Home From the Sea: An Elemental Masters Novel Page 6

  She put the clothing into the tub for a good soak. And she took her time hanging things up to dry. By the time he arrived, she hadn’t filled a quarter of the line. He stood awkwardly, waiting for her to acknowledge him.

  She didn’t. She just glanced at him sideways, and hunched her shoulders a little.

  “Good afternoon, miss,” he said, when she didn’t greet him.

  She’d decided on a particular tactic to avoid saying anything more than she had to. She’d play shy. That way the more he tried to bully her, the quieter she could get without arousing suspicions. “Afternoon, sir,” she whispered, ducking her head and avoiding his eyes.

  He waited. She said nothing. She sensed his bafflement, and his annoyance. “You’d be Mari Prothero, then?”

  She waited a long, long time before making an awkward little bob and replying. “Aye, sir,” she whispered.

  “And your father…” he consulted a notebook. “Daffyd Prothero? Where is he?”

  She favored him this time with a brief, blank look, then averted her gaze. “Fishing, sir.” She waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the sea, and went right back to hanging up the wash, moving away from him as she moved up the line. He had to follow her in order to hear her whispers.

  “Where is he fishing?” Constable Ewynnog demanded. Now that… that had to be the most daft question anyone could ask. How would she know where he was fishing? He could be anywhere.

  “Sea, sir,” she murmured, again waving her hand at the ocean.

  He muttered under his breath, then said aloud “Where on the sea?” he persisted.

  This time she gave him an incredulous look, and swiftly looked away. “Don’t know, sir,” she replied. “Where there be fish,” she added.

  What kind of a fool did they send here?

  Unless he expected her to give him the name of something nearby. But how could she possibly know where the fish would be running today? Only Daffyd would, and only after looking for the signs, and possibly a deal of sailing.

  “And where is your mother?” he asked. She glanced at him under the cover of her hair. Now he was writing things in that little book of his. She went to the washtub without answering, and started scrubbing.

  Although she was positive that he already knew the answer, she gave it to him, but only after a very long wait. “Dead, sir.” She kept her head down and her hands busy, scrubbing in the first tub, rinsing in the second, then wringing out the rinsed garments and putting them in the basket to be hung up. She took great pains not to look grief-stricken. He surely must know she didn’t remember her mother, not at all.

  “Ah. My condolences.” He didn’t sound at all sympathetic. Then he revealed himself, possibly without realizing it. “I didn’t find a grave at the churchyard… could you tell me where she is buried?”

  It was a good thing that she had her head down, or she was sure she would have given herself away with her fury. Of course he knew; if he knew her father’s name, then he knew how her mother had died. It was in the parish records and everyone in the village knew. He had looked for a grave anyway—perhaps assuming her mother’s body had washed in to shore and been properly buried. She took several deep breaths before answering, and reminded herself to be calm. He was trying to trip her up. She must not let him. She truly must not.

  “Drownded, sir,” she told him, and fought with herself to keep from growling it out. Her voice did sound indifferent in her ears; good, it would be stupid to sound grief-stricken.

  She risked another glance at him from behind her hanging hair as she took up the basket of wet clothing and went to the line again. He frowned as he scribbled in his notebook. “Isn’t that unusual? For a woman to drown?”

  Aha. Suspicious limb of Satan that he was. Oh, how she wanted to slap his smug face! How dared he? What kind of a terrible person would say that to someone who had lost her mother?

  But she got control of herself, and averted her face, and doled out her words in short sentences with long, long pauses between the words. “Rogue wave, sir.” Take good long breaths, and try and stay ahead of him. “Ask in village, sir.” She took some more steadying breaths, and kept her voice barely above a whisper. “She was kelpin’.”

  He didn’t ask what kelping was, though she was in doubt that he actually knew what it was. “Where?” he asked.

  With both hands full, she nodded up the beach. “In sight of village,” she told him, pitching her voice so low he had to lean in to hear her. “They say.”

  “And was she alone? Were there others with her?”

  He was either a monster or unbelievably dim.

  She paused for a good long time. “Just me brother.” Another few breaths. “And me.” She held pins in her mouth to avoid saying anything for a moment.

  “And you saw all this?” Angels and saints. He asks that?

  “I was in cradle,” she corrected him. “Up on shore, sir.” Which he would know, since the record of her birth was at the parish as well, he would know she was only a month or two old at the time.

  “So you didn’t see it?” Persistent as well as a monster.

  “Been told,” she said. She pinned up an apron, then a dishtowel. “Rogue wave.” One of her da’s shirts. “It came an’ took ’em both.” A pair of her da’s drawers. “Half village saw it.”

  He blinked at that; as if it had surprised him. Well. Interesting. Clearly he had not asked in the village after all, and perhaps had relied only on the parish records. Perhaps no one in the village had been willing to tell him anything. Well, too bad for whatever theory he had, because there were too many witnesses.

  A moment later, an expression of disappointment and irritation passed over his face. “I am sorry for your loss,” he said, though it was almost a growl. Then, to spoil the half-apology completely, he added “I’ll ask in the village when I return to corroborate your story.”

  Oh, now she wanted to slap him and kick him. Why would she lie about such a thing? Yet he clearly thought she might, and more than that, he clearly thought there had been dirty work afoot.

  She knew now what it was he had been trying to trip her up over. He thought my father did away with her! His own wife! The mother of his children! Well, of course he would. He was a stranger, and looking for trouble to boot. She hadn’t much liked him before, but now, she hated him so badly that if a wave came up and pulled him out to sea she would stand there and applaud.

  But she shrugged, and concentrated on her wash. Let him think her stolid and stupid as well as shy. “Don’t remember.”

  There was only so long she could keep hanging up clothing, however. Fortunately, she had brought the peas out to shell. She put the empty clothes basket next to the house, sat down on the handy bit of driftwood she kept beside the door, and picked up the bowl of peas. She still would not look at him, nor speak unless she was spoken to. She would make him do every bit of the work. Not one word would he get from her without dragging it out.

  He picked his way across the yard to loom over her. “Has your family owned this house long?” he finally asked.

  “Great-great-great-great granther, sir,” she said. “Maybe longer. Dunno.”

  Let him trace it back in the parish records. And good luck to him at it.

  “Do you farm?” he prompted.

  “Nay. Fishermen.” Ignorant git.

  “Then what is that?” He pointed at the dormant vegetable garden.

  “Bit of garden, no more,” she informed him. “Tisn’t farming.”

  “Then who owns all that behind your house?” he demanded.

  “Emir Jennyd.” He had to know that.

  “All of it?” he persisted.

  “Dunno. Ask at farm.” No more sirs for him. She was getting mighty tired of his presence.

  He looked about himself as if he would like to sit down, and injudiciously attempted to move the cat from her rock. Outraged at this affront, the cat objected. Strenuously. She growled at him and laid her ears back, her eyes glowing with a dang
erous light.

  He was either too stupid or too sure of himself to heed the warning. He reached down to grab her by the scruff of the neck. He managed to get hold of her, but she was not the sort of cat to put up with that insult.

  In fact, she somehow writhed around and got teeth and hind-claws into him; she mauled his hand, then sprang away before he could hit her. He let out a rather girlish shriek of pain and let her go. She fled, growling as she ran off into the fields behind the house. He swore and shook his bleeding hand, then cradled it against his chest.

  Then he whirled to face her. “Your cat just savaged me!” he exclaimed angrily, with a face full of accusation, as if he blamed her for his own stupidity of putting his hand on an animal whose temper he didn’t know.

  “Not my cat,” she said shortly, and went on with her work, not offering him so much as a rag to wrap his hand in.

  Finally, after waiting in vain for her to offer to help him, he trudged down to the shore to wash his lacerated hand in the surf. He came back, face even more sour than before, wrapping his hand in a handkerchief.

  She was finished with the peas by then. An idea had occurred to her, so she got up and set the bowl of peas on her seat. Restraining her expression with difficulty, she picked up another basket from the side of the house, this one very old and battered, taking the least battered from her selection of three. Then she got two net bags. Without saying a word, she trudged down to the shore. He could follow if he liked; she wondered if he would.

  He did. “Where are you going?” he shouted, a little breathless, his tone angry. “I am not finished speaking with you yet!”

  She looked back. “I got work,” she said shortly, only a little above a whisper. “It needs doing.”

  “I demand that you answer my questions!” he shouted, red-faced, stumbling a little over the uneven surface. She doubted he’d even heard what she’d said.

  She shook her head. “Then I reckon,” she said, hunching her chin down and looking servile, “you’d best follow.”

  She plodded a good half mile down the shore to where the best kelp generally washed up. It was in the opposite direction to the site where her mother had been taken, but really, even he could not be so daft as to think she would go to that same spot! As she’d thought, the last storm had brought in plenty. It was almost dry now, perfect for her purpose. She began picking it up, shaking the sand out, and packing it into her basket, as he finally caught up with her.

  “What in God’s name are you doing, girl?” he asked, still sounding angry. She glanced at him again. He was angry—with an incredulous look on his face as if he thought she was playing some sort of trick on him. So she had been right. He had never heard of kelping. Did he think that the seaweeds washed up on the beach were worthless? Or had he been so spoiled all his life that he’d never had to find a use for everything that came into his hand?

  City man. Pff.

  “Kelpin’,” she said shortly.

  “Oh, he’s a rude one,” said a bright voice beside her.

  The voice chilled her anger and made her swallow hard. She looked out of the corner of her eye, and spotted one of the seaweed-girls, like the one she had seen the other day, the ones that would lead her to good places for mussels and cockles. These were tiny little things, no higher than your knee, who were dressed all in green drapery, like seaweed, with hair as green as the seaweed. She glanced at the constable. Clearly he did not see her.

  This was the first time one of them had turned up when she was with another person. And that other person didn’t see the creature. So was this a confirmation? Was she really going mad?

  Before she could get any farther in her thoughts than that, the tiny thing spoke up again.

  “No fear; the likes of him can’t see the likes of me. And I’m minded to do him a mischief,” the little thing continued. And before Mari could blink, the girl was gone.

  Do him a mischief? What on earth— Oh, she knew what that meant in the stories. The Tylwyth Teg folk didn’t like rudeness, and they punished it in a number of ways. But if this creature was some symptom of madness… how could it do something against someone else?

  Automatically, her hands had carried out the work while her mind had been watching and listening to the seaweed-girl. Where she saw fresh laver or samphire she added it to her net bags. And now the constable had caught his breath and was back to his questions. “Your father fishes every day?”

  Good heavens, the man was persistent.

  “Aye,” she said, moving away from him, carefully picking up kelp and shaking it out. “E’cept Sunday.”

  “Why not Sunday?” He was writing again.

  “We go to chapel.” This time she allowed incredulity to creep into her voice. Didn’t he go to chapel? Or church?

  Oh. Wait. Anarchists were supposed to not believe in God. “Ask parson,” she added.

  “He goes out fishing every day but Sunday? Even when it storms?” He was making more notes. How could that possibly be of interest to him?

  “Aye.” She contemplated mischief herself, and sternly reminded herself that she was not to arouse suspicion. “Don’t fish, don’t eat.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw, to her astonishment, a bit of rope snaking towards his left foot. It slipped around his ankle. He didn’t notice, he was so intent on her. Or maybe the pain of his hand kept him from feeling the slithering rope at his ankle.

  “Does anyone else go out when it storms?” What was he trying to get at? That her father was doing something nefarious under the cover of storms? How daft was that? “The other fishermen in the village. Do they fish in the storms too?”

  Again, she shrugged. “Course.” She moved off again, towards another patch of kelp. “Don’t fish, don’t eat.” He started to follow. “Village bain’t rich.” Surely he had seen that for himself. Surely he had seen the number of deaths by drowning in the parish records.

  The rope suddenly tightened around his ankle as he started after her; taken completely by surprise, he went sprawling on his face. And before he could notice what had tripped him, the rope whipped itself away and sped up the sand, to lie, all harmless-looking, too far to have been what caught him.

  He came up with a face and fancy uniform full of sand, sputtering, and looking around for what had caught him. He glared at her, but she was too far away to have done anything to him, and what could he accuse her of? Say she was a witch and had bespelled him to trip? A right fool he’d look. Claim she’d planted some sort of trap in the sand that had managed to disappear as soon as he’d fallen? A greater fool he’d look then!

  She resisted the urge to say something—although she could hear giggling from where the rope was.

  His notebook lay a yard away, pages fluttering in the wind. She made no move to pick it up or give him any other kind of help.

  Her basket was full, so she decided this was a good time to make him follow her again. She hiked it up on her shoulder and headed for the house. She didn’t look back—but she did hear him fall twice more.

  That delayed him enough that she was able to get the fire started beside the bare garden and throw the kelp on it, then hang the kettle over it to start the laver boiling to make the fuel do double-duty. Kelp smoke was… fairly noisome. And as delicious as the laver was after boiling for a day, when it was boiling it was just as noxious. To her gratification, somehow, no matter where he stood, he found himself downwind of it. He waved at it ineffectually, coughing.

  He probably wants to ask me why I’m burning kelp and boiling seaweed, and he can’t get a breath long enough to get the words out. Does the wretched fool think laver grows in a garden? He’s a Welshman; he has to have eaten laver-bread. Now she was highly amused, and some of her temper cooled. Clearly, clearly a city man, and one who’d never had to make what he could buy. The kelp ash was invaluable in the garden, and for making soap, and for scrubbing pots and the hearthstones. She’d have to wash the ash to get rid of the salt before she put it on the garden
, but it would keep down the weeds between the rows just a treat, besides nourishing the plants. But he wouldn’t know that. And she was not going to tell him. Let him ask in the village.

  And clearly he had no idea where laver came from, nor how it was prepared. He probably didn’t even know that the thin brown sheets she’d picked off the rocks were laver. As for the samphire, well, from the look of it, he’d think of eating grass before he’d think of eating samphire.

  She’d told him that her mother had died going kelping, she’d shown him what kelping was, now let him try and figure out why anyone would go kelping, then burn or boil the kelp.

  The smoke almost seemed to be chasing him. Before long, his eyes were red and weeping, and he kept trying to wipe them with the handkerchief around his wounded hand. The sea-water in those deep scratches and bites must have burned like fire. She was not in the least sorry for him. After all, he’d brought every bit of his suffering on himself. Evil to him that evil thinks had never, in her experience, been so immediate.

  After opening and closing his mouth several times and getting a lung full of smoke for his troubles each time, sending him into a coughing fit, he gave up. Without so much as a “Good day”—although he probably would not have been able to choke even that out for the smoke—he stalked off, heading for the road. She watched him leave, carefully. His tormentor tripped him twice more before leaving him alone—or perhaps at this point, between the coughing and the watering eyes, he simply couldn’t see where he was going very clearly. She sincerely hoped he’d been tripped into something nasty at least once.

  When she was sure he wasn’t coming back, and his figure was a stiff, distant little sketch nearing the road, she left the fire to tend to itself and took in her peas.

  Clearly he had been trying to get some sort of information out of her—presumably to use against her da. That was troubling, but no more than her da had expected. He came out here, figuring I would tell him something that would give him a reason to call up da for killing mother. Or at least something that would let him link da to smuggling or maybe the anarchists. Why? Maybe he figured since they lived so far from the village that the village wouldn’t care if he went after them. But why would he do so in the first place? Just because he was sour-natured? That didn’t seem right.