In the Summertime
Part Two
Read Part One.
Though it was a holiday, Rone went out early the next day. He went first to the blacksmith, Henri, who didn’t take days off. Henri was his oldest friend. And living in the center of town as he did, Henri was the first to know any news.
“I missed you and your beautiful wife and growing boy yesterday my friend,” said Henri, barely pausing at the horseshoe he was hammering into shape. When he had no orders, he made nails and horseshoes, the market for which never quieted.
“Something delayed us on the road,” said Rone. “Actually, we saw Stellant.”
Henri looked up with a quick laugh. “Did you?” he asked. “Yes, she got back a week ago. Nobody expected to ever see her again. She’s already made herself unwelcome.”
“Yes, she scared my boy.”
“I’m sorry, but unsurprised. She sought out my wife at the market the other day to yell at her about something. It’ll happen to all of us eventually, I suppose.”
Henri’s wife, like Astor, had been born in the wilderness.
“Actually, that was what I was coming to see you about.”
“Stellant?” Henri glanced up again.
“Yes. Do you know anything?”
“Other than that she arrived back a week ago and hasn’t changed?” asked Henri. “No.”
“Of all the time’s of year for her to show, too.”
Henri laughed again. “Oh, I think she chose it on purpose,” he said. “She knows what time of year it is.”
“What do you think is wrong with her?” asked Rone, carefully looked out at the street to see if anyone was there.
“It always bothered her that we actually liked it here. She doesn’t, but she really can’t stand the fact we’re proud of being from here.”
“Do you think she’d be quieter if we didn’t have patriotic pageantry and grand speeches?”
Henri frowned. “I can’t say,” he said. “Might be. Might be she comes up with a new reason. Some people just need something to hate. How did your boy take it, by the way?”
Rone frowned, too. “Actually, quite well,” he said. “I was a little surprised. He was much calmer than I thought he’d be.”
“He’s been calm since the day he was born. My girl’s just talking but she already makes more noise in a day than he does in a week.”
“Yes,” said Rone. “He takes after his mother.
Henri smiled. “With all due respect, my friend, that is very good news.”
They laughed.
“He seemed to understand it better than I expected,” said Rone. “It made sense to him in a way I didn’t think it would.”
“What did?”
“Oh, she was saying the usual stuff about how evil we are and how it’s our fault for everything bad that happens in the world and that Jonam’s very existence is creating great harm in the world. I explained that this wasn’t true, but that some people believe it, or want to believe it. I told him the world’s a hard place and not a fair place, and that people go looking for explanations and it seems natural to some people that the reason some people have it good is that other people don’t. And vice versa. He took it all pretty well, I must say. I worry that his innocence is gone already. Five years old and he knows that there are people who hate him for no reason and he can’t do anything about it.”
Henri had finished several horseshoes in the time they’d been talking. He tossed the latest one into a bucket.
“Children come into the world knowing more than they let on,” he said. “How old were you when you knew there was bad stuff in the world.”
Rone thought about this. “Fair,” he said.
“Jonam’ll be just fine. He’ll turn out alright.”
Rone nodded. “If you hear anything else about Stellant,” he said, “tell me.”
“I will.”
“She didn’t bring anyone back with her, did she?”
“No.”
“And she doesn’t have any allies, does she?”
Henri snorted. “Of course not,” he said. “She’s as much a footsore as she always was. She’s managed to anger half the town already.”
Rone kept nodding. “Good. Good,” he said. “Still, I’m worried. A lot of people weren’t happy about the Bloodless Revolution. Every time something goes wrong, there’s talk that life was better under the king.”
“When we couldn’t buy or sell our own crops and the king’s men could have their way with our women and hanged was the man who objected?” asked Henri. “Not too many seriously want that back.”
“They say we were more united then. We had a common solidarity that we lack now.”
“Like hell we were,” said Henri. “United on only one thing – hatred of the king. There’s a reason it was a bloodless revolution. He was quick enough in seeing he’d be dead if he resisted and he did his best to get out. The country celebrated.”
“Did you hear Yoren say last week that our prosperity has made us soft and corrupt?”
“He can speak for himself,” said Henri. “Anytime he wants to work, he can come down here and I can put him to work in my shop. Our backs were broken every day under the king. Maybe he thinks that’s a simple life and a better one, but I haven’t seen anybody who was corrupted by having two pairs of shoes and roofs that didn’t leak for the first time in their lives.”
“I’m still worried something is going to happen.”
Henri stopped hammering for the first time. He looked his friend in the eye and he didn’t make a joke this time. “I know,” he said. “I don’t blame you. I don’t think it will. I think we’re past that. Stellant won’t get the king’s old faction to come out of the woodwork. She doesn’t inspire them. Besides, wasn’t like she liked us back then, either. Doubt she wants to reinstall the king.”
“What does she want?”
“Oh, attention maybe. Hard to say. Some people don’t know themselves.”
“Thanks.”
Henri nodded. He stuck his hand out and clapped Rone on the back. “Come around here anytime you want to talk,” he said.
“I will, my friend.”
They bid each other farewell, and Rone stepped out into the empty street. It wasn’t a cobblestone street – the town still lacked the money for that – but the soil had been raked to make it easier to walk or ride a horse down. Any potholes were filled in regularly and the edges of the street were kept neat and clean. The houses here were nicer – some even had two stories. As Rone walked out of town, he noticed new homes being built just beyond the unofficial town limits. They were small, but the carpentry was skilled. Rone knew a couple families who were moving in there. None of them had much in the way of money and ten years ago they’d have been in mud hovels with thatched roofs. These homes had wooden roofs.
Clouds had rolled in during the hour or so he’d spent in the forge talking to Henri. Light-gray clouds on the edge of white. A very soft rain began to fall now, as Rone walked back out of town, out to where his wife and child were waiting. He felt no rush, but he did feel as though it was important that he go back for a midday meal.
Just outside the town, the street became a less-maintained road, and the road wound around a hill and past a copse of trees. As he rounded the hill, Rone stopped. He stared at the trees. There, hanging from one of the branches by a rope around her neck, was Stellant. A small footstool lay at the base of the tree, kicked over. She must have been there some time, for a couple of carrion birds had flown in and were sitting higher in the tree watching her body sway in the breeze.
Rone stood there for some time. Eventually, he went back to town and found some of the local guard and brought them out. Together, they cut down the body and carried it back to town. One of the selectmen told them to bury it in an unmarked grave, but someone pointed out that her parents’ plot was available, since they’d had no other children.
Rone helped them dig the grave and fill it back in. A small, wooden marker was placed atop it, and when they were done, the very light rain which had continued all day without wetting the ground stopped. Rone arrived home just before supper, aware that he hadn’t eaten all day, and aware that he wasn’t very hungry.
That night, he told Astor everything. He told her what Henri said and he told her about the hanging and the burial. They agreed not to tell their son until the morning. As they were putting him to bed, he asked them whether the strange woman was going to come back.
“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about her anymore,” said Rone.
“Why not?”
“I’ll tell you in the morning,” said Rone. “Sleep tight.”
But this proved to be a poor strategy, for it was the first thing Jonam said, “What were you going to tell me last night about the strange woman?”
Rone hesitated. Perhaps it would be better to tell him that she’d gone away.
“She had an accident,” he said.
“What happened?” the boy perked up.
“Hard to say. She was in the woods by herself. She died.”
“Oh,” said Jonam. He was thinking.
Astor took the opportunity to adjust Jonam’s collar, which was still up. His trousers were also on backwards, but that could wait. She guided him to a chair at the table and poured him a glass of milk. Rone stood in the doorway drinking a cup of coffee. “She was buried yesterday,” he said.
“Oh,” said Jonam.
“See your mother and I are right about it being dangerous to go off in the woods by yourself,” said Rone, but Astor gave him a look. It was clear Jonam wanted to ask another question, but couldn’t think of one. Instead, he sat their quietly eating the eggs his mother put in front of him. He remained quiet the rest of that morning and into the afternoon. When his mother and father called him to come in for supper, he still seemed subdued.
“Your father and I have some news,” said Astor when Jonam had washed the dirt off of his hands. He looked up expectantly.”
“You know how you keep mentioning you want a dog?” she asked. The boy nodded.
“Well,” she said. “We’ve decided to get a puppy.”
And he gave a little shriek and couldn’t stop talking about the puppy all supper. Rone had to remind him that if he didn’t sit still and eat his turnips, he would be eating them in the morning for breakfast.