Chapter 13
The House Guests
Rhoda Hadwin sat at the small writing desk in her study with the lamp low and the letter half-written. Quill was asleep on her lap with his small grey chin still laid across the back of her wrist, the way he had laid it on the porch step the evening before. He had not, in the hours since, moved.
She had been at this letter since before the light came up. The ink was good. The page was kind. The words, she had found, did not want to come easily.
To the family of Phineas Grove, Sibiu.
She had written that line and then she had stopped. She had written He came to our door three days ago, and stopped again. She had written He saved us, and crossed it out.
Edgar came into the study with two cups of coffee and set one beside her elbow. He did not read over her shoulder. He lowered himself into the chair by the window with his own cup and looked out at the lawn.
"Can I help, darlin'?"
"I keep trying to tell them who he was. I only knew him a day, Edgar. What right do I have."
"Every right." Edgar's voice was warm and slow. "You knew him on the worst day of his life and the last one. That's a thing his family will want to hear."
Rhoda looked at her husband a long moment. Then she picked up the pen again.
When she had finished, she folded the letter once.
She sealed it with a careful drop of green wax.
She wrote Spellbinders, for Mary, with care on the outside in her best hand, and laid it on the corner of the desk for the morning's first runner.
Quill blinked once where he lay. He did not lift his head.
"There," Rhoda said, to the letter and to Quill and to herself.
Maeve Byrne came into the Hadwin kitchen with her plait done in a hasty rope down her back, pink cheeks from the cold air on the porch, and a bounce in her step that had not been seen in the house since she had arrived.
She dropped Pepper down off her shoulder onto the windowsill above the sink.
Pepper, who had been openly homesick and had not bothered hiding it, set her chin on her paws and looked out at the back garden with the slow misery of a cat whose departure had not yet been arranged for her.
Maeve poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove without asking, drank half of it standing up, and set the cup down.
"Mornin', loves."
"Maeve, sweetheart." Rhoda lifted Quill carefully off her lap and onto the warm chair beside her. "Sit down. Have somethin' to eat."
"I will. In a moment. I've a thought I'd like to share with the three of ye."
Edgar, who had been drinking his coffee at the long pine table with Honey at the far end and Rhoda across from him, set his cup back down on its saucer and waited politely for the thought.
The kitchen door opened again. Bramble came in first, ears forward, tail held with the comfortable authority.
Oona Pierce followed him in a dressing gown the color of a plum, her hair down for the morning, with the unhurried gait of a woman who had timed her entrance to the second.
She crossed to the stove. She poured herself a cup of coffee.
She lowered herself into the chair beside Honey, and Bramble flowed up onto her lap, and Oona sat with her cup in her hand and looked at Maeve.
"Did I miss it?"
Maeve huffed, "not yet, but I'll go on."
Edgar took the both of them in. He refilled his own cup. "Ladies. What can we do for y'all this mornin'?"
Maeve drew in a small ceremonial breath. "Edgar. Rhoda. Honey. We've come to a decision."
"What sort of decision?" Rhoda put both her hands flat on the table.
"Pepper and I," Maeve said, "are stayin'."
Edgar paused with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth and lowered it back to its saucer. "Stayin'."
"In Cauldron Falls. I've been thinkin' on it.
The cooperage in Galway is fallin' down, my brother is not fit to run it, and the customers can come find me out here as well as anywhere else.
I had a look at the old barn out back yesterday afternoon.
With a fresh roof and a new hearth she'd be a fine workshop.
I'll be needin' the back bedroom, of course, but ye've made it nice enough that I've taken to it. "
Honey raised her eyebrows and watched the silent volley happening between her parents' eyes.
"And Oona?" Rhoda turned to the other woman.
"Oh, my heart." Oona patted Bramble's head once.
"I had been considering returning to my own quiet house.
But Maeve and I have been talking, and a witch of my years does not get the chance, in any given century, to share a kitchen with family.
I'll be takin' the upstairs reading room.
Bramble has had his eye on the rocker by the window since the Tuesday before last. I'll need the writin' desk for my correspondence. "
"Well." Edgar's voice was the warm dignified Southern of a man whose whole life had been built on his welcome. "Maeve. Oona. That is wonderful news. Just wonderful."
"Isn't it." Maeve puffed out her chest.
"You have been a fine addition to this house. Both of you. The both of you." Edgar nodded.
"Such a fine addition," Rhoda said.
"The very finest," Honey said.
"I'll clear out the upstairs reading room this very mornin'." Rhoda's hands were still flat on the table. "I'll move the books to the parlor. The desk too. We'll bring up the smaller wardrobe from the attic. The light is good in the morning. You'll want a small carpet."
"The barn," Edgar said, "wants a roof, as you say. I'll have a man out by Friday. The hearth I can do myself. It is a fine barn, Maeve. The light is good."
"I'll send for my brother today." She clapped.
"Wonderful." Rhoda drew in a deep breath.
"He'll want feedin'." Maeve warned.
"Of course." Edgar said.
"He eats like a man at war with a famine." Maeve chuckled.
"Oh, well, of course." Honey stuttered, "We'll need a larger pantry."
"...we will." Rhoda rubbed her temples.
Maeve side-eyed Oona. And then both women broke.
Maeve went first. The laugh came out of her in a single yelp she had been holding since she had walked through the door, and it doubled, and it could not stop.
Oona let out a big and wheezy guffaw, her hand on Bramble's head and her shoulders shaking.
"Edgar Hadwin." Maeve dabbed at her eyes with her shirt. "I'm sorry. I am that sorry. I cannot keep a face when I try."
"Did ye see his face?" Oona pointed at Edgar with one bent finger. "Did you see it. The man was promisin' me his upstairs reading room. The man was buildin' me a hearth."
"Rhoda was movin' her books."
"Honey was settin' the table for you, Maeve." Oona slapped her knee
"For my brother!" Maeve snorted.
"For your brother Maeve, who eats like a man at war with a famine."
Rhoda laughed until her shoulders dropped and her eyes filled. Edgar shook his head once on his neck and let out a long Southern laugh he had been holding politely in his throat. Honey put her face in her hands and laughed into them, the relief making her shoulders shake.
"Oona Pierce and Maeve Byrne." Edgar barely got their names out. "You are terrible women."
"I am that, love." Maeve agreed.
"And we'll miss you dearly." Oona cooed.
"Ye'll miss us a great deal, Edgar. That's the joke." Maeve winked.
Maeve crossed the kitchen and got her arms around Rhoda first, and Rhoda held her tight enough to lift her up off her toes.
Then Honey. Then Edgar, who took both of Maeve's hands in his, held them a beat, and let her go.
Oona came up after her with the unhurried gait, and she got her arms around Rhoda, and Rhoda made a small sound into Oona's shoulder, and Oona made one back.
"Yule," Maeve said. "I'll be back at Yule. With my brother, who won't eat ye out of house and home, but he'll try."
"Yule," Rhoda said. "The both of you."
"My heart." Oona squeezed Rhoda once and let her go. "Yule. It's been a long time since I've looked forward to Yule."
"I'm glad, Oona. You're family now." Rhoda squeezed her again.
By mid-morning the back bedroom had been cleared.
Maeve's trunk stood corded at the foot of the bed.
Pepper had taken her place on the lid with her tail tucked, ready to be carried.
Oona's small valise stood beside the trunk.
Bramble had refused to be carried and had walked himself down to the front hall.
The Saturday coach was due at noon at the bottom of the hill.
The Hadwins walked them down the long sloping lane together, the four of them and the two ladies, past the marigolds at the back door of The Boozy Cauldron where Murphy O'Reilly had stepped out onto the stoop with a tea towel over his shoulder when he heard them coming.
"Off, then?" Murphy leaned on his broom.
"Off, Murphy. With many thanks for the whisky."
"Aye, well. Come back then." Murphy smiled.
"I will."
"Oona." He waved.
"Murphy O'Reilly." She waved back.
"Travel safe."
"Always."
The coach pulled away. The Hadwins stood on the lane below The Boozy Cauldron and watched it go. Murphy waved his tea towel until the coach rounded the bend, and then he tucked it back over his shoulder and patted Edgar on the arm once and went back inside his pub.
Rhoda blew her nose into Edgar's handkerchief.
"Well." She wiped her eyes. "That was a fine joke."
They came up the lane toward home with the late-morning light slanting through the bare branches. Honey took Rhoda's arm. Edgar lagged a step behind with his hands in his pockets.
When they reached the porch, an owl was on the railing.
She was small and dust-pale, with one foot tucked neatly under her chest and the other extended for the small leather pouch on her ankle to be opened. She watched Rhoda come up the steps with the patient gold-ringed eyes of a creature who had flown a long way.
"Mary," Rhoda said. She knew her by sight. Colin's owl from Spellbinders.
Edgar's hand was already at the pouch. The seal on the folded letter was wax the color of an old library shelf, and the address on the front, written in a neat scholar's hand Rhoda had seen across her dining table only days ago, said:
Quill.
Rhoda did not breathe for a long moment.
"Edgar," she said.
"I see it, darlin'."
She took the letter in both hands and went into the house. She stopped at the parlor doorway. Quill was where she had left him in the wing chair by the fire, his small grey chin laid along the arm.
Rhoda lowered herself down to the rug beside the chair. She broke the seal carefully. She unfolded the page.
"Quill, sweetheart," she said. "There is a letter."
Quill's small grey head came up. His eyes settled on the page in her hands. He did not move otherwise.
Rhoda began to read aloud, very gently.
My dearest Quill,
If you are reading this, my friend, then I am not coming back to you. I am sorry. I had hoped to.
I have written this letter many times in many places.
I have carried it in my coat through six countries against the day I might need to send it.
I sealed it in a small bookshop in a town I had not been to before yesterday, and I have asked the owl who lives there to find you.
I am told she is reliable. I trust she will.
I want you to know I did my best. I tried, Quill. I tried for both of us.
Quill stepped down off the arm of the chair and into her lap. He laid his head across the back of her wrist. He listened.
You have been the best friend of my life.
I have loved you the way I have loved very few things.
I want you to know that the small things were the dearest. The way you tucked yourself against my knee in the carriage.
The way you sat with me at the long table in the library and watched me read.
The way you said my name when you wanted me, which was not often, but was always perfectly timed.
I want you to be happy. I want you to be warm.
I want, more than anything in this world, for your next bond to be the best you have ever known.
I think you will find her. I think she will be a great soul.
I think she will know what she has the moment you step into her lap.
I think she will love you all the days of her life.
Go on, my friend. Go on.
Yours always,
Phineas Grove.
Rhoda finished. She folded the letter once, carefully, and laid it on the rug beside her knee.
"He hoped it would be a good one," she said quietly to the grey tabby in her lap.
Quill lifted his small grey head. "Thank you, Rhoda," he said softly. "Phineas was a good warlock. And he was always right."
He laid his chin back across the back of her wrist, and Rhoda sat on the rug beside the wing chair with her free hand at her face and her other hand gentle on the small grey body in her lap.