“Good, then we’ll round up some serpents for you before you come, eh? Or you can clear some of the rats and kittens out of our old barn if you like. I’m glad to know the gift runs true”—this to my father with the same booming geniality—“for I’ve had a thought concerning a granddaughter of mine, my youngest son’s daughter, which we might talk about when you come to Drummant.” He rose. “Now you’ve seen I’m not so much an ogre as maybe you’ve been told”—this to my mother—“you’ll do us the honor of a visit, will you, in May, when the roads are dry?”
“With pleasure, sir,” Melle said, rising also, and she bowed her head above her hands crossed at the fingertips, a Lowland gesture of polite respect, entirely foreign to us.
Ogge stared at her. It was as if the gesture had made her visible to him. Before that he had not really looked at any of us. She stood there respectful and aloof. Her beauty was unlike that of any Upland woman, a fineness of bone, a quickness, a subtle vigor. I saw his big face change, growing heavy with emotions I could not read—amazement, envy, hunger, hate?
He called to his companions, who had been gathered around the table my mother had set for them. They went out to their horses in the courtyard, and all went jangling off. My mother looked at the ruins of the feast. “They ate well,” she said, with a hostess’s pride, but also ruefully, for there was nothing left at all for us of the delicacies she had, with much care and work, provided.
“Like crows on carrion,” Canoc quoted very drily.
She gave a little laugh. “He’s not a diplomat,” she said.
“I don’t know what he is. Or why he came.”
“It seems he came about Orrec.”
My father glanced at me, but I stood planted there, determined to hear.
“Maybe,” he said, clearly trying to defer the discussion at least until I should not be there to hear it.
My mother had no such scruples. “Was he talking of a betrothal?”
“The girl would be of the right age.”
“Orrec’s not fourteen!”
“She’d be a little younger. Twelve or thirteen. But a Caspro through her mother, you see.”
“Two children betrothed to marry?”
“It is nothing uncommon,” Canoc said, his tone getting stiff. “It would be troth only. There’d be no marriage for years.”
“It’s far too young for any kind of arrangement.”
“It can be best to have these things secure and known. A great deal rides on a marriage.”
“I won’t hear of it,” she said quietly, shaking her head. Her tone was not defiant at all, but she did not often declare opposition, and it may have driven my father, tense as he was, farther than he would otherwise have gone.
“I don’t know what Drum wants, but if he proposes a betrothal, it’s a generous offer, and one we must consider. There is no other girl of the true Caspro lineage in the west.” Canoc looked at me, and I could not help but think of how he looked at colts and fillies, with that thoughtful, appraising gaze, seeing what might come of it. Then he turned away and said, “I only wonder why he should propose it. Maybe he means it as a compensation.”
Melle stared.
I had to think it out. Did he mean compensation for the three women he might have married to keep his lineage true, the women Ogge had snatched away, driving him, in defiance, to go and get himself a bride who was of no lineage at all?
My mother went red, redder than I had ever seen her, so that the clear brown of her skin was dark as a winter sunset. She said carefully, “Have you been expecting—compensation?”
Canoc could be as dense as stone. “It would be just,” he said. “It could mend some fences.” He paced down the room. “Daredan wasn’t an old woman. Not too old to bear Sebb Drum this daughter.” He paced back to us and stood looking down, pondering. “We must consider the offer, if he makes it. Drum is an evil enemy. He might be a good friend. If it’s friendship he offers, I must take it. And the chance for Orrec is better than I could hope.”
Melle said nothing. She had stated her opposition, and there was nothing else to say. If the practice of betrothing children was new and distasteful to her, the principle of making a good marriage for one’s child, the use of marriage for financial and social advantage, was perfectly familiar to her. And in these matters of the amity and enmity between domains and the maintenance of a lineage, she was the foreigner, the outsider, who must trust my father’s knowledge and judgment.
But I had some ideas of my own, and with my mother there, on my side, I spoke out. “But if I got betrothed to that girl at Drummant,” I said, “what about Gry?”
Canoc and Melle both turned and looked at me.
“What about Gry?” Canoc said, with an uncharacteristic pretense of stupidity.
“If Gry and I wanted to get betrothed.”
“You’re far too young!” my mother burst out, and then saw where that took her.
My father stood silent for some while. “Ternoc and I have talked of this,” he said, speaking doggedly, heavily, sentence by sentence. “Gry is of a great line, and strong in her gift. Her mother wishes her to be betrothed to Annren Barre of Cordemant, to keep the lineage true. Nothing has been decided. But this girl at Drummant is of our line, Orrec. That’s a matter of very great weight to me, to you, to our people. It’s a chance we cannot throw away. Drum is our neighbor now, and kinship is a way to friendship.”
“We and Roddmant have always been friends,” I said, standing my ground.
“I don’t discount that.” He stood gazing at the despoiled table, undecided for all his decisive speech. “Let it be for now,” he said at last. “Drum may have meant nothing at all. He blows hot and cold at once. We’ll go there in May and know better what’s at stake. It may be I misunderstood him.”
“He is a coarse man, but he seemed to mean to be friendly,” Melle said. “Coarse” was as harsh a word as she used of anyone. It meant she disliked him very much. But she was uncomfortable with distrust, which did not come naturally to her. By seeing goodwill where there was none, often enough she had created it. The people of the household worked with and for her with willing hearts; the sullenest farmers spoke to her cordially, and tight-mouthed old serf women would confide their sorrows to her as to a sister.
I couldn’t wait to go see Gry and talk with her about the visit. I had been kept close to the house while we waited on Ogge’s whim, but usually I was free to go where I pleased, once the work was done; so in the afternoon of the next day, I told my mother I was riding over to Roddmant. She looked at me with her clear eyes, and I blushed, but she said nothing. I asked my father if I could take the red colt. I felt an unusual assurance as I spoke to him. He had seen me show the gift of our lineage, and heard me spoken of as a potential bridegroom. It didn’t surprise me when he said I could ride the colt, without reminding me to keep him from shying at cattle and to walk him after I let him run, as he would have reminded me when I was a boy of thirteen, instead of a man of thirteen.
♦ 7 ♦
I set off, like any man, full of cares and self-importance. The colt Branty had lovely, springy gaits. On the open slopes of Long Meadows, his canter was a dipping flow like a bird’s flight. He ignored the staring cattle; he behaved perfectly, as if he too respected my new authority. I was pleased with both of us as we came, still at a canter, to the Stone House of Roddmant. A girl ran in to tell Gry I had come, while I walked Branty slowly round the courtyard to cool him off. He was such a tall, grand-looking horse, he made the person with him feel grand and admirable too. I strutted like a peacock as Gry came running across the yard to greet us with delight. The colt of course responded to her gift: he looked at her with great interest, ears forward, took a step towards her, bowed his head a little, and pushed his big forehead up against hers. She received the salutation gravely, rubbed his topknot, blew gently into his nostrils, and talked to him with the soft noises she called creature talk. To me she said nothing, but her smile was bright.