Notice: The Honorable Miss Edith Shepley, granddaughter of Prosper Shepley, Lord Ewert, to be presented 4 Bloomsmonth.
(The Quarterly Journal, Midwinter 526)
.:.
And so, I was out.
It was not the sort of thing to be talked of down in Ethelsburg, though I heard there was a terse announcement in one of the more obscure periodicals that sat, unread, in many studies across the Southlands.
In truth, the Barony of Ewert wasn't especially remarkable even within the Northerns, being rather small and unfashionable and crammed up against the very edge of polite civilization. But it had its wiles, even so. It was very profitable, and it was rather old, and because it clung to the old rules of inheritance -- a practice Folk often spoken badly of in times when their circumstances could not be improved by it -- it possessed a particular constancy not many could claim: since the day Able Eweherd was styled Baron, Ewert had been passed through an unbroken chain of sons and sometimes daughters to Prosper Shepley, and it would, some day, pass to me.
And now I was out.
But more importantly -- or so I thought -- I had lambs to look after.
I woke to bright sun and clear blue skies, and roused myself quickly. I washed lard and lemon off my face, then dressed in riding clothes without calling the maids. I was soon down in the morning room, my heart light and eager for the work ahead of me.
Mr. Wentworth was the room's sole occupant. He glanced upward as I entered, giving me a languid nod and a murmured Good morning before returning his attention to his book.
I nicked a piece of toast and three boiled eggs. Mr. Wentworth, meanwhile, turned a page and sipped at a cup of peppermint. He nodded again as I left, issuing another Good morning.
I slipped through the servant's door, gnawing on toast, and escaped into the garden. A little black kitten -- a frequent shadow the past few weeks -- romped after me til I passed through the garden gate. Soon, I was free of Ewert's grounds and well on my way to the west pasture.
For my eighth birthday, my grandfather had given me eight lambs -- two rams and six ewes -- and a silky lock of wool. He'd told me the new mill in Riverton favored a long, fine staple for its yarns, and there'd be good money in it if I could improve the breed. For the eight years since, when I wasn't studying with Miss Goodwin, I had spent the better part of my days trying to do just that.
I had met with many disappointments in my efforts. The first was that one of the rams wouldn't stud; he only mounted the other ram and would not be persuaded toward the ewes. I talked to every shepherd, young and old, in Ewert Town, but they said there was nothing for a ram truly stubborn like that.
In the end, we made a stew of him, and I'd begged my grandfather for the services of one of his rams. Quite shrewdly, he'd refused to give it for free, but as I was a child and had no ready coin to pay for it, I was obliged to depend on a single sire and a hope for the best.
My second great disappointment was a failure infuriatingly tangled with my greatest success. By my twelfth birthday, I'd bred a generation of lambs with fleeces long and fine and strong and black as coal. There were advantages to black sheep -- the wool took less dye, so long as one only wanted to dye it black -- but no mill in the Trothlands would buy such fleeces.
I spent years breeding white sheep in, filling books full of notes on which matings of rams and ewes threw how many black lambs, selling off the stock I didn't want and using the proceeds to pay for shepherds...
In short, I hadn't made any money at all yet, but I had hopes I soon would. My sheep were white, they were hardy, their fleeces long and fine -- the ewes even threw twins regularly enough. I was proud beyond words, and I hoped I might be allowed to show them at the Harvesttide market in Riverton.
I marched through damp grasses to the west pasture, hitching my skirts up round my knees so Mrs. Burke wouldn't scold me later. I found my flock grazing close to the trees along the bank of the Grassbeck, but I didn't find Henry Thatcher -- he was a young man from town; I hardly knew him, but he wanted to learn the shepherd's trade, and since I was learning the farmer's, we were ready associates.
I looked north and south and further west, but I saw not a soul about. Eventually, I called, "Hello...!" across the flat pastureland. I walked toward the creek, calling again, "Hello...! Thatcher?"
At length, an answer came back to me -- "Here."
I followed his voice northward, through the green oaks. He was on the other side of the creek, trying to herd a few wayward sheep back to where they belonged.
"Got another one with the bloat," he called. "Come and see."
"Ach, again?"
The bloat was my remaining disappointment. My stock seemed almost willfully determined to cling to this one defect; it cropped up again and again, like the mint in the chives, though I had done my best to weed it out with every generation.
I gathered my skirts up high and picked my way down the bank, reluctantly -- I never liked crossing the Grassbeck, muck and scoldings aside. It used to be the boundary between the Northerns and the old Wolfmarch, and though that boundary had never really mattered in my memory, it was still a palpable enough thing.
I hopped across the creek, stone to stone, and scrambled up the other side. There, Henry was trying to get hold of a distressed ewe, who staggered away from him, wide-legged and dunging, every time he drew near.
Together, we cornered her. I gripped the stupid beast's fuzzy head and shook it. "What did you eat?" I asked. "Alfalfa or clover?"
"Either or both," Henry said. "She got into one of their old fields." He jerked a thumb backward toward the forlorn remnants of a little stone cottage. There were half a dozen such cottages scattered along the north bank of the creek, their gardens overgrown, their sod roofs rotting, yet still very much there, reminding us.
Henry rubbed the ewe's swollen flanks, at length pronouncing, "I don't think it's too bad. She might pass it."
I nodded, running my hand through her fleece, thinking. "Cull her lambs," I decided. "If she survives, keep her til shearing."
Henry nodded. "Very well, Miss."
I left him, hurrying back over the creek, away from the cottages and their eerie reminding.
I did some accounting in the pasture, observing the suckling lambs and whether they grew well. Once satisfied that my flock had clear eyes and clean hindquarters, I turned back east, toward the orchards and Grover Roberts' cottage. Roberts was Ewert's orchard master, but my business was with his eldest daughter, not with him -- one of my maiden ewes had refused her lamb, so I'd had them penned together, and Darlene watched over them while I couldn't.
I found Darlene pacing back and forth between scratching hens as she hung linen to dry. She'd taken ill in Horningmonth, and was pale and poorly for weeks upon weeks. I'd worried for her terribly. Then her belly rounded, and I worried for her even more.
It'd be mere fleeting gossip if Darlene would just marry -- she was hardly the first girl in Ewert Town to find herself in this sort of trouble -- but she wouldn't even say who the father was. Half the servants were guessing it was Bram, but I didn't believe it. Indeed, I often feared the truth was an altogether grimmer tale, but Darlene promised me it was no such thing. She loved the man and the man loved her, she'd said, but marrying him was simply out of the question.
I waved and called a hello to her as I skirted round hedges of rosemary. She looked up, her dark brows rising. "Ah, hello, Miss...!"
I drew up beside her, asking, "How are you today, Darlene?"
"Oh, I'm as well as could be hoped..." she said.
She did look well, I thought. Her cheeks were rosy again, her eyes bright and lively. Indeed, she looked as beautiful as ever -- not my mother's porcelain doll beauty, but something more robust and vigorous.
She pointed into the distance with her chin. "Come and see your sheep."
She led me toward the rear of the cottage and a little wattle pen with a tarp of burlap draped over it. I drew back one corner of the tarp slowly and we peeped inside.
The ewe penned within bleated a half-hearted sort of protest at our prying, but she stood patiently, tolerating the lamb's suckling. I counted four bright eyes and two pink noses and several little piles of dung composed of well-formed pellets.
I nodded. "I think I'll move them to pasture tomorrow."
"If you think so, Miss. They're no trouble to us, if you change your mind." Darlene shrugged and smirked down at me -- she was one of the few girls who could. "Or no trouble to me, anyway. I've got Darwin minding them."
"Thank you." I drew the tarp down again. "We'll see how they do through the night."
I followed Darlene back to the drying line, where I insisted she sit and rest her bones a moment. She agreed readily enough, and eased herself down onto the stump of an oak her father used for a chopping block.
I hung up the rest of the linen, then I cut up some onions and turnips for the family's dinner while Darlene collected eggs. My mind drifted to cheerless thoughts of overrun gardens and moldering roofs.
Darlene's mother had been born in one of the little cottages across the Grassbeck. Her name was Winnie, and she was the issue of a Folk mother and a Wolf father, as I understood it. When the Baelgast came marching through the Northerns, town to town and house to house, Winnie was declared a Wolf and a traitor. Darlene and her siblings were deemed merely Wolfkin, and so Roberts was left with four little children and no wife to mother them, and counted himself among the lucky ones.
Darlene became a little mother to her siblings afterward, as she was the eldest. Fate had given her good practice at motherhood, I supposed. I just wished it would also give her a husband.
I finished off the onions, and then Darlene came in with an apron full of eggs.
"What else can I do for you?" I asked, glancing about. My eyes landed on an empty bucket. "Do you need more water? I can go to the well..."
Darlene shook her head. "Naw. I'll send Darwin to fetch some when she gets home. But thank you, Miss."
"Very well, then. I'll be back again in the morning."
I left Darlene and trudged back to the house, bracing myself for the more daunting duty of entertaining a house full of overnight guests.