by Robin Hobb
Gillam still in her arms, she strode across the room and snatched up the small bag from behind the kindling box. She opened the neck of it and dashed the contents to the floor. The scatter of small coins rang and rolled against the stones. She tossed the emptied bag onto the bedding. “Take it,” she said. “Take every penny that you never earned. Take every bit of it. And go away and never come back.”
“Stupid bitch,” he said with great feeling. “I am taking it.” Without shame, he dropped to his knees and went grubbing after the coins. He grunted as he crawled under the table and spoke as if short of breath. “I’m going to town. I have to meet someone there, to talk business. And I may have a beer or two with old friends. But I will be back. Because this is my house. My grandfather may have willed it to the boy, but everyone in town knows it should have come to me. That’s how it should be. And that’s how it’s going to be. Accept that, and things might be easier for you. Or get out. I don’t care which.”
With a louder grunt, he heaved himself to his feet. His face was red, and his fine shirt was so wrinkled it looked crumpled. He pulled his own empty purse from his belt and funneled her small collection of coins into it. His telling her to get out suddenly changed everything. “This is Gillam’s house and land, given him by his grandfather when you would do nothing for your son. I won’t let you take them from him.”
“Don’t talk to me like that!” he warned her. He tied the purse at his belt and glared at her. She stood where she was, her foot firmly planted to cover two of the errant coins that had rolled toward her. She needed them, and so she stood her ground as he advanced on her. She met his gaze. She wasn’t quite brave enough to say anything more to the angry man, but her need to keep the money made her stand defiantly before his sudden charge.
As he lifted his hand, disbelief froze her. She turned her body, shifting Gillam away from the blow. He wouldn’t! her mind shrieked.
He will. He’ll kill you if he dares. It’s in his mind right now.
He can’t! Her argument with herself took less than a second. His hand was in motion and she still hadn’t moved, still covered the bits of money she hoped to keep for herself. Faster than his falling hand, the cat leaped down from the rafters. Claws out, he lit on Pell’s head and shoulder, raking his face and yowling. The blow Pell dealt Rosemary was a glancing one as he spun to confront the snarling, spitting cat. It still sent her to one knee as she sought to keep Gillam from hitting the floor. Pain shot through her leg, but she didn’t drop her child.
Pell seized Marmalade in both hands, and the cat sank his fangs into the soft meat between Pell’s thumb and fingers. Pell shouted wordlessly and flung the hapless cat. He struck the wall, fell to the floor, and then impossibly swift, shot out of the open door.
“MARMY!” Gillam shrieked.
Pell clutched his scored face with his bleeding hands and glared at them. “No howling,” he warned the boy. He pointed a shaking finger at Rosemary. “You clean this mess up before I get back.” A nasty smile showed his teeth as he glared at the white-faced child. “Kitty likes to fly,” he said and laughed.
Rosemary struggled to her feet, her child still in her arms. “No. My cat, my Marmy!” Gillam’s little body, she realized, was tight with anger, not fear. “You bad! Bad, bad, bad!”
“Mind your mouth, boy!” Anger flushed Pell’s face, and the cords on either side of his neck stood out. He advanced toward them, blood streaming down his clawed cheeks and fury in his eyes. “Mind your mouth or I’ll shut it for you, you little bastard!”
She stumbled back from him, and then turned and dashed out into the night, carrying Gillam with her. “Bad, bad!” the child shouted defiantly over her shoulder as she fled.
“Shush!” she warned him and covered the child’s roar with her hand. A panicky Gillam clutched and clawed at her stifling hand, but she ignored that as she ran and stumbled and ran again. Her knee wanted to fold under her. She couldn’t let it. She fled to the deep meadow grasses beyond the chicken yard and then dove to the earth and lay still. “Be quiet!” she hissed in the boy’s ear. “Be quiet. We’re hiding. We don’t want him to find us.”
She lifted her hand and a terrified Gillam hiccuped once and then clung to her silently. His breathing was harsh and loud; she feared Pell would find them. Her knee throbbed so badly that she thought she would not be able to stand again, let alone run. Pell appeared in the lamplit doorway, looking all around. He couldn’t see them.
“Rosemary!” he shouted.
She held her breath and Gillam huddled tight against her.
“Rosemary! Get in here, you stupid bitch. Clean up this damn mess. I want it all cleaned up before I come back!” He waited. She cowered silently. “Don’t think I’m going to forget this. I won’t. If you don’t come now, it will just be worse for you later!” He waited again. “You can’t stay out there forever.”
She watched him through a screen of grass stalks. He pulled his cloak up tight against the rising wind and threatened rain. He scowled helplessly at the vacant landscape around him. He wanted so badly to win this encounter. She feared he would stand there all night. But suddenly Pell strode away from the cottage, headed for the cliff-side road that went to town. She watched him as a darker figure against the evening twilight as he marched up the pathway. She suddenly felt another small warm body pressed against hers. She put her hand down and found Marmalade crouched in the grass beside her. She flinched with him when she set a hand on his ribs, and he cowered away from her touch with a rebuking growl.
“He nearly killed you, cat. I’m so sorry.” She barely breathed the words as she watched Pell hiking up the hill. She touched the cat and he rumbled again.
A thought slowly dawned on her. The cat had taken the blow to save her. “He was trying to hit me. He could have thrown me against the wall. Or Gillam.” She shook her head, trying to deny the thought. How had Gillam got into that sprawl in the corner? Had he already struck his own son? She heard again the word he’d flung, the one she sheltered Gillam from every day. Bastard. From his own father’s mouth. Their cottage was no longer a refuge, but a prison. Her defiance blew away with the wind.
“I have to run.” Rainy roads and no shelter. Unknown dangers for her and her boy. Hunger. What future could she possibly find? What would she have to do to feed them?
Marmalade stood and butted his head against her. Pell was nearly out of sight. She spoke slowly, scarcely daring to utter the thought aloud. “If I don’t run, I have to fight for my territory. Maybe to the death.” She shook her head at herself. Where had such an idea come from. “What am I thinking? I don’t know how to fight. He’s too big for me. I can’t win against him.”
The cat bumped his head against her hand and then slipped away. The grasses parted and swayed in his wake. He was headed up the hill, off on his night hunting. Pell had vanished.
She spoke aloud the thought that hung in the air. “Everything knows how to fight. Anyone with young knows how to protect them.”
Slowly she got to her feet. She reached down to touch her knee and felt the warmth. It was swelling. She picked up Gillam. He was still shaking and uncharacteristically silent. “Don’t worry. He’s gone. Let’s go back to our house.”
She tried to set him down to walk with her, but he just let his legs fold under him. He lay on his side, just as Marmalade had sprawled for that instant at the bottom of the wall. Her mind suddenly showed her a vision of her boy, flung against the wall and broken at the bottom of it. “No,” she said in a low voice. She wouldn’t wait for that to happen. She gathered him up, thinking how heavy he had grown, and tried not to think of taking him to the roads and how far she would have to carry him each day after he wearied. She didn’t try to bend her knee as she lurched along.
The cottage was a mess. Furniture and stores were the victims of Pell’s hasty search. She set Gillam down in a heap on the unswept hearth. He immediately began to wail. “Just a minute, son,” she told him as she put the bedding back on the rop
ed bed frame. Already it stank of Pell. The whole house smelled of him, she thought to herself. She picked up her small money poke. She’d gripped the bottom of it when she shaken money out on the floor, and then tossed it onto the bed where the chink of the concealed coins would not be heard. She glanced inside. Five coppers. Not much but better than nothing.
Once the bed was back together and the blankets smooth on it, she scooped up Gillam and set him on it. He hadn’t stopped wailing, but his cries were becoming feebler. Terror and fury had exhausted him.
“I can’t tend you right now, son. Mama has to put some things together for us.”
She had the smoked fish she’d hidden from Pell, and the silver coin. She built up the fire and searched the floor with the lamp, righting the chairs and putting the cloth back on the table as she did so. Pell had missed the two coins that she’d had her foot on, and she found another copper stuck in a crack. Scarcely a fortune, but she slid it back into the poke. She put the poke in the bottom of a canvas sack, save for two coppers that she slid into her pocket. Never show all your money when you travel.
She looked into her cupboards, but Pell had eaten whatever could be immediately eaten. Habit made her tidy as she went, putting the house back in order even though she intended to leave it forever tomorrow. When she thought of that, she was tempted to wreck the place, but only for an instant. No. She had come to love the little cottage. Putting it to rights now was her apology to it for what Pell would make it: a dingy, run-down hovel with garbage strewn around it.
Gillam had stopped wailing. He was sound asleep. She left him in his clothes. She packed all their extra clothing into the bag. It didn’t even fill it. She used her quilting rags to create two straps on the canvas bag, and then packed her needles, threads, and scraps. One pan for cooking. Flint and steel. A few other odds and ends. There would just be room for the blanket from the bed. She slipped quietly from the house lest she wake Gillam and went out to the cow’s byre. She hid the bag there; if Pell came back early, she didn’t want him catching a glimpse of it and asking any questions. She patted the wakeful cow and went back to the cottage.
Her decision to run made, she could find no peace. She longed to leave immediately and knew that would be stupid. In the dark, carrying Gillam and leading the gravid cow? No. She would go at dawn. Pell would come in drunk if he came in at all, and he’d sleep late. She’d be up by dawn and gone, with her boy rested and light to see by. It was the sensible thing to do, and she was a sensible woman. If he came back tonight, she’d pretend deference to him, no matter what he demanded of her. She was strong. She’d make her preparations.
That, she told herself, was why she sat down in her battered old chair, the one that was even more battered now that Pell had tossed it aside in his search for her money, and did her crying then. She wept for how stupid she had been, and then for how much work and love she had put into the ugly little hovel between the fens and the cliffs to make it her own little cottage. And when she was finished, she found she was done with tears. The foolish connection she had felt to a place that had never truly belonged to her was gone. It would be Pell’s. Let him have it. He could have the cabin; she’d never let him have the boy.
Marmalade trotted earnestly through the dark. His ribs ached, and his ears still rang from hitting the wall. He let a small rumble of anger emerge from his throat, then silenced himself sternly. Was he a kitten to betray himself to his prey with a yowl or a lashing tail? Of course not.
The female had a point. The man was large and very strong. And quicker than the cat had allowed for. He’d thought he could slip right though his hands, but he’d gotten a good grip on him. If he’d had the sense to break the cat in his hands instead of throwing him, he’d be dead now.
Which meant that if he didn’t get rid of the man, he’d be dead very soon. Marmalade understood territory. It could not be surrendered. His fight with the man was to the death.
But how did one kill so large a beast?
The man did not know the cliff-side path. Perhaps, once, it had been familiar territory for him, but no longer. The night was dark, with clouds taunting the moon. The man stumbled more than once, swore loudly, and went on. The cliffs were bare of trees; only brush and tall grasses carpeted them. There was no shelter from the wind. And little, the cat thought to himself, between the man and the land’s end. The shore below the cliffs was broken shale. When the tide came in, it came right to the cliff’s edge.
But the man stayed to the path, hurrying and sometimes tripping in his haste to reach town. Marmalade matched his pace but stayed well back. The man bumbled along in the near dark, keeping to the path along the winding cliff tops. The spring wind blew, warm and full of rain to come. The night was alive and it would have been good hunting for the cat, if only he hadn’t needed to kill this big fool first. He was invisible in the grasses as he slunk after the man. The wind on the tall dry stalks of last year’s grass and the whisper and hush of the waves against the rocky beach below covered the slight sounds the cat made as he stalked after him. It wasn’t hard to keep up. Light that was plenty for a cat was black night for the man. He was not walking fast. He muttered and cursed as he trudged along. He halted a moment to look back and down into the dell; in the distance, light shone still from the cottage window and through the battered thatch of the roof. The man spat out a vicious word and lurched on.
Marmalade watched him for a time, noting how high he lifted his feet and gauging his pace. Then, with a dart no mouse could have avoided, he dashed across the man’s path, yowling as he came. The man leaped in surprise, tangled his own feet, and came down hard on his hands and knees. Marmalade had already vanished himself. I want to kill you, he told the intruder.
The man got to his feet, wiping his skinned hands on his trousers. “Just a cat,” he said, and then, “Just that damned cat.” He considered for a moment, then shouted, “You can’t hurt me, cat! And if I get my hands on you, I’m going to kill you.”
He stood for a time, staring all around himself in the dimness. Marmalade had no fear. When the man set off again, he ghosted along behind him. When the man ceased glancing back over his shoulder, he waited a dozen steps more. Then, silent as the spring wind, he raced up behind him and shot up his back. He scratched the man’s face in passing, not as deeply as he would have liked, for he wouldn’t chance the man grabbing him again. The man shrieked and cursed and clutched at his face. Marmalade ran to the side of the path and crouched in the grasses.
“You damn Witted beast! Damn you! I’m going to kill you.”
Try. Marmalade invited him. Just try. He lashed his tail. He saw the man stoop and grope for stones. He wouldn’t find any on the grassy path. Marmalade growled in his throat. It was amusing to watch the intruder straighten up. It was even more amusing to watch him pretend he wasn’t sneaking up on the cat as he ventured closer.
When the man sprang, Marmalade leaped back, but only a dozen paces. He crouched again, growling and lashing his tail in unmistakable challenge. Go ahead. Catch me. Kill me.
The man was in a fury now. He sprang and fell on the place where the cat had been. Marmalade yowled victoriously and dashed away. The man scrabbled to his feet and followed, shouting threats.
Shout all you want! Words can’t hurt me!
“I’ll give you more than words when I catch you, you demon beast!”
Twice more the cat taunted him and twice more the man sprang. The third time, Marmalade darted into deep tussocks of grass and crouched. But he was not hidden. He saw the man spot him, and he tensed every muscle in a desperate need to be ready. The man sprang and Marmalade darted back to where Pell had been as the undercut edge of the grassy cliff gave way. The man roared and as the earth collapsed beneath him, he clutched desperately at the tussocks. They tore free and went down with him, falling toward the rocky beach and clutching waves below. He shouted as he fell.
Marmalade, heart thudding, ventured closer to the cliff and peered over. At first, not even his
cat’s eyes could penetrate the deepening night. He could make out the white lace as the waves met the rocks.
“I’ll kill you, cat!” the man shouted from below. “I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”
It hadn’t worked. The man hadn’t fallen far enough, and the earth collapsing with him had cushioned his fall. The intruder clung to the cliff face, glaring up. The cat was reasonably certain the man couldn’t see him. He poked his head out a bit farther to look directly into his face.
Perhaps you’ll kill me. But not tonight.
Then Marmalade turned and retreated into the deep grasses. He hunkered down to wait. He listened to the noises the man made as he climbed, slipped, and climbed again. The night was getting away from him; he’d have no time to hunt tonight. It was very irritating. He shouldn’t have to be doing this. The female should be defending her own territory. What was wrong with her?
It was some time before the man slithered up onto the top of the cliff. He lay there for a long time, just breathing, before he pulled himself to his hands and knees and then staggered to his feet. He brushed uselessly at the wet mud that streaked the front of his fine clothes. Then he gave it up. “Damn you, cat!” he shouted to the open night. Marmalade remained still, and the man resumed his journey to town. The cat followed.
The cat had been to town before. Sometimes he followed the woman when she went to do errands or work for others. She would turn and shake her apron at him and tell him to go home, but he simply hid and then followed her. Town was an interesting place. There were fat rats beneath the fishmonger’s shop. There were female cats, too, some sleek and some ragged, and all howling for him to come join in battle and then in mating with them. He’d made his share of kits for the village. And thus he knew that there were dogs, too. During the day, they roamed the streets, but at night, they stayed closer to their doorsteps, guarding their masters’ homes. As the man entered the village and the cat followed him, he became less than a shadow as he wound his way along the fronts of porches and through weedy alleys. Some of the homes and businesses of the village had wooden boardwalks in front of them, and they provided excellent shelter for a small animal seeking to remain unseen. The streets were mostly dark. Lamplight fingered its way between shutters to lie as bars across the street. But there were carts with empty traces and deep shadows under them, left in front of their owners’ homes. A drapery of fishing nets hanging and waiting to be mended offered him a long stretch of dappled shadow.
