108. A Spring Outing

And then it was spring. And the cats that gathered round the well next to Nauta’s villa were all there reciting proverbs and saws and sayings about this season.

“Spring is like a child who knows poems,” said Catullus.

Woof MacTecla, the Wise Sisters’ pet dog, who was there on a visit, preferred autumn, and made it his business to dampen anything nice said about spring.

“But around a flowering tree you can find a lot of insects,” he barked.

“It is said that when spring comes, the grass grows by itself,” said Cato.

“It is also said that it is only the farmer who faithfully plants the seeds in spring that reaps a harvest in autumn,” retorted Woof.

“One swallow does not make a spring, nor does one fine day,” said the emperor Augustus. “The Greek philosopher Aristotle said that.”

“But did he say a spring or a summer?” asked Woof.

“I will say that March is windy, April rainy and May flowery,” said Don Alonso.

“Water is my element,” said the salmon MacMor leaping out of the well he had been swimming in. “So I will say that if it rains on Easter Sunday it will rain the next seven Sundays too. Or so it should.”

He was lucky to be friends with the cats. None of them ever tried to eat him.  

“I prefer autumn rain,” barked Woof.

While the cats were busy celebrating Spring spouting nuggets of folk wisdom, I went in search of Heather and Thistle, hoping they might want to come on a picnic with me.

     

I found them very busy learning chemistry from Mary the Jewess, one of Mum’s oldest friends.

Mary Prophetissima is the first known alchemist of the Western World. She invented the technique known as bain-marie or Mary’s bath.

 

It consists of putting something you wish to cook in a container and then putting that container in a second, larger container, about half filled with water or some safe liquid.Then you boil the contents of the first container in the contents of the second container.This is not only done in science labs. It is also very useful in the kitchen.

Mary promised me that there would be milk sweet for desert that night. It was a little late for me to join the class, so I thought that instead of bothering them I would have to find something else to do.

I still had the idea that a picnic was the best plan for this day, but I didn’t want to go on one with Alpin, not just then.

Of my brothers, only Devin, Thymian and Cespuglio were at  home.

I knew for sure Devin would not want to leave his computers. The only place he ever goes to is the kitchen at midnight for ice-cream. It is so long since he has stepped out into the garden or even drawn the curtains in his rooms that I believe he has forgotten what sunlight is. It would probably not only hurt his eyes but also scare him to see it. 

Thymian is an Egyptologist and was busy showing the palace’s crypts to a group of ghosts of  embalmers from Waset. That was, in my opinion, no kind of entertainment for a green and gold and blue spring day.   

As for Cespuglio, he was out in the garden pretending to be a bush. And when he does that, it is best to avoid him.

Wandering about the palace, I wandered into the nursery and found my little sister all by herself.  Since she didn’t speak to anybody and showed no interest in anyone, everybody and everyone stopped giving her as much attention she had at first received. I don’t mean she wasn’t cared for. I mean she wasn’t fussed over as much as she had been at first.

It was such a beautiful spring morning that I thought the baby should enjoy it too. I felt she had been locked up in the nursery for far too long, so I decided to take her on an outing.

“The sky is turquoise blue, the sun is pure gold and the countryside is a radiant green today,” I said. “Would you like to have breakfast in a field full of wild flowers in joyous bloom?”

  

Baby nodded. She did that once in a while. More often she would shake her head meaning ‘no.’ But both of this was only to me. Everyone else she utterly ignored. For some reason, perhaps because I had fussed over her the least, she seemed to trust me a little. 

“You have to promise to behave, eh? I don’t want to get us into trouble. Shall I take you in your pram? No? Well, if you want us to go flying, I’ll have to bind your wrist to mine with a ribbon. We’ll be like Siamese twins. Is that fine with you?”

She offered her little wrist to me and I bound us together with a purple ribbon. As soon as we were out of the palace, she began to fly like mad. I had to rush behind her, wondering how she could pull so strongly.

“Whoa! Not so fast!” I cried. “Where do you think you are going?”

It took me a while to get her to slow down a little.

“Much better,” I said when she finally calmed down. “You enjoy things more if you do them slowly. Look up at the clouds. That one looks like a bird! Look down at the fields. See the little lambs among the flowers! They look like clouds!”

And then, looking down at the fields, I spotted Alpin. He saw us too and was waving like crazy for me to fly down. When I didn’t, he came flying straight at us.

“Hey, Arley!” he called out. “Is that your sister? The one who’s rumoured to be mute? Wow! The kid can fly. I can barely follow you.”

“I hope you’re not very hungry,” I whispered to the baby. “We may have to go without breakfast.”