Rundle University Ch. 05

Mrs Hazelbrack knocked while the window was still grey: two light raps of one knuckle, so faint they seemed an apology for waking her, then went away without waiting for an answer. On the stool by the door stood a bowl of porridge, still hot, with a spoonful of honey slowly melting in the middle of it. There was no honey on weekdays. Honey meant a long day.

She ate at the window, watching the shed roof grow light. Then the shift, off over her head and onto the back of the chair, collar uppermost; then the straps, which over the past few weeks had become simpler than buttons. Breast strap; the strap beneath the bust; waist strap. The ring at her belly, and the narrow strap that ran from it round her hips to the ring at the small of her back. The saddle between her shoulder blades. Her fingers found the right hole by themselves, the one she had buckled yesterday, and the day before, and all last week, while her mind was elsewhere.

A quarter of an hour later she was kneeling on the flat stone by the gate. For the first few minutes the stone was cold and wet, and gooseflesh ran up her arms. Then the gooseflesh subsided. Her knees warmed the stone beneath them, the straps took her warmth and stopped being cold bands across her skin, and even the ring at her belly grew warm. The empty saddle sat lightly on her back, almost weightless, and her back, used to a rider's weight by now, half expected it. Elinor rested her hands on her thighs, breathed evenly, and hurried neither the morning nor her landlady. Waiting, it turned out, could be learned.

On weekdays at this hour there would already be a clatter of buckets at the pump on the corner. On Saturdays Hobwell slept. The street lay empty and damp with dew, the shutters were closed, and not a single chimney had begun to smoke.

She let her thoughts drift. Whether it would rain by noon. A word from yesterday's lecture that was on the tip of her tongue and would not come: something to do with roots, beginning with R. The cat on the fence opposite, which sat regarding Elinor as it might a new stone by the step, then turned its attention to its paw. The word never came, and Elinor stopped calling for it.

Somewhere downriver a mill wheel groaned into motion, and only then could she hear how quiet it was.

In the house a floorboard creaked, then another, nearer. Something knocked against the floor, and Mrs Hazelbrack told it in a whisper exactly what she thought of it. Through the wall Tobb coughed in his sleep, then was quiet. The floorboards were quiet for a while, then started again, more softly.

Mrs Hazelbrack came out sideways, holding the door so that it would not bang, and eased it shut behind her. She wore her cape, her bonnet was tied under her chin, and she carried a large travelling bag, bulging at the sides, which gave out a soft, full chink of glass at every step. She set it down gently on the step, and took Elinor in hand.

A finger under the breast strap: up a hole. The strap across the back lifted, turned, laid flat. The flat of a hand along the waist strap: left as it was. She tugged one buckle at the side and moved on.

Elinor put her hands behind her back and folded them, as she did every morning. Mrs Hazelbrack fastened them beneath the saddle, as if doing up her own cuff, then lifted the bag and buckled it on underneath. It hung below the saddle and its weight spread through the harness, the breast strap drawing up under her collarbones, the waist strap settling tighter, while the glass inside chinked once and was still.

Mrs Hazelbrack stepped back. She was gazing over the gate at the ridge of the neighbours' roof, her lips moving. Then she said 'Drat' to herself, hurried back into the house (the door did bang a little this time) and came out again almost at once. In her hand was a small copper bell on a leather loop. She bent, threaded the loop through the ring at Elinor's belly, pulled it tight and touched the bell with a finger. It gave a thin, clear ting, and she nodded.

Then she put her foot in the stirrup, took hold of the pommel, mounted, and settled herself. Her heels touched Elinor's sides, briefly.

Elinor rose and ran.

The bell rang at every step, ting, ting, and in the empty street the sound carried far ahead, bounced off the shutters and came back. The bag swayed beneath the saddle, and the glass inside answered the bell, more dully.

Her feet knew the way to the bridge: the baker's, shuttered; the workshop on the corner; Paper & Stationery, its window shuttered too. But at the bridge itself, grey in the mist, with the toll-keeper's box still asleep, a heel pressed into her left side, and Elinor turned where she had never turned before: down a steep cobbled lane towards the water.

The town was different here. The houses stood closer together, the windows were lower, and there was a smell of wet leather and oak bark. Then came the mills, one after another. Their wheels were already turning, heavy and dripping, flour dust hung above them, and the air smelled of warm grain. A goblin in a white apron looked out of a gateway at the sound of the bell and went back into the dark.

Then the houses ran out, and the road began.

It followed the river, now dropping to the water's edge, where willows trailed their branches in the mist, now swinging away behind hedges, so that the river could be guessed at only by the cold and the smell of mud. Haws and hips reddened in the hedgerows, and somewhere beyond them an unseen orchard scented the whole road with apples. Rooks stalked the stubble, silver with dew.

The mist lifted off the water, then off the meadows, and began to thin. The sun came up over the hills, cold at first, then warmer, and her left side warmed before her right. Mrs Hazelbrack sat quietly, as people sit in a mail coach on a road they know, and before long Elinor stopped noticing her. Only the rhythm was left: stride, breath, bell, the creak of the saddle. Her thoughts scattered, and she had no wish to call them back.

In the first village a squat church tower struck seven, slowly, stroke after stroke, and the bell at her belly, small and hurried, rang in the gaps between. Beyond the village, at a stone post carved with arrows, the road forked. The heel hesitated, long enough for Elinor to slow, then pressed firmly on the left, and she bore right in a wide curve, as she was used to.

Between her shoulder blades, under the saddle, it grew warm, then damp. Her calves filled with a steady heaviness that did not hinder her, only reminded her it was there.

The nearer the town, the more people on the road, in twos and threes, with packs and baskets, and the bell parted them as a stone parts water.

Then roofs rose above the trees, a great many of them, and a bell tower, and threads of smoke, and long before they reached it they could hear Mossford, a steady hum of voices. Beyond the bend the road came out into the open under walls of grey stone and the dark arch of a gate. The market lay outside the walls, hard up against them, on a broad common running down to the river.

Stalls stood in rows under striped awnings, on grass that many Saturdays had trodden bare. Half were still empty. At the rest folk were sweeping, hanging up scales and knocking in awning pegs, and the mallets carried across the common like woodpeckers in a copse. The air smelled of smoke, wet earth, cabbage, leather and, from somewhere off to one side, roasting chestnuts. Here the bell was one noise among many, and folk stepped aside for it without looking round.

Mrs Hazelbrack steered Elinor with her heel to one of the stalls right by the wall, still empty, and drew her up.

Elinor knelt. The ground here was trodden hard and damp with dew, but the sun had already reached the edge of it.

Mrs Hazelbrack dismounted: foot in the stirrup, hand on the pommel, down to the ground. She straightened her cape, unbuckled the bag from beneath the saddle and heaved it with both hands onto the stall, and the glass inside chinked loudly.

At the stall across the way an old wrinkled goblin sat on a low stool threading dried mushrooms onto a string. Long brown strings of them lay on the board in front of him, and on the corner stood a sack, almost empty.

'Brimms,' said Mrs Hazelbrack, untying her bag. 'Still alive.'

'Still alive,' Brimms agreed. He kept his eyes on his string.

'I was beginning to wonder. I haven't seen you all summer.' She drew a piece of canvas out from under the bottles and, as she talked, wiped Elinor's neck and back with it and slipped a hand under the edge of the saddle.

'What's there to see? I was in the woods.' He drew the string through a mushroom and pulled it tight. 'I'll go gathering till I'm a hundred. That's not work, that's a stroll with a basket. But hauling it here... I used to carry it and never notice. Now I notice every mile. So I stopped at home till the attic was full. Today there was nothing else for it.'

He nodded at the sack.

'Even so, I was lucky. Fellow from Tillbridge came by first thing with a wagon, took two-thirds and never haggled. For an inn, he said.'

'For an inn,' Mrs Hazelbrack repeated respectfully.

'So I'll sell the rest by noon and then home, nice and easy.' Brimms looked up at last and nodded at Elinor. 'Yours?'

'She carries the Professor.' Mrs Hazelbrack wiped the stall with the same cloth and put it away in the bag.

'Ah,' said Brimms, and went back to his string.

The bottles emerged from the bag one after another, each in its own canvas pouch. Mrs Hazelbrack took them out of their pouches, rubbed them on her sleeve and set them in rows by colour, then rearranged them by height, the little ones in front and the tall ones behind. A board for chalking up the prices went on the corner of the stall. When she uncorked the sample bottle, such a gust of lavender rose over the stall that Brimms sneezed across the aisle and said his mushrooms would smell like a fine lady's chest of drawers now.

Elinor knelt at the side of the stall, just as she had been halted: back to the aisle, facing the next-door awning. To turn round straight away had seemed somehow undignified, as if that was all she had been waiting for; and after a couple of minutes it was too late, because then it would look as though she had been facing that way on purpose and had suddenly changed her mind. Mrs Hazelbrack, of course, did not care either way. Elinor studied the pegs of the next-door awning and waited until she did not care either.

The clerk of the market arrived as Mrs Hazelbrack was chalking the last price: lanky for a goblin, with a copper badge on his hat.

'A shilling for the stall. And twopence for the mount, if she stops by the stall. Otherwise there's the public tethering post. That's free.' He nodded towards the rail with rings along the town wall, where barrows already stood in a row.

'I should think not,' said Mrs Hazelbrack. 'She's the Professor's. Twopence.'

The clerk breathed on his stamp, thumped it on the ticket and then, with the same hand, on Elinor's shoulder.

Elinor squinted down at it. The crest in its little violet circle was upside down to her.

Mrs Hazelbrack set out the last bottle, stepped back, looked at the stall, moved one bottle, looked again and was satisfied.

The market took its time getting going. At first only the stallholders went up and down the rows, pricing each other's wares and swapping news and small change, and Mrs Hazelbrack let her first bottle go at half price to the cabbage woman from the next row, for luck. Then the cooks began arriving from the town side with big baskets, needing everything and needing it quickly, and after them came the people with no need to hurry. The dew dried off the common. The sun climbed over the wall and reached Elinor, first her shoulders, then her knees.

She heard the customers before she saw them: laughter, quick voices all talking over one another, and the stiff rustle of skirts kept for high days. She looked over her shoulder. Three goblin girls stood at the stall, young and dressed up and beribboned, and at once the stall was full of them.

'This one,' said one of them, in blue, reaching for a pink bottle.

'Redheads don't wear rose,' said another, round-faced, with a basket. 'Ma says.'

'Mine isn't red, it's copper.'

'Worse still.'

The third, a slight girl in grey with her plaits neatly pinned up, said nothing and looked past the bottles at Elinor. When their eyes met, she looked away. Elinor turned back to the awning too, and when she glanced round a minute later, the slight girl was looking again.

Mrs Hazelbrack uncorked one bottle, then another, and dabbed a drop on the wrist of the girl in blue. The girl in blue sniffed it, let her friends sniff, and all three began to argue. Elinor knew that the bergamot was the one for copper hair (Mother had said so when Meg was choosing scent for her first ball), and kept quiet.

'It's no good on a hand,' Mrs Hazelbrack decided at last. 'Hands go cold at market. We'll try somewhere warm.'

And without waiting for an answer she dabbed from one bottle onto Elinor's left shoulder, right by the strap, and from the other onto her right.

The girls exchanged glances. The girl in blue leaned in first to the left shoulder, carefully, as if afraid it might move away, sniffed, and straightened up.

'Oh,' she said. 'It's nicer on her.'

The round-faced girl sniffed the right shoulder, then the left, then the right again, very close, and Elinor felt her breath on her skin, warm and tickling, and did not move.

'The right,' said the round-faced girl. 'Definitely the right.'

'That's the bergamot,' said Mrs Hazelbrack with satisfaction.

The slight girl never leaned in at all.

The girl in blue got out her purse but was in no hurry to count. She was looking now not at the bottles but at Elinor, and looking differently from a minute before: not sidelong now, but openly, the way people look at a fine horse at a fair when they have no intention of buying.

'Isn't she big,' she said. 'Bigger still close to.'

'And her hair,' said the round-faced girl. 'Look at it. Like silk.'

'Could we...' The girl in blue hesitated, glanced at her friends, then at Mrs Hazelbrack. 'Could you stand her up? So we can see. We've only seen her back.'

Mrs Hazelbrack, whose customer had not yet paid, considered for no more than a second, and reached back to touch Elinor's shoulder, stroking upwards.

Elinor stood. Without her hands it never came quickly: rock forward, bring the weight onto her feet, straighten. The bell at her belly rang out, loud and ill-timed, and all three girls jumped and laughed. The saddle pulled her backwards; Elinor found the familiar lean and came upright. The market, which all morning she had seen at the height of the stalls, suddenly dropped away, and the three girls came up to her waist, their heads tipped back.

Mrs Hazelbrack took her by the thigh and turned her, unhurriedly, in two goes, the way one turns a bolt of cloth to the light.

'Oh,' said the girl in blue.

'Well, I never,' said the round-faced girl.

The slight girl said nothing, but she was looking now and not looking away.

Mrs Hazelbrack turned Elinor another quarter, then another, so that she could be seen from every side, and brought her back to face the customers.

'And her legs,' said the girl in blue. 'So straight. Like the pillars on the town hall.'

'The town hall ones are crooked,' said the round-faced girl.

'Well, like they ought to be on the town hall.'

'Can we touch?' The round-faced girl already had her hand out, but she remembered herself in time and looked at Mrs Hazelbrack.

'The leg you can,' said Mrs Hazelbrack.

The round-faced girl touched Elinor's calf, quickly, with her fingertips, quick as testing a stove, and snatched her hand away.

'Hard,' she reported to her friends, delighted.

'And she holds her back so well,' said the girl in blue. 'Look how straight. Under a saddle, and still straight.'

'And her neck,' said the slight girl. She said it quietly, and blushed, as though she had said too much.

Elinor felt the shame come up hot in her face. But beneath the shame was something else, and when she recognised it she was more embarrassed still: she was enjoying it. It was not her they were praising, after all, but the work: the legs that had run up Green Walk for a month, the back that held the saddle.

Mother always said that when you were praised you should stand up straight and say thank you. She could not stand any straighter.

'A good one,' the girl in blue pronounced, stepping back. 'You're lucky with her.'

'You should see her on a hill,' said Mrs Hazelbrack. 'And doesn't it smell lovely on her, eh?'

And she touched Elinor's thigh, stroking downwards. Elinor sank back onto her knees, and the ground seemed familiar now, almost cosy.

The girl in blue helped herself to one more sniff at her shoulder and tipped her coins onto the stall without counting them.

The round-faced girl could not take her eyes off Elinor. Then she leaned towards her friends and said, lowering her voice just enough for every word to be perfectly audible:

'I wonder if they get embarrassed the way we do? Ponies, I mean. Without a frock on.'

'Shh,' said the slight girl.

'What d'you mean, shh? I'm not saying anything bad. Maybe it's different for them. Maybe in harness it counts as dressed.'

'It counts as dressed to us,' said the slight girl. 'Not to her.'

'My great-grandmother had a pony,' said the girl in blue, tucking her bottle into her reticule. 'Rosie. Great-grandmother said Rosie used to blush when people praised her.'

All three looked at Elinor, as if to check.

Elinor felt her ears go hot and was crosser with her ears than with the girls.

'She's blushing!' the round-faced girl whispered in delight. 'See? So it's the same as us.'

'Ma'am,' said the girl in blue, turning to Mrs Hazelbrack with a politeness that had nothing behind it but curiosity. 'Isn't she embarrassed?'

Mrs Hazelbrack gave her the look she kept for any question that had nothing to do with the goods.

'What's she got to be embarrassed about? She's working.'

The girls giggled. Mrs Hazelbrack shrugged and turned to the woman at the next stall.

Then the round-faced girl went right up to Elinor, eye to eye, and her friends gasped.

'Are you embarrassed?' she asked, straight out, with no mockery in it.

'You can't!' hissed the girl in blue. 'She's not allowed. Ponies don't talk in front of their owners, Great-grandmother said.'

Elinor was silent for a moment. If ponies did not talk, she need not answer. But the question had been asked honestly, and an honest question, Mother held, deserved an answer.

'At first I was,' she said.

The round-faced girl waited for more. There was no more. And Elinor heard that at first as though someone else had said it, and was surprised.

'And now?' asked the girl in blue from behind her friend's shoulder, quite forgetting her great-grandmother.

'I still am,' said Elinor. 'But less. And differently.'

'Differently how?'

Elinor considered.

'Like having to recite in front of the class,' she said. 'You're embarrassed because everyone's looking. And then you get to the end without a mistake, and it isn't so bad.'

The round-faced girl straightened up and looked at her with new respect.

'Have you been like this long?' asked the slight girl. Quietly; the first time she had spoken to Elinor directly.

'Since dawn.'

'Could you have said no?'

Her friends went quiet.

'I could have,' said Elinor.

Nobody asked the next question. The slight girl nodded, as though she understood the answer better than her friends did, and looked away.

'Come on,' said the girl in blue. 'Or all the ribbons will be gone.'

They went off, arguing again as they walked, about ribbons this time. Five paces on, the slight girl looked back, hesitated and raised her hand, awkwardly, halfway, as you might to someone across a street who may not have recognised you.

Elinor nodded. She could not wave back.

The slight girl smiled and ran to catch up with her friends.

Her right shoulder smelled of bergamot. Elinor glanced down at it and thought that the scent would have suited Meg, but not her. Still, it was on her now, and it would probably last till evening.

'There, you see,' said Mrs Hazelbrack over her shoulder, putting the coins away in her money bag. 'You're selling for me.'

---

Trade went on at its own pace. The bottles went one at a time, two at a time. Mrs Hazelbrack wrapped them in paper, took the money, counted out change, and in between rewrote the price board, and then rewrote it again. People went past the stall with their baskets, asking prices, and every so often someone came back after a turn round the rows and bought the thing they had asked about an hour before.

The aisle grew more and more crowded; people walked slowly now and stopped at every stall.

Across the way, business was brisker still. Brimms shook his sack out over the board. One mushroom fell out, small and shrivelled. Brimms looked at it, at the empty strings, at the goblin woman in a cap, the third in half an hour to stand in front of him asking whether there would be any more, and said to her:

'Next week.'

The goblin woman sighed as though a week were a year, and went away.

Brimms sat for a bit, watching her go. Then he got up from his stool, came round his stall and crossed the aisle.

'Here,' he said to Mrs Hazelbrack. 'That pony of yours. The Professor's.'

'Well?'

'I could do with going home and back. There's plenty more in the attic, and they're asking for it, see.' He felt in his waistcoat pocket. 'I'll pay, don't you worry.'

Mrs Hazelbrack did not even look at his hand. She waved it away with the same movement she used to shoo wasps off the bottles.

'Take her, take her. She can stretch her legs; she's been sat idle all morning.'

Brimms thought it over, put his coins away and nodded.

'By the road, that's round by the other bank, through Tillbridge. But I know a short cut, over the heath. We'll be there and back in no time.'

He came round to her side, sizing up the stirrup. Elinor shifted her shoulder slightly, offering him her left side.

'Fidgety,' said Brimms knowingly. 'Wants to be off.'

Mrs Hazelbrack nodded. Elinor looked hard at the ground.

---

Beyond the last vegetable plots the path plunged into bracken, tall and rusty, and beyond the bracken the heath opened out: brown, speckled with heather and splashed yellow with gorse, flat all the way to the horizon, where a band of woodland showed dark. There were any number of paths across it. They were all narrow, all alike, and not one of them ran straight.

Brimms steered with confidence. The heel came in good time, three paces before each turn, clear and brief, left, right, and Elinor turned where she was told. But the turns came one after another. The path skirted a gorse bush, swerved at once away from a pit grown over with heather (Elinor saw its edge only as she ran past), then went round a green patch, too smooth, that glinted wet in the sun, then more gorse. The heel touched one side and at once, before she had collected herself, the other. She was barely out of one turn before she had to go into the next.

At first she kept track of the wood and tried to hold it in her head. The wood was ahead, then on the right, then gone altogether behind the bracken, and once it was behind her, and she had no idea when that had happened. The sun moved over her in the same way: from shoulder to shoulder, from back to breast.

Then she stopped keeping track, and that was worse. Her body, which on the road would find its own angle and rhythm, had no chance to learn anything here, because no turn was like the one before. The heel came in time, but she answered half a pace late, and Brimms rocked in the saddle. Once she overshot a fork and had to pull up and go back. Brimms said nothing, only waited while she turned round.

At a stream in a peaty bed the path went down to the one place where there were stones, and Elinor crossed on them at a walk, feeling the rider's weight catch at every step. Beyond the stream the heather began again, and beyond the heather, at last, came the edge of the wood, a low stone wall, a gate, and a thatched cottage buried to the windows in flowers. Asters, dahlias, marigolds, nasturtiums on the sills, hollyhocks taller than the roof of the shed: everything was in bloom that still could be, and a few things that by every rule had no business to be.

By the step she sank to her knees. She was breathing harder than after the morning's road, though they had run only a third as far.

Brimms got down and disappeared around the corner of the house. After a rattle of the well chain, he came back carrying a wooden dipper filled to the brim. When he reached her he stopped, judged his distance, and laid his free hand on the back of her head, dry and rough and hard as bark. The dipper came up to her lips. The water was icy, straight from the well, and smelled of stone. Elinor drank, and Brimms tipped the dipper a little at a time, keeping pace with her swallows. Only one trickle escaped, down her chin and over her collarbone and in under the breast strap. Elinor shivered. When she drew back for breath, he waited, then tipped again. She drank it all.

He wiped the dipper on his trouser leg, set it on the step, rummaged in his pocket and brought out a handful of something dark and shrivelled. He held it out on his palm, level with her chin.

Dried berries: cranberries, bilberries, cowberries, all mixed together. Elinor looked at the palm, then at Brimms. Brimms was looking at the shed, as if he were holding his hand out for no particular reason, just resting it.

She bent her head. The berries were sharp and sweet, and hard, and smelled of summer woods and a little of pocket. Her lips brushed his palm, the callus at the base of his fingers. Brimms did not stir until she had taken every last berry; then he brushed his hand off on his thigh and went into the house.

Elinor stayed by the step. The wind off the heath stirred the heather beyond the wall, and the taste of berries and water still lingered in her mouth. Between her shoulder blades, under the saddle, she was cooling. Inside, the stairs creaked, up to the attic, and for a long time there was nothing to hear but someone walking about overhead and shifting things.

Brimms came out with a full sack on his shoulder, grunted, dropped it by her side and buckled it beneath the saddle, tight, with two straps. The sack was soft and light but enormous, and it gave off a smell of dried mushroom.

Then Brimms reached inside his coat and brought out something that clinked in his fist. An iron bar, dark with age but smooth in the middle as if from long polishing, with rings at either end. From the rings ran leather straps, cracked but oiled and worn soft, and beyond them a long rein, coiled. Brimms turned it all over in his hands and checked the buckle on the strap.

'Your mistress rigged you out for the highway,' he said, examining the buckle, as though talking to it rather than to Elinor. 'And for the highway that's right enough. But out here you can't do without a bit.'

He straightened the straps, stood in front of her and brought the bit up to her face. The iron was just by her lips, not touching them. Brimms looked at her and waited.

Elinor looked at the iron. It was old, smooth and worn in the middle, and it smelled of grease and cold metal.

She opened her mouth a little.

Brimms did not move. The bit stayed where it was, at her lips, and he went on looking at her and waiting.

So Elinor leaned forward herself, slowly, and took the iron into her mouth. It was cold, and it lay across her tongue, heavier than it had looked; her teeth closed on it. It tasted the way it smelled, of oil and metal.

Only then did Brimms go round behind her. The straps lay along her cheeks and met at the back of her head, and the buckle clinked and drew tight. He took it up one more hole, ran a finger round to make sure it was not cutting the corners of her mouth, and let go.

He uncoiled the rein, weighed it in his hand and threw it over the saddle. Then he mounted and made himself comfortable.

Elinor stayed on her knees. Brimms gathered up the reins, and the straps on her cheeks shifted a little and settled. The left rein took up its slack and tightened, barely. The iron moved in her mouth, pressed into the left corner, and her head went left of its own accord, before Elinor had thought about it at all. He eased off, and her head came back. The right: the same, to the right. And last of all both together, softly and upwards, and her chin rose, her neck lengthened, and her shoulders, already drawn back, drew back further.

He left it like that, on a light contact. Elinor swallowed. The iron was in the way, and she had to swallow differently, around it. Brimms waited until she had managed, gave the reins one more sway, left, right, and only then touched her with his heels.

She rose and ran.

Gate, wall, the edge of the wood, and the heath again, the same brown and yellow heath, only now Elinor saw it differently. On the way out she had looked wherever she liked: at the wood, at the sun, at the edge of the pit as they ran past it. Now her head was held straight and higher than usual, and she could look only forwards, over the heather, at the haze on the horizon. Anything to the side she had to catch out of the corner of her eye, and it slid away before she could make it out.

The first turn came not in her side but in her mouth: the left rein, lightly, and her head went left, and after her head, her neck and shoulders and legs. Elinor turned and immediately thought: left rein, so left. The next was the right. Again she thought, right, turn right, and was half a pace late, because her body was already turning while she was still thinking. Another turn; she began working out what the pull meant, and was late again, and for a moment the iron went hard in her mouth.

At the fourth turn, or the fifth, she stopped thinking.

It did not happen all at once. It was like falling asleep: she never noticed when. At some point the rein simply drew, her head went, her body followed, and between rein and stride there was no room left for any thought at all. Gorse, the pit under the heather, the green patch, gorse again: she did not see them; they drifted past at the edge of sight, and the rein was already leading her by. On the way out every turn had been a problem to solve. Now there were no turns, only one long winding line along which she was carried.

Her stride evened out. Her breathing evened out. Brimms hardly rocked in the saddle at all.

At the stream both reins tightened, gently and for a long moment, and Elinor had dropped to a walk before she realised she had been checked. She could not see the stepping stones, with her head held so high, and she felt for them with her feet while the rein guided her from stone to stone, a little left, a little right, and never once got it wrong. Cold water licked her ankle. On the far bank the rein eased, the heels touched her sides, and she ran on.

The second time she was checked in the middle of the heather, for no reason she could see. She went at a walk, peering down as far as the rein allowed, and only then saw it: for a few paces the path crossed a warren, all dug over, the black mouths of burrows hidden in the grass. The rein led her along the very edge, where the ground was firm, and then let her go.

The sun, a midday sun but low, as autumn suns are, shone straight into her lifted face. Elinor screwed up her eyes but could not turn away. A pale haze hung over the heath, and in it, far ahead, the bell tower of Mossford appeared, vague at first, then clearer and clearer. Elinor kept her eyes on it, because there was nothing else to look at, and watched it grow.

Bracken, vegetable plots, the first awnings. The noise of the market broke over her: voices, wheels, hammering. The rein led her through it, and Elinor saw neither faces nor stalls, only the striped awnings ahead, above people's heads, with everything else flickering at the edge of sight.

The bell tower struck once, briefly, and on that stroke both reins drew tight and halted her at Mrs Hazelbrack's stall.

Brimms got down, stood a moment holding the pommel, and came round to Elinor's side. His fingers felt for the buckle at the back of her head.

'Tillbridge iron,' he said to Mrs Hazelbrack over Elinor's head, proudly. 'My father bought it. They don't make them like that any more. I dare say the Professor's is no worse?'

'The Professor hasn't got one at all,' said Mrs Hazelbrack, busy with her bottles. 'He manages without.'

The fingers at the back of her head stopped.

'What do you mean, not at all?'

'Just that. Heels. And in town, what's the need? It's all straight roads in town.'

Brimms was silent for a moment. Then he undid the buckle and took the iron out of Elinor's mouth, carefully, giving her time to unclench her teeth, and she swallowed freely at last, in her own way, and felt how tired her mouth was. But he did not put the bit away. He lowered the straps onto her neck and fastened them so that the iron lay across her collarbones.

'It's yours,' he said. 'No use to anybody lying in the attic.'

Elinor looked down at the iron as far as her neck would let her. It was still warm from her mouth.

'She goes better with a bit,' said Brimms. 'Softer.'

Elinor nodded. And only after she had nodded did she realise that it had been said not to her but to Mrs Hazelbrack.

Brimms unbuckled the sack and carried it across the aisle to his stall. Then he came back, reached inside his coat and took out a purse.

'There and back in no time. Half the day left for trading.' He counted coins onto the stall beside the price board and pushed them across with one finger. 'Take it.'

Mrs Hazelbrack looked at the coins. A customer was coming up to the stall, and there was no time to argue. She swept them into her money bag.

Brimms came over again about ten minutes later, when everything was running smoothly at his own stall once more. In his fist were the same berries, cowberry red mixed with black, and he opened his hand in front of her face.

'She likes these,' he informed Mrs Hazelbrack.

Elinor bent and took the berries. This time she ate them more slowly, and the sour and then the sweet seemed even better than they had by the cottage step.

The stallholder from the next row saw this, a broad goblin woman in a checked headscarf. She thought about it, glanced back at her own stall, and came over with a dried apple ring on her palm.

'And does our girl like these?' she asked Mrs Hazelbrack, as if Elinor could not hear.

Mrs Hazelbrack shrugged. Elinor, crimson, took the ring with her lips and ate it, looking away. The woman beamed and went back to her stall, telling her neighbours all about it as she went.

After that it took care of itself. An old man came with nuts, already shelled, on a clean scrap of cloth. A young goblin girl in a flour-dusted apron came over from the gingerbread stall, holding a piece of a gingerbread, with the woman who kept the stall standing behind her and pushing her forward. A young fellow came with a carrot, and the people round about laughed, and he said his carrots were the best in the market and they could stop their sniggering. Elinor, thoroughly embarrassed by now, took the carrot as well. It really was a sweet one.

Then she noticed that a little queue had formed, each person in it with something on their palm, and all of them looking as though she were the chief event of the day.

Next came a goblin with a piece of salty cheese. Elinor looked at the cheese, then at him, and slowly turned her head away.

The queue gasped and roared with laughter.

'She won't have it!' someone cried in delight. 'She's turned down Gleddock's cheese!'

'His cheese is salty,' the woman in the checked headscarf explained to everyone in earshot. 'The girl knows.'

Gleddock, not in the least offended, looked at his cheese, sniffed it, shrugged and ate it himself. He was applauded.

From then on Elinor picked and chose. A candied chestnut she sniffed, considered and accepted with the air of one doing a favour, and the chestnut man beamed as if he had sold his whole stall. A rye cake she refused with barely a glance. Its baker wagged a finger at himself, to general laughter, and promised caraway by next Saturday.

'Well, well,' said Brimms from behind his stall. He had long since stopped selling and was simply watching. 'Well, well. Choosy, she is. Got a mind of her own.'

Not everyone left the stall empty-handed. Anyone who had queued with a treat took a sniff at the sample bottle while they were there, straight from the neck of the bottle now, since Mrs Hazelbrack had grown sparing with her drops. She sold with her head down and tipped the coins into her money bag uncounted: there was no time to count, and she meant to count them later, properly, at home. When the chestnut man went off, there were two bottles left on the stall. When the baker wagged his finger at himself, there were none.

The last to come was the gingerbread girl, on her own this time, and she brought a whole gingerbread. Elinor took it without a moment's thought, and the girl ran off so fast that she nearly knocked down the old man with the nuts, who was on his way back with a second helping.

Mrs Hazelbrack looked at the empty stall, then at the sun, which still stood high, and said to herself, with a satisfaction Elinor had never heard from her before:

'Not two o'clock yet. Haven't had a day like it since spring.'

Then she turned to the queue.

'That's it, that's enough. She's been fed. Off you go now, you've left your stalls with no one minding them.'

The queue broke up, chuckling. The old man with the nuts, who had not reached the front with his second helping, poured them regretfully into his pocket. Mrs Hazelbrack unbuckled the bit from Elinor's neck, wiped the iron on her apron and held it to Elinor's lips. This time Elinor did not hesitate, and the buckle clinked at the back of her head.

The canvas pouches, the price board, the empty sample bottle all went into the travelling bag, and the bag went under the saddle. Mrs Hazelbrack took up the reins and set off.

She did not look round or check whether anyone was following.

Elinor got up off her knees half a pace later than she should have, and the rein pulled her straight down towards Mrs Hazelbrack's hand. She had to bend double and shuffle along, taking small steps on her long legs, watching Mrs Hazelbrack's bonnet and the edges of the stalls drifting by. Had Elinor dug her heels in even slightly, Mrs Hazelbrack would have hung off the rein like a bell-ringer on a rope and not shifted her an inch. Elinor had no intention of digging her heels in. She pattered.

The goldsmiths' row stood right under the wall, in the shade, and it was quieter there. Mrs Hazelbrack stopped at one of the stalls, behind which sat a spare, wizened goblin in spectacles with thick lenses, and drew the rein downwards. Elinor knelt and could straighten her back at last.

The stall was level with her face. Everything lay on the dark baize at once: rings she could not have got her little finger into; chains as fine as a hair and so short that at most they would have gone round her wrist; earrings, shoe buckles, a tiny engraved thimble, brooches. The work was so fine that one could have gone on looking at it for ever. And Elinor did look, slowly, from left to right, while Mrs Hazelbrack and the goldsmith talked over her head about some acquaintance of theirs.

The first thing that caught her eye was a hairpin with a pearl, but in Meg's thick hair it would hardly have shown. She studied a brooch shaped like a bunch of grapes for a long time, until she realised that she did not want to look at it so much as touch it, and she had nothing to touch it with. Behind her back her hands stirred, uselessly.

Mrs Hazelbrack noticed only when the talk about the acquaintance had run its course.

'Can't choose without hands,' she said, as if to herself, and went round behind and loosened the loop on her forearms.

Elinor's arms slid down and began to ache, but her fingers were already reaching for the baize. She touched the grapes: no. She picked up the hairpin, turned it, put it down.

And then, in the far corner, almost under the goldsmith's hand, she saw a brooch the size of a large button: on a silver ground, within fine cells of gold, sat a kingfisher. The enamel on its wings was blue, a blue so bright it looked wet, its breast a warm russet, and in its eye a tiny black drop glinted. The kingfisher sat on a branch with its head turned, looking off to where, presumably, there was a river.

Elinor took it into her palm and looked no further.

Mrs Hazelbrack turned, saw the kingfisher in Elinor's palm, and then saw her face.

'How much?' she asked the goldsmith.

'Four shillings.'

Elinor nodded. Four was a lot, but it was a kingfisher. She nodded again, at Mrs Hazelbrack. All her pennies had been in Mrs Hazelbrack's money bag since the evening before: there are no pockets in harness.

Mrs Hazelbrack did not take out the money bag. She looked at the goldsmith as though he had said something improper in front of the children.

'Four,' she repeated. 'For a button.'

'For the enamel,' said the goldsmith. 'Cloisonné. Look at those feathers.'

'Feathers.' Mrs Hazelbrack took the kingfisher from Elinor's palm, held it up to her eyes and then out at arm's length, the way she held letters. 'There's a chip.'

'What chip?'

'There.'

'That's the light.'

'The light, then. Two.'

'Three and six.'

'Two,' said Mrs Hazelbrack, and put the kingfisher down on the baize and took Elinor by the rein. 'Come along, dear. We'll try Poyser's.'

Elinor obediently began to rise, but the goldsmith, still seated on his bench, reached across the stall, took the other rein and drew her gently back.

'Poyser,' he said tenderly. 'At Poyser's she'll get this very brooch. For six. On a little velvet cushion.'

Elinor, being pulled both ways, sank back onto her knees, because that was the simplest thing to do.

'Three.'

'Two and six.'

'Three, and I'll wrap it for you.'

'I'll wrap it myself.' Mrs Hazelbrack took up the rein again. 'Two and six.'

Elinor half rose. The goldsmith reached out again, and again she was gently returned to her place.

'Mrs Hazelbrack,' said the goldsmith reproachfully. 'You'll wear her out.'

'She's used to it. Two and six.'

The goldsmith took off his spectacles, polished them, put them back on and looked at Mrs Hazelbrack, then at Elinor, then at the kingfisher.

'Two and six,' he said. 'Highway robbery.'

'A fair price,' said Mrs Hazelbrack, counting the coins onto the stall, and she suddenly smiled. 'You never change, Mr Timmel. Thirty years and always the same: double to start with, and then highway robbery.'

'And in thirty years, Mrs Hazelbrack, you've never bought a thing from me.' The goldsmith wrapped the kingfisher in soft paper, though she had said she would wrap it herself, and handed it to Elinor. 'Thirty years. She haggles with me on other people's behalf and never buys a thing for herself.'

'I've no use for it.'

'That's just what I'm saying.' He looked at Mrs Hazelbrack, thinking, and seemed to come to some decision. 'Since there's no selling to you, I'll make your filly a present instead.'

He bent down under the stall, rummaged about, and laid on the baize a gilded tube the length of a finger, flared at one end, with a pattern round the rim like a plaited cord. Mrs Hazelbrack raised an eyebrow. Elinor looked at the tube.

The goldsmith nodded at Elinor, asking leave. Mrs Hazelbrack shrugged.

He came out from behind the stall, dragging a stool after him, and stood on it behind Elinor. First he freed her hair from under the strap of the bit; then he gathered it into one hand, all of it, from temples to nape, smoothed it, gave it a single twist, threaded it through the tube and snapped shut a tiny clasp at the side. The tube sat at the back of her head, a little above the buckle of the bit, snug and springy, and her hair rose out of it, up and back, and fell from there over the saddle.

'There,' said the goldsmith, climbing down from the stool. 'That's more like it.'

Mrs Hazelbrack walked round Elinor and looked, her head on one side. Then she found she had more to say about the acquaintance after all, and the conversation carried on across the stall, past Elinor.

Elinor saw the mirror.

It stood on the edge of the stall, small, on a stand, angled towards the customer. If she turned her head a little, she could see herself. Her face, flushed, with iron across her lips. And the tail. It rose from the back of her head, the gold tube gleaming in the sun, and the hair poured out of it and down over her shoulders, and when she turned her head it swung, the tube first and then the tail a moment after, like a real one.

She turned her head to the left. The tail swung. To the right; it swung back. She tipped her head a little and it fell across her shoulder, and when she straightened up it swung round behind her, heavy and handsome. She turned her head once more, more slowly, to see how it looked from the side.

Only then did she notice that there were two others in the mirror besides herself, and both of them were looking at her. The conversation across the stall had ended some time ago.

Elinor froze, her head half turned. The tail, which did not know it was supposed to freeze, finished its swing and settled on her shoulder.

The goldsmith was smiling.

Elinor lifted her chin and gazed over the stall at the wall, with the face of someone who is above all this. She felt her ears go hot.

Mrs Hazelbrack sighed.

'Well, since she's taken such a fancy to it,' she said. 'Thank you, Mr Timmel. She'll keep it, then.'

Elinor kept her chin up and her eyes off the mirror, and gave the goldsmith a short nod of thanks. The tail nodded with her, about three times as expressively as she had intended.

They rode out for home as the bell tower struck three, with the market behind them still in full swing.

Mrs Hazelbrack had never used reins in her life, and it showed. For the first hundred paces she tugged at one and then the other, as if trying to pull out a drawer that had stuck, and Elinor went in zigzags. Then Mrs Hazelbrack said to herself, 'Ah, so that's how it is,' let go, took the reins up again more gently, and from then on steered as though she had been doing it all her life. Elinor passed the turn at the post with the carved arrows before she knew the rein had told her anything. Brimms, she thought, could not have done it better, and she thought it with as much pleasure as if she herself were being praised.

The running came easily. After all that kneeling her legs seemed to ask for the road, and she was in high spirits, from the market, from the gingerbread, from the laughter all around, and from the little parcel with the kingfisher in it that now lay in Mrs Hazelbrack's bag beneath the saddle. The tail swung at every step, and the bell at her belly rang and rang, more merrily, it seemed, than in the morning, ting-ting-ting, quick and bright, so that people with barrows going the same way turned round from a long way off, and one old man, stepping aside, waved his hat after her. Again and again Elinor found herself quickening, and again and again the rein gently checked her and brought her back to her pace.

About half an hour out, at an old willow on a bend, the rein drew her right, onto a side lane she had not noticed that morning. The lane ran between hedges, then narrowed to a path, and the path dipped down through hazel. Branches brushed her shoulders; yellow leaves came pattering down. Then the hazel opened out, and the rein stopped her.

The clearing was small and round and closed in by bushes on every side. A stream ran across the middle of it, shallow and clear, chattering quietly over the pebbles. A rowan leaned over the water, hung all over with red berries, and the grass around it was still green and soft and strewn with its leaves. The sun, low already, slanted in over the bushes, so that the far side of the clearing lay in shadow while the stream and the grass by the water stood in the light.

Mrs Hazelbrack got down, took the rein close to the bit and led Elinor to the water. Elinor knelt at the edge and leaned forward, and the rein gave her just enough to let her lips reach the water. Drinking with iron in her mouth was strange: the cold water ran round the bit, the iron turned icy, and she had to take small sips, but she drank greedily all the same. Beside her, Mrs Hazelbrack sat down on a stone, scooped up water in her palm, drank, wiped her lips and sighed as contentedly as if it had been wine.

Then she led Elinor onto the grass, sat down beside her, unbuckled the bag and took out a bundle wrapped in a clean cloth. Inside was a pie, golden brown, with crimped edges. Mrs Hazelbrack broke it in two, and a smell of apple and cinnamon rose from the break. She held out one half to Elinor on her palm.

Elinor consulted her stomach. Berries, an apple ring, a candied chestnut, a carrot, nuts, a whole gingerbread. She shook her head. The tail shook too.

'Well, suit yourself,' said Mrs Hazelbrack, not in the least put out, and bit into her half.

She ate unhurriedly, savouring it, looking at the stream. Elinor knelt upright beside her and looked at it too. The water glittered on the pebbles. A leaf came away from the rowan, twirled, landed on the water, and the stream took it, turned it round and carried it off behind the bushes. In the hazel a bird was rustling about. The sun warmed her back and shoulders, the saddle, the hands folded beneath it, and it was so quiet and so warm that all she wanted was to kneel and look at the water. When they went on was not hers to decide. The rein lay in the grass by Mrs Hazelbrack's hand, and for as long as it lay there Elinor knelt and watched the stream carry the leaves away.

Then something nudged softly against her side.

Elinor glanced sideways. Mrs Hazelbrack was asleep, leaning back against her. Her bonnet had slipped to one side, the hand holding the rest of the pie had slid down onto the grass, and she was breathing deeply and evenly, with a faint whistle on every breath out.

Elinor wondered whether to ease herself away, little by little, so as to lay her down on the grass, somewhere soft. But the moment she moved, the bell at her belly gave a tiny ting, and Mrs Hazelbrack worked her lips in her sleep. Elinor went still and did not move again.

Leaves circled on the stream. Elinor began composing a letter to Meg.

A breeze stirred the tail at the back of her head.