by Myers, Karen
The black leather harness had been made hurriedly and Luhedoc was not yet happy with its fit. Before it arrived he’d worked the horses using other wagons and patched-together harness just to make sure their training could continue, but now it was time for the real harness and the real caravan.
George had shown them both pictures of horse brasses, decorations he thought they might like, but there wasn’t enough time. For now all the horse tack was plain unrelieved black, with only the long flowing manes and heavily feathered legs to draw the eye.
Luhedoc straightened up finally and stuck his fingers underneath the harness saddle on the near horse to make sure the padding lay flat. He gave the patient animal a pat and stepped back to join his nephew. “Don’t let go of ’em, now,” he called to the groom who waited at the head of the pair and held the lines near their bits.
“So,” Benitoe said. “What do you think?”
“It’ll do. When do they get here?” Luhedoc asked.
“Ives will come by wagon,” Benitoe reminded him. “And George would take him through the ways, so they’ll be coming together.”
He squinted up at the position of the sun. “Soon, I imagine.”
From where he stood he breathed in the new-leather smell of the harness and the sun-warmed paint, drying. All the caravan windows were open, to help dissipate the odor of new wood and oil finishes. There was still plenty of work to do, mostly decorative, but the main task was completed.
He looked at his uncle’s two grooms. There was one man missing.
“So where is he?” he asked Luhedoc.
“Corniad?” Luhedoc said, and Benitoe nodded.
“He’s in the stable. Too many neighbors.” He waved his hand at the spectators along the fence. “He’s not interested in being on display.”
He glanced over at his nephew. “What do you think, should we let them meet, George and his father?”
Benitoe shrugged.
Ives clucked to the cobs pulling the wagon and kept them to a brisk trot for the full mile and a half from the Golden Cockerel. Karnag wasn’t far from the inn, and Luhedoc’s place was on the near side, so it wasn’t long before George saw the stables, over by the lane that swung off the road.
Quite a crowd, he thought, looking at the spectators leaning up against the fence. “Come to see us off, do you suppose?” he asked Ives.
“Some folk there is, don’t seem to have enough to do,” he grumbled, but George could hear the amusement in his voice.
I’m likely to see him, he thought. He hadn’t met his father the last two times when he’d come to help Benitoe with the design of the vardo, the gypsy caravan, but George had been uncomfortable anyway, expecting to catch sight of him at any moment.
Ives turned the corner into the lane, and then trotted the horses along the fence line to the stable yard. As they approached the entrance to the yard, one of the dogs at the fence pulled away from his owner, dodged under the lowest rail, and charged, barking a challenge to the horses, and they broke stride, the one nearest the dog trying to rear.
George set his mind at once to the barking dog and suppressed him, sending him back to his chagrined owner who had climbed the fence and was running their way. He turned to do the same with the horses but they were already settling. Corniad had come from the stables, and calmed them from a distance. George could see him watching from the stable entrance, and their eyes met.
George hesitated a moment, then he nodded at his father. Corniad nodded back, his face expressionless, before disappearing inside the stable again.
Ives drove on at a walk, and Luhedoc’s second groom ran out to hold the horses’ heads.
“We’ve brought you a few things,” George called as Luhedoc and Benitoe walked over to greet them. And, indeed, the wagon behind him was full.
“We stopped by the inn first, and your auntie added a few things she thought you’d need,” he told Benitoe.
He climbed down from the wagon seat and walked round to drop the tailgate. “See that box?” he said, pointing to a box about the size of a small trunk with a hinged lid, now latched shut. There were symbols carved into the wood which were the outward manifestation of a chilling spell.
He lifted it down to the ground so they could all see. Benitoe put his hand on the lid. “It’s cold. No, they didn’t make it already, did they?”
At George’s smile, Benitoe danced a brief jig. “You’re going to love this, uncle.”
He opened the trunk and found four pottery containers, shaped to fit the space. He lifted the lid of one, and smiled at the pink-hued ice cream within. He stuck a finger in for a taste. “Ummm. Raspberry?”
George laughed. “That’s right. Cover it up or everything will melt.”
Benitoe put the lit back on the pottery jar and closed the box. “How’d you do it? I’ve been talking to Eluned about it but we ran out of time.”
“From Ceridwen. Never underestimate the power of competition,” George said. He reached back into the wagon-bed and brought out another, smaller, wooden box, more flat than square, a small burlap bag of rock salt, and a device that looked like a large covered wooden bucket with a revolving handle on top.
“This,” he said, pointing at the bucket, “is an ice cream maker, the kind that doesn’t need electricity.”
He explained for the benefit of Luhedoc. “To make ice cream, you need cream, sweeteners, and flavor, then you freeze the mix slowly while incorporating air into it. Without the air, it’s like trying to eat flavored ice. So you throw your ingredients in here, surround it with ice and rock salt, which makes the ice last longer, and then churn it until your arm falls off. Then you freeze the result.”
He opened up the smaller, flat box. It had different runes than the large one. “This is your ice maker.” He showed them the metal human ice trays stacked along the bottom in layers, full of ice, then he closed it again.
“I told Eluned that Ceridwen said she had a better spell for making ice, and I told Ceridwen that Eluned had a better spell for the ice cream chest.”
“And they believed you?” Luhedoc said, his eyes wide, laughing.
“Well, you see the result.”
“Who made the ice cream?” Benitoe wanted to know.
“Alun,” Ives said. “He had lots of helpers.”
“Our kitchen was a mess,” George said. “I had to keep them from getting too carried away experimenting. Maelgwn and Bedo appointed themselves judges, but since they liked everything, I question their discrimination.” He chuckled at the reminiscence.
“Seriously, Ceridwen and Eluned are prepared to make more of these, for a fee, and a larger cool box for each caravan. I wanted to have at least this much ready for the Kuzul today.”
He told Luhedoc, “You can thank your wife, though. We entirely forgot you’d have no way to serve it. So this bag,”—he pointed—“contains bowls, spoons, and a couple of scoops from the inn. She told me to tell you she’ll be wanting those back.”
George hoisted another bag. “She thought you’d also like sandwiches and something to drink, for the journey.”
“Or in case it doesn’t go well,” Ives muttered. “At least we’ll have someplace to sleep. I don’t want to worry you, Benitoe, but do you have any idea how much is riding upon this demonstration?”
“I do, sir,” Benitoe replied. “Let me show you the whole thing.”
They each picked up some of the items George and Ives had brought along and Benitoe led Ives over to the clean and sparkling caravan, leaving George with Luhedoc.
“No balloon, I’m afraid,” George said, leaning on the side of the wagon, “but we’re working on it. Gwyn will gift the material, and Rhys and Edern will pay for the assembly of the first one, as a gift to the lutins of Edgewood.”
Luhedoc nodded. “Eluned and Benitoe have been negotiating fees for filling it with hot air. She’s got some ideas about how to do that.”
“It’s just as well,” George said. “You don’t want the first trial a
scent to be done with some Kuzul member aboard and have it come down in someone’s cow byre. It’s going to take practice.”
Luhedoc smiled. “Have you worked out how you’ll go, today?”
“I’ll take the wagon we came in. Ives and Benitoe will lead off until we get to the ways, and then they’ll follow me. We’re going to go through Edgewood first, and take the Edgewood Way in front of the court. I think Rhys has something planned there.”
“I’d like to see that,” Luhedoc said.
“Well, why not come along with me as far as the court? You can always get back from there, I assume.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Then I’ll take them through to the Guests’ Way, and put them on their road north,” George said.
He looked down at Luhedoc. “I’m pretty sure all the lutins at Greenway Court will be down at the gate to see them off, and others, too.”
“It’s a proud moment for all of us,” Luhedoc said. He waved his hand at his neighbors, watching from along the fence. “Like a flower blooming on a grave, this is, after the nightmare that was Edgewood for so long.”
They watched companionably together while Benitoe showed Ives the interior of the vardo and then brought him out again. Benitoe walked to the front, climbed up to the porch, and picked up the paintbrush and small jar of white paint that were waiting for him there. He carefully dragged over one of the block seats from the corner, and stood upon it, holding the paint jar and brush in one hand.
George watched him write something over the seats, under the overhang. He couldn’t read it at that distance, but he saw Ives turn his face away.
Luhedoc explained quietly. “We decided each caravan should have a name. I thought he should warn Ives first, but…”
He swallowed. “Benitoe named this one ‘Isolda.’ He said, ‘Think how she would have loved to drive it.’”
Corniad stood in the gloom of the stable aisle and watched the two wagons drive off, first the gaily colored caravan, to the cheers of the crowd watching along the fence, and then Luhedoc and George, hanging back in the ordinary wagon.
Luhedoc’s other two grooms came back in chatting with each other and then, as usual, quieted when they saw him. He had discovered he could wrap his privacy around himself even here, with the lutins everywhere. Ignoring the grooms, he walked out to begin clearing up the debris left from decorating the caravan. He settled the lids on each pot of paint, and gathered all the brushes into a single bucket.
He stored the paint away in the tool shed and the leftover bits of harness in the tack room in the stable, then walked off with the bucket and its brushes, taking them up to the farmhouse to clean them.
The farm was the one-time property of some fae, lost with his family to the Edgewood disaster. The furniture was too large for Luhedoc and the other lutins, but they’d made some progress refurnishing some of the rooms to their liking, and the grooms slept there.
Corniad kept to a room in the stable loft. Luhedoc had offered him a place in the house, but he’d declined. It was more tolerable with the horses.
Most nights Luhedoc joined his wife at the Golden Cockerel, a half-hour’s walk or a few minutes on horseback. Sometimes the grooms went out also, together or singly, and left Corniad alone on the place. He liked it best that way, just him and the animals.
Corniad had been to the inn once. It made him uncomfortable, all those people, though he’d never let it show on his face. Maëlys made him uncomfortable, too. She saw too much, and he didn’t quite understand her.
She reminded him of Léonie. His kind didn’t usually stay in man-form long enough to form a life that way. He’d never heard of his kin taking a wife, but he’d been lonely in the human world, and she’d been difficult to resist. She’d puzzled him, with her quick enthusiasms, and her sudden spurts of work at her typewriter. He’d gotten used to her, eventually. Now he wondered what she’d thought of him.
As he stood in the farmhouse kitchen, cleaning the brushes, he remembered what it was like when he’d stood in a different kitchen, listening to her tell her stories to George as a child. The stories were never quite the same each time, but always they ended with a feeling of justice and protection. He liked those stories himself, and listened secretly, though he didn’t always understand them.
He’d been surprised when Senua mentioned them, too, surprised that she knew. She told him to remember as many as he could and then to go to his son for more, that he had others he could share. That was a lot to ask, he thought. It was better that they saw little of each other, safer. He didn’t think George could set aside his attempt to put him down, whatever he said, and he was no longer sure he would win in a struggle against him.
What had surprised him most was Senua urging a new task upon him, of learning to cherish his son and his children, rather than dread them. It felt very strange to him. He should be solitary in the woods, as a stag, not enmeshed in some two-leg family, but decades of human habit made him pick at the challenge anyway, worry it when he had little else to occupy him.
What would it mean, not to be alone, transient among the others?
CHAPTER 33
“How much longer can this possibly go on?” George asked, sitting on the veranda with Angharad the next day. The sun shone warmly on the repaired garden, and the newly-planted roses were thriving, but all of his attention was on his wife. She sat with him placidly, not quite upright in her well-cushioned chair, relaxed in the shade with her feet up.
“She’ll get here when she gets here,” she told him, with the calm of an experienced mother.
“Probably in the middle of the night with maximum chaos,” he muttered, and felt the glory of her answering smile in spite of his nerves.
“If that’s how she wants it, that’s how it will be.”
He couldn’t help smiling back. “Wasn’t it strange how my father was sure it could only be a boy?” he said. “Mag hasn’t changed her prediction, has she?”
“Your mother’s blood broke the purity of his lineage, don’t forget,” Angharad said. She draped a hand fondly over her stomach. “This one will be something special, I think.”
Imp, parked in George’s lap temporarily, yawned at that and began to purr, kneading his thigh lazily. “You just want your customary place back,” he told it, rubbing the back of its neck. “Can’t have it for a few more days.” Senua never spoke to him directly from her avatar, the way Cernunnos did, but he felt her presence, under the soft black fur.
What does she want, he wondered, and not for the first time. Imp came to him in Gaul, already ridden, but then the goddess transferred her attention to Angharad, to everyone’s surprise. Still, she hadn’t forgotten him, in his need, at his father’s attack. Or maybe she’d just saved him on Angharad’s behalf.
He shook his head, frustrated. He wasn’t going to solve that puzzle today.
“Mag’s getting impatient again,” he told Angharad. “I said she’d have to wait until after the birth.”
Angharad glanced down at herself. “Let’s hope she doesn’t have to restrain herself too long.”
George flashed her a quick grin. “I think I have an answer for her. What she really needs is someone who can use what she has to offer, besides the money. If I can find just the right underpaid, untenured teaching assistant or grad student, then there has to be some way to drop hints about what the rock-wights know, enough to give him something he can base research on. Without giving away their identity, of course.”
“I found something out,” he continued. “They’re not invulnerable, the rock-wights. They can melt, like rock, so they don’t make their ways too far below the surface. They’re very curious about what lies beneath that safe zone.”
He stopped, and let a broad, satisfied smile steal across his face.
“What have you done?” Angharad asked.
“I told them about seismology, how to… thump the earth and listen to the sound waves coming back. I gather Gravel was really taken by the notion.�
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He chuckled. “I’m sort of surprised we can’t hear her pounding the tunnel floors inside the Blue Ridge all the way from here, from what Mag says.”
One more bit of news, Angharad thought. “Did I tell you,” she asked, “about finding someone to help Alun?”
“How’s that going?” George said.
“Alun hasn’t had much luck. It’s not that I’ll need a wet-nurse, but he could use someone to help with the disruption that a baby makes.”
She glanced over at George. “He confessed his difficulty to me a few days ago.”
George nodded, listening to her.
“I sent a note to Tegwen, and she came up with a suggestion.”
How much should she tell him, she wondered.
“There’s a widow on her estate, working in her cheese house. She went to Edgewood with her husband a few decades ago, and he was lost there, with their little boy. She wanted to come back home, as soon as that became possible.”
Tegwen had told her some of the story in her letter, and what little she knew was grim indeed, but why cast a shadow by spreading the tale now? There’d be plenty of time for it to come out gradually, if it seemed like they’d all get along together.
“Tegwen will bring her along tomorrow, and we’ll see if she seems suitable. Her name’s Eiddun.”
“Whatever you want, dear,” George said, taking her hand, and she squeezed it fondly.
Hurry up, she told the babe. I want to introduce you to your family. And I’d like to be able to see my feet properly again. She patted her belly lightly.
“What’s the weather going to do tomorrow, Ceridwen? Do you know?” George looked west at the hazy August sky, dubiously. Ceridwen glanced up and told him, deadpan, “You overestimate my skills, huntsman, if you think I can predict it with any certainty.”