Ch. 167 The Road Beyond the House

Chapter 167: The Road Beyond the House

The apple seeds remained on the little plate for two days.

On the third morning, I found a note beside them.

Please do not clear these away.

Aurelia’s handwriting.

Beneath it, in a different hand, someone had added:

We know.

I carried my tea into the sitting room.

Evelyn looked up from her drawing.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re smiling.”

“I believe our teacher has encountered the household.”

We chose the place for the tree after breakfast.

The ground was too hard for planting, but that did not prevent a considerable discussion.

Aurelia wanted somewhere children could reach the fruit.

The gardener wanted somewhere the tree would receive enough light.

I suggested the open patch beyond the pears.

He looked at me.

“That is where the cart turns.”

“Does it need to?”

“Yes.”

We moved farther along.

Evelyn walked beside Aurelia, their cloaks brushing the bare stems along the path. Behind us, the gardener explained what he could do with a cutting from the tree at Lethmere if Brother Oren was willing.

Aurelia listened carefully.

Then asked whether we might try growing the seeds as well.

“We can try,” he said.

That pleased her.

We settled on a place beside the lower path, with room enough for a bench.

I put a small stake into the ground.

It leaned.

The gardener straightened it after I stepped away.

Tessa arrived before noon.

She brought a folded letter, a sack containing something heavy, and an opinion about the road between the gate and the castle.

“The drain beside the lower turn is blocked.”

“I’ll have someone look.”

“Leaves. Mostly.”

“You checked?”

“I was standing in the water.”

She handed me the letter.

The sack went onto Mary’s table with a dull clatter.

Mary looked at it.

“Should I be concerned?”

“Only if you dislike cheese.”

Mary moved an inkpot farther away.

The letter came from Merrow at Northwatch.

The first part concerned snow.

The second concerned the wayhouse.

He had posted warnings at the old approaches and arranged for the nearest households to hear what we had found. Nobody would be sent up to work on the ruin until the weather improved.

Then the subject changed.

Three people had come to ask about the bridge.

I read that part twice.

“What bridge?” Evelyn asked.

“The one on the old road.”

Eleanor had joined us by then. She took the letter when I offered it.

“The broken one?”

Tessa nodded.

“They heard the king had been up there with a builder.”

“And assumed we meant to repair it,” I said.

“Some hoped.”

That was a different thing.

The people lived beyond the eastern ridge.

I knew there were settlements there.

On our maps, they occupied a space between two rivers and a range of hills drawn with more confidence than detail.

Tessa knew which roofs leaked.

She spread her own map beside Mary’s book.

“This is the road they use now.”

Her finger followed the valley south.

Then west.

Then north again.

Evelyn leaned closer.

“That far?”

“When the lower ford is passable.”

“And when it isn’t?”

“They wait.”

Eleanor studied the old crossing.

“What do they bring?”

“Wool. Cheese. Timber from the lower slopes. A little ironwork.”

Tessa glanced at the sack.

“That came from a woman who remembers carrying her youngest over the old bridge.”

“How long ago?”

“The youngest has grandchildren.”

I asked the Castellan to bring the old road accounts.

He returned with copies of the passages we had examined before going north.

Forty beams.

Twelve men.

Six mules.

The words had meant something different when we had first read them.

Then, I had been looking for a prison.

Now I noticed the entries beneath the bridge work.

A load of salt.

Replacement shoes for the mules.

Payment to a household that had fed the workers.

Eleanor tapped the page.

“This tells us what they repaired that year. It won’t tell us what’s left.”

“Can you find out?”

“When the snow goes.”

I looked at the map again.

The road continued beyond the wayhouse.

I had known that.

Somehow, until Tessa put her finger on the houses, I had treated the ruin as its end.

We went to the workshop because Eleanor wanted a board large enough to draw on.

Perrin cleared one.

Then remained close enough to hear while pretending to sort pegs.

Eleanor sketched the gorge from memory.

The broken approach.

The surviving stonework.

Where the old deck had fallen.

Tessa corrected the far bank.

Eleanor rubbed it out and drew it again.

I watched a bridge become considerably more expensive in three strokes.

“Could we make a crossing for people first?” Evelyn asked.

“Possibly,” Eleanor said. “If the stone will take it.”

“And mules?”

“That is the next question.”

“Wagons?”

Eleanor looked at me.

“That is several questions wearing a coat.”

Perrin laughed.

Then dropped a peg.

I could lift stone.

I could shape it.

For a few moments, while Eleanor drew, I imagined standing above the gorge and drawing the broken sides together beneath my hands.

A clean span.

A road where there had been empty air.

Then she began asking Tessa about the water during the thaw.

Where the ice gathered.

Whether the bank above the western footing had slipped.

My imagined bridge became less convincing.

“Would my help make it possible sooner?” I asked.

“It would make some of the work faster.”

“Some?”

“Hauling. Setting. Perhaps shaping, after we know what we’re setting it on.”

She put down the chalk.

“I’d be pleased to have you lift the stones, Uriah. I still want to know whether the mountain intends to keep them.”

That seemed fair.

I disliked how often useful answers did.

By the time we returned upstairs, Beatrice had heard that we were discussing a bridge.

She arrived with the winter accounts.

I had not sent for her.

Apparently bridges could summon people.

“We have commitments,” she said.

Eleanor nodded.

“So do my workers.”

I looked around the table.

“I haven’t promised to build it.”

“Good,” Beatrice said, and sat down.

Mary opened a clean page.

We agreed to pay for a survey when the road could be reached safely.

The households beyond the ridge would be asked which crossings they used, what they carried, and where they needed to go.

Eleanor wanted a mason with her.

Tessa wanted someone from the far side who knew the thaw.

Beatrice wanted the survey’s cost before anyone hired six mules.

The Castellan offered to compare the old route with the roads now in use.

It was less satisfying than announcing a bridge.

It was also something we could actually begin.

“There is one thing you can do before spring,” Tessa said.

We turned toward her.

“The woman who sent the cheese needs salt.”

“How much?”

“For herself, or everyone who gave her money when she said she was asking?”

Mary’s pen paused.

Tessa reached into her coat and produced another folded sheet.

Eleanor began laughing.

“You brought the list.”

“She wasn’t going to send cheese without asking.”

The quantities were modest.

Salt.

Lamp oil.

Needles.

A replacement blade for a saw.

Two kinds of medicine, described by appearance with enough uncertainty that Evelyn took the page to Ilyen before we agreed to send anything.

There was money wrapped inside the fold.

Small coins.

Carefully counted.

I touched the edge of the paper.

“We can arrange this through Northwatch?”

Tessa nodded.

“A pack train is going around before the next heavy snow.”

Beatrice drew the list toward her.

“Then let’s see what we have.”

Aurelia had listened through most of the meeting.

After the others left, she remained beside the map.

Her fingers rested near the old bridge.

“Did you know those villages?” I asked.

“Some of them. Under other names.”

“Were you ever there?”

“Once, before I became queen.”

I waited.

She smiled faintly.

“My horse lost a shoe. I thought that was a disaster.”

“How long were you delayed?”

“Two days.”

“Was it?”

“No. A family took us in. Their youngest daughter taught me to mend a net.”

“You?”

“I was not born knowing everything.”

“I have occasionally wondered.”

She gave me a look.

Then bent over the map again.

“There was a drying shed beside the river. I remember the smell.”

Tessa had marked a mill near that place.

Aurelia studied it for a while.

“I want to go,” she said.

“When?”

“When Tessa goes back. Part of the way, at least.”

I looked toward the window.

The garden stake was just visible beyond the pears.

“To see what remains?”

“And what they have built.”

She said it without sadness.

That caught me more than I expected.

“Will you take a horse?”

“I may.”

“Does Tessa know?”

“I intended to ask her before acquiring one.”

“Wise.”

Aurelia folded the edge of the map back into place.

Then looked at me.

“I should like a journey in which nobody has hidden part of me at the end.”

I found Evelyn in the nursery later.

She sat on the floor with a wooden cup beside her knee.

Carol had put a ring inside it.

Then removed it.

Then put it back.

The work appeared exacting.

Our son stood against the chest, holding its edge with both hands.

Helena sat nearby, sewing.

“Did you build a bridge?” my wife asked.

“Not yet.”

“Productive afternoon, then.”

“We bought salt.”

“That will please someone.”

I sat beside her.

Garrick turned at the sound of my voice.

One hand remained on the chest.

He reached the other toward me.

I held out a finger.

He considered it.

Then looked at the wooden cup.

Evelyn moved it nearer.

Our son frowned.

He released the chest.

For a moment, he stood with both hands in the air.

My wife went very still.

So did I.

Garrick moved one foot.

Then the other.

He fell forward into Evelyn’s waiting hands with an expression of profound surprise.

The cup rolled away.

Nobody cared.

“Oh,” Evelyn said.

It was hardly a word.

She gathered him against her, laughing.

I put my hand over his back.

He pushed at us both.

The cup was still beyond his reach.

We tried to persuade him to do it again.

Naturally, he refused.

Aurelia arrived.

Then Garrick.

Then Melody, who had heard something from the passage and wanted to know whether anyone had been injured.

Our son sat comfortably in his grandfather’s lap and chewed a wooden ring.

“Two steps,” I said.

“Toward the cup,” Evelyn added.

Melody looked at him.

“A clear objective. That helps.”

Carol crawled across the rug, took possession of the cup, and struck it against my boot.

Her brother watched.

I thought rivalry might accomplish what encouragement had failed to do.

He reached toward her.

Then settled more firmly into his grandfather’s arm.

Apparently walking could wait.

That evening, Mary brought the letter for Northwatch.

I read it beside the nursery lamp while Evelyn coaxed our daughter toward sleep.

The survey.

The supplies.

The questions for the households beyond the ridge.

At the bottom, there was space for my signature.

“Will they be disappointed?” I asked.

“That you haven’t promised the bridge?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps.”

I looked at the list of things that would leave with Tessa.

“They’ll have an answer.”

“And their salt,” Mary said.

I signed.

After she left, Evelyn leaned against my shoulder.

Across the room, our son slept with one hand open beside his face.

“Two steps,” I whispered.

She smiled.

“I was there.”

“I know. I may keep saying it.”

“You have been.”

I kissed her hair.

Outside, the lower garden had disappeared into darkness.

We would have to wait for spring to plant the tree.

Tomorrow, I thought, I should move the nursery cup a little farther away.