by Robin Hobb
“Advantage of her?” I laughed aloud. “Spink, man, if I were trying to protect anyone, it was you! My cousin is taking advantage of your good nature with her outrageous manners. One minute she is tooting a whistle at us like a street performer, and the next she’s claiming your arm to escort her as if she were the Queen herself. No. You’ve given no offence. She is just so odd. Truth to say, she embarrasses me.”
“Embarrasses you! Nevare, there’s no need for that. I find her oddness, well, charming. I’ve never before met a girl who is so direct, so honest. She puts me at my ease. And so, I thought, perhaps I had become too relaxed with her, to offer to escort her down the path without first asking your permission. I do beg pardon if I presumed too much familiarity.”
“There is no need, Spink. If anything, she is the one who presumes too much familiarity. She started calling you by your first name almost the moment she met you. I just thought to put Epiny in her place, and show her that if she behaves like a spoiled child, I intend to treat her as one. And now I will offer to beg your pardon, if I offended you with what I said to her.”
“Me, offended? No, not at all. It was just, well, you acted so strangely for a time. You gripped her arm as if you intended to hurt her, and the way she looked at you, as if she’d never seen you before—I was quite frightened, to tell you the truth. I feared you’d do an injury to one another.”
I was aghast. “Spink! You know me well enough, I think, to know that I’d never harm a girl, let alone my own cousin!”
“I do! Yes, I do, Nevare. It was just that, for a time there, you did not seem like the Nevare I know.”
“Well… It was odd. For an instant, I didn’t feel like myself at all, either, in all honesty.”
And my admission of that stunned us both into an awkward silence. Spink moved away, looking everywhere except at me. He touched the books on the shelves, the much used school table, and then wandered to the windows. He rested his hands on the sill and looking out into the night asked me, “Do you ever wish that you could own a home such as this? With rooms like this for your sons to learn in?”
I was a bit shocked at his words. “I never thought of it. I’m a soldier, Spink. All my sons will be soldiers. I’ll teach them what I know, as they grow, and I hope they’ll be bright enough to rise quickly through the ranks. Maybe, if one of them excels, I’ll ask my brother to speak for him and try to have him admitted to the Academy or purchase a commission for him. But, no, I don’t ever expect to own a home like this. When I’m old and can no longer serve my king, I know my brother will make me welcome on his holdings, and he’ll help arrange solid marriages for my daughters. What more could a soldier son ask?”
He turned from his contemplation of the darkening grounds and gave me a rueful smile. “You have deeper roots than I, I think. This beautiful home is your ancestral estate and you are still welcomed here. And the way you speak of Widevale makes me think that in a generation or two the house and grounds there will rival this place. But for me, the only home I recall is Bitter Springs.” He smiled wryly. “I love the land there. It’s home. But when your father was given his lordship, he chose lands that bordered the river, arable land and pasture land. Land that could generate the monies to enable him to live like a noble. My mother chose with a different purpose. She chose the land that surrounded the area where my father was killed. His burial site was lost; his troops covered him hastily, for they still feared they might be over-run by the plainsmen and did not want them to have his bones as trophies. So they buried him and hid the grave and we have never been able to discover it. But she knows it is somewhere on the land that she claimed, and says that all we build or do there is memorial to him. But the problem is, the land is not good for much else. You can’t shove a spade into it without hitting a stone, and when you remove that, you find two more stacked under it. You can hunt and you can forage there, but you can’t till a field or even graze sheep. My brother is trying hogs and goats, but they swiftly strip the land and leave only stirred rocks behind them. I do not think they are a good idea; but he is the heir, not I.”
He said this so wistfully that I had to ask, “And if the land were yours, to develop as you chose?” I felt I was tempting him to the sin of ingratitude for order, and yet I could not forbear to pose the question.
He gave a brief, bitter laugh. “Stone, Nevare. Stone is what we have. The idea first came to me when one of my father’s soldiers came to retire with us. He looked over our land and asked another fellow if we were growing rocks as a crop or for pleasure. And it came to me then, if stone is what we have, then stone is what we should prosper on. Our house, small and humble as it is, is built all of stone, and the walls between our so-called fields are of stone. I’ve heard that the King’s road building goes slowly for lack of proper stone. Well, we’ve stone in plenty.”
“Exporting stone sounds difficult. Are there roads in your region?”
He shrugged. “There could be. You asked me for my pipe dream, Nevare, not for the reality. It would take years to bring it to fruition. But my family will be there for generations so why not begin the task now?”
I had made myself uncomfortable with the discussion. All knew that a man’s career was determined by his birth order. To question it was to question the will of the good god himself. All knew the tales of what came of trying to quarrel with your fate. A son must be what he was born to be. My family was strict in the matter. It was true that some of the other noble families were less observant of the law. In one notorious case, when the House Offeri heir son died, Lord Offeri had moved each of his sons up a notch, so that the soldier became the heir, the priest the soldier, and so on. All were failures in their careers. The new ‘heir’ was too militant with the estates serfs, and many of them fled the land, leaving crops to rot in the fields. The priest son did not have the constitution to endure the arduous life of a soldier, and died before he had even faced a battle. The artist forced to become a priest was too creative in his copying of scripture and nearly faced charges of heresy from the archor of his order. And so it went. The story was often told as a warning to any families considering such an extreme measure. I should not be tempting Spink or myself to pretend we would ever be anything but soldiers. I changed the subject.
“Why is your home called Bitter Springs? As testament to your father’s death there?”
“Well, that is a bitter memory for my mother, but no. There are several large springs not far from our home. The water that comes to the surface there tastes terrible, but several plainsmen tribes revere the spot and hold that people can be cured of disease or granted marvellous visions or increase their intelligence by bathing or drinking the waters. They offer my family trade goods in exchange for being granted passage to the springs. I think it is my mother’s sole act of revenge that she will not allow any member of the folk that killed my father to visit the springs. It angers them greatly, for they say the springs are sacred and were always a truce place and open to all. To which my mother replies, ‘You changed all that when you killed my husband.’ Over the years, there have been a few clashes over that, with warriors attempting to make sorties to the springs to steal water. My father’s old soldiers always repel them. They take pride in that.”
I barely heard the last few sentences. I had become aware of an odd sound. At first, I had thought it a distant birdcall from the garden, but now I realized that the soft trilling matched the cadence of breath. The door of the old schoolroom was ajar. I thought I had latched it. I crossed the room silently and pulled the door suddenly open. Epiny stood outside it, her otter-whistle between her lips despite the fact that she was dressed for dinner. She grinned at me, clenching the silver toy between her teeth and letting it wheeze as she did so. “It’s time to come down to dinner,” she said around the whistle.
“Were you eavesdropping?” I asked her severely.
She spat her toy into her hand. “Not really. I was just standing outside the door listening, so that I could wait for a br
eak in the conversation to announce dinner rather than interrupting you.”
She said it so blithely that I almost believed her. Then I decided that I would follow through on my earlier resolution about my cousin. If she were going to act as if she were an errant ten year old, I would speak to her as such. “Epiny, listening outside of rooms for any reason is impolite. At your age, you should know better.”
She cocked her head at me. “I do know when it is rude to listen at doors, dearest cousin. And now it is time for us all go to down to dinner. Father enjoys his food and hates to have it served at less than the correct temperature. You do know, don’t you, that it is rude to keep your host waiting for his dinner?”
I could control my temper no longer. “Epiny, you are close to my age, and I know my aunt and uncle have taught you manners. Why are you acting like an ill-mannered child? Why can’t you behave as if you were a young lady?”
She smiled at me as if she had finally forced me to recognize her. “Actually, I am one year and four months younger than you are. And the moment I begin to behave as if I were some suffocatingly correct young lady, that is how my father will start to treat me. Not to mention my mother. And that will be the beginning of the end of my life. Not that I expect you to understand what I am talking about. Spink. Would you care to escort me to dinner? Or do you find me too childish and spoiled?”
“I should be glad to,” Spink declared. To my astonishment, he crossed the room with alacrity and offered Epiny his arm. He blushed as he did so and she seemed likewise ruffled. Nonetheless, she accepted his offer and they preceded me out of the room.
Epiny’s long, pale blue skirts rustled against the marble steps as they descended the staircase. Her hair had been brushed and simply confined to a gold lace net at the base of her neck. Spink’s back was straight as a ramrod; he was not much taller than she was. As I followed them, it struck me that they looked like a couple.
Then, abruptly, Epiny ended that illusion. She snatched her hand back from his arm, gathered up her skirts and bustled down the stairs ahead of him, leaving Spink looking confused. I caught up with him as Epiny was disappearing into the dining room.
“Don’t mind her,” I told him. “It’s as I told you. She’s a very silly little girl at this point. My sisters went through a similar time.”
I did not add that my father’s reaction to my sisters’ flightiness had been far more severe than my uncle’s tolerance of Epiny’s eccentricity. I recalled his stern admonition to my mother: ‘If we do not settle them soon into a becoming and womanly calm, they will never find appropriate husbands. I am a new noble, madam, as you are aware. Some of their opportunities to rise in society they must create for themselves, and they will best do so by being sedate, tractable, and demure young women.”
“As I was,” my mother had filled in, and there was an edge to her voice, bitterness or regret, that I could not understand.
I do not think my father even heard it. “As you were, my lady, and continue to be. A fine example of all a noblewoman and wife should be.”
When we entered the dining room, Epiny was standing behind her chair. My uncle was at the head of the table. Purissa waited at his left elbow. The child looked far more groomed than she had earlier. Someone had tidied her hair and put a clean pinafore on her. Spink and I rapidly took our places and I murmured an apology that we had kept my uncle waiting.
“We are short on formality at family meals, Nevare, and that is what we will enjoy this evening, for you are definitely family, and you appear to regard your friend as if he were almost a brother. I regret that your Aunt Daraleen and cousin Hotorn cannot be here as well. He is away at his schooling, and she has been summoned to serve our queen at court for the days of the Council of Lords. They will not convene it until Firstday, but the women of the court must have at least a dozen days to be dressed for it. And so she has departed, leaving us here to get by on our own. But we shall make do here as well we can in their absence.”
With that, we took our seats and a servant entered almost immediately with the soup. The meal was the most excellent one I had had since arriving in Old Thares. The food had been cooked to be consumed by individuals rather than stirred up in vats for hundreds. The difference in taste and texture seemed marvellous after so many meals produced for the masses. I felt almost honoured to be presented with a single chop cooked to my liking rather than a ladled serving of meat chunks in watery gravy. I ate well, trying to control my greed, and finished the meal with a large serving of apple pan dowdy.
Spink kept pace with me, but also managed to hold up his end of the conversation with Uncle Sefert. He expressed great admiration for my uncle’s home, and asked a number of questions about the house and the estate in general. The gist of his questions seemed to be that he wondered how long it took a noble family to establish such a grand ancestral seat. The answer seemed to be “generations.” My uncle spoke proudly of the innovations that he had introduced in his lifetime, from gas piping and lights to his remodelling of the wine cellar to allow for better temperature control. Spink followed his answers with enthusiasm, and I saw my uncle warm toward him.
When dinner was over, my uncle suggested that we might retire to his den for tobacco and brandy. My brief hope of a peacefully masculine retreat was shattered when Epiny protested with, “But Papa! You said I might have them to play Towsers! You know how much I’ve been looking forward to it!”
Uncle Sefert heaved a tolerant sigh. “Oh, very well. Gentlemen, instead of my study, we shall retire to the sitting room, for sweet biscuits, soft wine, and several hundred rousing games of Towsers.” He looked ruefully amused as he announced this, and what could we do save smile good-naturedly and agree? Purissa seemed to share her sister’s delight, for she jumped from her chair and ran to catch hands with her. They led us away from the table and into a pleasant room where a little iron stove enamelled with flower-patterned tiles was keeping a teakettle puffing out steam. The floor was layered with bright woven rugs from Sebany. Upholstered cushions in the vibrant colours of that exotic land littered the room. Pot-bellied oil lamps with painted shades flickered in their alcoves despite literally legions of fat yellow candles of all shapes and sizes on holders of all heights throughout the chamber. There were several low tables, little higher than my knee, and on one of these were several platters of biscuits and a carafe of watered wine. A large wicker cage held half-a-dozen tiny pink birds that hopped from perch to perch, twittering as we entered. White curtains had been drawn for the evening across the tall windows.
“Oh, I should have showed you our sitting room earlier, while there was still daylight!” Epiny exclaimed in sudden disappointment. “You can’t see our new glass curtains at all properly at night!” Despite this announcement, she went to a corner and drew the white curtains back with a pulley arrangement. Between the night and us a threaded fabric of tiny glass beads hung on thin filaments of wire. “When the sun shines, you can see that there is an entire landscape there worked in beads. Tomorrow, perhaps you can see it better,” she announced, and swept the white curtains across once more.
Spink and I were still standing, for the room lacked chairs of any kind. My uncle folded his long legs to sink down on one of the immense cushions that littered the carpeted floor. Purissa was already sprawled on one, and Epiny returned to likewise ensconce herself on one. “Do sit down,” she directed us as she produced a brown wooden game box from a drawer in a low table. “My mother has followed the Queen’s example in furnishing our sitting room. Our queen has been quite taken with Sebanese decor of late. After a court dinner, she retires with all her favourites to her own lounging room. Just sit down anywhere around the table and be comfortable.”
Both Spink and I settled uneasily. Our trousers had not been tailored for this sort of sitting, nor did our boots allow much bend to the ankles, but we managed. Epiny was setting out a game with brightly coloured cards and ceramic chips and an enamelled board. She seemed to delight in the musical clacking
of the pieces as she arranged it all.
“I’m afraid I don’t know this game,” Spink said sociably as she assigned a colour to each of us.
“Oh, never fear on that account. All too soon, you will know it too well,” my uncle predicted with a wry grin.
“It is such fun, and terribly easy to learn,” Epiny assured him earnestly.
Such proved to be the case. For all its shiny and elegant pieces, the game was idiotically simple. It involved matching colours and symbols, and calling out different words if one had a red match or a blue match and so on. Both girls were constantly leaping to their feet and doing little dances of triumph when they secured winning pairs of cards. I rapidly tired of leaping to my feet to declare that I’d scored a point. Epiny insisted it was a rule and that I must comply. For the first time, my uncle interfered with her wilfulness, and announced that neither Spink nor I nor he would leap up, but would merely raise a hand. Epiny pouted about this for a time, but the dreary little game proceeded anyway. Is there anything more tedious than a pointless pastime?
Uncle Sefert managed to escape with the excuse that little Purissa was not allowed to stay up late. Her nanny had come to the door to find her, and surely he could have sent the child off with her. I think he insisted on accompanying them simply to escape the dreadful game.
