Ching jumped down from Maggie’s back and raced to where Sybil was working, where he began mewing raucously and rubbing himself against her, before sitting down to clean the syrup from his paws. Sybil turned a beaming face to them, so pretty and friendly and benevolent that the resemblance to Maggie’s grandmother was all but obliterated for Colin.
“Maggie, darling, and Colin! I am so pleased you’ve made it with no further trouble! I nearly burnt the gingerbread when you fell in the river and the dragon got loose!” She had set down the bowl, which Colin could now see contained fudge icing, and, after wiping her hands on her ample apron, embraced them both.
“Auntie, what’s happening to your house?”
“I tell you, dear, I was about to send to your Gran and see if she would like a guest ’til high summer. Have you ever seen such a sticky mess?” They both agreed that they had not. “You should know, Maggie dear, since I have no daughter of my own, I had intended to pass this place to you, but the practical problems of a house made of sweets far outweigh the security of owning one’s own home.”
Surveying the ick and goo, Maggie certainly understood what she meant. She bit her lip for a moment, then picked up a shingle and bit that instead slowly, chewing carefully as she circled the house, noting that even the foundation of peppermint stick logs was sagging and melting into the ground around the house. “May I use your oven?” she asked finally.
“Oh, of course, darling. You must be famished.”
“We are, a bit. But if you’ll find something for Colin and Ching, I’ll undertake the repair of the cottage for you.”
“Could you do that, dear?”
Maggie shrugged. “Well, it’s a bit trickier than preparing a banquet for 1500 after a lean hunting season and a drought, but if you have the raw ingredients, I can tackle it.”
It took even Maggie’s magic the remainder of the light part of the afternoon to make the required candies and shore up the foundation, shingle the walls, and patch the roof with fresh sugar wafers. Fortunately for her, the power that defined her hearthcraft talent as that of hearth and housework took the term housework literally, so that it included a bit of light carpentry.
Colin and Aunt Sybil sat on stumps in front of the house, drinking tea and munching the fresh roofing material, watching Maggie apply the fudge at strategic points so that it could spread itself before she applied the shingles.
“I only tuned in when you children were in the river, young man,” said Sybil conversationally, “Have you known my niece long?”
Though Colin’s experience was limited, it was not so limited that he had never before heard that tone of voice from fond female relatives of unmarried girls. “Er—not that long. We’re traveling together on official business actually—Sir William’s orders.”
“I see. Maudie’s message hinted that there had been some unpleasantness?”
“Message, ma’am?”
“My familiar, my budgie bird, flies messages between us sometimes—to keep in touch, you know.”
“Isn’t that a little awkward, considering?” He nodded to Ching, asleep in Sybil’s lap, face nestled in his front paws as completely at home as though Sybil were his sister.
“Oh, Ching knows he mustn’t be naughty and bother Budgie. Maudie has made that quite clear.” She stroked the cat’s spotted fur. “Our mother wouldn’t have needed a budgie for her messages, of course.”
“She wouldn’t?”
“Oh, no. She could talk to you plain as day through HER visions. She talked Maudie all through birthing Bronwyn, even though she had to be in Queenston just then.”
“Bronwyn?” Colin asked, sipping his tea. Maggie certainly had an extensive family. More of them just seemed to pop up in conversation all the time.
“Maggie’s ma. Lovely girl she was, Bronwyn.”
“It seems like Maggie has an awful lot of relatives, and they’re all ladies. Tell me about Bronwyn, will you? Maggie talks about distant ancestors, but hasn’t said much about her immediate family, other than that she’s frightfully worried about this one sister who doesn’t seem to be entirely a sister.” He felt a bit guilty for taking advantage of Maggie’s doing a favor for her aunt to pry, but he had a vested interest in this venture in that his life was at stake. He felt, under the circumstances, he really ought to have the whole story. Besides, it could add immeasurably to the background he needed to improve that song…
Aunt Sybil was a kind person and a lonely one; however, she was not stupid. She gave him a hard look from under her brow that considerably heightened her resemblance to her sister. Maggie, having finished the foundation and the walls, and having patched the hard-candy windows with an extra shingle or two, had climbed the ladder her aunt used to climb to her bed-loft. With this she mounted the roof. She was again applying the fudge as binding material in strategic places so that it would spread itself properly to be ready for the application of the sugar-wafer roof tiles. “Well, young man, I can understand your curiosity. I suppose I can tell you something now, but the rest I’ll save ’til Maggie’s done there and we can all have a bit of supper. There’s a lot she doesn’t know, either, that I think she ought…”
“Any enlightenment you can provide would be appreciated, ma’am,” Colin said. He had finished his tea and roof tile and had taken his guitar from its bag. He strummed lightly the strings as he fingered the keyboard. It kept his hands limber.
“I suppose Maggie has told you that she is a love child?”
“A—? Oh, yes, she did. I thought that was a little strange, because she and Sir William and everyone else acted as though she is a legitimate heir.”
“She is, she is. But only because Sir William chose to acknowledge her, when he married her mother.”
“I think you had better explain about that part.”
“Well, let’s see, now. How it was that Willie Hood, Sir William that is, and my niece, Bronwyn Brown, were fond of each other from—oh, from when they were little bitty tykes. Childhood sweethearts, you might say. But Old Tom Hood, Willie’s father, he had grand ideas, you know. He never did take to Willie being so sweet on the village witch’s daughter. I lived there then, with Maudie, my powers not being so well developed at that time as they are now. Folk could stand to be around me then. Our mother lived here with our little brother, Fearchar, and they were both querulous, discontented folk mostly, not easy to be with. So I lived with Maudie and her little girl, and often this little lad, Willie Hood, was there to play. Stop that, kitty!” she cried, as Ching jumped off her lap and ran after a bird. He did desist, but not without an unkind glare before he sat down to wash his paw. Sybil tried to pick up the thread of her story. “Oh, my dear, now, let me see, where was I?”
She found a bit of metal wire in her pocket and began to twist it as she continued. “Oh, yes, Willie Hood. He did come to visit, but Himself, Sir Thomas, didn’t like it. So he arranged a marriage with some foreign faery folk who had a daughter with a dowry so large as to buy title to all the Northern Territories for Willie.” She crocheted the wire with her fingers into a double-linked ring. “If he’d been a braver boy, I suppose Willie might have taken Bron and run off—but they were only sixteen years old or so then, and he was fond of his father, for all that he was an old rogue. And Bron wasn’t so sure that she wanted to run off and marry anyone, even Willie. Not that she didn’t care for him, but she still hoped then to see her own talent blossom into some sort of respectable witchery, and there was only Maudie and me could teach her. She didn’t mind not marrying, like some craftless village lass might, of course. Few of us have married, in the Brown line. I believe Elspat was wed to an ogre for a short time, if you could call such a union a marriage, and later there was Bron herself, but that’s all I recall.”
“Surely that’s a little unusual?” Colin asked. He put a hand across the strings to stop their vibration. “Most ladies need a husband to protect them and provide for them.”
Was there a hint of mockery in that gentle, dimple
d smile? “And that’s what you’ll do, I’m sure, young man, when you marry. Protect and provide for your wife.”
“Well, minstrels don’t marry, as a rule. At least not until they’ve retired from the road and obtained positions as professors,” he explained. “It’s too difficult being on the road all the time, giving all your attention to music, to really be seriously involved with somebody—and girls take a great deal of involvement.”
She laughed outright this time. “Dear, dear lad, you have just made my point for me! Boys take a lot of involvement too, that a witch may not have time for. Bronwyn was a sweet, dear girl, but she never really developed her powers before she died, because she was always spending so much of herself on Willie. Do you think Maggie’s craft,” she nodded at her niece, still busily shingling the roof, “takes less of her than your music does of you?”
“Er—I suppose not, but Maggie’s—”
“Maggie’s very like we all have been, even Bron. Which was why, as I was saying, she told Willie to never mind, she didn’t care if he married Ellender. She even went to the wedding, pregnant and all. Her uncle was furious.”
“I can see his point.”
“Yes, I guess you could. Maudie was a bit put out too, but she’d raised Willie as much as Tom Hood had, and was delighted she was going to have a grandchild. The only time it looked as though there might be trouble was right after the wedding—Willie became genuinely attached to Ellender, the faery bride, and stayed away for a time from Bron. But faeries—and Ellender was a good quarter-blood faery, it was easy to see that—they smile and nod a lot, and are ever so lovely to look at while you’re speaking to them, but you go away feeling that you’ve been talking to yourself. Have you ever noticed that?”
“No’m, I can’t say as I’ve met many, at least not that close to the old blood.” There had been a girl in East Headpenney, though, that, try as he might, he could never compose a really decent song about her, for all that she had long blond hair, big blue eyes, and all the really admirable feminine attributes.
“I see that you have.”
“What?”
“I don’t need my crystal ball to see what’s so close to me, laddie. Why do you think I must bide alone?”
She went on. “At any rate, for whatever reason, Willie soon was coming back to the cottage, and asking after Bron, and bringing Maudie a bit of this or that from the castle gardens for her crafting. Pretty soon it was as though the wedding had never taken place.”
“Didn’t people talk?” Colin asked, again remembering East Headpenney.
“I suppose they might have, but they were careful not to let Sir William Hood hear, if they did. For he was now Sir William. Sir Thomas, having wickedly succeeded at separating the children, as he thought, had taken to his bed. Folk were careful not to let Maud or Sybil Brown hear either, and I hear many things that are not meant for me to.
“Well, they certainly must be a high-minded lot of villagers to not be right in the middle of it, nevertheless. In East Headpenney there’d have been an awful scandal.
“It’s amazing how fair and generous folk can be when faced with their own mortality. It’s the uncertainty, I’m thinking, that adds a spice to life, keeping a body more immediately concerned with his own problems than other folks’. Even a loose-tongued person who knows that he might wake up as a crow can find his own fate a good deal more absorbing than his neighbors’.”
“I never thought of it that way.”
She nodded wisely. “Brewing beer and mixing healing herbs is the least of the good that Maudie does for that village.” She stuck the wire back in her pocket. Maggie was now circling the house, hands waving designs in the air in front of her. She appeared to be mumbling something, but her voice was too low for Colin to hear. “What surprised everyone most, though, was when Bronwyn was birthin’ Maggie—what do you suppose?”
Colin looked at Maggie. Obviously the birth had taken place. What else, then, could be the punch line? He had to admit he didn’t know.
“Why, Her Ladyship, Ellender, came trippin’ down from the castle to the cottage, is what! Maudie nearly threw her out at first, but I could tell she meant no harm and made Maudie let her in. Do you know, young man, I think that right there is where Maggie and Winnie got to be such great friends?”
Colin, having no idea what she meant, nodded and kept quiet, and hoped she’d elucidate so that he wouldn’t have to seem ignorant.
“Ellender was pregnant at the time, poor thing, and her people, the foreign faery folk I was telling you about? They’d sent her some special elixir for labor pain. Faeries intermarrying with mortals had caused some difficulties with the birthings, but this elixir was to make it all seem like a walk in the garden. Bron’d been having a hard time of it, you could hear her hollering all about, I would imagine. Clear to the castle, probably, which must have been what brought Ellender down.” Tears began to gather in her eyes. “Do you know—um—in spite of what Maudie could do, none of her medicines were of any help to Bron, and she could give her nothing more without harming the babe and—do you—” she stopped for a moment to compose herself. “Do you know that that silly faery lass gave Bronwyn her elixir? Just a bit at first, but as it only helped some, she gave her more and more, ’til it all was gone.”
“That was certainly a very kind thing to do.”
“It was kinder than that. Her own folk never got more elixir to her before little Amberwine was born, and she died herself giving birth. That was when Bron moved into the castle to care for little Winnie, along with Maggie, and when a decent time of mourning passed, Willie married my niece and acknowledged Maggie as well.” The old lady was quiet for a time. Maggie had disappeared into the house, which caught the last pink rays of sundown on its soundly wafered roof, as tight and neat and pretty a cottage as any made of more conventional building materials.
“In East Headpenney, people would have said Bronwyn personally saw to it that the lady would die in childbirth so she could take over and be a wicked stepmother and…
“If anybody had said such a thing, they’d have had the whole clan down on them, particularly young Winnie, for Bronwyn was the only mother she knew. Funny, you know. I myself wouldn’t think being a crow would be such an awful thing, but—”
“I take your point.”
* * *
“Oh, Auntie, that was so good,” Maggie sighed, leaning back in her chair.
“Your voice is a bit crackly, dear,” said her aunt. “Care for some honey in your tea?”
“Don’t mind if I do, at that.” She cleared her throat and rubbed her arms with the opposing hands. “I’m so hoarse and weary from all that spell-casting, I couldn’t boil water for tea right now.”
“Well, it certainly looks lovely, darling. I appreciate it so much. Under normal circumstances it’s an enormous chore to keep this old place up, but with all this rain I was quite sure I’d finally be forced to move.”
“Just don’t let the children eat at it anymore, Auntie. You’ll have to keep a conventional cookie jar for that, I’m afraid. I put such a strong preservative spell on it, it will be quite inedible.”
“Don’t worry about it, dear. It was a wicked idea to begin with, that has deteriorated into being merely frivolous. I’ll be glad to have a roof over my head that won’t turn to goo. When mother and Fearchar lived here the two of them could keep it up—he was rather handy as a boy.”
“Tell me about Uncle Fearchar, Auntie,” Maggie said. “None of the villagers seem to know much about him, and Gran never speaks of him at all.”
The old lady didn’t say anything for a moment as she cleared the table and poured the tea. Ching was stretched full length in front of the embrous hearth fire, dying now that it was not needed for cooking. The evening sky had been clearing as the three people and Ching had come into the cottage for dinner, and the night was warmer than it had been at any time on their journey.
“I was going to mention Fearchar anyway, Maggie. Colin and I we
re having a talk while you were working and, as I told him, I wanted to tell you one or two family things that might be—painful—for Maudie. You may think that I’m an interfering old woman—” she held up her hand to ward off Maggie’s protestations. “Yes, you well may. Quite a few do. But someone with my talent—to see so much denied the rest of you—it may be arrogant of me, but I feel that I have an obligation to give you some advice, to make things easier. And I’ll do a sighting, as well, of course, but we can do that later.”
She stared for a moment into her earthenware cup. “You see, dear, there was a quarrel, years ago, before you girls were born, and Fearchar left, and we haven’t heard from or seen him since.”
“Not even you?”
“Well, I did for a while, actually, but it wasn’t a very good contact—a lot of static, you know, interference—’til finally I could scarce see him at all.”
“He was—somehow, do you think he was blocking you?”
Her aunt nodded sadly. “I think so. He was most upset when he left—it can’t have been easy for him, the first boy in our long line of females. And then, mother died just before.”
“Before what, Mistress Brown?” asked Colin, as the old lady was looking increasingly embarrassed. She looked, in fact, as though she wished she had not opened the subject and was reluctant to continue.
“Before Willie and Ellender.” They nodded at her encouragingly, and she went on. “I told you, Colin, that folk in the village thought little and said less of Maggie’s mother being with child and her love wedding another. That was very true. Our brother was not so prudent.”
Song of Sorcery Page 7