She thought—she hoped—she could see the ripples spreading from Kenti telling the story of Tis’ burnt arm. She’d had Kenti’s neighbour Vel asking about his well first, where about once a sennight for about a day the water tasted strongly of roses—“It’s nice, the wife likes it, and she’ll be sorry if you take it away, but it’s a little queer and queer is…queer.” She forbore to ask how long this had been happening, and why he was only coming to ask her about it now. After Vel there was Frak, an old mate of Danel’s, asking if she could do anything about a quiet, flat-seeming field where the furrows refused to cut straight; and after Frak was Droman, who worked on the same farm, who wanted something for the ground under a bit of fence that kept falling down and letting the sheep out.
She might, once or twice, have asked one of the others of the Circle to help her—Landsman or Oakstaff, perhaps, with a restless spinney or meadow—but she did not.
At this rate, she thought, I’ll have to take an apprentice just because I need the help. At least I could teach her to take care of bees. She’d have to be able to read; but then maybe she could teach me something about the Chalice…. She surprised herself by considering this possibility seriously for a minute or two, and then thought, No. Not yet. Wait till…but she could not put it into words, even to herself.
But when Catu came to discuss with her the possibility of letting it be known that the Chalice could heal burns and wounds as well as Catu could, she said: “I’d be glad of it; and if you can cure a few stomach-aches too that would be even better; I have more work than Silla”—who was Catu’s apprentice—“and I can do, and I’d rather be birthing babies.” And Mirasol almost replied, “Only if you find me a good girl for apprentice. Silla doesn’t have any younger sisters, does she?”
She said instead, “I’ll help anyone I can.”
Catu looked at her shrewdly. “You aren’t getting enough sleep, are you? Is it work or worry?”
Mirasol shook her head. “Both. Everything.”
“I should have come before—Mirasol, I’m sorry. You know how—confused—everything has been, since the old Master died. I know it’s been a hard transition for you—I know that I can’t imagine how hard a transition—but I’ve been run off my legs myself. The next time I’m going this way I’ll bring you something to help you sleep. The quietening herbs I gave you helped, didn’t they? Oh dear—if it’s work that’s keeping you up, I shouldn’t be adding to it, should I? But—well, it would be good if…” She hesitated. “The Chalice before the last one—she was Chalice almost sixty years. And our Master’s father—he was a good Master but not an easy man—and as is the way of things, most of his Circle was like him. That’s some of the problem now, of course, there are a few of them left, and the others, they took as apprentices folk who were as near like to them as the rods would let them. And so the people went to their Chalice, who was not like the others. Everyone knew her.”
“Yes. Nara is the commonest woman’s name in Willowlands, because it was her name.”
“Yes. In sixty years I hope the commonest woman’s name is Mirasol.”
Mirasol smiled, tiredly. And Nara’s Master was as friendly and approachable as a puppy or your grandmother, compared to the one we have now, and most of his Circle is united only in their aversion to him. What would you think of Horuld as a Master? What would Silla think? What would the mothers of your babies think? “Send me your wounds and burns and stomach-aches then.”
But it was Kenti who brought two little packets from Catu—“this one’s for if you’re lying awake thinking, and this one’s if you’re just too tired to sleep”—plus two loaves of bread and a big jar of potted meat. “I asked Catu—she didn’t think it would be—she thought it would be—she told me these were to help you sleep, that you were working too hard, and I said I didn’t think you were eating properly, I know it’s easy not to when you’re too busy, but even honey isn’t enough by itself….” Her voice trailed away and she looked at Mirasol anxiously.
Mirasol reached out and took the parcels. “It’s very kind of you, thank you,” she said.
Very little money changed hands among the small folk of a demesne; some duty was paid in coin, but most of the economy was based on barter and exchange. The Chalice, like the other members of the Circle, received a stipend for the work she did (disbursed by the Grand Seneschal), and unless there was some very complex ritual involved, ordinary demesne folk were not expected to pay for help from a Circle member. (Given her book-and-paper habit, Mirasol was glad she had honey and beeswax to sell.) But popular Circle members tended to have very well-stocked larders and very well-maintained properties, or known and frequently augmented collections of things on display at the House. Nara had collected wood carvings; there was a dormouse in linden wood in the Yellow Room which had belonged to her that Mirasol was absurdly fond of. Occasionally she took her books and papers to the Yellow Room and when she did she always lifted the dormouse down from its shelf to sit on her work-table.
Mirasol’s hands shook a little as she cradled the parcels. “How is Tis?”
Kenti laughed with an easiness that told Mirasol what she wanted to know. “She’s absolutely fine. Except she gives the stove a wide berth—which is no bad thing. She’s with her cousins today, so that I could get some things done.” She hesitated. “I—I told Danel and my sister what you said about the Master—about him healing your hand. I—I hope you don’t mind.”
“On the contrary,” Mirasol said sincerely, and her heart sang within her.
“It is hard to—to—to like him,” Kenti said, obviously finding words with difficulty, “although I know it’s not liking a Master needs from his people. Danel says his horses aren’t always shying at ghosts any more—any more nor horses always shy at ghosts—especially the young ’uns, and that that’ll be the Master taking hold like a proper Master, and the earthlines quietening under him, and never mind what he looks like. But those red eyes—I can’t—what does he see with those red eyes?”
“He sees warmth,” said Mirasol. “When he looks into a tree where a bird sits singing, where you and I could not see it hidden behind the leaves, he will see the outline of its warmth.”
“But they—But he—”
“You get used to it,” Mirasol said.
Kenti looked at her sidelong. “There’s a story that you spent the day with the Heir. That you…favour him.”
The day, thought Mirasol miserably. She took a deep breath and said, “I—I feel that the Heir’s connection with the demesne is—is not as strong as it might be. If he is Heir, then he must be bound here—for the Master’s sake. Binding is the Chalice’s work. But we have a Master—a good Master. Whatever colour his eyes are. The Heir is only the Heir.”
Kenti’s face was wearing that hopeful, thoughtful look again when she left, the look she had worn when Mirasol had told her about the Master healing her hand. Mirasol hoped Kenti would tell the story of why the Chalice had spent time with the Heir too—and hoped that her sister was a chatterbox. She could not tell—or guess—how much or how little her mistake with the Heir might have contributed to any new restlessness among the demesne’s folk. She heard other reverberations of both her behaviour and the Grand Seneschal’s commentary on it. When she could—since few people asked her as directly as Kenti had, as if healing her daughter’s arm had somehow made the Chalice accessible—she said she had mistaken the Heir’s purpose in consulting her; that she had wished not to embarrass him by revealing his shortcomings. It was the nearest she could come to the Seneschal’s suggestion that she insinuate the Heir was unworthy or unfit. She was afraid that her real revulsion would be exposed if she spoke too near it.