Free Ozark Trilogy 2: The Grand Jubilee by Suzette Haden Elgin Page B

be useful to know that one day. And while she had it going, she drove it home.
    “And it doesn’t burden your conscience that you Grannys are charged to help me, not hinder me?” she demanded. “I find that curious.”
    The Granny’s face closed, shut, and if the rage was still there she mastered it. She gave no sign that she’d heard Responsible’s last question.
    “I’ll leave it to you to furnish your excuses for your absence,” she said, looking right through the girl. “You lie easy enough, it should cause you no special trouble. Just you stay away from the Hall. And I’ll have your word on it.”
    “You have it,” said Responsible wearily. They were tiresome, these Travellers, with their never-ending insistence on guarantees. “And now you do have it, I’ll thank you to leave. I have work to do, and I’d best get at it.”
    Granny Leeward headed for the door, but she stopped there long enough to shake her finger some more and say a few sentences on the subject of pride going before a fall, and peace coming to them as deserved it and misery to those as didn’t, and just deserts. Responsible rode this out in silence-she had no intention of easing any wounds she might have inflicted on this one-and the time finally came when the woman had either exhausted her supply of moral justifications or tired her own tongue, and she went out the door, leaving a vast silence behind her.
    Responsible lay there and whistled her way through three choruses of “Once Again, Amazing Grace,” as a calming measure, and gave her situation some careful thought.
    Under her bottom pillow, for example, there was a cylinder no bigger than a needle, and in it a list written on pliofilm and headed “Things To Do When I Get Home.” Weeks it had been there, shoved out of sight till she could find time to tackle it, and there’d been nights when she’d had the feeling it burned her head right through the feathers and heavy pillowslips. Might could be she’d make her way through some of the items on that list after all, while she was staying away from the Hall.
    And then, might could be she’d take advantage of the opportunity to just lie here? She was that tired.
    She reached under her pillow, knowing the foolishness of the lying-about idea, and took out the cylinder, unscrewed the top, and pulled from it the sheet of pliofilm. It had been so long curled it wouldn’t lie flat, of course, and she hadn’t any inclination to take it over to her desk where she could spread it on the leather surface to cling properly; she made do with gripping its edges and ignoring the way it wound itself round her fingers.
    Eight items she had written there, she noted with disgust. Eight tasks. And when she’d set out on the Quest in February there’d been only the first. Somehow, riding back into Brightwater in April, there’d been the idea in her head that she could get them all out of the way before the Jubilee. Like many another fool idea she’d had lately.
     
    First of all, there was the task she’d set out with: to go over the Castle’s secret account books, those that couldn’t be trusted to the Economist and required her personal attention.
    Next came the matter of determining whether there really had been a Skerry seen at Castle Motley; and if there had been-which she doubted even more strongly now than she had when the servingmaid had blurted out the tale to her-declaring a day of celebration separate and special for the event as custom demanded. It’d be a tad late, but better a tardy observance than none at all. Provided she found any evidence that the servingmaid’s story had had a scrap of truth to it.
    Third was the promise she had made in the night to the Gentle, highborn T’an K’ib. She had given her word: the Gentles would be involved in none of the Ozarkers’ doings, as already specified by the treaties signed centuries ago. Furthermore, Responsible intended to see that every inch of the Gentles’ territory taken