Noctavia announced the market on a Saturday, over breakfast, in the voice she used to use for declaring war on small countries.
"I will be handling the shopping."
Toby stopped chewing. Clara looked up from her porridge. Across the table, Dumpling, who had been given a seat of honor and a saucer of rainwater, opened its mouth very slightly.
"By myself," said Noctavia. "I have written a list."
She had. It was on a sheet of paper, ruled into columns, with the ruler she had found in a drawer in the cabin and clearly never intended to return. Under Item it said: Salt. Thread. Flour. Cheese. Under Maximum Price it said, in tiny, neat handwriting: Fair.
"Do you want company?" I asked.
"No."
"I could carry things."
"I am capable of carrying things. I carried a tomato across four days of sky." She folded the list into her sleeve. "I am going to be a customer. A perfectly ordinary customer. I have practiced."
"On who?"
"The tomato."
"Of course."
"Don't say it."
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"You're about to say pig."
I was, in fact, about to say pig. I had been holding it since the first week at the cabin, when she told me I would come home with one.
"You would not need to buy a pig," I said, carefully, "if you were never tempted by a pig."
"I would never be tempted by a pig."
"Okay."
"It is a perfectly dignified animal and I have no feelings about it at all."
She put on her gray coat, pulled the hood up over her ears, checked her tail twice, and walked out the green door with the stiff, brave stride of a woman going to a duel.
I waited exactly eleven seconds.
"We should probably go and buy some thread," I said.
"We have thread," said Clara.
"We should probably go and happen to be passing the market."
Clara put down her spoon. "That means yes."
"It's a very common phrase."
Aldermere's Saturday market spreads along both banks of the widest canal, with stalls on the bridges and boats tied up four deep, selling fish and cheese and ribbon out of the bottom of their hulls. It smells of fried dough and wet rope. It is extremely loud.
We stayed behind a barrel of pickled herring, and watched.
Noctavia had found the cheese stall first. A round man with a mustache stood behind a wheel the size of a cartwheel, and she stopped in front of him, drew herself up to her full height, and said in a voice that could have stripped paint:
"I would like to purchase one cheese. This one. What is the price?"
The cheesemonger looked at her. He was a brave man. He lasted nearly two seconds.
"Four... uh. Three. Two and a half?"
"That is not a fair price."
"Is it... too much?"
"It is too little." She frowned, which made it worse. "Cheese of this quality is worth four. I will pay four."
"But I said—"
"Four."
The cheesemonger looked at the four coins she had slapped on the counter. He looked at the cheese. He looked at the rest of the market, which had gone quiet in a ring around them.
"...I couldn't possibly take four, madam."
"You will take four."
"I'll take three."
"Four."
"Three," said the cheesemonger, with the voice of a man standing on a cliff, "and a half."
A small silence. Noctavia narrowed her eyes. "That is a very bad negotiating position."
"It's the only one I have."
I put my forehead against the barrel and shook silently. Beside me, Clara had both hands over her mouth. Toby was bouncing on his toes.
"Why is she losing?" he whispered.
"She's winning."
"Why is she losing by winning?"
"That's a very good question."
It went on that way, all down the canal. At the fishmonger's, a man offered her a salmon for half price, and she insisted on paying double, and he wept a little. At the flour stall, a woman gave her a free sack and was told to take it back. At the thread seller's, a girl of about nine, trembling, held up a spool of green and said, "It's yours. Please." Noctavia said, "I do not accept charity," and left a silver coin on the counter and walked off with the thread and the dignity of a queen.
By the time she reached the middle bridge, there was a small crowd following her at a respectful distance. Nobody was afraid, exactly. They were just fascinated.
"Who is she?" I heard someone whisper.
"A duchess," said a woman.
"A retired duchess."
"Retired from what?"
"I heard she was an actress. A very serious actress. Tragedy."
"That's the one with the hat."
"She doesn't have a hat."
"It was implied."
Noctavia stopped at the last stall on the bridge. It was a very small one, almost a barrel, with a very small woman sitting behind it on a stool. She was at least eighty, with a face like a walnut, and she was knitting a sock that appeared to be about nine feet long.
"Excuse me," said Noctavia. "How much is the salt?"
"Two coppers," said the old woman, without looking up.
"That is... fair."
"I should hope so. I'm the one who set it." The needles clicked. "Sit down, lovey. You're making the street nervous."
"I am not making anyone nervous."
"You're making a hundred people nervous. Look at them." The old woman jerked her chin at the crowd. "They want to be nice to you, and you keep paying them for it. It's very confusing." She finally looked up. Her eyes were very sharp and very kind. "Here's how it works. He says four. You say three. You both frown. You land on three and a half, and everybody goes home pleased."
"That's... a ritual?"
"It's a dance. Nobody wants the cheese that much. They want to have argued about the cheese."
Noctavia stared at her. For a moment, I think she was thinking of three hundred years of treaties.
"So the fighting is the point," she said, slowly.
"The fighting is the fun."
"...I can do that," said my wife.
She turned around, looked at the cheesemonger down the bridge, and cracked her knuckles.
"Three," she said, very loudly.
"Four," said the cheesemonger, with a look of such shining joy that I had to look away.
"Three."
"Four!"
"That is an outrage!"
"It's a bargain!"
She walked home an hour later with salt, thread, flour, and three full cheeses, having won every argument in Aldermere by a margin of exactly half a copper. People were waving at her. She had no idea how to wave back. She did a stiff little nod, and a woman on a boat burst into applause.
I had been watching so happily that I had forgotten to look at where she was going.
"Elise," said Clara.
"Mm?"
"There's a pig."
I will be honest. I did not see how it happened.
There was a shout from the east bridge, and a cart tipped over, and something pink and fat and extremely determined came tearing down the canal path with a farmer behind it yelling at the top of his lungs. The crowd parted like the sea. Noctavia, who was holding three cheeses, turned her head to see what the noise was about.
The pig ran straight at her. It was a very large, very round, very dirty pig, and when it reached her, it did not go around. It stopped, wheezed, and sat down on her boot.
The whole market went silent.
Noctavia looked down.
The pig looked up.
"No," said Noctavia, quietly.
The pig leaned its enormous head against her knee and sighed like a very old man at the end of a very long day.
"I am not buying a pig."
The farmer arrived, red-faced and panting, with a rope in one hand. "Madam, I'm so sorry. He's been trouble all week. He keeps getting out. Never goes to anyone. Last month he bit the vicar."
"Then I am especially not buying him."
"He's not for sale. He's for—" The farmer stopped. He looked at the pig, which had closed its eyes and begun to snore against her leg. "...He's picked you."
"He has not picked me."
"He's sitting on you."
"He is sitting on my boot."
"That's a pig's way of saying yes," said the old woman from the bridge, with great satisfaction.
Noctavia looked up at the sky. I do not know what she asked it.
"What is his price?" she said, in the voice of a woman at the end of a long argument with fate.
"Take him," said the farmer. "Honestly. For free. Please."
"I do not accept—"
"One copper."
"...One copper," said Noctavia, bitterly, and paid it.
She came up the garden path at noon with three cheeses under one arm and a pig on a rope in the other, both with the same expression of resigned dignity. I was sitting on the porch pretending to read. I had beaten her home by a very narrow margin.
"Hello," I said.
"Do not speak."
"I didn't say anything."
"You were going to say pig."
"I was going to say welcome home."
"...It followed me."
"I saw."
"It selected me. I did not buy it. I was given it. It is a dependent." She set down the cheese with great care. "The rope is only a precaution."
"Of course."
"It has a very good character."
"I'm sure it does."
Toby came out of the house like a small cannonball and stopped dead on the top step. His eyes went to the pig. His mouth fell open. For a long moment, the garden was perfectly still.
"Noctavia," he whispered. "Is that ours?"
"It is a temporary arrangement."
"Can I name it?"
"It already has a name, I'm sure—"
"Pudding," said Toby, with total certainty, and flung himself around its neck.
The pig, which had bitten a vicar, closed its eyes and made a sound like a contented kettle.
Dumpling had been watching from the step, round and green and quite still. When the pig was led into the garden, it opened its jaws and made the long, rising click of a plant that was about to take a position on the matter.
"Dumpling," said Noctavia, in her war-council voice. "This is Pudding. He is a pig. He is not to be eaten."
Dumpling studied him. Pudding studied Dumpling. They had the look of two very different dignitaries at a very awkward summit.
Click, said Dumpling at last, and leaned back.
Pudding blew out a long breath through his nose and went to lie down under the willow.
"Well," said Noctavia. "That's settled."
The hens, who had been watching from the coop, did not agree. They began to complain in unison. It continued, quite loudly, for the rest of the afternoon.
That evening, in the kitchen, after the last cup was dry and the house had gone soft and quiet, I opened the dictionary.
"I will be handling the shopping" means I want to do one ordinary thing by myself, and have it go well.
"It followed me" means I'm keeping him.
Underneath, because I am not very good at holding my tongue, I wrote one more.
"I am not buying a pig" means you were right, and I love you for it, and I will never say so.
Noctavia read it over my shoulder.
"That is slander," she said.
"It's the dictionary."
"It's inaccurate."
"It's very accurate."
"...Whatever."
Yes. Obviously yes.