CHAPTER 13
The morning sunlight flooded into Ouska’s kitchen, where Cat and Bibby were sitting at the table, eating thick spoonfuls of porridge laced with honey. Fragrant mint tea was steaming in a cup beside Cat’s bowl.
“I sure slept well last night,” said Cat to Ouska, who was stirring the porridge in the pot, which was sitting on the lip that jutted out over the wood fire. “Your spare bed is a lot more comfortable than Guy’s rocking chair, especially when you have to share sleeping quarters with little people.” She smiled at the baby.
“Bibby lepp!” pronounced the little girl.
“Yes, you slept too.”
“Bibby wake!”
“And then you woke up,” agreed Cat.
“Bibby pay now!”
“You want to do what?”
“Pay. Pay kiki.”
“Oh, play with the kitty! I don’t know where the kitty is; why don’t you see if you can find her?”
The little girl slid off the bench and toddled off to find the cat.
“I hope the men did all right in the cottage last night,” Cat said to Ouska.
“Oh, yes, I expect so. Provided the boy could sleep over Uncle’s snoring.” The older woman chuckled. “That man can rattle the windows sometimes. No, they’ll have been fine. Was glad to see that wound is getting so much better; won’t be long before that young fool will be champing at the bit to get back to working.”
Cat smiled.
“He sure makes nice dishes,” she said, admiring the mug in her hand. “They feel just right. Those are all his work, aren’t they?”
A yowl and a baby’s scream were heard from the next room. Cat and Ouska both jumped; Ouska reached the door first. Bibby was crying hard, holding out her pudgy little hand with a thin red scratch line across it.
“Kiki bad! Bibby owie!” she sobbed.
Ouska scooped her up in a comforting hug.
“Tush, tush,” she soothed, then looked over her head at Cat. “Well, perhaps that’ll teach her to treat the cat with a bit more respect. Had to happen sooner or later,” she added prosaically, then bore the baby off to the bathroom to clean the scratch. The small cat nonchalantly padded into the kitchen, sat on the hearth rug, and licked her paw.
A knock sounded on the door. When Cat went to open it, a girl stood outside. She was perhaps fifteen years old, had long, dark hair, and wore a set of clothes not unlike the ones Cat had on herself, except that the girl’s were tucked in tightly to show off her figure. On her arm hung a basket, which was covered with a buff-coloured linen cloth.
“Can I help you?”
“Oh, oh, I was looking for the wisewoman! I got eggs for her” (the girl indicated the basket on her arm), “and my mother wants some more of the balm leaves for the brew she makes, and a bit of the salve for the sores.”
“Well, why don’t you come in then; she should be right out,” said Cat, turning back into the kitchen.
The girl stepped over the doorsill and gave Cat a nosey look.
“Your skirt and blouse—they look just like Ashya’s!” she said.
Cat found that a rather curious introduction.
“Well, they were loaned to me. Who is Ashya? I’m new in town, I don’t know people yet.”
“You don’t know about Ashya? I thought you were one of her family.” She tipped her head in the direction of the back parts of the house, indicating Ouska.
“Well, I met her nephew, and her husband, and—I suppose Bibby is a great-niece,” Cat explained.
“Ooh, the little darling!” The girl put on a sugary smile which she must have thought showed her fondness for children, then immediately dropped it again. “But if you know her, you should know who Ashya—who she was.” She lowered her voice to a near whisper, then leaned forward conspiratorially. “You know what I think? I think he killed her!”
“Uh, pardon me?”
“You know, him! The potter. Guy.” She pronounced the name with a sneer. “He’s got a filthy temper; Ashya told me so herself. I’m her cousin, you know.” She flounced around and settled herself on the bench by the table. “Ashya, she said he was such an awfully jealous husband, and mean, and wouldn’t let her do anything she wanted or get her anything she liked. And then she had the baby” (another flounce), “and he wanted her to just stay there, in that filthy little house out in the woods, and do nothing but look after the baby. And if she tried to just get her own way a teensy little bit, he would fly into a jealous rage. She told me so herself. And then,” she dropped her voice to a dramatic whisper again, “she disappeared!”
“Hmm,” Cat nodded her head in her best listening manner, an art she had perfected at the library through countless rants by patrons intent on sharing their latest pet theories.
“Well, it’s true! Nobody’s seen her since that day last summer—not this past one, the one before—when she came into town, just to do a little shopping, they say, and then he came after her, all smeared with his filthy clay, and dragged her home by the hair, they say. And,” she opened her eyes wide in a dramatic gesture, obviously relishing every detail of her tale, “somebody heard screaming from that house, and… nobody’s—seen—her—since.”
“Really,” said Cat, noncommittally.
“Yes! Ooh, and you know, the same thing happened to him!”
Now Cat was thoroughly confused.
“Guy disappeared, too?”
“No, no, not him, his brother! You know,” she leaned forward again in her conspirator’s style, “the Septimissimus!! Everyone knows he’s filthy jealous of him, because he was only the sixth, and Sepp, he’s seventh, so he had all the gift—and then Sepp, he had a screaming fight with him in the street, they say, and the next day he went to his house, in the woods, and he disappeared, too! I wonder what happened. Sepp’s really cute. I’m going to marry him, you know.” She flipped her dark hair back over her shoulder.
“Well, if Sepp’s disappeared, that would be a little difficult, wouldn’t it?” This girl was getting on Cat’s nerves.
“Kashinka!” Ouska had stepped back into the room. The girl jumped up off the bench, all signs of the conspiracy theorist gone.
“Oh, oh, wisewoman,” she stammered, “here’s eggs, and mother wants more balmbrew and salve.”
“Very well,” Ouska said, briefly. She looked out the required supplies and made short shrift of sending the girl on her way.
Cat looked at Ouska in surprise. The older woman was banging the empty porridge bowls from the table into a stack and set them on the dresser with a thump; then with a loud clatter she took the lid off the water kettle and gave the pump handle a few vicious yanks.
“Fool!” she finally said. “Utter fool, that Kashinka! Conceited, empty-headed, silly, self-absorbed fool! But they’re all like that, the whole family.” She slammed the kettle on the top of the fireplace cook surface.
“Is it true she is Guy’s wife’s cousin?”
“Yes, unfortunately. And that was about the only true thing she told you.”
“You heard what she said then?”
“The last bit. The rest I already heard before, often enough. It’s nonsense, tomfoolery—most of it, at any rate. Don’t believe a word of it!” she said fiercely.
“Most of it? Then some of it is true? What about this Septimississi…” Cat stumbled over the syllables.
“Septimissimus? Yes, that’s true enough. Well, that the seventh son of the seventh son of the Septimi—you’ll recall what I told you—that he’s double strong in the Powers. We call him the Septimissimus. Yes, we have one right now; that only happens once every few hundred years, if that.”
“Guy’s brother?”
“He’s got a brother, yes. Sepp. Young fool,” she added, almost automatically and in a fond tone that gave the lie to the insult. “He’s not much more than a year younger than the boy, turned twenty-eight Thursday last. That Kashinka’s nonsense about them fighting in the street—sometimes I’d like to take a paddle to that girl. Of course the
boys fought when they were small; they were brothers, weren’t they? They’re fond enough of each other now; they’ve long since outgrown the fisticuffs.”
“So where is he now, that Sepp?”
Ouska looked thoughtful.
“That I can’t tell you. The worst of that silly girl’s lies is that there’s half-truths hid in them, like a needle stuck in a piece of cloth that jabs you when you least expect it. Sepp—well, the boy always had a hankering to fly the coop, to see the world. He’s not like his brother. Guy belongs here; he is rooted in the earth he works with, but Sepp—no. For the last while, some months now, he has been more and more out of sorts, and a week ago it got rather so even people who didn’t know him well noticed. He might have snapped at his brother when they met in the street that day, but by then he was snapping at everyone. And it’s true enough that the last time anyone saw him he was headed down the path to the pottery.”
“So Guy was the last person to see him? What does he say about it?”
The older woman gave a brief grunt.
“Nothing—what do you expect?”
She leaned over the table to wipe the porridge splatters from Bibby’s spot, and a silver pendant on a necklace, slightly darkened with tarnish, swung free from the neckline of her blouse.
“That’s a nice necklace,” Cat said. “I never noticed it before! Do you always wear it?”
Ouska reached for the necklace, pulled it outwards from her neck, and screwed her eyes downwards to look at the pendant.
“Oh dear, that’s black! Needs cleaning.” She reached behind her head, unclasped the necklace, and took it off. “Yes, it’s my wedding chain. That’s not been off my neck for more than a few minutes in the last forty years.”
Cat picked up the necklace from the table where Ouska had put it down. The pendant was shaped like a small animal—a circular centre, with five little stubs protruding from it, one of which formed the loop that suspended it from the chain. A turtle, Cat thought, looking like it was hanging on to the chain with its teeth.
“A wedding chain?”
“Yes, it’s the sign of the marriage—the contract, if you will. Uncle gave it to me for our wedding.” Ouska placed a grey metal dish, like a small pie plate, on the table. “Pass me the salt cellar, will you?” she requested, and when Cat gave her the ceramic pot, held out her other hand for the necklace. Intrigued, Cat watched as the older woman put the necklace in the bottom of the dish and sprinkled a teaspoon of salt over it.
“Is it always an animal on the pendant?” she asked.
“Most often. But sometimes it’s a tree, or a flower. Always a living thing, though; it says that as long as the chain is whole, the marriage will live.” Ouska fetched the water kettle from the cook top of the wood stove. “That’s what I meant when I said it’s the contract—you can break the marriage if you wilfully break the necklace.”
She poured boiling water from the kettle onto the salt-covered necklace in the dish. A sharp, metallic smell rose with the steam, and when it cleared, Cat saw that the chain and pendant in the water were bright silver again. Low-tech silver immersion polish—how clever!
Ouska fished the necklace out of the water with a wooden fork, rinsed it under the pump, then dried it with a soft cloth and clasped it around her neck again. She tucked the brightly gleaming pendant under her blouse.
“Better check on the babe,” she said. “I left her playing with a doll on my bed; it’s so quiet she’s either gone to sleep or got up to mischief.”