Ozark Trilogy 2: The Grand Jubilee (13 page)

The Mule was lathered, and she set the basket aside, hung the saddlebags on a hook in a corner of the stall, and began to rub it down . . . He could hear the rough hiss of the stable blanket against its hair. He sat bolt upright against the wall, doing his best not to breathe, and was pondering what to do next when she spoke up.

“Lewis Motley,” she said briskly, right along with the rubdown, “you’d be a good deal more comfortable in your bed than you are against that wall. We pride ourselves here at Brightwater on making our guests comfortable . . . but then we’ve never had to allow for them sneaking up and down the halls and through the stableyards and roaming all around the town half the night. Might could be our arrangements’ll need to be changed. Tea, maybe, served for the guest with a sudden urge to go riding after midnight. And a sofa in the stable instead of that hard floor.”

The idea that she’d known he was here all along, let him follow her down the garden path, and expected him to be waiting-the humiliation of it left him without a word to say.

“Well?” she said. “No answer, Lewis Motley? You Wommacks have curious manners, if I do say so myself, and I surely do. Only person I’ve ever known with more gall than you is my sister Troublesome, and she has her reasons. You have your reasons, young man?”

He cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and launched into an ordinarily reliable account of the manner in which he ached for her fair white body and was willing to spend any number of waking nights on hard floors for an opportunity to clasp it to him once again. It wasn’t his very best version, but it was the one that came quickest to his otherwise vacant mind, and she listened to it all the way through politely enough.

“Do tell,” she said, at the end of it, and he wasn’t all that surprised. It had had its uses with any number of young females, the ones Jewel expected him to worry about their crying and puling through their days and their nights. But it was not all that likely to prove effective with the daughter of Brightwater-he’d heard the
welcoming speech she gave the delegations, and noted the easy way she lulled them.

“Shall I try a different one?” he asked her. “I have an assortment.”

“Never mind,” she said. “Considering you spent most of last night sitting out in my hall and got nothing for your trouble, and then most of this one in the company of our Mules, I’ll settle for the piece you just recited. Now I suggest we go to bed, or you’ll be late back to your room and the whole Castle will be scandalized.”

He followed her warily, feeling no more lust for her than he’d felt for the borrowed Mule. It had been far too easy, and he’d gotten off much too lightly; he might have been led round the barn, but he wasn’t so addled he didn’t realize
that
. Not to mention that she must know he’d seen her disappearing act, seeing as how she knew everything else he’d done this past forty-eight hours or so. And he tread the halls softly, knowing they had barely an hour before the Castle staff roused to start this day. To say nothing of the Grannys, that felt anybody abed after five in the morning wasn’t worth spitting over, and tended to set even that hour back once they passed the century mark. Might could be that with the press of time and the number of curious circumstances he’d not be called upon to muster up even a pretense of that absent lust; which would be just as well.

But he needn’t have worried. Responsible of Brightwater had him naked in her arms with a speed that made him wonder if she was still using witchcraft, and in ten frantic minutes it was all over, tangle of bodies, tangle of minds, and all. He lay there drenched with sweat beside her, trying to get his breath, and complimented her on her efficiency.

“I’d of preferred a more leisurely course to things,” she said, “
if
I’d had my druthers, but there are times when every second must be made to count. This was one of those times.”

“Well, I thank you for your hospitality,” he said lamely; he hoped he had strength enough to get back down the corridors and up the stairs to his room. Maybe he could claim he’d broken a leg and buy himself a few hours’ sleep-for a few hours’ sleep, at that moment, he would of been more than willing to break a leg.

Tired, Lewis Motley Wommack?” she asked him.

“Oh, no,” he said. “I can hardly wait to get to the Independence Room and sit through today’s round of speeches on the cursed
Confed
-er
a
tion.”

“Law, how you lie!”

“Right enough. And I wish you’d tell me, before I rush off to my important affairs of the day, how you
do
that.”

“Do what? Lie? It’s you as does the lying.”

“Tell me how you run around inside my head like you do, Responsible of Brightwater . . . Tell me that, and stop your throwing dust in my eyes.”

Responsible raised herself on one elbow and stared at him, and he thought what a shame it was she wasn’t beautiful, plain witches not really fitting his concept of the thing, and she said with an absolute seriousness that inclined him to believe she spoke the truth: “If I could keep from it I wouldn’t do it, since I’m well aware you dislike it.”

“You can’t keep from it? That’s a dubious claim.”

“I don’t go where I’m not wanted,” she declared. “Not deliberately. Might could be that as I get more practice at this, I’ll learn to control my head somewhat better. I get . . . carried away, you see. It’s a distracting sort of activity.”

She did indeed get carried away, and he prudently made no comment on that. She was a lusty woman, and he pitied any man handed the task of keeping her satisfied for the next fifty years.

Just the thought of it and the sweat turned icy on his body, making her go “Tsk!” beside him.

“I’d warm you up, my friend,” she said gently, “but there’s not time. Nor time for you to shower, I’m sorry to say. Unless you want every Granny in this Castle to see you sashaying down the halls, you’d best get yourself under way and save the tidyup for your own rooms:”

“Tell me one thing,” he said.

“If you don’t ask,” she cautioned, “I won’t be obliged to refuse you.

“Where did you go?” he continued, determined to gain as much as he could. “Near on three hours you were gone, Responsible of Brightwater-where were you?”

She was silent, except for the laughing; and he sighed and dragged himself out of her bed before he could fall asleep in it. He wasn’t going to find out by asking, she’d made that clear; and the idea of turning her into the sort of maudlin mess he was accustomed to producing, where she’d do or say anything just to keep him from leaving her side-that was ridiculous. He was young, but he wasn’t stupid.

“I intend to find out, you know,” he told her, pulling his clothes on any old how. “I do intend to find out.”

“Intend all you please,” she mocked him-mocked him, damn her! “I’ll not spoil your fun by telling you.”

“And how do you know I won’t get up today in front of the Grannys and the whole world assembled, and tell them that you disappear in the night on a Mule, and have the power to lay silence on the creatures, and make something indescribable of the act of love?”

She was calm as a pond. “I know that,” she answered, “because first of all that would put an end to your fun, for sure and for certain-you’d never find anything out that way. And secondly, because for all the wickedness you so pride
yourself
on, young Wommack, you have a code of honor of your own-and it doesn’t include tattling. You’d never stoop to that.”

“Might could be I’d see it as my duty as a citizen to speak up,” he said, struggling with his hood. “If there’s anything I can’t abide, you know, it’s failing in my duty as a citizen.”

“Like Jeremiah Thomas Traveller?” she teased. “Burdened with the truth and heavy of heart, but oh, law, you asked the Holy One Almighty if you should tattle and the answer came back YES! and it came back again YES!”

He closed her door behind him as loudly as he dared, leaving her still chuckling on her drenched narrow bed among the pillows, and limped desperately toward his rooms and a scalding shower. He was by no means confident he’d live through this day, nor certain he cared to; and the Gates help anybody that crossed him till he’d had a chance at some sleep.

When Jewel of Wommack stuck her head out her door at him as he passed it he said only, “Don’t chance it!” and she popped it right back in again without another word.

Responsible sat at her desk, the private account books before her, and worked, doggedly. It was work that had needed doing before she had left the Castle in February; it was work that needed doing now; and it would make an excellent device for forcing the hours of this day to go by.

At nine o’clock sharp she’d tuned her comset for automatic printout, and she would not miss one word spoken. The speeches and their rebuttals, the Chair’s summary and the results of the voting-assuming they got to the voting today, which was not all that likely-would be transcribed silently onto pliofilm and deposited in the comset slot where her copy of the day’s news still lay unread. She had waked up that morning, an hour after Lewis Motley Wommack left her bed, to the sound of a late spring rain drumming on the roof and against the north windows, and usually that would of been her idea. of an ideal setting to curl up in her bed with the news-sheet and her pot of tea. But she’d had no stomach for the “news” this morning. None of what had happened at Confederation Hall would be news to her-except the things that mattered most but would not be printed on the pliofilm. And anything new that had happened beyond the narrow focus of her present interest, anything that was of importance and might deserve her attention, she did not want to know about right now. She had no attention left to give such things, and would do a slapdash cattywampus job of tending to them-far better to have them wait till this meeting was over and she knew where matters stood.

She was tired, from tension and from lack of sleep; the shower she’d had before her tea had not driven away the gritty feeling under her eyelids nor the ache in her muscles. Nevertheless, she sat at her desk and she studied the columns of figures, forcing them not to blur by squinting fiercely until she added a headache toher other problems and was tempted-just
slightly
tempted-to squander a Spell or two on her self.

“Pay attention, Responsible,” she told herself sternly, “and don’t be such a frail little flower.” A good hard pinch would wake her up fairly effectively, and save the energy she might well need for real magic before this week was over. She applied the pinch, swore softly, and looked again at the columns of numbers.

There was, for example, the one hundred thirteen dollers entered under the ambiguous heading “Herbs Needed.” Herbs needed by whom? For what? And how could anybody spend one hundred thirteen dollers on herbs at one time? The Grannys gathered their own herbs, as did she and the Magicians; only the Magicians of Rank were considered
so
busy that their herbs must be provided for them by others.

She laid down her stylus, cross at the ambiguous entry, cross that she hadn’t demanded details when it had come through on the private budget line in the first place, and went to the comset. She punched in the computer locations for the budget category, seven numbers in sequence, and the infowindow lit up for readout on such matters as the cost of goatfeed and Mule blankets in the month of April 3012, which was not yet quite what she wanted. The restricted access code numbers switched the computer’s search to the areas that interested her.

She typed in the date of the entry, the words, and then, AMPLIFY.

GAILHERB
         
EIGHTY DOLLERS EVEN

BENISONWEED THIRTY-THREE DOLLERS EVEN

SOURCE MIARKTWAIN WILDERNESS,

NORTHEAST EDGE, 2119.4 BY 941.0 APPROX

GOAL
     
CASTLE AIRY

BENEFICIARY
  
CHARITY OF GUTHRIE

The readout winked off, Bashed once more as a concession to her human frailties, and winked off, leaving the word WAITING behind.

Responsible thought about it.

IS REPEAT DESIRED? The computer was short on patience.

She ignored it, and thought some more. Then she typed in: DISPLAY ALL OTHER DETAILS RE ENTRY.

ALL DETAILS DISPLAYED. WAITING.

“Wait, then,” said Responsible, and turned it off. She was satisfied. Charity of Guthrie, widowed Mistress of Castle Airy, took in every damaged creature that Ozark produced. Any citizen involved in some shabby Family altercation that would not bear the light of day or of the courts; any girl suffering the nine-month effects of careless love; any young person unable to face the long haul up through the world from servingmaid or apprentice or hired man to heading an independent household; any weak or shamed or injured or frightened person, anyone simply in need of refuge, could be sure of a warm welcome at Castle Airy. And three Grannys lived under that roof, to help Charity live up to her name. If she’d felt she needed one hundred and thirteen dollers worth of gailherb and benisonweed, so be it.

Responsible checked the item off and went on to the next one. And then her stylus slowed as she wondered . . . had any of the Twelve Kingdoms planned ahead, against the possibility that the Confederation would fall and they would no longer be able to depend upon Brightwater for such things as herbs? It was very simple for them now; whatever their Castles required, they punched in their order on their comsets and it arrived by supply freighter. And in an emergency, there’d be Veritas Truebreed Motley the 4th, Brightwater’s own Magician of Rank, SNAPPING in on his Mule with the supplies in his saddlebags almost before the person asking had stopped entering the order. The Castles had been taking that for granted for hundreds of years now, like the weather; might some of them have thought about preparing for a new kind of winter?