Chapter 187: Letters from Home

The post comes up the hill at nine.

It used to come into the lower hall through the arches, a little of it from every kingdom with a gate, so that you could stand at the bottom of the stair at nine in the morning and watch the letters arrive in six different directions at once, like birds coming home to a barn. Mary loved it. She'd stand there with her basket and the Castellan would hand her each bundle as it came through, and she'd say the name of the place out loud, "Lyradon, thank you. Concordia, thank you," as if the letters had walked.

Now the arches were on the quay, and the post went to the Lantern and Oar, and a boy brought it up the hill in a sack.

The boy was Dickon Varley's cousin Sim, and he'd been asked in at the gate on Monday, so on Tuesday he was known. My father was on his stool when Sim came up. I was beside him, on his right, with a cup of tea I'd been sent down with and had mostly drunk.

"Morning, Sim."

"Morning, Your Majesty. Morning, sir." Sim held up the sack. "Nineteen letters, two parcels and a cheese."

"Who's the cheese for?"

"It doesn't say, sir. It just smells."

"Then it's for Helena," said my father. "Everything that smells goes to Helena. Will you take it around to the kitchen door?"

"Yes, sir." Sim stopped under the arch. He looked up at the slate. Every morning since Monday the boy has stopped under the arch and looked up at the slate, because the first time the Castellan wrote his name there in its narrow gray hand, Sim Varley. Post. Asked., he'd gone red and then pale and then red again and asked if he could tell his mother. "Is it still there, sir? My name?"

"It's still there," said my father. "It'll stay there."

Sim went on through, very straight in the back, carrying the cheese.

* * *

Mary sorted the post in her office in the south range, with Faelan.

Faelan is ten and my brother, and he keeps a ledger, a big green laundry ledger with a cracked spine, in which he writes down every god he's met and every friend he has and what they like best. Mary calls it the second most important book in Greykeep. He's been helping her with the post since the arches went down, because there are new rules, and Faelan loves a rule.

The rule was that every letter that came into Greykeep went through Mary's hands first.

Not to read them. We'd argued about that for an evening and my father had said no, very quietly, in the way that ends arguments. Nobody reads anybody's letters. But Mary looked at the outside of every one, and wrote down in a list who it was for and where it was from, in her small neat hand, and Faelan put a tick by it when it was delivered. It was the closest thing to watching that my father would allow, and he didn't much like that either.

"It isn't watching," Mary said. "It's the post. I've done the post for twenty years."

"I know," said my father. "I just don't like it having a list."

So it had a list.

I went up after breakfast to see if anything had come for me. Nothing had. Faelan was sitting on the floor by the window with the sack between his knees, taking the letters out one at a time and reading the outsides aloud while Mary wrote.

"Helena. From her sister in Fern Ford. Helena. From the man who sells her the flour. Garrick," he looked up at me, "no, it's not, it's Grandpa. From Velden. It's got a picture of a horse on the seal." He held it up. "That's a good seal."

"Put it on the chair, love."

"Eleanor, from Lyradon. Eleanor, from Lyradon. Eleanor, from Lyradon." He frowned. "Eleanor gets a lot of letters."

"She's got a lot of gates," said Mary.

"Wynn." Faelan turned the next one over. "Wynn Harlow. From," he squinted, "Skerrow. Where's Skerrow?"

"Down the coast, past Orselle," said Mary. "It's where his mother lives. It's a fishing village."

"It smells of fish," said Faelan, sniffing it. "It always smells of fish. That's how you can tell it's his mam." He looked at it a moment longer. "It's thinner than usual."

Mary looked up.

"His mam's letters are usually fat," said Faelan. "Because she writes on both sides and then she writes around the edges. He showed me once. He said she never wastes paper because paper's dear in Skerrow." He held the letter up to the window, the way you're not supposed to, and the light came through it. "This one's only one sheet. And it's only on one side."

"Faelan," said Mary. "Don't hold other people's letters up to the light."

"Sorry." He put it down. "I wasn't reading it. You can't read it through the paper anyway. I only wanted to see if it was fat."

"Put it in the pile for the quay."

"Yes, Mary."

He put it in the pile for the quay, and put a tick by Wynn's name in the list, and went on to the next one, which was for Carol, from Caldermoor, with a big red seal I didn't know.

I didn't think anything of the thin letter. I'd like that noted. Mary didn't either. She said afterward that she thought, Paper's dear in Skerrow, she's saving it for the winter, and wrote the next name down.

Only Faelan thought about it. And Faelan was ten, and had been told not to.

* * *

Eleanor went through to Lyradon at ten to ask Bettrys.

She went from the quay. It was the first time anyone from the castle had gone out through the new arches instead of the old ones, and she stood in front of the Lyradon arch on the quay for a moment in her coat and gloves with her list in her pocket and looked at it, and at the Castellan's line of writing below the plate, Lyradon. Kept., and touched it with one finger. Then she went through.

She came back at half past one.

I was on the quay with Aldren, striking the centering under the Concordia arch, which is the part where you take away the wooden frame that's been holding the arch up and find out whether it holds itself. It held. Aldren didn't even watch. He was eating a sausage. "Of course it holds," he said. "She built it." He meant Eleanor. Then he said, "I built it," because he knew she was in earshot coming out of the Lyradon arch, and she said, "You held the ladder," and he said, "That's the most important part," and that was them for the afternoon.

She came and stood beside me.

"Bettrys?" I said.

"All right." Eleanor took her gloves off and put them in her pocket next to the list. "She's well. Her hand's still the steadiest I ever taught. She showed me the plates she's cutting for the river towns, and they're beautiful. Better than mine at her age." She was quiet a moment. "She asked if she could come back."

"Come back?"

"Here. To the castle. To work with me again." Eleanor looked at the arch. "She said she missed it. She said she left because she thought she'd learned everything, and she'd been cutting plates on her own for nineteen years and found out she hadn't. She said she'd never asked because she didn't think she could ask." Eleanor put her hands in her coat pockets. "I said yes. In the spring. When the new apprentices come."

"That's good."

"It is good." She didn't sound as if she thought it was good. She sounded as though she'd been somewhere very high up and come down again and her ears hadn't popped. "Garrick, I've been doing this for forty years. Teaching. I thought I knew every one of them. I thought I knew them like my own plates." She took her hand out of her pocket. She had the list in it, folded very small. "Three of them now. Three people I taught. And all three of them wanted something, and none of them asked. Perrin with his lathe. Calum with the naming. Bettrys wanting to come home. And I never once thought to ask any of them."

"You're asking now."

"Because somebody hid gold in my gate." She put the list away. "That's a fine reason to start."

"It's still asking."

Eleanor looked at me sideways over her spectacles, the way she does.

"Your father says that," she said. "That it doesn't matter why you start."

"He does."

"He's usually right. I hate it." She turned to go up the hill. Then she turned back. "Four left. Hedge on Thursday. The twins on Friday. Then Wynn on Saturday." She looked down the quay toward the Lantern and Oar. "If he's slept. Tell him to sleep."

"I'll tell him."

I didn't, as it turned out. I didn't get the chance.

* * *

Wynn came up to the castle at four.

He came to the gate first. He didn't need to. He'd been asked in long ago and the Castellan knew him, and anyone the Castellan knew could walk through the gate any hour of the day. But he came up the hill road and stopped at the gate, and stood in front of my father's stool with his hat in his hands.

I was on the wall above. I saw him from there. It was getting dark already; it's dark at four by then, in the north, in the week after first snow. The lamp in the arch was lit, and Wynn stood in the light of it with his hat in his hands, turning it.

"Your Majesty."

"Wynn," said my father. "Come in. It's cold."

"I will. I just." He stopped. "I wanted to ask you. Before I asked Eleanor. Or. I don't know who I ask, now. With the lockdown."

My father waited.

"I'd like to go home," said Wynn. "For a few days. If I can be spared."

"Home to Skerrow."

"Yes, sir."

"Is everything all right?"

"Mam's had a fall." Wynn turned the hat. "She wrote. It came this morning. She went down the harbor steps on the ice and hurt her wrist, and she can't mend nets with it, and the girls," he stopped, and went on, "the girls are only eight and eleven. They're doing their best. But she can't mend the nets, and that's the winter money. She didn't ask me to come. She'd never ask. But I'd like to go." He looked down at the hat. "Just till it's set. A week. Less, if I can."

"Of course," said my father.

He didn't hesitate. I want that written down too. He didn't hesitate at all, and nor would I have, and nor would anyone in the castle, and that's the whole of what Greykeep is, and it was the thing that was used.

"When?" said my father.

"Tomorrow, sir. First thing. I'd go through the Orselle arch in the lower hall, it's still there, and walk down the coast from the Orselle side. It's not far, from there." Wynn looked up at last. "I've told Aldren. He says the quay can spare me. He says the golems don't need anyone to tell them what to do." Something like his smile. "He says they don't listen anyway."

"Then go," said my father. "Go first thing. Tell your mother we're sorry about her wrist. Wait there."

He got up off his stool. He went inside the gatehouse, where he keeps his frost hammer and his tea and the box of things he gives people, and came back with a jar.

It was honey. It came from the twelve hives we'd folded up from Ambrose Pelham's orchard the night of the wolf raid, the night my father held the first hard frost off so they could be moved. The bees had gone into the Greykeep lower orchard and sulked and then decided it would do. Pelham had sent nine jars up with them, from the last comb before they closed up for winter, by way of thanks. There were only nine. My father had been giving them to people who needed them, one at a time, and not saying.

"For your mam," he said. "For her wrist. Helena says honey's good for anything that hurts. I don't know if it's true. But it's good on bread."

Wynn looked at the jar.

He didn't take it at first. He stood there in the lamplight with his hat in one hand and his other hand half out and not moving, and I watched from the wall, and I thought he was going to cry. I thought he was going to cry because my father was kind, and he wasn't used to it, and he was tired, and his mother had fallen on the ice.

He didn't cry. He took the jar.

"Thank you," said Wynn. "Your Majesty. Thank you."

"Uriah," said my father. "You've known me twelve years."

"Uriah," said Wynn. It came out very quiet.

My father sat back down on his stool. "Is there anything you want, Wynn? Apart from going home?"

It's what he asks everyone. He asked it of Malachar. He asks it of the milk boy. Name, home, want. Wynn knew the question; everyone in the castle knows it. I saw him hear it. I saw him stand very still with the jar of honey in his hand.

"I want them to be safe," said Wynn. "Mam and the girls. That's all I want. That's all I've ever wanted, really."

"Then we want the same thing," said my father.

And Wynn looked at him for a long moment in the lamplight, and then he said, "Yes," and went in through the gate and up across the court toward Eleanor's drafting room with the honey held against his chest in both hands like something that might spill.

* * *

The Castellan logs everyone who leaves now.

That's the other half of the lockdown. Nobody new comes in without being asked in at the gate in daylight. And everyone who goes out, goes in the book. Not to stop them. The Castellan has never stopped anyone going out in its life; it says a castle that won't let you leave isn't a castle, it's a hand that's forgotten how to open. But it writes it down, so that when they come back, it knows they've been away.

So at six the next morning, Wednesday, in the dark, I went down to the lower hall with Wynn.

I didn't have to. I wanted to. I'd been thinking about him the night before, in the nook, with the coin lying flat on the sill. I'd been thinking that I'd asked him if he was well, on Monday, on the quay, and he'd said he was tired and missing home, and now his mother had fallen. And I'd thought: that's what it was. That's why he looked like that. He'd known something was wrong at home before the letter came. You do, sometimes, with people you love. You feel it at a distance like a fold pulling.

I was glad. I'd like that noted too. I was glad there was a reason.

The lower hall was very empty. Five of the six arches were gone, and where they'd stood there were only clean patches on the old stone floor, paler than the rest, like the marks pictures leave on a wall when you take them down. The ledger stands were gone. The brass plates were gone. Only two arches were left, at the far end: Greymere and Orselle, the one the two places share, which was to go down to the quay the following week; and beyond it the little Westmere arch, the smallest, which goes last, as it always has.

The Castellan was standing beside it. It was always standing beside one of them, these days, as if it were keeping the last ones company.

Wynn had a pack on his back and the honey in his coat pocket, and he'd slept, I think, a little. He looked better. Not well. Better.

"Wynn Harlow," said the Castellan. "Going."

"Yes."

"Where?"

"Home," said Wynn. "Skerrow. My mother's house. Through Orselle."

The Castellan was quiet. Then, on the slate beside the arch, which was new, which Aldren had put up on Monday so that the Castellan would have somewhere to write in the empty hall, a line came up in the narrow gray hand:

Wynn Harlow. Ward-keeper. Going home. Wednesday, before light.

Wynn looked at it a long time.

"Will you know me?" he said. "When I come back? With the lockdown?"

"I will always know you, Wynn Harlow," said the Castellan. "I have known you since you were fifteen. You came through the Lyradon arch with your mother's sandwiches in a cloth and stood on that stone, there," it pointed, at a place on the floor that looked like every other place, "and said your name to Eleanor as though it might be taken away from you. I wrote it down. I have never had to write it again."

Wynn didn't say anything.

"When you come back," said the Castellan, "you will not need asking. You are not new. You are known. You may come in at any door."

"Any door," said Wynn.

"Any door that is mine."

Wynn looked at the Castellan. Then he looked at the arch, the last one, Greymere and Orselle, with its brass plate and its salt-crusted Orselle half and the Castellan's new line beneath it, Greymere. Orselle. Kept. Then he looked at me.

"Garrick," he said. "Will you tell Eleanor I'm sorry? About Saturday. I know she wanted to," he stopped. "I know she's asking everyone. Will you tell her I'll come and see her the minute I'm back? And she can ask me then. Anything she likes."

"She doesn't think it's you," I said. "She said you're the one she's surest of."

I said that. I wanted him to know it. I thought it would be a kindness.

Wynn's face did something I couldn't read. It was very fast. It was gone before I'd seen it properly, and what was left was his ordinary tired face in the lamplight of the empty hall.

"Tell her thank you," he said.

And he put his hand on the Orselle plate, the way Eleanor taught him, flat, listening, and said his name, and went through.

The Castellan stood looking at the arch after he'd gone.

"He is sad," it said.

"His mother's had a fall."

"Yes," said the Castellan. "That is what he said." It turned its great head, slowly, and looked at me. "I do not know what people are, very well, Garrick Grey. I know names. I know them like keys. His name has not changed. It fits him as it always has." It was quiet for a moment. "But it is heavy, this morning. It sits low in him. Like a key that has been carried a long way in a pocket."

"He's worried about his mam," I said.

"Yes," said the Castellan. "That will be it."

And it wrote, under the line about Wynn, in the same narrow hand, so small I nearly didn't see it:

Heavy.

* * *

I told Eleanor at breakfast.

She was in the little kitchen at half past six, as she has been every morning for twenty years, in her coat, standing by the window with her egg and her two slices of bread and her tea too hot. Helena had put the egg on at twenty past without being asked. She always does.

"He's gone home," I said. "His mother had a fall on the ice. He'll be back in a week. He said to tell you he's sorry about Saturday and you can ask him anything you like when he's back."

"Oh, poor Mags," said Eleanor. "On the ice. Her wrist?"

"Her wrist."

"She mends nets. That's the winter money." Eleanor ate a bite of egg and looked out of the window at the court. "He'll be beside himself. He worships her. When I took him on, she walked him all the way to Lyradon herself, to the arch. Four days. To make sure I was respectable." Eleanor almost smiled. "She brought me a smoked fish. I didn't know what to do with it. Helena did."

"I made a pie," said Helena from the stove.

"She made a pie." Eleanor finished the egg. Then she put the cup down on the sill and took the list out of her coat pocket and unfolded it, for the first time I'd seen, and looked at it.

I didn't read it. I could see it had seven names on it, in her hand, and that three of them had a small neat line through them. Perrin. Calum. Bettrys.

She took a pencil out of her pocket. She looked at the last name on the list for a long moment.

Then she drew a small mark beside it. Not a line through. A mark. A little curl, like a bracket.

"When he's back," she said, to nobody, and folded the list up very small and put it in her pocket, and drank her tea too hot, and went up to the drafting room.

* * *

Carol read her letter at supper.

The one from Caldermoor, with the red seal. It had been in her pocket since Tuesday; she'd been at the college with Iselle and Roderic, and then on the walls with Thor, and she hadn't opened it till she sat down to supper on Wednesday. I saw her read it. Then I saw her read it again, the way Eleanor reads a plate, lips moving. Then she folded it up and put it back in her pocket and went on eating her soup.

Ignatius, across the table, put his spoon down.

He didn't say anything. He doesn't have to, with Carol. They've been together long enough that a spoon going down is a whole conversation. Carol looked at him across the table and gave the smallest shake of her head. Not here. He picked the spoon back up.

"Everything all right?" I said.

"Mm," said Carol. "Tomorrow." And smiled at me, the warm one, the one she uses when she's decided something is her problem and not yours, which is the one smile of hers I've never once believed.

My son was in his chair between Seraphina and me, eating bread and honey with both hands. The honey was from the same comb as Wynn's jar. He'd got it in his hair. He held a piece up to me, very seriously, to share.

"Thank you," I said, and ate it, and it was very good.

* * *

That night Faelan came and found me in the nook.

He's not supposed to be up past nine. He came anyway, in his nightshirt with a blanket around his shoulders like a cloak, carrying his ledger and a candle, which he's also not supposed to do. He sat down on the step on my right, where my father sits.

"Garrick," he said. "Can I ask you something?"

"You can always ask me something."

"Wynn's mam's letter." He opened the ledger on his knees. "Yesterday. It was thin."

"I know. You said."

"I know I said." Faelan frowned at the page. "But I've been thinking about it. Because his mam's letters are fat because she writes all around the edges. Because paper's dear. And this one was thin. And now Wynn says she's hurt her wrist." He looked up at me. "So she couldn't write very much. Because of her wrist. That's why it was thin."

"That'll be it," I said.

"That's what I thought." He looked back at the ledger. He'd opened it to the front section, the friends, where Wynn's page was, between Corra and the god of lost buttons. I could see Wynn's name at the top in Faelan's big careful capitals, WYNN HARLOW, and under it, from last winter, THE DOORS. WITH ELEANOR., and PEPPERMINTS. WHEN ELEANOR NODS. And under that, new, in pencil, from today:

MAMS LETTERS (FAT).

"Only," said Faelan.

"Only?"

"Only she hurt her right wrist. Wynn told Mary, when he came up to say he was going. Her right one." He looked at me. "And it was in her writing. On the outside. I know her writing, because it's on all of them, and it's all curly. And it was curly. It was just the same."

I sat there with my tea.

"So she can still write," said Faelan. "With her right hand. So it can't be her wrist that made it thin." He frowned harder. "So why was it thin?"

The coin lay flat on the sill. The court was dark and white. Down the hill the three small lights burned on the quay where the Castellan was keeping the arches.

I thought about it. I did think about it. I want it noted that I thought about it for very nearly a whole minute, sitting there in the nook with my little brother in his blanket.

Then I thought: someone else addressed it. One of the girls. Clemmie's eleven. Clemmie wrote the outside for her, copying her mother's hand, the way children do. And her mother wrote a few lines inside with her left hand, because it hurt, and that's why it was short. And Faelan's ten, and he's been told a great many times not to hold other people's letters up to the light.

"Maybe one of his sisters wrote the outside," I said. "Copying. Because her mam's wrist hurt."

Faelan considered that. He has a very serious considering face. My father has the same one.

"Clemmie," he said. "She's eleven. Wynn says she's clever." He wrote it down, in pencil, under the other line. CLEMMIE (11) (CLEVER). "And Goldie's eight. Her real name's Marigold. She walked to the dog first. Wynn said so on Sunday. Helena heard." He wrote that down too. GOLDIE (8) (DOG FIRST). Then he closed the ledger. "All right."

"All right?"

"All right," said Faelan. "That makes sense." He yawned enormously. "I'm going to send them peppermints. Clemmie and Goldie. When Wynn comes back, I'll give him some to take next time. Can I?"

"You can ask him."

"I'll ask him." He got up, blanket and ledger and candle all at once, and nearly set the blanket on fire, and I took the candle off him and walked him back to his room in the east range and tucked him in, which he says he's too old for, and he let me.

When I came back to the nook the coin was still flat.

I sat down and finished my tea, and I thought, Clemmie wrote the outside, and I believed it, and I went to bed.

* * *

From Mary's book, Tuesday and Wednesday. In the margin, a very small drawing of an envelope, and beside it, in the same hand, a tick:

Tuesday. Nineteen letters, two parcels, a cheese (Helena's; it smells). Sim Varley carried them. His name's still on the slate.

Eleanor asked Bettrys. Bettrys wants to come home. In the spring. Eleanor said yes. Four left.

Aldren struck the centering. The Concordia arch holds itself. He ate a sausage.

Wednesday. Wynn's mother fell on the ice in Skerrow and hurt her wrist. Wynn has gone home to mend the nets till it sets. Uriah gave him a jar of the honey. The Castellan logged him going, Wednesday, before light. It says it will always know him.

Carol had a letter from Caldermoor. She says tomorrow.

Coin flat.

And under that, in big, square, careful capitals, pressed so hard into the paper you can feel them on the back of the page, and one of them backwards:

FAELAN GREY. ID LIKE IT NOTED THAT I DIDNT READ ANYBODYS LETTERS. THAT I ONLY HELD ONE UP TO THE WINDOW AND IM SORRY. THAT WYNNS SISTERS ARE CALLED CLEMMIE AND GOLDIE AND I AM GOING TO SEND THEM PEPPERMINTS. AND THAT GARRICK SAYS IT MAKES SENSE AND HE IS USUALLY RIGHT.