第17章 The Substitution Sent

Nissa walked out to the ninth step at one in the afternoon on the third day of the Long Ebb, with the straw in her hands, the slate under one arm, and the Ledger under the other. She did not walk to Ashenholt. She walked to the ninth step and stood on it, and looked out over the flat, which ran white and dry to a point somewhere past the middle of Ebbmouth where mapmakers of the last hundred and sixty years had refused to draw anything at all. The top of the ninth step was warm. Not with water. She put her palm flat on the stone and the stone was the marsh, and the marsh was warm under her hand the way a child's palm is warm. She did not look at her hand. She looked at the flat. She stood there a while. She thought about the sea under the stone, and the marsh under the sea, and what had been kept there for four hundred years. She thought about Merle's mother, and about her own mother, forty years before Nissa had been born, walking out of the marsh and not coming back, coming home ill and quiet and dying in a kitchen of a fever the doctor at Ildwater had never once named. She put her hand off the stone. She took the straw from her arms. She walked past the ninth step and set the substitution down on the mud at the edge of the flat, where Ashenholt began. She put the slate beside the straw. She put the Ledger beside the slate. She left the ninth step empty. Then she went back to the eighth step and stood there, and the marsh stretched in front of her, white and dry, and the bell began to ring. It came from everywhere and from nowhere. It was not the church bell, and it was not the Ashenholt bell that had hung in the drowned town before the drowning. It was something older than either. It rang for an hour. Nissa did not move. The substitution lay on the mud. The marsh was going to Barsham. When the bell stopped, the child came out of the flat. She came from the direction of Ashenholt, walking across the dry mud with her slate under one arm. She came to the ninth step and did not come past it. She stood on the ninth and looked at Nissa across the space between them. "Where have you been," Nissa said. The child did not answer. "Did you walk out of Ashenholt." "Yes." "Did you walk out with the boy." "Yes." "Is the boy here." "No." "Is he at Ashenholt." "Yes." "Is he alive." The child did not answer. She stood on the ninth step with the slate under her arm, and the slate was empty. Nissa looked at the slate. She looked at the child. She looked at the mud between them, where the substitution lay. "The seventh line," she said. "It is gone from the slate." "Yes." "Who took it." "No one took it." "Who took it." The child did not answer. She looked at the marsh, and the sky, and the mud between them, and she did not look at Nissa. "The seventh line read that the marsh was going to Barsham. Where did it go." The child did not answer. She did not move. She did not speak. She stood on the ninth step with the slate under her arm. Cuthbert came to the marsh at two. He did not walk past the reed beds. He stopped at the shingle at the foot of the first step, and stood there with his coat buttoned to the neck and his hands in his pockets, and he did not come to the marsh. He stood there a while and looked out over the flat, and looked past the flat, and looked at the ninth step, and did not come nearer. "Nissa," he said, and his voice carried over the flat like a stone across the surface of a well. Nissa did not turn around. She did not take her hand off the marsh. "Have you done it." "Yes." "The substitution." "Yes." "Then it is done." "It is done." "Good," Cuthbert said. He did not move. He did not come nearer. He stood on the shingle with his coat buttoned to the neck and his hands in his pockets. "The book will be kept." "The book will be kept." "And the Ledger will be kept." "The Ledger will be kept." "And the child will be kept." Nissa did not answer. She kept her hand on the marsh. She did not turn around. Cuthbert came off the shingle and stood at the foot of the first step. He did not walk to the second. He did not come to the eighth. He stood at the foot of the first with his coat buttoned to the neck, and he looked up at Nissa across the eight steps between them. "I wanted a name for the substitution, Nissa." "I know." "Before you walked out to the marsh." "I know." "You did not have one." "No." "I told you to give one." "No." "He will ask why." "Nissa." "I am the Tidewarden." "I know you are the Tidewarden." "Nissa." "I am the Tidewarden," she said again. Cuthbert did not answer. He did not come to the marsh. He stood at the foot of the first step with his coat buttoned to the neck, and his hands in his pockets, and he looked up at Nissa across the eight steps. Then he turned, and walked back down the shingle lane, and did not come back to the Saltwyke house that evening. Nissa did not walk to the ninth step. She stood on the eighth with her hand on the marsh. The marsh was warm. The marsh was dry. The marsh was going to Barsham. The water came in at four. It came out of the flat, brown and still, and came up to the ankle of the ninth step and held there. Nissa stood on the eighth with her hand on the marsh, and the substitution lay on the mud beyond the ninth step, and the child stood on the ninth with her slate under her arm, and neither of them moved, and the water held. At five, the water was gone. At six, the child walked away from the ninth step, back out across the flat to Ashenholt. She did not look back. Nissa did not follow. She stood on the eighth with her hand on the marsh, and the marsh was going to Barsham, and Barsham was Barsham, and the marsh was hers. The wind dropped. The reed beds went still. The marsh held the hush of a room where everyone had just stopped speaking, and Nissa stood on the eighth step with the substitution behind her and the child ahead of her, and she thought about her mother, who had walked out of the marsh forty years before and not come back, and she thought about Merle, who had walked out of the marsh four times and come back three, and she thought about the boy, who was the son of Barsham and the son of the schoolmaster and the son of the schoolmaster's book, and she thought about the child, who had heard the bell, and the bell that had rung for an hour, and the seventh line that was gone from the slate, and the seventh line that was going to Barsham, and the marsh that was going to Barsham. The tide held. The marsh was dry. The marsh was white. The marsh was Barsham. ---