pleasure. He knows it. But I will get a little of my own back.”
I didn’t know what he meant, nor did my mother, till in the middle of the morning we heard a horse coming up behind us. We were alarmed, but Canoc said, “It’s Parn.”
She drew up with us and greeted us in her husky voice that was like Gry’s. “So, where are your cattle, Canoc?” she said.
“Under that hill, ahead there.” And we jogged on. Then we stopped, and my mother and I dismounted. She led me to a grassy place by a stream where I could sit. She took Greylag and Roanie into the water to drink and cool their feet; but Canoc and Parn rode off, and soon I could not hear them at all. “Where are they going?” I asked.
“Into that meadow. He must have asked Parn to call the heifers.”
And after what seemed a long time, during which I listened nervously for the sound of pursuit and vengeance coming down the road and heard nothing but birdsong and the distant lowing of cattle, Mother said, “They’re coming,” and soon I heard the grass swishing at the legs of the animals, and Branty s greeting whuff to our horses, and my father’s voice saying something with a laugh to Parn.
“Canoc,” my mother said, and he replied at once, “It’s all right, Melle. They’re ours. Drum looked after them for us, and now I’m taking them home. It’s all right.”
“Very well,” she said unhappily.
And soon we all went on together, she first, then I, then Parn with the two heifers following close behind her, and Canoc bringing up the rear.
The cattle did not slow us down; young and lively, and of a hauling, plowing breed, they stepped right out with the horses and kept up a good pace all day. We came onto our own domain by mid-afternoon, and cut across the northern part of it, heading for Roddmant. It had been Parn’s suggestion that we take the heifers there and leave them in the Rodd pastures for a while with their old herd. “A little less provocative,” she said, “and a good deal harder for Drum to steal back.”
“Unless he comes calling on you,” Canoc said.
“That’s as may be. I’ll have no more to do with Ogge Drum in any way, except that if he wants a feud he’ll have one.”
“If he has it with you he has it with us,” Canoc said, joyfully fierce.
I heard my mother whisper, “Ennu, hear and be here.” That was always her prayer when she was worried or frightened. I had asked and she had told me long ago about Ennu, who smoothed the road, blessed the work, and mended quarrels. The cat was Ennu’s creature, and the opal Melle always wore was her stone.
About the time I ceased to feel the western sun on my back, we came to the Stone House of Roddmant. I had heard barking for a mile before we got there. A sea of dogs came round our horses as we rode in, all welcoming us joyously. And Ternoc came out shouting welcome to us too, and in a moment somebody came and took hold of my leg as I sat on Roanie. It was Gry, pressing her face against my leg.
“Here then, Gry, let him get off his horse,” Parn said in her dry voice. “Give him a hand.”
“I don’t need it,” I said. I dismounted creditably, and found Gry holding my arm now instead of my leg, and pressing her face against it, and crying. “Oh, Orrec,” she said. “Oh, Orrec!”
“It’s all right, Gry, it’s all right, really. It isn’t—I’m not—”
“I know,” she said, letting me go, and snuffling several times. “Hello, Mother. Hello, Brantor Canoc. Hello,” and I could hear her and Melle having a hug and kiss. Then she was back beside me.
“Parn says you have a dog,” I said, awkwardly enough, for the guilt of poor Hamneda’s death weighed on me—not only his death, but even the choice of him, the choice that Gry had known to be wrong.
“Do you want to see her?”
“Yes.”
“Come on.”
She took me somewhere—even this house and grounds, that I knew almost as well as my own house, were a labyrinth and a mystery in my blindness—and said, “Wait,” and after a minute or two said, “Coaly, sit. This is Coaly, Orrec. This is Orrec, Coaly.”
I squatted down. Reaching out a little, I felt warm breath on my hand, and then the delicate touch of whiskers, and a polite wet tongue washing my hand. I felt forward cautiously, afraid of poking the dog’s eye or making some wrong movement, but she sat still and I felt the silky, tightly curled hair of her head and neck, her high-held, soft, flopover ears. “She’s a black herder?” I said in a whisper.
“Yes. Kinny’s bitch had three pups last spring. This was the best one. The children made her a pet, and he’d started her as a sheepdog. I asked for her when I heard about your eyes. Here’s her lead,” Gry put a short, stiff leather leash in my hand. “Walk with her,” she said.
I stood up, and felt the dog stand. I took one step, and found the dog right in front of my legs, immovable. I laughed, though I was embarrassed. “We won’t get far this way!”
“It’s because if you went that way you’d fall over the lumber Fanno left there. Let her show you.”
“What do I do?”
“Say, ‘Walk on’ and her name.”
“Walk on, Coaly,” I said to the darkness at the end of the leather strap in my hand.
The strap tugged me gently to the right, then forward.
I walked as boldly as I could, until the strap pulled me gently to stop.
“Back to Gry, Coaly,” I said, turning.
The strap turned me a little farther round and then walked me back and stopped me.
“I’m here,” said Gry right in front of me. Her voice was hoarse and abrupt.
I knelt, felt for the dog sitting on her haunches, and put my arm around her. A silky ear was against my face, the whiskers tickled my nose. “Coaly, Coaly,” I said.
“I didn’t use the calling with her, only at the very beginning, a couple of times,” Gry said. From the location of her voice she was squatting down near me. “She learned as fast as if I had. She’s bright. And steady. But you both need to work together.”
“Should I leave her here then, and come back?”
“I don’t think so. I can tell you some things not to do. And try not to ask too many things of her at once for a while. But I can come over and work with her with you. I’d like to do that.”
“That would be good,” I said. After the threats and passions and cruelties of Drummant, Gry’s clear love and kindness, and the calm, trusting, trustworthy response of the dog, were too much for me. I hid my face in the curly, silky fur. “Good dog,” I said.
¦ 12 ¦
When Gry and I went indoors at last, I was frightened to learn that my mother, dismounting, had fainted in my father’s arms. They had taken her upstairs and put her to bed. Gry and I hung around feeling childish, useless, the way young people do when an adult is taken sick.
Canoc came down at last. He came straight to me and said, “She’ll be all right.”
“Is she just tired?”
He hesitated, and Gry asked, “She didn’t lose the baby?”
It was part of Gry’s gift to know when there were two lives in one body. It was not part of ours. I am sure Canoc had not known Melle was with child before this day; she may not have known it herself.
To me the news carried little meaning. A boy of thirteen is at a great remove from that portion of life; pregnancy and childbirth are abstract matters, nothing to do with him at all.
“No,” Canoc said. He hesitated again and said, “She needs to rest.”
His tired, toneless voice troubled me. I wanted him to cheer up. I was sick of fear and gloom. We were out of all that, free again, with our friends, safe at Roddmant. “If she’s all right for a while, maybe you could come see Coaly,” I said.
“Later,” he said. He touched my shoulder and went off. Gry took me round to the kitchen, for in the commotion nothing had been done about supper, and I was ravenous. The cook stuffed us with rabbit pie.
