by John Jakes
Giles had seniority at the ironworks and so had no trouble arranging the boy’s transfer to the finery. There Giles put him to work handling the long iron bar with which three or four pigs at a time were maneuvered so that the bellows-heated charcoal would melt them uniformly. The boy developed a nice touch, and Giles soon found himself paying a compliment.
“You have a good hand and a natural wit for this trade, Joseph. You have an agreeable disposition, too—except, as I’ve noticed when the other apprentices rag you about your stepfather’s occupation. Take a leaf from the owner’s book. He’s strong-minded, all right. But he knows it’s better to hide it sometimes. He sells his product with smiles and soft words, not by bludgeoning his customers when they resist.”
Privately, the older man doubted the boy would listen. The mold of Joseph’s life was already formed, and the molten iron of his character was already pouring into it; circumstances and illiterate parents had no doubt condemned the boy to a life of obscurity. Unless, of course, one of his occasional violent outbursts didn’t condemn him to death in a brawl first.
Yet, perhaps because Giles was growing older and realized that he had been foolish when he chose a bachelor’s life, he continued to encourage Joseph. He taught him not only the trade of ironmaking but its lore.
“Iron rules the world, my boy. It breaks the sod and spans the continents—wins the wars, too.” The Archer furnace cast cannonballs for the Navy.
Giles raised his great round cheese of a face to the sky. “Iron came to the earth from, quite literally, only God knows where. Meteor iron has been known since the earliest days.”
The boy asked quickly, “What’s a meteor, Master Hazard?”
A smile spread over Giles’s face. “Shooting star. Surely you’ve seen ’em.”
The boy responded with a thoughtful nod. Giles went on to talk about a great many things that gradually acquired meaning for Joseph as he learned more of the trade. Giles discoursed on the history of iron making. He spoke of the stückofen and flüssofen that had existed in Germany since the tenth century; of the hauts fourneaux that had spread in France in the fifteenth; of the Walloons of Belgium, who had developed the finery remelting process about sixty years ago.
“But all that is just a tick on the great clock of iron. Saint Dunstan worked iron seven hundred years ago. He had a forge in his bedroom at Glastonbury, they say. The Egyptian pharaohs were buried with iron amulets and dagger blades because the metal was so rare and valuable. So potent. I have read of daggers from Babylon and Mesopotamia, long millenniums before Christ.”
“I don’t read very well—”
“Someone should teach you,” Giles grumbled. “Or you should teach yourself.”
The boy took that in, then said, “What I meant is, I’ve never heard that word you used. Mill-something.”
“Millenniums. A millennium is a thousand years.”
“Oh.” A blink. Giles was pleased to see the boy was storing the information away.
“A man can learn a great deal by reading, Joseph. Not everything, but a lot. I am speaking of a man who wants to be more than a charcoal burner.”
Joseph understood. He nodded with no sign of resentment.
“Can you read at all?” Giles asked.
“Oh, yes.” A pause, while the boy looked at Giles. Then he admitted, “Only a little. My mother tried to teach me with the Bible. I like the stories about heroes. Samson. David. But Windom didn’t like my mother teaching me, so she stopped.”
Giles pondered. “If you’ll stay half an hour extra every night, I’ll try.”
“Windom might not—”
“Lie,” Giles cut in. “If he asks why you’re late, lie to him. That is, if you mean to make something of yourself. Something other than a charcoal burner.”
“Do you think I can, Master Hazard?”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Then you will. The race is to the driven, not the swift.”
That conversation had taken place the preceding summer. Through the autumn and winter Giles taught the boy. He taught him well, so well that Joseph couldn’t help sharing his accomplishments with his mother. One night when Windom was away somewhere, roistering, he showed her a book he had smuggled home, a controversial book titled Metallum Martis, by the recently deceased Dud Dudley, bastard son of the fifth Lord Dudley.
Dud Dudley claimed to have smelted iron successfully with mineral coal—or pit coles—as Joseph read during his laborious but successful demonstration to Bess.
Her eyes sparkled with admiration. Then the light faded. “Learning is a splendid thing, Joseph. But it can lead to excessive pride. The center of your life must be Jesus.”
He disliked hearing that but kept quiet.
“Only two things matter in this life,” she went on. “Love of God’s son and the love of one person for another. The kind of love I feel for you,” she finished, suddenly clutching him against her.
He heard her weeping, felt her shivering. The killing time had whipped out of her all hopes but her hope of heaven, all loyalties but her loyalty to him and to the Savior he was coming to distrust. He was sorry for her, but he meant to live his own life.
They said nothing to Windom about the lessons. But evidently some glimmer of pride displayed itself in Bess’s manner, angering her husband. One summer night, not long after the quarrel over Joseph’s taking Windom’s name, the boy came home to find his mother bloodied and bruised, half conscious on the dirt floor, and Windom gone. She would say nothing about what had happened. She pleaded until Joseph promised not to carry out his threats against his stepfather. But the core of rage was growing steadily within him.
As the Shropshire hills turned gold and red with the coming of another autumn, Joseph’s progress grew so pleasing to Giles that he took a bold step.
“I’m going to speak to the ironmaster and ask him to let you spend an hour each week with the tutor who lives in the mansion. Archer’s own boys can’t keep the fellow busy all the time. I feel sure Archer will permit the tutor to give you a little mathematics, maybe even some Latin.”
“Why should he? I’m nobody.”
Old Giles laughed and rumpled Joseph’s hair. “He will be happy to gain a loyal and well-educated employee at virtually no cost. That’s part of it. The other part is that Archer’s a decent man. There are a few in the world.”
Joseph didn’t really believe him until Giles told him Archer had consented. Excited, the boy forgot his natural caution as he ran home that night. Heavy mist lay on the river and the hills, and he was chilled when he reached the cottage. Windom was there, grimy and half drunk. Joseph, so thrilled at the idea of someone else thinking well of him, ignored his mother’s warning looks and blurted the news about the tutor.
Windom didn’t care for what he heard. “In Christ’s name, why does the young fool need a teacher?” He studied Joseph with scorn that ran through the boy like a sword. “He’s ignorant. As ignorant as me.”
Bess twisted her apron, confused, not knowing how to escape the trap created by the breathless boy. She walked rapidly to the fire, knocking over the poker in her nervousness. Joseph’s eyes were on his stepfather as he said, “Not anymore. Old Giles has been teaching me.”
“To do what?”
“To read. To better myself.”
Windom snickered, twisting the tip of his little finger back and forth in his nostril. He rubbed his finger on his breeches and laughed. “What a waste. You don’t need book learning to work in the finery.”
“You do if you want to be rich like Master Archer.”
“Oh, you think you’ll be rich someday, do you?”
Joseph’s lips lost color. “I’ll be damned to hell if I’ll be as poor and stupid as you.”
Windom bellowed and started toward the boy. Bess left off her nervous stirring of the stew kettle hanging on its chain in the hearth. Hands extended, she rushed to her husband. “He didn’t mean that, Thad. Be merciful as Jesus taught we
shou—”
“Stupid pious bitch, I’ll deal with him as I want,” Windom shouted. He cuffed her on the side of the head.
She staggered, slammed her shoulder hard against the mantel, cried out.
The pain somehow destroyed her allegiance to the Savior. Her eyes flew open wide. She spied the fallen poker, snatched it, and raised it to threaten her husband. It was a pathetic gesture, but Windom chose to see it as one of great menace. He turned on her.
Frightened and angry, Joseph grappled with his stepfather. Windom beat him off. Bess, terrified, fumbled with the poker, unable to get a firm grip on it. Windom easily ripped it from her hand and, while Joseph watched, used it to hit her twice on the temple. She sprawled on her face with a thread of blood running down her cheek.
Joseph stared at her for one moment, then in uncontrolled rage lunged for the poker. Windom threw it against the wall. Joseph ran to the hearth, seized the kettle chain, flung the hot stew over Windom, who screamed and pressed his hands to his scalded eyes.
Joseph’s hands were burned but he hardly felt it. He raised the empty kettle and smashed it against Windom’s head. When Windom fell, his cries subsiding, Joseph wrapped the chain around his stepfather’s neck and pulled until it was half embedded in the flesh. Windom finally stopped kicking and lay still.
Joseph ran out into the mist and vomited. His palms started to burn. He began to realize what he’d done. He wanted to break down and cry, to run away, but he didn’t. He forced himself toward the open door. Once inside the cottage again, he saw his mother’s back moving slowly. She was alive!
After many attempts, he got her on her feet. She muttered incoherently and laughed occasionally. He put a shawl around her and guided her down the misty lanes to Giles Hazard’s cottage, two miles distant. On the way she faltered several times, but his urgent pleas kept her going.
Giles came grumping to the cottage door, a candle illuminating his face. Moments later, he helped Bess to his still-warm truckle bed. He examined her, then stood back, fingering his chin.
“I’ll run for a doctor,” Joseph said. “Where do I find him?”
Old Giles couldn’t conceal his worry. “She’s too badly hurt for a doctor to do any good.”
The news stunned the boy, bringing tears at last. “That can’t be.”
“Look at her! She’s barely breathing. As for the barber who serves this district, he’s illiterate. He can do nothing for her, and he’ll only ask questions about the cause of her injuries.”
The statement itself was a kind of question; Joseph had only blurted that Windom had hit her. “All we can do is wait,” Giles concluded, rubbing an eye.
“And pray to Jesus.”
Joseph said it out of desperation. Giles put a kettle on the fire. Joseph sank to his knees by the bed, folded his hands, and prayed with every bit of his being.
There was no sign that the prayer was heard. Bess Windom’s breathing grew slower, feebler, although she survived until the river mist floating outside the cottage began to glow with light. Gently, Giles touched Joseph’s shoulder, jogged him awake.
“Sit by the fire,” Giles said, pulling a coverlet across Bess’s battered, peaceful face. “It’s all over with her. She’s gone to find her Jesus, and nothing else can be done. It’s different with you. What happens to you depends on whether you’re caught.” Giles drew a breath. “Your stepfather’s dead, isn’t he?”
The boy nodded.
“I thought so. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come here. He’d have tended her.”
All of Joseph’s hurt went into a single cry. “I’m glad I killed him!”
“I’m sure you are. But the fact is you’re a murderer. Archer won’t employ a murderer, and I can’t say I blame him. Still—”
His voice softened; his pretense of sternness had been a failure. “I don’t want to see you hanged or quartered, either. What can we do?” He started pacing. “They’ll search for Joseph Moffat, won’t they? All right, you’ll be someone else.”
The decision made, Giles inscribed a paper with a statement that the bearer, Joseph Hazard, a nephew, was on an errand of family business. After a moment’s hesitation, Giles signed his own name, adding the words Uncle & Guardian and several flourishes beneath; the flourishes somehow lent it authenticity.
Giles promised to bury Bess in a Christian manner and insisted the boy could not afford to stay and help. Then, giving him two shillings and some bread tied in a kerchief, instructions about avoiding main roads, and finally a long, fatherly hug, Giles sent a bewildered Joseph Moffat out of the door and into the mist-grayed hills.
On a lonely road in Gloucestershire, something made Joseph pause and look up. The night was flawlessly clear, with thousands of stars alight. Eastward, above the roofline of a dairy barn, he saw a streak of white. Something afire, dropping very fast toward the earth.
Iron. God was sending iron to man, just as Giles had said. The boy could understand why ironmasters were so proud of their calling. It was a trade born and blessed in heaven.
Awed, Joseph watched until the white streak vanished near the horizon. He imagined a huge chunk of star iron smoldering in a fresh crater somewhere. There could be no more potent material in creation. No wonder wars were won, and distances conquered, by machines and equipment of iron.
From that moment, the direction of his life was never in doubt.
Joseph pressed on toward the port of Bristol on the Avon. He was not stopped once, nor required to produce the paper Giles had prepared so carefully. Showed you how much the world valued Thad Windom, didn’t it?
Joseph mourned the loss of his mother but felt little regret over having slain his stepfather. He had done what had to be done; vengeance had come as a companion to necessity.
On the journey he found himself thinking strange new thoughts, many of them about religion. He could never subscribe to his dead mother’s faith in a gentle, forgiving, and apparently powerless Christ. But he discovered a new sympathy with the Old Testament. Bess had read him many stories about strong, brave men who didn’t flinch from bold action. He felt a strengthening kinship with them, and with their God, as he trudged through fields and forests to the great port of western England.
After several false starts, he located a ship’s master who soon would be sailing for the New World—a part of the globe in which many Englishmen were finding second chances these days. The man was peg-legged Captain Smollet, his vessel the Gull of Portsmouth. The captain’s proposition was straightforward.
“You sign a document indenturing yourself to me. In return, I’ll provide you with passage and keep while you’re aboard. We’ll be calling at Bridgetown, Barbados, then going on to the colonies in America. They need skilled workers there. If you know ironworking as well as you claim, I should have no trouble placing you.”
The captain peered at Joseph over the rim of the ale pot he was just lifting to his mouth. The boy felt no resentment of the captain’s hard bargain; indeed, he rather admired it. A man determined to succeed always had to make difficult choices, he was discovering. So it had been with the heroes of the Old Testament. Abraham. Moses. If he was to be like any man, it would be one of them.
“Well, Hazard, what’s your answer?”
“You haven’t told me how long I’ll be a servant.”
Captain Smollet grinned admiringly. “Some are so lathered with excitement—or so guilty over past crimes”—Joseph kept his face absolutely calm, ignoring the probe—”they clean forget to ask till we’re on our way down the estuary.” He eyed the contents of his drinking pot. “The indenture is seven years.”
At first Joseph wanted to shout no. But he didn’t. Smollet took his silence for refusal, shrugged, and rose, throwing coins on the soiled table.
Being bound to another man as a slave for seven years wouldn’t be easy, Joseph thought. Yet he could use that time wisely and profitably. Educate himself, both generally, as Giles had urged, and in every aspect of his chosen trade. After seven yea
rs he would be a free man, in a new land where there was a need for ironmasters, and where no one had ever heard of Thad Windom.
At the inn door, Captain Smollet stopped when he heard, “I’ll sign.”
Rain was falling that evening when Joseph hurried along a wharf toward the Gull of Portsmouth. Light glowed in the windows of the captain’s quarters at the stern. How bright and inviting it looked. In that cabin Joseph would shortly make his mark on the articles of indenture.
He smiled, thinking of Smollet. What a rogue. He had asked only a couple of perfunctory questions about Joseph’s background. Fearing the offer of indenture might be withdrawn, Joseph had rashly shown the document Giles had provided. Smollet had scanned it and chuckled as he handed it back.
“A family errand. Taking you all the way to the colonies. Fancy that.”
Their eyes met. Smollet knew the boy was on the run and didn’t care. Joseph admired the captain’s ruthless enterprise. He liked him more than ever.
Seven years wasn’t so long. Not so long at all.
That thought in mind, he paused at a stair leading down to the water. He descended half way, clung to the slimy wood with one hand, and dipped his other in the salty water once, twice, three times. He did the same with his other hand. If there was any symbolic blood on him, it was gone now. He was making a new beginning.
He examined his dripping fingers by the light of the nearby ship’s lanterns. He laughed aloud. Earlier there had been some charcoal dust still embedded beneath his nails. It too was gone.
He whistled as he stepped on to the gangplank. He went aboard Smollet’s vessel with rising spirits. About to put himself in bondage for seven years, he faced the prospect with a sharp new sense of personal freedom.
In the New World things were going to be different for Joseph Mof—no, Joseph Hazard. God would make it happen. His God, growing more familiar and companionable by the hour, was a Deity who favored the brave man who didn’t shrink from the hard action.
Joseph and his God had become well acquainted during the past few days. They were close now; friends.
