Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years (6 page)

“The skirmish. Yes. Everyone was so vexed,” recaled Miss Murth, aiming at drolery and achieving condescension. “It completely upended the social season.” Damn the attitude of help; Glinda was talking this out to get it straight in her own head. “When by winter’s end our Munchkinlander tenants and neighbors had retreated under the superior fire of the EC

forces, they scurried back east. I hear they’ve been beavering about, renovating some antique fortress at the easternmost end of the lake. Where the Munchkin River debouches. So I believe General Cherrystone is stopping here to wait for reinforcements before pressing farther east. If he takes the fort at the head of the lake, he’l have access to the river, which is a virtual high road of water straight into the breadbasket of Oz, straight to Bright Lettins and to the seat of the Munchkinland government at Colwen Grounds.”

“Where the Thropp family used to live, back in the day.” Miss Murth sniffed.

“Indeed. Wel, not Elphaba, nor her brother Shel. Oh excuse me:
Emperor
. But their great-grandfather the Eminent Thropp ruled from that house. A pretentious heap compared to Mockbeggar’s understated charm! But never mind al that. It’s on the strength of his bloodlines that Shel Thropp claims Colwen Grounds and, by extension, the right to rule al of Munchkinland. So he starts with Restwater, which until the secession of Munchkinland twenty-umpty years ago, or something like that, had always provided water for the Emerald City.”

“If we’re through reviewing current events,” said Miss Murth, “the General is waiting for the list of staff. He threatens to imprison the whole lot of us if he doesn’t receive it by teatime.”

“Very wel. Find a quil and take down this list. You can remind me of the names, if you wil. Put yourself first, Miss Murth. Have you a first name?”

“Yes, in fact.”

“How alarming. Next, Chef. What’s he caled?”

“Ig Baernaeraenaesis.”

“Write Chef. Write Puggles the Butler.”

“
His
real name is Po Understar.”

“Oh, this is so tedious! Am I expected to remember these names? Is that the lot? Are we missing anyone? I think that’s it.”

“You requested a chambermaid.”

“That’s right, I did. Now whom should I pick? There’s Mirrtle. She’s a little cross-eyed but she plays a mean hand of graboge. There’s the broomgirl who does the steps. I don’t recal her name. And then sily Floxiaza. No, she steals my cologne. Not Floxiaza. What do you think? Mirrtle, shal we?”

“I like Mirrtle,” said Miss Murth. “One can rely on Mirrtle to keep a civil tongue to her superiors.”

“Then I’l choose the broomgirl. Write down the broomgirl. What
is
her name?”

“I’l ask her,” said Miss Murth. “Nobody ever uses it so I doubt she’l remember, but maybe she’l surprise us al. May I deliver this now? I don’t want to appear cowering but the General seems insistent.”

“I suppose I should sign it.”

“I have signed it for you.”

“You’re a blessing in disguise.” Glinda looked her over. “A very capable disguise. You may consider yourself dismissed.”
4.

She was standing at a weir. Though later she realized someone must have built it, at the time it seemed just another caprice of nature. An S-shaped curve of broad flat stones, to channel the water, slow it, creating a deep pool on the upstream edge. Along that side a fretwork of bentlebranch fronds had been twisted and laced together lateraly, further helping to slow the water that coursed through—when water coursed, that is. Today it was frozen.

Probably she’d been wearing boots, but she didn’t remember boots, or mittens, or even a coat. What the mind chooses to colect, and what it throws away!

She leaned from the walkway over the top of the artificial thicket. She could see that the whole affair guided the stream through a channel. Good for fishing.

The surface of the stream was glassy, here and there dusted with snow. Beneath the surface of the ice some hardy reed stil waved underwater with the slowed-down motion of a dream. She could almost see her face there beneath al this cold, among the hints of green, of spring.

Never one for studying herself, though, her eye had caught a flick of movement a few feet on. In a pocket in the ice of the stream, a little coppery fish was turning round and round, as if trapped. How had it gotten separated from the members of its school, who were probably al buried in the mud, lost in cold dreams til spring? Though she couldn’t have known about hibernation yet.

One hand on the unstable balustrade, she ventured onto the ice. The trapped fish needed to be released. It would die in its little natural bowl. Die of loneliness if nothing else. She knew about loneliness.

A stick came to her unmittened hand somehow. She must have dropped her mittens, the better to grasp the stick. Or she’d been out without protection. It didn’t matter. She bashed at the ice for some time, never thinking that the floor could capsize and she might go in the drink. Drown, or freeze, or become mighty uncomfortable some other way.

Little by little she hacked away a channel. The fish heard the vibrations and circled more vigorously, but there was no place for it to go. Finaly she had opened a hole big enough for her finger.

The fish came up and nestled against her, as if her forefinger were a mother fish. The scrap of briliance leaned there, at a slight tilt.

That’s what she remembered, anyway.

She had gone on to release the fish. What had she done with it? With the stream frozen over? The rest was lost, lost to time. Like so much.

But she remembered the way the fish belied against her finger.

This must be another very early memory. Was no one looking after her? Why was she always out alone?

And where had this taken place? Where in the world did childhood happen, anyway?

5.

Glinda finished her morning tisane and waited, but no one came to take away the tray. Oh, right, she remembered. But where was Murth when you needed her? The woman was useless. Useless and pathetic.

A light rain pattered, just strong enough to make the idea of Glinda’s giving an audience in the forecourt something of a mistake. She’d rather send remarks through a factotum, but that was the problem: the factotums were getting the boot. The least she could do was give her good-byes in person.

There was nothing for it but that Glinda must poke about the wardrobe herself and locate some sort of bumbershoot.

Puggles saw her struggling with the front door and rescued her. “Let me help, Mum,” he said, relieving her of the umbrela. It had a handle carved to look like a flying monkey; she hadn’t noticed that.

Probably Cherrystone would decide that the umbrela was grounds for her execution. Wel, stuff him with a rippled rutabaga.

“Everyone’s assembled, Mum,” said Puggles. “As you requested. Too bad about the weather, but there you are.”

She’d written some notes al by herself, but raindrops smeared the ink when she took them out of her purse. “Goodness, Puggles,” she said in a low voice. “Do so many work here?”

“Until today.”

“I never quite realized. Wel, one rarely assembles the staff al at once.”

“Once a year. The below-stairs staff party at Lurlinemas. But you don’t attend.”

“I send the ale and those funny little baskets from the Fairy Preenela, one for everybody.”

“Yes, Mum. I know. I order them and arrange for their delivery myself.”

Was he being uppity? She couldn’t blame him. She should have realized the household staff was this large. There must be seventy people gathered here. “If this is the number on which we normaly rely, how are we to get along with only a skeletal crew, Puggles?”

But he’d stepped back to join the paltry retinue that would not be dismissed, which had lined up behind her.

Awkward. In what degree of affection or distance ought she to address them? The situation was grave; many of them were in tears. She was glad she had worn the watered-silk moss luncheon gown with the peek-a-boo calf flare and the carmine colar; she’d be stunning against Mockbeggar’s rose-colored stucco and ivory entablatures. A comfort to the staff, she hoped, her ability to maintain her style. An example.

She plunged ahead. “Dear friends. Dear laborers in the field, dear dusters of the furniture, and whoever uses the loppers to keep the topiary in check. Dear al of you. What a dreary day this is.” She was reaching for a hankie already. How revolting, how mawkish. She didn’t know most of their names. But they looked so respectable and kind, in their common clothes. Men with hats in their hands, women in mobcaps and aprons. Surely they were going to leave their aprons behind? Aprons marked with House of Chuffrey crests? Wel, better not to make a fuss over it.

“I know some of you have lodged here, lovingly tending Mockbeggar Hal, since long before I met Lord Chuffrey, rest his soul. For many of you—perhaps al of you, I’m a bit wobbly on the details—this has been your only home. Where you go to now, and what life awaits you there, is beyond my comprehension.”

One or two of the young women straightened up and put their hankies away. Perhaps, thought Glinda, this hasn’t started wel.

“I have arranged for your safe passage off the estate. The General has promised you wil not be accosted, nor wil your alegiance to my welfare al these years be held against you. Indeed, I have not supplied him a list of your names or your destinations.” This much was true. Cherrystone hadn’t asked for that. He was irritatingly fair from time to time, which made resenting him a tricky business.

“Nothing should have pleased me more than to provide you with lodging and work here until the end of my days,” she said. “In the absence of that, I have had the seamstresses work overtime, hand stitching on some cotton geppling serviettes the lovely old-fashioned blessing OZSPEED. By the way, thank you, seamstresses; you must have had to stay up past midnight to manage supplying al this lot.”

“Actualy, we’re a few short,” muttered Puggles.

She paid him no mind. Having been Throne Minister for that brief period had taught her several useful skils.

“Mum,” caled someone; Glinda couldn’t tel who it was. “Wil you have us back, in time?”

“Oh, if I have my say,” she replied cheerily. “Though I doubt you’l recognize me when that day comes! I’l be sun-bronzed and wizened and my elbows wil be raw from the dishwater! You’l think I’m the bootblack’s grandmother!”

They liked this. They laughed with unseemly vigor. Though perhaps commoners have a different sense of humor, she thought.

“Dear friends,” she continued. “I cherish the dedication to your tasks, your love of Mockbeggar, your sunny good natures at least whenever I came in the room. And next? None of us knows what waits down the lane for us.” She was about to refer to her own power as compromised, what with the house arrest, but caught herself. Surely they knew about it, and they wanted to remember her as being strong. She threw her shoulders back and pinched a nerve in her scapula. Ow. “As to whomever was in the habit of filching the leftover pearlfruit jely from the sideboard in the morning room, you are forgiven. You are al forgiven any such lapses. I shal miss you. I shal miss every one of you. I hardly knew there were so many … so many”—but that sounded lame—“so many brave and dedicated friends. Bless you. Ozspeed indeed. And on your way out, don’t hesitate to snub the new sentries at the gatehouse. Don’t give them the benefit of a single word. This is your home, stil. Not theirs. Never theirs.”

“Burn the place down!” cried someone in the crowd, but he was hushed, as the emotion seemed misguided at best.

“Don’t forget to write,” she said, before she remembered that quite likely some of them couldn’t write. She’d better get off the top step before she did more harm than good. “Farewel, and may we meet again when Ozma returns!”

The bawling began. She had ended as poorly as she’d begun. Of course, the common people believed that Ozma was a deity, and they must have concluded that Lady Glinda was referring to the Afterlife.

Wel, so be it, she thought grimly, hoisting her skirts to clear the puddle by the front door. The Afterlife wil have to do for a rendezvous destination. Though I suspect I shal be lodged in separate quarters, a private suite, probably. “Puggles,” she murmured, “get the yard boy to pick up the mobcaps some of that lot were trampling into the mud as they left.”

“There’s no yard boy, Ma’am,” said Puggles gently. “He’s off with the others.”

“It’s a new era, then. You do it. It looks a sight. And then join the rest of us in the grand foyer.”

The others who were to remain had retreated inside and stood in a line with their hands clasped. Their uniforms dripped on the checkerboard marble. Glinda would fix each one with a dedicated personal beck. She could do this, she could. She’d been practicing al morning. This was important. “Miss Murth,” she began. “Ig Baernae…”

“Chef’l do, Mum. Even I can’t say it unless I’m soused.”

“Ig Baernaeraenaesis.” She was glad to see his jaw drop. Puggles slid into place in the line; Glinda nodded at him. “Mister Understar. And—” She came to the chambermaid. “And you. Rain, I think it is?

Very lovely name. Scrub your nails, child. Civil unrest is no excuse for lapses in personal hygiene. Dear friends…” But perhaps this was too familiar a note to strike now she was inside her own home. She had to live with these people.

“I’m grateful for your loyalty,” she continued in a brisker tone. “As far as I know my funds have not been impounded, and you shal stay on salary as usual.”

“We don’t gets salary, if you please, Mum,” said Chef. “We gets our home and our food.”

“Yes. Wel. Home and food are yours as long as I can manage it. I cannot pretend this is a pretty time for Mockbeggar Hal or for any of us. Murth, don’t scowl; it’s not too late to exchange you for someone out in the forecourt lingering over farewels.”

Miss Murth slapped on an inauthentic expression of merriment.

“A few remarks. I am stil the lady of the house. You are my staff, and according to your stations you shal maintain your customary retiring ways in my presence.”

“Yes, Mum,” they chorused.

“And yet, and yet.” She wanted a conspiratorial chumminess without a breakdown in authority. She must step softly. “We are now bound together in some unprecedented manner, and we must come to rely on one another.
So
. I shal ask you al to refrain from fraternizing with the military who wil be bunking in the servants’ quarters, in tents in the meadows, in the barns and stables. I shal ask you to be no more than minimaly polite and responsive to the officers who have taken up lodging in the guest quarters. If they ask for food, you must procure it. You must cook it, Chef. You need not season it and you must not poison it. Do you understand?”