Ozark Trilogy 2: The Grand Jubilee (32 page)

“Well, some of that should be laid to the account of Thorn of Guthrie,” put in another. “If she’d been doing her job as mother-”

“Thorn of Guthrie?” Gabriel Micah was amazed. “All that woman needs do to fill her role in life is breathe in and breathe out and let the rest of us have the privilege of looking at her.”

“That may well be, but it makes for sorry mothering.”

“For
example, let’s consider Responsible’s sister Troublesome!”

“For example, let’s not.” The Reverend was a tolerant man, considering, and he didn’t scruple to spend an evening here with the male members of his flock, listening to what they had to say and getting a certain perspective on the turn of their minds at any given time-but he had his limits.

“Sorry, Reverend.”

“I should hope.”

“Like I said, Reverend, I beg your pardon for mentioning that one. But Responsible’s another matter, and I say she’s meddled and poked her nose where it wasn’t wanted, and wasted good money on folderols till the time came when even the Holy One couldn’t stand her any longer. And this is what it comes out to.”

“There was that Quest of hers-talk of wasting money! Every Castle on this planet-always excepting those fool Smiths, and I don’t doubt they were up to something as wouldn’t bear the light of day or they’d of been in on it too-every Castle put on some kind of to-do for the `daughter of Brightwater’! I’ve heard it said it was the Grannys as ordered that, but I can’t see it. Can youall?”

Everybody agreed that they couldn’t; it didn’t sound like the Grannys.

“And there was her traveling outfit-you recall that? Three hundred dollers, good Kingdom money, that all cost, or I mistake myself!”

The Reverend set his ale mug down with a thump, shaking his head.

“How much, then?”

“Excepting the whip and spurs, that have been in that Family now over three hundred years and didn’t cost any of
us
a cent, though they may of been a strain on some of our grandfathers, that costume came to precisely sixty-three dollers and twenty-nine cents. I happen to know.”

“Magic in it, then,” said the lawyer.

“A needle goes a sight faster with a Granny pushing it,” agreed the hotelkeeper, filling glasses and mugs all round.

“And then, there’s all the money-Reverend, you can’t tell us it wasn’t enormous sums of money!-as was spent on that fool Jubilee!” Gabriel Micah snickered. “What’s the opposite of `Jubilee,’ Reverend? A wake?”

The Reverend gave him a chilly look.

“
You,
Gabriel Micah-if I remember correctly, and I believe I do-you had a good time at the Jubilee such as you’ve not had since you were caught that time down by the creek, with-”

“I recollect that, Reverend,” said the man hastily. “No need to review.”

“Well? Are you trying to tell me that all the people in this Kingdom, and many a dozen more that were our guests, didn’t have a fine time at the Jubilee? Didn’t enjoy the fairs, and the picnics, and the competitions, and the plays, and even-one or two of you-the sermons, and all the rest of it? I’ll grant you Responsible didn’t have much fun out of it, but I didn’t hear any of the rest of you complaining as it was going on.”

“No,” said another, “it was a right fine celebration. Fair’s fair, Gabriel Micah-and the rest of you, too. Not to mention, long as we’re talking her up, that it was Responsible of Brightwater as ordered five days’ wages paid to every last one of us out of the Castle funds so we wouldn’t have to work during the Jubilee.”

“That was our own money-tax money!”

“Howsomever; there’s a lot of other things it could of been spent on that we’d never of had any good from. And there was nothing to make her do that, you know. They could just as well of said work as usual and find time for celebrating after, if you’ve any energy left-and spent the tax money on theirselves. And you know it very well.”

“Well, if she’s such a fine lady,” demanded Gabriel Micah, determined now to be spokesman for his position if he died trying, “then how
come
she’s lying up there now, as near dead as makes
no
nevermind, and nothing any of the Magicians can do to bring her out of it? That sound like some mark of heavenly favor to
you?
”

The Reverend listened to them grumble and fuss for a while, and then left, clapping each one in his reach on the shoulder. He was satisfied that the doings at the Castle weren’t worrying the men much; if anything, they were pleased to have something new to talk about. The fall of the Confederation had made no difference in their lives up to now, since they were of Brightwater Kingdom and enjoyed every privilege they ever had, with the added advantage of not having to put up with the Continental Delegations coming in one month in four and filling up the hotels.

The men of Brightwater were in no way worried; curious, distracted at worst, uneasy perhaps that the Magicians and Magicians of Rank seemed not to know what was going on. But not worried.

It was the women that worried. At home in their houses, they were white-faced and tight-lipped, and they had just one question: what was going to happen now?

The Grannys and the Family had asked Veritas Truebreed Motley the same question.

“Now what, you hifalutin fraud?” Thorn of Guthrie’d thrown at him, speaking for a number of them that wouldn’t have dared say the words. “You and your high-and-mighty magic! What’s going to happen now to my daughter?”

The Magician of Rank had smiled and expressed his approval of the first concern for her child he’d ever heard from her lips, and Thorn of Guthrie had come near spitting at him. “I’m
not
concerned for my child,” she said, tossing that Guthrie hair, “not so much as my little finger-end’s worth! My child, from what I can determine and from what you tell me, is resting comfortably. I am talking about the effect of her condition on all the rest of us!”

Veritas Truebreed raised his eyebrows, and then he bowed his head, ever so slightly, and clasped his hands behind him.”My dear Thorn of Guthrie,” he answered her, “I think `all the rest’ of you have no cause for concern. Responsible attended to a thing or two in this Kingdom, and meddled a good deal more than was appropriate in things elsewhere, but there’s nothing she did that can’t be handled by others. Your Economist can see to the accounts she kept, the staff can-”

“
Veritas Truebreed!
”

“Yes, Thorn of Guthrie! I am not deaf, you know!”

“I am not referring to the things Responsible did that could be handled by the servingmaids! You’ll push me too far, even for a Magician of Rank! I am referring to her
other
duties!”

He looked her right in the eye and assured her that there was nothing-
nothing
-that Responsible of Brightwater ordinarily saw to that couldn’t be handled just as well by the nine Ozark Magicians of Rank.

“You’re sure of that?”

He was sure of it, and so were his colleagues. In the time it had taken them to accomplish the task of putting Responsible into pseudocoma-and that had turned out to be somewhat more of a project than they’d anticipated-they’d come to an agreement on that. The idea that the existence of a female, duly named and designated Responsible, in every generation-the idea that that was somehow essential to the well-being of Ozark-had been thoroughly discussed and set aside for what it was. Mere superstition.

It was eight o’clock in the morning on Tinaseeh. Morning prayer, morning chores, and the essentials of the body were out of the way; now it was time for teaching. The Tutors, though they came from the ranks of the Magicians, wore nothing to distinguish them from any other Traveller male. Their charges-exactly twelve per Tutor-were miniature versions of themselves. Black trousers, black shirts, black jackets, black shoes, black hats; the only concession made to childhood was the absence of the tie. In Booneville there were six little boys that didn’t have to go to Tutorials, because they were waiting for six more little boys to reach the age of three and bring their group up to the required dozen. The boys in the Tutorials hated them, because they were still free to play; the boys left out hated and envied the others, and felt deprived because they could not attend and would be late starting.

There were no problems of curriculum on Tinaseeh. Each Tutor had a heavy book he carried with him, laying out the content of each of the twelve hundred teaching days he would have with his pupils. Four years, from the third birthday to the seventh, he would have them, for three hundred days of the year. And there would never be a day in that twelve hundred when he thought to himself, “Now what shall I do today?” That’s not how it was done on Tinaseeh.

On this particular day, the subject was “Governments of Our World.”

“Boys?”

Tutor Ethan Daniel Traveller the 30th tapped his ironwood pointer once, for order, and was rewarded with instant silence. He was an experienced Tutor-weary of it, if the truth were known, and hoping this year’s examinations in magic would free him of the role-and his charges gave him no problems. They wouldn’t have dared.

“You’ll look at the map now,” he said, and raised the pointer to touch each continent as he spoke.

“Kintucky!” he said first. “Up here in the left-hand corner, with the Ocean of Storms all around it. Kintucky, settled in-” He waited, with the ironwood poised.

“Twenty-three thirty-nine!” they shouted, and he nodded approval.

“Kintucky is held by the Wommack Family, and it is a mite different from the other Kingdoms. It’s governed, right now, by a man called a Guardian, the uncle of the rightful Master of Castle Wommack, just until the boy is old enough to take his place. The name for such a government is a
regency.
You will remember that.”

“Yes, Tutor Ethan Daniel.”

“Mizzurah, across the Ocean of Storms and off the coast of Arkansaw, was settled in twenty-three thirty-two. It’s a very small place, as you can see, but it belongs to two Families-the Lewises and the Motleys. They are both democratic republics-as Kintucky will be, one of these days-and that means their government is a kind of council, that elects its leader. But it has never happened on Ozark that that leader was not also Master of the Castle in that Kingdom. And so the government of Mizzurah
is
led by the Masters of Castles Lewis and Motley. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” chorused the boys. Those old enough to write made notes with their styluses, and the three- and four-year-olds said it over and over under their breath to help themselves remember.

“Moving on, we have the continent-a continent, boys, is a large body of land completely surrounded by water; you will remember that-we have the continent of Arkansaw. Cletus Frederick Farson? Are you paying attention? Look at the map, Cletus Frederick, not the ceiling; there is nothing written on the ceiling!”

The other eleven boys laughed and nudged each other; and Cletus Frederick, supremely uninterested in the topic of “Governments of Our World” but not so stupid as to let it be known, fixed his eyes firmly on the point of the stick and stared at the map.

“The continent of Arkansaw, with the Ocean of Storms on the west and the Ocean of Remembrances on the east, was settled in-”

“Twenty-one twenty-seven!”

“Twenty-one twenty-seven, quite right. It is held by three Families: the Farsons
_,
the Guthries, and the Purdys. The Farsans and the Guthries have Kings, and are called-
monarchies.
You will remember that. Now Kingdom Purdy is a little different: it does not have a King, but it is not a democratic republic. It has a group of three men ruling it, that are called Senators; they rule together. This kind of government is called an
ol
igarchy. Say it after me.”

“
Ol
igarchy!”

“Again!”

“
Ol
igarchy!”

“That’s it. Now, crossing the ocean, still going clockwise, we come to Marktwain, the continent where First Landing happened in the year twenty twenty-one. For six years all of the Families lived together on Marktwain, which-as you can see-is small, almost as small as Mizzurah. It is shared by two Families-the Brightwaters and the McDaniels-both Kingdoms are democratic republics.”

“That’s where the comsets are!” piped one very small boy. “That’s true, James Thomas,” agreed the Tutor. “But we don’t want the comsets, do we, boys?”

“No, sir!”

“And why don’t we?”

“Because they are evil!”

“So they are, so they are. And what else is there on Marktwain, in the Kingdom of Brightwater, that is evil?”

The boys looked at each other, not quite sure what he wanted. There was so much evil everywhere.

“James Thomas?” said the Tutor sharply. “You brought up the comsets-how about you telling us the answer to my question?”

“Responsible and Troublesome,” mumbled the little boy very fast, looking at his feet and hoping.

“That is
exactly
right!” the Tutor thundered. “Exactly! Two evil women. Troublesome of Brightwater, exiled now for years to the top of a far mountain also called Troublesome, where decent people will not have to be around her! And Responsible of Brightwater?”

“She’s asleep!”

“Yes; she’s asleep. She was so wicked that the Holy One struck her down, putting her into a sleep like unto death-and she has been that way now for ten months, two weeks, and three days. You
see
where evil leads?”