Mara Vell came into the yard carrying an armful of white linen and found Ysabet sitting on the ground.
She looked at the empty cup beside her.
“Is there more?”
“Water.”
“That doesn’t explain much.”
Chaska had gone. Lilt’s straps needed checking at the courier post, and whatever had happened beside the hurdle did not make the postmaster willing to deliver his own letters. Ysabet had told her to go, then spent another quarter hour trying to discover whether her right hand felt different.
It hurt in the usual places. Beyond that she had learned nothing.
Mara put the linen on the bench. She was a broad woman with gray hair plaited close to her head and a builder’s pencil tucked into the plait. Before the baths had shut, she had carried coal to the boiler when the coal boy failed to come. Since then, she had been selling things large enough to require the assistance of the same coal boy. He rarely failed to come now.
“Chaska brought your clasp,” Ysabet said.
“I saw. The smith made it backward.”
“Can he alter it?”
“He can alter his price.”
She lifted the top sheet and shook it out.
Something struck the hurdle.
Mara stopped with the linen raised above her shoulders. Behind the crate, Pip had drawn itself into a pale knot. Its eye was wide open.
Ysabet rose too quickly. Her knee caught, and she took a clumsy step against the bucket.
“Lower that.”
“This?”
“Slowly.”
Mara lowered the sheet. Pip’s front feet scrabbled beneath its body. The two largest braced against the crate, pushing it sideways.
Ysabet moved toward the shelter. Mara turned to hang the linen over her arm, and the wind caught one corner.
Pip went through the bottom of the enclosure.
Its folded skin streamed behind it. For a moment Ysabet saw four legs outside and two inside; then the trailing pair twisted free of the loose sacking. The creature shot beneath the bench, scattering a saucer of clay pieces. Sedge hissed from her box. Pip hit the box, rebounded, and forced itself between the bench leg and the wall.
“Keep still,” Ysabet said.
Mara stayed where she was. Sedge did not. She dragged her hindquarters to the edge of her bedding, showing teeth.
Ysabet picked up the marten’s box and moved it onto the low stool by her door. Sedge clung to the rim with both front feet, outraged at the transportation.
Under the bench, Pip clicked so quickly the separate sounds ran together.
The mouse was still in its pouch.
Ysabet could see the little tail pressed against Pip’s front leg. She went down on one knee, moved her hand toward the bench, and stopped as the creature pushed harder against the wall. It was trying to go through a gap much smaller than itself.
Above her, the sheet cracked in the wind.
She caught its hanging edge.
That made everything worse. The linen pulled taut between her hand and Mara’s arm, rose in a broad white curve, and filled the space above the bench.
Pip’s sideways mouth opened. Its smallest foot slipped on a clay fragment.
Ysabet let go.
“Roll it up,” she said. “All of it. Into a bundle.”
“I was about to.”
Mara wound the sheet around her forearm. The yard became ordinary again: wall, roof, gray sky, two women and their various mistakes.
Pip remained jammed behind the bench.
Ysabet moved the lamp stand out of the passage toward her room. Then she set the empty fish crate on its side between the bench and the door. She used the old towel to cover the gap above it, making a low, dark continuation of the space Pip already occupied.
“You’ve made it a tunnel,” Mara said.
“I hope I’ve made it a tunnel.”
She could not reach the mouse without reaching Pip first. She could not pull Pip out without knowing which of the six legs would catch beneath the bench. Her right hand ached with a fierce, unwelcome memory of pressure closing around a handle.
She sat back. The towel moved a little in the draft. She tucked its edge beneath the crate.
After a minute, the mouse’s tail vanished.
Ysabet leaned forward.
Pip had drawn the tail inside. Its chest fold lifted and settled. A tiny nose appeared, then disappeared again.
She put her forehead against the bench for a moment.
“Alive?” Mara asked.
“Yes.”
“You sound surprised.”
“Relieved.”
Mara looked at the linen on her arm. “I could dry these in the front room.”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
“No. But I could.”
She carried the bundle inside. Ysabet heard the old bathhouse door scrape over the threshold, then the sound of furniture being moved. The merchant coming for the linen would find it dry. He might have to admire it over chairs instead of a line.
Pip moved when Mara had gone.
One narrow foot found the rim of the crate. The creature remained in that position for so long that Ysabet’s knee began demanding another arrangement. She changed legs. Pip drew back, then came forward again.
It entered the crate.
Ysabet left the route to her room open. Pip went halfway along it, paused in the doorway, and returned to the crate with a scrap of sacking clamped in its jaw.
It arranged the scrap beneath its chest.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s probably an improvement.”
She spent the rest of the afternoon mending the bottom of the hurdle. The sacking had been adequate for a creature that wished to stay behind it. She replaced it with an overlapping board and left the crate outside while she worked. Pip watched from within, its eye following the hammer.
She found a curved basket lid for the mouse, lined it with a torn undershirt, and set it beside the crate’s opening. Water and soaked grain went where the mouse could reach them without crossing the yard. By dusk it had come out to eat twice, one hind leg still dragging. On the second visit it remained in the lined basket afterward.
Pip lifted its fold several times. The mouse slept on.
Ysabet put a little clay in front of the crate.
“You can both have supper.”
Mara returned with a stool and sat down beside the repaired hurdle. She had taken the pencil from her hair. There was a line of graphite across her knuckles.
“Darr said twenty,” she said.
Ysabet kept her eyes on the hammer handle she was oiling.
“He talks.”
“It’s how he earns.”
“Your rent is in my room.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were going to.”
Mara put the stool’s loose rung against her knee and worked it back into place. “I was going to ask what happens when that one learns to eat the walls.”
Ysabet looked toward Pip. It was turning a clay piece with its feet, inspecting all sides before taking a bite.
“I buy you new walls.”
“With what?”
“I haven’t reached that part of the plan.”
Mara snorted. She turned the stool over and took a wooden wedge from her pocket.
“The plain brick’s yours. Leave the roof tiles alone. I’ve a buyer for those.”
“Pip doesn’t understand buyers.”
“Then you’ll have to.”
She tapped the wedge into place with the butt of the hammer. Ysabet let her use it. The familiar small blows seemed to interest Pip less than the white linen had.
“I have to see the potter’s mule tomorrow afternoon,” Ysabet said. “Could you keep an eye on this corner? Just until I come back.”
Mara looked at the crate, the basket, and the repaired hurdle.
“If it stays in there.”
“That’s the intention.”
“Whose?”
From inside the crate came a firm crunch.
Mara tested the stool, found it sound, and stood.
“I’ll be here. The linen man comes at noon.”
Ysabet thanked her.
When Mara had gone, she moved the mouse’s basket into the enclosure and put the crate beside it. Pip followed the basket without being called. It stopped at the low board while Ysabet lifted it back into place, then settled beneath the shelf.
The torn sacking lay beside the post. Ysabet cut away its loose strings and put them in the rubbish pail. Her supper would need warming a second time.