42. Then Moss #2
“You’re telling us,” my twin interjected, “that the women of Sheridan have been using the paste for winters and winters and no one else knows?”
Magda smiled and leaned back in her chair.
“They may spit on the ground where I tread and avert their eyes, but the women of this place know what I offer. It is not spoken. It is whispered. From one woman to another. And they can condemn me all they want. I bear their damnation happily if it means their bodies are given reprieve from constant pregnancy and their children have more food on their tables.” She held up one of the tins.
“This lasts about two moons. Keep track of who needs it when, but never write that down. The women will find a way to return the tins to you. When they need more, they’ll put a dried anemone somewhere outside their house.
I try and walk through town and the sharecropper houses once a week or so to check for anemone flowers.
That is your signal that they need another tin.
Women who live in the keep have to come here for it.
Or ask a friend. Too risky for me to go in there. ”
I felt my mouth fall open. All the windflower wreaths we had seen hanging from doors and the dried garlands strung outside windows. All those cup-shaped blooms with dark centers, in a rainbow of vibrant colors—those decorations we had grown up seeing in town—were a code.
“Our mother puts a string of dried ones outside the front window every now and then,” Rowena spoke aloud, looking at me.
“Every two moons,” Magda corrected. “I advised her to never have another child. The two of you nearly took her life.” She took her pipe out of her mouth and smacked her lips. “Not that that was your fault.”
She gave us old cloaks with hoods. She made us tie kerchiefs over the lower halves of our faces.
We were not allowed to ride into town, horses being too loud.
We walked the hour or so into Sheridan. Rowena and I took turns carrying the hefty crate.
Then we crept up to doors and windows and looked for wreaths and garlands.
“Sometimes it’s a lone blossom on the ground,” Magda whispered from under her own hood. “You have to look everywhere.”
“We’ve no torches,” Rowena said.
“Then you had best always do this on nights with a moon, I guess,” Magda sneered. She was winded, clearly out of sorts from the long walk. “Go slowly. You’ll see what you need to. My gods, you’re both insufferable today.”
I understood then that Magda had spent so many winters, even as her bones grew old, creeping in the dead of the night around town, around the rows of sharecropper houses, looking for signs of a woman in need.
“This is what you don’t know. Some of Torm’s closest men have cresset torches.
That’s a torch with an iron basket where the flame is.
It’s kindled by oiled rope or pitch. But it shutters.
They can twist the base of the cresset, and the little panels will be closed.
If they don’t want to be seen in the dark, they simply twist the cresset. Do you understand?”
We shook our heads, trying to see her in the dark.
“If they spot you and don’t want you to see them, they’ll simply dim their light. Then they can sneak up on you and catch you in a crime.”
Rowena shrugged. “I just thought they were expensive-looking torches.”
“They’re deadly things. Now. Put the tins on the windowsills of the windows closest to the anemones,” she whispered, trying to lower her voice. “Or on the ground up against the building. They know how to look for it. Just don’t make it easily spotted.”
We did this all night in the town, bent over, dodging patches of torchlight from places with folk still awake, such as the tavern and the small office of the keep guards from where they kept watch on the town.
Then we hiked towards the keep and the sharecropping fields.
Every single house had a windflower wreath or garland strung to the front of it.
I had a sudden memory of my mother tossing a newly woven wreath into the hearth, saying she didn’t like how it had turned out. She had likely thrown it away so as not to confuse Magda, having just received a tin.
“Next time, you won’t carry so much,” Magda wheezed as we returned to her farm, our limbs deadened by all the grinding and carrying we had done.
“You can deliver it more frequently and in chunks, so it is not such a big batch every time. Most of the women put the anemone outside a week before they run out.”
“And when do they pay?” Rowena asked.
Magda stilled and turned to my sister. Her hood slid back to rest on her hunched shoulders. The slice of moon shone down on her withered face framed by her white head of hair shot through with gray. She regarded Rowena with an impassive face and then turned to me.
“Part of her wages are to be supplemented with a foraging stipend so as to pay you for what you gather. It will just have to cover the cost of the time spent harvesting and grinding and delivering. This is not something for which I collect coin. Or ever will. It is also another danger to charge for it. It’s one more thing to worry over as well as the tins’ distribution and collection.
There is already cost attached to this.”