That much was the absolute truth, and it felt oddly good to say it to someone besides herself. Merrigan found her headache had completely gone as she sat down to resume her work. Perhaps it was the fresh air, since Flora left the door halfway open, or perhaps having an actual conversation with someone. Or perhaps it was the sympathy in the girl's round, pale face.
Sympathy from a serving girl? Welcoming that sympathy? How Merrigan had fallen from her glory days.
She sighed and glanced at the pages in their semi-neat piles at the other end of the long table. "You keep quiet—I'm not complaining, and I'm even a little bit ... well, grateful is too strong a word, but it is nice having someone feeling sorry for me. I'm just stating the facts of the situation, that's all."
Her work went quickly, despite an odd need to look up and make sure the pages were still there in their piles, every dozen stitches or so. Merrigan had half the seams basted together by the time Flora returned with a fresh apple dumpling, a saucer of thickened, sweetened cream to spoon over it, and a little pot of steaming fresh cinnamon tea to go with it. The girl winked at Merrigan as she put the tray down on a little side table she pulled up next to her chair.
"Flora, do you know how to read?" She put her sewing down in her lap. If that chat earlier had done her good, she would have regular chats with the serving girls whenever she could.
"Enough to read the road markers walking to Potzwheel, or Grimblpotz, and get the right papers from the judge's desk when he's already out in his carriage and needs something." She rolled her eyes, with a smile. Merrigan guessed the judge was rather disorganized and sent his servants back multiple times for things he had forgotten—and too lazy to get out and fetch them himself.
"Would you like me to help you read better?"
Flora's eyes got big and sudden tears made them glisten. "Oh, Mistress Mara, that would be so wonderful. But how would you have the time?" She gestured at the bolts of cloth and spools of thread and all the other supplies for the judge's new wardrobe.
"In the evening, after your chores are done, you can come in here and read to me, and when you come to words you don't understand, we'll figure them out together."
Merrigan didn't quite understand the warmth in her chest when the girl accepted with delight and then scurried out to tend to her duties. She rather liked the sensation. While of course her first motive had been to have some company, she found she didn't mind the thought of helping the girl improve herself. After all, once she could read, maybe she could find some place better to work. Wouldn't that serve Judge Brimble a bit more justice, losing another handy, downtrodden servant?
On second thought, maybe she should offer to teach Fauna and the stable boys—Rosco and Oscar, yes, she could remember their names too. If Judge Brimble was helping to cheat other people besides the baker, he deserved to lose more servants. Merrigan rather hoped the next people he hired were servants he deserved.
That evening, the seneschal brought her supper tray and a curious contraption of iron rods, a framework that stood over a fat candle with four wicks. He nodded to her and put the framework and candle down at the far end of the table, next to the piles of papers. He returned perhaps ten minutes later with a small pitcher, a covered pot, and a handful of narrow brushes, which he also put down by the frame and candle and left again, all without speaking to her. Merrigan didn't know if she should consider that odd or not. While the seneschal had been polite to her, the extent of their conversations thus far had been to make sure she had everything she needed, nothing more.
When she finished her dinner, she got up and went to investigate the materials. The pitcher held water, and the covered pot fit perfectly into the frame sitting over the candle. Merrigan lifted the covering, which was a bit of hide held in place with some cord wrapped around the lip of the pot. The smell of the yellowy-brown substance in the pot was vaguely familiar. Merrigan touched it with the tip of her finger. It felt somewhat sticky, but a dry sticky that didn't come off on her finger. She put the pot over the flames of the candle. Common sense said the water was to go in the pot, perhaps when the flame had heated the contents enough to melt?
"Dunderhead," she muttered, smiling, as the pieces came together.
The pot held glue, with brushes to spread it on the binding of the book, to hold the pages in place. She hadn't gotten that far in deciding what to do after sewing the separate piles into bundles, and then somehow affix everything back into the binding. The excited little thrumming in her chest spread to put a smile on her face she could actually feel. She sat down to arrange the first pile of sorted pages into some kind of order. If only whoever wrote this book had taken the time to number the pages, that would have made the task so much easier. Of course, Merrigan admitted, the writer had never anticipated someone would come along and desecrate the book by tearing out all the pages, soaking it in water, and treading on it. Still, the job wouldn't be that bad, since she did have clues, starting with the headings on the pages. The headings were all at the outer edges, on the right edge on one side of the page and the left edge on the other side. It was the only way she could tell which side was the right facing page or the left. Unlike newer bound books, the outer edges were as uneven as the inner edges where they had been torn out of the book.
Now came the tedious part. Reading the last full sentence on the bottom of the left facing page to try to match it with the first sentence at the top of the right facing page. In several places she was lucky, because whoever wrote the book, or perhaps more accurately, the journal, ran out of room at the bottom of the page and split the word, to continue on the next page. Merrigan tried not to pay attention to what the sentences were actually saying, because she didn't want to ruin the fun of reading the book when it was finally assembled. She couldn't stand people who would flip through books, reading a paragraph here, a paragraph there, the start of a chapter and the end of the chapter, and then read the entire last chapter before they started reading from the beginning. What fun was that?
When Flora came to retrieve the dishes, Merrigan asked her if Fauna would care to practice her reading as well. That earned her another wide-eyed gasp of gratitude. Honestly, the girl was pretty, with that flush in her cheeks and her eyes sparkling. She took the tray away and promised they would both be back in twenty minutes, thirty at the most. That bought Merrigan more time to sort through this first pile of papers. She had purposely chosen the thinnest pile. It seemed to narrate an encounter between a rather accident-prone young man and a foul-tempered herbalist with dreams of being a powerful wizard. That was far more of the story than Merrigan wanted to know. She was pleased there were only twenty sheets of paper in the pile. The first page of the bundle and the last were easy enough to identify, because the right facing side began halfway down the first page, and the left facing side of the last page only had five lines on it. That left her eighteen sheets to arrange. She had everything in order before the girls came back to the library for the night's reading.
"I am not taking the chance of having to do you all over again," Merrigan muttered, looking down at the neat bundle sitting on the table before her. Thirty piles, some of them twice as thick as the pile she had sorted. She hadn't thought it would be such a large book, judging by the binding.
She decided to use one of the longer pins to hold the papers together. Though she hated to poke holes in the pages, there was no remedy for it. Besides, she would have to poke numerous holes when she sewed them together before gluing them. Something made her hold her breath and brace—for what, she wasn't sure—when she inserted the pin through the sheets.
A sensation riffled through the room, not quite a sigh, but definitely the impression that someone let out a breath he had been holding, when she bent the bundle of papers and inserted the pin again, neatly fastening them together. Merrigan dropped the papers on the table and stepped back, rubbing her fingertips on both hands together.
For a moment there, she could have sworn she felt warmth flash through the dusty o
ld yellowed papers, there and gone again.
"Too long alone," she scolded herself. "Or maybe the fumes from the glue are too strong." She sighed and bent to blow the flames out on the candle. What had she been thinking, letting the glue warm and melt when she wouldn't be ready for days to do the gluing?
Ten minutes later, as she followed the girls down the bookshelves, looking for a book simple enough for them to practice their reading, Merrigan looked over and saw the flames under the glue pot were still lit. She scolded herself for carelessness and walked over to blow them out again. This time, she put the warm pot of glue down on the table, to make sure she blew directly on the flames. Then Merrigan walked back over to help Flora and Fauna pick out a book.
All in all, she was pleased with the evening. She finished putting together the second shirt and cut out a vest. The girls helped each other figure out words so she didn't have to stop to help them often enough that it grew annoying. They read to her from a clever book about the antics of silly, harmless talking animals trying to set up a kingdom so they could be "just like people." Merrigan remembered that book from her childhood and enjoyed hearing it again. Her sojourn here might turn out more pleasant than she had anticipated. If only she could remember that choking collar spell.
THE NEXT FOUR BUNDLES of papers Merrigan put together, working her way up from the smallest, all seemed to have the same type of story, just from the little bit she read to match the pages together. Each dealt with a traveler of some kind, whether an adventurer or someone who had lost his or her home through foolishness or a cruel trick. That young man or woman then encountered someone of varying magical strength. There was an accident or argument, or the majjian tricked the traveler into helping him or her find or retrieve something. That was always far more detail than Merrigan wanted to learn. She didn't want the story to be spoiled when she could finally sit down and read through the book. Preferably in a pleasant, clean, comfortable inn, where she could indulge in a few days of reading luxury.
By the third bundle of pages, she no longer had the sensation of someone in the room holding his breath, waiting for something to happen when she fastened the sorted papers together. As she arranged the fourth bundle, Merrigan made a disheartening discovery.
While it was easy enough separating the different sections of the book by the headings on the top of the pages, and then putting the pages into order, Merrigan had no clue yet to the order of the sections, to assemble the whole book. What came first? It would be highly irritating and inconvenient if she read one section and then read another, and realized the second should have come before the first. Books had to make sense. If they weren't a collection of individual, unrelated stories, then the sections or chapters had to lead one into another. What was learned in one chapter had its roots in the previous chapter. The journey had to go somewhere, and it had to make sense.
"Bother," she muttered, as she finished pinning the fifth bundle together and looked at the next pile to be arranged. "I don't suppose there is an index anywhere among any of you?"
She wasn't about to give up on the task now, a quarter of the way through. Less than a quarter, really, since the gluing and stitching would likely take as long as the sorting itself had taken. Still, knowing she couldn't confidently glue the sections into place rather took away the growing sense of accomplishment, the visible progress that mitigated the tedium. How could she consider the task accomplished if she might have to rip the bundles out of the binding and rearrange everything again?
"I suppose I could just put the pieces in and find some ribbons or even sew a case to hold everything together, and not glue it until I was sure ..."
That solution didn't feel right, either.
"Bother," she snarled, and put the pile of papers down and stomped over to the other end of the table, where she found relief in cutting out the pieces for three pairs of trousers. There was something highly satisfying, almost soothing, in the crunch of the scissors going through the thick cloth, of cutting apart the long, dignified, richly dyed material.
The problem of the order of the book sections gnawed at her all through the basting process and dinner, and made her somewhat short-tempered with Flora and Fauna during that evening's reading. The girls didn't seem to notice she sighed each time they asked her to help them figure out a word. That irritated her, too.
When the silence grew too long, she looked up to see the girls stood at the other end of the table, examining the papers. A shriek of warning caught in her throat as Flora gently flipped open a bundle of leather and wood, the battered cover and binding.
"Mistress Mara, what's all this writing in here? It looks like words, but I don't know any of them," the girl said.
Merrigan's hands trembled as she put down the trousers. Her knees wobbled as she walked down to the far end of the table. The scolding rising up hot in her throat cooled and died away when she saw neither girl had done anything more to the torn binding and covers, hanging together by a few thin, worn pieces of leather and many torn threads. With delicate motions, she tugged the leather of the front cover into place on the inside, left face. Odd. She could have sworn there was very little of the leather left when she first found the mangled book. It looked almost whole now, if faded and stained and threatening to wear through in a few spots.
Flora was right. There was writing on the leather. Not just writing, but a list. The first few words on each line were the titles of the bundles she had sorted. Merrigan's mouth relaxed into a smile. Her pleasure died as she deciphered the next few words on each line. Someone, in a different hand, had made notes to rearrange the list, so that the first item on the list wasn't the first section of the book. In fact, it had been designated the third, then changed to the twelfth, then the eighth. The same had been done to the other sections, their positions changed and changed again.
"Someone was very disorganized and very messy," she finally said to the girls. Merrigan could smile at them, though, because hadn't her discouraging problem been solved?
She should have looked at the cover, instead of nattering herself into a headache.
The odd thing was, she could have sworn she had looked at the pieces of the cover. Not only hadn't there been a list the first time, but far less leather existed in the cover. Was something wrong with her eyes?
THE LIST DANCED THROUGH her dreams. When she woke up long before dawn, Merrigan had a plan firmly in mind. She could almost laugh at herself, how she obsessed over fixing a book that was little more than a collection of tales of idiots who ran into majjians and fell into rewards they didn't deserve. Still, she had a gurgling in her throat that threatened to turn into humming, as she put the glue pot back on the candle to warm and melt, then hurried to wash with the water left in her basin, neatened her hair, dressed, and settled down to work on the book before her breakfast arrived. Between the sunrise creeping through the windows and the oil lanterns in the chandelier, there was more than enough light.
She felt positively buoyant this morning. By rights the prospect of another day putting together grand new clothes Judge Brimble most certainly did not deserve should have made her feel much abused. Repairing the binding and cover of the book felt like enormous progress.
The glue had softened enough that it was easy to stir it around with a little water and the stick end of a brush. Merrigan's hands stayed steady and her touch was delicate and sure, as if she had done this sort of thing a thousand times, as she spread glue on the wooden boards of the cover, stretched the leather into place and pressed it down with a firm but gentle touch. She had thick books ready to put on the mended cover boards to hold the leather in place while the glue dried. Odd. She couldn't remember taking them off the shelves. A chuckle escaped her.
"Mindless obsession. How Leffisand would laugh if he saw me now." She sighed, realizing she didn't feel the usual resentment that came with thinking of him.
There was innate satisfaction in repairing something that had been so tragically damaged. While the cover drie
d, held in place, she searched through her supplies for the thickest, strongest thread and the sturdiest needles, and prepared them, then set them aside. She knew exactly how to repair the binding to make it ready to take the bundles of pages. Before the seneschal brought her breakfast tray and the two fresh pitchers of water, one hot and one cold, she had two more piles of pages sorted into order. The sorting seemed to go more quickly with each pile, as if the pages were arranging themselves.
The morning sewing flew by. Merrigan caught herself a dozen times with a childhood song bubbling in her throat as she stitched and pinned and turned seams and thought ahead to what piece of the judge's wardrobe she would work on next. Working on the book had become a reward for completing tasks, rather than escape from the drudgery of sewing.
When she took a break midway through the morning, she sorted another pile of pages with ease, hardly paying attention to them as she listened to the judge speaking with a new visitor. Merrigan nearly dropped the bundle in the process of pinning them together when she heard the word "mill." What she had overheard before suddenly made sense. Right below her feet was the man who had cheated the miller's son.
For another half hour she stood right there, where the voices came up strongest through the floor and flue pipe. She sorted another pile of pages and listened. The oily glee of the man made her want to stomp downstairs and shout for the captain of the guard to come drag him away and throw him in prison for a year or two. What right did he have to take that mill? It belonged to the miller's son, just like the throne of Carlion belonged to her—she was the queen, wasn't she? So what if she hadn't given Leffisand an heir? She had earned it. Just consider all the frustrations she had endured, the whispering, the mockery from her siblings, the marriage proposals from second and third and fourth-born princes who might have been handsome and talented and brave and nice, but they weren't going to be kings.
The Kindness Curse Page 7