“I guess that’s how I feel, too.”
“Then we are agreeing on two things.”
“Two?”
“We are agreeing on what is minor and what is principle.”
She sat back, suddenly relaxed. This duty might not be so bad. He seemed all right. The expression on her face was mirrored on his, and they both smiled, pleased to be with one another, beginning to anticipate whatever it was that was coming. The server interrupted this calm to bring Gandro’s sandwich, which he sniffed at, tasted, and pronounced real—or so close as made no difference.
Though soothed, Ellin was not entirely willing to give up worrying. “You know, even though we’re both History House contractees, even though we think we know the period, this Newholme could be totally different from anything we know about.”
“Oh,” he nodded, chewing, his face very serious, “I am having no doubt about that. I am sure it is being very, very strange.”
15—Marool Mantelby
West of Sendoph, the terraces were narrower and steeper than in the farmlands to the east, climbing from the river in a great stair flight that ended on a final set of wooded ridges where the homes of the elite were built, very near the wilderlands. There among others of its kind stood the mansion of Mistress Marool Mantelby—Monstrous Marool, as she was known to some—the youngest of eight sisters, whose parents had done Marool great services firstly by having had no sons, and secondly by having died along with their eldest daughter, after they had sold off six younger daughters but before they had been able to sell Marool herself.
Her prosperity had come upon her thuswise:
Margon g’Mantelby the elder, Marool’s grandfather, had dowered in for his son, Margon Jr., a very expensive daughter of the Rikajors, a family known to run to girls. Though the Rikajor girls had a high opinion of themselves, Margon Jr. was an acceptable if not intelligent candidate, and the Mantelby fortune, gained through the fiber trade, was large and growing. Margon g’Mantelby’s offer was accepted, and Stella was dowered in to the Mantlebys.
In the first five years of their marriage Stella outdid herself in the production of five daughters, all born at home. Though the Margons, Sr. and Jr., gave every public evidence of pleasure in accepting the congratulations of their peers, they were heard to remark among friends that a male child would have been acceptable. The girls, after all, would be dowered away from the line. Where were the Margon sons to continue the line itself? Who would inherit? One did not want as heir a dowered-out nobody! One wanted a son as like oneself as possible!
Mayelan, the eldest daughter, and her two oldest sisters were much cosseted. The next two were not so much admired. Margon Sr. had died by the time numbers six and seven, twins, were born, and the last daughter, Marool, born three years after her next sister, was the straw—so Margon said in private—that fucked the camel. It had been the last attempt to produce a son, as Margon and Stella had been married ten years, and Stella’s contract provided that after that term she might select a Hunk to keep her company and take her about the city and do what Hunks were known to do so well.
Thus Marool was born into a house in which fortune was assured, domestic tranquility was without fault, and her father seldom talked with her mother. Or vice versa. The Hunk was very nice, but he was her mother’s Hunk, and though Hunks were taught to cosset children, they were also cautioned not to overdo it. Girls could be ruined by too much charm too early in their lives, for the reality of marriage would then come as too great a shock.
In truth, the Hunk was not even tempted to cosset Marool. Unlike her sisters—tall, pale girls with blunted edges, like monuments of warm wax—Marool was dark and pudgy in the places she was not sharp, the first of her many contradictions. She was born angry. Her first words, to her heedless chatron-nanny, were “I hate you.” In this, as in most of her later life, she was completely truthful, for she did not care enough about anyone’s opinion to lie.