Mrs. Toristel sighed. “Well, ask
“Oh,” said Nora. Aruendiel had not mentioned the trip to her. But then he had said almost nothing to her for the past several days.
She broached the subject of new boots as he was eating breakfast the next day. For the assizes, he was dressed with unusual formality, a fur-trimmed tunic over a shirt of finely crimped linen. His riding boots were beautifully polished.
Aruendiel interrupted her before she had finished. “What about the boots you are wearing?”
“They won’t last much longer,” she said, trying to be both firm and polite. “I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”
“Don’t you have some money of your own?” he said, turning back to his oatmeal. “I cannot afford to pay the wardrobe bills for a lady of fashion.”
“All I want,” Nora said, her jaw tight, “is to have dry feet while I’m helping to get your pigs slaughtered.”
He glanced down at her old boots, the toes still stiff and dark with blood. “You should be more careful where you step,” he said, rising from the table.
After he had gone, Nora went upstairs to her room, opened the drawer of the table beside her bed, and untwisted the square of cloth where she kept the silver beads she had brought back from Semr. Two beads left, out of the original dozen. Two for the river crossing, five beads to Massy’s children, two for her lodging at the inn at Stone Top on the journey back from Semr. (Foolishly, she had insisted on paying her own way, after the fuss that Aruendiel had made at the ferry in Semr.) Another bead for reshoeing her horse, when it cast a shoe on the road. The animal had later been sold; “Aruendiel should pay me back,” she muttered, twisting up the two beads again. Surely two beads would be enough for a new pair of boots. It was ridiculously stingy of Aruendiel to insist that she buy her own boots, but the money had come from him in the first place, so she could not complain too much. Perhaps there would be some money left over.
She was disabused of this comforting thought at the cobbler’s hut later that morning. “Four silver beads! That can’t be right.”
“Well, you’re from the castle, aren’t you?” the cobbler said.
“Yes. What does that have to do with it?”
“That’s what the gentry pays,” he said shortly. “And his lordship still owes me for his last pair of boots. I can’t work for nothing, you know. I have to eat. So does my wife.” The cobbler screwed up his face and shook his head.
“What if you make me the boots for two silver beads, and I’ll make sure his lordship pays you what he owes you?” Nora asked boldly, although she was not sure that she could persuade Aruendiel to settle his bill.
The cobbler evidently entertained the same doubts. “No’m. Four silver beads. I can’t charge less than what the boots are worth, just to please a lady.”
“I didn’t ask you to do that,” Nora said, “and besides, you as good as said you were overcharging me anyway.”
She went away fuming, stopping at Morinen’s hut to report. Morinen and her mother, carding wool in front of their fire, were gratifyingly shocked, and gave her a mug of cider as a restorative. “Four silver beads!” Morinen said. “He must think you’re rich.”
“Yes, he probably thinks I won’t pay because I’m as tightfisted as Lord Aruendiel,” Nora said bitterly. (Morinen’s mother laughed, showing all seven of her teeth.) “But all I have are two beads. Aruendiel wouldn’t give me anything to buy my boots with.”
“Most people don’t even pay Cobbler in cash. What did we trade him last time for my boots, Ma? Was it some goat hides?”
“Goat hides, yes.” Morinen’s mother nodded. “And a cheese.”
“I don’t have any goat hides,” Nora said. “Or cheese. He wants to be paid in advance, too. I don’t know what I’m going to do. My boots are all right when it’s dry, like today, but when it’s wet, they’re a disaster.”
“Snow tomorrow,” Morinen’s mother said.
“I won’t go outside this winter. That’s all I can do.” She put down her mug after a last swig of cider. Standing up—a little unsteadily, the cider was stronger than she’d realized—she accidently kicked her empty mug into one of the hearthstones. It broke into several pieces. Nora began to apologize before she recollected herself. Stooping, she picked up the fragments and handed the mug to Morinen, whole again.
“What!” Morinen stared at the restored mug, then laughed. “That’s some of the magic you’ve learned from his lordship, eh?”
“That, and lighting fires.”
Morinen’s mother was interested. “Where’s the candlestick you broke yesterday, Morinen?” Her shawled head nodded at Nora. “She can fix it.”
“It’s on the rubbish heap, Ma. She doesn’t want to bother with that.”
“No, I’d like to,” Nora said. “Lead me to it.”
She and Morinen pulled on their cloaks and went outside. Behind the hut, the rubbish heap was a pile of old barrel staves, worn-out harnesses, and broken glass and crockery. They assembled as many of the pieces of the broken earthware candlestick as they could find, and then Nora patched them together, adding a little extra to substitute for the missing fragments.
Morinen turned the candlestick over in her hand admiringly. “Ma’ll be pleased. She gave me a tongue- lashing that you never heard the like of. You should come around more often—I’m always breaking things. As a matter of fact—” she said hesitantly.
“Tell me.”
“Fori next door, she dropped a platter last week that belonged to her ma, that died last winter. She was all upset about it. I think she saved the pieces. Would you mind—?”
“Of course not!” It was gratifying to be able to exercise her new skill.
Fori was the woman whose pregnancy Nora had noticed the summer before. Now she was nursing the baby, her eyes vague with tiredness. Besides the baby, there were four other small children in the hut, wrestling with an excited puppy. In the tumult, it took some time for Morinen to explain why they had come. Fori looked doubtful, but she nodded toward the corner of the hut. “In the chest there. I couldn’t bear to throw it out just yet,” she said, almost apologetically.
Opening the chest, Nora lifted out the pieces of the dish. This was easy, they wanted to become one again, she could feel it. She let them coalesce under her hands.
Fori took the restored platter wonderingly. “That’s magic, isn’t it?”
She seemed about to say something else, but one of the children jerked the puppy’s tail, provoking a frenzy of yelping. Morinen and Nora turned to leave. They were a few paces outside the hut when Fori called after them. Nora’s first thought was that the platter had already been broken again. But Fori was waving two pale strips of cloth in the air.
“Stockings,” she said, pressing them into Nora’s hands. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to—”
Fori had already disappeared inside, drawn by a fresh wail from one of the children.
“That was nice of her,” Nora said, examining the stockings. “Lambs’ wool.”
“Just good manners to pay you back for the favor.” Morinen paused, then said meaningfully: “You know, I believe everyone in the village has got some kind of broken dish they’d like to have fixed.”
Nora looked at Morinen. “You really think so?”
“I could ask around.”
“And they might express their gratitude with more stockings?” Nora laughed. “Or goatskins?”
“Goatskins.” Morinen nodded, smiling back at Nora. “Cheese.”
“Well, that’s very interesting.” Nora considered for a moment. “I could come back tomorrow morning and see if anyone needs any pots mended.”
“Oh, they will,” Morinen said. “People always drop things. I wish I had a pair of stockings for every dish I’ve broken.”
