Haijon asked me to move into Rampart Hold that very night, after Catrin had said on the gather-ground that we were pledged, but I said no. There was a funeral still to be arranged, and also there was the way it would be seen. Nobody would speak against it, me being now without kin, but they would shake their heads all the same to see me jump into my lover’s bed with my father not even cold.
My father followed Dandrake’s teachings, so the funeral was stiff and bitter and brought no solace to anyone. Some who came thought I must be a believer too, and recited from the seven hard lessons while they clasped my hand. “We’ll be judged as we did,” or “Death’s the end of sinning, at least.” I smiled a sad smile, and said nothing. Dandrake’s words were sour milk to me.
I stayed on at the tannery for two weeks after Molo was buried. I had thought to stay longer, but living there alone was harder than I had imagined. Things that had never troubled me before – the staleness of the air, the creaking of the vats, the crooked chimney that filled the room with smoke whenever the wind changed – now seemed too burdensome to live with. At the start of October, on a day of bright sun and chill wind, I put my clothes into a leather satchel and walked up the street to the gather-ground. I didn’t try to hide it, but it was early and nobody saw me go.
I knocked on the door of Rampart Hold. It was opened, not by any of the Vennastins but by Ban, Gilly Fisher’s daughter, who along with her mother and father was tasked with cooking and cleaning for the Ramparts. Ban was a year older than me and I counted her a friend. At Summer-dance, in our fourteenth year, after too much wine and wild dancing, we had lain down together on the grass and kissed and fumbled with each other a little, more out of being curious than anything else. Afterwards, for a while, we were tongue-tied when we met, but we were over that.
“Good morrow to you, Spinner Tanhide,” she said to me now.
“Good morrow, Ban,” I gave her back. “Will you tell Dam Catrin I’m here?”
She hurried away to do it, and I sat down on the front step to wait. Rampart Hold was a stone house of the old times, bigger than any other building in the village, and it had four steps up to its door. To its front door, I should say, for it had more than just the one.
By and by, Ban came back. “Dam Catrin sends you welcome, Spinner,” she said. “There’s a room made ready for you. I’ll take you.”
She threw the door open and ushered me in. It was not my first time in the Hold. Everyone went there on testing days, and the meetings of the Count and Seal were held there too, so the downstairs of the house was familiar enough to me. There was a newness, though, to being there as my own self instead of in a crowd, and the size of the place did ever quell me a little. There was a space inside the front door that was not a room, only a place where rooms met, but it was bigger than any room in an ordinary house. There were four doors off this space, and a staircase, and a corridor that went through to the back of the house, where the chamber of the Count and Seal was.
Ban led the way up the stairs, which were of dark and polished wood, then up a second flight – the size of this place! – to where the attic was. The attic was not one room but two. The one of them was Vergil Vennastin’s, the other was to be mine until I made my promises to Haijon on the tabernac. And in my room there was a small surprise waiting for me. Only a small one though, for I knew Haijon had been thinking on this moment ever since my father’s funeral.
He jumped up off the bed, grabbed me in his arms and swung me round three times before setting me down again. Ban laughed out loud. “Don’t be mad at me, Spinner,” she said. “Jon bid me not to tell you he was here waiting for you. He begged me hard.”
“You got to watch men when they beg you hard, Ban,” I said, rolling my eyes at her to show I was joking. “It’s often a measure of other things being hard too, and then they’re not to be trusted.”
Haijon seemed a little shocked at my loose speaking, but Ban gave back as good as she got. “Is a man more honest when his pizzle’s soft then?” she asked me.
“No,” I said. “Only sadder. And sadness puts him in mind of death, and Dandrake’s judgement. So then he resolves to be good awhile.”
“Until the dead come back to life?”
“The dead, or else the pizzle.”
Haijon was outfaced entirely by this nonsense, and fled for his life. But he put his head around the door again. “This will do well enough for now,” he said, “but I’ll work on my mother to let us share a room. Or else to move Lari’s chamber so yours is next to mine.”
“We’re not wed yet, Haijon Vennastin,” I told him, all solemn serious.
“But we will be soon.”
“If you mind my honour, and your own.”
“I’ll mind yours if you mind mine, Spinner. Come to my bed when the lamps go out, and we can keep watch all night!”
He went down the stairs, whistling “We Took it As it Run”. He was in high spirits to have me under the same roof at last, and he did not trouble to hide it.
Ban gave me a hug, still laughing. “I’m so happy for you, Spinner,” she said. “Dead god smile on you! I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more.”
But not everyone in the household was of the same opinion, as I was soon brought to see. I tried to make myself useful that first day, finding things to clean or tidy in the parts of the hold that were open to all. But then Fer Vennastin, who was Catrin’s sister and Rampart Arrow, saw me and bade me stop, with a thin frown on her thin face. “We’ve got the Fishers for that, Demar Tanhide,” she said. “There’s no need for you to take a hand in it.”
“It’s no trouble, Dam Fer,” I said. She was not wearing the bolt gun, but I bowed my head to her as though she was. My aim was to be as amiable as I could. “I want to help.”
She shook her head as if she was checking a child. “It’s no help to step away from your own work and into someone else’s,” she said. “It’s a kind of reproach to them, making it seem like they can’t do it their own selves. Leave it be now, and tend to your business.”
No doubt she thought my business was at the tannery, and in the long run of it she was right. Mythen Rood needed a tanner, and nobody had better skills in that line than me. But the vats had been dry since my father died, and I had decided they could stay dry a while longer. I wanted to strengthen my acquaintance with the Vennastins, hoping in that way to make them think of me as one of their own. Rampart Hold was going to be my home, and I was determined to root myself in like a choker seed, as deep and fixed as I could.
For the time being, my business was here.
But I took myself out of Fer’s sight and spent a little while in my room, unpacking my clothes and putting them away in the shelves and drawers of the big wardrobe. The wardrobe was new-made and sturdy, like most of the furniture I had seen inside the hold. When I had imagined being here, I saw myself surrounded by ancient, beautiful things, as if the Ramparts lived partly in the world that was lost. They did not. They lived in the same world as the rest of us, only somewhat raised out of its ruck and run.
The family all came together at supper, and it was then that Catrin welcomed me properly. The supper table was a long one made of thick, dark oak. She sat me at the foot of it, next to Haijon. She was at the head, with Perliu, her father. Fer and Gendel sat on our right-hand side, Vergil and Mardew and Lari on our left, and that was everyone. All the Vennastins, I mean. Gilly and her husband Raelu Fisher didn’t sit down until they had brought in all the food, along with two big pitchers of beer and one of water. Then they sat at their own table on the other side of the room from us. Ban didn’t sit at all, but came and went from the kitchen as she was needed.