“Yes sir.”
“All right then. My prentices sleep in the loft over the kitchen, and you eat at table with my wife and children and me, though I’ll thank you not to speak until spoken to inside the house—I won’t have my prentices thinking they have the same rights as my own children, cause you don’t.”
“Yes sir.”
“And as for now, I need to het up this strap again. So you start to work the bellows there.”
Alvin walked to the bellows handle. It was T-shaped, for two-handed working. But Alvin twisted the end piece so it was at the same angle as the hammer handle when the smith lifted it into the air. Then he started to work the bellows with one arm.
“What are you doing, boy!” shouted Alvin’s new master. “You won’t last ten minutes working the bellows with one arm.”
“Then in ten minutes I’ll switch to my left arm,” said Alvin. “But I won’t get myself ready for the hammer if I bend over every time I work the bellows.”
The smith looked at him angrily. Then he laughed. “You got a fresh mouth, boy, but you also got sense. Do it your way as long as you can, but see to it you don’t slack on wind—I need a hot fire, and that’s more important than you working up strength in your arms right now.”
Alvin set to pumping. Soon he could feel the pain of this unaccustomed movement gnawing at his neck and chest and back. But he kept going, never breaking the rhythm of the bellows, forcing his body to endure. He could have made the muscles grow right now, teaching them the pattern with his hidden power. But that wasn’t what Alvin was here for, he was pretty sure of that. So he let the pain come as it would, and his body change as it would, each new muscle earned by his own effort.
Alvin lasted fifteen minutes with his right hand, ten minutes with his left. He felt the muscles aching and liked the way it felt. Makepeace Smith seemed pleased enough with what he did. Alvin knew that he’d be changed here, that his work would make a strong and skillful man of him.
A man, but not a Maker. Not yet fully on the road to what he was born to be. But since there hadn’t been a Maker in the world in a thousand years or more, or so folks said, who was he going to prentice himself to in order to learn that trade?
4
Modesty
WHITLEY PHYSICKER HELPED Peggy down from the carriage in front of a fine-looking house in one of the best neighborhoods of Dekane. “I’d like to see you to the door, Peggy Guester, just to make sure they’re home to greet you.” said he, but she knew he didn’t expect her to allow him to do that. If anybody knew how little she liked to have folks fussing over her, it was Doctor Whitley Physicker. So she thanked him kindly and bid him farewell.
She heard his carriage rolling off, the horse clopping on the cobblestones, as she rapped the knocker on the door. A maid opened the door, a German girl so fresh off the boat she couldn’t even speak enough English to ask Peggy’s name. She invited her in with a gesture, seated her on a bench in the hall, and then held out a silver plate.
What was the plate for? Peggy couldn’t hardly make sense at all of what she saw inside this foreign girl’s mind. She was expecting something—what? A little slip of paper, but Peggy didn’t have a notion why. The girl thrust the salver closer to her, insisting. Peggy couldn’t do a thing but shrug.
Finally the German girl gave up and went away. Peggy sat on the bench and waited. She searched for heartfires in the house, and found the one she looked for. Only then did she realize what the plate was for—her calling card. Folks in the city, rich folks anyway, they had little cards they put their name on, to announce theirself when they came to visit. Peggy even remembered reading about it in a book, but it was a book from the Crown Colonies and she never thought folks in free lands kept such formality.
Soon the lady of the house came, the German girl shadowing her, peering from behind her fine day gown. Peggy knew from the lady’s heartfire that she didn’t think herself dressed in any partickler finery today, but to Peggy she was like the Queen herself.
Peggy looked into her heartfire and found what she had hoped for. The lady wasn’t annoyed a bit at seeing Peggy there, merely curious. Oh, the lady was judging her, of course—Peggy never met a soul, least of all herself, what didn’t make some judgment of every stranger—but the judgment was kind. When the lady looked at Peggy’s plain clothes, she saw a country girl, not a pauper; when the lady looked at Peggy’s stern, expressionless face, she saw a child who had known pain, not an ugly girl. And when the lady imagined Peggy’s pain, her first thought was to try to heal her. All in all, the lady was good. Peggy made no mistake in coming here.
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure to meet you,” said the lady. Her voice was sweet and soft and beautiful.
“I reckon not, Mistress Modesty,” said Peggy. “My name is Peggy. I think you had some acquaintance with my papa, years ago.”
“Perhaps if you told me his name?”
“Horace,” said Peggy. “Horace Guester, of Hatrack, Hio.”
Peggy saw the turmoil in her heartfire at the very sound of his name—glad memory, and yet a glimmer of fear of what this strange girl might intend. Yet the fear quickly subsided—her husband had died several years ago, and so was beyond hurt. And none of these emotions showed in the lady’s face, which held its sweet and friendly expression with perfect grace. Modesty turned to the maid and spoke a few words of fluent German. The maid curtsied and was gone.
“Did your father send you?” asked the lady. Her unspoken question was: Did your father tell you what I meant to him, and he to me?
“No,” said Peggy. “I come here on my own. He’d die if he found out I knew your name. You see I’m a torch, Mistress Modesty. He has no secrets, not from me. Nobody does.”
It didn’t surprise Peggy one bit how Modesty took that news. Most folks would’ve thought right off about all the secrets they hoped she wouldn’t guess. Instead, the lady thought at once how awful it must be for Peggy, to know things that didn’t bear knowing. “How long has it been that way?” she said softly. “Surely not when you were just a little girl. The Lord is too merciful to let such knowledge fill a child’s mind.”
“I reckon the Lord didn’t concern himself much with me,” said Peggy.
The lady reached out and touched Peggy’s cheek. Peggy knew the lady had noticed she was somewhat dirty from the dust of the road. But what the lady mostly thought of wasn’t clothes or cleanliness. A torch, she was thinking. That’s why a girl so young wears such a cold, forbidding face. Too much knowledge has made this girl so hard.
“Why have you come to me?” asked Modesty. “Surely you don’t mean harm to me or your father, for such an ancient transgression.”
“Oh, no ma’am,” said Peggy. Never in her life did her own voice sound so harsh to her, but compared to this lady she was squawking like a crow. “If I’m torch enough to know your secret, I’m torch enough to know there was some good in it as well as sin, and as far as the sin goes, Papa’s paying for it still, paying double and treble every year of his life.”
Tears came into Modesty’s eyes. “I had hoped,” she murmured, “I had hoped that time would ease the shame of it, and he’d remember it now with joy. Like one of the ancient faded tapestries in England, whose colors are no longer bright, but whose image is the very shadow of beauty itself.”
Peggy might’ve told her that he felt more than joy, that he relived all his feelings for her like it happened yesterday. But that was Papa’s secret, and not hers to tell.
Modesty touched a kerchief to her eyes, to take away the tears that trembled there. “All these years I’ve never spoken to a mortal soul of this. I’ve poured out my heart only to the Lord, and he’s forgiven me; yet I find it somehow exhilarating to speak of this to someone whose face I can see with my eyes, and not just my imagination. Tell me, child, if you didn’t come as the avenging angel, have you come perhaps as a forgiving one?”
Mistress Modesty spoke with such elegance that Peggy found herself reaching
for the language of the books she read, instead of her natural talking voice. “I’m a—a supplicant,” said Peggy. “I come for help. I come to change my life, and I thought, being how you loved my father, you might be willing to do a kindness for his daughter.”
The lady smiled at her. “And if you’re half the torch you claim to be, you already know my answer. What kind of help do you need? My husband left me a good deal of money when he died, but I think it isn’t money that you need.”
“No ma’am,” said Peggy. But what was it that she wanted, now that she was here? How could she explain why she had come? “I didn’t like the life I saw for myself back in Hatrack. I wanted to—”
“Escape?”
“Somewhat like that, I reckon, but not exactly.”
“You want to become something other than what you are,” said the lady.
“Yes, Mistress Modesty.”
“What is it that you wish to be?”
Peggy had never thought of words to describe what she dreamed of, but now, with Mistress Modesty before her, Peggy saw how simply those dreams might be expressed. “You, ma’am.”
The lady smiled and touched her own face, her own hair. “Oh, my child, you must have higher aims than that. Much of what is best in me, your father gave me. The way he loved me taught me that perhaps—no, not perhaps—that I was worth loving. I have learned much more since then, more of what a woman is and ought to be. What a lovely symmetry, if I can give back to his daughter some of the wisdom he brought to me.” She laughed gently. “I never imagined myself taking a pupil.”
“More like a disciple, I think, Mistress Modesty.”
“Neither pupil nor disciple. Will you stay here as a guest in my home? Will you let me be your friend?”
Even though Peggy couldn’t rightly see the paths of her own life, she still felt them open up inside her, all the futures she could hope for, waiting for her in this place. “Oh, ma’am,” she whispered, “if you will.”
5
Dowser
HANK DOWSER’D SEEN him prentice boys a-plenty over the years, but never a one as fresh as this. Here was Makepeace Smith bent over old Picklewing’s left forehoof, all set to drive in the nail, and up spoke his boy.
“Not that nail,” said the blacksmith’s prentice boy. “Not there.”
Well, that was as fine a moment as Hank ever saw for the master to give his prentice boy a sharp cuff on the ear and send him bawling into the house. But Makepeace Smith just nodded, then looked at the boy.
“You think you can nail this shoe, Alvin?” asked the master. “She’s a big one, this mare, but I see you got you some inches since last I looked.”
“I can,” said the boy.
“Now just hold your horses,” said Hank Dowser. “Picklewing’s my only animal, and I can’t just up and buy me another. I don’t want your prentice boy learning to be a farrier and making his mistakes at my poor old nag’s expense.” And since he was already speaking his mind so frank like, Hank just rattled right on like a plain fool. “Who’s the master here, anyway?” said he.
Well, that was the wrong thing to say. Hank knew it the second the words slipped out of his mouth. You don’t say Who’s the master, not in front of the prentice. And sure enough, Makepeace Smith’s ears turned red and he stood up, all six feet of him, with arms like oxlegs and hands that could crush a bear’s face, and he said, “I’m the master here, and when I say my prentice is good enough for the job, then he’s good enough, or you can take your custom to another smith.”
“Now just hold your horses,” said Hank Dowser.
“I am holding your horse,” said Makepeace Smith. “Or at least your horse’s leg. In fact, your horse is leaning over on me something heavy. And now you start asking if I’m master of my own smithy.”
Anybody whose head don’t leak knows that riling the smith who’s shoeing your horse is about as smart as provoking the bees on your way in for the honey. Hank Dowser just hoped Makepeace would be somewhat easier to calm down. “Course you are,” said Hank. “I meant nothing by it, except I was surprised when your prentice spoke up so smart and all.”
“Well that’s cause he’s got him a knack,” said Makepeace Smith. “This boy Alvin, he can tell things about the inside of a horse’s hoof—where a nail’s going to hold, where it’s going into soft hurting flesh, that kind of thing. He’s a natural farrier. And if he says to me, Don’t drive that nail, well I know by now that’s a nail I don’t want to drive, cause it’ll make the horse crazy or lame.”
Hank Dowser grinned and backed off. It was a hot day, that’s all, that’s why tempers were so high. “I have respect for every man’s knack,” said Hank. “Just like I expect them to have respect for mine.”
“In that case, I’ve held up your horse long enough,” said the smith. “Here, Alvin, nail this shoe.”
If the boy had swaggered or simpered or sneered, Hank would’ve had a reason to be so mad. But Prentice Alvin just hunkered down with nails in his mouth and hooked up the left forehoof. Picklewing leaned on him, but the boy was right tall, even though his face had no sign of beard yet. and he was like a twin of his master, when it come to muscle under his skin. It wasn’t one minute, the horse leaning that way, before the shoe was nailed in place. Picklewing didn’t so much as shiver, let alone dance the way he usually did when the nails went in. And now that Hank thought about it a little, Picklewing always did seem to favor that leg just a little, as if something was a mite sore inside the hoof. But he’d been that way so long Hank hardly noticed it no more
The prentice boy stepped back out of the way, still not showing any brag at all. He wasn’t doing a thing that was the tiniest bit benoctious, but Hank still felt an unreasonable anger at the boy. “How old is he?” asked Hank.
“Fourteen,” said Makepeace Smith. “He come to me when he was eleven.”
“A mite old for a prentice, wouldn’t you say?” asked Hank.
“A year late in arriving, he was, because of the war with the Reds and the French—he’s from out in the Wobbish country.”
“Them was hard years,” said Hank. “Lucky me I was in Irrakwa the whole time. Dowsing wells for windmills the whole way along the railroad they were building. Fourteen, eh? Tall as he is, I reckon he lied about his age even so.”
If the boy disliked being named a liar, he didn’t show no sign of it. Which made Hank Dowser all the more annoyed. That boy was like a burr under his saddle, just made him mad whatever the boy did.
“No,” said the smith. “We know his age well enough. He was born right here in Hatrack River, fourteen years ago, when his folks were passing through on their way west. We buried his oldest brother up on the hill. Big for his age though, ain’t he?”
They might’ve been discussing a horse instead of a boy. But Prentice Alvin didn’t seem to mind. He just stood there, staring right through them as if they were made of glass.
“You got four years left of his contract, then?” asked Hank.
“Bit more. Till he’s near nineteen.”
“Well, if he’s already this good, I reckon he’ll be buying out early and going journeyman.” Hank looked, but the boy didn’t brighten up at this idea, neither.
“I reckon not,” said Makepeace Smith. “He’s good with the horses, but he gets careless with the forge. Any smith can do shoes, but it takes a real smith to do a plow blade or a wheel tire, and a knack with horses don’t help a bit with that. Why, for my masterpiece I done me an anchor! I was in Netticut at the time, mind you. There ain’t much call for anchors here, I reckon.”
Picklewing snorted and stamped—but he didn’t dance lively, the way horses do when their new shoes are troublesome. It was a good set of shoes, well shod. Even that made Hank mad at the prentice boy. His own anger made no sense to him. The boy had put on Picklewing’s last shoe, on a leg that might have been lamed in another farrier’s hands. The boy had done him good. So why this wrath burning just under the surface, getting worse whatever the boy did or s
aid?
Hank shrugged off his feelings. “Well, that’s work well done,” he said. “And so it’s time for me to do my part.”
“Now, we both know a dowsing’s worth more than a shoeing,” said the smith. “So if you need any more work done, you know I owe it to you, free and clear.”
“I will come back, Makepeace Smith, next time my nag needs shoes.” And because Hank Dowser was a Christian man and felt ashamed of how he disliked the boy, he added praise for the lad. “I reckon I’ll be sure to come back while this boy’s still under prentice bond to you, him having the knack he’s got.”
The boy might as well not’ve heard the good words, and the master smith just chuckled. “You ain’t the only one who feels like that,” he said.
At that moment Hank Dowser understood something that he might’ve missed otherwise. This boy’s knack with hooves was good for trade, and Makepeace Smith was just the kind of man who’d hold that boy to every day of his contract, to profit from the boy’s name for clean shoeing with no horses lost by laming. All a greedy master had to do was claim the boy wasn’t good at forgework or something like, then use that as a pretext to hold him fast. In the meantime the boy’d make a name for this place as the best farriery in eastern Hio. Money in Makepeace Smith’s pocket, and nothing for the boy at all, not money nor freedom.
The law was the law, and the smith wasn’t breaking it—he had the right to every day of that boy’s service. But the custom was to let a prentice go as soon as he had the skill and had sense enough to make his way in the world. Otherwise, if a boy couldn’t hope for early freedom, why should he work hard to learn as quick as he could, work as hard as he could? They said even the slaveowners in the Crown Colonies let their best slaves earn a little pocket money on the side, so’s they could buy their freedom sometime before they died.
No, Makepeace Smith wasn’t breaking no law, but he was breaking the custom of masters with their prentice boys, and Hank thought ill of him for it; it was a mean sort of master who’d keep a boy who’d already learned everything the master had to teach.
Prentice Alvin: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume III Page 9
