Robin Hobb - The Inheritance and Other Stories

“But everything I own is there, and not much of it is portable! And the cottage rightfully belongs to Gillam, not him.”

“The cottage will still be there when he is a man grown and he can come back to claim it then.” Tarsha was emphatic. “Run, girl.”

“I can’t. I won’t! Should I run off and leave the cow? The chickens? Everything I’ve worked so hard to build up in the last three years? Just take Gillam and set off into the world without a coin to my name?”

Tarsha had been visiting Serran when Rosemary arrived. They’d all been washing together, for Serran had decided her house needed a spring cleaning that included laundering all the bedding. It had been a companionable time, with Gillam playing with little Marsh and the women all chatting together. It would have been fun if the topic hadn’t been her personal danger.

“Better a live beggar than . . . well, than anything else you might become.” Serran’s words were ominous.

“What are you saying?” Rosemary demanded.

“I know why Pell has come back here,” Tarsha had said suddenly.

Both women had turned to stare at her. Serran shook her head as if to warn her against indiscretion. Tarsha had looked down at her hands and spoken anyway. “I heard it from my cousin. It started a couple of months ago, with little things. A push in the market, calling her a bitch after a squabble in a tavern. But about a month ago, Pell put hands on Meddalee and not in a kind way. He’d pushed her before and once he knocked her down right in the market. But this was his hands on her throat. Her father saw the marks and he threatened to kill Pell. But he came, all tears and apologies, and knelt outside her father’s house and begged pardon. So she took him back. But then he actually hit her, a week ago. Loosened a tooth, and that was it. Her father’s servants put Pell out of the house and told him never to come back, that he no longer worked for her father or had permission to see Meddalee. Said Pell had no prospects and no right to touch his daughter. I heard Pell lingered for a time, hoping he could make it up, but when he couldn’t and he ran out of coin, he came home.” Tarsha looked up from her washing and said bluntly, “You should leave him, Rosemary. Take Gillam and go. If he hit one woman, he’ll hit another.”

Shame flushed her face. She’d never admitted to anyone that Pell had struck her. She wouldn’t admit it now. “I’ve got nowhere to go,” she said bluntly. Both women looked away from her. Times were hard. No one could afford to take in a woman and her child, while risking the displeasure of Pell and his family. It wasn’t fair of her to ask it, and so she didn’t. “The cottage belongs to Gillam. He has a right to live there. And I can take care of myself.” She said it, but no one really believed it. And when Tarsha hugged her good-bye, she slipped a coin into her hand, a small silver one.

“Just go!” she whispered. “Run. Don’t you have cousins in Forge? Go there.”

Rosemary had nodded grimly and then started the long walk home. Home. Was it really her home anymore? Could she run off to Forge? Her father’s sister had settled there; she barely remembered the woman. She had cousins there, yes, cousins she’d never met. No. There was no easy sanctuary. But it was her problem, not her friends’. It was up to her to solve it for herself.

She saw the smoke from her chimney long before she could see her house. And when she stood looking down on it, her heart nearly broke. She’d put so much into it, and Gillam was so heavy as he slept in the sling. She tried to imagine running away, taking him off down the long road to somewhere. Buckkeep Town? She could probably find some kind of work in a big city like that. But the journey would be hard. Sleeping by the road with little more than her shawl to cover them, eating what they could find. There were dangerous men on the road; there always were and always had been. They might do worse to her and her son than Pell would even imagine. Bad as Pell was, there was worse out there. And Gillam was his only son. He wouldn’t hurt him. She’d face him and see what came next.

Her washing tub was in the front yard, full of dirty water. The scatter of feathers in the front yard was a grim warning. With a sinking heart, she saw the long, shining feathers of a rooster’s tail among them. “Picky-pick,” she whispered to herself. Her hatchet was sunk deep into the stump where she split kindling. Feathers were trapped around the embedded blade. As she opened the door, the smell of scorched meat greeted her. The carcass of a bird was on the spit over the fire with Pell crouching nearby. Feathers were everywhere.

“What have you done?” she demanded in a stricken voice, but she knew. He’d killed the rooster and with him, every generation of birds to come. He hadn’t even salvaged the feathers.

Pell turned round to smile up at her with his disarming grin. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m cooking dinner for us. Thought I’d show you that I’m a useful sort to have around the house.”

“You idiot!”

His eyes narrowed, the smile gone. “I’d think you’d show a little gratitude, after you left me here with no breakfast and dirty clothes. I had to wash them out myself. And put them on when they were still wet.”

She’d already seen that. His fine shirt was wrinkled, and the damp still showed in every seam of his trousers. She didn’t care.

“You killed Picky-pick. Without asking me. Without thinking about it at all.”

“Rosemary. Is that what’s troubling you?” A wealth of disbelief in his uttering of her name, and then he smiled indulgently as he explained it to her. “It wasn’t a hen, but a rooster. Doesn’t lay eggs, Rosie. I have no idea why you were wasting feed on him.”

“So he could father a batch of chicks! So we could raise extra chickens this summer for meat next winter, you idiot!”

The bed was a rumpled mess. She twitched a blanket flat and set Gillam down on it. He stirred and sat up. He looked around sleepily, and then took in the scorched carcass. “Cook meat?” he asked hopefully.

Pell had been glaring at her. He turned to the boy when he spoke. “There. You see. The boy needs meat. I told you so. A father has to take care of his son, and that’s all I’m trying to do. If it’s so important to you, I can get another rooster for you. Later. But tonight, little Will gets to eat his fill of nice roast chicken. Right, son?”

He smiled at her boy. It seemed a false smile to her, but the boy was taken in. Gillam nodded eagerly and bounced on the bed.

She stared at her smiling son, suddenly so like his father. Some terrible being inside her wanted to tell Gillam that it was Picky-pick on the fire, the rooster he’d seen raised from a chick and named himself, wanted to make her son dissolve in howls of sorrow. Perhaps that would chase the smug smile from Pell’s face. Perhaps that would keep her son’s heart as hers alone. But a stronger part of her could not do that to her boy. Soon enough, when there was no crowing in the morning, the boy would realize the bird was gone. Then was soon enough for him to mourn. And dead, the bird might as well be eaten as not.

She gritted her teeth and silently cleaned the feathers from the room, trying to gather what she could of them. She’d thought that if Picky sired enough chicks, there might have been not just meat for the winter, but feathers for stuffing a small comforter. All gone in an idiot’s impulse. And he’d expected her to thank him for destroying a year’s work! The idiot. She watched him crouched by the fire, turning the spit this way and that. Gillam had come to crouch beside him, studying the man as much as the cooking bird. She couldn’t stand it. She took herself outside.