“Rose pink,” he said to Eugenie as he noted it down. “And lots of soft cushions.”
When Roald returned home, his wife, Kinny, was waiting with supper ready to go on the table. Since Marthamay had married Alverd Bee and moved over to the other end of town, Roald and Kinny had been alone sporadically—that is, when none of the children had needed a baby-tender or a home-from-their-own following an argument with a spouse. Arguments with spouses, Roald had taken care to point out to each of his children, were as inevitable as winter but were not life-threatening provided one took a little care in advance. Such as making a habit of going on home to cool off for a day or so when needed, and no insult meant and none taken by either party. Just as spring followed winter, so better understanding followed a little cooling off.
Currently none of the children were fighting with their wives or husbands and none of the grandkids were in residence, so he and Kinny had the place to themselves, which pleased him considerably when it happened.
“I made goose with cabbage,” Kinny told him. “Jandra Jellico slaughtered a few geese, and she got on the tell-me to let me know. I hurried right over to get a fat one.”
Roald licked his lips. Spring goose with cabbage was one of his favorite dishes, and Kinny could make it like no one else. It was goose with cabbage had made him look at her in the first place, her with her round little arms and round little face, and it was goose with cabbage had happily punctuated all their seasons together since. Goose with cabbage generally meant a celebration of some kind.
“So, what good thing is going on?” he asked her.
“Marthamay’s pregnant.”
“Well, isn’t that wonderful! There for a bit she was worried.”
“She wasn’t really. It was just her sisters teasing her when the time went by after she and Alverd married and nothing happened.”
“Alverd getting ready to do a little digging, is he?”
“She says yes.” Kinny smiled as she forked a mouthful of cabbage into her rosy mouth, thinking of tall, eager Alverd Bee slaving away down in the winter quarters, digging a new room as every new daddy did. Alverd was likely to be elected mayor of Commons in a week or two, and mayors had little time for such doings. Well and all, the brothers would help him, just as he’d helped them. “So, tell me all about the new people.”
He told her, about the ambassador and about Marjorie and the other lady in her soon-to-be-pink nest.
“Ah,” said Kinny, wrinkling her nose. “That’s sad.”
“So I thought,” he agreed. “His wife’s a lovely lady, but cool. Take a little wooing, that one.”
“And him, I suppose he’s too hot and impatient for that.”
Roald chewed as he thought. Yes. As usual, Kinny had hit it right on the head. Too hot and impatient by far, Roderigo Yrarier. Hot and impatient enough to get himself into a mess of trouble, before he was through.
Not liking that idea, Roald changed the subject. “What does Marthamay think they’ll name the baby?”
Marjorie’s language instructor arrived two days later. He introduced himself as Persun Pollut. He sat beside her in what would become Marjorie’s study, just inside a large window warmed by an orange sun, while craftsmen came and went with crates and cartons, tools and ladders in the hall just outside. Watching the workers, Marjorie spoke of the strangeness of needing both winter quarters and summer quarters separate from one another.
“Winter is long,” he admitted, drooping his eyebrows at her. “It is so long we grow tired of looking at one another.” Persun had exceptionally long and sinuous eyebrows. He was young, though not callow; supple, though not yielding; determined, though not rigid. Marjorie felt Roald Few had selected well, particularly as Persun had shown good sense in not advertising the purpose of his presence. He had taken a room in the nearby village and announced that he was there to carve some panels for “Her Ladyship’s private study.” Now, seated at his ease in that study, he continued his explanation.
“Winter is so long that one tires of thinking of it,” he said. “We grow tired of breathing the air which is not only cold but hostile to us. We go under the ground, like the Hippae, and wait for spring. Sometimes we wish we could sleep like them.”
“What on earth do you all do with yourselves?” Marjorie asked, thinking once more of what they would do with the horses during wintertime. If they were still on Grass. Anthony kept saying the Yrariers would be on their way home by then, but Anthony didn’t know why they had come.
“In Commons we visit and have games and do our work, and have winter festivals of drama and poetry writing and things of that sort. We go visit the animals in the barns. We have an orchestra. People sing and dance and train animals to do tricks. We have a winter university where most of us learn things we would never learn if it weren’t for winter. Sometimes we bring professors in from Semling for the cold season. We’re better educated than the bons, you’ll find, though we don’t let them know that. There are so many tunnels and storage rooms and meeting rooms under Commons it is like living over a sponge. We come and go, here to there, without ever looking at the outside where the wind cuts to the bone and the cold mist hangs over everything, hiding the ice ghosts.”
“But the bons stay on their estancias?”
“Out
