Robin Hobb - The Inheritance and Other Stories

There was worse to discover. In his pursuit of the rooster, Pell had trampled two rows of her garden. The wilted seedlings with their wisps of roots were drying on the disturbed rows. Without much hope, she hoed the earth back into place, pushed the plants back into the soil and gave them a sprinkle of water. The green things lay flat and limp on the wet soil. They would not rise again. And that was another food source gone. The cold wind whipped her hair across her face.

Gillam had stayed in the house watching his father. She hadn’t liked that but could think of no way to lure him away. And it had been easier to tidy up his father’s mess without the toddler at her heels, asking a dozen questions and sometimes undoing half her work as she did it. As she hung up her tools and wiped her hands on her apron, she allowed herself to wonder what her life would have been like if she’d had a husband for the last three years. What if there had been someone who had brought home food, helped to dig the garden, and sometimes watched the child? Would the garden be twice the size it was now? Would the worn thatch of the roof have been completely replaced last year instead of patched? Perhaps, she thought to herself, and then shook her head. Perhaps, but not if Pell were the man involved.

Inside the house, she found them at the table, eating meat that was scorched on the outside and bloody within. “Chimney doesn’t draw right,” Pell excused it. “And the firewood is too small. You need good chunks for coals to cook meat over, not a bunch of little sticks.”

“You used up all my kindling,” she replied. “The pile of larger wood is over in the shelter of the spruce tree, to keep it dry.” Both of her bowls and chairs were in use. It didn’t matter. She didn’t think she could have faced eating Picky anyway. She wondered if she would still wake in the dawn tomorrow without his raucous crowing. Set it aside. Too late to fix it. She just had to go on. His gleaming knife lay on the table beside the butchered bird. He picked it up and sawed on the butchered bird. To her surprise the knife slid through the tough bird as if it were butter. It was only when he put the meat in his mouth that he had to chew and chew. She tried not to take satisfaction in how tough the meat was.

“That must be a sharp knife, to shear through that meat so easily,” she observed, and he started as if she had jabbed him with it. He hastily returned it to his sheath, uncleaned.

“It was a gift,” he said, and then, as if he couldn’t resist the urge to brag, “Chalcedean steel. The best money can buy.”

She made no answer to that. He hadn’t heard the hidden mockery in her comment. The fool hadn’t even known that a grown rooster was not fit for roasting but only the stew pot. How had he managed to live in the village all his life and not know such simple things? How had he kept himself above and apart from the simple work that could have put food on the table? She forced herself to think back through the years. Rory, the carter’s boy, had fancied her once. He’d been a hard worker, but his plain face and callused hands had not charmed her. No. She had fallen to the boy with the soft hair and fine clothes. He was never dirty, she told herself, because he never worked. Did she think he was an idiot for not knowing how to work? What did that make her? How could she have taken up with a man who did no more than smile and be handsome and sing tavern songs well?

She barely stopped him in time when he gathered what was left and began to throw it on the fire. “That will stink if you burn bones in the house. Besides, I can make a soup of the bones and what’s left on them. I have a couple of turnips and an onion . . .” and she glanced at her cupboard to see that was a lie. The turnips were gone.

“You can’t just eat everything you see around here!” she exclaimed angrily. “I have to plan what we use and be sparing of it.”

“Well, if you think I’m going to go hungry while there are chickens running around in the yard, think again. I’m not that helpless. Or foolish.”

A thousand responses came to her mind. But only one clear thought formed. That handsome fool would destroy everything she had built up in the last three years before he was finished here. He would not listen to her. He would do as he pleased with her things. She was speechless. She gathered the rags she had used to clean up his butchering mess and went outside.

She dumped the dirty water from her washtub, rinsed it, and filled it again. She was washing out her cleaning rags when he came out of the house. He was walking softly but she heard him. He came up behind her. “You work so hard,” he said gently. “Rosie, I never meant for you to live like this.”

Simple words in a kind voice. They stabbed her. Three years ago, even two years ago and they would have won her heart.

“It’s work and it has to be done,” she said and hated how her voice was choked with tears.

She started when his hands settled on her shoulders. She twitched but he did not lift them. They were so warm, and he gently squeezed just where her shoulders ached most.

“Don’t,” she said sharply and twisted away from his touch. He let her go.

“I’m going to stay, Rosie,” he said. “I know you don’t believe it. I know you don’t want to give me another chance. You’re still angry at me, and who could blame you? I’ve thought about it. For me, it seems like something I did a long time ago, three years ago. I left you, and for me, that was the end of it. But you stayed here, and I suppose that every single day you’ve missed me. Every single night, you’ve been alone, and I suppose that’s why the hurt is so fresh for you.

“But I’m back now. You can stop being angry, and there’s nothing to be hurt about any more. I’m here, ready to be husband to you and father to your child.”

“You’re not my husband. You never married me. You wouldn’t. Not even when your grandfather asked you to.”

“I told you, Rosie. A scared boy ran away from you and the baby. But a man has come back. Give me a chance.”

“No.”

She heard him take a deep breath through his nose. “You will,” he said confidently. Then, as if he were changing the subject to indulge her, he asked her, “What are you doing?”

“Washing out bloody rags,” she told him savagely.

He was silent for a time and she thought he’d finally read her mood. But then he asked in a voice between dismay and disgust, “It’s your blood time?”

“Yes.” She heard herself lie promptly, and he abruptly stepped back from her. She wondered what instinct had made her protect herself.

He’d always expressed a disdain for touching her or even being around her during her menses. And now he retreated from her in a way that did not reassure her. Retreated because . . . why? Because he had been preparing to advance on her in some way? Tonight, after the boy was asleep? A cold dread rose in her, but something else twisted inside her along with it. She had the same hungers that any woman had, hungers that had nothing to do with food. Hungers that paid no attention to sensible thoughts, hungers that wanted his warm hands on her aching shoulders, hungers that recalled well how once they had warmed a bed together.

But what if? Her thoughts wriggled out of her control and ran off on a sunlit path. What if Pell were sincere in his return? He’d said, more than once, now, that he wished to make his life what it should have been, to be a father to the boy and a husband to her. What if he meant it and was groping his way toward that path? Could he change? Could they find the love they’d once felt for each other and build something with it? What if she gave ground to him and tried to awaken that in him again? Would it be so terrible a thing? Could that old dream be called to life again?