Ozark Trilogy 2: The Grand Jubilee (10 page)

“Stupid!” she said fiercely. “That’s the only word for you, missy. Just purely
stupid! How
could you let yourself be wrenched round to such a state--and the Travellers, of all Families to find yourself beholden to! So Granny Leeward called you a whoredoes calling make it so? Prior to this morning, that is! I reckon she used the word again when she was in here, and this time with good reason!”

“No,” said Responsible, “as a matter of fact the word she used this time was `fornicator.”‘

“And how’d you respond to that? You put warts on all the Mules in the stables? Rashes on all the servingmaids and Attendants? Sink all the boats at the Landing? What kind of conniption fit did you throw over `fornicator’?”

“Well,” said Responsible, “I don’t mind `fornicator’ especially. It lacks the little extra bit; it makes no claim that I sell my favors, you’ll note. I was able to restrain myself.”

“And now there you are, barred from the Hall.”

“So I am.”

“Shame on you, girl!”

“Want me to call her bluff and go, Granny?”

“Great Gates, no! There’s no bluff to that woman. If she said she’d make a scandal of you before the whole world and its brother-in-law that’s exactly and precisely what she would do. You stay away, just as she bid you, and be glad she’s not made it worse.”

“Well, then, Granny, what I need from you is not more tonguelashing. What I need is for you to go on along and be my eyes and my ears. I can watch on the comset, for sure, but it’ll give me only such scraps of what’s going on as the comcrews find interesting. Whoever’s speaking, and a shot of the balcony now and again, and no more. I won’t be seeing who passes notes to who else, or who walks out in a huff, or who falls asleep that you might of expected to pay close attention, or who gets together in huddles in the rows. I need you to watch for me, and listen close, and send word if you see
anything
that appears to you to be out of line.”

“And what’ll you do if I do see mischief? I’ll see plenty afore this week’s over, you know. What do you plan to do about any of it, missy?”

“That depends on what it is,” said Responsible patiently. “Might could be there’ll be nothing I can do; might could be I can be useful. But unless I have you to report to me, we’ll never know which.”

“And what will you be doing in between my reports, besides lolling in your bed and sniffing the posies?”

Responsible thought of her hateful list of “to do” tasks. “I’ll find a way to pass my time,” she said with assurance.

“Rolling in his arms, no doubt!”

“Granny Hazelbide,” said Responsible, mock-serious, “you have an evil mind.”

The Granny clicked her tongue against her teeth till Responsible wondered the tip didn’t bleed.

“Shiftless
and
shameless!” she ranted, shaking her finger at the girl smiling up from her pillows. “What would your
mother
say?”

“That she couldn’t believe any man would of wanted me,” said Responsible promptly. “You know that. Especially when there’s such competition as Silverweb of McDaniels around, all unspoken for and never been kissed. Now do please go on to the Hall, dear heart? Please? It’ll be time soon for the Travellers to begin their move, and I’d be pleasured to know how they open the game. You can come back tonight and lecture me on my morals till you drop in your tracks if that appeals to you; so far as I know, nobody ever talked a maidenhead back into its place, but I’ll listen respectfully if you fancy trying. But not now, Granny Hazelbide, not now!”

The Granny went out of the door, proclaiming woe and thunderations all the way down the hall, and Responsible locked her hands behind her head and stared up at the ceiling until she could hear her nattering no longer. And then she stared a good half hour longer, thinking. She might have put her list away, but she could still see it plain as plain in her mind’s eye.

“This very day,” she told the ceiling at last, “this very
morning
-what’s left of it-I’ll see to the Bestowing of Flag of Airy’s two acres.

And then what? the ceiling gave her back.

“And then,” she said, carrying it on, “I believe I’m going to need some help. I do believe that I’d better send for my sister.” That silenced the ceiling. What it would bring on in the way of response from other sources, once it was known that Troublesome of Brightwater might be coming down from her mountaintop and into the city, would not be silence. Responsible chuckled, thinking about it.

And realized that, come to think of it, she
missed
her sister. Mean as she was, outrageous as she was, impossible as she was sure to be, she missed her. And she’d had no idea.

The Bestowing was drawn up in black ink on snow-white paper, marked with the Brightwater Crest and sealed with the Brightwater Seal, before noon of that day. Responsible had looked over the Kingdom’s maps, displayed for her on the comset screen, with great care; and she had chosen two acres plus a bit of riverbank left over, a nice piece of land only eleven miles out from Capital City, tucked into an arm of the river between two big farms and overlooked this long time because it was so small.

“Too small to be any use,” said her grandmother Ruth of Motley when Responsible carried it downstairs to the small sittingroom.

“Too
large
, to my mind!” her mother had objected. “We’ve almost no land left to give, Responsible; if somebody actually did a deed worthy of gratitude, Castle Brightwater would be hard put to it to find any acres to Bestow. I don’t approve, myself; I don’t approve at all.”

“Responsible didn’t expect you to,” said Ruth of Motley comfortably. “It’d spoil your image.
I
approve, and I’ll speak for both my husband and my sons: none of them would grudge the young woman her two piddling little acres.”

“I don’t see,” said Responsible’s mother stubbornly, “what Flag of Airy has done to merit a Bestowing. The last one we gave-and it’s been eleven years ago, mind, before Responsible ever saw daylight!-was twelve acres to the young man that tried to save the lives of Jewel of Wommack’s family. You remember that, Ruth?”

“I’m not senile,” answered Ruth of Motley, giving Thorn of Guthrie a look as she bit through a strand of embroidery floss that spoke of a preference for setting her teeth elsewhere.

“Grandmother, you’ll ruin your teeth,” said Responsible automatically. She’d been saying that ever since she could remember, and she’d learned it from hearing everyone else say it. But Ruth of Motley never paid it any mind, and her teeth gleamed bright as they ever had. Then she realized what Thorn of Guthrie had said, and she looked at her mother and tried for a casual face.

“I didn’t know that happened here,” she said. “Thought it was on Kintucky.”

“
No
-sir,” said Thorn of Guthrie. “The Wommacks were here at Brightwater on a visit, the old man and that young wife of his-she was no more than a child, and he had no business marrying her, if you ask me, not that anybody ever has-and Jacob Donahue Wommack’s wife, and the two children. Praise the Gates, they left the tadlings home . . . But the others went down in the river, there where that root tangle is just past the bend, right out there beyond the Castle grounds. And they all died, trapped in the roots and sunken logs, with the boat turned over on top of them. And,” she wound it up, “it was the young man as near drowned him
self
trying to save them that had the last Bestowing of land from this Kingdom. They were perfect fools, you know-going out on the river, and it in flood, and not knowing what kind of mess there was trapped in that tangle, but they wouldn’t hear no; nothing would do but they should have a day on the river-and they paid in full.”

“That was a sorry day,” Ruth of Motley added. “Everybody carrying on about the Wommack Curse, like it wouldn’t of happened if anybody else had been in that fool boat. I remember it well.”

“And
that
young man did something worth notice, Responsible. He must of gone down a dozen times trying to free the Wommacks, and at the last they had to hold him back to keep him from having another go at it when he was so exhausted he’d never in the world have come up again himself:”

“Mother,” said Responsible reasonably, “do think. If, as you put it, somebody did something that
really
called for a gift from Brightwater, those two little acres wouldn’t serve anyway. But they’ll please Flag of Airy and her husband, both of them fine young people. There’s room enough for him to raise a house, and her to put in a garden that’ll feed the two of them and a few tadlings as the years go by. Don’t be selfish, Mother-it’s not becoming.”

“Wait till the men are home,” said Thorn of Guthrie, “and we’ll see what they say. Not to mention Patience of Clark.”

“I’m not likely to make any Bestowing without the whole Family’s approving,” protested Responsible. “What do you take me for?”

“Responsible,” said Ruth of Motley mildly, “don’t tempt your mother.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“The document’s well drawn, and you were wise to do it and have it out of the way. Put it in the desk over there, and then after supper tonight we’ll call a short Meeting and send the vote around. But there’ll be no trouble.”

“
I
still
say-” Thorn of Guthrie began, but her mother-in-law cut her off. Enough was enough.

“Thorn of Guthrie,” she said, “for two long
months
Flag of Airy saw her own babe suckled at the breasts of Vine of Motley, so her milk would not dry up before we Brightwaters got Vine’s own child back to her arms. And in that two months she bore a heavy load. Responsible is quite right.”

“Fiddle!” said Thorn of Guthrie. “I’ve suckled two daughters myself, one of them there before you, and I’d have welcomed anyone that cared to take the task from me. I don’t see it.”

Ruth of Motley rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, and then bent over her embroidery in silence. She was doing a panel of ferns and flowers that required a good deal of attention, and she intended to waste no more effort on her sharp-tongued companion.

There they sat, the two of them: Ruth of Motley with her needlework, one piece after another till the Castle was smothered in the stuff, and Thorn of Guthrie with yet another of the endless series of diaries she’d been scribbling away at for thirty years. They were almost alone in the Castle. It wasn’t large, as Castles went; but today, with nearly everyone gone to the fair or the Hall or some one of the other entertainments, it seemed a vast echoing cavern.

The question Responsible had been dreading came just as she thought she was going to make it out the door without either of them thinking of it.

“Responsible!”

“Mother, I’m just on my way to put this Bestowing document back in my desk for safekeeping.”

“Your grandmother said to leave it here, and you heard her; and besides, I want to ask you something.”

Thorn of Guthrie sounded determined; Responsible turned back with a sigh, went to put the Bestowing document in the sittingroom desk, and then stood waiting.

“How come you aren’t down at Confederation Hall
yourself
this morning, along with the Grannys?” her mother asked her, and Ruth of Motley looked up from her work for the answer.

“Don’t plan on going,” said Responsible, short and sharp.

“You don’t plan on going?”

“Echo in here,” said Ruth of Motley, as was her habit.

“Whatever do you mean, you don’t plan on going? All the fuss you’ve made, all the dust you’ve raised over this week of nonsense -and you stand there and tell me you don’t plan to go?”

Responsible stuck to her guns.

“That’s right, Thorn of Guthrie.”

“Well, that beats all!”

Her rescue came from an unexpected source. Ruth of Motley had turned back to her work, but she spoke attentively enough.

“I think that’s wise of you, Responsible,” she said. “I think that’s
very
wise. Not a thing you can do to change what’s going to happen in that Hall, and for you to sit there and watch it going on and torturing yourself over it would be pure foolishness. You’re better off keeping busy here till it’s all over and we know how far they’ve gone. Not to mention the fact that there’s plenty of neglected work right here for you to turn your hand to while everybody else is off gawking at the delegations and going to carnivals.”

That satisfied her mother, and Responsible blessed Ruth of Motley for her solid common sense. Here she’d been fully prepared to face them all down and just plain refuse to say why she was staying away from the proceedings, same way she’d refused ever to say who she’d learned had kidnapped the McDaniels baby, and to bear the fuss that went with the refusing. Just because no amount of thinking had brought a plausible reason to her mind. And now Ruth of Motley had taken the load right off her back, all unexpected and unasked. And while Thorn of Guthrie was still occupied in counting off all the things she wanted Responsible to see to while she was staying home and not tormenting herself, she slipped away, much relieved. It was time she turned on the comset in her room and had a look at what was happening; by now they’d have finished with the Opening Prayer, and whatever leftover trivia there’d been from the day before-and unless she was far wrong in her thinking, Jeremiah Thomas Traveller would of been recognized by the Chair and would be holding forth.