“Nattie,” said Dag, his voice a mix of strain and amusement and regret, “I can’t keep this up much longer. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, patroller. It’s enough. Well, not that. But you know.”
“Yes.” Dag sighed and sat back, slumping. Awkwardly, he slipped his splinted arm back in its sling, then bent over, staring at the floor.
“Are you sick again?” asked Fawn, wondering if she should dash for a basin.
“No. Bit of a headache, though. There are things floating in my vision.
There, they’re fading now.” He blinked rapidly and straightened again. “Ow. You people do take it out of me. I feel as though I’d just come off walking patterns for ten days straight. In the worst weather. Over crags.”
Nattie sat up, her tears smearing in tracks like water trickling down a cliff face. She scrubbed at her cheeks and glared around the room that she could no longer see. “My word, this is a grubby hole we’ve been stuffed in all this time, Fawn, lovie. Why didn’t you ever say? I’m going to make the boys whitewash the walls, I am.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” said Fawn. “But I won’t be here.”
“No, but I will.” Nattie sniffed resolutely.
After a few more minutes to recover her stability, Nattie planted her cane and hoisted herself up. “Well, come on, you two. Let’s get this started.”
Fawn and Dag followed her out past the weaving room; once through the door to the kitchen, Fawn cuddled in close to Dag’s left side, and he let his arm drift around behind her back and anchor her there, and maybe himself as well. The whole family was seated around the lamplit table, Papa and Mama and Fletch on the near end, Reed and Rush and Whit beyond. They looked up warily. Whatever conference they were having, they’d kept their voices remarkably low; or else they hadn’t been daring to talk to one another at all.
“Are they all there?” muttered Nattie.
“Yes, Aunt Nattie.”
Nattie stepped up to the center of the kitchen and thumped the floor with her cane, drawing herself up in full Pronouncement Mode such as Fawn had very seldom seen, not since the time Nattie had so-finally settled the argument for damages with the irate Bowyers over the twins’ and Whit’s cow-racing episode, years ago.
Nattie drew a long breath; everyone else held theirs.
“I’m satisfied,” Nattie announced loudly. “Fawn shall have her patroller. Dag shall have his Spark. See to it, Tril and Sorrel. The rest of you lot”—she glared to remarkable effect, when she put her mind to it, the focused blankness making her eyes seem quite uncanny—“behave yourselves, for once!”
And she turned and walked, very briskly, back into her weaving room. Just in case anyone was foolish enough to try to challenge that last word, she gave her cane a jaunty twirl and knocked the door closed behind her.
Chapter 17
Dag woke late from a sodden sleep to find that his next duty in this dance was to ride with Fawn and her parents to West Blue to register their intentions with the village clerk, and to beg his official attendance on the wedding. Fawn was fussed and nervous getting Dag shaved, washed up, and dressed, which confused him at first, because she’d had the help down to a fairly straightforward routine, and despite his fatigue he wasn’t being gracelessly cranky this morning. He finally realized that at last they would be seeing people outside of her family—ones she’d known all her life. And vice versa. It would be the first view most of West Blue would have of Dag the Lakewalker, that lanky fellow Fawn Bluefield dragged home or however he was now known to local gossip.
He tried not to let his imagination descend too far into the disagreeable possibilities, but he couldn’t help reflecting that the only resident of West Blue who had met him so far was Stupid Sunny. It seemed too much to hope that Sunny was not given to gossip, and it was already proven he’d a habit of altering the facts to his own favor. His humiliation was more likely to make him sly than contrite. The Bluefields could well be Dag’s only allies in the farmer community; it seemed a thin thread to hang from. So he let Fawn carry on in her efforts to turn him out presentably, futile as they seemed.
The hamlet, three miles south via the shade-dappled river road, appeared peaceful and serene as Sorrel drove the family horse cart down the main, and seemingly only, street. It was a day for fluffy white clouds against a bright blue sky utterly innocent of any intent to rain, which added to the illusion of good cheer. The principal reasons for the village’s existence seemed to be a grain mill, a small sawmill, and the timber wagon bridge, which showed signs of having been recently widened. Around the little market square, presently largely idle, were a smithy, an alehouse, and a number of other houses, mostly built of the native river stone. Sorrel brought the cart to a halt before one such and led the way inside. Dag ducked his head under en excessively low stone lintel, just missing braining himself.
He straightened cautiously and found the ceiling sufficient. The front room seemed a cross between a farmhouse parlor and a camp lore-tent, with benches, a table, and shelves stuffed with papers, rolled parchments, and bound record books. The litter of records flooded on into the rooms beyond. In through the back hall bustled the clerk himself, who seemed, by the way he dusted the knees of his trousers, to have been interrupted in the midst of gardening. He was on the high side of middle age, sharp-nosed, potbellied, and perky, and was introduced to Dag by the very farmerly name of Shep Sower.
He greeted the Bluefields as old friends and neighbors, but he was clearly taken aback by Dag. “Well, well, well!” he said, when Sorrel, with determined help from Fawn, explained the reason for the visit. “So it’s true!” His stout but equally perky wife arrived, gaped at Dag, dipped her knees rather like Fawn upon introduction, smiled a bit frantically, and dragged Tril away out of earshot.
The registry process was not complex. It consisted of the clerk’s first finding the right record book, tall and thick and bound in leather, dumping it open on the table, thumbing through to the most recent page, and affixing the date and penning a few lines under some similar entries. He required the place and date of birth and parents’ names of both members of the couple—he didn’t even ask before jotting down Fawn’s, although his hand hesitated and the pen sputtered when Dag recited his own birth date; after a doubtful stare upward, he blotted hastily and asked Dag to repeat it. Sorrel handed him the rough notes of the marriage agreement, to be written out properly in a fair hand, and Sower read it quickly and asked a few clarifying questions.
It was only at this point that Dag discovered there was a fee for this service, and it was customary for the would-be husband to pay it. Fortunately, he had not left his purse with his other things at the farm, and doubly fortunately, because they had been far longer about this journey than he’d planned, he still had some Silver Shoals copper crays, which sufficed. He had Fawn fish the little leather bag from his pocket and pay up. Apparently, arrangements could also be made for payment in kind, for the coinless.
“There always come some here who can’t sign their own names,” Sower informed Dag, with a nod at his sling. “I sign for them, and they make their X, and the witnesses sign to confirm it.”
“It’s been six days since I busted the arm,” said Dag a little tightly. “For this, I think I can manage.” He did let Fawn go first, watching her closely.