“Almost said a broad word, did you, Granny?”
“Never you mind. What’d they want?”
“Well,” said Responsible, “we had a little talk, by way of my Mule. It does rankle, you know-having to use a Mule for interpreter. Lacks a certain dignity.”
“You be glad the Mule is willing,” cautioned Granny Gableframe. “You thank your lucky stars and comets for that small favor in a cold world! Cause there is no way that the human being could pass mindspeech directly with the members of the OutCabal and stay sane! It’s been tried, and what was left over afterwards was not pretty to look upon.”
“Died in a locked room, she did,” said Granny Hazelbide, nodding her support, “and nothing any level of magic could do for her. Crawled around in her own filth and howled, day and night, and just plain luck that the next Responsible was already nine years old at the time and able to get through the muck that was left of her mind when it was needful. You appreciate the Mule filtering that down for you, hear? You want your brains burned right out of your head?”
“The point,” said Responsible, “is that it makes it look as if the Mules are more stable of mind than we are. I don’t fancy that.”
“Faugh!” said Hazelbide. “It’s not that atall. The Mule’s just closer in its perceptions to the Out-Cabal than humans are, and the sharing seems to be no strain for the creature. Might could be they’re Mules themselves, in which case we’ve no call to be embarrassed. Now what did they want, or you plan to sit there going on about your dignity all this night?”
Responsible told them, and they put in the necessary Granny noises at all the proper places, and approved of the stand she’d taken.
“Handled it right well, I’d say,” said one; and the other allowed as how that was accurate.
“Got ‘em on a neat point, didn’t you, missy? I’m proud of you.”
Responsible thanked Granny Hazelbide for the compliment, pulled up a rocker, and began to rock. She was still mad, and the distraction provided by Granny Gableframe’s sudden arrival was beginning to wear off. The chair started to creak in protest at her speed, but she didn’t care; if it fell to pieces, it might relieve her feelings some.
“Responsible,” observed Granny Hazelbide, “why don’t you just take an ax to that rocker? It’d be quieter and quicker.”
“Why’ve you got your dander up, anyway?” asked Gableframe. “Seems to me you bested them; aren’t you satisfied?”
“No, I am not!”
She rocked harder, which wasn’t easy.
“Law, she’ll take off any minute and fly chair and all out through that window!” said Granny Gableframe. “Girl, what is your complaint? The Mule give you a headache?”
Responsible stopped rocking so suddenly that she nearly fell out of the chair. “I just don’t understand it,” she announced. “And what I don’t understand, I purely despise!”
“Well, you’re not the first,” said Gableframe. “Nor will you be the last. The time comes the Out-Cabal lets four five years go by and no message sent, then I’ll begin to fret-we’ll know then they’re up to some devilment.”
“We don’t know, and we wouldn’t know,” Responsible said, flat out, and struck the rocker arm with her fist. “We just assume!”
Granny Hazelbide sighed, and shook her head.
“There she goes again, Gableframe,” she said. “Been through this with her I don’t know how many times now, and her only ten years old the first time, and her pigtails pulled back so tight they made her ears stick out-and she’s not changed since. My, but she’s stubborn!”
“I say,” said Responsible, “and there’s nobody to say me nay, either, that we have no proof the Out-Cabal can do anything they claim. No proof there’s any such group of planets as the Garnet Ring. No proof that there is any such thing as the Out-Cabal, far as I can see, and I’m not exactly shortsighted!”
“Now, Responsible-”
“Never mind your `now-Responsibles’! You give me one bit of evidence, one solid piece of anything to show me I should believe in all this stuff; I’ll back down. So far, you’ve had nothing to say that sounded any more sensible than Emmalyn of Clark prattling about umbrellas inside the house and spitting when you see three white Mules, and I’m purely sick of it.”
“You recall that other young woman, Responsible, if you want proof-she had the same problem you have, and bad cess to the Grannys advising her that they couldn’t keep her from pushing it to where she did! Her mind didn’t leave her on account of fairy tales, Responsible of Brightwater, and she did no more than insist that they speak directly to her and not through the Mules. She didn’t defy them, nor question their existence!”
“And what about that lightning they chased you with, and the fire all round your pretty little feet last time? Not to mention they know everything as happens here on this planet, when and as it happens! You forget that?”
Responsible drew a deep breath, and began to rock again, careful to keep it slow and sensible.
“Look here,” she said to them. “Let’s just look at what you say, and no more of this carryon, fair enough? I don’t know about that other Responsible, though I’m for sure sorry about her; that’s been two hundred years ago or more, and the circumstances that went with it wrapped up in more mysteries than an onion has layers-I don’t consider that evidence. Being that nobody but the Grannys and one lone woman in every generation knows about the Out-Cabal, it’s understandable that we don’t have much in the way of details on the subject . . . but for all we really know she just had too hard a row to hoe and wasn’t strong enough to bear it. As for their fancy effects-I’ve got Magicians as could do everything I’ve seen them do, and Magicians of Rank that make their magic look like baby fooling. Knowing what goes on on Ozark’d be cursed easy if you just happened to be on Ozark, let me point that out! And if they’re so all-fired omnipotent and powerful, if their magic’s as far superior to ours as a spaceship’s superior to a river raft, like they claim, then why haven’t they shown us some of it? Why haven’t they rattled things around a bit? Moved some mountains? Canceled some of our weather? Ruined some of our magic, at least? Shoot!”
The two Grannys traded glances and allowed as how that was quite a speech, fit to try the patience somewhat more than somewhat, and added a half dozen more platitudes to the broth, until Responsible got disgusted with them, too.
“I made you a speech,” she said wearily, “you could at least make me an answer. Two of you-you ought to be able to work up something.”
Granny I-Iazelbide rocked and knitted, and rocked and knitted some more, and they all waited, and then she said: “Let me ask you a question, Responsible of Brightwater.”
“At your service.”
“Say there’s no Out-Cabal. Say there’s no Garnet Ring, no group of planets all bound by a single system of magic and out to add to their numbers. Say that long-ago Responsible did scare her own self insane. Say all the things you propose are true. But then answer me this: if it’s not them, if it’s no Out-Cabal, then who or what is it?”
“Someone on this planet,” Responsible muttered. “Somebody right here on Ozark.”
“For hundreds of years? Child!”
“For just as many hundreds of years,” insisted Responsible, “ we’ve managed to keep all this secret not just from the people of Ozark but even from the Magicians and the Magicians of Rank. That’s every bit as hard to believe, but we’ve done it.”
“Well, who do you suspect, then?” Granny Hazelbide demanded. “Speak right up, there’s nobody here but us!”
Responsible said nothing. She’d run it through the computers on run-and-destroys till she was blue, and it kept coming out with a whole passel of choices. Might could be it was a Magician of Rank-or two or three of them-passing it along to new ones carefully chosen as they grew old, and enjoying themselves tremendously at what they put the women through. Might could be it was the Skerrys-nobody knew anything about the Skerrys, what they could or would do
, hidden away in Marktwain’s small desert and not seen once in a hundred years-could certainly be the Skerrys. Could be the Mules themselves, and wouldn’t that be a fine howdydo! She’d had some experience with what a Mule could do if it took a fancy to, and might could be they were not all that happy having their tails braided and their backs saddled and bridled and behaving in general like the Mules of Earth; might could be they’d been getting their own back, in their own way. It wasn’t unreasonable; it was so far from unreasonable that she shivered.
“Look at the child! She’s all aquiver!”
“I’m all right, Granny Hazelbide.”
“All right, are you? Take a closer look at yourself, missy-you that has no trouble whatsoever facing down the whole crew of Magicians of Rank assembled, and knows more than all nine of them put together. You that knows more than all twenty-nine of us Grannys and sees the web of the universe laid out clear and clean before you like a tadling does a fishing net-you, Responsible of Brightwater! And you’ve done no more this night than send six seven sentences back and forth between you and the OutCabal, filtered through the mind of a Mule to keep it easy for you, and I do believe you’ll have to be carried up to your bed! What’s that, Responsible, if not proof the Out-Cabal’s real?”
“You speak mighty plain,” said Responsible. “Guard your tongue!”
“There are times,” answered the old woman, “only plain speaking will do the job. Think I want to see you with your mind destroyed? Just because I failed to speak up plain when my turn came? I’m not such a shirkall as that, nor yet such a fool. You can’t walk, can you? Now can you?”
Many things were not clear to Responsible at that moment. It seemed to her, for example, that even the Grannys should realize that all that power and wondrous knowledge they claimed she had was being carried around in a head that had seen only fifteen summers go by, and half the time didn’t know what to do with what it knew. It seemed to her they’d realize that her loneliness was a torment, an awful and awesome burden like the whole sky down upon her two shoulders, with no living soul to ask any question of. It seemed to her they’d know so many things; and it seemed to them-that at least was clear-that she knew so much more than she did.
And she could not afford to have them think any differently. Not the Grannys. Not and keep this planet stable, and all the Magicians of Rank in order, while she waited for what she knew to come to mean more to her. She had to make a show of strength for these two.
“If there’s anything wrong with me,” she said to them crisply, drawing on a source of energy she’d have to pay back in a painful coin later, “it’s the potion I was given twenty-four hours ago. Wonder you didn’t kill me with it, Granny Hazelbide!”
And she stood up and walked straight out of the room, steady as the stones of the Castle walls, and left them looking after her in comfortable silence.
Chapter 13
All the way back on the ship, Gilead worried about her father. Jacob Donahue Wommack sat through the days, staring out over the water; at the ship’s table he made little pretense of eating, picking absently at his food. And in the night she often heard him in the next cabin, pacing, hour after hour; when he slept, which was not often nor for long, he moaned like a creature wounded to the heart. Gilead herself grew thin from the nights she spent listening to him, catching only a few minutes of exhausted sleep toward morning, and the Grannys fussed at her incessantly. Did she think, they wanted to know, that she could help her father by wasting away to a stick and wandering around with two eyes like burnt holes in her face?
“I can’t sleep, while he’s like that,” she told them.
“You do him no service, listening to him and brooding over “
“I cannot help it,” she insisted.
“Then shame on you,” Granny Copperdell rebuked her, “for if there’s something serious wrong with your daddy he’ll need your strength later, and precious little you’ll have to offer him! You’ll have young Jewel with that on her back as well as the minding of her brother-and that’s unfair, Gilead of Wommack. Just unfair!”
Gilead turned her head away, and the tears burned in her eyes. “It’s just that I love him,” she said, almost choking on the words. “Aren’t I supposed to love him?”
“Fine kind of love that is,” the Granny went on, grimly. “You do your duty, we’d have a sight more respect for your `love.”‘
“It’s my duty to sleep, while my daddy suffers?”
Granny Copperdell turned her back on Gilead, a gesture as eloquent in its contempt as a slap would have been, and harder to bear; when the young woman pulled at her elbow she would not even look at her.
“What is it you’re after me for now?” she said, rigid as a rail. “Granny, I don’t blame you for what you’re thinking, I know I’m not much of a woman.”
“That you’re not. I’m ashamed to have had the raising of you.”
“Say whatever you care to-but can’t you potion Daddy?”
“He won’t have it.”
“You’ve tried, then-you’ve already tried?”
“I have tried, for sure,” said Granny Copperdell. “Granny Goodweather has tried. We know our business, Gilead, we’ve been at it more years than you’ve been on this world. And your daddy has sent us both packing, as is his privilege. He’s neither a tadling to have his nose held and the potion poured down him, nor yet an addled old one gone child again. He is a strong man in the flower of his manhood, and if he doesn’t choose to be potioned he doesn’t have to be.”
“I can’t bear it,” lamented Gilead of Wommack, “I can’t! Daddy like he is, and both of you Grannys ice and steel to me, and Lewis Motley behaving like a lunatic and driving Jewel distracted, and all the children upset-”
The Granny gave her a look, shook off her hand, and walked off and left her standing there, muttering about worthless females, and for the rest of the trip both Grannys made a point of avoiding her. When they reached Castle Wommack, they shunned her still.
“Don’t pay them any mind,” Lewis Motley told her once, seeing them pass her as if she’d gone invisible in the night. “What do you care for the opinions of a pair of creaking old women like that?”
“They’re Grannys,” said Gilead. “You don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t. Jewel has told me a mess of nonsense that’s supposed to explain it, but I don’t understand that either. You have a right to be worried about Jacob Donahue-I’m worried about him myself. I see no reason why you should be treated like they’re doing you, just for that.”
There is no harsher judgment in all this world, thought Gilead, than that of an Ozark woman for a female that can’t cope. But she didn’t say it aloud, it wasn’t the kind of thing you said to a man; and Lewis Motley went off shrugging his shoulders.
On the morning of the second day of their return, Jacob Donahue was dead. The Attendant who took his coffee up came back swiftly, looking white and stunned, and had the Grannys go back up with him to be sure. He was down again, fast as he’d gone up, and off to the stables like he was in a hurry to get to them. The Grannys were upstairs a considerable time, doing what was necessary, and would let nobody in until they were through. Even then, it was only for long enough to see the dead man laid neatly on a fresh counterpane with his eyes closed and his hands folded and a single candle lit beside his bed, and they shooed all the others away, scolding. “Leave him in peace now, get on with you!”
The staff were satisfied, saying, “All’s been done proper; trust the Grannys,” and they went back to their work, taking just time to tie a band of black cloth on their sleeves from a supply the Grannys kept handy. And then the Family went to the meetingroom and took their places round the table, leaving the Master’s chair empty.
“He left a letter,” said Granny Copperdell, without preamble. She reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a sheet of heavy paper folded in thirds, and slapped it down before Gilead. “With Gilead’s name on its outside.”
; “Oh, no, Granny,” breathed Gilead, “I can’t-”
“Say you can’t bear it one more time,” Granny Copperdell cut in, “just one more time, and I’ll send you from this meeting like you weren’t yet weaned, you hear me? Now that’s your father’s letter, the last words he wrote, and they are addressed to you. I’ll thank you-we’ll all thank you-to read them in a dignified manner, as is suitable to his memory.”
Gilead picked up the sheet and unfolded it, staring at the Grannys, and she asked, in a voice that nobody recognized: “Does this mean that Daddy killed himself? Does it?”
“You know anything else it could mean?” snapped Granny Goodweather. “Now will you leave off, and read what’s written?”
My dearest family and my beloved friends,
I write these last few words to you, not because I mean to excuse what I am about to do, but because I would like to try to explain. Perhaps then you will find you can forgive me.
My life has never been a hard one; excepting the loss of my dear wife, everything has been made easy and smooth for me, now that I look back on it. My memories are good ones, and for all that you have done to make that true, I leave you my thanks.
But I’ve come now to a place where I find myself too much a coward to go on-and that surprises me; I never knew I was a coward. I always thought I was a brave man-but I can’t face what life will be like now, nor bear the shame of my part in making it so. Of all the delegates to that doomed Jubilee, only one was of my generation in both years and mind. Only that fanatic, Jeremiah Thomas Traveller, who so well lives up to his name. We are told, you know, that Jeremiah was a prophet of doom, and that Thomas was a doubterthat’s Jeremiah, and I have known him many a long year. For the younger men and for the foolish ones there is maybe some excuse; there is none for either Jeremiah or for me. I leave it to the Holy One to punish him for the wickedness that rots his soul; no doubt I will be punished, too, for dying a coward’s death, and a death of shame. It is a bitter legacy I leave you-never think I didn’t know that.
The Ozark trilogy Page 37
