I added. I took his bridle down from its hook and he raised his head at once and watched me intently. I freed the red rose that hung from the strap across the forehead, and replaced the bridle, and the horse relaxed. “Good night, little one,” I said, slapping his massive hindquarters, and made my way softly back to the house. I took a deep bowl from the kitchen, filled it with water, and tiptoed back upstairs. I put rose and bowl on the window sill; and suddenly I realized that I was exhausted. I pulled my clothes off, and fell asleep as soon as I lay down.
5
Two days passed as quickly as a sigh. On the third day Greatheart and Cider were discovered to have escaped the stable, and were grazing, side by side, by the enchanted stream. Greatheart, to everyone’s surprise, was inclined to get a little huffy and snorty when Ger went to catch him, and wouldn’t let him near the mare, who stood still, ears forward, and awaited developments. I had been watching the show from the kitchen door, chewing lazily on a piece of bread and Grace’s blackberry jelly, but then I went across to join them. “Your overgrown lapdog has some temperament after all,” said Ger with a rueful smile.
“I’ll try,” I said. “We could be all day chasing them.
“Here, you great idiot,” I continued, walking towards the horse, who stood in front of his mare, watching my approach, “you’ve had your fun, a proper night of it I daresay. Now you can behave. Duty calls.” I stopped a few feet away, and held my hand out, palm up, with the last of the bread and jelly. “I’ll put you in with the cow if you’re not good,” I added. We held each other’s eyes for a moment, then Greatheart dropped his head with a sigh, and ambled over to me, and put his nose in my hand. “Cart-horse,” I said affectionately, and slid the halter I had thoughtfully brought with me over his head. Greatheart only flicked an ear as Ger slid a rope around the docile Cider’s neck, and we returned them to the stable, Greatheart investigating all my pockets for more bread. “This should be quite a foal,” said Ger. “I hope it takes after its daddy.”
“Maybe she’ll follow the family precedent and have twins,” I suggested. The father of the twins gave me a pained look, and we went in to breakfast.
I still hadn’t told Grace about Robbie; I dreaded it, knowing the heartache she had already been through, and while I knew that what I had seen in the Beast’s glass was true, it was so little, so very little to ruin Grace’s precarious peace of mind. And since die Beast was persona non grata at home anyway, I disliked the prospect of explaining the source of my information; my family would not have the faith I did in his veracity, and the possibility of truth in what I had seen would cause an uproar in several different directions at once. So I continued to put it off, and continued to scold myself feebly for so doing.
But that afternoon the minister came to call, Hope and Grace and I were all in the kitchen, and Grace asked us with a look to stay. I had not seen Pat Lawrey since my return, and I found myself estimating his worth with the cold calculation Ger used on a fresh load of pig iron, as he smiled and shook my hand and told me how well I was looking and how glad everyone was to see me. He was a nice young man, to be sure, I thought, but not much else. Grace can’t marry him, I thought with a touch of fear; no wonder she still remembers Robbie. Tonight, I thought. No more delays.
Melinda’s son John, the boy who worked for Ger, had spread the word of my return the day after my unexpected arrival, and the house since then had seen a steady stream of visitors, some of them old friends like Melinda and her large family, and some merely acquaintances curious to see the prodigal. All wanted to know what life in the city was like, and I put most of their questions off, and lied uncomfortably when I had to. Everyone thought it was very odd that I had turned up so suddenly, like a mushroom, or a changeling in a cradle.
Melinda had come the very first day; John had gone home for his dinner at noon, instead of eating with us, so he could start broadcasting the news as soon as possible. Melinda came back with him in the afternoon, and kissed me and shook me by the shoulders and told me I looked marvelous and how I’d grown! Her questions were the hardest to turn aside; she wanted very much to know why she hadn’t seen me coming through town—everything that happened in Blue Hill happened in front of the Griffin—and what my aunt meant by letting me come alone, and whether there really had been no warning. She obviously thought I was being treated very shabbily, and only her good manners prevented her from saying so outright. I tried to explain that I’d left the party I traveled with for only the last few miles, but she refused to be mollified. Then she was shocked that I could stay only a week—“After six, seven months, and a six weeks’ journey to come here at all? The woman’s mad. When are you coming again?”
“I don’t know,” I said unhappily.
“You don’t—” she started, saw the expression on my face, and stopped abruptly. “Well, I’ll say no more. These are family matters, and I’ve no call to be meddling. There’s more here than you care to tell me, and that’s as it should be; I’m no kin of yours. But I’m fond of you, child, so I hope you’ll excuse me; I’d have liked to have seen more of you, but you’re here for so little I’ll have to leave you to your family.”
I was glad to see her, but her common sense and my inability to answer her straightforward questions distressed me, and I was relieved when she took her leave. The only bright spot was watching her and Father together: They spoke for a few minutes apart from the rest of us, after she had already bid us good-bye. They were smiling at each other in a foolish sort of way that they obviously weren’t aware of; and I caught Hope watching them narrowly. She caught my eye, smiled just enough for me to recognize it as a smile, and winked slowly. We turned our backs on them and returned to the kitchen, where Grace had gone already, soberly discussing the dyeing of yarn.
John also took home the tale of the wonderful new bellows—brass-bound!—that I had brought from the city, which served to soften the opinions of people like his mother toward my evil-minded aunt. Ger had found the bellows hung mysteriously in the place of the old ones, which had disappeared, a scant few minutes before John had arrived that first morning after I had come home, and had just the presence of mind to explain where they were from. John swore they were more than twice as easy to pump as the old ones, for all they were so much bigger.
The smooth white road that had brought me to my own back door had disappeared as though it had never been. That morning, while Ger was discovering his new equipment, I was walking along the edge of the forest. I could find Greatheart’s hoofprints, where he had jumped over the thorny hedge that grew irregularly it the forest’s border, but behind it, nothing. Nothing but rocks and leaves and dirt and pine needles: no road, no hoofprints, no sign even of arty large animal forcing its way through the underbrush.
I was still staring at Greatheart’s hoofprints as though they were runes when the first visitors arrived with work for Ger and Father, and discovered the lost Iamb returned to the fold. The house was full of people for that day, and the day after, and the day after; I’d forgotten there were so many people in Blue Hill. But my mysterious arrival piqued their curiosity, and many of the men still remembered Greatheart’s strength, and came out to wish us well, and to drink some of our cider.
That third day, Molly arrived shortly before Mr. Lawrey left, ostensibly to deliver a big jar of Melinda’s famous pickles, which she remembered I was fond of, but actually to ask me again about the city. “She must keep you locked in the attic,” Molly said impulsively. “You haven’t seen anything.”
“Well, mostly I study,” I said apologetically.