(Strange Harbors) The Goldsmith's Wife

Bismuth Gilder was the sort of man who, having achieved a certain station in life, took great pleasure in being contrary. A solid confidence in his incomparably superior craft, built up over fifty or so years of his bitter life, had bestowed on him a certain arrogance which, in his belief, suited his profession so well that he would not change even if he wished to. Having achieved a distinguished age, and unmarried, he had been forced to find himself an apprentice from outside his own, highly eminent, circle. Of course, none of his peers knew that he had stooped to taking in a boy from an orphanage. Nobody but he could understand the tragedy of being forced to stoop to charity.

As she storm rolled in, he watched the precious cargo of one of the boats being offloaded, as it rocked against the sandy shore, buffeted by the rising wind. Gilder’s delicate health, apparently, was the cause of his inability to aid in the offloading process, or in any contribution which could be loosely associated with ‘manual labour’.

He winced as the Foster girl roughly picked up a sack filled with the most vital of his equipment – the bellows, tongs, hammers – which he had been forced to remove from the heavy chest in which it had travelled: in this wind, it made the journey from ship to land even more perilous for those who manned the boats, and, far more crucially to him, threatened the safety of his tools.

“Carefully!” he grunted as the journeyman’s young wife pushed past him, struggling with her load. She forced a dark glare in his direction, following the others hauling their burdens towards the caves. It had drizzled ominously for several hours, and the dark earth underfoot was turning into a gluggy quagmire. It sucked at her heels greedily. The sensation was curious, akin to a dream she had once had, years ago in the orphanage: pursued by hideous monsters, she had found her legs ineffectual, cumbersome, as she had tried to escape. The cruel difference was that her current situation was no apparition of a child’s subconscious, and that even if she could run, neither direction would bring her any nearer to safety. She consigned herself to trudge, even though she had imagined that she would never again know a life of drudgery as a journeyman goldsmith’s wife.

It was unfortunate that old Gilder had not the generosity to die before they had departed. It was not for lack of trying, on her part; she had concocted brews of every poisonous herb she had become acquainted with at the orphanage: half-starved children would eat almost anything, and she had learned quickly which ones irritated the stomach or caused unpleasant side effects, and which ones were lethal. And even an idiot knows what deadly nightshade looks like, and what it will do to the unsuspecting grazer. Opal had known several small children too young to know that the dark, slightly sweet berries posed a much direr threat than indigestion.

Her foot caught the edge of an unsteady rock, hidden beneath a layer of sludge; she was caught off balance. It was not entirely out of spite that she let her fingers unclench from the sack bearing the Gilder’s tools, though neither was it entirely an accident. The sack fell into the miry mess. She picked it up quickly, wiping the side covered with mud quickly with the skirt of her dress, before slinging it over her shoulder again. The contents rattled against each other dangerously.

The splash, splash, splosh of irregular footsteps on the mud behind her. Gilder had not missed her little accident; his craggy eye had been trained on her the whole time, waiting for a slip, a moment’s lapse of concentration. She ignored his presence, trying to trudge through the sucking mud quicker, but her short legs slowed her down, and her calves ached. Gilder caught up eventually.

Not one word as he grabbed the sack from her, cradling the muddy bundle close to his chest, tenderly as though it were a newborn infant. A silent glare, far more potent than words, was her reprimand. On some days, Gilder did not even deign to speak to Opal Pulver, wife of the prodigiously talented, but morbidly low-born, journeyman goldsmith who had once been his pupil. Gilder thought it a lamentable tragedy when great talent was bestowed on the humblest specimens of mankind, and not on those more deserving (and better bred).