by Myers, Karen
Angharad said, “Yes, let them climb to the roof and meet in the middle.”
“What about yesterday’s bush?” he asked.
“Better wait, I think, and see what comes next. We really might run out of room. Just water it for now.”
She turned and resumed her seat, lowering herself carefully down. She smiled at Bedo. “At least it’s not oak trees,” she said.
In response to his puzzled look, she told him the story of the painting of the oak tree in the huntsman’s study, and George’s recurring vision of the safety and shelter it embodied. “We saw it at the end of the great hunt at Nos Galan Gaeaf, in the human world, the very image he’d envisioned all his life. He still doesn’t know where that was, but we’ve seen it now, and that was enough for him.”
He didn’t talk about it much anymore, but she was reminded of it every time she saw the bare winter oak emblem he used for his goods, to mark the things that were his in the common stable—the horses’ stalls, and their tack. His human grandfather’s Talbot family blazon had been a lion rampant, but George had declared a new emblem for his family here in Annwn, and the bare oak was his sign.
Now if I could only get him to root himself here until the child came, she thought, I’d be more settled. Fewer rosebushes, please, more husband. Finish up your task, dear, and return. Her mouth quirked at the silent wish.
The black cat looked up at her sharply, as if he could read her thoughts and did not approve.
Oh, you have an opinion, do you, my lady? No disrespect intended to you, Angharad thought. Care to share your plans with me?
Imp looked down and began to wash himself.
Angharad sighed. Neither the cat nor his passenger deigned to comment. Again.
Bedo continued his assigned rose study until Maelgwn left for work with one of his masters, and Alun found tasks to do indoors again. Then he glanced over at Angharad, lost in her thoughts, and laid his brush down carefully where it wouldn’t drip.
He’d been looking for an opportunity to speak with her in private, not about his apprentice work—they talked of that all the time—but about the changes in his life, now that he had taken his bold step and come with her, back to her home.
The habits of a lifetime of service were hard to put aside. He felt himself too quiet, too deferential, beyond what was expected of an apprentice. When he’d visited Taironnen with Angharad three weeks ago, there’d been one morning when he was alone with Eurig and Tegwen, while Angharad rested a bit longer than usual. They’d drawn him into conversation and he hadn’t been able to hide behind his formal relationship with Angharad, apprentice to master.
Eurig had noted his discomfort and told him, in his gruff manner, “You’re not a servant any more, young man. You may be a student, but we learn all our lives—no shame in that. Angharad sees something in you, and I want to see it, too.”
Tegwen had added, softening her husband’s directness, “What he means, Bedo, is that you’re still hiding, like a servant does, keeping the ownership of his thoughts and opinions to himself. That’s prudent in a servant, and very understandable, but you have taken on a different role now, and need to learn the behavior that suits it. Your patrons will include royalty, if you’re good enough, and you must meet them with both appropriate pride and suitable deference.”
I’m hardly a young man, in my eighties, Bedo had thought, but he supposed to these two the distinction was probably meaningless.
He’d found the courage to ask, equal to equal, “I value your observations, my lady, my lord. What do you suggest I do, to grow into my changed circumstances? Clearly I must study this as well as my drawing.”
“Talk to Angharad about it,” Tegwen had said. “She’ll know what to do.”
And for three weeks he had turned this conversation over in his mind. They were right, he knew.
His heart was drawn to the exercises Angharad was setting him to. He could hardly sleep at night, his brain in a ferment over the day’s work, the analysis of what went wrong, the planning for the next step. It was as if he’d been seized by the need to create, as if he’d hungered for it all his life instead of awakening it just a few months ago.
He was deeply and forever grateful for Angharad for taking him on as an apprentice, and for giving him a path to follow to lead him through the taming and development of his artistic skill. But he needed to learn other skills, how to use other tools, to find a path that would let him truly leave his habit of service behind.
He wasn’t a servant any longer. He’d tried to befriend Alun when he first arrived, but Alun couldn’t think of him as a peer that way. Bedo’s overtures had made him uncomfortable. And so, Bedo spared him, and contented himself with helping out around the huntsman’s house whenever he saw an opportunity to do so.
But he was lonely.
He took a breath. “Angharad,” he said.
“Hmm?”
“My lady Tegwen suggested that I ask you something.”
“Oh?” Angharad gave him her attention with a faint smile.
Bedo remembered that Tegwen was perhaps her best friend. He felt at the mercy of the two much older women, but forged ahead anyway.
“She said I needed to learn how to behave less like a servant, now that my position has changed.”
Angharad’s forehead creased, and he was dismayed, but she responded with, “I’ve been remiss in my duties. She’s perfectly right, and I’m so sorry, Bedo.”
“Well,” he said, uncomfortably, “you’ve had much to occupy you…” He broke off.
“This child, you mean,” she said, waving a hand at her belly, “and my wandering husband, and all the rest. Nonsense, that’s no excuse.”
She paused as if considering what to say. “To be honest, Bedo, you’re the first apprentice I’ve taken who wasn’t already familiar with the sorts of people you’re likely to meet as an artist, the sort you need for patrons. I’ve been taking that for granted, and I can’t understand how I could have been so stupid.” She looked appalled.
He spoke, to spare her any more of this. “My lady, it’s fine, I should have mentioned it myself. It’s just that Tegwen, um…”
“Ambushed you?” Angharad suggested.
Bedo laughed out loud, surprising himself, and Angharad joined him.
In a lighter humor, Angharad started again. “So, let’s fix this. I haven’t noticed you taking any evenings off. Have you found many friends yet?”
Bedo could find nothing to say.
“I see. Well, we can do something about that.”
She thought for a moment. “I wonder, have you spent much time with Dyfnallt, yet?”
At Bedo’s surprised head shake, she continued. “He’s about your age, you know. He had to leave everything behind when he decided to side with Gwyn and George instead of his own lord Cuhelyn, after being sent to spy upon us here. That took great courage.”
She looked at Bedo. “I think his wife refused to go with him, and so he truly lost everything. I believe he feels rather alone here.”
He’d never thought about Dyfnallt. He was part of George’s world, the hounds and huntsmen, not Angharad’s. But she was right, he was almost as displaced as Bedo felt.
Bedo cleared his throat. “I’m afraid I don’t know him well at all.”
“We can change that,” Angharad said. “Shall I host a little dinner while George and Benitoe are away, just the family and Ives and Dyfnallt? I think they’d like that, and I know I would.”
Bedo could feel his heart lift a bit at just the prospect of lifting his isolation. “I’d like that too, my lady.”
“Good. That’s settled, then.” A smile touched her lips. “Dyfnallt’s something of a woodcarver, I understand, and so is Alun. I wonder if they’d be willing to show me their work?”
She cocked an eye at Bedo. “And you should probably get started on that, too. No time like the present.”
George was young again, and his mother was making him breakfast. He remembered what it
was to be child-sized, looking up at his tall mother who always seemed to have a smile for him.
She told him stories every night. He’d been so surprised once he was old enough to realize that other mothers didn’t make up stories for their children. Hers went on and on, and they never repeated. The same characters would appear, but the stories about them changed every time. She’d told him that he used to object to that when he was smaller, but he had no memory of it. Instead, he found it exciting trying to anticipate what new situation his familiar friends would encounter each night and how they would handle it.
If his father was home, he would listen, too, sometimes, in silence.
He wasn’t there now, just his mother, in the morning light of the cottage’s little kitchen. She took his plate away and put it in the sink and stood looking out the kitchen window, her right hand over her stomach.
Then she turned her head and looked back at him. “Be careful, dear,” she said.
The colorful, sunlit scene dissolved before him like melting wax, and he woke with tears on his cheeks and his heart pounding.
Why did it feel like a nightmare, there at the end, he wondered, as he wiped the moisture off his face and tried to slow his breathing.
I haven’t dreamt about my mother like that since my first couple of years in Virginia, after she died. How much of that was real, and how much imagination?
He thought her posture at the window was a real memory. He recognized it now, though he hadn’t as a boy. That was the protective stance of a woman carrying a child. His never-to-be-born brother. Gil the Ghost.
He’d forgotten her wonderful stories. How could he not have remembered? Did she ever write them down, or did she just make them up and forget them the next day? Were they in those boxes of her writing that he hadn’t finished going through yet?
And there was something else. She reminded him of someone.
Of course. She reminds me of Angharad. Not physically, he’d have noticed that, but the way her creative mind worked. I seem to have imprinted on artistic women who are older than me, he thought, amused. And me without a drop of creative juice in me.
He pursed his lips. And maybe that’s why, he thought. He was used to competent women who spent hours every day making something from nothing. He just hadn’t realized that was a key part of the feel of “home” to him.
He smiled, in the dark. He’d have to tell Angharad, when he saw her again.
Seething Magma had painted a clear image of the scene in his mind when she returned from her delivery this evening. She’d been sitting on the veranda with Bedo, Maelgwn, and Alun. And the animals, of course. Mag had relayed the messages and Angharad’s amusement at all the roses. He was tempted to send her three next time as a joke, just to worry her, but decided that would be too much.
He got out of bed to fill a glass of water, and drank it at the sink. Mag had repeated her side of the conversation, too, and he was worried by her frustration at getting the knowledge she wanted. Please don’t let her think of kidnapping some professor, he thought to himself, half joking.
On the other hand, maybe we could set up some sort of online tutorial, pay someone to answer her questions or give her private lessons, without ever seeing her. We could probably do something about her voice, to make it sound less strange. There had to be some way for her to get all the materials online, the journals and books, without having to visit a library.
He padded quietly back to his bed, so as not to wake Benitoe in the next room. He still considered it a good idea to leave the communicating door between their rooms open, in case Benitoe needed something in this alien place.
He thought the lutin was starting to get a feel for the sorts of things in the human world that might be useful in his own. When they went to the outdoors store, they’d spent some time looking at the flashlights that could be hand-cranked, or where shaking an internal magnet provided power. There were folding saws, firestarters, and sharpening stones that Benitoe thought could be hits. George had pointed out the compasses and magnifying glasses.
There were magical equivalents for some of these items, but not common everyday versions. George knew how popular the little disposable butane lighters were, throughout Gwyn’s domain, and visitors from elsewhere had already brought them back to the old world where they were starting to spread. Some of the things Benitoe and he had looked at could be just as useful.
He was sorry Benitoe was here without another lutin to share his discoveries. He’d caught him muttering aloud, “What would Maëlys think about this?” or “Luhedoc would never believe me.”
The real problem remained, however—not what goods to trade, but how to trade them. The korrigans had a history of industry and trade, and adding human items to the mix was no significant disruption for them.
Not so, the lutins. They sold their services, not their goods, and bartered in kind, mostly, not in coin. And all their dealings were local.
Well, he was sure some sort of solution would occur to them eventually.
He rolled over, pulling the blanket up against the chill of the air-conditioning, and a broad, self-satisfied smile spread across his face. He had a special treat lined up for Benitoe tomorrow. He’d seen the signs posted in a couple of the shop windows and followed up with a few phone calls when no one could hear him.
He’d checked the weather forecast before he went to bed. Tomorrow would be a fine day for a county fair.
CHAPTER 20
“The pedal on the left is the accelerator, and the one on the right is the brake,” George said.
Benitoe sat rigid, as far forward as his seat would go, and hung on to the steering wheel as if they were flying down the highway. He had to stretch upright to see adequately over the dashboard. The rental car was alone in the middle of a large empty parking lot, behind one of the big mall stores before opening hours, and not moving at all.
“It’s easier than a horse, trust me,” George said. “No mind of its own.”
Benitoe glared at him and tried to relax. “Let me try this again,” he muttered. “Gear in P-for-Park. Car turned on.”
“Check,” George said, holding up an imaginary clipboard and pen.
“Foot on brake,” Benitoe continued, ignoring him. “Gear in D-for-Drive.”
“Now give it just a little gas,” George encouraged.
Benitoe shifted his foot from the brake to the gas pedal and pressed it carefully. The car stuttered forward, and jerked to a stop when he stepped on the brake again. This time he recovered more quickly, and started over.
At a stately five miles per hour, he began to guide the car more smoothly around the empty lot. The starts and stops were still exaggerated, but it was definitely improving.
“There, not so bad, is it?” George said. His eye was caught by a police car cruising into the lot and headed their way. “Uh-oh, better stop. Put it in Park and let me do the talking.”
He got out of the car and stood next to it, his hands visible and empty. I still have an unexpired license but Benitoe has nothing, of course, he thought. Cover story, I need a cover story.
The cop looked him over, and glanced down into the driver’s side of the car to look at the much smaller driver. He straightened up again and raised an eyebrow at George.
“Sorry, officer, I thought this would be a good place to give my son his first driving lesson.” He gestured around the empty lot. “I hope that was alright.”
“Can I see your license and registration, please.” The way he said it, it wasn’t a question.
George reached into the glove compartment for the rental contract and pulled his license from his wallet.
The cop looked them over and made an entry in his notebook before handing them back. “I don’t suppose your son has a learner’s permit?”
“I’m afraid not, officer. We’re up here from Virginia visiting colleges and this was a spur of the moment thing.”
George did his best to look like an abashed father. The fear of exposure fo
r Benitoe overrode his dislike of interfering officialdom, and he held his tongue with some difficulty, trying to look meek and domesticated, not the easiest thing since he topped this fellow by half a foot. He’d fallen out of the habit in the months he’d been away, and it was an unpleasant masquerade.
There was a moment of silence while the cop considered. Then, in an unexpected display of country courtesy, he smiled and said, “Better have a permit for next time, sir. And make sure he’s properly licensed before he drives on his own. By the look of him, that won’t be for a couple of years yet.”
He got back into his car and waited there. George took the hint, and had Benitoe shift over to the passenger side of the car while he moved the seat back on the driver’s side for himself. He didn’t want the lutin to get out of the car to walk around it, where their difference in height would be so obvious, and the lack of resemblance suspicious.
He buckled in, and had Benitoe do the same, and then drove off slowly, checking his rear-view mirror until the stationary police car faded from sight. He followed the nearby entrance signs for the interstate. The county fair was a good ninety minutes away, and he wanted to take the fastest roads up and put some distance between them and the cop.
Benitoe had taken his cue from George and kept quiet, but as they turned onto the highway he had questions. “What was that about, then, huntsman?”
“Paperwork,” George grumbled. “He thought you were my teenage son, and all drivers are supposed to pass tests and get licenses before they’re allowed to drive. We’re lucky he cut us a break.”
“Son, is it?” Benitoe chuckled. “My auntie would be surprised to hear you’re part of the family.”
George glanced down at him, deadpan. “I’m sure she’d be very pleased. And Luhedoc, too.”
Benitoe laughed at the notion.
Privately, George thought that had been a close call. Benitoe had no papers at all. The last thing they needed was for him to be picked up as some kind of illegal alien. Any sort of close look at him, much less a medical exam, would be disastrous.
He hadn’t thought about that when he proposed the driving lesson—he’d meant it for a treat. He spent a moment looking at Benitoe with his beast-sense. He wanted to make sure he could identify him at a distance, in case the need should ever arise.