Eidi had a booth down by the shore, alongside someone Lesna knew, a fat woman selling knitted sweaters. Lesna helped Eidi load the wool onto the horse. She went with her to the marketplace and led the horse home again when they had unloaded the bales.
When Lesna had gone, Eidi sat down on one of the bales and looked around her in wonder. There were a lot of people selling wool and yarn, woven cloth and knitted garments, but there were booths with all sorts of other things as well.
“Go on, take a walk around and see the sights,” said the woman to Eidi, knitting all the while, as though her hands went on working by themselves and were no concern of hers. “I’ll keep an eye on your wool.”
There were silken shawls with long, sleek fringes; there were hair ribbons and peacocks’ feathers. There were gold belt buckles, and buttons of silver and bone and mother-of-pearl.
There was tea and sugar and tobacco, salt and flour and oatmeal, dried apples and prunes and raisins, fragrant spices and great bunches of thyme.
There were potatoes and cabbages, carrots and onions, parsnips and leeks. There was dried fish by the bundle and salt fish in barrels and smoked bacon and big loaves of bread and pots of butter and honey cakes and . . .
Eidi was reminded of the food Lesna had packed for her, and even though it was much too early, she hurried back to her booth to unpack it.
A man was standing by the booth. “Are you here to sell your wares or just to amuse yourself?” he snapped as she approached.
“To sell, sir,” she hastened to say.
“None of that, now, Bandon,” said the woman in the next booth. “The girl has to have a chance to look about a little. Don’t you remember when you were a little lad at your first market?”
But it seemed the man didn’t want to remember being any smaller than he was now. And now he was big—both tall and wide, and his thick, fur-trimmed coat and the fur hat on his head made him look even bigger.
“Mind your own business,” he said stiffly to the woman, turned on his heel, and walked off.
“Oh no!” exclaimed Eidi.
“Never you mind,” said the woman. “He’ll be back. Your wool is the best in the market, and he knows what he wants. So hold fast to your price!”
“Who is he?”
“Bandon? He’s the richest man in town. He has a finger in every pie, deals in every kind of goods, and thinks he runs the whole show. But once upon a time he was a snotty-nosed little tyke who got kicked out too early, because his mother, who was a widow, married a shopkeeper who didn’t care for any youngsters but his own.
“And even though they’ve both been dead for years, he still wants to show them what a big man he’s made of himself. He hangs around the fine folk, and us that knew him in the old days? Why, he won’t let on he ever saw us before. He’s puffing himself up, so he is, and one day he’s going to burst with a bang,” she concluded.
The woman was right. Bandon returned while Eidi was looking after both booths to give her neighbor a break.
He poked a bale with his stick. “Tell me, do you just shear the back ends of the beasts?” he said.
“No, sir,” answered Eidi politely. “We shear the whole sheep.”
“So where do you keep the clean wool?”
Eidi couldn’t help smiling.
“Right here,” she said, and dragged out a bale of white wool.
“Are you mocking me?”
“No, sir. I just meant that it might be easier for you to see how clean the wool is when it’s white.”
Bandon growled, and the bargaining began. Eidi had to struggle to stand fast and not be put upon, but she kept up her end and got very nearly the price she had determined on. Bandon bought the white bale first and then a light-brown one. He paid her and left the bales with her. Someone would come and fetch them later, he said.
“Well done,” said the knitting woman when she came back and heard all about it. Shortly after that, a slight young boy turned up and inquired after the wool.
“Why, you can’t lug even one of those bales by yourself,” Eidi protested. “I’d better give you a hand.”
But the woman made signs to her not to, so Eidi had to be content with hoisting it up for him to get hold of.
“Bandon would never forgive him if he should see that he can’t manage by himself,” the woman explained when the boy had left. “He’s so hard on that lad!”
“Who is he?”
“He’s the son of a woman Bandon took into his house. But Bandon’s not his father, because she was already with child when they met. She died in childbirth, and then Bandon kept the boy.”
The boy returned shortly for the other bale. Despite the cold wind, his forehead was wet with sweat.
“Sit down awhile,” the woman said kindly. The boy shook his head.
“Oh, come now,” said Eidi. “Just for a minute. I’ll get you a mug of tea.”
And before he could answer, she had darted over to the tea booth and bought mugs of tea for all three of them.
The boy glanced around him nervously before he took the mug.
“Just you tell him that you’ve been drinking tea with his old sweetheart,” said the woman with a laugh. “That ought to shut him up.”
The boy looked at her in amazement.
“Yes, you may believe it or not, but even Bandon was young and handsome once, with brown, curly hair and fair cheeks and a red, kissable mouth. Oh, weren’t the girls all after him! But now he’s getting old and bad-tempered. And never mind about the first part of that—we all get old—but the second part no one wants to put up with.”
At that moment a bellow was heard across the marketplace. Bandon had spotted the boy.
“Get away from those slatterns and get a move on!” he yelled, and the boy started up, the mug smashing on the stones while the tea splashed his trouser leg.
“Leave it, I’ll take care of it,” said the woman, picking up the pieces. Eidi lifted the bale, and the boy staggered off with his burden.
7
In the few days the market lasted, Eidi sold all the wool. On the last day, Rossan gave her some money to buy something for herself before all the booths were packed up.
She went from booth to booth, having trouble deciding, until she saw a row of mother-of-pearl buttons fastened onto a little piece of cloth. They weren’t just white, like ordinary buttons; they glowed with many different hues.
Then she caught sight of a mussel shell, lying on display among the buttons. It was as big as her hand, and grayish brown and drab on the outside. But the inside gleamed with the same shifting colors as the buttons: green and blue, silver and white.
“How much does that cost?” she asked.
She held out her coins, and the man shot them a quick glance.
“More than you can afford. I have one that’s chipped a bit. You can have that for what you’ve got there.”
But Eidi did some dickering, and in the end she left the booth with the chipped shell and half the mother-of-pearl buttons.
Dusk was falling, and the screams of the gulls were at last silenced. People were packing up. Some were sitting drinking around a fire they had made in an old iron pot. Eidi started up the hill toward Lesna’s house.
There were still crowds of people down by the harbor, but higher up, the streets and alleys were deserted. Suddenly Eidi heard a scream. She stopped and listened. Someone was crying out for help, and Eidi ran toward the sound.
Across from her on a narrow street, in front of a row of houses, stood a man with a bottle in his hand. Facing him stood the woman who had shouted. She was holding her cheek with one hand while the other was raised to protect her head.
The man lifted his empty hand to strike again.
“No!” Eidi yelled, and plunged between them. Too late she saw that it was her former stepfather, the man she and Foula had fled from, the one who had given her the scar on her eyebrow.
The blow struck Eidi with such force that she was thrown off her feet and land
ed on the slippery cobblestones some way off.
A ringing sound gathered inside her, as if she had an iron pot over her head. The sound turned into a white-hot ball that exploded in thousands of stars forcing their way outward at a raging speed. She felt that she was being pierced by a thousand needles. Then darkness closed down, the pain came to a point on the side of her head, and the sound turned to a shrill, constant howl.
Eidi whimpered softly.
“I’m sorry,” she heard a woman’s voice say above her.
Then the woman’s voice was farther away. “Let’s get out of here. You could have killed her.” A voice blurred with drink mumbled something about guttersnipes and wenches not interfering with a man, and Eidi realized that he hadn’t recognized her.
The footsteps faded away, a bottle smashed somewhere around a corner, and then everything was quiet. And in the stillness Eidi became aware that the howling tone came from inside her ear.
Her jaw hurt horribly, her knees and hands and cheeks were raw with grazes from the hard cobbles, and she had lost her mussel shell and the mother-of-pearl buttons.
She crawled around on her knees to look for them. Something shiny caught her eye over by the wall of a house. The pale moonlight escaping for a moment from the clouds picked it out. It was a piece of the shell. A little farther off she found the cloth with the buttons. Only one of them had survived being trodden on.
She took the fragment of shell and the button and limped up the street to Rossan and Lesna.
Rossan sat up in bed when she came into the room. “Well, did you find something you liked?” he asked.
Eidi stumbled across the room to the bed. She fell on her knees, buried her head in the covers, and sobbed. Her hands were clutching the mussel shell and the button.
Rossan took them from her and laid them gently on the chest of drawers beside the bed. He stroked her hair.
“There, there,” he said. “Did you fall in the dark? That’s a nasty steep street out there. And your nice things all broken!” He was talking to her as if she were a little child, but she didn’t mind. Not now, and not since it was Rossan. And she cried like a little child, long and heartily.
At last her weeping grew quieter, and she lifted her head and wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands.
“For goodness’ sake! Just look at you!” exclaimed Rossan. He called out for his sister. While Lesna was cleaning her cuts and scrapes, Eidi told them what had happened.
“That man just can’t take the drink,” said Rossan, shaking his head, “and he keeps on drinking more and more. Keep well away from him! If he discovers who you are, he might start asking around about Foula and looking for her again.”
Later, as Eidi lay in her room by the stable, her ear was still howling, but the comfortable rustling sounds from the horse in his stall held the noise at bay, and she soon fell asleep.
The next morning she had forgotten all about the weird noise. She was on her way down to the harbor with an empty pail. Lesna had seen a fishing boat putting in and she wanted Eidi to buy a couple of flounders.
Just as she was about to step onto the green where the market had been held, Eidi heard the howling in her ear again. She stopped in surprise and shook her head, like a horse plagued by a horsefly, and just then her stepfather and the woman he was with came walking across the green and disappeared between the houses on the far side. Then the howling noise stopped. It was as if it had sounded just to warn her.
When Eidi got back, Rossan was sitting in the sunshine on a bench in front of the house. He was recovering slowly, but he had begun to get up now and then.
The wind had fallen, so the sun felt warm. The last roses were blooming against the housefront. Eidi sat down beside him and started cleaning the fish. Lesna’s cat took charge of the offal and kept the gulls at a distance.
The sea was blue and smooth. Little gray boats with empty sails and full holds lay offshore waiting for a breath of wind. The fragrance of sun-warmed thyme and sage mingled with the salty smell of fish and blood and the smoke from Rossan’s pipe. The cat crunched on fish heads and tails, and through the open window they could hear Lesna rattling pots and pans.
“I’m going to look for work,” said Eidi. “I should pay Lesna something for food.”
“You don’t need to do that,” said Rossan. “We’ll be leaving just as soon as I’m well enough. I’m going to buy a horse with the money you got for the wool, and Lesna will let us take hers along for Kotka to ride back on, so the trip home won’t be so long or so hard.”
“I’m eating Lesna out of house and home,” Eidi protested.
Rossan laughed. “She can just stop cooking so well. That’s what I’m always telling her when she complains about Kotka’s appetite. And I gave her a bit of money for our keep, so you don’t owe her anything.”
“But then I owe you.”
He shook his head and smiled at her. “Don’t fret. There’ll be time enough for all that and more. You have a whole, long life ahead of you.”
8
Eidi didn’t need to look for work. It came to her.
“You there—girl with the shawl—you from the market!” she heard a familiar voice calling behind her the next morning as she was going to buy tobacco for Rossan.
She turned around, and there stood Bandon in his hat and coat, although the autumn afternoon was turning warm.
“My name is Eidi,” she said stiffly, because now that she had no more wool to sell, she didn’t need to be any more polite than she felt like.
“Miss Eidi,” said Bandon in a sarcastic tone, but with the hint of a twinkle in his eye, “may I be permitted to ask if that shawl is your own handiwork, and if such is the case, if you might care to do some weaving for me?”
“Yes, I made it myself,” she answered the first question.
“Very nice,” said Bandon. “And if I’m not mistaken, one customarily wears such a shawl when one is seeking to be hired. Am I right?”
Eidi nodded.
“And that is why I am inquiring as to whether the young lady might be inclined to weave for me.”
Eidi clutched the shawl closer around her. She didn’t know what she should say. She did want to work, but she didn’t like the way he had treated that boy.
“I pay good wages,” he went on. “The little lady can live at home or at my house, just as she pleases. I provide board and lodging, or else I pay a higher wage if you provide those things for yourself. I will expect an answer about sundown today. You’ll find me at home.”
He doffed his fur hat to her, turned, and was gone.
Rossan didn’t like the idea, but Lesna thought it was a good deal. “Bandon isn’t a bad sort, really,” she maintained. “And a big girl like you ought to turn her hand to something, so you can learn that no one gets food for nothing.”
“If I don’t live at Bandon’s house,” said Eidi, “he will pay higher wages. I’ve decided to say yes so Rossan won’t have to pay you for us both.”
Lesna nodded approvingly, got to her feet, and went out to the kitchen to start preparing a meat pie with sage.
At dusk Lesna went with Eidi to Bandon’s big house on the edge of the green. It had a view of the sea, so he could keep an eye out for the ships that bought his wares or sold goods to him. Behind the house were the outbuildings, stables, and warehouses.
Lesna and Eidi were shown in by an old man whose back was so bent that his head was level with his shoulder blades. They found Bandon sitting in a big, high-ceilinged room behind a massive table.
“Why, it’s you, Lesna,” he said in surprise.
Eidi noticed that Lesna’s features opened like a flower unfolding in the sun, while the faintest of blushes spread all the way up to the roots of her white hair.
Bandon had the old servant bring chairs for both of them. Eidi suspected that she would have had to remain standing if she had come alone.
“I thought you had only sons,” said Bandon.
“Four in all,” said
Lesna, “and three of them grown. There’s only Kotka left at home. Eidi here has a place with my brother, but he’s too poorly for them to travel home just yet, so . . .”
“So,” continued Eidi, “I would like to find some work to do just until we leave.”
“Then why do you go around wearing that shawl, which indicates that you’re looking for hire?”
“It’s true, that isn’t quite fair,” Lesna said hastily, “when you already have a place with Rossan.”
“But I do want a job,” Eidi protested. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here. Besides, it’s the only shawl I brought with me,” she added in a low voice.
In the end they agreed that Eidi would weave for Bandon as long as she stayed in town, and that she would go on boarding with Lesna.
Bandon escorted them to the door, nodded to Eidi, and kissed Lesna’s hand.
“He’s so courtly,” Lesna exclaimed on the way across the green, and then the flower folded its petals, and her face became once again a bit sharp and tight, as usual.
Bandon’s house hummed with life. The courtyard was always teeming with people. In the rear buildings there was a shop where people could buy anything they might otherwise have bought at the market. Only now it cost twice as much, because there were no other merchants to drive the price down. But people traded there all the same, because there was a lot to choose from at Bandon’s all year round.
In the evening, though, the courtyard fell quiet. The sounds of voices and the clop of horses’ hooves ceased, and all that was heard was an occasional deep bark from the watchdog and the rattle of his chain. Eidi worked right across the courtyard from the shop, in a half-cellar room with windows that gave her a good view of it.
She often worked late, because she was paid not by the hour but for every shawl she finished. The patterns and colors were up to her. Some of the shawls were square, others long with fringes at both ends, and they were sold as fast as she could weave them.
Eidi Page 3