Who Whipped Tace’s Rope in Teal

Tace Ropewright had come up from Cloudbreak for one night, to take down a rope he had made and put up a new one. He had brought a loaf of harbour bread as a present, and it had cost more than the rope. By the time the stew was on Rill’s table, he was telling the old rope’s story as if it had been a battle in a storm, and he had won it single-handed.

“The wind took us broadside,” he said. “Rain going sideways. Hats going over the wall. And me at the top of the post, one hand on the rope and the other holding fast, and I hung it in the teeth of it.” He took a mouthful of stew. “And not a hand on it since.”

“It was drizzle,” Rill said.

She said it the way she said most things, without looking up. She was sawing at the harbour bread, which had a crust like a cartwheel.

“It was a gale,” Tace said.

“It was April, and it was drizzle, and your other hand had a piece of Mora’s ginger cake in it.” Rill put a slice of bread by his bowl. “And Clove held up the end of the rope for everybody to see while he made his speech. So that’s Clove’s hand.”

“I don’t remember a speech.”

“Nobody remembers the end of it.”

The old rope lay coiled at the far end of the table, where Tace could keep an eye on it. It was good harbour rope, three strands laid hard. For nine years it had run the blue gate lamp of Lantern Hollow down for tending and up again for the night. Tonight the lamp sat on its pin at the top of its post, lit and ropeless, showing blue through the kitchen window. Rill said it could do that for one night and not two.

The ends of a good rope are whipped, bound round and round with twine so they cannot fray. Tace always whipped his own ends, in plain harbour twine. Both ends of this rope were bound in somebody else’s whipping, and the whipping was teal.

He had seen it that afternoon, when Rill brought the rope down off the post and put it in his arms. His hand had gone to the knife on his belt before he said a word. Rill had said, “Supper first.” So this was supper. He had come up to retire his rope properly: measure it, read its tag, coil it his own way and carry it home. He had not come up to find that somebody had been at his ends.

In between mouthfuls, because he could keep two arguments going at once, he told Rill about a card game at the ropewalk last winter.

“Moss says I played the Kind Gust on her Moonlit Whale. I played the Rain Cloud. It was a different card. It looked the same.”

“I wasn’t there,” Rill said.

“Which is why you can be fair about it.”

“Eat your stew.”

“Now,” Tace said. “The ends.”

He stood his spoon upright in his bowl. It stayed there, which was a compliment to the stew. “That’s the gate lamp post.” He took the salt cellar and walked it slowly up the table from the bread. “And that is Corvin the Tinker, coming up the east road with a cart full of other people’s kettles.”

“Is it,” Rill said.

“Corvin sees the rope. Corvin can’t help it. Corvin mended my kettle once and gave it back with a whistle on it. I had not asked for a whistle.” The salt cellar reached the spoon and stopped. “Up the ladder. Off with my twine.” He lifted one end of the rope into the lamplight. “Look at that. Twenty turns, laid flat, tucked under at the finish. That’s neat. That’s cheek. And the colour! Nobody puts teal on a harbour rope unless they want to be noticed.”

Rill let him go on. She had learned from Clove that it was quicker.

“Nine years that rope did its work,” Tace said, “with my tag on it and my turns in it, and not a hand on it since.”

“Hobb’s mule,” Rill said.

“A mule hasn’t got hands.”

“She had the end of it, though. It came up in Hobb’s flour cart, so it was floury, and she ate a yard of it while Clove was talking. That’s why it’s a yard short of its tag.”

Tace took his spoon out of the stew, where it had been the gate lamp post, and laid it down. “My tags,” he said, “are never wrong.”

He got up and measured the old rope across Rill’s kitchen the old way, from his nose to the tips of his fingers. One yard, and the next. Past the stove, along the dresser, round the leg of the table and back. Eleven. The tag on its loop of wire said twelve, in his own hand.

“She was a reasonable mule,” Rill said. “It was floury.”

Tace sat down. “Eleven,” he said, the way a person names the card that has just beaten them.

But a man with one good theory does not drop it for a mule. He picked up the end again to show Rill how tight Corvin had pulled the whipping, and pressed it with his thumb. It gave. It was soft. A little teal fluff came away on his thumb, and he held it up to the lamp and frowned at it.

“This isn’t twine.”

“No,” Rill said.

He smelled it, which was not dignified. “This is wool. This is knitting wool.”

“Linnet’s,” Rill said. “From the stall in the Glowmarket. The one under the awning.”

Tace had walked under that awning on his way up from the ferry. He had thought at the time that it was a very loud colour for an awning. He looked at the salt cellar. The salt cellar had nothing to say for itself.

“Corvin wouldn’t use wool,” he said slowly. “Corvin would use wire. And put a bell on it.”

“No,” Rill said.

“Then I don’t understand it.” He sat with the end of the rope across his knees. “Clove, I’ll give you. The mule, I’ll give you. But after that I’d have sworn to it. Not a hand on it since.”

“Mine,” Rill said.

She got up, because his bowl was empty, and filled it again at the stove, and talked with her back to him, which was easier.

“Every autumn, before the wet. I bring it down and look it over and do the ends fresh. It was a good rope. I wanted it to stay a good rope.” She set the bowl in front of him. “I tried twine the first year. The twine went in one winter. Wool was what the market had, so I tried wool. The wool doesn’t go. I don’t know why. I do it fresh every autumn anyway.”

Tace’s hand went to his knife. It always did when there was somebody else’s work on a rope of his. He had the knife out of his belt and the blade against the first teal turn before he noticed what he was doing.

Then he put the knife down on the table, beside the salt cellar, and left it there.

“Nine years,” he said.

“Nine autumns,” Rill said.

“I made that rope in a week.” He turned the soft end over in his fingers. “Making’s the quick part, Rill.” He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Thank you. I’m glad it was you.” And he stopped there, which for Tace was a very short speech.

“Eat your stew,” Rill said, and he did. Before bed he put the salt cellar back beside the bread, carefully, as if he were handing Corvin back a good name.

* * *

In the morning it was drizzling. Tace stood in the East Gate square with the new rope over his arm and looked up at the sky, and did not call it a gale. Rill counted that as progress.

He had been down to the Glowmarket first thing for a ball of teal wool. Now he sat on Rill’s toolbox at the foot of the post and whipped the new ends himself. It went badly. Wool is not twine. It stretched when he pulled it and bunched when he didn’t, and the first end came out like a small teal sausage. The second end was worse. He was very proud of both of them.

Then he went up the ladder, and Rill held it, which was the wrong way round from most days. He ran the new rope through the block at the top, came down, and sent the gate lamp down and up again to see it go sweetly. All the way down and all the way up, the lamp swung on its new rope and the blue flame inside stood perfectly still, as if it had been painted there. Tace had seen it a hundred times, and he watched it anyway. It went up the post burning blue in the grey morning, the way the Hollow’s lamps do even by day, and it went sweetly.

The new rope had a new tag on a loop of wire. Tace had measured the rope that morning, nose to fingertip, twelve yards exactly. He wrote on the tag: “East Gate lamp. Twelve yards. Made T.” Then he gave Rill the pencil. Underneath, in square plain letters, she wrote: “Kept R.”

“Hobb’s due through at ten,” Rill said.

Tace tucked the loose end of the new rope up high, out of reach of anyone with an appetite. Then he coiled the old rope his own way, the harbour way, and put it over his shoulder. He untied the old tag, the one that said twelve yards and was wrong by a mule, and gave it to Rill.

At the corner of the square he turned round. “That card last winter,” he said. “It might have been the Gust.”

“I wasn’t there,” Rill said.

“No,” Tace said. “But it might.”

He told the story of the East Gate rope all the way down to the ferry, to anybody who would stand still for it. It had drizzle in it now, and a speech nobody heard the end of, and a mule with a taste for flour. It had a woman who went up a ladder every autumn for nine years with a ball of knitting wool in her pocket. It took a great deal longer to tell than the gale. It was a much better story, and he said so.

Back at the gate, Rill tied the old tag to the handle of her toolbox, where she would see it every day. She looked up at Tace’s teal ends, which were very bad, and left them exactly as they were. Autumn would be soon enough to do them properly, and she would be the one to do it, the way she always had been. Now it said so on the rope, in her own hand, right under his.