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Chapter Thirteen

A fter some debate, it was settled (Tam insisted) on Lyford’s house as the headquarters for this experiment rather than the tea shop, on the theory that it would be more comfortable for everyone and most particularly Mrs. Hart herself—and there were people who would be responsible for seeing to things like cooking if the next attempt ended up taking a very long time.

Tam was sure that it would take a very long time. Babies were, after all, far more complicated than wheat fields in summer.

The next morning, Nicolau(???) went off to morning rites at Anghenge, and Tam had a cup of tea at his little table out front while he waited for Mrs Hart, who appeared presently with Angharad bundled in her arms. She smiled ruefully when she saw him. "Morning. I wasn't sure if you'd still need help—or at least company? Or I suppose I can buy a cup of tea and just sit with Daisy if you’d rather have me out from underfoot."

Tam scowled. "Don't be silly, you don't have to buy anything to sit here with her. Do you want tea?" he demanded. "Sit down." He went in to fetch another cup. When he came back out, he had a brief and exasperating argument with Mrs. Hart about whether he was allowed to give away his own tea to his friends.

Isa, she used to be, back before she was married. She'd spent their whole childhood talking about how much she liked the idea of being called Mrs Such-and-such one day, how grown-up and respectable it sounded, how it meant that people had to listen to you...

Names, Tam sighed to himself. Names, and the meanings of them and the weight of them. And somehow he was supposed to say Nicolau like it was normal and natural, and never mind what it meant for him to do that. Was he supposed to say it in front of other people, or was it allowed to be merely a private thing? He didn't have a leg to stand on when it came to formality—he'd been saying Lyford for the last twenty-odd years, and fie on anyone who tried to tell him that he ought to be more formal and polite to his Lordship.

"So," he said, when she had finally been bullied into drinking free tea and handing over Angharad. "Here's the thing. I’m favored of the Lady of Lambs, and it's not a big deal."

"Yes," she said calmly. "I had guessed. You know, what with the marrow, and his Lordship insisting that your tea shop was a better place for Daisy to spend time than Anghenge."

Tam bridled. It was not comfortable for other people to be noticing things about him. "Lyford is also her favored."

"I'd guessed that as well. Based on his general way of being, and also the way you two were... how to word it... talking shop yesterday."

Right. Fuck. "Alright. Well. We want to try something. Don't know if it'll work, but what's the fucking point of us if we don't give it a shot, am I right?"

She looked up from her tea. "Try something? With... Daisy, you mean? Like you did yesterday?"

"Right, but more than that, and also hopefully somewhat more competent. Organized. Lyford’s going to make a bloody effort. Thing is, we’re not sure how long it’ll take. Can you get somebody to take care of your other children and come up to the big house?”

Mrs Hart blinked. “The big house? Me ?”

“And Angharad. Lyford’s guest rooms are... adequate,” Tam said ruthlessly. “I’m sure he’ll insist on bringing out the nice sheets for you. This could involve a couple days of us glaring at your baby, but you can put your feet up and relax for the most part.” He paused and leaned in close. “Listen to me—say no. Negotiate.”

“Why in the world would I negotiate about the Lady of Lambs’ favored ones trying to help my baby?”

“Because,” Tam hissed, “Lyford has a really incredible bath and servants to heat all the water you could want. You should insist on getting to use the bath, for the inconvenience we’re putting you to.”

“Oh. Right,” she said slowly. “I don’t know, Tam, it seems awfully inconvenient, is there anything his Lordship can offer as compensation for my time?”

“Oh no, you’ve driven such a hard bargain, I guess you have me over a barrel here, how would you like all the baths you can stand?”

“Alright?” she said, bemused. “Thanks.”

“Great.”

When she’d finished her tea—Tam tried valiantly to bully her into having a second cup—Mrs Hart left him to babysit Angharad by himself for a bit while she ran off to get her mother to watch her other children and whatever else in her household needed tending to at short notice.

“Just you and me, little crabapple,” Tam said to Angharad, getting settled again inside by the window and the fading flower-boxes. It had been the first cold snap of encroaching autumn the night before, which Tam hadn’t much noticed. His toes hadn’t even gotten cold, what with the radiant warmth of another body under the covers, but the flowers were looking sad. Tam glared at them and thought fiercely of summer.

“Right,” he said, returning his attention to the infant. Crabapple was a good petname for her, seeing as how she was so very little and also more red and pink than he generally expected babies to be. “Let’s get a couple things straight. Number one: You like me more than that other guy. His name is Nicolau Lyford and he thinks he’s Angarat’s gift to the world.” He paused. “One part of him might be, but you don’t need to know about which one. Point is, I’m basically your Uncle Tam, and you like me so much more than him, got it? Second, men are not worth your time. Just remember that for the future. Third, you’ve got one fucking job, and that is to do your best at growing . I want to see you put in some honest bloody effort, same as me and that other fellow who you don’t like as much. I’m going to know if you’re not pulling your weight.” He paused. “Fortunately you are not that heavy, so you don’t have very much weight to pull, but you get my point. This is going to be a team effort, crabapple, and I can’t have you slacking off.” He paused again. “Though I should say I’m not as worried about your contributions as I am about certain other people’s. Just so you don’t think that you’re the weak link on this team. Honestly, you’re doing a pretty impressive job mostly by yourself so far. You’re a fighter, I can tell. That’s why I’m not so worried about your contributions. It’s just that Nicolau sends people on quests all by themselves because he’s got some embarrassing ideas about solo heroics, but we know better about things like that, don’t we? Yes, we do. This is why you shouldn’t waste your time on men. Learn from my mistakes, crabapple.”

Tam didn’t know who was minding the shop. He’d just walked out and left the door unlocked and figured that someone would come along when it was their turn. It was an unsettling kind of wonderful to not worry about it all the time, to be able to run out in the middle of the day and do whatever he liked. It was a weight off his shoulders that he hadn’t even known was there.

He ran into L— Nicolau on the road up to the manor. “I spread it about at the henge that we’d be busy until further notice,” Nicolau said. “And I took the liberty of asking Mrs Hatter to mind her own business when she got that nosy look on her face.”

“Good,” said Tam, hauling Angharad a little higher on his shoulder. There would have been a time, even just a few weeks ago, when it would have sent him into a snit that she was probably thinking about him and taking an interest in his life and trying to get him to bend to whatever agenda she had for his love life. He had better things to worry about, such as little crabapples, and also Nicolau’s legs in those hosen. “Anyway, let’s start in your kitchen garden.”

Lyford’s clothes weren’t really cut out for sitting on any sort of ground except clean grass, but he didn’t seem to mind. He led Tam around the back of the manor to the servants’ wing, rather startling one of the cooks who was picking the last of the summer vegetables—she yelped and dropped her basket, spilling its contents everywhere. Angharad stirred and make a tiny discontented noise; Tam instinctively froze and loudly thought soothing thoughts of soft bunnies and springtime flowers as Lyford knelt to help poor Mrs Barkey pick up all the beans and summer squash. When it appeared that Angharad was settling back into sleep, Tam breathed a sigh of relief and roundly scolded Lyford in a loud hiss about terrorizing his employees and his various crimes of household management.

“You really needn’t, your Lordship,” Mrs Barkey was trying to say as Lyford continued collecting the spilled vegetables. “Only I wasn’t expecting you to come around the corner—please, your Lordship, you’ll get yourself all mucky—”

“He’s about to get himself muckier still,” Tam said darkly. “He’s about to go in among the pea plants and sit on the ground and commune with the muck.”

Mrs Barkey seemed wildly disturbed by this idea, but she gathered herself and the rest of her basket quickly, curtseyed to both of them—inexplicable?—and said, “I’ll finish up whenever you’re done, milord, so I shan’t be in the way.”

“We’re just going to be glaring at a baby,” said Tam. “And I’ll be yelling at Lyford. You know. Normal activities. So you can continue working if you need to.”

“Ah, but we wouldn’t like to get in your way, either,” Lyford added. “Can you tell us which rows you’ve finished with?”

She did not look entirely convinced, but Tam supposed that two grown men sitting in some pea plants with a baby was not a particularly common occurrence in life, especially when one of them was the lord of the manor.

They sat in the pea plants, facing each other with their legs folded, and glared at Angharad. Rather, Tam glared, and Ly— Nicolau gazed at her and looked focused and thoughtful.

After an hour or so, the sun was warm on Tam’s back. He had Angharad in the cradle of his lap, comfortably in his shadow, and she was, thankfully, still napping. “She’s difficult,” Nicolau said, his brow furrowed. “It’s like trying to see a color that I don’t know about.” He stirred himself. “Could I practice on you?”

Tam gave him a withering look. “Fine, but don’t touch anything. I like my clocks and my bags of seed exactly how they are, thanks .”

“Not that it would do you much good even if I did,” the absolute prick said. “I don’t think you’re going to get my bedsheets pregnant no matter how much meddling I try—”

“You see?” Tam hissed to Angharad, who was drooling a little in her sleep. “Don’t waste your time on men, they’re disgusting.”

“Could you try doing something to the pea plants?” Lyford said thoughtfully. “I’d like to see if I can get the knack of perceiving the... the...” He waved his hand. “The movement of the wheat fields in the wind? Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” Tam said immediately. “The trick of things moving around when I’m doing stuff .”

“Right.”

So Tam stuck his hands in the dirt to either side of him and beckoned to the pea plants—like holding out a tuft of sweet grass or an apple for Piggy, or a nibble of hard cheese for the alley cat that lived behind the tea shop—

It was more difficult than it had been two months ago when he’d been riding out to the Highlands. Then, in the height of summer, there had been a momentum to the energy. The crops in the fields had wanted to grow, they were only lacking something they needed—better soil, more water or less, more sunshine or less... Now, the pea plants had given up their abundance to Mrs Barkey’s basket, and they were groggy, drifting off to a peaceful sleep and a natural death.

“Hmmm,” said Tam, frowning. He pushed harder, and felt one pea plant perking up—the soil was still good (really marvelous soil Nicolau had here, goodness, even better than the soil by the Anghenge gardens) and the sun was still warm, and perhaps the plant had another few pods left in it, if it just made an effort—

Tam stopped.

It wasn’t right. The plant had done its work, and the pea that had been sown there in the spring had fulfilled its purpose of growing and making more peas, hundreds of them. It didn’t seem kind to force it to do more on a mere whimsy. He took his hands out of the soil. “I don’t want to,” he said.

Lyford blinked at him. “What?”

Tam seethed. “It’s not civilized, Lyf— Nicolau. It’s like ordering one of the village grannies to pull a whole wagon up a hill by herself, even though she’s old and tired and has a bad hip. Who does that shit? Sadistic motherfucking—I’m not making the pea plants do anything. They did their bit. It’s not nice. Fuck off.”

Lyford blinked at him again. Tam was half expecting him to laugh in his face for—for caring about pea plants and their personal wellbeing , but all he did was cast a look around at them with an expression of slow understanding and slight embarrassment. “Oh, I see. Of course. They’re done.”

“They’re done .”

“Maybe we should go somewhere else, then,” Nicolau said, and paused with a strange and unsettling expression.

“What?” Tam demanded. “ What ?”

“When you had your hands in the dirt, it was like—it seemed as though you were pushing something that didn’t want to move.”

“Yes.”

“But before, you were talking as if it came naturally.”

“It did. In the summer, it did. They wanted to grow. Everything wants to grow in summer.”

“We’re all but out of summer,” Nicolau said. “So will it keep getting harder the longer it takes?”

Tam’s breath caught.

He scrambled Angharad back into his arms, probably getting smears and handprints of mud all over her nice swaddling, and he shot to his feet and wrestled his way out of the pea plants. Fuck. Fuck. “Fuck,” he snapped. “Get out of there. Pea plants, what are we doing with pea plants— fucking stupid idea, wrong time of year. Fuck. ”

Nicolau was already wading out of the pea plants just behind him.

Wrong time of year—summer waning fast, and autumn encroaching, and all Tam knew how to do was bully some fucking plants, and most of them were starting to die or go to sleep—there were still the late autumn crops and the early-winter nut harvest, but then...

Then the deepest part of winter. The hungry time, if the year’s crops hadn’t done well, or if vermin or other disasters got into the stored food. He clutched Angharad closer. Winter, when so many people got ill, when folks stopped going to Anghenge as often, when all the world wound down into stagnation and rest. Would Tam be able to do anything in winter?

Lyford— Nicolau , but goddammit, Tam couldn’t deal with that shit right now—Lyford put his hand on Tam’s shoulder. “We still have sunshine,” he said softly.

For now. For now. All things in their time, said the priests of Angarat.

He was holding Angharad too tightly, maybe, or he had moved too quickly and jostled her, or maybe he’d spoken too loudly—she stirred and made an ominously unhappy noise.

“Fuck,” Tam said again.

Angharad’s crying didn’t do anything to help Tam’s rapidly fraying nerves. Fortunately, it was only ten minutes or so until Mrs Hart showed up with a huge basket on her arm and cheerfully said, “Oh, good, I’m right on time.”

While she fed Angharad, Tam paced urgently around the sitting room, chewing his thumbnail ragged. “We need to think of something,” he said to Lyford, who was sitting by the window and pretending to read a book so as to give Mrs Hart some privacy.

“We could try the stables, or the sheepfold.”

“You got any lambs right now?” Tam snapped. “Any pregnant ewes? No . It’s not good enough.”

“The Lady of Lambs watches over all livestock.”

“It’s not good enough .” He paused. “Do we know anyone with rabbits? Rabbits breed all the time, or—oh, shit, wait, you know about the clocks— you can put your sheep in estrus and have pregnant ewes by the end of the day. You got a ram around here? Let’s get some of that.”

“And have those ewes lambing in the middle of winter? That’s as unkind a thing as the pea plants earlier, don’t you think?”

Tam subsided. It would be an unkind thing, come to that. Lyford had shepherds to care for his flocks, so it wouldn’t be the two of them out in the frost or the mud in the middle of winter to help the ewes lamb and then to keep the little things alive in the cold.

“It’s going to be alright,” Lyford said calmly. “She’s gotten through six weeks already. We don’t need to fight her back from illness, we just need to make sure she doesn’t take a turn for the worse.” He returned his attention to the book he wasn’t reading. “Babies want to grow, don’t they. Just like the fields in summer. So all we have to do is keep her going until she’s strong enough to thrive on her own. Every day gets us a little closer.”

Tam seethed at him and went back to pacing furiously.

He didn’t agree, that was the problem. Yes, babies wanted to grow like the fields in summer, theoretically , but babies were more complicated than plants, and Tam couldn’t relax. He felt itchy with it. When he’d been messing about in the fields, he’d known that they only needed a little encouragement, but there was something about Angharad or the situation which just... didn’t sit right. Itched.

Lyford was too accustomed to looking at the big picture, that was the problem. He ran the manor estate, he oversaw the village, he checked in on the farmers and helped them with what little problems they had. It was easy for him to look at the systems and rhythms of life and say some broad generalization like all we have to do is keep her going .

Tam was not good at the big picture. Tam could micromanage a marrow, he could bully some cereal crops, he could wrestle with one specific Piggy, and he could exasperate one of the favored of Idunet into not fucking him. Tam was a detail man: Every word mattered, every breath could cause him offense, every blink of Lyford’s eyes could be taken as an insult. He knew what it was to be focused on one thing to the exclusion of all else, and he knew what it felt like to be fighting and working and striving, and he knew how easily everything could fall to pieces out of nowhere, even if you’d put all your work and all your heart into it.

It wasn’t good enough to merely keep Angharad going until she grew strong on her own. It wasn’t good enough .

If she—didn’t make it—then Tam didn’t know what he’d do with himself. Break, maybe. Leave. All those years of carrying a grudge against Lyford for the marrow incident paled in comparison to how Tam would feel about him if they failed. He could genuinely not even imagine it. There was just a blank gulf of ringing nothingness in his mind when he tried, cold and barren as the winter after a year of famine.

It wasn’t good enough to merely keep her going. Babies, even healthy babies, were too fragile, too easily sickened. It was a fucking wonder anyone made it to adulthood.

She would be fine. She would.

Mrs Hart fed her and showed Tam how to change her with the clean cloths from the giant basket she’d brought. Lyford apparently already knew how—but that came of meddling about until he’d gotten all those countless niblings to practice on, so Tam was not giving him any credit for doing the bare minimum as a responsible uncle.

“You should have a bath now,” Tam said, taking Angharad from her once more.

“Tam,” Nicolau said reproachfully.

“If you want,” Tam added, rolling his eyes.

“Ah,” said Mrs Hart. “It’s... his Lordship’s house, Tam, you really oughtn’t—”

“It’s fine!” Tam said loudly. “Isn’t it fine for her to have a bath? I promised her that she could have all the baths she wanted while we worked. I told her you would not mind. I told her that your bath is one of your only redeeming features.”

“ Tam, ” Mrs Hart hissed.

“Goblin,” Nicolau sighed. “But yes, Mrs Hart, you’re more than welcome to as many baths as you like. I would imagine we’ll be in and out on little excursions as Tam has ideas for things, so please rest and relax—you’re also welcome to the library, and I’ve already told the kitchen staff to keep you well supplied with whatever you’re in the mood for.”

“That’s very kind of you, your Lordship,” she said.

He smiled at her. “You’re still allowed to call me Nicolau, you know. You might have grown up into Mrs Hart, but some of us have a fondness for our childhood playmates calling us by our given names.”

Tam narrowed his eyes as Mrs Hart, flustered but pleased, thanked him and said Nicolau like it was easy and left for her bath.

“So,” he said when the door closed. “Just everyone gets to call you that now, do they?”

“Why not?” Lyford said mildly. “Most people can do it with just an invitation, you know. They don’t need a whole quest about it.”

Tam glowered at him and hitched Angharad a little higher in his arms. “Let’s go to your room. You’re going to fucking try again. I’m not taking any of this bare minimum shit. She deserves for you to try harder. ”

“Alright,” Lyford said, in that patient way that Tam so hated. “We’ll keep trying.”