Sons of Fortune (10 page)

The cake made a delicious, crusty porridge in the saliva around his tongue.

“Good an’ claggy!” she said, watching him chew the glutinous mass. “Aye. Thy father were ’ere—eay, two month back. My man were a Stevenson man, thou knows.” She lifted the cooked havercake on the spittle and draped it from the “flake”—a sort of horizontal drying rack just below the ceiling near the back door. “They don’t bake it this way in these parts.” She wrinkled her nose at Caspar as though joining him with her in something not quite proper. “But I’m from Wensleydale, so it’s my way.”

Wensleydale was half a day’s walk away.

“Go and see ’im,” she said, nodding toward the yard, where the hammering was still going on.

A snowball stung his cheeks and eyes as soon as he poked his head out the door. Through the ringing of his ears he could hear Ingilby’s staccato giggle. That was to teach Caspar for seeing him cry.

“Nay!” A roar came from the shed across the yard. A stocky, raven-haired man with a full beard came to the doorway and shouted something in a dialect so thick that Caspar, who could understand anything said in the East Riding of Yorkshire, could not decipher a single word. Ingilby turned huffily and leaned over the wall of the pigsty to scratch the sow.

“Master Stevenson!” the man said with a smile that was shrewd rather than broad. He held out his left hand for Caspar to shake. “Come in out the cold.”

The shed was a carpenter’s workshop, so well organized it seemed twice as large inside as out. A gluepot mewed and gurgled on a small coke brazier near the window. Mr. Ingilby—for it was obviously he—guided Caspar to a space beside its warmth. Only then did Caspar notice that he had no right hand. Instead his right forearm was bound up in a leather harness that had all kinds of straps and bindings, one set of which now held fast a mallet; when the man had stood at the door Caspar was certain he held the mallet in his hand.

He saw Caspar’s fascinated stare. “Art right-handed?” he asked.

“Aye,” Caspar said, flexing the fingers of his right hand as if that proved it.

“Did’st ever think as how the right hand is the idiot of the pair?”

“No!” Caspar said; nor could he believe it.

Mr. Ingilby smiled knowingly. He took up a scrap of timber and clamped it under the bench holdfast; then he laid a round mallet and chisel down beside it and wafted Caspar an invitation. “I’ll prove it to thee,” he said. “Cut me a square pocket in that wood.”

Amused, Caspar picked up the tools. “How big?”

“One chisel-width will serve.”

Caspar placed the chisel as perpendicular to the edge of the wood as his eye could judge it and set to tapping with the mallet, cutting cross-grain first.

“Now, see thee,” Mr. Ingilby said after Caspar had made several cuts. “Which hand is doing precision work, and which is doing slave’s work?”

Caspar thought and then chuckled in disbelief of his own eyes. “Maybe you’re right, sir,” he said as he laid down the tools.

“Aye,” the other affirmed. “Happen I am.”

“Did you lose your hand…?” Caspar began. “I mean…how?”

“Aye.” Mr. Ingilby answered the unspoken part of the question. “On a Stevenson job. The very last week in Bramhope Tunnel. Eighteen forty-nine. A runaway wagon, it was, and me the fool that stopped it! But not before it had squandered that bit of me.” He waved the vanished hand with a flourish. “But I have a Stevenson pension to be thankful for. To see me out. And Missus, if she overlives me.” He began to tighten the straps that bound the mallet; then he stopped as if a new thought had struck him. “Thy father”—he spoke like an oracle—“is a great man. But even rarer”—now he looked searchingly at Caspar—“he’s a good man, too. I’ve known men would die for ’im.” He looked away. “Nay, I’d die for ’im.”

Caspar felt tears pressing at the back of his eyelids, and a lump grew in his throat; this tribute was so unexpected. Mr. Ingilby had perhaps said more than he intended. At all events he now caught some of Caspar’s embarrassment. He cleared his throat. “Anygate,” he said, “I’ve a deal of respect for thy father. If I may do aught for thee by way of service, thou needs but ask on. I’ll do it gladly.” Fussily he resumed the work he had been at before Caspar and his son arrived, a plain coffin of deal boards.

Caspar had once heard his mother say to his father, “I never see a crow fly overhead without thinking ‘how may I put that crow to our advantage’!” The moment the words left her lips he knew he was of the same company.
Yes!
he had thought.
That’s the way to be. That’s me too!

So now he thought feverishly for some service Mr. Ingilby could render him. All he could think of on the spur of the moment was that he might need a good, stout study cupboard; but even before the thought was complete he turned it down. Study cupboards were of little use to a roe, for as long as he was in the place he remained at every pharaoh’s beck and call. No, he’d think of something.

Then suddenly, with no thought at all, he heard himself say: “Teach me to carpent.”

“You what?”

“To be a carpenter.” He laughed nervously; now he had said it he didn’t even know if he wanted to be able to “carpent.”

Mr. Ingilby broke into a slow smile. “Aye,” he said with decision. “By God, so I will! I don’t know what thy father would say, but if such is thy wish—so be it. When?”

“How long d’you work?”

“Till seven as a rule. It all depends.”

“From half-past six, then, to seven, three times a week.”

Mr. Ingilby tousled Caspar’s hair in delight. “Eay! So I’ve gotten a ’prentice, and ’is name is Stevenson, son to Lord John!”

Only Stevenson men were allowed to call his father “Lord” John, which had been his nickname in his navvying days. Caspar felt all at home, and the feeling was warm.

As he left, Mrs. Ingilby pressed a flake of havercake smothered in blue-milk cheese into his hand. It was a banquet. How he envied young Ingilby, too, as he trudged back across the causeway for Latin theme. It was a thousand-mile walk.

He was barely through the yard gate when someone dealt him a vicious thump in the back. It almost sent him sprawling.

“Hi!” He turned around, snarling, and threw a punch before he even knew who his attacker was. It turned out to be Swift mi, who had put that enigmatic note in his pocket for Cossack to find, and had got a Latin impost for his reward. Soon they were fighting as hard as the slippery cobbles and the snow would allow.

Before they reached any resolution, however, Swift major, head of pharaohs at Old School, came upon them. He pulled them apart by their collars, effortlessly. “Barn heating for both of you,” he said as he let go. He walked on without a backward look.

Swift mi smiled at Caspar, as if there had never been the slightest animosity between them. Caspar smiled back; he had enjoyed the fight as far as it went.

“Sorry,” Swift mi said, watching his brother all the way down the cloisters. “He can be hells decent at home, you know.”

“So can my bro,” Caspar said. It seemed to give him a bond with Swift mi. “What’s a Barn beating?”

“Oh, a light paddling with a hairbrush or a slipper by the King o’ the Barn. Only it’s in front of all the other chaps.”

“When?”

“That’s the worst. No set time. They can send for you any time between seven and lockup. Perhaps Trench’ll be decent, seeing it’s his first day. If you want to fight, by the way, all you do is call out ‘Ring! Ring!’ at the top of your voice and everyone gathers around and forms a ring. Then you may fight. They can’t beat you for that. That’s legal. But what we were doing was plain ragging and really we ought to have got a house beating for it. We’re hells lucky, really.”

They were lucky, too, that Trench came out and called, “Baaaaaaaarns!” very soon after seven that evening, so they hadn’t long to stew. Everybody ran indoors and found something in or near the Barn to busy himself with. The tradition was that although a fellow was beaten in full view of everyone, nobody watched. Instead they all sat and pretended to bury their heads in a book, or a letter home, or making a model—any other business but watching the whacks. In reality they found every way to peep without being seen: peering through fingers, staring at concealed bits of looking-glass, beetling their brows, and straining their eye muscles. A casual onlooker would be astonished that thirty or so boys could be so indifferent to the torture of several of their fellows, until he learned that to be caught openly watching was to join the tortured boys, bending bare-bottomed over the top oak table.

Today five bare bottoms gleamed palely in the dark of the winter evening. Five boys bent over, resting on the oak, mutely waiting. Again Caspar had that embarrassing erection, but beneath the table; no one, he thought, would notice. The beatings went from left to right. No one had ever worked out whether it was better to go first or last. The first victim got it over with quickest but the King o’ the Barn’s hand was then freshest. The last got the whacks from the tiredest arm but had to endure the sounds—and the sight, for they were not allowed to look away—of all the previous assaults. The argument was endless.

So, too, was the argument about which was worse, hairbrush or shoe. Opinions pro and anti varied, depending mainly on which weapon the protagonists or antagonists had sampled last.

Caspar was to be whacked third. Boy (for failing to reconcile Malaby’s carpet and Euclid) was last. And Trench was to let them sample the arguments in favour of the hairbrush. Caspar was soon glad not to be next to Boy, for there was one further refinement to the ritual. Before each thrashing Trench called out “Turn!” whereupon the boy about to get it turned to face the one whose thrashing would come next. And there they lay, present and proximal victim, eyeball to eyeball, proximal seeing in present’s face an augury of his own punishment, blow by blow.

A Barn beating was a standard four whacks, unless the offence would normally have merited a house beating and only the caprice of the pharaoh had made it otherwise; then the boy got six. Today Swift mi and Caspar were getting six, the other three would have the regular four apiece.

“Turn!” Trench said.

Caspar saw a flurry of hair beyond the back of the head of the fat boy next to him. The whacks sounded very distant. The victim made no sound.

The hammering of his heart at the pit of his neck drowned everything. Surely, he thought, it must be ringing around the Barn? Surely, at the very least, it must be making the table shiver? His midriff felt very cold without the trousers.

“Turn!”

The fat boy turned, looked in mortal anguish at Caspar, then shut his eyes so tightly they vanished into twin craters of puckered flesh. Was it worse to be whacked if you were fat? Were there more nerves? Or was it better because of more padding?

Whack! That didn’t sound distant. And if the fat boy’s response was any guide, it was worse to be fat. “Hooooo!” He let out a draught of foul breath into Caspar’s face, stopping him from daring to inhale for a moment. As the other three blows followed, Caspar saw him blanch, bite, and bare his teeth like a death’s-head, shiver, and rise to the edge of whimpering. Caspar could have done with someone bolder to his left. How he wished there was some magic phrase that would make the clock slip a bit.
Please,
he thought,
I don’t want to escape it, but I do want it to be so that I’m walking away, rubbing my bum. Please! Now!!

“Turn!”

Swift’s face. Swift mi. Swift winked. He winked back.
Youch!
Pain, pain, pain. A stinging radiated from high on his right buttock. Nothing existed now but the skin on his bottom. It strained for the next. His ears, too, strained for every little clue that would tell of the descent of that fierce arm. Couldn’t there be some way of—
eeek!
That was worse, that was worse. Lower down, same side. The stinging area was doubled. Concentrate on your hands; they’re not in pain at all. Lucky hands. Think of them. Lucky, lucky—
wham!
Oh my God, what has happened to time?

The whole of his right buttock was like flesh in the aftermath of wasps. If his had been an ordinary offence, the next whack would have been the last. But this was only halfway! For the next three he lay as still and unreacting as possible, deliberately thinking of nothing, concentrating on staring blankly into Swift’s mask—which he purposely put out of focus—and on not twitching a muscle.

Trench laid them the same way—top, middle, lower buttock. Not a square inch of skin there did not shriek its protest as he walked away. Trench then stood where Caspar had bent, and gave Swift his six.

Down in the study passages Caspar was surprised how soon the sting went. It wasn’t so bad, really—except for those actual moments and the waiting, bent over and bare. “A light paddling”—Swift mi was right, actually. He wasn’t a bad sort, Swift mi. Caspar began to feel brave. Nothing at home had ever prepared him for this. His father had never raised a hand to them; he could be terrifying enough without any violence. So all this hitting and pain had been novel and frightening. He thought he had come through it rather well.

Then he saw Blenkinsop standing in the open door of his own study and smiling. “Hello, young ’un. You took it pretty well, I thought.”

“Did you see?” Caspar asked. He felt very manly to be talking so to a senior fellow.

“Every stroke. How d’you feel? Does it hurt much?”

He was being very pleasant. For a moment Caspar forgot how bestial Blenkinsop had been to Boy. “It stings a bit.”

“Ah!” Blenkinsop gripped his arm and pulled him into the study. “I’ve got the very stuff for that. Rub it on now and by this time tomorrow there won’t be a mark to show.”

“No, honestly, Blenkinsop. I’ll be all right. Don’t bother.”

“No bother at all, young ’un. As a matter of fact, I’ve taken a liking to you. A great liking. So it’ll be a pleasure. Let’s see now.”

Caspar stood awkwardly, wishing he could just turn and run away.

“Come on!” Blenkinsop squatted jovially in front of him and began undoing Caspar’s flybuttons.

The young boy giggled in embarrassment. “I’ll do it,” he said. “You’re tickling.” He turned around and finished unbuttoning himself.