When the Wisdom entered the Winespring's kitchen three days after the funeral, it was on the pretense of visiting, but she waited only til she'd draped her knitted shawl over the embellished chair rungs before broaching the matter they both knew she'd come about.
Thanking the mayor's wife for the tea she was handed, Doral Barran set the mug on the tabletop and cupped it between her large hands. "The girl." It was more statement than it was inquiry.
"Upstairs," the other supplied. "Abed, like as not; was, last I looked in on her. I've put her next to my Egwene."
"Poor mite," the Wisdom sighed, sipping her mellow brew politely. "What is to become of her?" This, too, was almost rhetorical, but the mayor's wife answered it anyhow with a delicate shurg.
"What of Elnor's people, down in Devon Ride?" she put out the previously tried option like a plate of uneaten sweetcakes. "There was talk of a brother, there. She went to his wedding, I believe, not too many years ago."
"Hm." Mistress Barran idly chivvied her mug between her palms, peering through the steam as though divining.
"I don't mind keeping her here—I wouldn't, even if Elnor hadn't been my friend—" Mistress al'Vere went on hurriedly, "Til perhaps someone could get word to that uncle..." the rest she left demurely hanging.
No, the Wisdom thought, not uncharitably, but you hadn't thought to acquire another daughter, and no one is asking you to. Instead, she murmured, "I'd hate to lose her to that Cambria woman."
"Or she might hire out," Mistress al'Vere suggested, hands full of plates. "The Elews down the way should be glad of the help, what with another little'un due along so soon." She shrugged a bit helplessly. "She's nearly grown."
"Aye." Mistress Barran mused. "'Nearly' being the axle pin."
"I'm not saying it isn't a bad business all the way 'round, Doral." The innkeeper's wife was becoming a tad resentful at being herded.
"Well." The Wisdom let go the breath she'd been holding pensively back. "It's no secret I've had my eye on the girl." One shoulder lifted in an offhand manner. "I've meant to take her one for some while now. The Pattern simply provides her apprenticeship to start a few years sooner than expected, that's all."
"Oh, I dunno." Mistress al'Vere sucked her teeth, offering well-meaning, though misplaced, advice. "She's a chancy bet, Doral. Willful little thing, but in all the time I've had her here, she's done ought else but sleep." Her palms slapped the table. "Ate hardly enough to feed a bird, and nary a word to anyone. And, you say it's not the fever what took Danell and Elnor...?"
Mistress Barran shook her head. "No." But that was to be expected. "Sometimes," she said gently, "there's so little difference between heart-sick and body-sick to make no difference a'tall." She placed her callused hands atop the other woman's reassuringly. "Give her time, and something to fill it with, and she'll do us proud."
"I expect you've the right of it," she gave sway a little halfheartedly.
"She watched them die, Marin," the Wisdom reminded, catching sight in the other's eye of the chariness begotten of the unsettling backlash dealing with the bereaved child. "That's bound to leave its mark on anybody, let alone a girl her age."
Mistress al'Vere dipped her head, a little chastened. "Aye. I'll fetch her, then?"
Mistress Barran nodded. "I do mean to take her as my apprentice; it'd be more than a shame to let her waste herself any other way." Rising from her chair, she knuckled the small of her broad back. "Besides...what with Deirdree gone, it's getting to be more work than these old bones can manage."
Mistress al'Vere scoffed off her contemporary's complaint with a flippant wave of the hand as she quit the room in a rustle of skirts.
A double tread on the back staircase some minutes later announced her return.
Nynaeve al'Meara, the girl in question, entered the kitchen with the softly prompting Mistress al'Vere at her back. Though her long hair was tangled, she'd obviously put some effort into smoothing it on the short way downstairs. Both hands were now fisted in her rumpled skirts, and didn't look as if they'd budge even for the Dark Hunt.
"Hello, Nynaeve." the Wisdom stood to address her prospective student.
Huge doe-eyes regarded her out of a pinched, achingly solemn face.
"Go on, then." Mistress al'Vere prodded her more firmly into the room; her charge gave a blank look over her shoulder that, but for the apathy of one so newly orphaned, would have been reproachful. The Wisdom suppressed a smile. Worse than a mule, that one. At scarce fourteen, she was small, if not scrawny, and not likely to get any bigger—although one would hope she'd grow into those bony hips.
"I came to see how you are," she said.
"Fine." the girl all but whispered. "Thank you." The lie was practiced, smooth; you would almost have believed it.
The Wisdom spoke to the girl as if to an adult; she deserved some recognition, at least. "It's a passing strange thing, the Pattern of our lives," she began. Her tone was firm, reasonable: anything but patronizing. "Often, we get no say at all in the weaving of it, and sometimes the threads seem tangled beyond sorting. But here, I'm offering you a choice." It really was no choice at all; the girl would be Wisdom, no two ways about it. Yet it was important that she see it that way, as a choice. "I want you to come and study with me, as my apprentice."
Eyes dark as indigo dye and round as teacups stared impassively up at her from their reddened rims. Whatever thoughts might be stirring behind them, none showed on her face. "Not just the odd lesson in herb lore of an afternoon, mind." They'd had those every so often over the past year or so; it could be no surprise to anyone when Doral announced she meant to take on another apprentice; she hadn't bothered with subtlety even grooming the al'Meara girl up for the post. "I mean for you to come and stay with me, learn the trade every hour of the day... or night, as it happens. Ours is not a calling that sleeps with the sun, like a farmer or a blacksmith."
Those eyes peered up at her for all the world like the dark end of the shaft of an iced-over well. Was that flash the glint of hope, or did she mistake herself?
"It's an offer I've always meant to make," Mistress Barran confided, mitigating her abruptness somewhat. "I can't see the harm of beginning a few years sooner than intended." She did not touch on the alternatives offered, the powerlessness of being fourteen and suddenly alone in the world with half a village full of bodies claiming to do-for and know best; she didn't want to spook the girl with unnecessary things they both knew well enough.
Those eyes blinked, slowly, deliberately, all the while unmoving. Good; she was alive in there, at least.
"You're good stock, girl." Mistress Barran told her firmly. "I mean to see you make something of it." More gently, she went on, "The Wisdom's cottage is a small one, but I daresay there's room enough for two. You could have a place there, if you want it. ...Would you like that, Nynaeve?"
In one brief, staccato motion, the girl nodded.
"That's settled, then." Mistress Barran took up her shawl and stick. "I'll expect you on my doorstep in the morning before my rooster's had the time to crow twice." And without another word or glance, the Wisdom bustled from the Inn, her turned back bespeaking full confidence of compliance with her demands.