The Returning (26 page)

In her room, Graceful hid behind her curtain and looked out at the evening. Three more days. She imagined herself brave and able to run away. She looked down at the stone flags of the yard. If she leaped from here, that would stop it, stop everything, and she saw herself lying there (her hair long and thick, waist slender as Stepmother's), lying just so, and wearing her yellow surcoat—What was that?

Down by the cow pen at the end of the yard, the Uplander Lord's son leaned on the fence, propped on his elbows. Attling's Oldest leaned back against it, facing the house, talking, making sweeps and halts and passes of his hand, and his body with it. Then he flung his head back, and the Uplander Lord's son's knees gave way so that he hung by his arms from the rail, and their laughter rang out, startling the cows. Graceful drew the curtains shut.

IN THE EVENINGS the Uplander Lord sat inside and played pegboard with Father, the two of them pushing piles of copper coins to and fro across the table. His son wandered, watching and always smiling, smiling, smiling—and what did he feel behind it, Graceful wondered. Though the weather was cooler with each day, the farmhands and maidservants were out in the yard, the Uplanders drawing them all. Night after night, the yard was noisy as an inn.

And in the passage the betrothal gift sat on the bowlegged hall table. Whenever she walked past it, it seemed to say,
Graceful? Graceful!

Wigs!
she thought, and shuddered.

“Why do you not open it?”

Graceful jumped nearly out of her skin. Attling's Oldest leaned against the doorjamb.

“Why do you care if I do?”

Attling's Oldest lifted one shoulder, smiled.

Graceful pushed at the package, shunting it about the table. “How do you say his name?”

“Gyaar.”

Graceful astonished herself by suddenly weeping. “I do not want to, I do not, and everyone is making me and no one cares how I feel.”

He came up to her. “I'm sorry, for I did tease you and I should not have . . . Miss Graceful? Your da does right in this.”

Graceful wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her gown. “He says we are making North and South one.”

“Aye. That's what I mean. I do think your da is right in this.”

“Gar,” she said.

 

IT RAINED ALL THROUGH the eve of her betrothal.

Isla and Stepmother came very early to her room the next morning (and had to wake her, which surprised Graceful because she was certain she had not slept, not for a moment).

“I've brought some food, so you don't go faint in the middle of it all.” Stepmother had laid out a tray with all Graceful's favorite treats: hot chocolate, pastries, a little iced cake. “Don't you cry now, Moppet. You don't want to be all red and puffy.”

She could not eat a thing, though she managed the hot chocolate. Stepmother and Isla put her in her red petticoats and white dress and the green surcoat. As a maid she must go barefoot, so Isla rubbed oil into her feet. “I did have mats put down so you don't get all mucky. I'll put some of this in your hair too; make it like silk it will.”

Father waited for her at the front door. He took her hand. “Such a cold little hand!” Held it between both of his.

“Now, now.” Stepmother dabbed at Graceful's eyes. “No tears, my brave little Moppet.” She led her sobbing without.

They had put up a tent and made a shrine of it, with mats on the ground and a screen at the back. The grass of the mats gleamed in places, was marked with mud in others. Graceful wore her bridal green and the tea service was white, white on the red lacquer of a little table. Only one color was needed—blue. Green for life, white for the mind, red for blood, and blue for death. It was the Northerner Lord's son who provided it. His tunic was blue, and his hair was bound with blue cord.

The men jostled in around the edges of the tent, made way for the Uplander priest. In the quiet that came then, Graceful stared across the width of the tent at Gyaar Ryuu, and Gyaar Ryuu turned to stare at her.

Tall as she was, Lord Gyaar was much taller. His hair was flat and black and stick-straight. He came to her, took her hand, and Graceful made to jerk it free. When he would not let her, she looked up. His smile was cool, and his eyes, but his hand on hers was palm-wet with sweat. Graceful stared, thought of him folding with laughter against the cow pen fence.

Every time the priest paused, the Lord's son's fingers jerked on Graceful's. The soldiers—courtiers?—sat on their heels as if they were at market, or resting. One of them would from time to time rise and wander to the entrance, wander back and crouch again.

The priest finished and the Uplander let Graceful's hand go, turned her with a touch to her shoulder. Rice, like a dusting of snow, lay all over the mire that the rain had made of the yard. As she stood, another man got up and flung a handful wide.

“Luck,” said Gyaar.

Then they tramped off across the soggy mats to the Fenister altar, to women with the men, and children and the green boughs of pine and their own Da Palfreyman to say the ceremony, and all as it should be.

The weather held clear for the three-day betrothal celebration. Graceful spent it hiding from her husband-to-be and his party. Or not quite hiding, but watching them. Sitting at Stepmother's side, being good, ladylike, and watching them until the black hair and eyes did not strike her so strongly, the faces, the tallness of them.

“If they were horses, they'd be Agerst,” she said. “Big.”

“Well they know how to enjoy themselves,” said Father, sloshing wine from his cup. The Uplanders held contests. Horseriding, hunting, mime. Drinking. Graceful watched that from inside. She thought they drank quite a lot, even without the contests, all but Lord Gyaar, who drank less than any of them, looked around him more.

“Enjoy?” said Graceful. “Why do they not enjoy themselves in the North and leave us be?”

The Uplanders wanted to compete at archery. Got up in jeweled belts and embroidered tunics and their long Uplander-style hair, they discussed where in the yard they should put a butt. They set it up at the back of the grounds, downhill from the horse paddocks, and shot arrows into it from the veranda, to the peril of the hands. When they had emptied their quivers they sauntered down, only to pull them out and do it all again.

Attling's Oldest leaned against a veranda post and watched. Graceful edged and shifted all the way along the veranda, until she stood at his side.

“Attling? I have something to ask you. I heard . . . I mean . . . Well . . .” She tried to look anywhere but at his knotted right sleeve.

Attling's Oldest's eyes widened a little. “Eh,” he said. “You do go in boots on and mucky, don't you?”

She stared at him.

“Aye,” he said. “He did. It's common knowledge.”

Graceful sat—
plump!
—on the edge of the veranda.

“Miss Graceful . . . it was war. He did not kill me and he could have. Should have. You do see?” He stared at her with eyes darker than the Uplander Lord's, his hair darker, his skin. More Uplander than any Uplander.

“No, I do not.”

“That's the way he is. I did choose this, because of him.” As he talked he untied the knot in his sleeve, tied it again. “Miss Graceful, I would now ask a question of you.”

“What?”

“My family, how do they? Do you see Pin? My sister, that is?”

“I do not go to the village without Father, and I do not talk with anyone there.” Graceful was ashamed. Father would have her be Lady over Kayforl, and she knew nothing of any of its people. “Isla would know. She always knows who is marrying, having a child, who has died—oh!” She put her hands to her mouth. The silence between them grew and tightened. “Why do you not go yourself?”

“I cannot. I closed that door.” Attling's Oldest stalked away.

Graceful wondered what it was that she had said wrong.

Later that afternoon, much, much later, Graceful saw a strange thing. The Lord's son was standing at Attling's side, holding the bow shaft while Attling drew, left-handed. And loosed the string. The arrow skipped in the air and dug itself into the ground halfway to the butt. Attling dropped the bow and the two of them staggered about laughing.

 

IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN the ruckus in the yard, or that her mind was too surprised by the happenings of the past days, Graceful did not know, but she could not sleep. She stayed long awake in the dark, listening. She woke early, at the ghost-light of the false dawn.

This early, so morning-early that Stepmother, always the first to rise, was not yet up, the hall was cool and dim. On Stepmother's bowlegged table was the Uplander Lord's package, wrapped in cloth and tied with cords. The cloth and cords were gold and scarlet and poison-green. Graceful leaned over them and smelled Uplander. It was different, it was. Different. She picked it up, put it down. The smell stayed on her hands. “Guy-yah.” She had a cord in her fingers, those same colors again.
Guy-yah
. She pulled the cord undone. It was a mirror, lacquered, and three rounded blobs carved on the back.

“Blossoms.”

She nearly dropped the mirror, she was so startled. It was her husband-to-be.

“I . . .” said Graceful. “I cannot sleep.”

“No.” Lord Gyaar touched his chest, fingers saying,
I too
. He reached to touch the mirror. “This? Paru, ah, bloodflower.”

Bloodflower . . . Graceful ran the silk slip of the handle through her fingers, the stipple of the blob-blossoms. She turned it over and there was her face, plain and heavy and stolid.
Who is that fat, dull-looking girl?
she thought, and put it down.

Gyaar—the name was loud in her mind—took it up and handed it to her. “This gift always. Custom. Look.” He mimed looking into the mirror. “In here, look your future.” He smiled his always-smile. For the first time, Graceful saw that it was real.

 

THEY WENT, GYAAR and Lord Ryuu and Attling's Oldest. Graceful thought,
I am just me again and it is all as it was
. But it was not.
Look your future.
She put the mirror on her dressing table, facedown.

 

AUTUMN WAS GONE, and the winter pictures had been brought out, put up. The trees were bare, the first snows scudding about under the whip of the wind. This was when they spun the flax, and Stepmother began the weaving. Spinning and weaving meant the warm fire and the hall chill, sitting and talking with Stepmother and Carin (Isla did not spin), and Father about, making them all laugh. She did not think she would enjoy it this year. Father prowled around jesting with them, but Graceful would not laugh.

Before Carin could spin and Stepmother weave, Graceful had to dress the distaff. Slow and patient, she spread a thin layer of flax on the great hall table, as wide as one arm's span, right hand to left. Another spread, left to right. Another, right to left. And left to right. When the bundle was layered, it must be rolled about the distaff and tied in place. It was then ready for spinning. Her hands began to remember last winter's work and moved quicker, nearly as quickly as Stepmother's.

“You'll make a fine spinner one day,” Stepmother said.

Graceful felt full of pride, until she thought that
one day
meant she would be spinning and weaving Uplander clothes for an Uplander Lord. Her hands fell still on her lap as she thought of Gyaar Ryuu watching her, long-eyed, across the table, watching his men drink themselves silly, laughing with Attling's Oldest.

Father stopped his pacing of the hall and came over to the fire where they all sat.

“Daughter? Will you walk with your old father? I've seen little enough of you lately.”

Graceful looked at Stepmother, who excused her with a nod. Graceful shook her apron clean, put her cloak on, and followed Father out into the yard.

“Spring.” Father took Graceful's hand in his. “You'll wed in spring, next year.” Their shoes went
schree-schree
in the snow.

“I thought you wanted to see me, Father.” She pulled her hand away.

He took her hand again. “Don't be so angry with me, Graceful.”

“Summer. Please, make it summer.”

“It is more than a year away, Daughter. It could have been this spring, easily! But I wanted more time with my Graceful.”

“Who weds in spring?”

Father's fingers squeezed hers. “My Graceful does. This is a special wedding and it needs its own time.”

“I would think about it longer.”

“What's to think? I have done the thinking; you have just the doing of it.”

Graceful pulled her hand free. “Summer, and I will do all you ask.”