The Purpose of Miss Shepley

Chapter Eight (part I)

I hold the firmest opinion that something must be done about our calendar. It is archaic, unscientific, and a most dreadful burden on all enterprises, both here and abroad. How many days will pass between 30th Midsummer and 1st Grazing this year? I dare say none could tell me without first consulting their almanacs. Commerce does not simply halt with the festival days. Transactions are made. Goods are shipped. Records and receipts are entered into ledgers. Gentlemen, what date shall we stamp on them? And what, pray tell, are we to do with a child born on a festival day? My neighbor's eldest boy recounts his birthday as 31st Budding. I, for one, do not have the heart to tell him there is no such day this year.

The Baelgast cling to the past, and they keep our prosperity hostage by it. Already, our methods are almost too backward for the great nations beyond the sea to suffer trade with us. If the Baelgast will not end the Abeyance and name a new king, then we must amend the Peacetroth and give power over the Common Reckoning to the Regents. Failing that, I fear we must ask ourselves if we Folk would not fare better as an independent people again.

(Beckley Hope, letter to The Ethelsburg Gazette)

.:.

The last days of Midsummer were uneasy and restless. I was to leave for Oakhurst at month's end, and there was much to do in preparation for it. Trunks were dragged down from the attic and dusted off, stacks of clothes folded and packed away... But each thing was done with a tense sort of reluctance, as if all of Ewert held its breath, waiting for the letter that would beg pardon and tell me not to come.

But no such letter arrived, and so, on the morning of the first festival day, I went.

I crossed paths with Bram on the way down to the courtyard -- we had not spoken since that mortifying day. I eyed him coldly, waiting.

Bram's jaw set hard. He touched his hat as we passed each other, saying, "A pleasant trip, Miss."

I nodded once. "Thank you, Mr. Fowler."

I suddenly felt rather glad to be leaving. For days, I'd been torn between dread and anticipation -- I was eager to see more of the world, but I did worry the world was not as eager to see more of me. But now, I walked out of Ewert Hall, imagining I might never need step a foot inside it again -- and wouldn't Bram be sorry, then? Perhaps Earnest would propose to me, and I could simply send for my things.

This was a delightful fantasy, dark and satisfying, but it was a brief and useless one. In my heart, I doubted Bram actually cared whether I came or went. I decided I wouldn't care, either.

I piled up in a hired carriage with Mrs. Burke, Miss Ward, and an embarrassment of trunks -- unless a letter reached me first, we would continue on from Oakhurst straight to the Browns' in Farport, and Mrs. Burke insisted I would need my winter clothes there.

With a lurch, hard and quick, we set off. We were to follow the Grassbeck westward, to the foothills and the Wolf's Back rising above. The point where the creek left the mountains was the upper lefthand corner of the Northerns, pinned in place by Oakhurst.

I watched Ewert shrink behind us, my mood growing darker and darker. Bram was angry with me, and I did care -- that was truth, no matter what I pretended. Everything about that rankled me.

Travelling did not improve matters.

Too soon, the cool and damp of the early morning gave way to the full, roasting heat of a cloudless, windless, relentless Summer day. The carriage jerked and rattled me to my very bones, and there was never enough room for all three of us, no matter how we arranged ourselves... If I wasn't pressed up against one of my maids, haunch to sweating haunch, I was knocking knees with them or stepping on their toes -- I soon came to wish we had not brought Miss Ward along. And there never seemed to be an end to it. Though we crawled along the unchanging road for hours and hours, passing the same sorts of weeds, the same sorts of trees, the mountains never seemed any nearer.