by Stephen King
“Why looked you at him so, miss?” Cordelia whispered furiously. The vertical line had appeared on her forehead. Tonight it looked as deep as a trench. “What ails thy pretty, stupid head?” Thy. Just that was enough to tell Susan that her aunt was in a fine rage.
“Looked at who? And how?” Her tone sounded right, she thought, but oh, her heart—
The hand over hers clamped down, hurting. “Play no fiddle with me, Miss Oh So Young and Pretty! Have ye ever seen that fine-turned row of pins before? Tell me the truth!”
“No, how could I? Aunt, you’re hurting me.”
Aunt Cord smiled balefully and clamped down harder. “Better a small hurt now than a large one later. Curb your impudence. And curb your flirtatious eyes.”
“Aunt, I don’t know what you—”
“I think you do,” Cordelia said grimly, pressing her niece close to the wood panelling to allow the guests to stream past them. When the rancher who owned the boathouse next to theirs said hello, Aunt Cord smiled pleasantly at him and wished him goodeven before turning back to Susan.
“Mind me, miss—mind me well. If I saw yer cow’s eyes, ye may be sure that half the company saw. Well, what’s done is done, but it stops now. Your time for such child-maid games is over. Do you understand?”
Susan was silent, her face setting in those stubborn lines Cordelia hated most of all; it was an expression that always made her feel like slapping her headstrong niece until her nose bled and her great gray doe’s eyes gushed tears.
“Ye’ve made a vow and a contract. Papers have been passed, the weird-woman has been consulted, money has changed hands. And ye’ve given your promise. If that means nothing to such as yerself, girl, remember what it’d mean to yer father.”
Tears rose in Susan’s eyes again, and Cordelia was glad to see them. Her brother had been an improvident irritation, capable of producing only this far too pretty womanchild . . . but he had his uses, even dead.
“Now promise ye’ll keep yer eyes to yourself, and that if ye see that boy coming, ye’ll swing wide—aye, wide’s you can—to stay out of his way.”
“I promise, Aunt,” Susan whispered. “I do.”
Cordelia smiled. She was really quite pretty when she smiled. “It’s well, then. Let’s go in. We’re being looked at. Hold my arm, child!”
Susan clasped her aunt’s powdered arm. They entered the room side by side, their dresses rustling, the sapphire pendant on the swell of Susan’s breast flashing, and many there were who remarked upon how alike they looked, and how well pleased poor old Pat Delgado would have been with them.
9
Roland was seated near the head of the center table, between Hash Renfrew (a rancher even bigger and blockier than Lengyll) and Thorin’s rather morose sister, Coral. Renfrew had been handy with the punch; now, as the soup was brought to table, he set about proving himself equally adept with the ale.
He talked about the fishing trade (“not what it useter be, boy, although it’s less muties they pull up in their nets these days, ’n that’s a blessin”), the farming trade (“folks round here can grow most anythin, long’s it’s corn or beans”), and finally about those things clearly closest to his heart: horsin, coursin, and ranchin. Those businesses went on as always, aye, so they did, although times had been hard in the grass-and-seacoast Baronies for forty year or more.
Weren’t the bloodlines clarifying? Roland asked. For they had begun to do so where he came from.
Aye, Renfrew agreed, ignoring his potato soup and gobbling barbecued beef-strips instead. These he scooped up with a bare hand and washed down with more ale. Aye, young master, bloodlines was clarifying wonderful well, indeed they were, three colts out of every five were threaded stock—in thoroughbred as well as common lines, kennit—and the fourth could be kept and worked if not bred. Only one in five these days born with extra legs or extra eyes or its guts on the outside, and that was good. But the birth-rates were way down, so they were; the stallions had as much ram as ever in their ramrods, it seemed, but not as much powder and ball.
“Beggin your pardon, ma’am,” Renfrew said, leaning briefly across Roland to Coral Thorin. She smiled her thin smile (it reminded Roland of Jonas’s), trudged her spoon through her soup, and said nothing. Renfrew emptied his ale-cup, smacked his lips heartily, and held the cup out again. As it was recharged, he turned back to Roland.
Things weren’t good, not as they once had been, but they could be worse. Would be worse, if that bugger Farson had his way. (This time he didn’t bother excusing himself to sai Thorin.) They all had to pull together, that was the ticket—rich and poor, great and small, while pulling could still do some good. And then he seconded Lengyll, telling Roland that whatever he and his friends wanted, whatever they needed, they had only to name it.
“Information should be enough,” Roland said. “Numbers of things.”
“Aye, can’t be a counter without numbers,” Renfrew agreed, and sprayed beery laughter. On Roland’s left hand, Coral Thorin nibbled a bit of green (the beef-strips she had not so much as touched), smiled her narrow smile, and went on boating with her spoon. Roland guessed there was nothing wrong with her ears, though, and that her brother might get a complete report of their conversation. Or possibly it would be Rimer to get the report. For, while it was too early to say for sure, Roland had an idea that Rimer might be the real force here. Along, perhaps, with sai Jonas.
“For instance,” Roland said, “how many riding horses do you think we may be able to report back to the Affiliation?”
“Tithe or total?”
“Total.”
Renfrew put his cup down and appeared to calculate. As he did, Roland looked across the table and saw Lengyll and Henry Wertner, the Barony’s stockliner, exchange a quick glance. They had heard. And he saw something else as well, when he returned his attention to his seatmate: Hash Renfrew was drunk, but likely not as drunk as he wanted young Will Dearborn to believe.
“Total, ye say—not just what we owe the Affiliation, or might be able to send along in a pinch.”
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s see, young sai. Fran must run a hundred ’n forty head; John Croydon’s got near a hundred. Hank Wertner’s got forty on his own hook, and must run sixty more out along the Drop for the Barony. Gov’mint hossflesh, Mr. Dearborn.”
Roland smiled. “I know it well. Split hoofs, low necks, no speed, bottomless bellies.”
Renfrew laughed hard at that, nodding . . . but Roland found himself wondering if the man was really amused. In Hambry, the waters on top and the waters down below seemed to run in different directions.
“As for myself, I’ve had a bad ten or twelve year—sand-eye, brain fever, cabbards. At one time there was two hundred head of running horses out there on the Drop with the Lazy Susan brand on em; now there can’t be more than eighty.”
Roland nodded. “So we’re speaking of four hundred and twenty head.”
“Oh, more’n that,” Renfrew said with a laugh. He went to pick up his ale-cup, struck it with the side of one work- and weather-reddened hand, knocked it over, cursed, picked it up, then cursed the aleboy who came slow to refill it.
“More than that?” Roland prompted, when Renfrew was finally cocked and locked and ready to resume action.
“Ye have to remember, Mr. Dearborn, that this is hoss-country more than it’s fisher-country. We josh each other, we and the fishers, but there’s many a scale-scraper got a nag put away behind his house, or in the Barony stables if they have no roof of their own to keep the rain off a hoss’s head. ’Twas her poor da useter keep the Barony stables.”
Renfrew nodded toward Susan, who was seated across and three seats up from Roland himself—just a table’s turn from the Mayor, who was, of course, seated at the head. Roland found her placement there passing peculiar, especially given the fact that the Mayor’s missus had been seated almost all the way at the far end of the table, with Cuthbert on one side of her and some rancher to whom they had not
yet been introduced on her other.
Roland supposed an old fellow like Thorin might like to have a pretty young relation near at hand to help draw attention to him, or to cheer up his own eye, but it still seemed odd. Almost an insult to one’s wife. If he was tired of her conversation, why not put her at the head of another table?
They have their own customs, that’s all, and the customs of the country aren’t your concern. This man’s crazy horse-count is your concern.
“How many other running horses, would you say?” he asked Renfrew. “In all?”
Renfrew gazed at him shrewdly. “An honest answer’ll not come back to haunt me, will it, sonny? I’m an Affiliation man—so I am, Affiliation to the core, they’ll carve Excalibur on my gravehead, like as not—but I’d not see Hambry and Mejis stripped of all its treasure.”
“That won’t happen, sai. How could we force you to give up what you don’t want to in any case? Such forces as we have are all committed in the north and west, against the Good Man.”
Renfrew considered this, then nodded.
“And may I not be Will to you?”
Renfrew brightened, nodded, and offered his hand a second time. He grinned broadly when Roland this time shook it in both of his, the over-and-under grip preferred by drovers and cowboys.
“These’re bad times we live in, Will, and they’ve bred bad manners. I’d guess there are probably another hundred and fifty head of horse in and about Mejis. Good ones is what I mean.”
“Big-hat stock.”
Renfrew nodded, clapped Roland on the back, ingested a goodly quaff of ale. “Big-hats, aye.”
From the top of their table there came a burst of laughter. Jonas had apparently said something funny. Susan laughed without reservation, her head tilted back and her hands clasped before the sapphire pendant. Cordelia, who sat with the girl on her left and Jonas on her right, was also laughing. Thorin was absolutely convulsed, rocking back and forth in his chair, wiping his eyes with a napkin.
“Yon’s a lovely girl,” Renfrew said. He spoke almost reverently. Roland could not quite swear that a small sound—a womanly hmmpf, perhaps—had come from his other side. He glanced in that direction and saw sai Thorin still sporting with her soup. He looked back toward the head of the table.
“Is the Mayor her uncle, or perhaps her cousin?” Roland asked.
What happened next had a heightened clarity in his memory, as if someone had turned up all the colors and sounds of the world. The velvet swags behind Susan suddenly seemed a brighter red; the caw of laughter which came from Coral Thorin was the sound of a breaking branch. It was surely loud enough to make everyone in the vicinity stop their conversations and look at her, Roland thought . . . except only Renfrew and the two ranchers across the table did.
“Her uncle!” It was her first conversation of the evening. “Her uncle, that’s good. Eh, Rennie?”
Renfrew said nothing, only pushed his ale-cup away and finally began to eat his soup.
“I’m surprised at ye, young man, so I am. Ye may be from the In-World, but oh goodness, whoever tended to your education of the real world—the one outside of books ’n maps—stopped a mite short, I’d say. She’s his—” And then a word so thick with dialect that Roland had no idea what it was. Seefin, it sounded, or perhaps sheevin.
“I beg pardon?” He was smiling, but the smile felt cold and false on his mouth. There was a heaviness in his belly, as if the punch and the soup and the single beef-strip he had eaten for politeness’ sake had all lumped together in his stomach. Do you serve? he’d asked her, meaning did she serve at table. Mayhap she did serve, but likely she did it in a room rather more private than this. Suddenly he wanted to hear no more; had not the slightest interest in the meaning of the word the Mayor’s sister had used.
Another burst of laughter rocked the top of the table. Susan laughed with her head back, her cheeks glowing, her eyes sparkling. One strap of her dress had slipped down her arm, disclosing the tender hollow of her shoulder. As he watched, his heart full of fear and longing, she brushed it absently back into place with the palm of her hand.
“It means ‘quiet little woman,’ ” Renfrew said, clearly uncomfortable. “It’s an old term, not used much these days—”
“Stop it, Rennie,” said Coral Thorin. Then, to Roland: “He’s just an old cowboy, and can’t quit shovelling horseshit even when he’s away from his beloved nags. Sheevin means side-wife. In the time of my great-grandmother, it meant whore . . . but one of a certain kind.” She looked with a pale eye at Susan, who was now sipping ale, then turned back to Roland. There was a species of baleful amusement in her gaze, an expression that Roland liked little. “The kind of whore you had to pay for in coin, the kind too fine for the trade of simple folk.”
“She’s his gilly?” Roland asked through lips which felt as if they had been iced.
“Aye,” Coral said. “Not consummated, not until the Reap—and none too happy about that is my brother, I’ll warrant—but bought and paid for just as in the old days. So she is.” Coral paused, then said, “Her father would die of shame if he could see her.” She spoke with a kind of melancholy satisfaction.
“I hardly think we should judge the Mayor too harshly,” Renfrew said in an embarrassed, pontificating voice.
Coral ignored him. She studied the line of Susan’s jaw, the soft swell of her bosom above the silken edge of her bodice, the fall of her hair. The thin humor was gone from Coral Thorin’s face. In it now was a somehow chilling species of contempt.
In spite of himself, Roland found himself imagining the Mayor’s knuckle-bunchy hands pushing down the straps of Susan’s dress, crawling over her naked shoulders, plunging like gray crabs into the cave beneath her hair. He looked away, toward the table’s lower end, and what he saw there was no better. It was Olive Thorin that his eye found—Olive, who had been relegated to the foot of the table, Olive, looking up at the laughing folk who sat at its head. Looking up at her husband, who had replaced her with a beautiful young girl, and gifted that girl with a pendant which made her own firedim earrings look dowdy by comparison. There was none of Coral’s hatred and angry contempt on her face. Looking at her might have been easier if that were so. She only gazed at her husband with eyes that were humble, hopeful, and unhappy. Now Roland understood why he had thought her sad. She had every reason to be sad.
More laughter from the Mayor’s party; Rimer had leaned over from the next table, where he was presiding, to contribute some witticism. It must have been a good one. This time even Jonas was laughing. Susan put a hand to her bosom, then took her napkin and raised it to wipe a tear of laughter from the corner of her eye. Thorin covered her other hand. She looked toward Roland and met his eyes, still laughing. He thought of Olive Thorin, sitting down there at the foot of the table, with the salt and spices, an untouched bowl of soup before her and that unhappy smile on her face. Seated where the girl could see her, as well. And he thought that, had he been wearing his guns, he might well have drawn one and put a bullet in Susan Delgado’s cold and whoring little heart.
And thought: Who do you hope to fool?
Then one of the serving boys was there, putting a plate of fish in front of him. Roland thought he had never felt less like eating in his life . . . but he would eat, just the same, just as he would turn his mind to the questions raised by his conversation with Hash Renfrew of the Lazy Susan Ranch. He would remember the face of his father.
Yes, I’ll remember it very well, he thought. If only I could forget the one above yon sapphire.
10
The dinner was interminable, and there was no escape afterward. The table at the center of the reception room had been removed, and when the guests came back that way—like a tide which has surged as high as it can and now ebbs—they formed two adjacent circles at the direction of a sprightly little redhaired man whom Cuthbert later dubbed Mayor Thorin’s Minister of Fun.
The boy-girl, boy-girl, boy-girl circling was accomplished with much la
ughter and some difficulty (Roland guessed that about three-quarters of the guests were now fairly well shottered), and then the guitarists struck up a quesa. This proved to be a simple sort of reel. The circles revolved in opposite directions, all holding hands, until the music stopped for a moment. Then the couple created at the place where the two circles touched danced at the center of the female partner’s circle, while everyone else clapped and cheered.
The lead musician managed this old and clearly well-loved tradition with a keen eye to the ridiculous, stopping his muchachos in order to create the most amusing couples: tall woman-short man, fat woman-skinny man, old woman-young man (Cuthbert ended up side-kicking with a woman as old as his great-granddame, to the sai’s breathless cackles and the company’s general roars of approval).
Then, just when Roland was thinking this stupid dance would never end, the music stopped and he found himself facing Susan Delgado.
For a moment he could do nothing but stare at her, feeling that his eyes must burst from their sockets, feeling that he could move neither of his stupid feet. Then she raised her arms, the music began, the circle (this one included Mayor Thorin and the watchful, narrowly smiling Eldred Jonas) applauded, and he led her into the dance.
At first, as he spun her through a figure (his feet moved with all their usual grace and precision, numb or not), he felt like a man made of glass. Then he became aware of her body touching his, and the rustle of her dress, and he was all too human again.
She moved closer for just a moment, and when she spoke, her breath tickled in his ear. He wondered if a woman could drive you mad—literally mad. He wouldn’t have believed so before tonight, but tonight everything had changed.
“Thank you for your discretion and your propriety,” she whispered.
He pulled back from her a little and at the same time twirled her, his hand against the small of her back—palm resting on cool satin, fingers touching warm skin. Her feet followed his with never a pause or stutter; they moved with perfect grace, unafraid of his great and booted clod-stompers even in their flimsy silk slippers.
