ashamed to come home and face her, but finally his heart could stand to be parted from her no longer. He had come back, to beg her forgiveness.” The little face gave a disdainful snort. “And she believed him.”
“But you did not?”
“I believed he had spent all her money, that it was not his heart that had brought him back, but his greed. She told him it mattered nothing to her, that all would be well if he would but marry her. Side by side they could toil and still make a good, if simple life for themselves. She still had her house and some family jewelry and somehow they would manage.”
I closed my eyes, pitying my grandmother that she could love so much and so blindly.
“I warned her. Her friends warned her, too, saying that if she listened to that rogue again, they would disown her. But Aubretia cared nothing for anyone but him. And he, speaking so nobly, said he would not let her family think her a fool. Howarth would not marry her while he was penniless. A fortune was still within his grasp. If only he had enough money, he could recoup his losses and go on.”
“How could that be?” I demanded.
“An excellent question. One that your grandmother never asked, or at least not directly. He implied all sorts of things. That a bribe to a tariff official would free up a seized shipment, that it he were seen to be successful, others would lend him the money to complete some transaction. He spoke so skillfully and knowingly of how one must have money and spend money in order to make money.”
A terrible sadness welled up in me. How often had I heard my mother lament our poor circumstances and wish for better days, only to have Grandmother say, “But it is hopeless, my dear. One must have money in order to make money.”
“She went to her grave believing that was so.”
The pendant was silent for a moment. Then she gave a tiny sigh. “I feared as much. For of course you have guessed the rest of the story. Aubretia sold all she had and gave him the money to redeem his fortune. When she dared to ask to go with him, he said that her passage south would cost too much, and the hardships would be too much for her to endure. That ring you wear once held an emerald, flawless and deep green. Even that he took. Howarth pried the stone out of the setting himself, saying he would sell the stone in Jamaillia only if he had to, but that he hoped to bring it back and restore it to her hand. He promised her that, no matter how he fared, he would come back within a year. She watched him sail from the Bingtown docks. Then she went to her oldest friend and confessed her situation. She threw herself on her mercy. Well, they had been friends since girlhood. Despite her threats, she took your grandmother in, and gave her a bed to sleep in and a place at the table. Aubretia was, after all, still a Lantis and a Trader. It was expected that she would find a way to make her way in the world, and eventually make a suitable match. There is a saying in Bingtown. ‘Money does not make a Trader, it is the Trader that makes the money.’ Her friends hoped she had learned her lesson.
“Yet it was hard for them to be patient with her, for she did little except moon after her absent lover. A year went by and then another. All of us told her both man and fortune were gone, and she should make a fresh start for herself. Aubretia insisted she would wait, that Howarth would come back for her.” The carved face pursed her lips in ancient disappointment. “She waited. And that was all she did.”
“Did Howarth ever come back?” I asked in a whisper.
The pendant’s small face twisted in disgust. “Oh, yes. He returned. Some three years later, he came back to Bingtown, but it was months before your grandmother knew of it. She recognized him one day as he strolled through the market with his fine foreign wife at his side. A servant walked behind them, carrying a parasol to shade them. A nurse carried their little son. And his pale, plump Jamaillian wife wore the Lantis emerald at her throat.”
“What did she do?” I whispered.
The pendant’s small voice grew heavy with an old weariness. I sensed it was a memory often pondered but still painfully fresh. “She stood and stared. She could not believe her eyes. And then a cry of purest disbelief broke out of her. At the sound, he turned. Howarth recognized her, and yet he turned aside from her. She shrieked his name, demanding to know why he had abandoned her. In the streets of Bingtown, before Traders and common merchants, she wailed like a madwoman and tore out her hair. She fell to her knees and begged him to come back to her, crying that she could not live without him. But Howarth only took his wife’s arm and hurried her way, whispering something to her about ‘that poor mad woman.’ ” The pendant fell silent.
“Then what happened?” I demanded. My heart was beating strangely fast. “Did she go to him and confront him and his wife, denounce how he had taken her fortune, demand the return of her emerald?”
In a trembling whisper, the pendant confided, “No.”
“Why?” Pain hushed my voice. I recalled my grandmother’s resigned eyes and feared I already knew the answer.
“I do not know. I will never understand it. Her friends urged her to confront him, to bring a complaint against them. When she spoke with them, she was strong. But whenever she was alone and set pen to paper, she lost her resolve. Weeping, she would confess to me that she loved him still. She would spin tales that he had been drugged or was bewitched by the woman. Her hands would shake and she would wonder aloud what she herself lacked, what was wrong with her that the Jamaillian woman could steal Howarth from her. Never, ever did she see him for the scoundrel and the cheat that he was. I could not make her see that the man she loved had never existed, that she persisted in loving an idealized image of Howarth, that the real man was worthy only of her contempt. She would sit down, pen in hand, to denounce him. But always, her accusing letters somehow changed into pleas to him to come back to her. The worst was the night that she went by darkness to his door. She sought entry there, like a beggar, pleading with a servant to let her in so she might speak privately with the master of the house. The servant turned her aside with disdain, and she, Aubretia Lantis of the Bingtown Traders, crept away weeping and shamed. I think that night broke her. The next evening she packed the few possessions that remained her own, and we left Bingtown, walking away in the dimness while her friends were at dinner. She did not even bid them good-bye. She felt she had lost all standing with them and could never be seen as anything but a fool.”
I felt ill, dizzied with the dirty little story. It twisted my memories of the gentle old woman I had tended for the last two years. I had believed her contained and stoic. I had deemed it strength, that she had endured my grandfather’s harsh ways and tolerated the disrespect of her stepson. Now it seemed something else. The implacable little voice went on.
“She left Bingtown. Just walked away. She said she did not care what became of her, just so long as she could escape everyone telling her she should confront Howarth. She came to the countryside and floundered through work as an inn-maid until she married a man she did not love, to tend his son and bear him a daughter. Shortly after your mother was born, she set me aside, for I was the final reminder of the life she had abandoned.” The tiny face pressed her lips together in a flat line. “I begged her to listen to me, even as she wrapped me in linen. I could not stand to see her raise her daughter in submission to her brutish father and that loutish boy of his. She should have her birthright, I said. I told her it was not too late to go back and reclaim her inheritance. But she muffled my voice and shut me away.”
I thought of all the years the pendant had waited in the box. “Why did you tell me this?” I asked the pendant in a low voice.
For the first time, a question seemed to give her pause. She lifted her brows as if amazed I did not know. “Because she lives on in me, as do all the women of your line who have worn me. And I would see things set right. I would see you regain what is rightfully yours.”
Rightfully mine. The concept seemed almost foreign. It frightened me. “But how? I have no proof, I do not know him, if Howarth still lives and—”
“Hush. I will guide you. You have the empty ring on your hand and me at your throat. You need no more than this.”
My head so whirled with stories, I do not know how I slept that night. But I woke, still clutching the wizardwood pendant in my hand. Stiff in every joint, I rose, and donned the silver necklace and made my way to Bingtown.
In the next few weeks, the pendant became my guide. My ears swiftly became attuned to its soft whisper. The advice it gave me was difficult to follow, and yet when I listened to it, I found that my life progressed. In Bingtown, I sought and found a position caring for an elderly Trader woman. The food at Trader Redof’s table was better than any I had ever eaten before, and the cast-off garments of her granddaughters were the finest clothing I had ever worn. My years of caring for my grandmother served me in good stead. I became a willing ear for any
