Bloodflower

by Bloodflower (The Returning) (retail) (epub)

  ‘Autumn Second Month for the betrothal’ – Father cut Stepmother a piece of fowl, laid it on her plate – ‘my dear.’ And served himself.

  Graceful cried, ‘But that is my birth month. Oh, Father, no! No, no, no.’

  ‘Tush,’ said Father. ‘Twice the reason to celebrate.’

  ‘So soon?’ said Stepmother.

  Garrad leaned forward. ‘Now, now, Mistress. Fifteen is a grand age for marriage: no longer a child, and not woman enough to be set in her ways.’

  ‘Thank you for that, Garrad.’

  ‘Mistress.’

  Stepmother was sitting with her plate untouched before her, chilling the air with her gaze. ‘Just give her a little more time, that’s all.’

  Graceful looked at her and adored her.

  Father leaned on one elbow and picked his teeth. ‘She’s the same age you were, when you came.’

  ‘No, she was sixteen and I was seven,’ said Graceful. ‘I remember.’

  ‘I don’t see you suffering too hard under the yoke of marriage.’ Father ignored Graceful. He and Stepmother had become very busy staring at each other. Isla stood opposite Graceful and started winking and jerking her head at them. Graceful pushed her plate aside so that it rang against the serving dishes.

  Tomorrow was the first day of autumn Second Month. Carin and Isla were sorting through the cupboards for the month’s prints. This, Graceful’s birth month, was the wind month. The pictures were hung up: hills painted under lowering skies, trees dipping under driving wind. Outside the sun burned the sky pale about it, and though heavy clouds blew across it, they left it alone and gathered sullen on the south-east rim of the world.

  ‘First clouds,’ said Stepmother. ‘It’ll be changeable now, till winter.’

  Stepmother had bolts of cloth down from the attics. Rose, cherry, crimson, and moss and pine, for red and green were wedding colours. She tried them all against Graceful, draping them over her shoulder, around her waist. She sent Isla up to the attics: ‘Let’s try something stronger.’

  ‘Softer, something softer.’ Carin picked up a bolt the colour of sage leaves.

  ‘Yeuugh,’ said Graceful.

  ‘For all it looks plain on the bolt, it does suit you.’ Stepmother held the fabric up, held it down and frowned at it, held it up to Graceful’s face once again. ‘Carin?’

  ‘Makes her look all rosy.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘The sage for the surcoat, then. And petticoats from the crimson.’

  ‘But . . .’ said Graceful. ‘I like the cherry.’

  The surcoat would hang to her ankles and run into a train at the back, and under it last summer’s white dress, for a bride must wear something from her girlhood, when she passed into marriage.

  Stepmother sat in the sunny gallery upstairs and sewed. Carin towed Graceful out to the scullery.

  ‘Get that dress looking like new,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t care what it looks like.’

  ‘You will, when you’re standing up there and the Headman’s throwing words over you.’ She bullied Isla along, then left her with Graceful to do the washing. ‘I do have food for fifty to get ready, and those village wenches don’t do anything right without being told.’

  Graceful stood and bit all her fingernails while Isla rubbed the white dress on the scrubbing board. ‘Dallon says word is he’s very handsome.’ She paused to smile at Graceful.

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘And well-liked among his men.’

  ‘Tell Father that. He can marry him.’

  They spread the dress out to bleach under the moonlight.

  ‘And Dallon did tell me something else.’ Isla straightened. ‘I’m sorry to say it, Miss Graceful, but you did ought to know It was the Lord’s son did cut off Cam Attling’s arm.’

  ‘Oh.’ Graceful recoiled. ‘No!’

  Aye, he did too, in the Battle for Dorn-Lannet. Dallon had it from Cam himself, when he was here with the Uplanders.’

  Even with the Uplanders coming, work could not be suspended. Autumn was the time of gathering: the fruit was picked and stored, or preserved; the root vegetables harvested. Down in Merrydance field, the mulberries were shedding their leaves. The attics were piled high with flax, ready for winter weaving. All done in a rush, because of the Uplanders, because Graceful’s betrothal was on her birthday, less than a month hence.

  There were fifteen days left until her birthday.

  ‘I shall never celebrate my birthday again,’ Graceful told Stepmother.

  Heartless, Stepmother said, ‘What nonsense, Moppet.’

  ‘Traitor,’ said Graceful. ‘You were on my side.’

  ‘Hush, hush, there’s my pretty maid. You do like your Father says. When is he ever wrong?’

  One day for each year of her life. Graceful willed them each to pass as slowly as a year, but they did not. They came and went – snap! – and it was the next day, and then the one after that until once again the yard was full of armoured Uplander men. They came and she must stand there with Father and Stepmother (wearing her yellow surcoat) to greet them. As they dismounted, the Uplanders bowed, one knee and one fist to the ground. They bowed to her.

  Stepmother leaned to Father and whispered, ‘Do they have any women? I have yet to see one.’

  Father pushed his smile into his beard. ‘Fine stock, that.’ He walked around their horses, looking them up and down. ‘I’d like to put one to my mare.’

  During the day the family ate in the kitchen as they came in, but at night Father sat like a lord in the hall, sat on his dais with his wife to his right and daughter to his left and all the house at the table. Tonight, though, Graceful was sat on Stepmother’s right, and the Uplander Lord, his son and Attling’s Oldest sat on Father’s left. There had been discussion over Attling’s Oldest and where he should sit, whether he should.

  ‘He’s village,’ said Father. ‘Not high village, just village. Send him down to the end to eat with the hands.’

  ‘He’s Uplander now and high with them. He’ll sit at the upper table with us,’ Stepmother said.

  Father leaned forward, using the great hushed shout that was his whisper. ‘I’m not having that crippled, loose-loyal peasant-farmer’s son at my high table.’

  ‘Do you recall that you are marrying your daughter to the same side as he is gone over to?’ Stepmother folded her arms and glared at Father.

  Attling’s Oldest ate at the high table.

  The Uplanders sat at their great height and stared down long, high-bridged noses at everyone, and smiled. Attling’s Oldest turned perfectly good words into Uplander yaddle for the Lord and his son, at which they nodded and smiled and looked down, down at her, at Father and Stepmother.

  Graceful tried to watch her betrothed without watching, but every time she glanced his way, his dark eyes were on her. She thought it the most unending meal of her life.

  The plates were cleared and the men were all pink-faced with drink when the Uplander Lord’s son leaned and whispered to Attling’s Oldest, who got up and left the table. He returned with a package that he gave into the Uplander’s hands.

  ‘Yaddle, yaddle,’ said the Uplander, standing, which meant they all must stand.

  ‘If you please.’ Attling’s Oldest bowed. Father snorted, just a little, and received a frigid glance shot sidelong at him by Cam Attling, even as he said, ‘Lord Gyaar wishes . . .’

  The Northerner bowed the package towards Graceful.

  ‘Oh? No!’ She put her hands behind her back. Stepmother took it for her.

  ‘Hunhf,’ said Father. ‘Must excuse. Very young, dumbstruck, poor maid.’

  Graceful stamped her foot. Stepmother took her hand and tugged her down into a curtsy.

  The package went on the hall table. If there had been another way up to bed, Graceful would have taken it, but there was not. She made a face at the table and kept to the far side of the hall.

  ‘Daughter?’

  She jumped.

&nbs
p; ‘It’s a betrothal gift.’

  ‘I don’t care what it is.’

  ‘At least look,’ said Father. ‘You’ll at least look at it.’

  ‘Father? Father . . . are you angry with me, that you will send me away?’

  ‘I don’t know how I will manage without my Graceful.’ Father’s arm, big and heavy, dropped about Graceful’s shoulders. ‘But you have to go sometime. He is a lord and you will be a lady, is that not fine?’ He tried to put the package into her hands. ‘Look, Daughter. You won’t be damned for that.’

  Graceful clasped her hands all neat and together at her waist and stared at the air.

  ‘Here.’ Father sidestepped so he stood in the space she was staring at. ‘A stake. Your happiness – I know you will be happy – and I’ll give you a silver belt like Stepmother’s.’

  Stepmother’s belt was a chain, each link a flower. One end had the hook that fastened it; the other a round silver ball and a ring from which hung the keys to the house. Graceful most ardently wanted a silver belt like Stepmother’s. She turned her gaze aside. ‘No, I will not stake anything.’

  ‘Ah.’ Father stuck his lower lip out, stuck his hands in his belt under his belly. ‘Oh. No wager?’

  ‘No stake. Not with you, not ever again.’

  ‘Ah, Graceful,’ he said. ‘Ah, Graceful. You will one day understand.’

  ‘I understand this: you’ve settled me with an Uplander, but I won’t. I won’t.’ Graceful kilted her skirts in one hand, and ran up the stairs.

  In her room, Graceful hid behind her curtain and looked out at the evening. Three more days. She imagined herself brave and able to run away. She looked down at the stone flags of the yard. If she leapt from here, that would stop it, stop everything, and she saw herself lying there (her hair long and thick, waist slender as Stepmother’s), lying just so, and wearing her yellow surcoat— What was that?

  Down by the cow pen at the end of the yard, the Uplander Lord’s son leaned on the fence, propped on his elbows. Attling’s Oldest leaned back against it, facing the house, talking, making sweeps and halts and passes of his hand, and his body with it. Then he flung his head back, and the Uplander Lord’s son’s knees gave way so that he hung by his arms from the rail, and their laughter rang out, startling the cows. Graceful drew the curtains shut.

  In the evenings the Uplander Lord sat inside and played pegboard with Father, the two of them pushing piles of copper coins to and fro across the table. His son wandered, watching and always smiling, smiling, smiling – and what did he feel behind it, Graceful wondered. Though the weather was cooler with each day, the farmhands and maidservants were out in the yard, the Uplanders drawing them all. Night after night, the yard was noisy as an inn.

  And in the passage the betrothal gift sat on the bowlegged hall table. Whenever she walked past it, it seemed to say, Graceful? Graceful!.

  Wigs! she thought, and shuddered.

  ‘Why do you not open it?’

  Graceful jumped nearly out of her skin. Attling’s Oldest leaned against the doorjamb.

  ‘Why do you care if I do?’

  Attling’s Oldest lifted one shoulder, smiled.

  Graceful pushed at the package, shunting it about the table. ‘How do you say his name?’

  ‘Gyaar.’

  Graceful astonished herself by suddenly weeping. ‘I do not want to, I do not, and everyone is making me and no one cares how I feel.’

  He came up to her. ‘I’m sorry, for I did tease you and I should not have . . . Miss Graceful? Your da does right in this.’

  Graceful wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her gown. ‘He says we are making North and South one.’

  ‘Aye. That’s what I mean. I do think your da is right in this.’

  ‘Gar,’ she said.

  It rained all through the eve of her betrothal.

  Isla and Stepmother came very early to her room the next morning (and had to wake her, which surprised Graceful because she was certain she had not slept, not for a moment).

  ‘I’ve brought some food, so you don’t go faint in the middle of it all.’ Stepmother had laid out a tray with all Graceful’s favourite treats: hot chocolate, pastries, a little iced cake. ‘Don’t you cry now, Moppet. You don’t want to be all red and puffy.’

  She could not eat a thing, though she managed the hot chocolate. Stepmother and Isla put her in her red petticoats and white dress and the green surcoat. As a maid she must go barefoot, so Isla rubbed oil into her feet. ‘I did have mats put down so you don’t get all mucky. I’ll put some of this in your hair, too; make it like silk it will.’

  Father waited for her at the front door. He took her hand, ‘Such a cold little hand!’ Held it between both of his.

  ‘Now, now.’ Stepmother dabbed at Graceful’s eyes. ‘No tears, my brave little Moppet.’ She led her sobbing without.

  They had put up a tent and made a shrine of it, with mats on the ground and a screen at the back. The grass of the mats gleamed in places, was marked with mud in others. Graceful wore her bridal green and the tea service was white, white on the red lacquer of a little table. Only one colour was needed – blue. Green for life, white for the mind, red for blood, and blue for death. It was the Northerner Lord’s son who provided it. His tunic was blue, and his hair was bound with blue cord.

  The men jostled in around the edges of the tent, made way for the Uplander priest. In the quiet that came then, Graceful stared across the width of the tent at Gyaar Ryuu, and Gyaar Ryuu turned to stare at her.

  Tall as she was, Lord Gyaar was much taller. His hair was flat and black and stick-straight. He came to her, took her hand, and Graceful made to jerk it free. When he would not let her, she looked up. His smile was cool, and his eyes, but his hand on hers was palm-wet with sweat. Graceful stared, thought of him folding with laughter against the cow-pen fence.

  Every time the priest paused, the Lord’s son’s fingers jerked on Graceful’s. The soldiers – courtiers? – sat on their heels as if they were at market, or resting. One of them would from time to time rise and wander to the entrance, wander back and crouch again.

  The priest finished and the Uplander let Graceful’s hand go, turned her with a touch to her shoulder. Rice, like a dusting of snow, lay all over the mire that the rain had made of the yard. As she stood, another man got up and flung a handful wide.

  ‘Luck,’ said Gyaar.

  Then they tramped off across the soggy mats to the Fenister altar, to women with the men, and children and the green boughs of pine and their own Da Palfreyman to say the ceremony, and all as it should be.

  The weather held clear for the three-day betrothal celebration. Graceful spent it hiding from her husband-to-be and his party. Or not quite hiding, but watching them. Sitting at Stepmother’s side, being good, ladylike, and watching them until the black hair and eyes did not strike her so strongly, the faces, the tallness of them.

  ‘If they were horses, they’d be Agerst,’ she said. ‘Big.’

  ‘Well they know how to enjoy themselves,’ said Father, sloshing wine from his cup. The Uplanders held contests. Horseriding, hunting, mime. Drinking. Graceful watched that from inside. She thought they drank quite a lot, even without the contests, all but Lord Gyaar, who drank less than any of them, looked around him more.

  ‘Enjoy?’ said Graceful. ‘Why do they not enjoy themselves in the North and leave us be?’

  The Uplanders wanted to compete at archery. Got up in jewelled belts and embroidered tunics and their long Uplander-style hair, they discussed where in the yard they should put a butt. They set it up at the back of the grounds, downhill from the horse paddocks, and shot arrows into it from the verandah, to the peril of the hands. When they had emptied their quivers they sauntered down, only to pull them out and do it all again.

  Attling’s Oldest leaned against a verandah post and watched. Graceful edged and shifted all the way along the verandah, until she stood at his side.

  ‘Attling? I have something to ask you
. I heard . . . I mean . . . well . . .’ She tried to look anywhere but at his knotted right sleeve.

  Attling’s Oldest’s eyes widened a little. ‘Eh,’ he said. ‘You do go in boots on and mucky, don’t you?’

  She stared at him.

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘He did. It’s common knowledge.’

  Graceful sat – plump! – on the edge of the verandah.

  ‘Miss Graceful . . . it was war. He did not kill me and he could have. Should have. You do see?’ He stared at her with eyes darker than the Uplander Lord’s, his hair darker, his skin. More Uplander than any Uplander.

  ‘No, I do not.’

  ‘That’s the way he is. I did choose this, because of him.’ As he talked he untied the knot in his sleeve, tied it again. ‘Miss Graceful, I would now ask a question of you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My family, how do they? Do you see Pin? My sister, that is?’

  ‘I do not go to the village without Father, and I do not talk with anyone there.’ Graceful was ashamed. Father would have her be Lady over Kayforl, and she knew nothing of any of its people. ‘Isla would know. She always knows who is marrying, having a child, who has died – oh!’ She put her hands to her mouth. The silence between them grew and tightened. ‘Why do you not go yourself?’

  ‘I cannot. I closed that door.’ Attling’s Oldest stalked away.

  Graceful wondered what it was that she had said wrong.

  Later that afternoon, much, much later, Graceful saw a Strange thing. The Lord’s son was standing at Attling’s side, holding the bow shaft while Attling drew, left-handed. And loosed the string. The arrow skipped in the air and dug itself into the ground halfway to the butt. Attling dropped the bow and the two of them staggered about laughing.

  It might have been the ruckus in the yard, or that her mind was too surprised by the happenings of the past days, Graceful did not know, but she could not sleep. She stayed long awake in the dark, listening. She woke early, at the ghost-light of the false dawn.