Ch. 171 The Stories We Kept

Chapter 171: The Stories We Kept

Aurelia went to the school after breakfast.

She carried no book.

I noticed that as we crossed the lower hall.

“Have you chosen your story?”

“Yes.”

“Am I allowed to hear it?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“Whether you can sit quietly.”

I opened the door for her.

“I rule an entire kingdom.”

“Yes,” she said. “I have seen how often Mary has to repeat things.”

Abigail had placed a chair near the hearth.

The children gathered around it with the untidy precision of people who knew exactly where they wanted to sit.

Della remained with the youngest at a nearby table.

I took a place beside the wall.

Aurelia stood in front of the chair for a moment.

Yesterday, she had sat across from the woman who helped imprison her.

Now a boy was moving his foot so her skirt would not catch beneath it.

She thanked him.

Then sat down.

“When I was young,” she began, “I believed I could keep a secret better than anyone in our household.”

Several children nodded.

They appeared to share this confidence.

Aurelia folded her hands.

“This was before the goose.”

The goose belonged to a woman who supplied eggs to the kitchens.

Aurelia had been forbidden to feed it.

Naturally, she had concluded that the adults did not understand its needs.

For three mornings, she carried bread into the yard.

On the fourth, the goose followed her inside.

“How far?” a girl asked.

“Far enough.”

That answer satisfied nobody.

Aurelia smiled.

“Into the room where my father was receiving a delegation.”

Abigail covered her mouth.

I settled more comfortably against the wall.

This was becoming an excellent use of my morning.

The goose had bitten a visiting lord.

Not severely.

Aurelia was very clear about that.

It had then pursued a servant carrying a tray, knocked over a small table, and settled beneath her father’s chair.

“What did your father do?” the boy nearest the hearth asked.

“He continued the meeting.”

“With the goose?”

“With the goose.”

“Was he angry?”

“Eventually.”

Several children laughed.

Aurelia looked toward the window.

“I remember standing outside the door, hoping that if I remained very still, nobody would connect me to what had happened.”

“Did they?”

“The goose came out when I called it.”

That was the part that undid Abigail.

Afterward, the questions wandered.

What had Aurelia worn?

Had the lord bitten the goose back?

Did kings have to learn their letters?

Was the goose still alive?

Aurelia answered each in turn.

Then a quiet girl beside the hearth asked, “Do you remember everything?”

The room changed a little.

Not enough for most of the children to notice.

Aurelia looked at her.

“No.”

“But you’re—”

“I forget things. Sometimes I remember part of something and cannot find the rest.”

The girl considered that.

“My grandmother forgets the end of songs.”

“Does anyone else know them?”

“My uncle knows the wrong end.”

Aurelia smiled.

“Perhaps you should write down both.”

I stayed after the children returned to their work.

Abigail gathered a few abandoned slates.

“They’ll ask you back.”

“I should like that,” Aurelia said.

Della approached with a page in her hand.

“One of the evening pupils has been asking whether she might bring her father.”

“To lessons?” Abigail asked.

“To tell us something.”

She passed over the page.

There were only a few lines.

The man had worked on the river for most of his life.

He knew the old names of its bends and the years the water had reached particular doorsteps.

His daughter had begun writing them down.

“He thinks she’s doing it wrong,” Della said.

“Is she?” I asked.

“She says he changes the account every time.”

Aurelia glanced toward me.

“Then we may need more than one page.”

By noon, Abigail’s ordinary lesson had become an invitation.

A small one.

Anyone attending the evening class could bring a story, a song, or something they wanted another person to know how to do.

Della wanted them to practice writing complete sentences.

Abigail wanted the older children to learn to listen without interrupting.

I suspected the second ambition would be harder.

Mary read the proposed notice.

“Where will these be kept?”

“In the school, at first,” Abigail said.

“And if people want them back?”

“They can have them.”

Mary nodded.

Then added a line asking everyone to put their name on what they brought.

It was sensible.

It also saved us from eventually possessing seventeen accounts of unusual sheep with no way to find out whose sheep they were.

I told Evelyn over lunch.

She listened while Carol attempted to remove a crumb from my sleeve.

“Aurelia told them about a goose?”

“Yes.”

“I missed that.”

“I expect several children will be willing to tell you.”

“Accurately?”

“Enthusiastically.”

My wife smiled.

Then looked thoughtful.

“What?”

“We should write some things down.”

“For the school?”

“For the children.”

I looked at our daughter.

She had acquired the crumb.

She was now looking for another.

“What sort of things?”

Evelyn rested a hand against Carol’s back.

“What we remember. What their grandparents remember.”

Then, gently, “What you remember.”

I knew what she meant.

I had told her about Caroline.

Small pieces, usually.

A winter tent.

An argument.

The way my sister said my name when she had already decided I would help.

Some memories arrived easily.

Others stayed beyond reach, even when I could feel the place where they ought to be.

“I don’t know where to begin,” I said.

Evelyn reached across the table.

“Something you want them to know.”

I nodded.

Carol caught her fingers.

For a while, that settled the conversation.

The first evening brought more people than Abigail expected.

Not a crowd.

Enough that we fetched another bench.

Rona came with several carefully folded pages.

A cooper brought a broken hoop to explain something.

The old river worker arrived wrapped in a coat his daughter kept trying to fasten.

“I’m indoors,” he told her.

“You’ll go outdoors again.”

“Not immediately.”

Della placed them beside the hearth.

Melody joined me near the door.

“What are we learning?”

“Whatever people bring.”

She looked at the broken hoop.

“Promising.”

The river worker’s name was Halden.

He objected to being called old.

His daughter informed us of this before he began.

Then he described a flood.

At first, it was difficult to follow.

He named a mill that no longer stood, a footpath now beneath a warehouse, and three brothers whom nobody else in the room had met.

Abigail asked him to slow down.

Della found another sheet.

I fetched a board.

By the time he finished describing where the water had broken through, we had drawn a rough stretch of river between us.

Halden leaned forward.

“No. The ditch was there.”

I moved the line.

“That’s where they filled it.”

“When?” I asked.

He named a year.

Mary, who had arrived quietly, looked over my shoulder.

The filled ditch lay near the east warehouses.

Near the turn where the cart had slipped during the storm.

I looked at Mary.

She had noticed too.

Halden tapped the board.

“Water used to go through that meadow. Before they raised the road.”

“Does it still?”

“When it gets high enough.”

“Has anyone told the warehouse owners?”

He gave me a patient look.

“I’m telling you.”

That was fair.

I asked whether he would walk the place with Eleanor when the footing improved.

His daughter opened her mouth.

“With someone to carry a chair if he needs one,” I added.

Halden considered the drawing.

“Could do.”

Then he looked at Della.

“Have you written the bit about the mill correctly?”

Rona read next.

She did not stand.

Her pages trembled slightly as she unfolded them.

At first, she read so quietly that we had to lean closer.

Then her voice steadied.

She had written about making bread with Ressa.

The bowl they used.

The way her aunt judged the dough by touch.

An argument about whether the oven was hot enough.

Nothing terrible happened.

Nobody fled.

The bread burned because two women became distracted talking at the door.

Rona looked up.

“She’ll say it was my fault.”

“Was it?” Melody asked.

“Yes.”

People laughed.

So did Rona.

She read the rest.

Aurelia sat near the back with Evelyn.

She listened to the cooper explain why a barrel could look sound and still leak.

She listened to a woman sing half a harvest song, stop, and accept three different versions of the next verse.

When Abigail asked whether she wished to tell another story, Aurelia shook her head.

“I should like to hear this one finished.”

It never was.

They disagreed about the final verse until Della wrote down all three.

The quiet girl from the morning looked enormously satisfied.

That night, Evelyn placed a small book on our table.

Plain brown leather.

Good paper.

No title.

“Where did you find it?”

“Mary.”

“Does she know what it’s for?”

“I told her.”

I opened it.

The first page waited.

That felt unreasonable of it.

Evelyn sat beside me with her sewing.

She did not suggest a beginning.

After a while, I dipped the pen.

Then stopped.

“I can’t remember the colour of the blanket.”

“The one in the tent?”

“Yes.”

“Does the story need it?”

I looked at the empty page again.

“No.”

I wrote Caroline’s name.

For several breaths, that was all.

Then I added that she had been eighteen months older than me and had regarded this as a qualification for giving orders.

Evelyn leaned closer.

“Accurate?”

“Painfully.”

I wrote about the tent.

The stolen blankets.

The food I had been required to bring.

How she made me knock before letting me into a space that occupied most of my own room.

The words were untidy.

Twice, I crossed something out.

Once, I laughed before I could explain why.

My wife waited until I finished the sentence.

“She charged you to come back in?”

“With biscuits.”

“You’d already brought food.”

“She said that was rent.”

Evelyn put down her sewing.

I had to stop writing until we both became quiet again.

Then I added the biscuits.

That was something I had not remembered when I told the story in the mountain hut.

It returned with the shape of her hand held out beneath the blanket.

I sat looking at the page.

My wife touched my shoulder.

“Uriah?”

“I remembered something else.”

She stayed beside me while I wrote it down.

The following morning, Eleanor took Halden to see the old ditch.

They returned before lunch.

She brought muddy boots and a new drawing.

He brought the satisfaction of a man who had been correct for several decades.

“We need to clear the outlet before the thaw,” Eleanor said.

“Can it be done?”

“Yes. We’ll speak to the warehouse owners this afternoon.”

Halden looked at me.

“Told the last fellow too.”

“Which fellow?”

“Had a beard.”

That did not narrow the matter sufficiently.

Mary wrote down the work instead.

I found Aurelia in the south sitting room later.

The mill boy’s drawing stood on a shelf, flattened beneath its ribbon.

She held a small notebook.

When I came in, she closed it.

“Another goose?” I asked.

“No.”

I sat beside the hearth.

She looked down at the cover.

“My son used to hide things in his boots.”

“What things?”

“Stones. String. Once, a very small frog.”

I smiled.

“Did you know?”

“Usually when someone tried to dress him.”

She opened the notebook again.

“I remembered the frog this morning.”

For a little while, I thought about the windowless room and everything that had happened there.

Then Aurelia began describing the servant who had discovered it.

I listened.

Before she finished, I went to find my book.