The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,28

to be seen.

Haijon told me Catrin tried to buy the dagnostic off of Ursala more than once, offering her all kinds of treasure in return. She even offered the bolt gun or the cutter, Haijon said, though not the firethrower. Ursala give her the same word each time, and the word was no. That may of been the reason Catrin was so far from liking Ursala, despite her being of so much service to us all.

Which I begun to tell but got pulled aside by what I had to tell you about Athen’s sickness. It wasn’t only doctoring that Ursala did, though doctoring was a big part of it. She carried messages from other villages too, and brung warnings of things we needed to be ware of. Like a great pack of wild dogs on one occasion, and the creep-blight on another. If Catrin hadn’t burned the blight at Burley Carr and turned it aside, it might of been inside the fence before we knowed it threatened.

And there was one other thing Ursala did, which was that she told which marriages would be fruitful and which wouldn’t ever. She used the dagnostic for this, and also she used a knife she kept on her belt in a sheath of white leather, cutting the hands of the man and the woman who wanted to pair-pledge and letting the dagnostic taste the blood off the blade.

You would think these questions would be asked and answered in private, but in fact this was done on the gather-ground. It was done there for two reasons, I think. The first was that – except in emergencies, such as that time with Athen – the drudge was not an inside-of-doors kind of thing. If it walked down the steps of the Count and Seal, there wouldn’t be no steps left when it got to the bottom. And the second was that Catrin, along with most other people in Mythen Rood, believed the issue of children being born or not being born or being born wrong was a problem for the village as a whole. After all, the children would belong to the village when they come, and with each year that passed there was fewer and fewer being born alive. It mattered to everyone to roll that particular stone up the hill instead of down, as they say.

If the news was bad, Ursala give her verdict as gentle as she could. “It doesn’t mean you won’t have any children,” I heard her say to one couple – I think it was Vuru Cooper and Werian Strong, if you remember them names. “It just means they’re that much less likely to be born alive and healthy. The probabilities are against you. But the probabilities can’t take away your choice.”

Maybe that was true. The probabilities, whoever they were, didn’t have no say in the matter. Catrin stood firm on the yes or no of it, and if the dagnostic said no then that pair-pledge was set aside. Catrin said Mythen Rood couldn’t afford no barren ground.

On this occasion when Ursala come, there was three pledges she had to decide on. Haijon and Spinner’s come first, and she pronounced that there was no problem with their pairing. I told myself I was happy for them, but a part of me had been hoping for a different outcome and was cast down when the answer come. For now there was nothing in the way of it. Spinner would marry Haijon and go into Rampart Hold. I had losed any chance of being with her, and it seemed to me then that there wasn’t any way of being happy without her. So I did what fools always have done since time was time, which is I pissed in my own milk and then complained about the taste of it.

Not that I spoke aloud, of course. Most people in the village was in a joyful frame of mind. Them other two couples I spoke of got good outcomes too, so there was going to be three weddings coming soon and nobody grieving on account of their hopes being dashed down. Everyone was most especially happy for Spinner, who had lost her father but now was getting a new family just pat when she needed one.

So my sullenness was inward, and for the rest I put a brave face on it. And maybe in time I would of swallowed my disappointment and done what most everyone else does in such a case, which