The Sheri S. Tepper eBook Collection

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Thrumm House was remarkable neither for its size nor for its rather undistinguished exterior architecture, a style referred to in some quarters as Nuvo Obfuscian. It was a dwelling of some fifteen or twenty major rooms, interesting mainly in the extent of its internal drawering. The number and variety of drawers was uncommon, if not unique. They covered every wall from floor to ceiling: the bathing chambers, the stairways, the kitchens – even the little porch where Nursey sat on rainy days singing nursery songs and rubbing thube shrinking salve into her charge’s Van Hoost chin – all the rooms were lined with drawers. There were large ones, including those in which the inhabitants slept, medium-sized and smallish ones for the storage of a multitude of necessary things, and then hundreds of very tiny ones along the floor or up beneath the coving of the stained and cracked ceilings. Some had heavy, ornamental castings as handles. Others had simple knobs of porcelain or simulacre or gold.

  In the child’s own room there were one thousand six hundred and forty-three drawers. She learned this as soon as she was able to count though she had known it before. She learned at the same time that most of the drawers were quite empty. Only one of them had anything in it that she had previously put there. As soon as she could walk, she had taken the jar of thube salve which Nursey was wont to rub into her chin and emptied it into one of the tiniest drawers, refilling the jar with tallow from the kitchen. What moved her to this effort, Buttercup the infant could not have said. Mouse would have said that the thube salve smelled abominably and, more to the point, it itched. The kitchen grease did not smell quite the same, but Nursey, who had very little sense of smell, never noticed the difference and went on tallowing her charge’s chin every afternoon for years.

  A tribe of small waltzing mice lived in several of the medium-sized drawers, drawers which Mouse, though not Buttercup, thought were probably connected to the kitchen because of the smell of toasted cheese which emanated each time she opened them. The mice were companions, not useful for conversation but infinitely amusing in the long, dusky holiday hours when the shutters were closed and there was nothing to do. Some of the drawers in the orangery had lizards living in them, and there were bright, glistening snakes in the drawers of the small porch. All in all, she preferred the mice for the bedroom.

  When Buttercup was still quite young, after she had learned to walk and count but before she was weaned or could talk with clarity, Mr Thrumm began to object to the name ‘Buttercup.’

  ‘Not a name which will do,’ opined Mr Thrumm. ‘Not one which will be acceptable on the occasion.’

  ‘Well, for heaven’s sake, I’ve got to call her something!’ Nursey objected with that stubborn intransigence which was natural to all Nurseys. ‘I can’t go on saying “her” all the time.’

  Mr Thrumm grumbled, but did not insist. Acceptable or not, it was the name by which the infant became known to those around her. As herself, she accepted the name, thinking nothing of it. The mouse part thought to itself that it was a ridiculous name for anyone, but most especially a ridiculous name for this – this being that she was inhabiting.

  Mr Thrumm, in whose house they dwelt, was not the only Mr Thrumm. Buttercup was to meet three Mr Thrumms, virtually identical in appearance though somewhat varied in habit. Each of them, seemingly, had been awarded the care and custody of Van Hoost rogues since the time, approximately, of Hermione. Buttercup’s own Mr Thrumm was named Raphael. The others, who visited from time to time, were Jonas and Cadmon. Buttercup came to understand that there had always been three Mr Thrumms, always so named. Whether these were the original or successor ones, she was never able to establish, and in fact she – including her separate inhabitant self – grew to feel that it did not really matter.

  Mr Thrumm, whether the current Mr Thrumm or a predecessor, had to have collected everything stored away in the drawers of Thrumm House. The current Mr Thrumm, however, passed his time looking for things he or his predecessors had hidden. In the evenings he would sit in a half-open drawer staring into the fire while he made lists of things he hoped to find on the following day. Then, on the morrow, he would look for these things, always finding others which were not on his list. Exclamations of interest and amusement followed these discoveries, though he never actually laughed, and the fact that he seldom if ever found what he sought did not dissuade him from making another interminable list on the following evening. He was not in the least disheartened. He would say to Buttercup, ‘Well, lass, try again, what? Got to be there somewhere, that’s what I say. Those memorabilia of the Great Grisl-Threepian War, for example. Couldn’t have been thrown away, could they? Keep looking, and eventually they’ll turn up.’

  Perhaps it was the constant repetition of these words, or perhaps it was that Mouse finally managed to get through to her, that caused Buttercup to hear a reverberation of his words in her own mind, an almost echo instructing her in a firm and not unfamiliar voice, ‘There’s something in this house that I need. Something I had with me when I left. It isn’t in here, where I am, so it must be out there, in the house. You’ll have to find it for me. Don’t forget it, now. It’s important.’

  Buttercup could not imagine what this something might be, but the reminder irritated her, causing her to lose sleep, making her lie awake in the closely shuttered dark wondering what might possibly be in any of the drawers that was important to her. Mouse saw this restlessness with satisfaction. She knew she had had the matchbox with her when she left … left wherever she had been. Where had she been? Sometimes it was almost on the tip of her tongue. She had been in… She had been on… Never mind. Wherever it had been, she knew it had not simply been ‘lost in transit.’ The matchbox could not be lost in that way. Intrinsic to its nature or structure was an inviolability of direction. If she, Mouse, had come here, then it, matchbox, had come here as well. It was nearby, and it was up to Buttercup to find it.

  In the course of time, Buttercup was weaned, toilet-trained, and taught proper speech and elementary deportment. She achieved her third birthday. It was time for Nursey to depart and for the tutor to arrive. Buttercup did not weep when Nursey went. There was a feeling almost of relief to smell the last of that thube-reeking, deep-uddered being. When night came, however, grief came with it bringing shuddering sobs which Buttercup could in no wise understand. It was as though the very foundation of her life had been torn away without her realizing it. That night she experienced a strong, almost imperative dream in which the unknown voice reminded her to search for something – something very important to her. She wakened from it half terrified.

  She sought no comfort from Mr Thrumm. Even in the midst of her grief, she was cognizant that Mr Thrumm would offer her no consolation, even if he had known how.

  The tutor was a tall, pale individual who wore tight trousers and short, many-pocketed jackets worked with scenes of forests and glades in tapestry stitch. He carried a slender cane with which he switched the heads off of grasses and wildflowers while on walks. His name was John Henry Sneeth. He confessed in an embarrassed whisper that he did not like the names John and Henry and would prefer to be called simply ‘Sneeth.’ Buttercup had had no intercourse with the outer world and therefore did not at the time think this a ridiculous request, though Mr Thrumm rolled his eyes and pinched his mouth as though to keep back laughter and Mouse rolled about in amusement, figuratively speaking, since Mouse, being disembodied, had no ability to roll about in actuality.

  Ribble the cook also quivered with merriment for days after first meeting Sneeth. There were, in addition to Thrumm and Sneeth, two other older persons in Thrumm House, the Ribble couple: cadaverous Ribble who tended the gardens and fat Ribble who cooked. Cook Ribble made up for all the laughter no one else used. Cook was always aquiver: chins, belly, bosom, tiny jiggly bits and pieces around the elbows and knees moving in a constant delirium of motion. Cook’s laughter was as without end as without cause. Cook simply moved in it, like a fish in water, unconscious of its being a medium of transport.

  Cad
averous Gardener Ribble was as dry and brittle as a burnt bird’s bone. Gardener Ribble seldom spoke and was never amused.

  Sneeth took up Buttercup’s tutelage with something approaching enthusiasm, at least he did so at first. Simple reading, writing, arithmetic, basic history – though Buttercup had the feeling that he left things out of history, either through carelessness or ignorance, or from some other motive she could not discern – and, of course, deportment. Mr Thrumm recurrently suggested the importance of deportment. Why it should be important for someone virtually expunged from the memory of the Royal Family to be instructed in the minutia of aristocratic customs and behavior made no sense at all. According to Mr Thrumm, it was important. Sneeth always complied with Mr Thrumm’s suggestions, however gently they might be phrased, and deportment became important to Sneeth.

  It was Sneeth’s inclination, however, no less than Buttercup’s own, to ignore the curriculum laid down as much as possible, that is, at any point at which the basics were well in hand. Once the subject matter was reasonably well understood, Sneeth found no reason to continue with the dull texts prescribed by custom (or Thrumm) when there were other, more interesting – even though forbidden – books available.

  And there were. The drawers in the library were packed with volumes. Others filled the lower stairway drawers and those in the back pantry. In the root cellar, where no one would expect to find books at all, Buttercup found a collection of what were possibly the most interesting volumes on the property. These included books of wonder stories, some purely fanciful and others based in fact, concerning other worlds and peoples. There was also a collection of the Palace Newspapers, a rich trove of mystery and intrigue beside which mere history (however truncated to eliminate boring detail) paled to nothing. From them, and without Sneeth’s knowledge, Buttercup learned many things she was not supposed to know. She learned, for example, what had happened to the Van Hoost consorts. She learned the ritual of Royal Challenge, during which the Heiress Presumptive, challenged by at least one other Grisl of Royal Blood, must prove herself able to emerge victorious from combat. She read with interest accounts of current and bygone fads and fashions at the Palace, who and what was in and who and what was out, and why. Though all these matters were but dimly understood, scarcely more relevant than if they had recounted the customs of savage Earthians or Jambanders, they had a certain fascination and served to fill up the vacant corners of an eager young mind.

  It was in one of these same drawers that she found a small gold box, greeting this discovery with a wash of grateful emotion so ecstatic that it left her limp. Under Mouse’s direction, Buttercup took the box to her room and secreted it in one of the tiny drawers, where she, guided by Mouse, could take it out and fondle it from time to time, though she had no idea why. ‘Never mind why,’ Mouse said within her mind. ‘It’s important, that’s all.’

  Sneeth and Buttercup were largely unsupervised, so long as the examiners, who arrived once each year, were satisfied with the progress of Mr Thrumm’s protégée. A Van Hoost chin, taken alone, was not sufficient to warrant actual execution, but such a chin coupled with intransigent ignorance of deportment and protocol might well be. Mr Thrumm was at some pains to point this out. As a result of this threat, the latter part of each winter was spent in a feverish attempt to master all the information which had been largely ignored since the previous spring. Buttercup rather liked these intellectual sprints. She quite enjoyed the haunted expression which Sneeth came to wear on these occasions, realizing full well that his own destiny was tied to hers. If Buttercup failed, so did Sneeth. For Buttercup, contemplation of this fact lent piquancy to what might have been an otherwise tedious span of years.

  In the spring the examiners came. In company with one or two who changed from visit to visit there was always one named Fribberle who came again and again. He had a dour and reproving countenance. He sat with the others at one end of the table in the formal dining room while Buttercup stood at the other end of the table, hands folded in front of her, face composed. This was elementary deportment. One did not twitch. And, despite Cook’s example, one did not laugh. And one did not show interest beyond mere politeness. One answered briefly, accurately, demonstrating if requested. The bow direct. The bow deferential. The bow obsequious. The challenge Royal. The challenge covert. The nod of dismissal. The nod of repudiation. She learned them all and practiced them in front of her mirror. There was never any trouble with the examinations. Buttercup always passed.

  And each time the examiners left, Sneeth and Buttercup were left to their own devices once more. There were weeks and months during which they could amuse themselves, weeks and months in which Buttercup experienced virtual contentment – except for the internal voice of Mouse which sometimes wakened her in the night trying to give her unwanted advice.

  Thrumm House was situated on a pleasant prominence overlooking the Welling Valley and the village of Lesser Wellingford. Greater Wellingford had been widely distributed by flood some years before and was no longer sufficiently aggregate to merit attention. Lesser Wellingford offered plentiful amusements, however. Sneeth and Buttercup could shop in the main street, or visit the parrot market or buy hot seed pies from the piemonger, and do all these things without offending against what Sneeth was pleased to call Buttercup’s ‘dignity.’ Certain other pleasures, such as watching a grisling show, were forbidden lest they result in this offense.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by “dignity,” Sneeth,’ she complained when he refused for the third time to allow her to see the grisling show. The two of them were standing on the midway of a traveling circus that came frequently to the Welling Valley during the summer, and Buttercup was staring up at the banners that advertised this event. ‘I am a rogue daughter of the ruling house. I’ve been banished. I don’t know what dignity I’ve got.’

  ‘More than me,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Well, yes,’ she admitted, ‘but then I am female. That means I have more dignity that you or Thrumm or Cook and more than all the villagers, too, because you and they are all males, but that doesn’t signify much. I don’t know what it has to do with watching a grisling show.’

  ‘Mr Thrumm would have a fit if he found out.’

  ‘How in the world would he find out! He doesn’t come down to the village. None of these oafs are going to go up to Thrumm House and tell him.’

  ‘You won’t tell him?’

  ‘Of course I won’t tell him. Don’t be silly. I don’t want to get into trouble.’

  Sneeth bought tickets, insisting that they enter the show through the rear tent flap and set themselves well toward the back, where they would not make themselves a part of the spectacle.

  The stage was small. Grislings themselves were small. Buttercup watched, entranced, as the little females decked themselves in their finery – they had been trained to do this, of course, it was no part of the wild behavior – and then went through the classic motions of challenge and attack. A cage of males was surreptitiously placed near the platform to provoke this behavior. The little females looked almost Grisl-like, almost human with their cocky little heads and delicate arms. Their ivory spurs had been replaced with false, flexible ones so they could not hurt one another, and the growth of their paralyzing fangs had been suppressed with thube. They had been cleaned and groomed until they were very pretty, and Buttercup thought that she preferred them even to the waltzing mice. They looked so very human. Almost as though they might speak at any moment, demanding access to the cage of males which had been hastily taken away as soon as battle was joined.

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Buttercup protested. ‘Taking the males away from the little pink one. She won the fight.’

  ‘Well – but,’ Sneeth stuttered, turning quite red. ‘That’s not a nice thing to say! If they had left the males there, she would have … well, it’s not something we could watch. Not good deportment, at all. Not civilized!’

  She subsided, still thinking it had been quite unfair, but d
istracting herself with the thought of hot seed pie. She and Sneeth usually bought pies for themselves plus two to carry back, one for Gardener Ribble and one for the gardener’s boy. Ribble always had a boy, someone from the village or the surrounding area who was willing to work for three meals a day, a drawer to sleep in, and a seed pie now and again.

  They wandered munchingly along the valley, licking syrup from their chins, climbing over a stile to ascend the hill toward Thrumm House, then stopping as they heard a sound in the underbrush nearby, a kind of stifled snigger.

  Sneeth dithered, turning toward and then away from the noise.

  ‘Come on,’ instructed Buttercup. ‘I want to see what that is.’ She streaked away through the grasses, Sneeth tiptoeing guiltily behind, and threw herself at the top of an embankment to peer between two shrubs.

  Below her in a tiny clearing was the latest gardener’s boy, and on the earth before him were two wild grislings engaged in battle. They were in no wise as lovely as the groomed ones Buttercup had seen so recently upon the stage but no less human-looking for that. Buttercup drew in her breath, letting it out in one long shriek of fury. The boy, the filthy boy, had cut the spurs from one of the grislings leaving her helpless before the paralyzing attack of the other. She had already been cut to ribbons while the boy sat there sniggering and playing with himself.