“We did more than talk,” said Gird, stripping the first two teats and going on to the next.
“You can’t mean—you’re not betrothed? Gird, you know you have to ask—”
Gird grinned into the cow’s flank and squirted a stream of milk at Arin, who had come to stand by her hip. “Not betrothed, but more than talk. Lady’s grace, Arin, you know what I mean. And I will ask for her, just you wait.”
“But are you sure? The first time you’ve been out with the lasses since before—” he stopped short, and reddened. Gird laughed.
“Since before I left the guards, you mean, and you’re right. So you think it’s like a blind man’s first vision, and I should wait and see? So she said, but I tell you, Arin, this is my wife. You’ll like her.”
“I hope so,” said Arin soberly. “Best tell Da.”
“After milking.” He finished the brindle cow, and took both buckets into the kitchen.
His mother gave him one look and said “Who?” Gird looked at her. “Is it so obvious?”
“To a woman and a wife? Did you think I was blind, lad? No, you’re a lad no more. Man, then. You’ve found a woman, and bedded her, and now you want to marry.”
“True, then. What d’you think?”
She looked at him, a long measuring look. “About time, I think. If you’re ready. You’ve spent long enough sulking—”
“I know,” he said, to forestall what was coming. She shook her head at him, but didn’t continue the familiar lecture.
“Well, then—I don’t know where the fee’s coming from, but you can earn that. What’s her parrion?”
“Herbcraft and cooking.” He held his breath; his mother had always talked of finding a wife with a parrion to complement hers: another weaver or spinner, perhaps a dyer.
“Well enough. No lad—man—takes advice of his mother, but you think now, Gird—is she quarrelsome? The house will be no larger for cross words.” That was said low; Arin’s wife was still in the other room, and she had brought, his mother had said once, a parrion of complaining.
“Not—quarrelsome.” She had said she was freespoken, but nothing in her voice had sent the rasp along his skin.
“Best tell your father.” She gave him a quick smile. “If she’s brought you laughter again, Gird, I’ll give her no trouble. It’s been a long drought.”
His father, still hunched over his breakfast, brightened when Gird told him. Arin’s wife said nothing, briskly leading her oldest out the front door. His father leaned close.
“Comely, is she?”
“She’s—” Gird could not think of words. She had been starlight and scent, warmth and strength and joy, all wrapped in one. “She’s strong,” he offered. His father laughed.
“You sound like the lad you were. Strong didn’t give that gleam to your eye, I’ll warrant. There’s more to the lass than muscle. When will you go to her father?”
“Soon. I—I’m not sure.”
His father whistled the chorus of “Nutting in the Woods” and laughed again. “Young men. By the gods, boy, I remember your mother—” Gird was shocked. His mother had been his mother—that capable, hard-handed woman in long apron, spooning out porridge or carding wool or weaving—all his life. His father had gone on. “Hair in a cloud of light around her face, and she smelled like—like—I suppose all girls do, in their spring. Never a young lad can resist that, Gird; we all go that way, rams to the ewes and bulls to the cows, and spend the rest of our days yoked in harness—but it’s times like this make it worthwhile.”
“Eh?” He had not followed all that; his father’s words brought back Mali’s scent, as if she stood next to him, as if she lay—and he pulled his mind back with an effort.
His father thumped the table. “To see sons ready to wed themselves, strong sons: that’s what’s worth the work, Gird. To see you with your eyes clear and your mind on something but the past.”
Gird shrugged. The self of yesterday, the self that had had nothing to hope for, was gone as if it had never lived.
“ ’Tis the Lady’s power,” said his father. “She can bring spring to any field.” This no longer embarrassed Gird; he had returned whole-hearted to his family’s beliefs.
His visit to Fireoak began auspiciously. Mali’s own mother had seen his mother’s weaving at the tradefair years before.
“She has the parrion for the firtree pattern,” the woman said. She was as tall as Mali, but spare, her dark hair streaked with gray. “If she has not the parrion for the barley pattern, I would be glad to trade.” Gird knew that his mother had wanted the barley pattern for years, and had never been able to work it out herself. She had bestowed the firtree pattern on Arin’s wife’s aunt; surely she would trade with his wife’s mother. He nodded: no commitment, but possibility.
Mali herself was kneading bread, her arms flour-smudged to the elbows. The scar she’d told him of was obvious enough, along the right cheek, more broad than deep. He didn’t care; he had known he would not care. It was hard to be that close to her, in the same air, and not holding her. Her eyes twinkled at him: agreement. Then she looked back at the bread dough and pummeled it again. He could feel once more her fist on his arm, the strength of her. She was strong inside and out; his knees weakened as he remembered the feel of her body all along his on the starlit grass.
“Mali’s not the quietest girl,” said Mali’s father. He was not so dark as Mali and her mother, a brown square man with a graying beard, almost bald. “She’s got a quick tongue.”
“Gird knows that,” said Mali, flipping the dough and slamming it down again.
“Like that,” said her father. Gird smiled at him.
“Better a quick tongue than one full of malice,” he said, misquoting the old proverb on purpose.
“Oh, aye, if it’s not quick into the pot. Good cook; her parrion’s valuable.” That began the bargaining phase. A daughter’s parrion was a family’s most valuable possession, the secrets and inherited talent of generations of women passed to a chosen carrier. A valuable parrion enriched the household gaining it, and impoverished those left behind. The lords’ fee for marriage was the same for all of the same rank, but he would owe Mali’s family for her parrion.
At least it meant that her family found his acceptable, and she must have agreed as well. Despite all the lords had done, the people had never come over to thinking that girls had to go where their families bestowed them. Marriage was, in the old rituals, the mingling of fires on a hearth—and if either failed to kindle, the marriage could not be.
Arin had come along for the bargaining phase, since Gird was neither holder nor heir. Gird and Mali escaped to the smallgarden, there to stand awkwardly staring at each other, in full view of her village. An amazing number of people seemed to need to go back and forth in the lane. Gird knew none of them, but noticed the same small boys driving the same goats up and down, a girl in a red skirt carrying a basket—full, then empty, then full again—past the gate. Mali finally began to laugh.
“It’s true—they’re just seeing how long we can stand here, and expecting one of us to turn tail and run.”
“The scar doesn’t matter.” The words were out before he thought; she flushed and it showed whiter. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“No—I’m used to it. I thought you’d come anyway, and I thought you’d still—but I’m blushing because it’s my fault.”
“Fault?”
She looked away past his shoulder. “I had heard of you; I went there to meet you, and no one else. And meeting you, I wanted you—and then—”
“And then I wanted you. So?”
“So—I still want you, but—don’t bring it back to me, years from now.”
“No.” He moved closer to her, ignoring the women now carrying buckets past on their way to the well. “No, it was meant. The Lady meant it, maybe, or some other god.” He put his arm around her waist, and she leaned on him. He could have carried her off to the barton, then and there, but Arin came out looking pleased.