be It-they just want to be gone, with their tails between their legs. Purple velvet tails, in the case of the Smiths.”

“Well,” said Responsible bitterly, “the Economist should be happy. This will save Castle Brightwater three days’ rations for near on two hundred people, and a respectable number of Mules.”

“It’s a sorry mess, child, and a scandalous waste.”

“Not just for us, Granny-think of the Lewises. They’ve got no money to spend on frills like trips to Brightwater, but they sent twenty-four, and every last one of them in Sundy best . . . I know how long they had to save to do that.”

“There was no way we could of known,” Granny Hazelbide insisted.

“There should of been!”

“And there should be only bliss and glory, but there isn’t. How many nights did you spend casting Spells, trying to see your way through this, Responsible’? Not even the Magicians of Rank could say how it would come out. All any of you got for your efforts was `There’ll be trouble’!
I
remember.”

She stood up then, and brushed her skirts down, looking grim. “And I’m sorry to have to tell you that there’s a piece of trouble left over,” she muttered.

“Ah, Granny! A piece of trouble-we haven’t even seen the beginning of the troubles yet!”

“This is something . . . more ordinary.”

“What? What’s happened?”

“Well, now, it seems as there’s a Bridgewraith.”

“Oh, Granny Hazelbide!” Responsible knew she must look despair doubled and pleated, but it was too much. “Not now!”

“Now,” sighed the Granny. “You recollect that little bit of a bridge on Pewter Street, the one they call Humpback, though it has about as much of a hump as I do-that’s where she is.”

“You know who it is?”

“For sure I do. It’s Mynna of McDaniels. But there being strangers in town, and young people as weren’t here when Mynna died-she’s been taken home twice already. They say her mother’s in a sorry state, Responsible; Mynna’s been dead it must be twenty years this October. Two of the Airy Grannys are down in the diningroom this minute telling those as are left eating not to pay Mynna any mind no matter how she cries and begs; but it won’t be easy. Mynna was a pretty little thing, and she’s standing on the bridge crying fit to kill, wearing the blue dress she had on the day she tripped and fell off that bridge into the water. Hit her head on a rock, Mynna did, and drowned in water not even six foot deep, and her a good strong swimmer for a girl of ten. I remember it like it was yesterday.”

“I’d better-”

Granny Hazelbide stopped her, pushing her back into her chair with one firm hand.

“You’d `better’ nothing-you stay right here,” she said. “I’ll be going along to Humpback Bridge myself, soon as it’s dark, and I’ll take Mynna of McDaniels’ hand and lead her back to the graveyard where she belongs. That’s Granny business, and not suitable for you to concern yourself with it.”

“She won’t
stay
in the graveyard, Granny-they never do.”

“Then I’ll go down and lead her back every night for so long as it takes to convince her, and two or three times a night if it’s needful. And some of the other Grannys’ll spell me. A month or two, she’ll settle back down.”

Responsible rubbed at her eyes with both hands; the sandy feeling was a torment, and tonight, somehow, she’d have to get some sleep. But she said, “I don’t mind going down there, Granny.”

“Nor do I,” said the old woman, “nor do I. And I’m not worn out with all this the way you are. At ninety a body doesn’t need much sleep.”

“I thank you-and I do mean it.”

“I know you do, child. And I’ll have a little something sent up to you to
see
that you sleep this night. Mind you drink it all down, you’re falling over in your tracks.”

Responsible nodded, and leaned her head back in the chair, weary to her bones and beyond.

At the door, the Granny stopped suddenly and stood with one hand on the knob.

“One more thing, Responsible,” she said, “and I reckon you’d best hear it from me. I’d be averse to your hearing it from Granny Leeward, for example, and if I know that one she’ll be at you with it before supper-or your mother will, one. It’ll be no surprise to you.”