The Ozark trilogy

by Suzette Haden Elgin

  “Crisis,” said Nathan.

  “What kind of crisis?” asked Amanda.

  I waved the note. “Doesn’t say,” I said. “Just disinvites me.”

  “Now that won’t do, young lady,” Granny Golightly jumped in, “for you invited your own self on this particular traipse-about! There was no call sent out from the Twelve Castles, demanding the drop-in of Responsible of Brightwater at her earliest convenience, not as I know of—and I would know.”

  “Gently, Granny,” said Zoe of Clark, and leaned over to pick up a baby. For ballast perhaps. “Gently!”

  “Flumdiddle,” said the Granny.

  “I withdraw the accusation,” I said, “and you are quite right—I had no invitation. Not here, either, but you’ve seen fit to be hospitable and I thank you for it. I will remember it.”

  “On your list!” said Granny. “See there?”

  “And,” I added, “I will remember the way the Smiths set their hands to the same plow—what to do with Responsible of Brightwater, all inconvenient and uninvited. Unless—unless there truly is trouble at Castle Smith to back this up.”

  Silence, all around the table. Mules braying in the stables, and seabirds crying out as they whirled above us, but no words, nor did I really expect many. Ozarkers do not talk behind one another’s backs, excepting always the Grannys, who do it only as part of their ritual and are careful that it leans to harmless nonsense.

  “Anybody sick there?” I asked finally.

  “Might could be,” said Zoe. “It’s that time of the year. We have a few people here down with fevers ... nothing serious, but fevers all the same.”

  “I was thinking more on the order of a plague,” I said flatly.

  More silence.

  “All right,” I said, “is there marrying trouble there? Or birthing trouble? Or naming trouble?”

  “If there is,” said Granny Gotightly, “Granny Gableframe is there and she’ll see to it.”

  “Responsible,” said Amanda of Farson, “you’re touring the Castles, as I understand it, because you intend to find out who hung the McDaniels baby in your cedar tree—”

  “Flumdiddle!” said Granny Golightly again. Emphatically.

  “Trite, Granny Gotightly,” I said between my teeth, and she wrinkled her nose at me.

  “I say flumdiddle because no other word that’s accurate sits well in my mouth,” she had back at me. “If all you wanted to know was who did that foolish baby trick, you have Magicians of Rank as could find that out for you without you setting out on a Quest! Amanda, you can’t see any farther than the end of your nose.”

  “Gently, Granny,” said Zoe again, and her sisters each reached for a baby, too. They appeared to use the little ones like a kind of armor in this Castle; any sign of tension and everybody grabbed a baby. I wasn’t sure what it signified, but it was distinctive.

  “What were you going to say, Amanda?” I asked, keeping my voice as courteous as I could and hoping for a chance at this Granny another day.

  “I meant to say that the Smiths are easily offended. That’s well known.”

  “If they think you suspect them of doing that sorry piece of business—and with you coming uninvited they’ll for sure think you do suspect them, since you’ve never done such a thing before—you’ll put their backs up,” said Nathan Terfelix. “They’re stiffnecked and overproud. They won’t bear being spied upon.”

  “Do you see my visit as being spied upon?” I asked, taken aback, and then regretted it; Golightly was on me quick as a tick.

  “Most certainly!” she said, little wrinkled cheeks red as wild daisies. “Most certainly! And why not, seeing as that is what it is?”

  “Oh, my,” I sighed, “this won’t do.”

  “Now, my dear, that’s just Granny’s way of talking,” said Amanda. “You mustn’t mind it.”

  Telling me, was she, about the Grannys and their way of talking? Even Sharon looked embarrassed, and the silent Una made a little noise in the back of her throat and stared down into her coffee cup.

  “Your Granny,” I said quietly, “is doing what she’s good at. Stirring up trouble. Sowing dissent.”

  The old lady’s brows went up, and I thought she was going to rub her hands together with glee at finally getting to me. But she waited, to see if I’d go on.

  “I see no reason why youall can’t know why I’m here,” I told them. “Nor why the tour of the Castles. For sure, I could of found out without leaving my own bedroom—with the help of a Magician of Rank, of course—”

  “What are you up to with a Magician of Rank in your bedroom?” Granny interrupted, scoring one point.

  “—who kidnapped the McDaniels baby,” I went right on. “That’s not in question. The point is that somebody, or some one of the Families, is doing one piece of fool mischief after another to try to make people back out of the Jubilee. Especially people that’ve been against it all along and are just looking for an excuse to stay away. Finding out who’s doing the mischief is not really the point—though it serves as Quest Goal, naturally, and I’ll do it as I go along. The point is to show that Castle Brightwater is not to be put down by mischief, magical or otherwise.”

  “A symbol,” said Amanda.

  “A Quest for a Challenge,” said Golightly, who knew her business. “Quite right.”

  “But nobody here is against the Jubilee!” said Zoe, looking both outraged and puzzled.

  “Of course not,” I agreed, “but do think, Zoe of Clark!”

  She jogged the baby a bit, and then she nodded.

  “You couldn’t go only to the Castles you suspect,” she said. “That would tip your hand.”

  “Green roosters, the girl’s stupid!” shrilled Granny Golightly, and Zoe winced. I thought I might have to take this Granny in hand; and then I reminded myself sternly that the internal affairs of Castle Clark were none of my business, as long as they remained allies of Brightwater.

  “And why am I stupid, Granny?” demanded Zoe, and good for her!

  “She means,” I said gently, “that the problem is not tipping my hand—the Families that I suspect know who they are already. Traveller; Purdy, Guthrie, and—I’m sorry, Amanda— Parson. The reason for all this folderol is that a Quest must be done in a certain fashion, or it is not a symbol. A Quest is one thing, done under rigid constraints, one step at a time—”

  “And plenty of adventures as you go along!” said Granny. “That’s required!”

  “One step at a time,” I went on, working uphill, “flying our finest Mule, wearing my finest gown ... and so on. Done any other way, it’s not a Quest at all, it’s just the daughter of Brightwater gallivanting around the planet uninvited and unexplained. That would be something quite different, Zoe. Brightwater doing this as a Quest, and doing it to the letter of the rule—that says we mean business, and no mistake about it.”

  The early shadows were beginning to stripe the balcony, and the wind was coming up cold. The older children began shooing the younger ones inside, and the Clark daughters passed along the babies in their laps to the staff to be carried in. High time, too, to my mind.

  “I see,” Zoe said, rubbing her arms and drawing a shawl around her shoulders from the back of her chair “Yes, that’s clear.”

  Nathan Terfelix pulled at his beard—which I would have enjoyed pulling myself—and poured one half-cup of coffee all around to finish off the pot.

  “What do you think, Responsible of Brightwater?” he asked; and there was no banter in his voice. “I take no insult on the part of my wife—the Parsons have never shown sign of love for the Confederation, and your logic can’t be faulted. Nor is she responsible for her family’s doings on the other side of Arkansaw, if doings there be. But what do you think of the chances for this Jubilee?”

  “Fair to middling,” I said. “Provided I do this right.”

  “I don’t see it,” said Sharon of Clark. “The Jubilee is a celebration, a giant party. It’s a lot of trouble for Castle Brightw
ater; but if they’re willing, why should anybody else care?”

  I looked at Granny Golightly and waited for a remark about the girl’s stupidity, but apparently she didn’t think twelve was old enough yet to demand the attentions of her tongue. She glared at me, but she held her peace.

  “The Travellers,” I told the child, “the Purdys, the Guthries, the Parsons ... all of them want the Confederation set back to meeting one day a year like it once did, pure play-acting with no muscle to it. And each Castle absolutely to its own self the rest of the time. Every meeting, Sharon of Clark, the Travellers move to go back to that one day a year, the Parsons second that, it goes to a vote, and it goes down seven to five or eight to four depending. Every meeting ... that’s the first thing happens after the Opening Prayer. The Jubilee, now, may look like a giant party, but it means a kind of formalizing of the Confederation that’s never been done yet. Those Families would like to see it fail, like to see the other Families do as Castle Smith has done here—send letters around politely regretting that due to some ‘crisis’ they could not after all attend the Jubilee. You see that?”

  Sharon of Clark drew her brows together and sighed. “Well, it makes no sense atall,” she said crossly. “Don’t they know anything? Don’t they know that if it wasn’t for the Confederation we’d have anarchism?”

  “Anarchy, child,” said her father “The word’s anarchy.”

  “Well, that, then! Don’t they even care?”

  She was positively abristle with outrage, and I gave the Granny credit for that; Sharon of Clark had been properly taught. I doubt she knew anarchy from a fishkettle, but she’d learned it for a word to shudder at, and that was all that was likely to be required of her.

  “Perhaps they don’t care, Sharon,” I said carefully. “And then perhaps they only don’t understand. If we knew the truth of it, might could be we’d be able to change their minds on the subject.”

  Amanda of Parson said nothing, there being little she could say, and I paid her the courtesy of not questioning her on her own sympathies, while her child nodded solemnly. Amanda had been a Clark by marriage now over forty years; it was not likely that she still held to her Family’s prejudices. Even if she did, certainly she would not be involved in sabotage coming from that quarter. A woman actively disloyal to her husband’s house would go back to her own, as a matter of honor; she would not live as his wife and work against him.

  “Speak openly, Responsible of Brightwater” said Granny Golightly then, “and look in my eyes when you speak. Do you suspect treason here?”

  I looked her eye to beady eye, and I spoke flat out. “For sure and for certain, Granny Golightly, I do not. Nor, till I had this scrap of paper from Castle Smith, did I suspect it on all of Oklahomah. It was my idea that I’d stop quickly at each of the three Castles here, where I knew the loyalty to the Confederation wasn’t in question, and so doing gain maybe a little extra time to spend in other places.”

  “She speaks the truth,” said the Granny, showing an amount of overconfidence that didn’t specially surprise me. “And I will speak the truth, returning her the favor and then we can all get inside out of this blasted wind and get comfortable.”

  She leaned forward and tapped her skinny fingers together as she steepled them, peering at me over the steeple. “There’s no trouble at Castle Smith,” she said, “but not your treason, either. No one at Smith’s doing magic as shouldn’t be doing it, or for evil ends.”

  “I wonder,” I said.

  “I’m telling you,” she snapped, “and I know of what I speak. You can cease wondering. I am the Granny of this Castle, and the senior Granny of the five that share the housekeeping of Oklahomah among us, and I tell you, Uppity—fourteen, aren’t you! What an age for wisdom!—I tell you there’s no need to set your stubborn foot in Castle Smith. It’s as Nathan Terfelix says; they’re stiff-necked and you’ve insulted them, and they haven’t the sense to see what you’re doing, any more than Sharon there did, or the babies.”

  “Not going would save me time,” I hazarded.

  “Don’t go, then,” she said, and stood up with more creakings and poppings than an old attic floor in cold weather. “Who’s there to suspect? Granny Gableframe, her that was a Brightwater by birth, and a McDaniels by marriage forty-seven years? Can you see her allowing such goings-on? And there’s whatsisname ... Delldon Mallard Smith the 2nd, and twice is enough if you ask me, no more gumption to him than a nursing baby for all he thinks himself a power in the land. And his three brothers, each of them as much a bully as he is, but scared of him, more fools them ... and all their poor burdened wives, doing their best to clean up after their worthless menfolk ... “

  “Granny Golightly,” I said quickly, “I think I follow you.”

  “That one,” she said, shaking her finger under my nose and not a bit slowed down, “that Delldon Mallard, now, he is just stupid enough to set himself up proud and claim he should have been made an exception of, though he knows very well you skip a station on a Quest and you risk the whole thing. He was a stupid little boy, he was a stupid young man, and he’s growing stupider with every passing year. I can just see him thinking himself fit to be an exception and sitting around his supper table bragging that he’s shown Brightwater a thing or two! But he’s a pool; pitiful, pathetic, puny fool. He couldn’t sour milk any way but spitting in it.”

  Whew! She was outspoken. Too outspoken. There were still staff near us, and what their family allegiance might be was unknown to me. And children, who are not always good at guarding their tongues.

  “Want me to hush,” she said, her mouth twitching, “you pass the Smiths by. Or I’ll say the rest, to convince you—and I know a passel more, young woman.”

  I was sure she did, and it was clear that she was prepared to lay it all before us, and the devil take the consequences.

  “Granny Golightly,” I said, “I’ll make a bargain with you, if you’ll hush now.”

  “State it!”

  “You spread the word for me,” I said, “with a suitable story ... some good reason why I did not go to Castle Smith. You know the conditions on a Quest—mere refusal of admittance to a location is no excuse. I need a plague, or a dragon, or a bomb, or whatever you like, I leave it to you. But something that will be sufficient to make by-passing that Castle not a spoiling of my Quest! Something clearly and wholly beyond my control, you understand me?”

  “I do,” she said. “And I’ll see to it.”

  “Your word on it? And nobody else harmed, mind!”

  “My word, given already,” she said impatiently, “and done as it should be. I’ll spread the story and it will be ample, and no edges lopping over. My promise on it, Responsible of Brightwater!”

  I stood up then, too, and it was like a congregation following the choir; they all followed the Granny and me and stood along with us, and the servingmaids moved in to clear away the tablestuff.

  “Then I’ll stay the night here, if you’ll have me for supper; too,” I said, “and then go on sometime tomorrow to Castle Airy. The matter of Castle Smith I’ll leave to Granny Golightly, with my thanks.”

  “Make it good, Granny,” said Una—the first time she’d spoken all that time except to chide or cosset a child.

  “Never you mind,” said the old woman. “I’ve been a Granny a very long time now, I know my doings.”

  Maybe.

  Since she would cover my tracks for me, it made no difference if the guilty one was at Castle Smith; as had been plainly stated, I had not even needed to leave home to find out who that was. But the Smiths now ... I’d seen Delldon Mallard Smith at meetings, and for sure had always found him a pompous bore, with an “uh ... uh ... uh ... “ for every other word out of his mouth. But I didn’t know there was dry rot in his brain, which was how the Granny made it sound, and it was of course a credit to the Smith women that I didn’t. If the men at the Castle were as foolish as Granny Golightly had said them to be, plain out and aloud in front of one and a
ll, then there might be one or more of them fool enough to be mixed up in this somewhere, or to prove a weak link at an inconvenient moment.

  It didn’t matter; I decided. I felt quite confident about Granny Golightly’s powers of invention. By the time I landed Sterling at Castle Airy some truly wondrous tale would have spread from one end of Ozark to the other to explain why I had not favored Castle Smith with a visit, and that was all that was of any present importance. The rest of it could wait rill a later time.

  I followed them into the Castle, looking forward to my room and a rest and a proper bathroom, and as a show of solidarity I scooped up a random baby from a low bench in the hall under a round window.

  When in Clark ...

  CHAPTER 4

  CASTLE CLARK DID very well by me; a small formal supper for twenty-four interesting couples, and the young man provided for me able to discuss several other subjects besides Mules and the weather and then a truly impressive breakfast on the Castle balcony with what appeared to be half the county invited, and both a Taleteller and a Ballad Singer laid on. I left happy; dulcimerless, but mighty well fed, and my traveling costume fresh from the attentions of Granny Golightly herself—who I’d wager had not bothered to wash or press it but confined her “work” to a Housekeeping Spell—and I went over the next step in my head as Sterling and I headed out.

  Castle Airy sat at the southernmost tip of Oklahomah; like Castle Clark it overlooked the sea, but there was a great difference between the tender hills of Kingdom Clark’s seacoast and the hulking sheer cliffs that Castle Airy sat on. Their lands had no beaches; you pulled a boat up into the sucking caves that pitted the lower borders of the looming seacliffs at your own peril. Between the borders of dark and the lands paced off by Daniel Cantrell Airy the 9th and his five sons in 2127 lay a broad expanse of Wilderness. Technically speaking, it was at least a three-day flight from Castle to Castle, and considering the time involved it was going to be a piece of luck for me that I could by-pass the visit to Castle Smith after all.