Ch. 208 Names on the Calendar

Chapter 208: Names on the Calendar

Eliza returned on the third afternoon.

I heard the gate bell while I was helping Perrin carry the practice door into the lower chamber.

He held one end.

I held the other.

“You can put it down,” he said.

“I can carry it to the room.”

“You’re looking toward the gate.”

He was right.

We set the door against the wall, and I went to meet her.

Nathaniel rode behind Eliza. Ivara followed with a narrow bundle wrapped in oilcloth.

All three were wet and tired.

“There was a house,” Eliza told me. “It’s still standing.”

“Was anyone there?”

“No.”

She looked at Ivara.

“But someone kept its records.”

Mary brought them into the council chamber after they had eaten.

The house at the crossroads had been closed for years. Its front room was empty apart from a bench and a hearth filled with fallen plaster.

Behind a loose stone in the records cupboard, Ivara had found a packet of pages.

She unwrapped it carefully.

“Names?” Mary asked.

“Some.”

Nathaniel laid one page flat.

“This records people who arrived,” he said. “There’s a second list of those who left.”

“And the petitioner?” I asked.

“We found an entry on the day I waited at Greykeep.”

A woman had arrived at the house that evening.

The name beside the date was damaged by water.

Only its first few letters remained.

“She reached the house,” Nathaniel said.

“Then she must have crossed,” I said.

“Someone reached it. We don’t yet know whether it was the person whose petition I was meant to witness.”

Ivara nodded.

“The arrival was entered without a witness’s name.”

Mary copied what remained of the entry.

Eliza leaned against the wall.

“We found a road account too. Someone paid for a cart to continue south the next morning.”

“Who paid?” Maelin asked.

“The Hall,” Ivara said. “Or someone using its seal.”

Nathaniel looked at the page for a long time.

Then he asked Mary for a copy.

She had already begun making one.

At supper, I found Evelyn’s father at the end of the table with our son on his knee.

The two Garricks were engaged in a disagreement about a spoon.

The younger held it.

The elder wanted him to use it to eat.

“No,” our son said.

“That is a useful word,” Garrick Valewood told him. “You’ll find people use it on you as well.”

Garrick put the spoon down and reached for his grandfather’s cup.

“There,” I said. “He’s learning.”

Helena sat beside them with Carol and the cloth book.

My daughter opened the little door.

“Grandmother home.”

“I am,” Helena said.

Carol shut it and opened it again.

I sat across from them and accepted the bread Helena passed me.

Mary arrived with her calendar.

That caused Melody, three chairs away, to cover the page she was writing.

“I saw that,” Mary said.

“You saw a piece of paper.”

“I know whose birthday is next.”

Evelyn looked up from her supper.

“You are not arranging another hall full of chairs.”

“Those are Uriah’s words,” Melody said.

“They are sensible words.”

I looked between them.

“When is it?”

“You know when my birthday is,” Evelyn told me.

“I do. I wanted to see whether Melody would tell me.”

“She won’t,” Melody said. “I was warned.”

Evelyn pointed her spoon at me.

“By me.”

Mary set the calendar on the table.

Evelyn’s birthday was marked first.

Several weeks later came Garrick Valewood’s fifty-first.

The twins’ second birthday stood farther down the year, near the end of the page Mary had opened.

“They’ve only just turned one,” I said.

“Time continues,” Mary replied.

Carol reached for the calendar.

Mary moved it beyond her hand.

Our daughter looked at the distance, then at Mary.

“No,” Mary said.

The calendar remained where it was.

For several seconds, we all watched it.

It did not move.

Mary closed the book with some satisfaction.

After the children slept, I asked Evelyn what she wanted for her birthday.

“A morning without a timetable,” she said.

“I can speak to Mary.”

“That wasn’t an invitation to create another timetable for avoiding one.”

“What about the chapel?”

“I want to see the foundation before anyone builds on it. Then I would like to go home with you and the children.”

“That sounds possible.”

“And supper with my parents.”

“Also possible.”

She considered.

“Perhaps a walk, if it isn’t raining.”

“I’ll ask Veyra.”

“Don’t ask Uriah, god of storms, to arrange the weather for my birthday.”

“I haven’t become him yet.”

“You wouldn’t be allowed to arrange it then either.”

The next morning, Garrick Valewood came to see me in the workshop.

Aldren was shaping timber for the new chapel’s foundation. Perrin was measuring the cover Orin had brought from the western beacon.

Neither looked up when Garrick entered.

“Have you a moment?” he asked me.

I put down the piece of wood I had been smoothing.

We walked into the yard.

“I heard Mary has put my birthday on the calendar,” he said.

“She has.”

“She’s written fifty-one beside it.”

“That is the age you’ll be.”

“I was hoping you would question her arithmetic.”

“I know better.”

He laughed.

Then he grew quiet.

“There’s something I should discuss with Evelyn while we’re all here.”

“The Valewood estate?” I asked.

“Yes.”

Garrick looked toward the lower road.

“I have been away from it more often this year. Helena has too. The people who manage the house know their work, but they ought to know whom to approach when a decision is needed.”

“Evelyn?”

“I intend to ask what she wants.”

I had assumed the question came with an answer. Garrick had not.

“She has Greykeep,” I said.

“She does.”

“And the chapel.”

“And the children.”

He looked at me.

“That is why I intend to ask.”

We spoke with Evelyn and Helena that afternoon.

Garrick brought the estate accounts. Helena brought a list of people whose homes and wages depended on them.

Evelyn listened to her father’s explanation.

“You aren’t leaving the estate,” she said.

“No. I want a succession plan while I can make one with you.”

“Why now?”

“Because you and Uriah have children. Because you have work here. Because those things have changed what it would mean to ask you to return.”

Helena sat beside her.

“We can arrange for the house to be managed without asking you to live there,” she said. “We want to know whether you would want that responsibility at all.”

Evelyn looked at the accounts.

“I want to understand what the people there need before I answer.”

Garrick smiled.

“That sounds like my daughter.”

Mary joined us to explain which records Greykeep already kept of land and trade with Valewood.

She found two places where the accounts used different names for the same stretch of road.

“That has caused arguments,” Garrick said.

“It will again,” Mary replied.

She marked both names on a separate page.

I watched Evelyn follow the estate’s expenses from one year to the next.

She asked about repairs, winter stores, and the woman who had overseen the household since Garrick and Helena began spending more time at Greykeep.

“Does she want to continue?” Evelyn asked.

“We should ask her,” Helena said.

“And the families who work the land?”

“We can speak with them too.”

The conversation became longer.

Nobody seemed troubled by that.

When we left the table, Evelyn took my hand.

“I thought he was going to tell me I had to choose between Greykeep and Valewood.”

“So did I.”

“He didn’t.”

“No.”

She looked toward the nursery.

“If I take responsibility for the estate someday, it will have to be in a way that lets the people there speak for themselves.”

“Mary will enjoy helping you write that down.”

“Mary enjoys making anyone write things down.”

I could not dispute it.

The chapel foundation was marked at the end of the week.

Eleanor called Evelyn before the first stone was set.

She showed her the drain below the site, the room left for future additions, and the line of the road leading to the entrance.

Veyra’s place for wet coats had a stake of its own.

“You’re giving it nearly as much room as the record chamber,” I said.

“We’ve met the people who arrive in rain,” Evelyn replied.

Aldren brought the first foundation stone.

It was too heavy for one person to place comfortably.

I offered to lift it.

Eleanor shook her head.

“We have a frame for that.”

Perrin looked pleased.

The frame lowered the stone exactly where Eleanor wanted it.

Evelyn’s birthday came on a clear morning.

Veyra had made no promise about the weather.

I made sure to tell Evelyn that.

“I was going to ask,” she said.

The twins woke early. Garrick wanted his grandfather before breakfast, and Carol insisted on carrying a ribbon she had found in a drawer.

Evelyn received them both on the bed.

“Happy birthday,” I said.

Carol held out the ribbon.

Evelyn took it.

“Did you choose this?”

“Blue,” Carol said.

It was blue.

Garrick leaned across her to give Evelyn his boat.

She accepted that too.

For a while, we stayed where we were.

No timetable appeared.

Mary had kept the morning free, though I suspected doing so had required one.

We walked to the new foundation after breakfast.

Evelyn stood inside its outline and looked back toward Greykeep.

“Can you see the castle from the treatment room?” she asked Eleanor.

“From the window, yes.”

“Good.”

I did not ask why.

At supper, Garrick Valewood and Helena joined us. So did Aurelia, Mary, Melody, and several people from the chapel.

There were fewer chairs than on my birthday.

Evelyn noticed.

“Was that deliberate?”

“Yes,” Melody said.

“I approved it,” Mary added.

Helena had brought a small box from Valewood.

Inside was a set of needles Evelyn had used when she first learned to mend cloth. Their wooden case had been repaired.

“I thought these were lost,” Evelyn said.

“They were at home,” Helena replied.

Garrick gave her a book of the estate’s older maps.

“I’m not asking you to answer anything tonight,” he said. “I thought you might like to see what was there before the newest roads.”

Evelyn turned the first page.

“I do.”

I gave her a new case for her drawing pencils.

Aldren had helped me fit its lid.

“It closes properly,” I said.

“That sounds like a claim I should test.”

She opened and shut it three times.

“Accepted.”

Later, we took the walk she had wanted.

The path below the inner wall was dry. Lanterns shone from windows above us.

“Did you get your morning?” I asked.

“I did.”

“And your walk.”

“I am having it.”

“I thought I’d check.”

She leaned against me as we went.

“The twins will be two before we know it,” she said.

“Mary knows exactly when.”

“Yes.”

“Helena will want to prepare.”

“So will my father. He’s already begun talking about a larger boat.”

“He should speak to Garrick about that first.”

“Which one?”

“Our son.”

She laughed.

I wanted to hear it again, so I told her what Perrin had proposed for the boat’s measurements.

Several weeks later, Garrick Valewood turned fifty-one.

He had asked for a quiet supper.

Helena told us he had made the same request every year she had known him.

“He will enjoy the gathering once he stops insisting he didn’t ask for it,” she said.

She was right.

There was music after supper, and Aldren brought Garrick a newly repaired case for his tools.

“I thought that hinge was beyond saving,” Garrick said.

“It was,” Aldren replied. “I made another.”

Carol sat in her grandfather’s lap and counted the candles badly.

Garrick helped her.

Our son tried to blow them out before anyone had lit them.

The estate came up again once the children were asleep.

Garrick had spoken with the household manager and the families Evelyn had named. They wanted the day-to-day work to remain with the people doing it. They also wanted to know who would settle a dispute they could not resolve.

“I could take that responsibility,” Evelyn said. “But I would need a way to hear them from Greykeep, and I would visit.”

“You needn’t decide tonight,” her father told her.

“I’m telling you what I think I could do. There are still things to settle.”

He nodded.

Helena reached for his hand beneath the table.

They had time to make the plan together.

Before bed, Mary showed me the last page of the calendar.

She had marked the twins’ second birthday.

Beside it, she had left an empty space.

“What goes there?” I asked.

“What they need when the day comes.”

“That is unusually uncertain for you.”

“They are unusually good at changing the plan.”

I looked toward the nursery door.

Garrick’s boat lay on the floor beside his cradle. Carol’s cloth book rested on a chair beyond his reach.

“At least we know they’ll want cake,” I said.

Mary wrote cake in the empty space.

“There,” she said. “We’ve begun.”