He wanted breakfast then, and expected it to be served to him. His father had always been waited on by mother, wife, daughter. Was he less a man than his father? Was she to prove it to him? She served him his meal and cleared it away for him, and went back to the orchard where she and Therru and Shandy were burning off a plague of tent caterpillars that threatened to destroy the new-set fruit.
Spark went off to join Clearbrook and Tiff. And he stayed mostly with them, as the days passed. The heavy work requiring muscle and the skilled work with crops and sheep was done by Ged, Shandy, and Tenar, while the two old men who had been there all their lives, his father’s men, took him about and told him how they managed it all, and truly believed they were managing it all, and shared their belief with him.
Tenar became miserable in the house. Only outdoors, at the farmwork, did she have relief from the anger, the shame that Spark’s presence brought her.
“My turn,” she said to Ged, bitterly, in the starlit darkness of their room. “My turn to lose what I was proudest of.”
“What have you lost?”
“My son. The son I did not bring up to be a man. I failed. I failed him.” She bit her lip, gazing dry-eyed into the dark.
Ged did not try to argue with her or persuade her out of her grief. He asked, “Do you think he’ll stay?”
“Yes. He’s afraid to try and go back to sea. He didn’t tell me the truth, or not all the truth, about his ship. He was second mate. I suppose he was involved in carrying stolen goods. Secondhand piracy. I don’t care. Gontish sailors are all half-pirate. But he lies about it. He lies. He is jealous of you. A dishonest, envious man.”
“Frightened, I think,” Ged said. “Not wicked. And it is his farm.”
“Then he can have it! And may it be as generous to him as-”
“No, dear love,” Ged said, catching her with both voice and hands-”don’t speak-don’t say the evil word!” He was so urgent, so passionately earnest, that her anger turned right about into the love that was its source, and she cried, “I wouldn’t curse him, or this place! I didn’t mean it! Only it makes me so sorry, so ashamed! I am so sorry, Ged!”
“No, no, no. My dear, I don’t care what the boy thinks of me. But he’s very hard on you.”
“And Therru. He treats her like- He said, he said to me, ‘What did she do, to look like that?’ What did she do-!”
Ged stroked her hair, as he often did, with a light, slow, repeated caress that would make them both sleepy with loving pleasure.
“I could go off goat-herding again,” he said at last. “It would make things easier for you here. Except for the work.” “
“I’d rather come with you.”
He stroked her hair, and seemed to be considering. “I suppose we might,” he said. “There were a couple of families up there sheep-herding, above Lissu. But then comes the winter… .
“Maybe some farmer would take us on. I know the work-and sheep-and you know goats-and you’re quick at everything-”
“Useful with pitchforks,” he murmured, and got a little sob of a laugh from her.
The next morning Spark was up early to breakfast with them, for he was going fishing with old Tiff. He got up from the table, saying with a better grace than usual, “I’ll bring a mess of fish for supper.
Tenar had made resolves overnight. She said, “Wait; you can clear off the table, Spark. Set the dishes in the sink and put water on ‘em. They’ll be washed with the supper things.”
He stared a moment and said, “That’s women’s work,” putting on his cap.
“It’s anybody’s work who eats in this kitchen.”
“Not mine,” he said flatly, and went out.
She followed him. She stood on the doorstep. “Hawk’s, but not yours?” she demanded.
He merely nodded, going on across the yard.
“It’s too late,” she said, turning back to the kitchen. “Failed, failed.” She could feel the lines in her face, stiff, beside the mouth, between the eyes. “You can water a stone,” she said, “but it won’t grow.”