As he did, Susan looked up along the rise of land and saw the great herd, now untended and unravelling at the edges. They had done that much, perhaps. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
“Do you need to do the necessary?” Reynolds asked. “I’ll help you down if you do, but don’t say no now and whine about it later.”
“Ye’re afraid. Big brave regulator that ye are, ye’re scared, ain’t ye? Aye, coffin tattoo and all.”
Reynolds tried a contemptuous grin. It didn’t fit his face very well this morning.
“You ort to leave the fortune-telling to those that are good at it, missy. Now do you need a necessary stop or not?”
“No. And ye are afraid. Of what?”
Reynolds, who only knew that his bad feeling hadn’t left him when he left Jonas, as he’d hoped it would, bared his tobacco-stained teeth at her. “If you can’t talk sensible, just shut up.”
“Why don’t ye let me go? Perhaps my friends will do the same for you, when they catch us up.”
This time Reynolds grunted laughter which was almost genuine. He swung himself into his saddle, hawked, spat. Overhead, Demon Moon was a pale and bloated ball in the sky. “You can dream, miss’sai,” he said, “dreaming’s free. But you ain’t never going to see those three again. They’re for the worms, they are.
Now let’s ride.”
They rode.
19
Cordelia hadn’t gone to bed at all on Reaping Eve. She sat the night through in her parlor chair, and although there was sewing on her lap, she had put not a single stitch in nor picked one out. Now, as morning’s light brightened toward ten o’ the clock, she sat in the same chair, looking out at nothing. What was there to look at, anyway? Everything had come down with a smash—all her hopes of the fortune Thorin would settle on Susan and Susan’s child, perhaps while he still lived, certainly in his dead-letter; all her hopes of ascending to her proper place in the community; all her plans for the future. Swept away by two wilful young people who couldn’t keep their pants up.
She sat in her old chair with her knitting on her lap and the ashes Susan had smeared on her cheek standing out like a brand, and thought:
They’ll find me dead in this chair, someday—old, poor, and forgotten. That ungrateful child! After all I did for her!
What roused her was a weak scratching at the window. She had no idea how long it had been going on before it finally intruded on her consciousness, but when it did, she laid her needlework aside and got up to see. A bird, perhaps. Or children playing Reaping jokes, unaware that the world had come to an end. Whatever it was, she would shoo it away.
Cordelia saw nothing at first. Then, as she was about to turn away, she spied a pony and cart at the edge of the yard. The cart was a little disquieting—black, with gold symbols overpainted—and the pony in the shafts stood with its head lowered, not grazing, looking as if it had been run half to death.
She was still frowning out at this when a twisted, filthy hand rose in the air directly in front of her and began to scratch at the glass again. Cordelia gasped and clapped both hands to her bosom as her heart took a startled leap in her chest. She backed up a step, and gave a little shriek as her calf brushed the tender of the stove.
The long, dirty nails scratched twice more, then fell away.
Cordelia stood where she was for a moment, irresolute, then went to the door,
stopping at the woodbox to pick up a chunk of ash which fitted her hand. Just in case. Then she jerked the door open, went to the comer of the house, drew in a deep, steadying breath, and went around to the garden side, raising the ash-chunk as she did.
“Get out, whoever ye are! Scat before I—”
Her voice was stilled by what she saw: an incredibly old woman crawling through the frost-killed flowerbed next to the house—crawling toward her. The crone’s stringy white hair (what remained of it) hung in her face. Sores festered on her cheeks and brow; her lips had split and drizzled blood down her pointed, warty chin. The corneas of her eyes had gone a filthy gray-yellow, and she panted like a cracked bellows as she moved.
“Good woman, help me,” this specter gasped. “Help me if ye will, for I’m about done up.”
The hand holding the chunk of ash sagged. Cordelia could hardly believe what she was seeing. “Rhea?” she whispered. “Is it Rhea?”
“Aye,” Rhea whispered, crawling relentlessly through the dead silk-flowers, dragging her hands through the cold earth. “Help me.”
Cordelia retreated a step, her makeshift bludgeon now hanging at her knee. “No, I… I can’t have such as thee in my house … I’m sorry to see ye so, but . . . but I have a reputation, ye ken . . . folk watch me close, so they do …”
She glanced at the High Street as she said this, as if expecting to see a line of townspeople outside her gate, watching eagerly, avid to fleet their wretched gossip on its lying way, but there was no one there. Hambry was quiet, its walks and byways empty, the customary joyous noise of Reaping Fair-Day stilled. She looked back at the thing which had fetched up in her dead flowers.
“Yer niece … did this . . .” the thing in the dirt whispered. “All . . . her fault . . .”
Cordelia dropped the chunk of wood. It clipped the side of her ankle, but she hardly noticed. Her hands curled into fists before her.
“Help me,” Rhea whispered. “I know … where she is … we … we have work, us two … women’s . . . work …”
Cordelia hesitated a moment, then went to the woman, knelt, got an arm around her, and somehow got her to her feet. The smell coming off her was reeky and nauseating—the smell of decomposing flesh.
Bony fingers caressed Cordelia’s cheek and the side of her neck as she helped the
hag into the house. Cordelia’s flesh crawled, but she didn’t pull away until Rhea collapsed into a chair, gasping from one end and farting from the other.
“Listen to me,” the old woman hissed.
“I am.” Cordelia drew a chair over and sat beside her. At death’s door she might be, but once her eye fell on you, it was strangely hard to look away. Now Rhea’s fingers dipped inside the bodice of her dirty dress, brought out a silver charm of some kind, and began to move it back and forth rapidly, as if telling beads.
Cordelia, who hadn’t felt sleepy all night, began to feel that way now.
“The others are beyond us,” Rhea said, “and the ball has slipped my grasp. But she—! Back to Mayor’s House she’s been ta’en, and mayhap we could see to her—we could do that much, aye.”
“You can’t see to anything,” Cordelia said distantly. “You’re dying.”
Rhea wheezed laughter and a trickle of yellowish drool. “Dying? Nay! Just done up and in need of a refreshment. Now listen to me, Cordelia daughter of Hiram and sister of Pat!”
She hooked a bony (and surprisingly strong) arm around Cordelia’s neck and drew her close. At the same time she raised her other hand, twirling the silver medallion in front of Cordelia’s wide eyes. The crone whispered, and after a bit Cordelia began to nod her understanding.
“Do it, then,” the old woman said, letting go. She slumped back in her chair, exhausted. “Now, for I can’t last much longer as I am. And I’ll need a bit o’ time after, mind ye. To revive, like.”
Cordelia moved across the room to the kitchen area. There, on the counter beside the hand-pump, was a wooden block in which were sheathed the two sharp knives of the house. She took one and came back. Her eyes were distant and far, as Susan’s had been when she and Rhea stood in the open doorway of Rhea’s hut in the light of the Kissing Moon.
“Would ye pay her back?” Rhea asked. “For that’s why I’ve come to ye.”
“Miss Oh So Young and Pretty,” Cordelia murmured in a barely audible voice.
The hand not holding the knife floated up to her face and touched her ash-smeared cheek. “Yes. I’d be repaid of her, so I would.”
“To the death?”
“Aye. Hers or mine.”
” ‘Twill be hers,” Rhea said, “never fear it. Now refresh me, Cordelia. Give me
what I need!”
Cordelia unbuttoned her dress down the front, pushing it open to reveal an ungenerous bosom and a middle which had begun to curve out in the last year or so, making a tidy little potbelly. Yet she still had the vestige of a waist, and it was here she used the knife, cutting through her shift and the top layers of flesh beneath. The white cotton began to bloom red at once along the slit.