Inside the water gate the steps were taller, too, and more deeply covered with moss. Everything was more difficult than when I had last been there. The stairs to the attic seemed endless, but I had to go there to get a dress. On my way back to the kitchen I stopped in Aunt Love’s room to snatch up a looking glass and the fine toothed comb made of tortoise shell she had used on me when, as a child, I had picked up lice from my acquaintances in the stables. The bath place was next to the kitchens, a small, stone-floored room with a stone-curbed well in the corner, a great wooden tub, and over the hearth a huge hanging kettle with a copper to bail the water in and out. Except for Papa, my aunts, and I, who had had tubs brought to our rooms for occasional use, everyone at Westfaire had bathed in this room, sometimes half a dozen of them at once. There was a similar arrangement at Wellingford, though I had never been able to use it when I was being Havoc the miller’s son for fear of being found out. Once I was Edward’s wife, there had been no need. I had had my own tub again, filled and emptied by sweating servant girls. At least, I assume they sweated for I did by the time I had filled the huge kettle from the well.
I lit the fire, already laid, tied the belt of my cloak around my neck to keep from falling asleep, took off the cloak itself, and sat down to comb my hair while the water heated. The tangles were deep. The comb pulled and the tangles caught in the teeth. I pulled the wad of hair out and threw it into the fire, combing again. The next time I threw the hair toward the fire, a draft caught it and blew it back at me. Gray hair. Not wheat straw, not silver, but gray.
The looking glass lay face down on the table. I polished it with the rags of my sleeve. An old face looked back at me. No … no, not an old face. Just not a young face. A thirty-fiveish, fortyish face. Not old for the twentieth, but old for the fourteenth, when people did not live so long. There were tiny lines around the eyes, not deep ones, but they were there. There were more lines on my forehead, between my brows, furrows, as though I had often thought deeply, worrying over something. Most of my hair was still gold, but at either temple the gray swept upward in silver wings around a face thin as a chicken’s breastbone.
I had only been gone a little time! A few weeks in Chinanga! A few weeks in Ylles! Whence came this protruding skeleton, this skull beneath the wrinkled skin? Whence came this hoary hair, this hip-stiff walk, this pale reflection of beauty gone, beauty done, beauty over! I screamed, I think. It was as though I had found a snake in my bed, a spider crouched upon my food, a monstrous devourer slinking close at my back, death, worse than death, for with death it is done soon and over, but with this, with this, I was still alive to know of it.
Panic and tears and wailing. I came to myself later to find the kettle steaming over the fire, the lid dancing upon the roiling waters, a jolly clangor which seemed to say so you’re getting old, you’re old, you’re old. So what? Hills are old and getting older, rocks are older than that, stars are older still, so what?
“So it’s gone!”, I cried, half in pain, half in fury. “My youth, my beauty, gone. I didn’t even use it up and it’s gone! I didn’t have time to waste it, time to taste it, time to glory in it, and it’s gone! Here I am all sunk-cheeked, droopy-chested, flat-butted, and it’s gone.”
Bingity-bangety went the lid. You’re half a fairy, aren’t you? You’ve learned magic haven’t you? What does it matter how old you are?
What did it matter? If I chose to use enchantment, no one would know it but me. Was there a difference if no one knew it but me? Oh, yes, I cried to myself. Oh, yes. There was more weeping, more howling, coming to myself at last with my hands buried in my filthy hair.
Old or not, I could not bear the dirt on me. I filled the tub and stripped the rags away. When I got them off, I recognized what they were: the remnants of the dress I had worn when I left Wellingford. A simple kirtle of fine wool. I had stood on the sandspit in Chinanga in that gown. I had traveled to the wall of Baskarone in that gown. I had met the ambassador in that gown. Evidently I had also grown old in that gown. It was gone. Only tatters.
I heard a voice singing.
“Beauty and rag tag and motley are twins.
When the one’s gone then the other begins.”
Oh, Fenoderee! How could you
