by Betsy James
“Get along, Songsparrow,” said Mailin. “They won’t disappear; I’m feeding them. And may Dai and Robin stay in town with you and your sister tonight?”
“Surely.”
Dai said, “Why?”
“Your house is too close to Upslope. We’ve stirred the hornets’ nest—there’s no telling what may fly out of it.”
“Knew that when we stirred it,” said Dai. “Now it’s look sharp and pull together. You saw how many were on the beach last night; Shoreman or Least Night guest, they’ll all be in the plaza tomorrow, clamoring for council.”
“Then you be in the plaza too. Not sitting alone on the border.”
“Cow’s to be milked.”
“Dai.”
He made a rueful face. But he nodded, saying to Nondany, “Sorry to be a nuisance, sir. Tell Lilliena we’ll be along directly.”
“No nuisance. More ears for her to exercise.” At this all present groaned; I gathered that Lilliena must be a famous gossip. Nondany pointed his forefingers at Nall and me. “Don’t you dare forget anything!” he said. He picked up the dindarion and rattled down the veranda steps as though he were not half blind, as though he had run them a thousand times. Next to the door I saw what he had told me to look for: Mailin’s Year Altar, a wall niche filled with rocks and feathers, dried flowers, scraps of cloth. Someone had put there a little seal carved from driftwood; I knew who.
Dai turned to me. “I know who won’t be in the plaza tomorrow. Harlan. He’ll be at the guardhouse with all his toadies, offering a fat sack of coin to whoever will turn you in, Sister. And I know how many offers he’ll get.” He looked at me from under his brows. “You’re a portent, you know.”
“I thought it was Nall.”
Nall had risen and stood like the otter, poised. “There is nothing in the world that is not a portent,” he said.
Dai slapped his forehead. “What did I say about Rig talk? Muck the stall for me, Brother, and clear your head. But see, Kat—if Nall’s an omen, it stands to reason you’re one, too. I try to tell them you were an ugly baby and smelled funny, but who listens?” He cuffed me gently. “Well, we’ve bitten the adder back. Things will change now. Glad of it.” He hugged Mailin, saying, “You believe too much good of people.”
“I’ve delivered so many babies.”
“We’ll try to keep you in work.”
Robin refused Mailin’s offer of a shawl against the sweet night air. “I’m hot all the time,” she said, fanning her hands at her face.
I hesitated, then left Nall and followed the two of them out onto the veranda in the hoarse ocean dawn. “Dai, they told me Father’s dead.”
His sleepy look sharpened. “When?”
“At the guardhouse. Seroy said I killed him.”
“You jammed his cart wheel, all right, but you never killed him. He’s sick, that’s all.”
Against all reason my heart lightened. “Sick with what?”
“Just sick. Too mean to die.”
I wondered who got Father’s dinner now, who scrubbed his hearth. There would be no cow to milk anymore. “Dai, where did you get all those cows last night?”
“Borrowed ‘em.”
I thought of the scream we had heard. “You didn’t kill Queelic?”
“Me? The udder warrior? Bull gave him a good fright, that’s all. Might clear up his pimples.”
“Nobody’s ever killed a Leagueman,” said Robin with a shiver. “There’d be hangings then!”
“Can’t kill ‘em. They’re like our father: nothing inside but shredded ledgers. Speaking of the dear old man, Kat, I near forgot—I have a homecoming present for you, from him.”
“A present? From Father?”
“Last time I went to see him, before my—well, my intimacy with Ab Harlan, he threw this to me. At me, actually.” Dai pulled his round face into an approximation of our father’s long, unhappy one. “‘You could never manage money,’ he says. ‘Half of this is yours. The other half is your sister’s, should she be fool enough to show her face. It’s not for your own use, either of you. It’s for my grandchildren. I won’t have them raised poor dirt.’ So catch, Sister. Love from Dad.”
The fist-size buckskin pouch clinked as I caught it, heavier than a rock.
“Dai, it’s gold!” In the League that was to say: It’s the Blood of Light—the greatest blessing, deepest truth. I untied the neck and tipped a few coins into my palm, the old, thick, embossed weights that were saved, not spent.
“Bought the land with my half. Thought I’d use Father’s money to raise cows; he’d like that.”
The coins were cold in my hand. I said, “It’s the only way he knows how to say he loves us.”
“He’s a stone, Sister. He never loved anybody.”
“He loved Mother.”
“If that was love, it killed her.” Dai pulled Robin close. “This one knows how to love. And doesn’t mind teaching.”
“You just love me because I’m getting to look like a cow,” said Robin, yawning.
“Time to herd you home along the beach. Barn for my cuddy-o,” Dai sang.
Robin went back to hug Mailin over her big belly. Dai watched her go, his face so soft that my heart turned in my chest and I said, “I’m glad you’re happy.”
“You be happy too, Sister.” He jerked his chin toward the end of the veranda. Nall had slipped past us as we talked and leaned there on the railing, watching the sea.
“You like him?” I said.
“He’s my brother. Don’t listen to that truck about omens either.” He looked away and said, “When Harlan had me, I thought—well, it crossed my mind, ‘If anything happens to me, what’ll become of Kat?’ But it’s all right. You’ve got Nall now.”
I put my arms around my brother. “I love you more than anybody. I’ll tell you about our people in the Hills.”
“Tomorrow.” Dai yawned in turn. “I’m not used to midnight alarms.”
“Wait till you have a baby!”
As Dai and Robin walked the beach toward town in the rising sun, their shadows held hands.
I was so weary that my head rolled on my neck. An arm went around my waist. “Bear Spit,” said Nall, “are you coming with me?”
I let him take my hand and lead me down the veranda steps, back among the great pilings that held up the house, and into the stall of the black-and-white cow. There I took back my hand and said, “This is where you live?”
“In the summer. In winter I go upstairs by the fire.”
“I thought—I thought you’d have a little house.”
He laughed. Through the slats in the wall I could see a lean-to with the manat in it. Otherwise there was nothing to suggest that a human lived here but a blanket on the straw and a few worn implements on the wall: razor, hammer, axe. The haltered cow chewed her cud.
He knelt, pulling at my hand. I felt as the water in the millpond must feel at the brink of the millrace, when in an instant the roar will begin, the rush into space. I put out my hands against him. “Nall—”
“What?” Smiling, wicked.
“Don’t tease me! I mean, I never—” Dealt with cabbage worms. At last I said, “I never slept with a man.”
“You slept with me.”
“I don’t mean sleep!”
“But I do.” The cow breathed her clover breath; the straw was soft. Past his shoulder I could see the dawn ocean through a gap in the wall. “The night is spent. Come sleep,” he said.
I would not take off my shift or untie the deer mouse sash. But I lay down against him in the rustling straw, and his mouth was right where it should be.
He made a little happy grunt, like a puppy nursing. It made me laugh, and in the middle of laughing I fell asleep.
10
Kill! Kill! Kill!
The army’s on the hill!
Katyesha’s dead
And the worms shall eat their fill!
Children’s Game. Upslope.
A FLY BUZZED, and landed on my
lip. I woke.
I was hot, with the sick feeling that comes from sleeping deeply in daytime heat. I had had a bad dream, of which I remembered only noise, and trying to wake but not waking. Sunlight glared through the gaps in the cowshed wall.
In a moment I knew where I was, hearing the ocean’s breath and breath. I put out my hand for Nall. Touched nothing. I opened my eyes again and saw only the heap of straw.
I sat up. It was afternoon, the flat time. The cow had moved to the back of the stall, away from the barred, dusty light. Desolate and cross, I rubbed my face in the crook of my elbow.
A woman screamed.
A high, raking scream. In the Hills women scream like that at burials. It yanked me to my feet with my arms flung out, my hand hit the haft of Nall’s axe and it dropped from its hook like a rock.
I blundered to the doorway. No more screams, but sobbing, a gabbling wild sound, upstairs. I was afraid to go up the steps and ran up them, my shift stuck full of straw. On the veranda Robin knelt with her face in Mailin’s lap, arms stiff, braid undone. It was she who sobbed, her body so strange, so big.
I cried, “What!”
Mailin began to speak but Robin jerked up her head, her face swollen, a different face. “They took Dai!”
“Who?”
“Paidmen,” said Mailin.
“Paidmen?” The sun shone plain. I was stupid, that was all. “Why would they take Dai?”
Because he had sprung me from the lockup. Someone had recognized him—Queelic, probably. Or maybe just because he was my brother.
I woke completely, awfully. “Just now? They just came?”
Mailin said, “Robin. Breathe.”
Robin took a breath too big for her and said, “They killed the calf.”
“The calf—”
“He had to milk the cow, he’s so stubborn, he wouldn’t stay in town so I wouldn’t either. We went home, we were asleep. They kicked in the door and the mirror broke, they made him put his pants on. I went after them, I shouted and they said, ‘Get back, old lady.’ The calf was in the pen—she’s so little, they pulled her out.”
Mailin closed her eyes.
“They stabbed her with their dirks. Again, again. Little white calf. Then they took Dai.” Robin had stopped crying. Her face was still with wonder. “They laughed.”
I felt only a hugeness. “So then? What happened?”
Mailin said, “Downshoremen have gone to get him back.”
“Then it’s all right! They’ll get him back. Robin, they got me out—so easy, it was funny: one, two, three!” My heart jumped. “Did Nall go?”
“Yes.”
Still I said, “Robin, it’ll be fine. Paidmen, Leaguemen—pig dirt!” It felt good to say those words about my father’s people, my own. “When did they go?”
“It’s been some time,” said Mailin. “I wonder you slept through it. Pao and Nondany stayed in town, but Suni and I brought Robin away.”
I turned to see a young woman standing in the doorway. She was as I remembered her, baby on hip, but it was a different baby, and behind her full culottes a three-year-old was hiding.
“Lali Kat.” Suni embraced me around the infant. The older child gave a high, tense wail.
I did not know what to do. I knelt and said, “Rosie, do you remember me?”
“No!” Rosie screamed into her mother’s knees.
“We’re in a state,” said Suni. “My brother’s gone with the others to get Dai. You heard Ab Harlan took my man? Three months ago.” In my mind I saw her man, curly-haired and slender, a paidman in some little town, learning to laugh as he stabbed a white calf.
“How many went for Dai?” The air was still, the surf soft, yet I felt as though I were hearing a murmur rising to a yell.
“Fifteen, maybe. More wanted to go. It’s gotten bad since you left, Lali Kat. We aren’t warring sorts of folk, but we know what to do in a brawl. Now then, Rose, don’t pinch! There was talk of stealing somebody important from up there, to stand hostage. Maybe there were twenty men.”
Rosie whined and snuffled; Robin lay facedown on Mailin’s lap. The heat was sticky as flies.
I said, “What can we do?”
“What women do,” said Mailin. “Wait, and try to calm the children.”
The child on Suni’s hip began to scream. Suni said, “Rose, did you pinch your brother? Shame, what would your daddy say? Pick her up, Kat, she wants to be held tight.”
“No, no, no!” Rosie shrieked as I hefted her, all fists and knees.
“There’s a Rosie, there’s a Rose.” I walked her up and down the veranda, singing a grinding song of Bian’s.
A rose upon the ditch bank grew,
With a green thorn beside it;
In one the wind did sing of love,
And in the other sighed it.
It is so hard to be little, so easy, with somebody big to hold you while you scream. I swayed, saying, “Rosie, look at the sea. Look at the little birds, Rose, see how they run along the water—Oh!”
Suni followed my glance and caught up the baby against her neck. A crowd of men ran along the tide line, making the sanderlings fly. More than twenty men. In my arms Rosie screamed and screamed.
Robin ran to the railing. “He’s not with them!”
Nall was. I knew his gait now. As the crowd rushed the stairs, I drew aside and waited for him to limp to the top step.
A new gash split his cheek. I could not reach my hand to him because my arms were full of child.
Robin’s low wail.
Like a runner touching finish, Nall laid his unmarked cheek against mine. He stank of bodies, of hate. He turned, he stumbled back down the steps, elbowing through the crowd that poured up; he limped to the tide line shedding breech-clout and knife belt, leaned into the waves, and disappeared.
Rosie’s screams had gone to sobs. I turned from the sea, back to the confusion of shouting, weeping, angry talk. The speakers stared at me. Last night they had whispered my name; now nothing mattered but the rage they were in, the relief of it, like vomiting.
Pao and Nondany had come with them. Pao saw me and stooped to take the child, but I held tighter, as if she were all I had.
“Dai’s alive,” said Pao. Rosie sobbed on my neck, slimy and warm. “He was alive when they left him.”
“They left him.”
“Too many paidmen. They didn’t expect us—peaceable little Downshore! But they’re trained to fight, and these boys are farmers, tailors, armed with fish knives. It was bad, they said.” Pao closed his eyes. “Did they think it would be sport? The boil’s burst now. Trenk’s lost a hand and Larrigo’s stabbed in the belly. And there’s a man dead.”
I said stupidly, “But not Dai.”
“No. One of them. But a Leagueman, an important man.”
“Who?”
“The Axe, we called him. We scarcely know their real names.” Pao’s face was like Nall’s: beaten. “We’ll pay for that. We only hated them, and never learned their names.”
“The Axe, what does he look like?”
“Lean. Ab Something; their names all sound alike! Ab Harlan’s deputy. Pearl cuff links.”
“Ab Seroy!”
“Yes.”
“My uncle.” I felt lust or glee, knowing that cruel man was dead. “But what will happen now?” I answered myself, “Ab Harlan will kill Dai. Or he’ll—” Kiss him. The white-hot poker.
Pao looked away. “We,” he began, and paused, as though he could not stomach the words. “We took two hostages. Apparently. Both are Leaguemen. That may stay Ab Harlan’s hand. But they may be dead by now; the young men had them, and they don’t think. There was talk of taking them out to sea. Leaguemen so fear the sea.”
I looked at the ocean, pretty blue, with two white sails on it.
“The men will try again,” said Pao. “They want food and weapons and more fighters. The town’s in a ferment. When night falls, they’ll go back for Dai.”
“Not until night?” I fel
t the poker on Dai’s body as I had felt Ab Harlan’s hand shove Queelic’s onto my breasts, the shape of hate driven home.
“So they said. No chance by daylight. Where’s Nall?”
I looked at the sea.
Pao nodded. “Gone to get clean of us. We’re a dirty lot.”
“You are not!”
“We are. Please, Lali Kat—love us anyway.”
Rosie’s body, sobbing, was heavy as unrisen bread. I walked the veranda up and down, up and down, singing a lullaby from Creek.
Loolee, loolee, you’re my pigalee,
You’ll be bonnie when you grow bigalee.
A stupid, stupid song. But it was something I could do.
11
God of gods
comes with a flute
dancing
face like the sun
says laughing
Child of mine
betray your friends
or betray yourself
Whichever you choose
will be wrong
Choose
and dance!
God of gods
who comes with a flute
I dance
Flute Melody. The Roadsouls.
NALL DID NOT COME BACK until dusk. I waited for him at the door of the cowshed, sitting in the sand. Rosie had long since wept herself to sleep and been laid on Mailin’s bed upstairs, where the talk, the argument, the tears of grown-ups went on and on. From the cowshed that noise seemed distant, like the cries of animals in a wood.
He rose out of the sea, dark against the dark water. He picked his belt and breechclout out of the sand; holding them in his hand, he limped up the beach.
I could not think where he had been. I was afraid of him naked and did not speak his name. But he saw me, half hidden by the cowshed door. His face had lost its beaten look and he shuddered, shining with wet.
Timidly, I held out my arms. He knelt into them. He was cold as a frog. As I held him, his shivering stopped and I saw him crying—not with sobs, but with tears that came and came, as though he were made of water.
I did not know what to do. I had not known what to do since Robin’s first scream, as though that scream had never stopped. “The men are upstairs,” I said. “More every minute. Fishermen, and farmers with their scythes. You’ll be an army.”