Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years (7 page)

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Mum.”

“I daresay. If they request their shirts and stockings done…” She looked about. She had forgotten about laundry. “Wel, they wil have to do it themselves, or hire a laundress. No doubt they wil try to cozy up to some of you.” She took a dim view of cozying these days, though soldiers probably got lonely. She didn’t think Miss Murth was in danger of being meddled with, and as for the girl… “You, Rain,” she said,

“how old are you?”

Rain shrugged. “I believe she is eight, Lady Glinda,” said Miss Murth.

“That should be safe enough, but even so, Rain, I’d like you to stick near to Miss Murth or to one of the rest of us. Chef, Puggles. No running about and getting into mischief. I’ve kept you here because you have work to do. Sweeping up. You’re the broomgirl. Remember that.”

“Yes, Mum.” The girl’s gaze lowered to the polished floor. She wasn’t overly bright, to judge by appearances, thought Glinda, but then some had said that about her, in her day. And look where she’d ended up.

In virtual prison, she concluded, sorry she’d begun the train of thought. “That’l do. To your work, then. Hands to your task, eyes ever open, but keep custody of the lips. If you should hear anything useful, do tel me. Are there any questions?”

“Are we under house arrest too?” asked Puggles.

“Open up a bottle of something bubbly,” she replied. “When I figure out the answer to your question, I’l let you know. You are dismissed.” She stood for a moment as the foyer emptied. Then, mounting the first flight of the broad fleckstone staircase to her apartments, her eye drifted through the doors of the banquet hal. Before she knew what she was doing she had turned and pitter-patted down the steps and marched into the room. “Officer!” she shouted. She had never raised her voice in her own home before. Ever.

A soldier snapped to and saluted her. “Where is Cherrystone?” she barked.

“Not here, Mum.”

“You’re not in my staff. I’m not
Mum
to you. I am Lady Glinda. I can see he is not here. Where is he, I asked you.”

“That’s privileged information, Mum.”

She might have to throttle him. “Officer. I see charts and maps al over my banquet table. I am sure occupying armies need charts and maps. I am also sure they do not need to be held down flat by early Dixxi House spindle-thread vases. Do you know how rare these are? No more than thirty exist in al of Oz, I’l wager.”

“Do not approach the table, Mum.”

She approached the table and she snatched up first one porcelain vase and then the second. They were almost four hundred years old. Handworked by artisans whose skil had been lost when Dixxi House went factory. “I wil not have magnificent art used as … as paperweights. You put your boots on al the other furniture. Use your boots.” The maps had roled up.

“Begging your pardon, Mum, you’re striding in where you’ve no—”

“I don’t stride, young man. I never stride. I glide. Now you heard what I told you to do. Take off your boots and put them on the stupid maps.” He did as he was told. She was impressed. She stil had some little authority, then. She turned and left without addressing him again.

She cradled the vases against her breast as if they were puppies, but she wasn’t thinking of the vases. She had seen that one map featured a detailed drawing of Restwater, al its coves and vilages, its islands, the locations of its submerged rocks. She had seen a dotted line drawn from Mockbeggar Hal to Haugaard’s Keep, the garrison fortress at the east end. The marking didn’t run along the north shore of Restwater, but right through the middle of it. But what army could march through a lake?

6.

Of an afternoon, Glinda had been accustomed to the occasional carriage ride. She would set out for nearby vilages and take a ful cream tea in someone’s front parlor. She would drag along Miss Murth and a novel, and ignore one or the other, sometimes both. From favorite overlooks she sometimes watched the sun subside toward the horizon. Spring in Munchkinland usualy lent a certain cheer to her days.

Summer the same. She didn’t suffer pangs of longing for the house in Mennipin Square until after the first frost of the autumn. And by now she had learned to endure those pangs. For the time being, those lovely fal social seasons in the Emerald City were a thing of the past.

Like, it seemed, her excursions by carriage. It only took a few days after Cherrystone’s appropriation of Mockbeggar for a new pattern to set in: the carriages were always spoken for when she requested one.

Unsettling, that the activities of the house were being determined by someone else’s needs instead of her own.

And what a commotion! The army had set up a sizeable vilage of tents and built a pair of rude temporary structures—latrines, she expected. One for officers, one for enlisted men. The farm animals were turned out of the barns—no hardship, since the weather was good—and the barns became ad hoc mess hals and, perhaps, a wood shop of some sort, as the sound of hammering went on al day and half the night.

Glinda had Puggles show her how to find the stairs to the parapet so they could peek from behind an ornamental urn and grasp something of the size of the operation.

“I should think there are a ful three hundred men on the demesne, Lady Glinda,” said Puggles. “Given the amount of food I hear is being conscripted from local granges and farms.”

“Can that be enough force with which to prosecute an invasion?” she wondered.

“You’d have a better sense of that than I. You managed the armies of Loyal Oz for a time,” he reminded her. “And word has it you yourself once hoped for reunification.”

“Of course I did,” she snapped. “But not through military action. Too messy by half. I hoped if we put on a bal and went lavish with the refreshment budget, the Munchkinlanders would come back into the fold. I’m speaking figuratively, Puggles, don’t look at me like that.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. How could we humble Munchkinlanders refuse an invitation to dance with the overlords of the Emerald City? But when that rogue missile of a Dorothy-house came down on Nessarose’s holy head? The Munchkinlanders discovered that liberation from sniffy Nessarose didn’t provoke them into wanting a return to domination by the EC. Can you blame them? What population signs on wilingly for slavery?”

“You mean other than wives?”

“I’ve never married, Mum. Don’t accuse me by association.”

“Oh, never mind. I just think Cherrystone is going to need a vaster force if he expects to drive a division right into the heart of Munchkinland, to Bright Lettins or Colwen Grounds. Unless the Emerald City is simultaneously mounting an invasion from the north, through the Scalps. Though I can’t imagine the Glikkun trols in the mountains would let them get very far with that. Or is Cherrystone going to be content with snatching Restwater and leaving us the rest of the province?”

“I wouldn’t know, Mum.”

“Wel, what
do
you know, Puggles? How would we find out what’s going on in those barns, for instance? I can’t go waltzing around as if I’m used to milking the cows of a spring evening.”

“No, Mum. But I’m not alowed to wander about, either. Guards are posted, you see, beyond kitchen gardens on the barn side, beyond the forecourt on the carriage frontage, and beyond the reflecting pond and the parterre to the west.”

“Is that so.” She wasn’t surprised.

“I do hope you’re not going to contemplate some campaign, Mum.”

“You flatter me with that remark.”

“I have a hunch that General Cherrystone wouldn’t hesitate to restrict your liberties even further than he has already done.” She began to cross the roof and head for the stairs. “I’m sure you don’t believe me capable of laying gelignite sandwiches on the party platter. Anyway, I can’t cook.” When she was back in her salon she wandered along al the windows to see what she could see. She had never considered herself an inquisitive woman, but being confined to a suite of only eight rooms made her restless. She was also gripped with curiosity. Why hadn’t she thought to retain someone nubile? Someone who could smolder, sloe-eyed, near a vulnerable soldier? Someone who could pick up some useful information? She herself was too high, Murth was too dead, Rain hardly more than a babe in arms … and Glinda doubted that Chef or Puggles would attract much attention among itchy-triggered soldiers.

Was it too late to exchange Miss Murth for someone a bit younger—younger by, say, a half century? Glinda could pretend to do it out of concern for Miss Murth’s health.

But then Miss Murth came tramping in, hauling six logs of oak she had split and quartered herself, and she knelt down at the hearth to arrange the fire for when the evening chil took hold. Glinda knew that unless she herself brained Miss Murth with one of these spindle-thread vases, the old fiend would probably never die. She’d colapse over Glinda’s grave with dry, red eyes, and then take up a new position somewhere else.

The tedious never die; that’s what makes them tedious.

Glinda remembered the death of Ama Clutch, her governess. Almost forty years ago. Glinda never wakened from any sleep, even the luscious damp sleep that folows rousting sex, without sensing a pang of obscure guilt over her governess’s demise. Glinda didn’t feel she wanted to take on another such debt, especialy over someone as irksome as Miss Murth.

“Miss Murth,” she found herself saying, “Puggles was teling me about how limited a range he is alowed to traverse these days. Does the same apply to you?”

“I suspect it does, Lady Glinda,” said Murth, “but I haven’t pressed myself to try. I have no place else to go, and for years I haven’t had reason to leave the premises unless you require my company.”

“What had you been used to
doing
when I would go to the Emerald City for six or eight months?”

“Oh … tidying up some. Dusting.”

“I see. Have you no family?”

“I’ve been in your employ for twenty years, Lady Glinda. Don’t you think I would have mentioned my family if I had any?”

“You may have nattered on about your kin for yonks. I never know if I’m listening.”

“Wel, since you’re asking, no. I am the last of our line.”

And I the last of mine, thought Glinda, who had had no siblings. And she and Chuffrey had never managed to conceive. How quirky, to share this common a loneliness with a member of her staff. Whereas if Glinda had had children—even now, some child or children dashing in every direction, carrying on irresponsibly as the young do—wel, what a different place Mockbeggar would seem.

“There are al sorts of maps and missives in the dining hal, Miss Murth, but I draw attention to myself when I enter. There’s no chance you could sneak a peak at them and report to me anything you read?”

“Out of the question. We’re al under supervision, not just you.”

“Do you think that our Rain has the run of the grounds?” She picked at a thread on her shawl as she spoke and didn’t look up. She could hear Murth settle on her heels in front of the fire and let out a worried hiss between those old wel-chewed lips. “And does she have any family, do you think?”

“To the best of my awareness, she has no more family than you and I,” replied Miss Murth, vaguely.

7.

The first time a dinner invitation arrived from General Cherrystone, Glinda folded up the paper and said, “Thank you, Puggles. There wil be no reply.” The second time she had Murth write a note to decline.

“How shal I sign it?” asked Miss Murth. “Lady Glinda, or just Glinda?”

“The scandal of you. Sign it Lady Glinda Chuffrey of Mockbeggar Hal. And none of those twee little hearts and daisies and such.” But the next night Glinda sent
him
an invitation. “Dinner at ten, on the roof of the south porch.” She had Puggles and Chef take apart the salowwood table from the card salon, put it through the windows leg by leg, and reassemble it on the graveled flat of the porch roof. Then she arranged herself upon the balustraded area ahead of time so she wouldn’t have to be seen clambering through a window like a day laborer. The stars were out and the moon was wafery. She wore her midnight blue scalopier with eyelet fenestrae and a ruched bodice the color of wet sand. Chef would serve lake garmot stuffed with snails. “Is it a mistake about the candles?” caled Murth through the lace swags. “They’l drip wax al over the food.”

“Don’t hector me,” said Glinda. “I know what I’m doing.” The two precious spindle-thread vases held a bounty of prettibels and delphiniums selected for their vigor. They better not so much as drop a single petal if they knew what was good for them.

Cherrystone came up the grand staircase just at ten. She could hear the clongs of the grandmother clock strike and the clicking of his heels as he turned at the landing. The windows were wide but the sils two feet high, so he had to sit and swivel to get his long legs across. “A novel place to host a dinner guest. Perhaps you intend to push me over the rail as a divertissement,” he said. “Good evening, Lady Glinda.”

“General. You understand that a person of my position doesn’t entertain in her private apartment, and in any case I notice that the banquet hal has been requisitioned as a strategy center. So I’ve improvised.

We dine at my invitation, as this is my home, but we dine neither in my own apartments nor in the spaces you have appropriated. Instead, a neutral territory. Above it al, as it were. Won’t you have a seat?” He offered a bottle of wine. “Not from Mockbeggar celars, so I apologize if it doesn’t suit. It’s Highmeadow blanc, a good year. I don’t travel without it. I hope you approve.”

“My butler is a bit stout to be climbing through windows. So this is something of an evening picnic, I’m afraid. Wil you do the honors? There’s a cork-pul just here.” The candles were guttering madly for the first ten minutes. Glinda took care to sip sparingly. “While I understand the intent toward courtesy in your recent notes to me, General, I can’t bring myself to accept an invitation to dine in my own home. My study of etiquette provides no precedent. So I thought I should be cordial and explain this to you in person.”

“Damned awkward I’m sure, but you’re being a brick, as I knew you would be.”

“The meal wil grow cold, so please, shal we sit?” She waited for him to pul out her chair. From over his shoulder she could see the campfires of soldiers beyond the ha-ha. The distant sound of singing, more rowdy than tuneful. “How wil you keep al these men occupied and out of trouble, General? You’ve clearly settled in for a while, and no matter what construction you’re overseeing in the barns, you can’t be employing more than a smattering of this large number.”