them. But at the proper time, Rufus. Now let her go. Ki, you look like a beaten dog, and that’s the truth. No slight meant to you, as you well know. Hard it is to lose one, let alone three. When Sven’s father took the bloody cough and died … I won’t talk of it now, but I know the pain behind such looks. You know the way, Ki. Same room as always. Lars, fetch her a light down the hall. The beasts have been seen to, have they? Of course they need grain, you young idiot! If I don’t see to it all myself …’
Ki felt swept along by a river into a bright common room of the house, cut free from Rufus’s grip by Cora’s tongue, to be washed down a hallway to a bedroom by Lars. She had not greeted any of the people clustered in the common room to receive her. And Cora was chattering on like a magpie to cover her grief and shock. Speeding up life to get past the bad parts, Sven had called it. Talking to everyone at once, seeing to every tiny detail as if they were all helpless babes. Ki wished that such a defense could work for her.
‘I’ll leave the candle here, Ki. Refresh yourself and rest a bit. It will be a long evening, and you have already been through much. Take your time. They have waited this long; it will do them no harm to wait a little more.’ Lars shut the heavy wooden door behind himself with a solid thunk.
Ki sank onto the bed. It was thick with Cora’s best weavings and new sleeping furs. A white bowl rested on a stand by the draped window. Ki knew that the cool water in the graceful ewer beside it would be scented with fresh herbs. This was a room for ceremonious occasions. Cora had insisted that Ki and Sven spend their first night here after they made their agreement formal. They also slept here when they returned twice to present their children to the family. Sven told her that his father’s body had been laid out upon this bed. The room had seemed a colder place to Ki after that. She could take no comfort in the thickly padded bed or scented water or rich shagdeer hide on the floor. So she would take a note from Cora and hurry herself through this bad part.
She washed her hands and face in the cool, scented water. She took down her hair and carefully redid the knots and weavings smoothly. She had no clean clothing to put on. She had left her things in the wagon. It would be too awkward to walk out past all those people to find clean things and return to change again. Ki was paralyzed by indecision. At any other time it would have been a minor dilemma. But now it brought a blackness crashing down on her, a depression no logic could lift. To go before them in this dusty skirt and blouse seemed an insult to their ceremony. To make a stir by going for clean garments seemed a vanity and an insult to Sven’s memory. She sank onto the bed and put her forehead in her hands. It was all too much. They wanted too much of her. She had nothing left to draw out of herself and give to their rite. She was empty, and her being here was an empty act. She could not decide what to do. She was tired of it all. She pressed her hands to her temples. Weariness, hatred, and anger – would she ever feel any other emotions?
A tap at the door, and Cora was entering before Ki had even raised her head.
‘You look a little better, dear. No, I’ve taken liberties, and I hope you won’t mind them. As soon as word came. Well, you know me. I try to think of everything. It helps sometimes to think of everything at once. There’s a robe here in this chest. I wove it for Lydia as a gift, you know, a surprise, but I had not reckoned on what birthing that second huge boy of hers would do to her belly. So, naturally I never gave it to her, nor even showed it to her, for I didn’t want her to think I thought she had let herself go a bit. No one has seen it and I had set it aside for you even before … ah … word came. Weeks ago, in fact. It’s clean and fresh and new. I know you Romni don’t usually wear green but tonight is a night for our own customs, and I didn’t think you would mind. Something new and fresh, sometimes it gives you an extra bit of strength to go on, you understand. So I’ll just lay it out here for you.’
Cora paused expectantly as she smoothed the robe out across the foot of the bed. Their eyes met. Cora’s eyes had always been dark and deeply shining. Ki had once hoped her children would inherit those compelling eyes. But now they were dull, as if her bright spirit had congealed there. Ki saw the mirror of her own anguish and despair. But there was no relief in finding that her suffering was shared. They were two fish, trapped in separate pools in a drying riverbed. Their tragedy separated them, and their courtesy was a sham between strangers.
‘It’s lovely, Cora. I’ve never felt much bound by the Romni traditions about green. Thank you. It is exactly what I needed right now.’ Ki hoped she sounded warm. All she felt was tired, and shamed by her dusty dress.
‘I’ll just go out, then, and let you make yourself ready. Not that you need to hurry. Lars told us all how tired you are. We’ll wait for you.’ Cora hurried out, fleeing from herself.
Ki shut her eyes tightly, sat still for a moment. Then she rose. She stripped off her dusty clothes. She dampened a cloth in the scented water and smoothed it over her body. The robe slipped on coolly. Tiny yellow flowers had been worked at the throat and cuffs. It was a bit long for Ki, but surely no one would notice that tonight. She smoothed it over her hips and forced her spine to straighten.
The common room was a long, narrow room with a low ceiling. It had no windows, but was dominated by a huge fireplace that blazed at one end of the room. The floor was of flat mortared stone, the walls of thick gray river rock and clay. They kept out the heat and cold alike. A long table stretched down the room. Folk crowded benches on both sides of it. The table was laden with platters of meat freshly taken from the huge fireplace, with fruit piled high in bowls, with steaming pots of vegetables, and with pastries stuffed with berries. Conversation was muted among the people gathered there, humming like a hive of bees at nightfall: A gathering of the family.
Ki stood framed in the dark hallway, afraid to enter and afraid not to. How could she cross that open space alone, to where an empty chair at the head of the table awaited her? But Lars had been watching for her. He was suddenly at her side, escorting her across the room without touching her. She made her way up the table, past murmured greetings from relatives she had met only once or twice before. She could not even put names to all of them. Lydia, of course; and Kurt and Edward, sons of Rufus; Haftor; and beside him, looking so like him, must be the sister she had never met. The faces merged as Ki nodded acknowledgement of their greetings. Lars took his place, waving her on to hers. She passed three old women she did not know; Holland, wife to Rufus; an old man; and Rufus himself. At last the empty chair gaped at her. Ki seated herself and looked up. At the far end of the table, incredibly distant, sat Cora. How could Cora guide her from there? Everyone sat expectantly. Ki waited. There was food on the table before them, and drink. Was she supposed to make some signal for them to begin? Was the Rite of Loosening a family meal, a coming together to share food and sorrow? Ki’s eyes sought Lars, but he was too far down the table to help her.
At her right elbow, Rufus suddenly whispered, ‘I bring you sad tidings.’
Ki jerked her head to stare at him. What tidings could he possibly bring her worse than what she had for them? But Rufus was nodding and making small encouraging hand signs. Ki surmised his intent. She cleared her throat.
‘I bring you sad tidings.’ She said it clearly. She paused, wondering how to word her phrases for such a mixed group. From the old man fumbling with his fingers at the edge of the table to the little girl scarcely able to see over the top of it – how make it comprehensible to all? But from Ki’s gulf of silence their response thundered at her.
‘What tidings do you bring us, sister?’
Ki took a deep breath. At her elbow, Rufus hissed, ‘There are three ye shall see no more. Drink with me to this sorrow.’
Ki shot Lars a venomous glance. No doubt he was supposed to have versed her in her lines before she arrived here. Lars shook his head apologetically at her. Rufus tapped his fingertips impatiently on the tabletop beside her.
‘There are three ye shall see no more,’ Ki intoned. ‘Drink with me to this sorrow.’
‘There are three we shall see no more. We drink with you,’ came murmured reply.
Rufus’s lips were folded flat and tight when Ki looked to him for instruction. Damn it, he could be as angry as he wanted. She was going through this for their sake,