Джон Джейкс: North and South

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 — "