The Returning Read Online Free Page B

It was Mam Coverlast speaking. “But with your gamekeeper setting borders that never used to be, it’s hurting our livelihood.”
    Graceful leaned on the doors and peered through the gap between. Shadows shifted, making it hard to see, then the light caught on something. An eye, pressed to the crack. One of the Coverlasts was looking right at her through the crack, and clear as anything Graceful saw his eye close and open, winking; then he must have moved away, for the gap was empty.
    Graceful ran all the way to the kitchen. The hall doors opened, and the passage was suddenly full of Coverlasts, small and wiry and weatherworn. Coverlasts, Father and Stepmother. Not one of the hands or maidservants was about. Father followed the Coverlasts at a Lordly distance, halting at the gate to watch them troop down the drive.
    â€œMake a village entire of themselves,” he said, coming back to the house. “Wish my horses bred like they do.”
    â€œHush, Arno.”
    â€œFather? Must we clear that land? Merrydance is so large a field already.”
    Father took her hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm. “Come, my little Graceful, and let’s see how that mare does.”
    Garrad was standing by the horse paddocks, watching the mare. “She’s bagging up, Master. You look, her udder’s enlarged. Won’t be long now.”
    Father for once could not be distracted by horses. “There.” He swept his forefinger in an are that covered the whole of Merrydance field, with its one little seedling. “Just a start, that. Imagine, the whole field full of mulberry trees. Grow the height of a man, more than, in a year. And it’s not just the worms.”
    Worms? Graceful blinked at Father.
    â€œWe’ll have fruit, wood, why, even wicker of them!”
    â€œYou’ll be breeding them with the horses yet,” said Garrad.
    Graceful couldn’t even laugh.
    Father would say, “If the one means can achieve two ends, well, all the better.” The one end was always announced; the other was not acknowledged until it had been achieved. Merrydance field and the trees were the one thing. Graceful wondered what the other would be.
    Â 
    GRACEFUL SAT ON a footstool, so that Isla could brush her hair.
    â€œDid he—” Isla jerked her head at the hall, meaning Father. “He did speak with the Attlings then?”
    â€œNo-o.” It was strange. There was a way these things had to be done. Attling’s Oldest had been away a long time, and before he could start courting visits, Father must first pay a visit to him. They would drink ale and talk farming, and somehow that would clear the way for him to see her. But Father had yet to do so, and Graceful could only see her betrothed from the cart, all joggled with the speed of their going, all at a distance across the terraces. It was strange that they had not stopped at Attling’s holding. “No. We went to the Headman’s, to Master Palfreyman’s.”
    â€œHey?”
    â€œWe drove past Attling’s holding too fast for them to hail us.”
    â€œWhat’s he about, your da?”
    Graceful spread her hands: I don’t know .
    â€œBut you did see him, Cam Attling?”
    â€œYes. He looked like . . .” Graceful hunted in her mind for words. “He looked like songs, sung to life. He looked like faraway places, planted here in Kayforl.”
    â€œOh aye,” said Isla. “All the maids in the village do have a fancy for him.”
    â€œHis arm,” said Graceful. “It’s so . . .”
    â€œSad,” said Isla.
    â€œHeroic.”
    â€œAnd that’s one hundred.” Isla set the brush down, stroked Graceful’s hair with her hand. “There, soft and shiny, like silk.”
    Maybe , thought Graceful. But not soft and shining like Stepmother’s hair; that was long and thick and white-gold as flax.
    â€œYou know how they make it,