Robin Hobb - The Inheritance and Other Stories

She was coming to her feet when she heard his voice behind her. Startled, she stumbled away from him, trampling her own seedlings. “Damn!” she cried, and then spun to face him.

“All I said was hello.” Pell smiled at her. The expression was uneasy on his face, as if it clung to his mouth despite his eyes. He was as tall as she remembered him, and as handsome. He’d grown a beard, and it was as curly as his dark hair. His shirt was blue with embroidery on the sleeves, and his shining knee boots were black. His belt was heavy black leather, and he wore an ivory-handled knife in a fine sheath at his hip. Dressed like a merchant’s son, and as always, aware of just how good he looked. Handsome, handsome Pell, the dandy of the village. She stared at him, and his smile grew broader. He had once been hers. How amazed she had been at that, when he chose her. How grateful and how accommodating she had been, in her astonishment. She should have known she couldn’t hold him. Not even with his baby in her belly. He had left her, just as her mother had warned her he would.

And now he had come back. She found herself gripping her old anger, telling herself that she felt no attraction to him at all. She reminded herself of all the nights of weeping over how he had left her, heavy with child, to chase after lovely Meddalee Morrany and her father’s wealth. All those nights of anguish and longing for his presence in her bed, for a man to protect her and help her. She recalled all the doubts that had plagued her; she’d been too homely to hold him, too fat with her pregnancy, too undesirable. And now she looked at him, her long-strayed lover, and felt not one jot of desire for him. Beautiful Pell meant only sorrow to her. She would not be a fool for him again.

“Aren’t you going to say anything to me?” he asked her. He tilted his head, his soft brown hair dancing in the evening wind and aimed his smile at her. Once that smile had been deadly to her willpower. Had it changed, or was it weakened by the brown beard that masked it? Had she changed that much?

“Can’t think of anything to say.” She stooped and carefully plucked at a cabbage seedling to coax it upright again. She gently patted earth back around it. When she looked up, he was still smiling down on her. Fondly. She gritted her teeth. “What do you want?”

“I’m home,” he said simply, as if that explained everything, excused everything. “I’ve come back to you, Rosemary.” He sighed and softened the smile a bit. “I know what you’re thinking, girl. But it was a boy who ran away and left you. It’s a man who has come back to you, and a wiser man, now. I’ve been out in the world and seen how things are.” His voice seemed to firm. “I know what I’ve got to do now to set my life right. I’m ready to do it, no matter how hard.”

That was all he offered, she noticed. That he was wiser. That coming back to her and her son was hard. No apology for what he’d done to her, how he’d humiliated her before the whole village. No thought for what she’d been through, how she’d managed the birth of his child and the raising of the boy since then. No questions on how she had survived while he was “out in the world.” Nothing like that. Only that he was wiser for the experience.

“I think I’m wiser, too,” she said. She dusted her hands on her skirts as she rose. Dirt clung to the rough skin of her palm and had packed under her nails. Why did she notice that now? Was it only because he was back? She circled wide of him and then was annoyed that she had to wait for him to leave the garden patch before she could shut the gate behind him. If she didn’t gate it shut, the chickens would be up at dawn to scratch and peck every seed and seedling from the earth. Even with the fence, she had to keep an eye on them. Often it was only Marmalade sleeping on the warm dry earth of the garden that kept the birds out.

“We were too young, Rosemary. We made a lot of mistakes, and those mistakes trapped me. I got scared. I should have been stronger. I wasn’t. But I don’t think they should shape the rest of my life. I’m going to face up to my tasks and make things right. I’m ready to build the life I was meant to live.” He looked so earnest. He never looked away from her. Once she would have fallen into that dark gaze. Once she had believed she could read his heart in that gaze. She shook her head and looked away from it.

“I’ve built my life, Pell. And there’s no room in it for you. Gillam fills it up completely.”

He stiffened at that. “Gillam?” He sounded puzzled.

It took her a moment to realize the cause. “Your son,” she replied crisply. “I named him Gillam.”

“Gillam? But I said we’d name him Will, if the baby was a boy. After my friend, Will the tailor. Remember?”

“I remember.” She dragged the stubborn gate into place. “I changed my mind when he was born. I changed my mind about a lot of things in those days.” She looped the tie around the gate. “Gillam is a name from my family line. My mother’s father was named Gillam. I decided I’d give Gillam my family’s heritage.”

She stood still, staring at him. The day was growing cooler. She gathered her shawl around her. She wanted to go back to the cottage, to poke up the banked embers and warm the soup and toast some bread for supper. Gillam would wake soon. He was a good little fellow, but she didn’t like to leave him alone when he was awake. Yet as much as she wanted to do those things, she didn’t move. If she went back to the cottage, she was certain he would follow her. And she didn’t want to see him go inside, didn’t want to see him look at her son. She didn’t want his praise for all she’d done, or his disdain that it was, still, a little run-down cottage on the farthest outskirts of the village. He’d never liked the place, not since the first day his grandfather had given it to him. He’d never wanted to live in it, with its smoky chimney and leaky roof. Yet now she feared that he would want it, if he saw it tidy and cozy.

Worse, she feared he would want his son. And Gillam was all she had. He belonged to her, every bit of him. It was why she had named him to anchor him to her lineage, not Pell’s. There would be no sharing of Gillam. Pell had missed his chance for that.

“Let’s go inside and talk,” he said quietly. “You have to listen to what I have to say to you.”

“I have nothing to say to you,” she replied.

“Well, perhaps I have things to say to you. And it’s getting cold. I’m going inside. Follow me.”

And he turned and walked away from her, toward the cottage, knowing that she must follow him. It galled her. It reminded her too sharply of the last time she’d had to obey him.

It had been winter, with the rain coming down in sheets as it always did along the Buck coast. They’d gone to town, to spend most of the few coins they had on a sack of potatoes and three pieces of salt cod. She’d been carrying the cod, wrapped in a piece of greased paper, and he’d had the sack of potatoes on his shoulder. A sudden rain squall had caught them just at the edge of town. Her head had been bent to the wind, and the rain had been running down into her eyes. When he spoke sharply to her, she knew that he must have said her name before. “Rosemary! Take the potatoes, I said!”

She turned back to him, wondering why he wanted her to carry them. They were not a large load, but her belly was big with the baby, and the mud sucking at her old shoes made her so tired she already wanted to cry. “Why?” she asked, blinking rain away as he put the mesh bag into her arms.

“Can’t you see I’ve got to help her? She’s trapped, poor thing!”

She had not had a hand free to wipe her eyes. She blinked her lashes quickly and saw that a child in a yellow dress was standing under a tree at the side of the road. Her arms were wrapped around her, her shoulders hunched to the rain. Her flimsy cloak of lace was no protection against the sudden storm.