CHAPTER 11
“Guy’s father?” Cat should have seen it coming, but there was so much that was new and confusing in this place, she had utterly failed to put two and two together. “So, he’s one of the Septimi? Then, that’s why—”
Ouska turned her head, rather quickly.
“Why what?”
Cat held out her right hand, without bandage and completely well.
“He touched it, again, just before you came back this morning. I don’t know what he did, but look.” She flexed her fingers, made a fist, and then flattened out her hand again.
There was a curious gleam in Ouska’s eyes, but she shook her head.
“I’ve never heard of one being able to do that. Guy’s a craftsman, he—”
She was interrupted by a knock on the door, which was immediately followed by the appearance of a head around the edge of the door.
“Mother?” A young woman stepped into the room, her red-blonde hair wreathed around her head in the same coronet style Ouska wore. She was carrying Bibby and put her down on the kitchen floor. “Mother, the goat is having troubles with the kids, and I can’t handle her on my own. Can you help? I’m sorry, I thought I could keep the little one with me for a while, but the goat’s bad…”
She caught sight of Cat, whose chair was partially hidden behind the open door.
“Oh, I didn’t see you there!” She smiled at her. “You must be the visitor? I’m Yldra. I’m sorry to be rushing in here like this, but, Mother,” she turned back to Ouska, her voice taking on urgency, “I’m really worried about that goat.”
The older woman was already opening cupboards and drawers and taking out what seemed to be a collection of supplies, presumably for the midwifery of bothersome goats. She looked at Cat.
“I was going to keep you here for a while, Catriona, you and the babe, but now it looks like I’m needed. In fact, I think we might have need of Uncle as well. Think you can find your way back to the cottage? It would be a tremendous help if you could send him out to us; just tell him his daughter’s goat is having trouble with the kidding.”
Cat smiled wryly. The people in this place seemed somewhat crisis-prone. She was getting downright used to being thrown from one emergency into another.
“Not a problem! Is there anything we need to lock up here, or turn down, or something?”
“No, none of that. If you can just take the little one with you, we’ll all be off,” said Ouska. Her matter-of-fact tone told Cat that she was fully confident in Cat’s ability to handle whatever was coming her way, which made Cat determine that she would not disappoint her.
“Come on, munchkin!” she said to Bibby, scooped her up, and settled her on her hip like she had seen Ouska do. “Let’s go see your papa.”
“Yee bubba,” agreed the little girl.
Half an hour later, they were back at the cottage and had delivered the message to Uncle, who immediately set out to assist his wife and daughter. Under his breath he muttered about being the village nursemaid, but his tone clearly stated that he really did not mind. In fact, Cat wondered if he wasn’t rather proud of nobody being able to do without him.
Guy was propped up in his bed, drinking some soup out of one of his brown pottery bowls, when Cat and Bibby walked into the cottage. He looked a vast deal better than when Cat had seen him last—much cleaner, for one. He was wearing a white linen shirt, laced up at the throat; his bed was now properly made up (Cat looked around for the old blanket Ouska had made such scathing comments about and found it bundled into a corner by the fireplace), and his legs were lightly covered with a sheet and clean blanket. His hair, now that it was not smeared with clay, turned out to be a darker shade of red than that of his cousin Yldra; it was long enough to brush his collar, but the way it sprang back from his forehead and waved around his face clearly indicated from whom his little girl had inherited her feathery curls. His face, though still pale, had lost the horrible grey hue Cat had last seen on it, and his eyes were much clearer now.
Cat made up her mind to stop being embarrassed about being in his cottage with him. After all, if she were a nurse, this would be perfectly normal, wouldn’t it? So she would simply consider herself a nurse. Or the babysitter—that was an even more familiar role. Except that when she was babysitting, back in her teen years, she was never stuck in a rustic cottage with the sick father of the baby she was looking after. Oh dear…
She cast a sidelong glance at his face and saw that he was looking at her just as awkwardly as she felt. Their eyes met, and they laughed nervously. Bibby looked from one to the other and gave a high-pitched baby giggle, which set both of the adults really laughing. After that, there was no more room for tension or awkwardness. Cat smiled at him.
“Good soup?” she asked.
He smiled back, an attractive lopsided grin that crinkled up the corner of his eye.
“The best. Aunt made it, so I’m to eat every last drop. There’s more in the pot on the table, if you want some—Cat?”
“Gah,” confirmed Bibby, then tried out the combination of their names: “Bubbagah. Bubbagah youp.”
“Yes, that’s right!” said Cat, realising she was beginning to understand almost everything the little girl said. “Papa and Cat are eating soup. And Bibby too.” She sat the baby on the bench by the table and brought over two more pottery bowls. Suddenly she felt Guy’s eyes on her, watching her handling of the dishes.
“Your hand?” he asked, quietly.
Wordlessly, she held it out to him, turned up her palm, and flexed her fingers. A look of relief crossed his face, followed by something that felt as if shutters were being closed. No, this was not the time to ask him what happened there, Cat realised. She turned back to the soup on the table.
Cat and Bibby had finished their soup, and the little girl was yawning.
“Looks like someone needs a nap!” Cat said.
“Yes, and Bibby’s looking sleepy, too,” replied Guy from the bed. He surprised a laugh out of Cat, but a look in his face showed that he was looking grey around the edges again, and he was drooping against his pillow.
“Very well,” Cat said in her best imitation of Ouska’s no-nonsense voice, “a nap it is. But Bibby goes potty first.” She took the little girl by the hand, led her out the front door, and turned left around the adjacent building. The water pump was on the corner of the building, but next to it Cat noticed an entrance door into the annex, with a large window beside it. Some twenty yards away from the back corner of the building was a strange beehive-shaped structure, built of piled-up bricks, about four or five feet high and as much across, with a round curved tunnel leading into it from one side. No, not a beehive, thought Cat, an igloo! A tall, straight-sided brick igloo, with a really small entrance. Curious.
They turned the corner again, walked along the back wall of the annex, opened the gate in the garden fence, which was made of woven sticks, and went around the next corner to the privy. It seemed a bit of a long trek around the house to get to the privy when it was stuck right to the back wall of the house, Cat thought; then she noticed a door in the annex wall at a right angle to the privy door. She tried the latch, but it was locked from the inside.
When they returned to the cottage, Guy was looking like he was ready to drop off to sleep.
“You know, you can go through the workshop to get out back,” he said, his voice roughening again with the sudden fatigue of illness.
“Oh, I see. No, Bibby, your bed is over here!” Cat said, as the little girl was attempting to climb up on her father’s bed. She tried to scoop the baby back off the bed, but Guy weakly shook his head, with a light contraction of his eyebrows.
“She always sleeps with me,” he said. With an obvious effort, he reached out his arm and pulled the little girl closer to his side; she snuggled against him and gave a deep satisfied sigh. The man pulled the blanket over both of them and closed his eyes in exhaustion. In just a few minutes, their regular breathing showed that both had fallen asleep.
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