Dragon Rose(5)

With that he replaced his velvet cap on his thinning hair and stalked out.

After he had gone, I realized my hands were shaking. Not so much because I had been discovered, but because of Master Marenson’s not-so-subtle threat to reveal my family’s secret to the rest of the town. Such a revelation could ruin us.

More pressing, however, was the mystery of my parents’ absence. What could have possibly happened to prevent them from being at home for such an important guest?





I found out soon enough. My father had gone to gather clay, as I had guessed. What I hadn’t guessed was that he would suffer a heart spasm while hauling the heavy barrow of clay homeward.

Luckily, a cowherd found him sprawled across the path and had taken him to his cottage, only a quarter-mile away. Word came to the house, and my mother and two of my sisters had left immediately. It would take something of that magnitude for my mother to forget Liat Marenson and her plans for him, and in summoning the doctor and waiting through the examination that followed, she had quite lost track of the time.

It was falling dark by the time she returned, looking drawn and preoccupied and not at all her usual poised self. She reassured me that Father was fine, but that he shouldn’t be moved for at least a day or so more.

“And what of Master Marenson?” she asked, casting a worried glance around the dining room, where the unused table settings still awaited a guest who would never use them. Darlynne and Janney and I had cleaned up the uneaten food and stored it in the larder several hours past.

The truth would only upset my mother further, and besides, I had no idea whether Liat Marenson actually planned to make good on his threats. “I made our apologies,” I said. “He understood that some emergency must have occurred, and so returned home.” Well, that was at least half true.

She nodded and, after making a quick inspection of the kitchens, told me that it was time for bed. I wasn’t about to argue; the day felt as if it had dragged on quite long enough.

Perhaps I wouldn’t have been so eager to sleep if I had known what awaited me on the morrow.





They began to appear at as early an hour as was considered halfway civil—Elder Macon, the Widow Mallin, everyone who had placed an order with my father in the last few months. My mother met them at the door and tried to explain that Barne Menyon was very ill and not even at home. They cared little for that. They only wanted their money back.

Somehow she got rid of them and came to see me where I sat in the schoolroom, looking down at the street from my second-story window. The plumes on the Widow Mallin’s hat bobbed indignantly as she strode away, and I thought the sight reminded me of nothing more than an outraged barnyard fowl.

“What happened, Rhianne?” my mother asked, standing in the doorway with her arms crossed. The shadows under her eyes seemed very pronounced in the bright sunlight streaming through the windows.

“I fear Master Marenson discovered me painting the last of Elder Macon’s dish set yesterday afternoon.”

“And you waited until now to tell me?”

“You had more pressing things to worry about yesterday evening.”

She was silent, mouth tight as she contemplated my words. I knew she wouldn’t explode—not my mother—but that didn’t mean she couldn’t say some very cutting things when pressed. Perhaps she would tell me that I should have made up some plausible lie, or that I should have noticed the passage of time and been safely out of the workroom long before Liat Marenson appeared on our doorstep.

I held my breath, waiting.

At length she said, “We will wait and see if this blows over. I have some money set by, and we needn’t worry. Not yet.”

Relief course through my veins, even as I wondered at her words. Oh, there had been money on her side of the family—her father, though he had died before I was born, had been a successful tinsmith, and it was his house that we lived in now, the house my mother inherited when my grandmother died. I had been a small child then, barely five years, and I remembered very little of my maternal grandmother. She had been a wispy pale little woman who seemed content to let her daughter rule things. I guessed there had been very little argument when my mother took it into her head to marry a young potter with barely a copper graut to his name.

However, I’d never heard a whisper of any savings, and indeed, with the way my mother talked about the household finances, I had always assumed that we lived from month to month, with only my father’s earnings to keep us afloat. Now those earnings were threatened, but perhaps it didn’t matter quite as much as I had thought.

“Some money,” she repeated, giving me a warning look. “Certainly not enough to permanently replace your father’s income, or even keep this house going for more than a month…possibly two, if we are very careful. So do not look quite so relieved, Rhianne.”

Since there was very little else I could say, I merely bowed my head. I wouldn’t let myself become too discouraged.

After all, a great deal could happen in a month’s time.





Chapter Two





My father came home three days later, riding in the back of the cart his savior shepherd used to bring wool to town. We all clustered around him, exclaiming over his return, but he was uncharacteristically quiet, a grimness that couldn’t be completely attributed to his condition somehow clinging to him. My mother shushed Darlynne and Maeganne, saying that their father needed his rest, and bustled him up to the room my parents shared.