“You’ll be wanting even more iron, then, won’t you?” he said with a sigh of resignation. “D’you know how much it costs these days?”
“Any that’s spoiled in practice can be melted down and used again,” Alun blithely assured him.
A CARTER CAME ONTO the farm one day, bearing a message for me from my mother. It had been written before the winter solstice and was a list of her present dissatisfactions, including the fact that my sister Flora had been married and I hadn’t come to be witness.
Salutations to Galwyn Gains Varianus from his grieving mother, Serena, widow of Decitus Varianus, who is in good health despite her condition and who hopes to find you well.
Have you forgotten how to write and read so that you do not answer my last letter and give us no word of you since the scrawl that the carter brought us? You should have paid more attention to your tutors when you still had them. But there are others, surely, there in the north where you say you went, who are able to read and could have written on your behalf. Your sisters have persuaded me, against myi better judgment, that it is possible that you were unable to convince your employers to let you come to your sister Flora’s nuptials.
As this was the first letter I had received from anyone, I had to assume that a previous letter, containing the news of Flora’s imminent wedding, had not reached me. How like my mother to think I could have forgotten how to read and write!
Lavinia insists that you were unable to come- rather than too lazy to make the journey. But surely you know that it would have been your duty to give your sister’s hand, as you are the legal guardian of both sisters, though I know you are fonder of Lavinia than Flora but she is the elder and deserves your courtesy. You could at least have answered my letter.
Had you not left the employ of your uncle Gra-lior you would have been given leave to attend a family Junction. Indeed, he was here where you were not, and still displeased that you left his employ so precipitously. I thought you had been raised with more attention to courtesies and I cannot understand why you would distress your uncle who had great hopes for you in his business.
That was certainly the first I had heard of his hopes for me.
We are well enough here, though the winter was cold and I suffered from it badly with my feet and hands swollen with the chilblains you know I al-
ways have when I have to bide in an unheated place like this poor little house I must now occupy.
I am surprised, too, that you have made no attempt to see your family since your father’s unfortunate demise. At least for the Winter Solstice, when it is the habit for families to come together. Not that we had much of a celebration but as much as I could manage. You would have been comfortable enough in the shed but it was most unkind of you not to come to Flora’s wedding. She and Lavinia cried over your absence but I told them what could they expect of a boy who would leave a good position to go the gods knew where with strangers.
I close this now. Vale, your grieving mother.
The letter was both infuriating and depressing. It was true that Lavinia and I had always been the best of friends, but I would certainly have been happy to have attended Flora’s wedding, to see her happy. Even if it had meant being in Uncle Gralior’s company. Obviously he had filled my mother’s head with nonsense. “Hopes for my future” indeed! I was a lot better off with strangers than I had been on my uncle’s ship.
I moped over her unkind words and accusations. Begging a piece of vellum from Teldys, I started to compose an appropriate response, not quite denouncing Gra-lior for the mean and brutal man he was but making it plain to her that I was in a much better situation in Lord Artos’s service.