The Returning (25 page)

“Graceful?” Stepmother called, but softly, from halfway up the stairs. Just as she had led Graceful from the yard, she now led her into the hall.

Uplanders. They stood like a wall, with hanging black curtains of hair, and shoulders square with armor. They wore tunics over their trews and over their armor, shorter than a dress, much longer than a shirt, split at the sides for their long, swinging warrior-strides, belted on the hips and swords stuck through the belts. Tunics and trews were stitched and patterned with gold and scarlet and poison-green, and under the layer of dust their boots shone black and inky as their hair.

Father put his arm out wide and Graceful went to him and stood safe in his hold, watching from there: an old man, a young man, and Attling's Oldest.

“My daughter, Graceful.”

She was suddenly shy. She blushed and curtsied and could look only at the floor. They bowed and spoke, yaddling.

“Lord Ryuu; Lord Gyaar, son to Lord Ryuu.” Attling's Oldest gave their names in a strong farmer's accent, bowing after each name, and with each bow his right sleeve flopped, knotted, empty.

The Uplanders were laughing. So were Father, Stepmother, and though Graceful did not know at what, she laughed too.
Ryuu
. She mouthed it. It was a slippy sort of name, hard to get the tongue around.

Then it was done and they were going. Past her they walked, in time, their tread heavy, their armor creaking and chinking, and then she did stare at them. At the door the younger one of them slowed, falling out of step, and sent a long look over his shoulder. Graceful saw his face aslant and beshadowed and it was everything she'd heard of Uplanders, all pushed thin, nose high-bridged, cheekbones too high, too flat. Attling's Oldest said something, a single word, and the Uplander laughed and turned his face forward, found his fellows' rhythm, and they thumped and clattered together out of Fenister Fort and into the yard; into the yard and onto their horses; onto their horses and away, Father and Stepmother bowing, then standing and watching them out of sight.

 

“THIS IS THE gist of it,” said Father. And stopped.

Stepmother patted the settle next to her. Graceful sat at her side and thought of Uplanders, here in her yard, hall! The air remembered them, smelled different, she was sure.

Stepmother poured tea, for Graceful, Father, Garrad, herself. Father did not sit. He stood before the hearth, one hand holding his teacup (fingers wrapped around it, no saucer), the other stuck in his belt, under his belly. “The Lord of Dorn-Lannet—”

“Arno!” said Stepmother. “I've said, and I still say, I do think we should wait.”

“Nonsense! Besides, it's all signed and sealed now.” Father tipped his head back and emptied his teacup in one great swig. “Another cup of tea, please, Vivrain.”

“Aye, tea, My Lord.”

“What!” said Father. “Do not you go all high and mighty with me. I thought we were agreed.”

Graceful looked from one to the other of them. “Is it war again?”

“It will be.” Stepmother sat very straight and proper. “Between your father and me.”

“Gar!” said Father.

Stepmother clacked her teacup down. “Faugh!”

“Well?” Father took Graceful's hand. “Daughter?”

Graceful thought,
I have misunderstood. I have most certainly misunderstood.
“What, Father?”

“Have you not figured it? The Lord of Dorn-Lannet's son asks you to wife.”

Graceful pulled her hand free. “
Father!
”

“He is a fair man. I would not let you go to a man not decent.”

“He is an
Uplander
.”

Garrad shifted and scratched and said, “I do think there's plenty maids in the village would say aye. Even if he does look all wrong.”

Graceful started to cry.

 

STEPMOTHER AND FATHER carried on the argument over the evening meal. As they sat down together at the table, they leaned in and kissed each other as they did every evening, then started throwing words at each other.

“Autumn Second Month for the betrothal”—Father cut Stepmother a piece of fowl, laid it on her plate—“my dear.” And served himself.

Graceful cried, “But that is my birth month. Oh, Father, no! No, no, no.”

“Tush,” said Father. “Twice the reason to celebrate.”

“So soon?” said Stepmother.

Garrad leaned forward. “Now, now, Mistress. Fifteen is a grand age for marriage: no longer a child, and not woman enough to be set in her ways.”

“Thank you for that, Garrad.”

“Mistress.”

Stepmother was sitting with her plate untouched before her, chilling the air with her gaze. “Just give her a little more time, that's all.”

Graceful looked at her and adored her.

Father leaned on one elbow and picked his teeth. “She's the same age you were, when you came.”

“No, she was sixteen and I was seven,” said Graceful. “
I
remember.”

“I don't see you suffering too hard under the yoke of marriage.” Father ignored Graceful. He and Stepmother had become very busy staring at each other. Isla stood opposite Graceful and started winking and jerking her head at them. Graceful pushed her plate aside so that it rang against the serving dishes.

 

TOMORROW WAS THE first day of autumn Second Month. Carin and Isla were sorting through the cupboards for the month's prints. This, Graceful's birth month, was the wind month. The pictures were hung up: hills painted under lowering skies, trees dipping under driving wind. Outside, the sun burned the sky pale about it, and though heavy clouds blew across it, they left it alone and gathered sullen on the southeast rim of the world.

“First clouds,” said Stepmother. “It'll be changeable now, till winter.”

Stepmother had bolts of cloth down from the attics. Rose, cherry, crimson, and moss and pine, for red and green were wedding colors. She tried them all against Graceful, draping them over her shoulder, around her waist. She sent Isla up to the attics: “Let's try something stronger.”

“Softer, something softer.” Carin picked up a bolt the color of sage leaves.

“Yeuugh,” said Graceful.

“For all it looks plain on the bolt, it does suit you.” Stepmother held the fabric up, held it down and frowned at it, held it up to Graceful's face once again. “Carin?”

“Makes her look all rosy.”

“Aye.”

“The sage for the surcoat, then. And petticoats from the crimson.”

“But . . .” said Graceful. “I like the cherry.”

The surcoat would hang to her ankles and run into a train at the back, and under it last summer's white dress, for a bride must wear something from her girlhood, when she passed into marriage.

Stepmother sat in the sunny gallery upstairs and sewed. Carin towed Graceful out to the scullery.

“Get that dress looking like new,” she said.

“I don't care what it looks like.”

“You will, when you're standing up there and the Headman's throwing words over you.” She bullied Isla along, then left her with Graceful to do the washing. “I do have food for fifty to get ready, and those village wenches don't do anything right without being told.”

Graceful stood and bit all her fingernails while Isla rubbed the white dress on the scrubbing board. “Dallon says word is he's very handsome.” She paused to smile at Graceful.

“I don't care.”

“And well-liked among his men.”

“Tell Father that. He can marry him.”

They spread the dress out to bleach under the moonlight.

“And Dallon did tell me something else.” Isla straightened. “I'm sorry to say it, Miss Graceful, but you did ought to know. It was the Lord's son did cut off Cam Attling's arm.”

“Oh.” Graceful recoiled. “No!”

“Aye, he did too, in the Battle for Dorn-Lannet. Dallon had it from Cam himself, when he was here with the Uplanders.”

 

EVEN WITH THE Uplanders coming, work could not be suspended. Autumn was the time of gathering: The fruit was picked and stored, or preserved; the root vegetables harvested. Down in Merrydance field, the mulberries were shedding their leaves. The attics were piled high with flax, ready for winter weaving. All done in a rush, because of the Uplanders, because Graceful's betrothal was on her birthday, less than a month hence.

 

THERE WERE FIFTEEN days left until her birthday.

“I shall never celebrate my birthday again,” Graceful told Stepmother.

Heartless, Stepmother said, “What nonsense, Moppet.”

“Traitor,” said Graceful. “You were on my side.”

“Hush, hush, there's my pretty maid. You do like your father says. When is he ever wrong?”

One day for each year of her life. Graceful willed them each to pass as slowly as a year, but they did not. They came and went—
snap!
—and it was the next day, and then the one after that until once again the yard was full of armored Uplander men. They came and she must stand there with Father and Stepmother (wearing her yellow surcoat) to greet them. As they dismounted, the Uplanders bowed, one knee and one fist to the ground. They bowed to her.

Stepmother leaned to Father and whispered, “Do they have
any
women? I have yet to see one.”

Father pushed his smile into his beard. “Fine stock, that.” He walked around their horses, looking them up and down. “I'd like to put one to my mare.”

 

DURING THE DAY the family ate in the kitchen as they came in, but at night Father sat like a Lord in the hall, sat on his dais with his wife to his right and daughter to his left and all the house at the table. Tonight, though, Graceful was sat on Stepmother's right, and the Uplander Lord, his son and Attling's Oldest sat on Father's left. There had been discussion over Attling's Oldest and where he should sit, whether he should.

“He's village,” said Father. “Not high village, just village. Send him down to the end to eat with the hands.”

“He's Uplander now and high with them. He'll sit at the upper table with us,” Stepmother said.

Father leaned forward, using the great hushed shout that was his whisper. “I'm not having that crippled, loose-loyal peasant farmer's son at my high table.”

“Do you recall that you are marrying your daughter to the same side as he is gone over to?” Stepmother folded her arms and glared at Father.

Attling's Oldest ate at the high table.

The Uplanders sat at their great height and stared down long, high-bridged noses at everyone, and smiled. Attling's Oldest turned perfectly good words into Uplander yaddle for the Lord and his son, at which they nodded and smiled and looked down, down at her, at Father and Stepmother.

Graceful tried to watch her betrothed without watching, but every time she glanced his way, his dark eyes were on her. She thought it the most unending meal of her life.

The plates were cleared and the men were all pink-faced with drink when the Uplander Lord's son leaned and whispered to Attling's Oldest, who got up and left the table. He returned with a package that he gave into the Uplander's hands.

“Yaddle, yaddle,” said the Uplander, standing, which meant they all must stand.

“If you please.” Attling's Oldest bowed. Father snorted, just a little, and received a frigid glance shot sidelong at him by Cam Attling, even as he said, “Lord Gyaar wishes . . .”

The Northerner bowed the package toward Graceful.

“Oh? No!” She put her hands behind her back. Stepmother took it for her.

“Hunhf,” said Father. “Must excuse. Very young, dumbstruck, poor maid.”

Graceful stamped her foot. Stepmother took her hand and tugged her down into a curtsy.

 

THE PACKAGE WENT on the hall table. If there had been another way up to bed, Graceful would have taken it, but there was not. She made a face at the table and kept to the far side of the hall.

“Daughter?”

She jumped.

“It's a betrothal gift.”

“I don't care what it is.”

“At least look,” said Father. “You'll at least look at it.”

“Father? Father . . . are you angry with me, that you will send me away?”

“I don't know how I will manage without my Graceful.” Father's arm, big and heavy, dropped about Graceful's shoulders. “But you have to go sometime. He is a Lord and you will be a lady, is that not fine?” He tried to put the package into her hands. “Look, Daughter. You won't be damned for that.”

Graceful clasped her hands all neat and together at her waist and stared at the air.

“Here.” Father sidestepped so he stood in the space she was staring at. “A stake. Your happiness—I know you will be happy—
and
I'll give you a silver belt like Stepmother's.”

Stepmother's belt was a chain, each link a flower. One end had the hook that fastened it; the other a round silver ball and a ring from which hung the keys to the house. Graceful most ardently wanted a silver belt like Stepmother's. She turned her gaze aside. “No, I will not stake anything.”

“Ah.” Father stuck his lower lip out, stuck his hands in his belt under his belly. “Oh. No wager?”

“No stake. Not with you, not ever again.”

“Ah, Graceful,” he said. “Ah, Graceful. You will one day understand.”

“I understand this: You've settled me with an Uplander, but I won't. I won't.” Graceful kilted her skirts in one hand and ran up the stairs.