Wizard and glass - Stephen King [91]
Mayhap there’s one more little thing, the old woman had said . . . or so Susan thought. But what had that one more little thing been? She couldn’t remember. And, really, what did it matter? She was shut of Rhea until her belly began to rise with Thorin’s child . . . and if there could be no baby-making until Reap-Night, she’d not be returning to the Cöos until late winter at the soonest. An age! And it would be longer than that, were she slow to kindle . . .
“I walked slowly coming home, Aunt. That’s all.”
“Then why look ye so?” Aunt Cord had asked, scant brows knitting toward the vertical line which creased her brow.
“How so?” Susan had asked, taking off her apron and knotting the strings and hanging it on the hook just inside the kitchen door.
“Flushy. Frothy. Like milk fresh out of the cow.”
She’d almost laughed. Aunt Cord, who knew as little about men as Susan did about the stars and planets, had struck it directly. Flushy and frothy was exactly how she felt. “Only the night air, I suppose,” she had said. “I saw a meteor, Aunt. And heard the thinny. The sound’s strong tonight.”
“Aye?” her aunt asked without interest, then returned to the subject which did interest her. “Did it hurt?”
“A little.”
“Did ye cry?”
Susan shook her head.
“Good. Better not. Always better. She likes it when they cry, I’ve heard. Now, Sue—did she give you something? Did the old pussy give you something?”
“Aye.” She reached into her pocket and brought out the paper with
written upon it. She held it out and her aunt snatched it away with a greedy look. Cordelia had been quite the sugarplum over the last month or so, but now that she had what she wanted (and now that Susan had come too far and promised too much to have a change of heart), she’d reverted to the sour, supercilious, often suspicious woman Susan had grown up with; the one who’d been driven into almost weekly bouts of rage by her phlegmatic, life-goes-as-’twill brother. In a way, it was a relief. It had been nervewracking to have Aunt Cord playing Cybilla Good-Sprite day after day.
“Aye, aye, there’s her mark, all right,” her aunt had said, tracing her fingers over the bottom of the sheet. “A devil’s hoof’s what it means, some say, but what do we care, eh, Sue? Nasty, horrid creature that she is, she’s still made it possible for two women to get on in the world a little longer. And ye’ll only have to see her once more, probably around Year’s End, when ye’ve caught proper.”
“It will be later than that,” Susan had told her. “I’m not to lie with him until the full of the Demon Moon. After the Reaping Fair and the bonfire.”
Aunt Cord had stared, eyes wide, mouth open. “Said she so?”
Are you calling me a liar, Auntie? she had thought with a sharpness that wasn’t much like her; usually her nature was more like her father’s.
“Aye.”
“But why? Why so long?” Aunt Cord was obviously upset, obviously disappointed. There had so far been eight pieces of silver and four of gold out of this; they were tucked up wherever it was that Aunt Cord squirreled her money away (and Susan suspected there was a fair amount of it, although Cordelia liked to plead poverty at every opportunity), and twice that much was still owed . . . or would be, once the bloodstained sheet went to the Mayor’s House laundress. That same amount would be paid yet again when Rhea had confirmed the baby, and the baby’s honesty. A lot of money, all told. A great lot, for a little place like this and little folk like them. And now, to have the paying of it put back so far . . .
Then came a sin Susan had prayed over (although without much enthusiasm) before getting into her bed: she had rather enjoyed the cheated, frustrated look on Aunt Cord’s face—the look of the thwarted miser.
“Why so long?” she repeated.
“I suppose you could go up the Cöos and ask her.”
Cordelia Delgado’s lips, thin to begin with,