Strange Trades (50 page)

Once in the parlor, Florence spoke for the first time since she had left Spurwink. “I want to wash up, please.”

“Well, by the Factor’s grace, you’ve found your tongue,” said her father somewhat sarcastically. “Maybe now well learn the cause of you bringing so much shame upon our family.”

Florence said nothing, but merely went to her room. Her mother soon brought a white basin and a pitcher full of water heated on the wood stove, some towels and a washcloth. When she was alone, Florence used the chamber pot, then scrubbed herself free of Spurwink’s detestable scent. She dressed in gown, robe, and slippers trimmed in bluefox fur around the ankles. She knew now that she would never say anything about what had happened that night, come what may.

Back in the parlor, Florence sat on the couch, the center of her family’s baffled looks. Gently at first, then, as she refused to answer any of his questions, more and more roughly, her father tried to elicit what had happened from her. Florence maintained her silence throughout all her father’s cajoling and threats, his attempts at logic and reason, his appeals to honor, duty and affection. Her mother’s pleas also she ignored. As the night wore on, Roger Cairncross grew more and more irrational. Several times he gestured as if to strike her. At last he did, bringing his open palm across her face.

Florence took the blow without uttering a sound. A wild look of despair and self-disgust flashed across her father’s face. He jumped to his feet and fled the house.

Charley had sat through this cross-examination silently, offering neither consolation nor accusation. Now he arose also and left.

Soon her father returned. With him was Pastor Purbeck.

Pastor Purbeck had lost an arm to the Mill’s machinery at age twelve, some fifty years ago. That same year had seen the demise of Pastor Topseed’s youthful catechumen, a boy named Hayflick who had fallen prey to a pack of dire wolves forced down from their mountain fastness by an unusually hard winter. Young Purbeck, barely recovered from his wound and the equally traumatic surgery, had been immediately compelled by his family—a disreputable group led by a drunkard father and a termagant mother—to take his devotional vows. Shortly thereafter his family left the Valley. Upon the death of Pastor Topseed some ten years later, Purbeck had become the Valley’s youngest cleric.

Purbeck lived now in the one-room rectory attached to the Blue Devil chapel, a building on the far side of the Mill from the Cairncross home. He was tall and thin, and bore a good-sized wen at the hinge of his jaw. His eyes fairly radiated his devotion to the religion symbolized in the icon of the Factor hung on a chain around his neck. These features, combined with his empty right sleeve, formed a presence capable of frightening even grown men. More than one poor child, hurrying through the cresset-lit windowless tunnel through the Mill’s body, rushing from one square of light to another, had had the wits startled out of him by being abruptly grabbed on the shoulder by the single hand of Pastor Purbeck and questioned on elements of his catechism.

In the homey atmosphere of the Cairncross parlor Pastor Purbeck lost none of his imposing sternness. Florence shivered upon seeing him, recalling no specific incident but only the general air the Pastor had always carried, an air of suspecting everyone of guilt and sin. Tonight, she feared, she merited his suspicions.

Purbeck took off his wide-brimmed cleric’s hat. Then he sat on a footstool directly opposite Florence. He rested the hat on one bony knee. He flicked some luxdust from it with a contemplative slowness. He lifted the silver figure of the Factor on its chain to his lips and kissed it. Then he raised his gaze to Florence. She braced for a flood of accusations and threats of damnation.

Purbeck’s voice was soft and flat. “Ah, young Florence, it seems only yesterday to me that you were being consecrated into the faith. Such a pretty little girl you were. But even then rather willful. I remember when you joined the choir. ‘Why must I sing with all these others?’ you asked. ‘I prefer to sing alone.’ I found it amusing at the time, and so I let you have a solo part that Lay- day. Do you remember the song, Florence? I do. It was ‘Our Hearts Shine Like Lux in the Factor’s Sight.’ A lovely piece. Written over a hundred years ago by Holsapple. And your voice was equally lovely, dear. So sweet and piercing, such a contrast to all those massed tenors and basses. You were guaranteed a solo every Layday afterwards. Such beauty, I thought, could only serve to glorify the Factor.”

The Pastor paused a moment, turning his hard eyes ceilingward before fixing Florence with them again. “But now I reproach myself for my vanity, as well as for yours. For what good is beauty without the soul behind it? It is like putting stucco on the Mill. Underneath would still be the brick. And when the heats of summer and the chills of winter—the trials of life, if you will—had flaked all the plaster off, the brick would once more be exposed. Yet my analogy is imperfect. In the case of the Mill, we would not be ashamed to see the noble, homely brick, the true substance of our days. But in your case, my dear, we are all of us ashamed to see what lies beneath your lovely exterior.”

Now the Pastor’s voice began to modulate into those tones it assumed just prior to the inevitable moment when he would bring his single fist down on the pulpit. “Your beautiful exterior, my dear, is cracking. You have let it be mishandled and mauled, and now your soul is starting to show through. And what a sorry sight it is! Its lineaments are those of greed, selfishness, impetuosity, and stubbornness. You have revealed yourself to lack a sense of gratitude to your parents, of duty to your village, of devotion to the Factor. You have revealed yourself to be a thoughtless, reckless, immature little girl. And to compound your errors, you refuse now even to make amends for your sin by disclosing the name of your partner.”

Leaning forward, Purbeck took hold of one of Florence’s hands. She tried not to flinch, but failed to repress a slight movement. The Pastor did not comment on this, but instead launched onto a different tack.

“Do you think, my dear, that your partner will turn himself in and save you performing what you wrongly regard as a betrayal? If so, you must disabuse yourself of such a notion immediately. Although it pains me to say it, there are few men in this Valley who would move a little finger to save a woman’s virtue. But that is the sad fact of a male’s composition. That is why a man is bound by natural law to support his family—if he is lucky enough to have one—by the sweat of his brow all his days. That is why the Factor made a disproportionate number of men. They are expendable and imperfect.

“But a woman, dear Florence, a woman is different. They are so few and so rare, that their natures cannot help but be more refined and heavenly. It is woman who perpetuates our race on this sad world. When a girlchild is born—so rarely, only one to every two boys—we rejoice. All her youth she is cosseted and petted, perhaps made too much of. But we cannot help it, for we see in her a visible sign of the Factor’s grace, proof that although he has made life hard, he has not made it impossible. It is woman who must act as the conscience of our race, the moral light. So you see, all the burden of resolving this affair must devolve to you.”

Florence’s mother was crying; her father was tugging thoughtfully at one end of his mustache and nodding, as if to acknowledge his own male unworthiness. Pastor Purbeck gave her hand an extra squeeze and eyed her hopefully. Florence looked at all of them in disbelief. Then she yanked her hand away and shot to her feet.

“I won’t have it! I won’t be part of it, do you hear! Special! Holy! Duty and honor! That’s all I’ve heard all my life! Why, I’d rather work in the Mill thirty hours a day than spend one minute as the kind of creature you paint. But you won’t have a woman in there. ‘Too dangerous, too coarse,’ you say. ‘Stay home and have babies, lots and lots of babies!’ For what? So that they can live out their tiny constricted lives in this narrow Valley, bowing and scraping before the Factor? Why should I raise more little slaves for him? Ask my father’s opinion of the Factor, if you want to hear something that makes sense. No, I’ll go to my grave unwed, I swear it!”

Pastor Purbeck dropped to his knees, crushing his hat in the process. “This is close to blasphemy, girl. Much worse than mere fornication. I am going to pray for your soul now. Let those who would, join me.”

Florence’s mother got down on the floor, then Roger Cairncross too, more reluctantly. They were bowing their heads when Charley came in.

“Get up,” he said. “Get up, all of you. There’s no need of that. I’ve known all along who the man was, and now that I’ve had time to think, I’ve decided to tell.”

Florence yelled, “Don’t listen to him, he’s lying! There’s no way he could know.”

Charley regarded his sister somberly. “It was his scent, Floy. I smelled it on the playing field when I tackled him, and on you tonight. It’s that new clodder, Spurwink, Da. From the Tarcats.”

Roger Cairncross leapt up. “The Devils and I will fetch him. Keep our girl here.”

Florence threw herself on Charley, knocking him down. She rained blows on his head and shoulders, shrieking, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you! You awful, hateful prig! You and your stinking Mill can burn!”

Charley made no motion to protect himself. Eventually Florence’s rage subsided, and she crawled back to the couch. Charley raised himself off the floor. Tears washed tracks through the blood from his nose.

Spurwink was not much more bloody than Charley when they marched him into the house. One eye was swelling, and he favored one leg. Florence had feared worse. His demeanor was subdued, but still somewhat insouciant.

“Since they tell me we are to be wed soon, I might as well salve my pride and ask if you’ll have me. Well, poppet, what shall it be? Pretend you have a choice and answer me now. Will you be my wife?”

Florence was exhausted. She had no reserves left. “I am yours,” she said wearily. Spurwink grinned, thinking it was him she had addressed.

But Pastor Purbeck knew it was himself. Or rather, the Valley, the Mill, the Factor.

3
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The bulky man chafed his hands in an abstracted way. For several minutes he merely sat, rubbing those large hands together, squeezing first one then the other. At the end of this period he abruptly ceased all motion, his hands freezing into position. His conscious mind had caught his limbs again at their independent life. An expression of distaste flickered across his features. He jerked his hands and they flew apart as if they were similar poles of a lodestone. He placed them carefully down on the desk in front of him, palms flat on the felt blotter.

What made his hands betray him? Was it anxiety? Most likely. He had so much on his mind. His mill, the Factor’s upcoming visit, Alan’s strange behavior of late.… Yet why look for such deep-seated motivations? Perhaps it was only the chill. An unconscious seeking of warmth? His breath did not fog, but felt as if it should. And well it might, were the potbellied stove in the corner, sitting four-pawed on its raised hearth of green-enamelled tiles, to slacken its output any further. Yes, that was probably it. Just a basic animal instinct, nothing complicated about it.…

The man leaned back in his chair and regarded his traitorous hands. They were big-knuckled and hairy. The wiry hair disappeared at his wrists beneath the cuffs of his jacket. The hair was still black on his hands, but the short-cut stubble carpeting the enigmatic lumpy contours of his skull was mostly gray. His eyes were dark, his nose showed signs of having been broken more than once, as did so many ballplayers’ noses—although those days were long behind him—and his jaw was blunt and perpetually out- thrust.

Old. He was getting too old for this job. How many more years could he cling to this position? Just as long as he earned a good share of the Factor’s largess for his mill. But how long would that be? Long enough to train his protégé and insure his accession, he hoped. Factor grant him that much, he prayed.

The room, the man suddenly realized, felt chillier than just a minute ago. Looking up from the plain scratched woodgrained surface of his desk beyond the blotter—upon which were scattered pasteboard rectangles punched with holes and scribbled with figures, through which were threaded hanks of shining luminous threads of various subtle hues and intensities—he spotted the stovetender asleep, something he had not registered with his earlier glance.

The boy wore a red coat with brass buttons that he put on each morning from his wooden locker among the others just inside the Mill doors. This was the badge of the stoveboys, those who formed, along with the stockboys, the lowest rank of Mill workers. The boy sat on a short three-legged stool beside the sooty coal stove that was rapidly cooling. His chin hung on his chest, his eyes were closed, and his breath buzzed in and out as if he were acting the part of a diligent bellows.

The man regarded the boy with a mix of good-humored solicitous pity and mild aggravation. He knew how hard it was for these youths—coming into the Mill at age twelve, having known mostly freedom and few responsibilities—to be burdened with one of the most important tasks in the Mill, that of guarding and ministering to and always watching the contained fires that heated the Mill during the winter, and which must never be allowed to escape. Also, it was no easy physical task, constantly hauling scuttles of coal up the long flights of stairs.

On the other hand, these boys were now workers. They were getting paid, drawing a share of credit from the commonly held gold which derived from the Factor’s purchase of their cloth each year. These boys had to learn proper work habits early on, if they were ever to be relied upon to intelligently manage the various machines that all contributed toward producing the luxcloth.