Chapter Twenty-Two: The Breakthrough
Hope hooked one foot behind the other ankle and stared at the rug without seeing it.
“You know,” she said, “I think we’ve gone as far as we can with my childhood for now. I want to go directly to the time when I cursed Faithful.”
She looked up to see Lily smiling. “Good,” she said. “That’s exactly what we need to do, but I was waiting for you to reach that conclusion for yourself.”
“Do I get to beat him up?” asked Patient. She detected a serious undercurrent beneath his question.
“No,” said Hope. “In fact, I’d like you to just be there and not say anything. I like having your support, but… I need to handle this one myself.”
She slipped easily into the trance, having practiced it so many times, and found herself drawn back to the fateful day. Her throat roughened with the remembered fumes of the leaves that one of her classmates had dropped accidentally into a brazier. She described to Patient and Lily, in a rasping voice, how she cancelled her regular singing engagement at Honey’s tavern and decided to surprise Faithful in his rooms.
“I go up the stairs, and open the door.” She knew what was coming, but she still gasped at what she saw. “He’s with Briar.” The two of them were seated on the bed, kissing passionately, and broke off as she entered.
“I’m standing there beside you,” said Patient.
“I’m angry with him,” said Hope, ferociously. “I want to hurt him. But…”
She watched Briar as she worked out the situation, slapped Faithful across the face and began to button up her shirt.
“Faithful,” she said. “I’d like to curse you for this. But I’m not going to. You’re not worth it. You’re a little man. You’re unimportant. My real man’s here, watching, and he’s the one who’s important. In fact, you’re starting to shrink.” His feet were already off the floor, hanging over the edge of the bed like a child’s, though he was still proportioned like an adult.
“You’re nobody in my life,” said Hope. “You mean nothing. Only people who love us get to tell us who we are, and you don’t love me, you only used me. He’s fading away,” she reported in her normal voice. She could see the bedspread through his increasingly tiny form.
“I don’t know if you even still remember me,” she said, rasping again. “But I’m ready to forget about you now.”
“He’s gone,” said Hope, after a minute. “Shrunk and faded. Disappeared.” She stood in the imaginary room next to Patient and a silent Briar, looking around, but there was no sign of Faithful anywhere.
“You didn’t curse him,” said Lily, after a pause.
“No. No need. He wasn’t worth it.”
“So what’s happened to the curse?”
Hope drew a long breath in and flexed her shoulders as if a weight had been removed from them. She straightened up in her chair.
“There’s no more curse,” she said, and smiled.
“Are you sure?” asked Lily.
“Yes. It’s gone.”
“For now, or forever?”
“Forever. I don’t need it. It doesn’t have anywhere in me to hold onto, because I’m loved now. I’m allowed to be loved.”
“So you can be oathbound to Patient, and be together, and be intimate?”
“Yes. It’s all right to do that now.”
“Good. You’ve done incredibly well. I’m going to bring you both back out of the trance now.”
Lily began to chant, and they slowly drew back into their own bodies, in her room, on a Threeday afternoon in Late Sowing of the year 547. When they were fully alert again, Hope shook her head as if to clear it, smiled at Patient, and leaned over and kissed him.
After the kiss had gone on for some time, Lily cleared her throat. “Time enough for that later on,” she said, and they broke apart reluctantly.
“Well,” she said, “I think we have our breakthrough.”
“Yes,” said Hope.
“So,” said Patient. “Hope, will you be my oathmate?”
“Yes,” she said. “As soon as possible, and with great pleasure.” Lily’s usual professional neutrality of expression vanished behind an enormous smile.
“I’d like to see you again afterwards,” she said, “but I don’t think there’s any hurry. You go off now and plan the rest of your lives.”
“Thank you, Lily,” said Patient.
“Yes, thank you so much,” said Hope.
“My pleasure. It’s a refreshing change to work with a couple who are so devoted to one another. And Patient,” she said, “if Hope doesn’t have time to apprentice you, let me know, and I will. I’m serious.”
“Apprentice me?”
“I think you could very easily become at least a Mage-Minor in mindmagic. And with your woodcarving skills, you could make your own amulets. If you want to, of course.”
“That’s… I’ll think about it,” he said, with an expression that suggested he actually would.
“Any lingering effects of the curse you can detect, Hope?” Lily asked, as they prepared to walk out the door.
“No,” said Hope. “I’m not in the disinhibition trance, and I’m having difficulty thinking about anything except dragging this man off and practicing Chapters 20 to 35 on him until we collapse from exhaustion.” Patient blushed, but looked pleased.
“Well,” said Lily, in her imperturbable manner, “that’s a good outcome. Control yourself, though, until an appropriate moment.”
“Of course.”
Much as Hope wished for their oathbinding, she didn’t want a minimal, cut-down ceremony like Rosie and Dignified’s. She wanted her friends to be there, and Patient’s, and that meant a delay while arrangements were made.
The day before the ceremony, she took a few personal possessions down to Redbridge on her red-and-gold airhorse, driving carefully. She would leave the furniture in the flat for Briar and whoever moved in after her, since Patient, naturally, had better pieces already.
Hope had never visited Redbridge before. Patient had always come to her. It was a pretty little village, with a stream running through it, in which a small group of elderly men were pretending to fish as an excuse to spend time together and pass around a stoneware flagon. She asked them where the carver’s shop was, and they directed her to a lane leading off the main street between the post station and the warden station. No wonder he wrote so regularly, she thought, if the post station is just down the lane.
Patient met her outside his shop and joined her on the airhorse to direct her the last part of the way to his cottage. They crept down a winding lane at the back of the village and drew up in front of a tidy dwelling rather larger than her flat.
“When you said ‘cottage,’” she said, “I was expecting something smaller than this.”
“Well, it’s not a mansion,” he said. “But it’s home.”
He dismounted the airhorse and fished for his key. “Oh, by the way,” he said, “I have something for you.” He passed her a key on a chain.
“What’s this to?”
“The front door. I thought you should have one.”
She hugged him. “Thank you, Patient. Can I try it?”
The key fitted and turned, and she swung the door open and peered in curiously.
Sunlight lay across a clean wooden floor scattered with well-coordinated rugs. Several easy chairs and couches, with small tables beside them, formed an arc, and beautifully carved wooden pieces decorated the walls.
“You like it?” he said, putting his arm around her and looking over her shoulder.
“I love it. Do I get a tour?”
He led her through the front room into a neatly organised, but old-fashioned, kitchen, dominated by a huge black iron range and a water pump. A well-scrubbed kitchen table and carved chairs stood to one side.
“Those chairs were my graduation piece for the Guild,” said Patient, and she ran her hands over them in admiration.
“They’re beautiful.�
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He shrugged. “I’m better now. There are things I’d do differently.”
At the back of the cottage, a small, cramped, old-fashioned bathroom with a half-bath fed by an ancient boiler, a separate lavatory and two bedrooms completed the roster of rooms.
“No!” said Patient, as Hope put her hand on the doorhandle of the main bedroom.
“No?”
“I have a surprise for you in there, for after we’re oathbound.”
“Intriguing,” she said, but left the door alone.
“I still sleep in here, at the moment,” he said, swinging open the other bedroom door. Hope saw a tidy space, a narrow, carefully-made bed with a carved headboard, and a beautifully polished wardrobe. “This has always been my room, and when my parents died I never quite got around to moving.”
Hope was tempted to try the bed with him, but they were due at his aunt and uncle’s inn soon, where the ceremony would be held, and she reluctantly tore herself away and concentrated on carrying in her boxes. She had hired a small cart to tow behind the airhorse.
Once all Hope’s possessions were stowed away, Patient took her out to the garden at the back. A shady porch overlooked it, which would be lovely in the warmer weather. Hope started to get an idea, and paused by the bathroom window to check the thickness of the wall.
“What?” asked Patient.
“Nothing,” she said.
As they prepared to ride off, a cheerful voice greeted them from across the hedge which separated Patient’s front garden from the neighbour’s.
“Hello,” said a balding, fiftyish man in a Silver tradesman’s clothes. “Is this your young lady, Patient?”
“Productive!” said Patient. “Yes, this is my promised oathmate, Hope at Merrybourne. Hope, Productive Victualler. He’ll be my witness.”
Hope blinked for a moment. Victualler had been Faithful’s name of affiliation, and even though she knew there was no connection (Faithful had been from Inner Province, far up the river), it gave her a moment’s pause. The curse might be broken, but that didn’t mean that her feelings were all resolved.
“Pleased to meet you,” she said.
“We’re just moving her personal items in, and then we’re off to Uncle Pleasant’s,” said Patient.
“Good, good,” said Productive. “I’ll join you there this evening.”
Patient’s Aunt Peace and Uncle Pleasant, his only close living relatives apart from their near-adult son Sterling, lived in a village near Redbridge, and kept an inn. They were happy to provide a venue for the celebrations, and as many rooms as they had free, and they had even found a marquee from somewhere which would provide somewhere for the gnomes to sleep. The whole manufactory, all twenty gnomes and their families, were invited, along with Gizmo, Briar, Rosie and Dignified. A large farviewer at one end of the inn’s front courtyard would allow Sincerity, the Countygold, and Hope’s parents to watch.
Briar, naturally, was Hope’s witness, and accompanied her to the traditional pre-oathbond talk the night before the ceremony. Aunt Peace, a plump, middle-aged lady who cooked like Dignified invented, took on the responsibility, as the only woman involved of the correct generation and oathbond status. Sincerity, who wasn’t oathbound, didn’t qualify, and while Hope had exchanged a couple of tentative letters with her mother, geography wasn’t the only reason for not having her participate.
Both Hope and Briar managed to keep straight faces while Aunt Peace covered the topic of sex as quickly as possible. Not looking at each other helped.
“So,” said Aunt Peace. “With that out of the way, let’s talk about the real business of being oathbound. Pleasant and I have been very happy, mostly, and it’s down to two things. Putting up with each other’s quirks, and being thoughtful.”
“How do you mean, Aunt P?”
“Pleasant’s a man who doesn’t steer easy,” she said. “Like a big old oxcart, he is. If you want to change his direction you need an early start.”
Hope smiled to herself. From what she had seen, this was an excellent summary.
“That’s what I mean by a quirk,” said Peace. “With Patient it’ll be something different, but there’ll be something, you can be sure. It’s his quirk, and it’s not for changing.”
Hope nodded.
“But you’ll get far by being thoughtful. Think about what he needs and prepare to give it to him. Watch him and study his habits. I know what Pleasant wants before he does, half the time, these days. It builds goodwill, and when I want or need something it inclines him to listen more than if I was taking all the time. And he does the same for me, of course. Now, mind, it’s not ‘I do this for you, so you have to do that for me’. It’s both people giving as they see need and opportunity.”
Hope nodded again. “I don’t think that will be a problem,” she said. “He’s the most generous man I know.”
“He’s a good lad,” said Peace, showing that habit older relatives have of being blind to their younger relatives’ maturity. “Doesn’t mean he has no quirks, or that he doesn’t need thoughtfulness. Bear that in mind, you’ll have a long, happy life together.”
The morning of the ceremony started early, with a strategy breakfast which included Briar, Bucket, Wheel, Aunt Peace and Uncle Pleasant, their son Sterling, Productive, and Grateful, the Asterist scholar who would perform the ceremony.
Grateful, who served the Redbridge congregation that Patient attended, seemed nonplussed at the charts, diagrams and checklists that Wheel had helped prepare, not to mention the fact that he stared at Bucket and Wheel as if he had never seen gnomes before. Perhaps he hadn’t. He didn’t say anything, though, as Hope went through the plan. They would be holding the ceremony on the little green across from the inn, and using the inn’s kitchen to prepare the feast, and its dining room to serve.
“Any questions?” she said, sitting back at her place and taking another bite of bread and preserves.
“You’re proposing to have an Earthist as your witness?” asked the scholar. He eyed Briar with a hint of disfavour.
“Yes. Is that a problem?”
“I don’t know if it’s canonical,” said the old man.
“As far as the secular law is concerned,” said Briar, “anyone who has had their adulthood rite is qualified to witness an oathbinding. Two witnesses, besides the couple and the celebrant, are all that is required. There is no religious test.” She met the elderly scholar’s frown with her no-nonsense professional face and added, “I’m a lawyer.”
Grateful subsided without further comment.
“No other questions?” asked Hope. “Good. Wheel, if you’d give out the checklists, then, we can be about it.”
Wheel was Hope’s appointed deputy to marshal the troops, leaving Briar to help her friend get ready. They withdrew to Briar’s room in the inn. Patient was using the room where he and Hope would sleep that night as his base of operations, ably assisted by Bucket and Productive. Sterling would act as a runner for messages.
Grateful’s temple choir could faintly be heard rehearsing as Hope changed into her garnet-red Victory suit. She was, of course, wearing her silver mage bracelet, set with the gems she had earned through hard work and determination at the university, and to the bracelet she attached the Realmgold’s Civilian Honour, Gold, with Moon that she had received for her wartime work. Not only was she proud of it, but she wanted Patient to wear his.
The same gnome who had made their racing jackets, a cousin of one of the manufactory gnomes, had embroidered the traditional oathbond sashes which both Hope and Briar would wear. As was the custom, they had completed the last few stitches themselves the previous day.
With no more than the usual number of problems, they managed to get Hope’s hair done, her eyes rimmed with kohl, and her feet into a pair of Briar’s shoes before Sterling tapped at the door to ask if she was ready.
Stomach churning like a milkmaid, she clumped in the impractical footwear to the front of the building, where she awaited her so
on-to-be oathmate in the porch.
Her heart nearly stopped when he appeared. Patient, as a tradesman, didn’t own a Victory suit, but he had kitted himself out in a new pair of green trousers (the ones he had worn on their ill-fated dinner engagement had been irretrievably stained) and a well-cut linen shirt. His Realmgold’s Military Honour, Gold, with Sun and Moon hung round his neck on a dark-green cord that indicated his service in the Unification War. Beneath it, the hexagonal Recognition of Injury in the Line of Duty flashed silver in the light, as did the silver mountings on his best cane. His eyes, though, seemed brightest of all, and fixed themselves on her face like a man who comes over a mountain pass and sees his home country on the other side.
Her heart thudded at the sight of him, then soared like a falcon, and she gave him a beaming smile and offered her arm.
“Shall we?” she said.
“By all means,” he said. “Let’s.”
The choir struck up the first hymn, and they walked side-by-side towards the waiting scholar.
Grateful invoked the Ninefold Divine with great thoroughness, keeping one eye on Briar the whole time as if expecting her to do something impious, or possibly burst into flame. When she didn’t, he continued by introducing the couple, also at length.
Hope had tuned out by the time he finished, and came back to attention with a start when he produced a calligraphed scroll with the oaths written in three triangular sections. His words were in one triangle, Hope’s in another and Patient’s in the third.
Hope, as the younger, gave oath first, and in response to Grateful’s prompt she declared, “I, Hope at Merrybourne, come willingly to give you, Patient Carver, oath of lifebond, joining together our lives, our property and our inheritance.” She smiled at him.
He smiled back and recited the same formula.
“As you are willing, so let it be done,” said Grateful, and joined their hands together. They spoke in unison, saying each other’s names and then continuing, “I am your lifemate. I swear to you abiding fidelity and devotion, to be linked always by oath and binding, one heart until death.” Hope’s oathsense of him sharpened and deepened. She could feel his steadfast stance, planted on the earth, anchoring them both, and the abiding love he had for her burning like a sun.
Hope and the Patient Man Page 24
