Inheritance Feud

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

She had once, long ago at Baron, run barefoot about that hill of grass lying now beyond the trim hedge, to where Theon was waiting then; and together they'd sat down on the woodland moss and looked at the white wild garlic, just in flower. It seemed long ago. Theon… she'd hardly seen him this year, or perhaps last. What was he doing now? Taking the boat out into the bay, holding the irons for old Aaron Judd, the blacksmith, with whom he lived now at the smithy cottage, having unclassed himself, as aunt Galadriel said, by so doing? But what else could poor Theon have done, with Baron closed and no roof over his head, after aunt Galadriel said she would have none of him at the Mains? Theon was too wild to live with them, Hermione had been told; it was too much responsibility for a lone widow-woman. But there was more, far more, to it than that.

She herself was not permitted to go and visit Theon, any more than he was allowed to come to the Mains. The black smith's cottage was no place for a young lady, aunt Galadriel said predictably; in addition, certain matters took place there one should not know about.

Certain matters… "It will be the smuggling, a part of it," Hermione thought, without undue concern. Everyone, Papa when he was alive, and Sir Sandor Melrose, her own maternal uncle, who was a Justice of the Peace over at Maddon, and the parish-minister, and aunt Galadriel herself, all bought brandy and, in the case of the gentlemen, pipe-tobacco in such ways because it was cheaper, and saved tax. "Their wives get French lace," Hermione reflected. If Theon was smuggling sometimes, it was understandable, she thought. He had nothing else to do, and no money.

A low whistle, which might have been a blackbird's, came at that moment from beyond the hedge, across the remembered rise of blowing grass. Since it was empty of the ponies Papa had used to keep grazing there, the grass was by now too long; aunt Galadriel talked of putting geese on it. Beyond, the far ground disappeared over the hill, studded along its top with the gean, the wild cherry tree, which in autumn would yield small bitter fruit, useless for pickling. It was from this region that the whistle came. Theon would be up there, inexplicably waiting for her, his thin face expressionless, his eyes dancing.

How could she go? How could he even expect it, so long it was since she'd had word with him, so that it was almost as if a stranger called her to come? Once, a year ago, perhaps, when she was still a child, it might have served; but now, she was a young lady.

Hermione changed colour, and dug her needle into the cloth with such force that the point stabbed her finger. Persons like Theon thought everything stayed the same. They didn't know how people like herself had to alter.

She sucked the blood from her pricked finger. On no account must she venture beyond the garden: Aunt Galadriel had been explicit on that point. One no account. The yew arbour, for an hour and a half, till tea-time only. It was almost that now.

The blackbird's call sounded again. Theon wasn't used to being kept waiting. In the days when they had been together at Baron, she'd always obeyed him when he whistled, on the instant. Theon was the elder, Papa had told her, and one day she was to be his wife.

There was, she knew already, a thin place at the back of the arbour where one could wriggle through. At first when she had come here, a wild and undisciplined child from Baron. she had done exactly that, emerging with crumpled clothes and her hair full of spiders and beetles into a briefly recaptured world of grassy freedom. Aunt Galadriel had seen it and sent Betts to catch her and he'd brought her back at once, and the whipping she'd had still made Hermione's cheeks hot, remembering. It wasn't, when all was said, worth risking that again; especially now she was fourteen.

The whistle … Theon knew about how she was treated here; it wasn't fair. It was as though he deliberately tried to get her into trouble, to laugh at her punishment, a kind he himself had never experienced. Theon, as a boy, had never been whipped, hardly even rebuked. Papa wouldn't let his tutor use the birch on him. It was all because of Uncle Richard, Theon's father, the true laird, who'd died abroad shortly after the 'Forty-five. 

"Theon's the son of his sire, the true heir of Baron," Papa had used to say sombrely, whenever the subject came up; hearing of some new, wild thing Theon had done, he would laugh, and toast him in contraband claret. "If the coin had fallen to the George and not the rose, in 'Forty-five, it would have been I who rode off north, and not your uncle." But Uncle Richard, the elder twin, having won the toss, had gone; and had had his estates forfeited. 

In the end, after lawsuits and much expense, which ruined the family, Papa had been permitted to inherit Baron because he was the brother who had stayed at home and hadn't joined the Prince. But Theon's father, who had, was an exile, never again to be allowed to come home. He never even saw Theon, who'd been born after Culloden at Baron.

Theon. "Unless he marries yourself, my lass, he can never come into his own," Papa used to say. And he himself had had it all arranged before he died that this should be the way of things, only aunt Galadriel and Uncle Sandor Melrose, adding up the debts afterwards, had said the marriage wasn't the answer and Theon must go. And they'd closed Baron up, after Papa's funeral, and driven Theon out as a vagabond with no home, and taken herself and brought her up as a little doll, a correct young lady, sewing samplers, sewing chair-seats and footstools, bribing her with promises that one day Baron should be opened again.

"Perhaps on your marriage," aunt Galadriel would say with her tight, narrow smile. But the marriage, it was clear, mustn't be to Theon now, but to some rich man who would clear the debts and wouldn't mind the lack of any real dowry. Most of the money Papa still received had gone, in twice-yearly con; signments, to Uncle Richard in Paris while he lived, and after wards to educate Theon. Even poor Mama's dowry had been used for the purpose.