Robin Hobb - The Inheritance

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The Inheritance

Robin Hobb

IT WAS IN MY GRANDMOTHER’S jewel box. I found it after she died.

Perhaps jewel box is too fine a name to give to the plain wooden cask

that held so little. There was a silver ring with the stone long prised

from the setting, sold to pay family debts no doubt. I wondered why she

had not sold it whole. There were two necklaces, one of garnets and

another of polished jasper. At the bottom, wrapped in layer upon layer

of linen, was the pendant.

It was a lovely carving of a woman’s face. She looked aristocratic,

yet merry, and I recognized in her features some of my own. I wondered

which of my female ancestors she was, and why someone had taken

such care to make so delicate a carving from such an ugly piece of

wood. It was grey and checked with age, and weighed unnaturally heavy

in my hand as I examined it. The chain it was fixed to was fine silver,

however. I thought it might be worn alone if the pendant could be

removed. I heard a footstep in the hall outside her bedroom, and hastily

slipped the chain about my neck. The cameo hung heavy between my

breasts, concealed by my blouse.

My cousin Tetlia stood suddenly in the doorway. ‘What do you

have there?’ she demanded.

‘Nothing,’ I told her, and hastily set the box back on

Grandmother’s chest.

She swept into the room and snatched it up, opened it and

dumped the necklaces into her hand. ‘Nice,’ she said, holding up the

jasper one. My heart sank, for I had liked it best of the three. ‘I’m eldest

of the grand-daughters,’ she pointed out smugly, and slipped it over her

head. She weighed the garnets in her hand. ‘And my sister Coreth

comes next. This is for her.’ Her lips twisted in a smile as she tossed me

the despoiled ring. ‘For you, Cerise. Not much of an inheritance, but

she did feed and clothe you for the last two years, and kept you in a

house that long ago should have come to my father. That is more than

she ever did for my sister and me.’

‘I lived here with her. I looked after her. When her hands twisted

so that she couldn’t use them anymore, I bathed her and dressed her

and fed her...’ My hidden anger pushed the words stiffly out.

Tetlia waved my words away contemptuously. ‘And we all warned

you that you’d get nothing for it. She burned through her own family

fortune when she was a girl, Cerise. Everyone knows that if my

grandfather had not married her, she’d have starved in the streets. And

my father has been good enough to let her live out her life in a house

that should have come to him when his father died. Now she’s gone,

and the house and land revert to my father. That’s life.’ She tossed the

plundered casket onto my grandmother’s stripped bed and left the

room.

‘I loved her,’ I said quietly into the stillness. Rage burned bright

in me for an instant. It was an old family dispute. Her father was the

son of Grandfather’s first wife, and the rightful heir to all, as they so

constantly reminded me. It counted for nothing with them that my

grandmother had raised their father as if he were her own child. It

scalded me that Tetlia would claim my grandmother as kin for the sake

of being entitled to her jewellery, but deny that I had any right to share

the family wealth. For a second I clutched that anger to me. Then, as if

I could feel my grandmother’s gentle hand on my shoulder, I let the

strength of my just wrath leak away from me. ‘Useless to argue,’ I told

myself. In my grandmother’s looking-glass I saw the same defeated

resignation I had so often seen in her eyes. ‘It’s not worth fighting for,’

she had told me so often. ‘Scandal and strife serve no purpose. Let it go,

Cerise. Let it go.’ I looked at the gaping ring in my hand, and then

slipped it onto my finger. It fit as if made for me. Somehow, it seemed

an appropriate inheritance.

I left the room and went to my own chamber to pack. It did not

take long. I had one set of clothes besides my own, and her old Trader’s

robe of soft saffron. I hesitated before I put it in my rucksack. I had

never seen her wear it. Once I had asked her about that only unused

garment in her chest. She had shaken her head. ‘I don’t know why I

kept it. It has nothing to do with my life any more. In Bingtown, Trader

families wear them when they go to the Traders’ Council to vote on

Trader matters. Saffron was my family’s colour, the Lantis family. But I

gave all that up years ago.’

I fingered the soft wool. It was cut in an archaic style, but the

wool would be warm, I told myself. Besides, I had no intention of leaving

it for my cousins. Now that my grandmother was dead, her little house

on the seacliffs and the sheep pastures behind it would go to my uncle.

And I, the sole daughter of her daughter, would have to make my own

way in the world. My uncle had scowled at me when I had told him last

night that I had nowhere to go, and asked his leave to stay on for a

week.

He replied heavily, ‘The old woman was dying for two years,

Cerise. If, in two years, you couldn’t make a plan for your future, you

won’t do it in a week. We need this house, and it’s lawfully mine. I’m

sorry, but you’ll have to go.’

So I went, but not far. Hetta, the shepherd’s wife took me in for

the night. They were as angry with my uncle as I was, for he had

already announced to there that he was raising their rent. In all the

years that they had been my grandmother’s tenants, she had never

raised their rent. Hetta was older than I, but that had never kept us

from being good friends. She had two small children and was big with

her third. She was glad to offer me a bed by the fire and a hot supper in

exchange for help with her chores, ‘for as long as you want.’ I tidied the

house as we talked, while she was relieved to sit down, put her feet up

and put the last stitches into a quilt. I showed her both my ring and my

pendant and chain. She exclaimed at the sight of the pendant and

pushed it away from her.

‘The chain will bring you some coin, and maybe the empty ring.

But that pendant is an evil thing. I’d get rid of it if I were you. Throw it

in the sea. It’s wizardwood, the stuff a liveship is made from. I wouldn’t

wear it next to my skin for the world.’

I picked up the pendant and looked at it more closely. In the

candlelight, I could see faint colours on it, as if it had once been

painted but had faded. The grain of the wood seemed finer, the features

of the face more distinct than I recalled. ‘Why is it evil?’ I demanded of

Hetta. ‘Liveships aren’t evil. Their figureheads come to life and talk and

guide the boat on its way. They’re magic, but I’ve never heard them

called evil.’

Hetta shook her head stubbornly. ‘It’s Rain Wild magic, and all

know no good ever came down the Rain Wild River. A lot of folk say that

that’s where the Blood Plague came from. Leave magic like that to those

Trader folk who are born to it. It’s not for you and me. It’s bound to

bring you bad luck, Cerise, same as it brought your grandmother. Get

rid of it.’

‘She came from Trader stock,’ I reply stoutly. ‘Maybe that’s how it

came to Grandma. Maybe she inherited from the days when we were

Traders.’

Hetta pursed her mouth in disapproval as I put the chain back

around my neck. I heard Hetta’s husband at the door and hastily

slipped the pendant inside my shirt again. I’d always liked Hetta, but

her husband made me edgy.

Tonight was no exception. He grinned to see me there, and

grinned broader when Hetta said she’d invited me to stay the night.

‘You’re always welcome here, Cerise, for as long as you want to stay.

There’s many a wifely chore that Hetta hasn’t been able to do for a time.

You could take them on for room and board here.’

I smiled stiffly as I shook my head. ‘Thank you all the same, but I

think I need to find a future for myself. I think I’ll go to Bingtown and

see what work I can find there.’

‘Bingtown!’ Hetta was horrified. ‘That den of vice? Stay in the

country, girl, where folks have hearts. No one will treat you well in the

city.’

‘Stay,’ her husband urged me. His eyes decided me as he

declared, ‘Live here, and I’ll treat you just like one of my own.’

And that night, he was as good as his word. As I slept on the

hearth, I heard the scuff of his big bare feet as he came into the room.

His children slept in the loft, and Hetta in their small bedchamber. In

the past, he had done no more than stroke my buttock as I passed him,

or casually brush my breast with the back of his hand as he reached

past me, as if it were an accident. But I had never slept the night in his

cottage. I smelled his sweat as he hunkered down beside me. ‘Cerise?’

he whispered in the darkness. I kept my eyes shut and pretended to be

asleep. My heart was hammering as I felt him lift the corner of the

blanket Hetta had given me. His big hand came to rest on the angle of

my neck. I gritted my teeth but could do no more than that. Useless to

resist. Hetta and the children might wake, and then what would I say? I

tried to be as stoic as my long-enduring grandmother. Let him touch

me. If I refused to wake, surely he would leave me alone.

‘Cerise, honey;’ he whispered again, inching his fingers along my

flesh.

‘Faithless man!’ a whisper answered him. Every muscle in my

body tightened, for it seemed to come from my own throat. ‘Touch me,

and I’ll rake your face with scratches that Hetta won’t ignore.’

He jerked his hand back from me as if scalded, so startled that

he sat down hard on the floor behind me. I lay still, frozen in silent

terror.

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摘要：

1TheInheritanceRobinHobbITWASINMYGRANDMOTHERSjewelbox.Ifounditaftershedied.Perhapsjewelboxistoofineanametogivetotheplainwoodencaskthatheldsolittle.Therewasasilverringwiththestonelongprisedfromthesetting,soldtopayfamilydebtsnodoubt.Iwonderedwhyshehadnotsolditwhole.Thereweretwonecklaces,oneofgarnetsa...

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