Ozark Trilogy 2: The Grand Jubilee (9 page)

“And it doesn’t burden your conscience that you Grannys are charged to
help
me, not hinder me?” she demanded. “I find that curious.”

The Granny’s face closed, shut, and if the rage was still there she mastered it. She gave no sign that she’d heard Responsible’s last question.

“I’ll leave it to you to furnish your excuses for your absence,” she said, looking right through the girl. “You lie easy enough, it should cause you no special trouble. Just you stay away from the Hall. And I’ll have your word on it.”

“You have it,” said Responsible wearily. They were tiresome, these Travellers, with their never-ending insistence on guarantees. “And now you
do
have it, I’ll thank you to leave. I have work to do, and I’d best get at it.”

Granny Leeward headed for the door, but she stopped there long enough to shake her finger some more and say a few sentences on the subject of pride going before a fall, and peace coming to them as deserved it and misery to those as didn’t, and just deserts. Responsible rode this out in silence-she had no intention of easing any wounds she might have inflicted on this one-and the time finally came when the woman had either exhausted her supply of moral justifications or tired her own tongue, and she went out the door, leaving a vast silence behind her.

Responsible lay there and whistled her way through three choruses of “Once Again, Amazing Grace,” as a calming measure, and gave her situation some careful thought.

Under her bottom pillow, for example, there was a cylinder no bigger than a needle, and in it a list written on pliofilm and headed “Things To Do When I Get Home.” Weeks it had been there, shoved out of sight till she could find time to tackle it, and there’d been nights when she’d had the feeling it burned her head right through the feathers and heavy pillowslips. Might could be she’d make her way through some of the items on that list after all, while she was staying away from the Hall.

And then, might could be she’d take advantage of the opportunity to just
lie
here? She was that tired.

She reached under her pillow, knowing the foolishness of the lying-about idea, and took out the cylinder, unscrewed the top, and pulled from it the sheet of pliofilm. It had been so long curled it wouldn’t lie flat, of course, and she hadn’t any inclination to take it over to her desk where she could spread it on the leather surface to cling properly; she made do with gripping its edges and ignoring the way it wound itself round her fingers.

Eight items she had written there, she noted with disgust. Eight tasks. And when she’d set out on the Quest in February there’d been only the first. Somehow, riding back into Brightwater in April, there’d been the idea in her head that she could get them all out of the way before the Jubilee. Like many another fool idea she’d had lately.

First of all, there was the task she’d set out with: to go over the Castle’s secret account books, those that couldn’t be trusted to the Economist and required her personal attention.

Next came the matter of determining whether there really had been a Skerry seen at Castle Motley; and if there had been-which she doubted even more strongly now than she had when the servingmaid had blurted out the tale to her-declaring a day of celebration separate and special for the event as custom demanded. It’d be a tad late, but better a tardy observance than none at all. Provided she found any evidence that the servingmaid’s story had had a scrap of truth to it.

Third was the promise she had made in the night to the Gentle, highborn T’an K’ib. She had given her word: the Gentles would be involved in
none
of the Ozarkers’ doings, as already specified by the treaties signed centuries ago. Furthermore, Responsible intended to see that every inch of the Gentles’ territory taken from them by the careless mining operations of the Arkansaw Families was restored, and restored in either its original condition or with improvements to the ancient race’s own specifications. T’an K’ib had not insisted on that, treating it as a minor matter, but Responsible saw it differently. The Arkansawyers knew quite well where the boundaries of their lands joined those of the Gentles, and the temptations of a few tons of ore or a vein of choice gemstones were no excuse for violating those boundaries.

Fourth, she had to see to the matter of the growing prejudice against the Purdys. Prejudice was one of the things that had driven the Twelve Families from Old Earth in the first place. They’d all been white, sure enough, but they’d heard more than they cared to tolerate about “ignorant hillbillies” and “white trash” and they’d seen the black and brown and yellow peoples of Earth suffer at the hands of ignorant and vicious people their own color. And now, somehow without anybody’s remarking on it as it grew, the Purdys had become the “white trash” of this planet. When anybody did a stupid thing, the first remark you heard was “A body’d think you were a Purdy born and raised!” Nasty, that’s what it was, and she would
not
have it; it shamed her that she had not noticed it sooner.

You didn’t put an end to prejudice by proclamations, though; it grew slow, and it died slower. What was required was for the next few groups of Purdy girlchildren to spend their Granny School time spread all round this planet, clear away from the constant expectation of the grown-up Purdys that they would always fail in whatever they did. A few dozen confident, self-assured Purdy females to go home and do missionary duty-that’s what was called for.

And then, for number five on her list, she had written down “Wommack superstition clear out of hand.” As it was, and no doubt about it. A Wommack cut his finger, it was because of the Wommack Curse. A Wommack spoiled a roast because she had her mind elsewhere, the Curse again. Every mistake, every natural mishap that the universe laid on a Wommack-be it ever so like the mishaps and mistakes that were laid on every other soul on Ozark-lay it to the Wommack Curse. That had to be seen to, and quickly; there had to be a sufficient run of good luck for the Wommacks to put some chinks in their curse consciousness. And thinking of Lewis Motley Wommack, she smiled to herself; she might find it possible to get in a few licks on
that
job with no strain to herself at all.

Sixth was the trivial task of making certain that nobody but pitiful Una of Clark, lost in her worship of her husband beyond all limits of decency, had been back of the mischief that had plagued Brightwater early in the year. Milk that came spoiled from the goats, mirrors that shattered, Mules that flew like squawkers drunk on fallen fruit fermented in the sun-and the one kidnapped baby, with no harm done to him. Responsible had no doubt this one was trivial, for Una of Clark had been too broken with terror the night she’d confronted her with her crimes not to have cried out the names of anyone that’d helped her-always excepting the husband. Una of Clark would have died unhesitatingly, plunged off the seacliff and into the waters boiling below her, before she spoke any word that might mean the smallest peril for Gabriel Laddercane Traveller the 34th.

Responsible tried, briefly, imagining herself obsessed in that way with Lewis Motley Wommack, convinced the sun rose when he came in the door and set when he went back out it, trembling at his least frown and melting away when he smiled on her. She ran it round her head for a minute or two, checking, but it made no sense to her any way she viewed it. Praise be for small favors.

Next to last on the pliofilm was the Bestowing of two acres of land on Flag of Airy and her husband, in recognition of their service to Castle Brightwater; and seeing that, the guilt did bite at her. Most of the things on the list she could truly say there’d been no time for; they required careful planning and ample time. But not this, this was an hour’s easy work. She had plain and simply forgotten about it.

And finally . . . “See to the feuds on Arkansaw,” she’d written with the stylus.

See to them!

Responsible rolled over onto her stomach and struck the pile of pillows with her fist. See to them, indeed. How was she to “see to” the incredible antics of three Families, bent on feuding, set on feuding, bound and
determined
on feuding? Guthries, Farsons, and Purdys, bad cess to them all, and the poor Gentles right in the middle of it! Just what she’d been thinking when she’d scribed there so casually “See to the feuds” she could not imagine. Must have been after she crashed into the side of that dockshed and addled her head.

It was a long list, and she figured that to carry it through she needed maybe a staff of fifty Magicians, and fifty more miscellaneous, and far all she knew an army wouldn’t be a bad idea, whatever an army might be like. She could begin with the Castle accounts, and throw in the Bestowing in a hurry, but the rest of it?

She knew an assortment of words she was forbidden to use, and she ran through them as she’d run through the list, all the while she was rolling up the pliofiim and stuffing it back in its case to bury once more underneath the pillows. And she’d only gotten to the tenth of her prohibited pronouncements when there came the thundering at her door that she’d been expecting with half an ear for some time now.

“Come on in, Granny Hazelbide, before you destroy my door for good and all,” she hollered, resigned to what could not be avoided and wouldn’t improve by being put off. “Come on in here and tell me all about my sins!”

The Granny fairly flew through the door, and banged it to behind her. She had on a crackling crisp dress of shiny dark blue, caught at the neck with a brooch handed down in her family all the way from First Landing, if she was to be believed. Her feet were shod in high-heeled pointy-toed black pumps with a shine that hurt your eyes, and so narrow Responsible knew they hurt
her.
Granny Hazelbide prided herself on the neatness of her foot. And on her head was a black straw hat to match the pumps, and a black veil ready to be pulled down over her face in the latest style, with a cluster of dark-blue violets with velvet petals and velvet leaves and velvet stems wound round wire to top off the headgear. She was a regular fashion plate, was Granny Hazelbide, and she was in a fury.

“Whatever are you doing lying there in that bed like the Queen of the Shebas?” she demanded, advancing on Responsible like a skinny tornado. “You make me late for the Opening Ceremonies, girl, and I’ll take a switch to your bare tailbone, for all you’re near fifteen and fancy yourself full grown! I’ll give you two minutestwo minutes, do you hear?-to make yourself fit to be seen and go out this door with me! Laws and Dozens, Responsible, we’re late this minute!”

“Granny, Granny,” soothed Responsible, “you’ll have a heart attack if you go on like that, and I’ll have to call in a Magician to set you right, and for sure I want no Magician hanging round my bed on a beautiful morning like this! I suggest you
calm
yourself a tad.”

The old lady’s lips drew tight, and her brows met over her nose, and she leaned over Responsible’s bed like she was ready to whack her with her pocketbook.

“Calm myself!” she said. “When you lie there and face me down, cool as you please, and it half past eight in the morning? Have you taken sick, missy, or leave of your senses-which one?”

“Neither one, Granny Hazelbide,” said Responsible. “Neither one. I’ve just run into a sort of a snag.”

Granny Hazelbide leaned over farther, and tipped the girl’s chin up to look into her face, turning it this way and that till it made her neck ache. And then she let her fall back, suddenly, and Responsible was grateful it was pillows she’d had to fall on. Even so, the resulting thump shook her some.

“You call that a snag, do you,” said the old woman disgustedly. “A snag! What’d you go and catch yourself on it for, if you saw
^,
it as such a hindrance, eh, Responsible?”

“Granny, darlin’--”

“‘Granny, darlin’!’ You mark my words, Responsible of Brightwater, there’ll be a few words from your Granny darlin’ about this, once she’s leisure enough to speak them. But losing your maidenhead, though it’s a disgrace to us all and a piece of foolishness the likes of which doesn’t come by
often,
it’s no excuse for you to lie in bed and miss the Second Day at Confederation Hall. Now get yourself out of there and into your clothes, and let’s us
go
, Responsible! Snag, huh!
Who
, pray tell, was it got past my wards on this room?”

“I’m not about to tell you. Granny,” said Responsible. “Not
about
to, so you needn’t push it. Nor, I’m sorry to say, is that the snag I had in mind.”

“What you have in mind doesn’t bear repeating before decent folk such as myself, I’ll wager!”

“How you
do
go on!” said Responsible admiringly. “You’ll outgranny all the other Grannys yet, and think how proud I’ll be then! Seeing as how I had the raising of you.

“
How
ever,” she added quickly, before the Granny could catch her breath and start on her again, “if you plan to hear the Opening Prayer you’d best go on, and I’ll explain later. It’s not a short explanation.”

Granny Hazelbide stared at her, and set her arms akimbo. “Responsible,” she said, “is there really an explanation? Worth my being late for?”

“You’d have to tell me that after you heard it,” said Responsible. “Depends on how much you fancy the Opening Ceremonies, I’d say.”

Granny Hazelbide pulled up a chair and sat down in it without a word, as Responsible had known she would; and she listenedher mouth puckering tighter and tighter with every passing minute -while she heard a carefully edited version of the mistake made at Castle Traveller and this morning’s visit from Granny Leeward. And then she spoke her mind, and Responsible was glad she’d only made it a tale of giving all the staff at Castle Traveller toothaches. She’d been afraid that might be somewhat too mild to convince, since many an Ozark woman not a Granny and with no hope of ever being one picked up a scrap or two of Granny Magic, though few would dare use what they knew. Granny Hazelbide didn’t find the transgression a light one; that became clear in a hurry.