With a Tangled Skein Read online

  “Yeah,” Cedric agreed from the hearth.

  “Cedric, come over here,” she said in peremptory fashion. “We must get this done. We can’t face them, otherwise.”

  He got up and perched on the foot of the bed. He seemed to be afraid of her. “Cedric, it’s really not all that complicated,” she said. “We’ve both been told about the birds and the bees and we’ve seen animals.”

  “You are no animal!” he said, horrified.

  That set her back. This remained awkward. If he had come on like a bull in the mating pen, she would have been appalled, but would have tolerated it; that, her mother had warned her privately, was the way men were. At least the ice, so to speak, would have been broken. She didn’t feel quite comfortable with that metaphor, but it seemed to apply. As it was, they were in trouble. “Forget the animals,” she said. “Come into bed with me. It’s ridiculous sleeping apart like this.”

  He moved up, and stretched timorously beside her on the bed.

  “Not in your clothes!” she exclaimed.

  “Oh, ma’am, I couldn’t—”

  She reached across and took his hand. It was cold and stiff. “Cedric, are you afraid of me?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am!” he protested. But he was shivering.

  “Of—what we have to do?”

  “Terrified,” he agreed.

  “Cedric, this is ridiculous. You know I like you, and if you sing to me—”

  “That’s the magic, not me.”

  And he wanted her to love him, not his magic. He had a point. But she suspected this was mainly an excuse to justify his fear. “Cedric, I know you’re no coward. What’s really bothering you?”

  “I couldn’t—just couldn’t do that to you, ma’am.”

  That “ma’am” again! She was trying to bring them closer to each other, but was only succeeding in increasing their separation. “Why not?”

  “Because you’re so—so beautiful and wonderful and—” He shrugged, unable to express himself properly.

  “But Cedric, I’m your wife!”

  “Not by your choice!”

  This ground was too familiar; she had to get away from it. “But not by yours either, Cedric. We are two people thrown together by circumstance and the will of our families, and they really have tried to do what was best for us, and now we—”

  “A woman and a boy,” he said.

  There it was again. He felt inadequate—and she couldn’t argue with this assessment, privately. But she knew she had to change that. “But you’re growing,” she said.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be grown enough for you.”

  “Oh, Cedric, that’s not true!” she protested. But she knew she sounded like a mother encouraging a child. This dialogue was going nowhere. Like all the others.

  She considered, while he lay in uncomfortable silence. After a bit, she said: “Cedric, maybe we’re trying to do things too abruptly. Let’s start in stages. Take off your clothes, lie beside me under the quilt, and sleep, tonight. Nothing else.”

  “You promise?”

  She laughed. “I promise, Cedric. What do you think I could do to you?”

  He had to laugh too, but it was strained. “What if it gets cold?”

  “Then we move together, to share our warmth under the covers. That’s the idea, isn’t it?”

  “But you—you aren’t wearing much.”

  She sat up and unbuttoned her nightie, pleased at her own daring. “I’ll wear nothing at all.”

  He actually rolled over and fell off the bed with an awful thunk. Alarmed, Niobe jumped out, ran around, and bent to help him up. “Oh, Cedric, I’m so sorry! Are you hurt?”

  “Please, ma’am—your shirt—” He turned his face away.

  She glanced down. In the faint light of the dying fire, she saw that her partially unbuttoned nightie had fallen open, exposing part of her bosom. “For God’s sake, Cedric, you can look at me! I’m your wife!”

  “It’s not right,” he said, face still averted.

  “Cedric, look at me!” she ordered. But he would not. Anger flared in her exposed bosom. She got up and stalked back around the bed and plumped back down. What was she to do with this boy?

  Then, through her cooling fury, she became aware of something. She listened.

  He was leaning against the bed and sobbing, trying desperately to muffle it so that she would not know.

  Her emotion spun about in a full turn. “Oh, Cedric!” she breathed, and started across the bed to comfort him. Then she stopped, realizing that that might be the worst thing she could do. She was no mother, and he no child, and these roles had to be avoided like plague. She had thought originally only of her own chagrin at being married to a boy; now she realized that the problem was far more acute for him. She had to find some way to free them both from these perceptions, so that she would be a woman and he a man.

  Tonight was a loss. She would just have to let it grind itself out and try to do better on the morrow.

  She did try on the morrow. “Cedric, let’s get drunk.”

  He was taken aback. “I never touch the stuff, ma’am.”

  “Niobe,” she said firmly. “Call me by name.”

  “Niobe,” he agreed reluctantly. “I don’t drink, Niobe.”

  “Neither do I. But there’s a bottle of white wine on the shelf.”

  “I don’t know. Some folks get wild when they drink.”

  “Yes, don’t they!”

  He smiled. He seemed recovered from his distress of the prior night, and she knew she had been right to leave him alone. Tonight she would get him in that bed!

  They opened the bottle after the evening meal. They sat out on the slope of the knoll beyond the cabin and watched the sunset. Each took a small glass of the golden fluid and drank it down. “Oh, it burns!” Niobe gasped.

  “Sure does!” Cedric agreed. “Say, that’s good stuff!” He refilled his glass, and she refilled hers, but she sipped her second more cautiously than he did. She was not, she found, all that partial to burns, and anyway she didn’t need to get drunk, just him.

  It did not take long for the wine to reach their minds. “Hey, my head feels light!” he exclaimed happily.

  “So does mine,” she agreed. “Maybe we’d better go slow.”

  “Slow? Why? This is fun!” He refilled his glass, not noticing that she had not yet finished hers, and downed it at a gulp.

  Niobe was getting worried; it was evident that the alcohol was carrying him away, and she wasn’t quite sure where it would take him. “Cedric, let’s sing!” she suggested, taking his hand so that he couldn’t use it to take any more wine, yet.

  “Sure, Niobe,” he agreed cheerfully. Without preamble, he sang:

  “Drink to me only with thine eyes, and I will pledge with mine.”

  The orchestra manifested, because she was touching him. It added its grandeur to the simple song. Again she was entranced. When she had first heard the magic, she had realized that there was more to Cedric than she had supposed. This time she realized that she had developed a definite fondness for him. She could love this bonnie boy, in due course. It was easy to believe that, as the music encompassed her.

  After that he sang a straight drinking song, Three Jolly Coachmen, about a trio that was merry for the evening, knowing that they would be sober and therefore less jolly in the morning. They pontificated on the man who drank light ale—

  “He falls as the leaves do fall, so early in October!”

  And on the one who drank stout ale—a jolly fellow! The background music was becoming somewhat uneven, as his mind was dulled by the wine, as if the players of the orchestra were getting tipsy too. Niobe found that excruciatingly funny.

  As it happened, she knew that song, and had a couple of verses to contribute:

  “Here’s to the girl who steals a kiss, and runs to tell her mother.

  She does a very foolish thing; she’ll never get another!”

  Cedric, high as he was, laughed with agreem
ent.

  Then she leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. He looked startled. He glanced around, leaned forward, and vomited on the ground.

  Oh, no! He had had too much, and gotten sick. He was in no particular distress at the moment, but Niobe knew that this evening, too, was finished.

  She managed to get him inside, and cleaned up, and onto the bed to sleep it off. This time she slept by the hearth.

  In the morning, grim with hangover, Cedric picked up the bottle and stared at the remaining wine. “It looks exactly like urine!” he said savagely, and went to the door and flung it outside. He simply wasn’t cut out to be a jolly coachman.

  That evening Niobe tried again. She sat him on the bed beside her, took his hand, and asked him to sing again. She sang with him, and the magic surrounded them, and it was very like love. But when it was time to complete the act of love, Cedric could not. The magnitude of the task rendered him impotent. He was chagrined, but she was in her secret heart relieved; she had tried her very best, and failed. It just did not seem to be time.

  “But Cedric,” she said. “You must sleep without clothing in this bed from now on, and I will too.”

  He stared at her with dismay. “But—”

  “So we can honestly say we slept together,” she explained. “Would anyone believe that was all there was to it?”

  Slowly he smiled, as relieved as she. He joined her, naked, in the bed. It was a cheap compromise, but it would have to do.

  —2—

  COLLEGE

  In the fall Cedric went to the local college. It was not far distant, but inconvenient to commute to by foot, and it would have been complex to arrange for a horse. A magic carpet would have been ideal, but reliable ones were still so expensive that it wasn’t expedient for this situation. It was best, all things considered, for him to board—and romantic incompatibility did not even enter the picture.

  Niobe sent him off with a kiss and a tear and watched him march away with his knapsack full of clothing. He would buy his books there and pay tuition and board; they had budgeted for it and had a comfortable margin.

  She was depressed when he departed and sorry they had not been able to make their marriage work. Cedric was certainly a fine boy with wonderful magic, and she had become quite fond of him. Of course no one knew about the failure of the marriage—or at least the relatives were too discreet to mention any suspicions. With luck, things would work out better after Cedric had matured a year or two in college, and no one would ever know. As a last resort, she could buy a love potion and take it herself; but if Cedric caught on, he would react negatively, and she really didn’t want to deceive him anyway. Love was not really the problem.

  Meanwhile, she was lonely. She could have gone home to her parents for the term, but knew that, if she did, her mother would worm the truth out other, and she couldn’t stand the mortification.

  She made do alone. Running the house was simple enough, and she did a great deal of reading and weaving in the days and cultivated the acquaintance of the dryad of the water oak in the swamp. It was an acceptable existence, for the time being.

  She arranged the cabin to suit herself precisely, and it was very comfortable. She worked on the yard, and that was comfortable too. When she had the near portion of the swamp nicely policed, she decided it was time to visit Cedric.

  She rented a horseless carriage for the occasion. This was considerably cheaper than a carpet, but slower, and the wheels bumped over the rutted track, jolting her uncomfortably. Nevertheless she arrived after a day, reaching the college in fair order, though her prim traveling dress was dusted with grime.

  She spied Cedric walking along a pathway between the dormitory and a classroom building. Only two months had passed, but he did seem to have grown. He was the tallest of the youths there, though he was a freshman, and two college girls flirted outrageously with him as they passed.

  Then he spied Niobe and smiled. He had grown more handsome, too! He seemed to be in his element here. But he became diffident and awkward as he approached her. The problem between them still existed.

  She visited his dormitory room and met his roommate—a pudgy, scholarly type. Cedric showed her his work so far: projects relating to wetlands reclamation and natural magic. It was evident that he took it seriously and was learning a great deal. She was sure he was a joy to his professors.

  First she had a little chore to do. “Give me your cap,” she said.

  “My cap?” he asked blankly.

  “Your college cap—the one you wear to show you’re a student. I believe you’ll find it on your head.”

  Perplexed, he removed it and handed it to her. She brought out her needle and thread and sewed a bright band of silk around it. “That’s to show the college girls that you’re married,” she said firmly, returning it to him.

  “Oh. Sure. Of course.” He seemed nonplused.

  She kissed him chastely, then returned to her carriage. She found herself both reassured and disquieted as she rode home, and it took time to ferret out the sources of her feelings. But at length she realized that she was pleased to see Cedric properly established in college and doing well, pleasantly surprised to see him so tall and handsome and confident, and jealous of the attention he received from the girls of his own age. A married man, after all, had no business attracting such interest. So she had done what was necessary, but still was bothered. After all, what had she done with him all summer, when she had had him all to herself? There was the nagging suspicion of failure on her part; or, if not exactly that, of imperfection. Would they have succeeded in consummating the marriage if she had been more alert to the problem? If she had been sensitive to his side of it? If she had refrained from correcting his errors, from being the perfect lady, and just concentrated on being a person he could relate to as he could to a college girl? Naturally he had been diffident!

  Having resolved the mixture of her emotions and gotten them suitably shelved in her mind, she resumed her ordinary life and produced some truly fine tapestries depicting forest and wetlands scenes. One showed the water oak in the swamp, with the hamadryad perched on its lowest branch, posing. It had taken time and patience to befriend the nymph enough to get her to do this, and Niobe knew that not many human people could have accomplished this at all; she was quite pleased. If only she could have done that with Cedric!

  Near the end of the semester she visited Cedric again. He had been dutifully sending her letters about his life and progress at the college, and his writing showed increasing perception and literacy. He was gaining mentally and socially as well as physically; the college experience was indeed good for him. He was majoring in Wetlands Magic and already was learning things they hadn’t taught in Niobe’s day. He knew how to test trees for their specific forms of magic and all about the ecological cycle. Next term he would take a course in Wetlands Fauna and their relationship to the vegetation. He was excited by the enormous store of information available and determined to master it all. But Niobe wanted to see for herself, just to be sure he wasn’t exaggerating. The impetuous young were prone to exaggeration, after all.

  Cedric was taller yet and marvelously handsome in the sunlight, and his ready smile charmed her. He had one class to attend before he could give her his full attention. “I’m sorry,” he apologized, but his grin was one of accommodation rather than chagrin. “I must attend; I have a report to give. Then I’ll be with you. But my Water Magic Prof wants to talk to you anyway, so you won’t be bored.”

  How his confidence had grown! Niobe was almost dismayed to see that her husband was prospering just as well without her as she was without him. But she went to see the Prof, who was expecting her.

  The Prof was typical of his breed: aging, stooped, with a shock of white hair and a deeply serrated face from which the eyes fairly gleamed with intelligence. “Ah, Mrs. Kaftan!” he exclaimed. “I recognize you at once by your extraordinary beauty!”

  “Oh, come on!” she demurred, foolishly flattered. />
  “No, indeed!” he persisted loudly. All teachers had voices that carried to the farthest recesses of the mind. “I asked Cedric how I would know you, and he said when I saw the loveliest mortal woman of this world, that would be Niobe. Lo, it is so! He is much in awe of you, and it is not difficult to perceive the reason. You are indeed outstanding!”

  “Enough, Professor! I’m an old married woman! Why did you wish to talk with me? Is something wrong with Cedric’s program?”

  “Quite the opposite, my dear!” he protested enthusiastically. “Cedric is the most brilliant and conscientious student I have had in a decade. His work is outstanding for a student! Do you know, Mrs. Kaftan, a mind like his is seldom brought to these, if you will pardon the pun, backwaters of scholarship like Wetlands Ecology. I wanted to compliment you on the good work you have done for our discipline by motivating him to enter it. I know that when he matures he will carry our research forward to new heights, as it were.”

  Niobe was taken aback. Evidently the Prof was a creature of superlatives! “I only showed him the local—I do have some interest in—”

  “Indeed you do, Mrs. Kaftan!” he agreed. “He tells me that he owes it all to you. He says you took an ignorant hick and showed him the wetlands in a way he had never seen, and it changed his life. Mrs. Kaftan, you are a wonderful woman, and I salute you!”

  She found herself halfway overwhelmed by the Profs enthusiasm. He was not bad at motivation himself! “Then Cedric is—doing well?” It sounded inane, but she couldn’t think of an adequate remark at the moment.

  “Straight A’s,” he agreed. “And we do not issue those lightly! But that does not begin to suggest his potential. Do you know, Mrs. Kaftan, if I may be so candid, at first I wondered why a woman as lovely as you have been confirmed to be would marry such a youngster, as obviously you could pick and choose among the best the War has left us, but as I came to know him, I understood that you had picked the best. There is only one like him in each generation. You will never regret that decision, I am sure!”