Wildwood Dancing (11 page)

Don’t bother yourself with him
. Gogu had found an ink drop on the table and was dabbing it experimentally with a webbed foot.

“Stop it! You’re just making more mess for me to clean up, and I’m tired!” My tone was much too sharp for such a minor misdemeanor. I saw the frog flinch, and made myself take a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” I told him, reaching a finger to stroke the back of his neck. “I’m upset. It’s not just the farm, it’s Tati as well. She should be helping me, but she’s off in a dream half the time. I know she’s thinking about
him
—about Sorrow. It’s as if the moment she clapped eyes on him, she forgot every rule there is.”

On this topic, Gogu had nothing to contribute. I picked up the quill again.

We would love to know how you are keeping, Father
, I wrote.
Could you give Cezar’s messenger a brief note? I am not sure if you received my earlier letter; I sent it some time ago. Please be assured that we are all in excellent health and are coping well, though the weather is extremely cold. We’ve had word that the consignment for Sibiu was delivered safely and unloaded at the warehouse. Your agent there will arrange for the items to be dispatched to their purchasers, and he will hold the payments in his strongbox until your return. I have not spoken to Cezar yet about Salem bin Afazi’s goods. As I said, we have hardly seen him since the
pomanǎ. Of this I was quite glad. I could not forget the image of our aunt bent over in her grief like an old woman, her hands lingering on each item of Uncle Nicolae’s clothing before she passed it to a ragged man, a skinny boy. I could still see Cezar’s stony face, which had seemed more furious than sorrowful.

As for Iulia, the shock of our uncle’s violent death had at
first left her withdrawn and tearful. Then, just as suddenly, she had become more willful and demanding than ever before, complaining about everything from the cold weather to the endless diet of
mămăligă
to the fact that Tati wasn’t doing her share of the work. To my surprise I realized that on this last count, Iulia’s dissatisfaction was justified. I kept finding my elder sister gazing out of windows, or staring into space, or taking fifty times longer to perform a simple task than she should. Challenged over this, she gave vague answers: “I don’t know what you mean, Jena.” “Oh, was I meant to be cutting up vegetables?” I tried to ask her about Sorrow. I tried to explain that things were difficult, that I needed her help. She did not seem to hear me. She was drifting in a little world of her own, her lips curved in a secret smile, her eyes seeing something that was invisible to me.

I signed and sealed Father’s letter, wondering whether it was fair to ask Petru to take it over to Vǎrful cu Negurǎ. I didn’t want to go myself. I would never be able to walk in there again without seeing Uncle Nicolae’s blood, without hearing Aunt Bogdana’s scream.

Someone’s coming
. Gogu made a leap in the general direction of my pocket. I managed to catch him and scoop him in as the door to the workroom opened and Paula appeared, looking apologetic. “Cezar’s here,” she said, and a moment later he was marching into the room, where he sat himself down opposite me at the small square table on which my writing materials were laid out. He was neatly dressed, all in black, and around his neck he wore an ornament that had belonged to Uncle Nicolae: a gold chain with a medallion in the shape of a hunting horn.

“Oh,” I said. Then: “Cezar, I wasn’t expecting you. Paula,
will you fetch Tati, please?” Whether my cousin was here for business or for family matters, I knew I did not want to deal with him alone, not now that his father’s death had changed things so much. Besides, to do so would be considered unseemly under the rules of polite conduct that were so important to our aunt.

Paula fled. Cezar was looking at the sealed document on the table before me. I seized on a topic of conversation. “I was just writing to Father. I’m hoping you may have someone who can deliver it to Constanţa for me.”

“Of course, Jena.” He took it and slipped it inside his jacket. “You realize that it may not be possible for a while. The roads are unreliable at the best of times. And it looks like a bad winter—”

“Yes, I know.”

There was an awkward silence. I willed Tati to hurry up.

“How are you, Cezar?” I made myself ask. “How is Aunt Bogdana coping?”

His jaw tightened. His eyes took on a distant expression. “My mother is as you might expect. Women lack the resilience to deal with such losses and move forward.”

Such a statement could not be allowed to go unchallenged. “I can’t agree with you,” I said, twirling the quill pen in my fingers. “I’ve always believed women to have great strength of endurance. In times of war, for instance, it is they who bear the loss of their men and the disruption to their lives. It is they who keep their communities together. But I do understand how sad and shocked Aunt Bogdana must be.”

Cezar stared at me. I had no idea what he was thinking. “You, I should imagine, would be different from Mother in such circumstances,” he conceded.

If that’s meant to be a compliment, we’d prefer an insult
. Gogu circled inside the pocket, his mood indignant.

“Have you had any word from Father since we last saw you? Anything at all from Constanţa?” I tried for an unconcerned, businesslike tone, though his last comment had struck me as quite odd.

“I’m afraid not, Jena. You must not distress yourself.” His hand crept out and laid itself over mine on the table.

I snatched my fingers away; something about his gesture felt entirely wrong. “I’m not distressed, Cezar,” I snapped. “I realize not much gets through in winter.” I made myself take a deep breath.

Cezar gave a small, knowing smile. That irritated me even more than his ill-advised gesture of comfort. I reminded myself that he had lost his father only a month ago, that he must still be grieving. If his behavior seemed a little out of place, that was probably why.

“It’s kind of you to pay us a visit,” I said, trying to act as Aunt Bogdana might expect under the circumstances. “I’m hoping your mother may be able to receive visitors in return—”

A tap at the door—Paula again. “I can’t find Tati anywhere,” she said. “And there’s a man at the door, his clothes are all ragged, and he says he has no work, no food, and no money, and his wife and children are starving. Florica said to ask you if we can give him something.”

“Some food, of course,” I said, getting up and going to the shelf where our store of silver and copper coin for household expenses was kept in a locked box. There had been a steady stream of travelers to the door of Piscul Dracului since the start of winter, and it did not seem right to send them off without a coin or two in their pockets. The pinched features and tattered garb of these wayfarers worried me. For every man we saw, there would likely be a woman and a gaggle of children out in the woods, trying to survive on what they could get from one landowner’s door to the next. I wondered how many died between one grand house and another. The fields were thick with snow.

“You are overgenerous,” Cezar commented, eyeing the iron-bound box as I placed it on the table and turned the key. “A package of food, a kind word—even that is more than many of these folk deserve. They are wanderers because they don’t know the meaning of hard work, because they have squandered their opportunities. You shouldn’t waste your money—What is it, Jena? What’s wrong?”

I was gaping into the box. Last time I had opened it, to make a small payment to Ivan, it had been three-quarters full, copper well balanced with silver. Now the contents barely covered the bottom, and there were only five silver pieces left. Almost overnight, our winter funds had disappeared.

“Jena?”

I suppose I had gone pale. I sat down slowly, gripping the table for support, my mind desperately seeking explanations. A mistake, some kind of mistake … Someone had moved the money.… Someone had put the household coins in the business
coffer in error.… No, I had checked the business funds myself only this morning.

“Jena, what is it?” Cezar leaned closer, frowning.

“Nothing,” I said, shutting the box with a snap. “Paula, go and tell Florica to give the man food, and to let him warm himself by the stove before he moves on.” My hands were shaking—I clasped them together in my lap as she left. How could this have happened? The only people who knew where the key was kept were Father, my sisters, and me. We all knew this money must be conserved carefully to last all winter and perhaps beyond. How could I pay anyone to come and help Petru? How could I make a family offering at church? How could I go on slipping Ivan a little extra, so that he would see our wares safely transported to Sibiu and beyond? He had come to rely on that, with his family ever expanding and his farm too small to sustain all of them.

“Are you missing some funds? You must tell me,” Cezar said. “Your father expected me to look after you and Piscul Dracului. It’s my right to know.”

Abruptly, I lost my temper. “It is
not
your right!” I retorted, fists clenched on the too-light box. “This place doesn’t belong to you, and nor do we! My father is still alive and he’s going to get better. Go home, Cezar. I don’t need your help. I’m coping perfectly well. I just need to … I just have to—” Then I disgraced myself by starting to cry, because it had come to me that I would have to question every one of my sisters about the missing coins, and that each one would then believe I thought her capable of stealing. I sprang to my feet, turning my back on Cezar, every part of me willing him to go away. Instead, I
heard the sound of my cousin opening the coffer, then his whistling intake of breath.

“This is all you have left?” The coins clinked as he lifted them and dropped them back into the box. “This will barely last you a month, Jena, and that’s only if nothing untoward occurs. You’d best let me handle your domestic expenses from now on. It’s clear you have no idea how to manage them.”

“That’s not true!” I dashed away the tears and turned to face him. “I haven’t mismanaged them. I do possess some intelligence, whatever you may think. The money’s disappeared in the last few days, and I don’t know who’s taken it. I had plenty. I was being careful.”

“Here.” He handed me a silk handkerchief; he was the kind of man who always seemed to have one ready. “Who looks after the key, Jena?”

“Never mind that,” I said, blowing my nose. “It was safe. At least, I thought so. I’ll deal with this, Cezar. I’ll manage somehow.”

He gave me a direct look. “You’d best start by curbing your generosity to vagrants,” he said. “I want to help you. Let us not argue over this. Let me take care of this box, and the one you use for the business. We can’t have that going mysteriously missing, can we? I seem to recall that Uncle keeps it in here—”

I watched, frozen, as my cousin opened what I had believed to be a secret cupboard and helped himself to the much weightier strongbox that held Father’s trading funds. Of course he would know where it was—I hadn’t been thinking. He had visited many times with Uncle Nicolae.

“There’s no need for you to do that,” I said, my voice trembling
with rage and mortification. “I can cope perfectly well. It’s just a temporary setback.”

“Trust me, Jena,” Cezar said. “I have your best interests at heart. I will ensure you have a little for your expenses, week by week, and if anything untoward occurs, you may come to me for whatever additional funds you require. That way I will be in a position to approve each item of expenditure as it arises. It’s only common sense. You are a sensible girl, most of the time.”

Arrogant swine
.

“This isn’t fair!” I snapped, realizing with horror that from Cezar’s point of view, his action was perfectly logical. “You can’t just take over our funds and expect to decide what we can and can’t spend money on. I’m a grown woman, I can deal with this!”

“Let me help you, Jena,” Cezar said mildly. “We’re friends, aren’t we? I want to look after you.” He slipped the ring holding both keys into his pocket, then took up one box under each arm. I could see in his eyes that no argument I could muster was going to make any difference to him. He was a big man, tall and strong; there was no point in trying to take the coffers away from him.

“If we’re friends,” I said, recognizing that I was frightened, “then you’ll stop bullying me and let me handle my own affairs. Yes, there’s a problem, but—”

“Hush, Jena.” He sounded as if he were calming an overexcited dog. “I’m only too happy to be able to spare you this duty. You’ll be provided for, I won’t neglect that. Trust me.”

If a man has to say trust me
, Gogu conveyed,
it’s a sure sign you cannot. Trust him, that is. Trust is a thing you know without words
.

“I don’t think you understand,” I said, bitterly regretting that I had lost my temper; no doubt Cezar saw that as yet another indication of my unreliability. “Trust goes two ways. I know I owe you a debt from long ago, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy to hand over a responsibility that should be mine. I’m not stupid. You know me, and you should know that.”

Cezar had the grace to look a little uncomfortable. “I do trust you, Jena. Of all you girls … But you
are
a woman, and inexperienced in such matters. Your father did ask us to assist you. I’m only doing what Uncle Teodor would want for you.”

“He wouldn’t want you to be the one who decided every last small purchase.” My heart sank at the impossibility of it. “What if I need to pay workers day by day? I can’t make them wait while I run over to Vǎrful cu Negurǎ in the snow.”

“Send me a message when you need men. I’ll arrange to have them here, and I’ll take responsibility for paying them. Jena, this will save you a great deal of trouble. Trust me.”

There he goes again
.

“Let’s find out what Tati thinks,” I said in desperation. If she were at her charming best and exerted her natural authority as the eldest sister, maybe Tati could persuade Cezar that he was being ridiculous. “Come down to the kitchen. I expect we can manage some black currant tea.” I was going to have to break the news to my sisters that we were much lower on basic supplies than they realized. Florica had prepared as well as she could, but there would now be even less in the way of luxuries this winter than we were accustomed to at Piscul Dracului. There was no way I would purchase anything that hinted at extravagance if I had to grovel to Cezar for every copper coin. If
Tati couldn’t convince him to change his mind, it was going to be a steady diet of
mămăligă
.