The Land of the Silver Apples - Farmer Nancy (книги бесплатно txt) 📗

The Great Yule feast began to wind down. Wives packed up the remaining food and roused husbands from comfortable stupors. The blacksmith was carried home by his slaves, and more than one farmer was forcibly pushed out the door. Eventually, the hall emptied.

“Shall we go?” Mother said. She’d already wrapped Lucy in a woolen cloak.

“Not yet,” said Father. “I have business to attend to. We’ll wait until the Bard leaves.”

Jack saw the Bard come alert—not that the old man was ever anything else.

“It may take a long time,” Father explained. “I wouldn’t want to keep you from your bed.”

“That’s quite all right,” said the Bard.

“It will be boring.”

“I’m seldom bored,” the old man said genially.

Father frowned but turned brusquely to the chief. “It’s about Pega.”

“Has she done something wrong?” the chief said. He leaned back on his bench and stretched out his legs.

“No, no. It’s something else. Tell me, is she healthy?”

What a strange question,thought Jack.

“As healthy as any child. She catches colds and so forth.”

“Is she a good worker?”

“Ah!” The chief suddenly woke up. “An absolutely wonderful worker! For the size of her, she’s amazing.”

“Giles, what are you up to?” said the Bard. Now Lucy had awakened and eagerly pressed herself against Father’s side.

“This is farm business,” Father said.

“You have boys coming every day to help you,” said the Bard. “What more do you need?”

“I plan to buy a few cows for butter and cheese.”

It was the first Jack had heard of the plan. Father had all the work he could handle, even with the help of the village boys. That was an arrangement the Bard had worked out to free Jack for his apprenticeship. Father owned chickens, pigeons, geese, and thirty sheep, as well as the beehives and herb garden that were Mother’s domain. During the summer he planted oats, beans, and turnips as well. How could he possibly take on cows?

“Pega’s a valuable slave,” said the chief.

“She’s stunted and ugly. I’m surprised she doesn’t turn the milk sour,” Father said.

“On the contrary. She turns milk into fine yellow cheese,” said the chief.

They were bargaining as though Pega were a sheep! Jack was so outraged, he couldn’t trust himself to speak. He looked up and saw the Bard watching him intently.

“She looks weak. If I were a cow, I’d kick her out of the barn,” said Giles Crookleg.

“She stares them down as well as any sheepdog,” the chief replied.

“Giles,” Mother said. “We have no room for cows.”

So Mother didn’t know about the scheme either,thought Jack.

“Be still,” said Father. “I’ll give you five silver pennies for the wench.”

“Five!” cried the chief. “The skill in Pega’s hands is worth at least fifty.”

“For a sickly runt? I think not!”

“Observe her face, Giles. She has the scars of cowpox. She is safe from the great pox. I’ll call her from the other house so you can see.”

“Father,” said Jack hesitantly.

“Be still. Dairymaids are well known for lung-sickness. Because of our friendship, however, I’ll give you ten pennies,” said Giles Crookleg.

“Father, buying slaves is evil,” Jack said. A hush fell over the hall. All eyes turned to him.

“Excuse me?” said Father in a cold voice.

“He said, ‘buying slaves is evil’,” Mother repeated.

Giles Crookleg rose to his feet. “How dare you oppose me!”

“There, there,” the chief said hastily. “We have an expert on evil here. Brother Aiden, what’s your opinion in this matter?”

He eats at the chief’s table,Jack thought. He won’t say anything.The boy’s heart pounded and his face burned. He’d never opposed Father so directly or publicly. He hated doing it. But he knew how terrible it was to be sold like a cooking pot, to be discarded when you wore out.

“Slavery is wrong,” said Brother Aiden in his gentle voice. Shock went through the room, although the Bard merely smiled. “It is lawful, as you know, but you were asking me about evil. My companions on the Holy Isle—those who were not slaughtered—were sold into captivity. Your own children were taken, Giles, and returned only by the greatest luck. How could you possibly want to own another human being?”

The hearth fire crackled and the wind fiddled with the thatch. Father looked thoroughly ashamed of himself. “I suppose—I suppose I don’t,” he said.

“Da, you promised me!” Lucy cried suddenly. “You said you’d buy me Pega if I’d be good! And I was!”

“So there we have it,” said the Bard.

“Giles!” Mother gasped.

“I didwant to start a dairy,” Father said in his own defense.

“You promised me!” shrieked Lucy.

“Hush,” said Mother, attempting to pull her from Father’s side. The little girl clung to him, sobbing wildly, and Jack could see his father’s resolve crumble.

“I gave my word,” he said, putting his arm around his beloved daughter.

“I tell you what. I’ll go down to forty pieces of silver,” said the chief. He’d been startled by Brother Aiden’s words, but Jack guessed he wasn’t all that upset by them. Brother Aiden was always going on at people about sin.

“Thirty,” Father said automatically.

“Giles, that’s Lucy’s dowry,” Mother said.

“She’ll marry well without it.”

“Done!” said the chief.

Do something, somebody,thought Jack. He looked from Brother Aiden to the Bard and saw them looking back. At him. It was his task. He suddenly saw, in his mind’s eye, Lucy throwing a tantrum at the need-fire ceremony and Pega taking the candle into her own hands. And he knew what his part in this had to be.

“I’ll buy Pega for thirty-one pennies,” said Jack. “And then I’ll free her.” He saw the Bard and Brother Aiden relax.

“What?” roared Father. “Where did you get that kind of money?”

“From the Northmen. I buried it under the floor of the Roman house.”

“You liedto me? You withheld money for your own selfish uses? You’re no son of mine, you disloyal whelp!”

“I’m not disloyal,” Jack said wearily. “I suppose you won’t believe me.” He was shaking with nerves. His voice trembled and his heart ached within him, but he wouldn’t back down.

“Leave my house at once!” shouted Giles Crookleg in a perfect fury. “Never return again!”

And Lucy wailed, “You promised me, Da. I was such a good girl, too!”

Chapter Five

THE FARSEEING CHARM

The old Roman house shuddered as the wind blew off the North Sea. Black ice covered the path outside, and cold crept in through a dozen cracks in the walls. Not for the first time, Jack wished the Bard lived somewhere else. But the old man said the life force was strong on the cliff. “It always is at the border of two realms,” he explained. “The sea tries to capture the land, and the land forces it back. Between them is a great upwelling of power. It makes me feel quite young.”

It makes me feel quite old,Jack thought bitterly. The cold and dark depressed him, and his heart was sore from being cast out by Father. Not a day went by when he didn’t regret his rash action at the Yule feast. I lost my home and family—for what?For a pesky girl who had glued herself to him like a hungry, yowling cat.

Jack couldn’t really blame Pega. When he had grandly presented the thirty-one pieces of silver and the freeing was duly recorded by Brother Aiden, the chief had said, “Well, that’s one less mouth to feed.”

For the first time Jack realized what he’d done. He’d taken a scrawny, unlovable girl away from the only livelihood she knew. No one had a use for Pega as a paid servant. No one, in fact, wanted her around. She might mark unborn babies or make the sheep come down with foot rot. Who could tell what effect that weird birthmark on her face would have? Even Father wouldn’t pay her a wage, not that Jack dared ask him.