2
Just as it seemed that the drizzle would never end and the grinding sound of the thinny in the still air would drive everyone in Hambry insane, a strong wind - almost a gale - blew in off the ocean and puffed the clouds away. The town awoke one day to a sky as bright as blue steel and a sun that turned the bay to gold in the morning and white fire in the afternoon. That sense of lethargy was gone. In the potato fields the carts rolled with new vigor. In Green Heart an army of women began once more to bedeck with flowers the podium where Jamie McCann and Susan Delgado would he acclaimed this year's Reaping Lad and Girl.
Out on the part of the Drop closest to Mayor's House, Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain rode with renewed purpose, counting the horses which ran with the Barony brand on their flanks. The bright skies and brisk winds filled them with energy and good cheer, and for a course of days - three, or perhaps four - they galloped together in a whooping, shouting, laughing line, their old good fellowship restored.
On one of these brisk and sunny days, Eldred Jonas stepped out of the Sheriff's office and walked up Hill Street toward Green Heart. He was free of both Depape and Reynolds this morning - they had ridden out to Hanging Rock together, looking for Latigo's outriders, who must come soon, now - and Jonas's plan was simple: to have a glass of beer in the pavilion, and watch the preparations that were going on there: the digging of the roasting-pits, the laying of faggots for the bonfire, the arguments over how to set the mortars that would shoot off the fireworks, the ladies flowering the stage where this year's Lad and Girl would be offered for the town's adulation. Perhaps, Jonas thought, he might take a likely-looking flower-girl off for an hour or two of recreation. The maintenance of the saloon whores he left strictly to Roy and Clay, but a fresh young flower-girl of seventeen or so was a different matter.
The pain in his hip had faded with the damp weather; the painful, lurching stride with which he had moved for the last week or so had become a mere limp again. Perhaps just a beer or two in the open air would be enough, but the thought of a girl wouldn't quite leave his head. Young, clear-skinned, high-breasted. Fresh, sweet breath. Fresh, sweet lips -
"Mr. Jonas? Eldred?"
He turned, smiling, to the owner of the voice. No dewy-complexioned flower-girl with wide eyes and moist, parted lips stood there, but a skinny woman edging into late middle age - flat chest, flat bum, tight pale lips, hair scrooped so tight against her skull that it fair screamed. Only the wide eyes corresponded with his daydream. Ibelieve I've made a conquest, Jonas thought sardonically.
"Why, Cordelia!" he said, reaching out and taking one of her hands in both of his. "How lovely you look this morning!"
Thin color came up in her cheeks and she laughed a little. For a moment she looked forty-five instead of sixty. And she's not sixty, Jonas thought. The lines around her mouth and the shadows under her eyes . . . those are new.
"You're very kind," she said, "but I know better. I haven't been sleeping, and when women my age don't sleep, they grow old rapidly."
"I'm sorry to hear you're sleeping badly," he said. "But now that the weather's changed, perhaps - "
"It's not the weather. Might I speak to you, Eldred? I've thought and thought, and you're the only one I dare turn to for advice."
His smile widened. He placed her hand through his arm, then covered it with his own. Now her blush was like fire. With all that blood in her head, she might talk for hours. And Jonas had an idea that every word would be interesting.
3
With women of a certain age and temperament, tea was more effective than wine when it came to loosening the tongue. Jonas gave up his plans for a lager (and, perhaps, a flower-girl) without so much as a second thought. He seated sai Delgado in a sunny comer of the Green Heart pavilion (it was not far from a red rock Roland and Susan knew well), and ordered a large pot of tea; cakes, too. They watched the Reaping Fair preparations go forward as they waited for the food and drink. The sunswept park was full of hammering and sawing and shouts and bursts of laughter.
"All Fair-Days are pleasant, but Reaping turns us all into children again, don't you find?" Cordelia asked.
"Yes, indeed," said Jonas, who hadn't felt like a child even when he had been one.