Ozark Trilogy 2: The Grand Jubilee (26 page)

“Then how did Silverweb find out, when even I don’t know?”

“Ah, Missus,” said Joan of Smith, “I’ll not speak to that question. What a woman can do provided she’s driven sufficientlynow that’s been a wonder since the beginning of time. Every inch, as you put it, the youngun must of searched-just every inch! And not to be fooled by holes with a blanket hung over ‘em, either. As I said-you’d best see for yourself.”

Anne stood up and hesitated, half afraid to go see what her tall grave daughter was up to, wholly afraid not to, and Joan of Smith said, “The reason for that blanket and trunk, you see, that was so as nobody’d wander into there by mistake and catch whatever it was the person sick there had at the time. You see how that would be.”

Anne saw. “You sit here and rest,” she told Joan, “just as long as you fancy it. Up to the attics, at your age, and all those stairs! I’d fuss at you if I had the time, Joan of Smith, I declare I wouldbut I’m going up to see what’s to be seen, before she comes down.”

“That’s wise,” said the other. “And I can climb as many stairs as you can, or any other soul in this Castle, you keep that in mind, ma’am! I’m no invalid, and I’ll be climbing stairs here when-”

Anne knew from experience that this would go on a long time before the old lady wound down at last and was satisfied with her disclaimers. She leaned over and patted the frail hands holding the battered cane-absolutely, she must be made to have a new one, if they had to send in the Grannys to make her give in to the change, this one was falling to pieces and would give her a broken hip one of these days!-and she slipped out and left her still at it, and headed for the eastmost attic.

The room was there; she found it easily enough. She found her daughter, too. Three knocks she made at the door, clucking her tongue at the sheen it had-she knew how many coats of polish that meant, and how much rubbing, and the servingmaids had never in a million years done
that,
or her name wasn’t Anne of Brightwater-and there’d been no answer. She’d hesitated; a person of Silverweb’s age had a right to her privacy, and clearly this was a very private place. Then her mother’s concern had triumphed over her manners and she’d turned the knob and stepped inside, saying smartly, “Silverweb?” so the girl couldn’t claim she’d been sneaking up on her.

It wouldn’t have mattered if she’d come in with a brass band; she saw that at once. She went forward to where her daughter was kneeling, tiptoeing for no reason that she understood, and said the name again. Silverweb neither saw her nor heard her. Not at all.

Anne ran, then. Down the tiny hall, scraping her arm painfully on its walls in her panic, through all the attics one after another, down the flights of stairs-and came to a full stop. At the bottom of the first staircase, Joan of Smith stood waiting for her; that meant three flights the old lady had toiled up
again
this day. She would be weary and aching tonight, and Anne thought distractedly that she had to remember to have someone see to her.

“Found her, did you?”

“Yes, I did-and I don’t like it!”

“Thought you wouldn’t, child; that’s why I’m here.”

“What will I
do?
” She knew she looked foolish, wringing her hands and rubbing at her scraped arm-if she hadn’t Joan would never have called her “child”-but she didn’t care. She was frightened.

“Do? You can leave her be,” said Joan. “You’re Missus of this Castle, and a fine lady, as it’s a privilege to serve under. You’re mother of nine, and my womb never quickened- Aye, I’ll go virgin to my grave, if you want to know the truth of it! Never could bear the idea of a man . . . doing as they do. But I have been walking this earth more years than you and all your babes combined, and I know a thing or two. Anne of Brightwater-leave her be.”

Anne leaned against the wall, too weak suddenly to support herself.

“Oh, Joan,” she wailed, “it’s not natural! You know what it is, don’t you? You saw her-you know what it is?”

“
Rapture,
it’s called,” said Joan calmly. “And ecstasy, sometimes. I do believe rapture has a better sound to it, though I’ve always thought both were ugly words.”

“And you say leave her be?”

“I do.”

“I’ll talk to the Reverend!”

“Do that, and he’ll drive her away,” came the warning. “She would be just as satisfied with a bare cave in the desert, or a hut out in the Wilderness Lands, as she is with that room up there. You care to keep her home, you say nothing at all to the Reverend. I’ve seen him, how he looks sharp at her when she sings in the choir on Sundys; he’s suspicious already, and a word from you about this would be the last dot on the
i
. He wouldn’t tolerate it.”

“But what will become of her? What will she do, where will she go? On Earth she could have gone into what they called a convent, lived in a bare cell and prayed all the days of her life back of bars if she chose to-we’ve no such things here! She will be so terribly alone!”

Joan of Smith shook her head firmly, and then again.

“Oh, no!” she said. “There’s nothing of this world as Miss Silverweb wants or needs, Missus, and nothing she lacks. She has the Love of Loves, beside which all else is no more, they say, than dry husks and ashes. Such things happen for a purpose, and hers will be clear in time-we will know, and the Twelve Gates grant these eyes live to see it!-we will know what that purpose is. Until then, there are two things to do.”

“And they are?”

“Wait, in patience and in humility, if you’ll pardon my using the word, as has no right. That’s one. And give her hard work aplenty. Chores! To make a balance. Rapture’s all very well, but madness lies just the other side of it. See to it she’s in the kitchen and the garden and the orchards, make her
sweat,
to tie her safely to this earth in its
wholesome
parts. You’ve been doing that, I’ve had my eye on you; your woman’s knowing, your mother’s knowing, has been directing you as proper as you could be directed. See you don’t stop that, now-I’d make it harder on ‘er, were I you.”

Anne nodded, numb to the core. It was right-every word of itthough how the old creature knew it she couldn’t imagine. Perhaps it was the fabled wisdom of age, perhaps it was an experience Joan of Smith didn’t care to speak of or had forgotten entirely . . but it had the ring of rightness. Nevertheless, she was blind with anger. That this should happen to her daughter! All that blond ripeness, the heavy braids always wound in their figure eight like a crown! She had seen the pale down on Silverweb’s breasts, and the way they strained at the fabric over them, and the long line of spine when she bent to weeding. And those good hips, meant for babies, designed for them! The waste of it, the utter heartbreaking waste . . . Anne could have cursed the deity that had stolen away her only daughter and denied the motherhood that daughter was fashioned for in every last detail.

Except the spirit. The spirit was

“Warped!” she said aloud, defying the Powers to do their worst. And then, “Maybe she will grow out of it.”

“That happens sometimes,” said the old woman. “Might could be.”

But Anne of Brightwater had seen her daughter’s face, and she knew she spoke a lie, and that Joan of Smith humored her in it. Silverweb would not, would never, grow out of it, and the time would come when it would ripen to a terrible purpose that had nothing at all to do with the ripeness of the flesh, and there was no least thing she could do to stop it, or slow it, or turn it aside. It was like so many other things-it was to be endured.

Responsible’s list of tasks had been reduced considerably by the turn of events. The project for spreading the Purdy girls round the Kingdoms to break the hold of the “you can’t do anything right because you’re a Purdy” idea would have to be postponed; at the moment, Brightwater had no kind of relationship with Castle Purdy to even suggest such a thing. She could also draw a firm line through the item that instructed her to see to the Arkansaw feuds; Farsons, Guthries, and Purdys could now go at one another with broadswords and bludgeons, free from all interference-the advantages of sovereignty. The matter of holding a day of celebration in honor of the alleged Skerry sighting had become irrelevant, even if there really had been a Skerry. The penalty for failing to celebrate was bad luck, and that had already arrived in ample measure. And the superstition at Castle Wommack?

Responsible thought about that one awhile. No question about it, she would of welcomed any sort of excuse to visit Castle Wommack, seeing as how that was where Lewis Motley Wommack the 33rd was to be found. Her sleep was filled with dreams of him, far too vivid to be restful, and she woke from them drenched as she had risen from his arms. Once awake, she guarded her mind rigorously, stamping out any thought of him the same way she’d have stamped out fire in dry grass, but her nights were a scandal. The advantage, of course, was that they required no effort on his part and only she was troubled by them; she would heartily have enjoyed a chance to let him share the occasions.

But the Wommacks had done no more to save the Confederation than any of the other Families had, and had left Castle Brightwater as rapidly as everybody else, and they’d left no invitations behind them. While the Confederation stood, she’d felt comfortable touring the Castles; now, for all she knew, they’d bar their gates against her and shout Spells. She’d best leave Castle Wommack alone.

Some of the Families had been prompt in their actions, praise the Gates. Castles McDaniels, Clark, and Airy had sent bids for alliance, obviously written as fast as Family meetings could be held, votes taken, and Mules saddled to fly the documents to Brightwater. Castle Motley had sent its own Magician of Rank, Shawn Merryweather Lewis the 7th, to let Brightwater know that Castles Motley and Lewis would remain allied with Brightwater for so long as it was possible to do so.

She looked up at the map above her desk; the tiny continent of Mizzurah had all of Arkansaw between it and Brightwater, and looked more like an island off Arkansaw’s coast than a nation of two Kingdoms. It was brave of Lewis and Motley to send the message, and a bit of good fortune for them that they had a Magician of Rank to SNAP it on to Brightwater; but they were very isolated now, just the same. When their supplies began to dwindle, which wouldn’t be all that long a time off, she was reasonably sure they’d have no choice but to turn to Arkansaw for help-and that would be the end of their ties to Brightwater.

There’d been no word from Castle Smith, now surrounded by Brightwater allies but only a brief flight away from Castle Guthrie, just across the narrow channel between Oklahomah and Arkansaw. Presumably they were debating their options . . . or might could be Delldon Mallard Smith was really fool enough to think he could go it entirely alone.

She turned back to her list, it being pleasanter food for thought than the blamed Smiths. There was the question of whether Una of Clark had acted alone in using magic against Brightwater to scuttle the Jubilee-she’d waste
no
time on that one! The Jubilee, and all that went with it, was over, and she intended to put it behind her, thought
and
deed, like any dead and dishonored thing.

But there was one task that had now become not just one more promise, one more duty postponed, but a matter of urgent necessity. She had given the Gentles her word. Whatever happened to the Confederation of Continents, stand or fall, they would not be involved in the results. For thirty thousand years of recorded history they had lived in the caves of Arkansaw; they had granted the surface of the land without stint or hesitation to the humans, by treaties that guaranteed them the right to go on with their own lives as they always had. And now they were smack in the middle of the feuds. Might could be the Farsons and the Guthries, and the Purdys following along, would hold to the treaties for the sake of simple decency; she would have liked to think so. Might could be, on the other hand, they’d take the position that the old treaties were Confederation agreements and no longer bound them. The Gentles would of been safer, all in all, at the hands of the Travellers, obsessed as they were with righteousness. No telling
what
the Arkansaw Families might do . . .

It was going to be a curious situation, grant that right off. The Granny had been discussing it that morning at the breakfast table, and Granny Hazelbide had laid it out for the rest of them with absolute accuracy.

“It’d be one thing,” she’d said, glaring over the top of her coffee cup, “if the very minute of First Landing we’d divided this world up twelve ways and sent everybody off to their own homeplaces and stayed that way since. That’d be
one
thing! As it is, that is
not
what we have on our platter, not in any degree whatsoever. We’re all scrambled and mixed and conglomerated . . . why, there’s not a place on Ozark that’s not got folks all settled in from every one of the Twelve Families!”

“Travellers excepted, might could be,” said Granny Gableframe. “I misdoubt there’s anybody on Tinaseeh but Travellers, Farsons, and Purdys-maybe a Guthrie or two. No more.”

“Tch!” went Ruth of Motley. “That’s not even decent.”

“If we’d gone the way Granny Hazelbide was mentioning,” Jonathan Cardwell Brightwater pointed out, “we’d of been inbred worse than the goats long before this.”

“Jonathan Cardwell! Such talk!”

“May not be elegant, m’dear, but it’s accurate,” he answered her, and bent to kiss her cheek. “It’s a right good thing the Families had sense enough to mix it up, and plenty of other family lines represented among them at the beginning.”