The Blacksmith

by Howe, Barbara;

  He studied me from under bushy black eyebrows. “Sent you, eh?” He went back to polishing. After a bit, he said, “Ever been tested for magic talent?”

  “Aye, when I was twelve, like everybody else. I’ve got a little, but nothing to brag about.”

  “Fire, or earth?”

  “Both. I can light a fire, and dig a bit, and nothing else. I could’ve joined either guild, if I’d wanted.”

  “Can you hold a shield against the heat from the forge?”

  “Nae.”

  “Shame. Would’ve been handy.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “So why didn’t you? Become a wizard, that is. Most boys think that’s easier and more exciting than being a blacksmith.”

  “I don’t mind hard work, and I was already as big as some men, and still growing. Uncle Will had agreed to take me on as apprentice, and I wanted to be a top-notch smith more than a one-flame wizard.”

  “If hard work doesn’t scare you, there’s another way to earn a certificate. Make a masterpiece, instead.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A piece of work just for show that’s complicated enough, and has enough variety, to show you know what smithcraft is all about. Sign on with another master in town, work on it in your free time, and bring it to the guild meeting when it’s done. The local guild, that is, not the royal association. If they decide it’s good enough, they’ll advise us to certify you. It would take months, but not as long as waiting for a chance to work for Randall or me.”

  I chewed on that. “I’d have to pay for it out of my own pocket, I suppose.”

  “Of course. You won’t get it back either. Guild rules say you have to turn it over to them before they’ll advise us to certify you.”

  “Frost it! That’s a steep price for a bit of paper.”

  “Depends on how bad you want it. Other smiths have done it. Take a look at the masterpieces in the guildhall, and see what you think.”

  “I will, if Grandmaster Randall doesn’t have room for me either.”

  “He won’t. There’s only one queue. There’s a roster in the guild hall, which you should sign. Whenever a journeyman leaves either of us, we have to take whoever’s next on the list. The local guild would have our heads if we didn’t—they say that’s the only way that’s fair.”

  I groaned. “I’ll head for the guildhall next, then, if you’ll tell me how to get there.”

  “From here, easy. You can’t miss it.”

  The clerk added my name without comment to a fat ledger.

  “How long’s the wait?” I said.

  He scratched his nose and started counting backwards, working his way to a bookmarked page, where half the names had been struck through. “About two-and-a-half years, I’d say.”

  “How long would it take to make a masterpiece?”

  “Not less than three months, if you’re in a tearing hurry and work on it every day, including Sundays. Most take six months to a year.”

  My shoulder ached just thinking about doing nothing more than swinging a hammer, seven days a week, for months, but I was in a hurry. Even if I wasn’t… “Why would anybody wait nearly three years if they could be done in less than one?”

  “Most journeymen want the chance to learn from the grandmasters.”

  I’d trained under Will Archer, and he’d been the best. I’d be a better smith in three years, anyway, with or without their help. “I would, too, if I was starting out, but it’s not enough of a payout for my time, when I’m good enough to be a master now.”

  The clerk gave me a long look over his spectacles. “Making a masterpiece is hard work, and it’ll cost you—”

  “But by being a master earlier, I’d make it up.”

  “Maybe. Assuming the Council likes what you’ve done. They might not, despite your high opinion of yourself. And when you turn it over to the guild to be judged, we strike your name from the roster. If they don’t accept it, you’ll have to sign the roster again, at the end—”

  “Frostbite.”

  “Assuming they don’t tell you not to bother, you’ll never be good enough. They’ve done that, too. But if you want to try, take a look at the masterpieces here in the hall. Take your time.”

  I had already been eyeing the ironwork lining the walls. In the right place, a few would have been useful—a garden gate, or a candelabrum too big for anything other than a lord’s manor house. A few others were nice to look at, like the statues the duke had in his garden just to make it pretty. But the others…

  One freestanding monstrosity, taller than my head, was a mess of grape clusters, wisteria, thorny blackberries, and other fanciful vegetation that would never grow close together. It looked off-balance, too, but a light poke set it turning on its base. Not off-balance at all. Whoever made it, he was a damn good smith. Too bad it looked like a thicket in need of clearing out.

  Most showed that the smith knew every trick any smith in Frankland had ever thought of, without being pretty or useful. In Abertee, we’d never had enough charcoal or coal, or pig iron cheap and ready to hand that we could waste on junk like this. Only the duke and a few other rich folk could afford ironwork just for show, and they made sure what they had was worth looking at. For the rest of us, anything tossed on the scrap heap got pulled back out and reused. And reused, until it rusted away or crumbled into pieces.

  On the way out, I asked the clerk what they would do when they got a new masterpiece.

  “Shove one of the older ones into the shed out back, along with the rest.”

  “There can’t be more.”

  “Sure there are. These are the most recent, and a few older pieces the guild is most proud of. We’ve been collecting them for centuries. The basement’s already crammed full, and we’ll run out of room in the shed in another decade or two.”

  I left, shaking my head over the waste of good iron.

  Grandmaster Randall’s smithy door stopped me in my tracks. I gaped at the lintel. I didn’t have to duck.

  Inside, the grandmaster was obvious right away. Only a couple of inches shorter than me, his bald head gleamed in the red light. We measured each other for a moment. I liked what I saw—laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, a nose broken and healed without the Earth Guild’s help, and a ready smile.

  He turned that smile on me. “Welcome, stranger. It’s rare I meet a man bigger than me.”

  “Aye, nobody’s topped me since I was sixteen. Only my uncle and brother have come close.”

  His smile widened. “There’re more like you? Good God. Where? You sound like you’re from up north.”

  “Aye, sir. Abertee.”

  “Abertee, eh? You put me in mind of another man I met from Abertee, more years ago than I care to remember, when we were both journeymen in Sheffield—Will Damned-if-I-can-remember-his-last-name.”

  “That would’ve been my uncle, Will Archer.”

  When I left, a couple hours later, I had a good dinner under my belt, a sketched-out map in my pocket marked with the locations of other smithies that might take on a journeyman, and a pledge that he’d buy me a beer at The Hammer and Anvil some night after I’d had a chance to settle in. Maybe Blacksburg wasn’t such a bad place, after all.

  Master Hal

  The next few days I roamed the city, keeping Charcoal reined in to a slow walk, chatting up anyone willing to talk—a rag picker here, a tinsmith there, pretty lasses everywhere. The friendliest of the lot, a green­grocer’s daughter, lived on the same street as the boarding house.

  But mostly I studied the ironwork. There was plenty—gates, fences, window grills, balcony railings, lanterns, hitching rings, doorknockers. You name it, it was there, and made to be pretty, not just because they needed it. Even the iron straps on the stable doors had three-lobed ends for show. Some looked hard, most didn’t, but near
ly all I could have done. Even the pieces I hadn’t seen before were obvious, once I got a close look.

  If not for the grill on its window, I wouldn’t have given the shop a second glance. I had no more use for a store selling books than for one selling hair ribbons. Less—I’d bought hair ribbons for a winsome lass before. But after eyeing the grill, I started down the street, then backtracked and stared at the scroll behind the glass—a map of North Frankland, twice as big as the largest Uncle Will had.

  I pressed my face against the grill, but reflections made it hard to see. On a closer look, inside, I drooled. This map was detailed enough to have Nettleton on it.

  The shopkeeper told me what he wanted for it, and I walked away, grumbling. I never could see why something someone made while sitting at a desk all day should cost so much.

  My foot was already in the stirrup before another idea sent me back in for a quire of foolscap. The charcoal I could get from a smithy. My head swam with ideas. The problem wouldn’t be knowing what to put in a masterpiece—it would be deciding what to leave out, or I’d spend two years on it. I stuffed the paper in my saddlebags and went on surveying the ironware.

  I had started at the edge of the city, and worked my way in. The biggest, fanciest pieces—the fence around the duke’s palace, the Fire Guild gate, and the town hall’s clock tower—were in the city square. I edged around the palace and eased out into the square, but jerked back out of sight. To get a good look at the duke’s gate, I’d have to be in full view of the Water Guildhall. It sat catty-cornered to the palace, and on the same little rise, with a good view of the parade grounds in front.

  Aristos went this way and that across the square, either thumbing their noses at the Water Guild, or they were so used to it that it stopped bothering them. Maybe it never bothered them. Her Iciness was on their side, after all.

  After that I started looking for the smithies Master Randall had marked on the map. The first smithy’s yard was weedy and untidy, the buildings needed repairs, and a couple of apprentices loafed around the side. I didn’t stop. The second smithy looked more prosperous. I started talking terms with the master, but when I said I wanted to work on a masterpiece, he said, “Fine, but it’ll be on your own time.”

  “That’s what I’d expect.”

  “And you’ll have to pay for every bit of charcoal and every scrap of iron you use.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “And don’t think you can cheat me and get away with it. I keep track of everything coming in and everything going out, and I’ll know if you cheat me.”

  Nobody in Abertee would say that to me and hope to get away with it. I clenched my jaw. “How many journeymen have cheated you?”

  His mouth settled into a thin line. “None, because they know I’m watching. Anybody’ll cheat you if they can get away with it.”

  “My Granddad used to say a man is quickest to accuse you of the sins he’s guilty of himself. I mostly tell people off for being too big for their boots. See you.” I walked out and didn’t look back.

  The third smithy was doing a brisk business in ordinary household hard­ware—pokers, hinges, latches, door pulls, and the like—but the master looked like he was chewing lemons. I was beginning to doubt Master Randall’s judgement. When Master Hal said he could only promise work on a week-to-week basis, I said that suited me fine.

  When I talked about making a masterpiece, and promised to pay him for everything I used, he shrugged. “You can if you want, but let me warn you—in the fifteen years I’ve run this smithy, I’ve had a dozen or so journeymen work on masterpieces. Most gave up after a while, ‘cause it was too much trouble. Of the ones that finished, well…”

  “The guild turned it down?”

  “That, or the blacksmiths’ guild approved it, and the swordsmiths still thumbed their noses at it. I’ve known some that got certified that way, but no one working for me ever did.”

  I needed work, so I shrugged it off. We came to terms without much trouble, he set me to making firedogs, and I dove in with a good will. It felt good to be back to work, even though drawing a deep breath made me cough. I stopped worrying and enjoyed myself for a while.

  We closed early on Saturday, and he said, “You’ve gotten off to a real good start. Come on down to the pub with me.”

  “Sure. Where? The Hammer and Anvil?”

  He made a face. “No, I don’t go there often. I can’t take the high and mighty attitudes of some of their regulars. It’s the Three Horseshoes for me.”

  I followed him to the Three Horseshoes, where he introduced me to a tableful of farriers. They made room, but nobody offered to buy the newcomer a beer. Still, I wasn’t having a bad time until the smith I’d called a cheat stomped in, and greeted Master Hal like his best buddy. He saw me, and went off in a corner by himself, where he gave me dark glares over his pint.

  When the talk got around to women, as it usually does, that freckle-faced earth witch kept coming to mind, but she was far away, and I’d seen pretty faces in Blacksburg. It was still early…

  The farriers got happy in their cups, and when one suggested heading to Mama Somebody’s whorehouse, they said it was a great idea and staggered out into the street. They turned one way; I turned the other. Master Hal said, “Aren’t you coming, Duncan?”

  The farrier who’d raised the idea snickered. “Maybe he’s not interested.” Another said, “He’s so big everywhere else, there wasn’t anything left…” That set them all laughing.

  I said, “I don’t like paying for stale goods, when there’s fresher to be had for free.” They stopped laughing. I turned and walked away.

  Plenty of people have accused me of acting high and mighty, and I don’t deny it. Next time, I’d go to the Hammer and Anvil. Maybe I’d like that crowd better.

  On Sunday, I rode Charcoal miles out into the countryside—far enough away to give my lungs and head a chance to clean out in the crisp, cool air. I stopped at a country inn for beer and beef pie. When the pie was gone, I fished the paper and charcoal out of my saddlebags, and started sketching ideas. After an afternoon’s hard work, I tore them up and rode back to the city in a black mood.

  Granny Mildred’s advice, most of which I meant to ignore, rang in my ears. Stop being neighbourly, my arse. But keeping my mouth shut, I had to admit, was good advice. Too bad I hadn’t taken it. You can’t ask somebody if they took something you said as an insult if you think the odds are at least even they didn’t, and you don’t want them to start thinking maybe they should have.

  Maybe someday I would learn to keep my mouth shut.

  Come Monday morning, Master Hal acted as friendly as the week before. Maybe I shouldn’t have worried. He asked me what I’d done on Sunday, and I told him about the torn up sketches.

  He laughed. “Told you it was hard work. If you ask me, it’s wasted time and money. Those certificates are to keep the competition down, so the smiths that have theirs can charge more than the rest of us. It’s a scam. That’s all it is.”

  That brought me up short. I’d heard muttering along those lines in Abertee, but not so strong, and it had always been from those who had no chance of earning one, so I’d not paid it much mind. I said, “Maybe you should have tried to get certified.”

  He scowled. “I did. I didn’t do a masterpiece, but I worked for Brother Randall. He said I wasn’t good enough. The hell I wasn’t. I’ve got my own smithy now, apprentices and all. People buy what I make, so who’s to say I’m not good enough?”

  I didn’t say it, not then. If he hadn’t made a fuss, I wouldn’t have given it any heed—plenty of good smiths in Abertee weren’t certified—but I thought it more than once in the coming days. He was good at what he did, but what he did was limited. He didn’t have the patience to make knives or dozens of yards of fencing, the eye to make something pretty, or the head to make a tool he’d never seen.

 
; I didn’t see all that right away. What bothered me at the time was his inclination to blame anyone but himself for his troubles.

  “The Guild stinks,” he said. “I pay a fortune every year in dues. If I didn’t, I could have as nice a house as Master Paul.”

  “Master Paul pays the same dues,” I said. “Maybe he manages his money better. And it’s fair that everybody pays—the Guild takes care of us, we have to take care of the Guild.”

  “Takes care of us, my arse. Let me tell you what the Guild does for me: nothing.”

  “The Guild keeps the duke and the other aristos from taking everything you’ve made and paying you halfpence for it.”

  “They don’t want the stuff I make, so what good does that do me? The Guild sets the prices too low for the things I do make. The apprenticeship fees aren’t high enough, either.”

  “You earn the same off them as any other master.”

  “No, I don’t. They’re such a sorry lot they only give me half the work they’re supposed to.”

  “Which is fair,” I said, “since you’re only teaching them half what they need to know.”

  It went downhill from there. A tailor came into the smithy one day, waving his hands and not using the right names for things. Master Hal was short with him, and would have sent him away empty-handed if I hadn’t figured out he wanted an auger and a couple of clamps. Master Hal was happy to make a sale, but didn’t like me showing him up. It didn’t help that the tailor came back a couple of days later, asking for ‘that chap who knows what’s what.’

  Master Hal didn’t invite me to come along to the Three Horseshoes again. When we closed on Saturday, I went to the Hammer and Anvil. Master Clive was there, talking to a cutler. He waved me over, bought me a pint, and we talked knives for the better part of two hours.

  When Master Randall showed up, he made good on his promise, and asked if I had started thinking about a masterpiece. I told him about tearing up the sketches, and he smiled.