Chapter 8
Eight
Her king was busy ridding the kingdom of bandits, so the concubine settled to answering the great unanswered questions of the universe.
“What am I? What is my purpose? And what should I eat for breakfast?”
— The Concubine and Her King. Unpublished MS.
“There.” Susannah set a bowl of porridge in front of Dando.
“Ah,” said her brother and began scooping the porridge into his mouth with the heel of last night’s bread.
Dando was very good about remembering to bring a loaf of bread home with him every night.
They ate most of the loaf at dinner, and, in the mornings, he ate the heels with whatever else Susannah had managed to scrape together before he went into the village, first to heat the forge and then to The Swan, where he would be fed a much bigger second breakfast by Celia.
All those second breakfasts. Susannah should have suspected something.
“And some tidbits.” She put the plate with the remains of Sunday’s chicken next to Dando’s bowl. It didn’t look like enough. Was it enough? “And I could boil an egg.”
“Sit,” Dando said as if she were a tetchy mare with a sore foot.
She sat. Even after a near-sleepless night like last night, dawn was the best part of the day. Everything was fresh and new, and the two of them were in the cottage together. She hooked her feet behind the rung of her chair and studied her brother as he ate.
He’d been such a little baby, the smallest of all of her brothers, and now he was the biggest man in Much Wemby.
And that was down to Susannah, wasn’t it?
She was the one who had made sure Dando had gone to sleep every night with a full belly when Mother had been so ill and Father had been so distracted by his magnum opus and Nolly had run away and Hodge had disappeared.
She blinked back tears that had nothing to do with tender fingers from picking nettles without gloves yesterday, nothing to do with her interrupted kiss last night.
“Eat,” Dando said and pushed her own bowl of porridge towards her.
She stupidly took a spoonful and blew on it even though it was already cool.
“Susannah.” Dando wasn’t looking at her but at the table between them.
She swallowed her mouthful of porridge. It needed salt. “Yes?”
“I’m to be married.”
“Oh.” She couldn’t think. She had been happy to see Dando with Celia last night, but she hadn’t thought, and now she couldn’t think.
Because Dando was to be married, but he wasn’t supposed to marry. He was supposed to let her take care of him until she grew too old to do that, and then he would take care of her.
She couldn’t think, but she must say something.
“Married?” she got out. “To Celia?”
The most patient of all her brothers sighed. “Yes.”
Susannah was exasperating. She knew she was exasperating. But Celia was much too young for Dando, much too young to get married, wasn’t she?
No, wait. It had been thirty-two years since Ned had asked Miriam to marry him. Thirty years and a bit since they married. Thirty years since Celia’s birth. Celia was thirty.
“She said we had to marry,” Dando said. He frowned. “And I want to marry her.”
Susannah patted his hand. “To be sure.” She couldn’t think.
Dando shifted in his chair. “You’ll live with us.”
She would live with Dando and Celia. She would live with a woman who didn’t like her, who thought Susannah was the wedge in her parents’ marriage.
Susannah would see Celia at every meal. Celia would sit at this table.
Maybe Celia would sit next to Dando in what had once been Jory’s chair.
Or would she want to be across from him in Susannah’s chair?
Of course, it wouldn’t be Susannah’s chair then.
Which chair would become Susannah’s? Not Nolly’s or Simon’s or Jory’s or Hodge’s. Maybe she’d have a stool in the corner.
Susannah would be pushed to the edges of a home where she had held the center for four decades.
“And Celia says . . .” Dando’s chin was on his chest. “She wants . . .”
What did Celia want? For Susannah to sleep in the attic?
“She says we must leave Much Wemby.”
Another blow. “Leave?”
“She says with the diversion of the turnpike, The Swan will lose custom and won’t be much of a coaching inn anymore.”
“So?” That was too bad for Ned and Miriam, but what did that have to do with—
“Half my trade comes from the horses at The Swan.”
Dando was a fine farrier, ever so good with horses, had done an apprenticeship with the best farrier in the county. Susannah had paid for that apprenticeship and for Dando to take up the old forge in the village.
Dando went on, “And Celia says the village will die without the turnpike. She says we should move to Charingham.”
Charingham was a big town, miles and miles away.
“I can’t go to Charingham,” Susannah said wildly. “I can’t.”
Dando nodded. He understood. Thank God he understood, and they could stay here.
But then he said, “Because of Ned.”
“Because of— No! Why would you say that?”
Now it was Dando’s turn to pat her hand. “I remember. I remember when he broke it off with you.”
Dando had been just a little boy, and there was no chance he remembered. And there had been nothing to break, not even her heart, not really, not when she looked back at it.
Her heart had been broken later, but she’d patched it up. That was what one did. Take needle and thread and make the best out of one’s lot.
“I can’t leave because . . .” Because of the grave and Hodge and Nolly. But she couldn’t tell those things to Dando. “No one will understand me in Charingham.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she could hear how foolish they were. And Dando’s kind eyes couldn’t hide what she knew he must be thinking.
No one understands you here, either.
“You can’t stay,” he said.
Of course, there wasn’t money for her to stay. It was Dando who made the money to pay the rent on the cottage, to buy the grain to make this porridge, and he would need that money to set up a household in Charingham, to provide for Celia, for a family.
“I must . . .” She stood abruptly, bumping the table, causing a wave of porridge to splash over the edge of her bowl. “I must wish you very happy, brother. Both of you.”