Jim Crace - Harvest

I cannot say that Master Jordan has proved himself — not yet — to be a rough or thoughtless man, though he shows a stony disregard for proper burial. He is efficient, that is all. And unceremonial. He talks good sense, though sometimes sense is colder than an icicle. And sharper too. He listened patiently while Master Kent recounted the history of the newcomers: the doves, the fires, the bows, the pillory. And his replies displayed the mildest exasperation: “It is my judgment, cousin Charles, that you make problems for yourself by being kind.” The two men in the pillory had only got their just deserts, in his view. If one had died, that was still within the bounds of what the law allows. “A sturdy vagabond and fire setter” should expect to have his ears cut off and then be hoisted to the gibbet. That was not unusual. The younger man? Well, he should still serve out his week-long sentence: “What is the case for being lenient? He has given community offense and so should suffer justice in the full gaze of the community. Besides, cousin, you say he has already threatened you and holds you guilty of his kinsman’s death. Would you have him walking free, in such a vengeful frame of mind? No, we will take him with us, far from harm, when we depart. We’ll lash him to the saddle of a horse and set him free only when it is safe. Perhaps, we will equip him with a limp, as a reminder to be good, and wise. No doubt the woman you describe, the sister or the daughter or the wife, whoever she might be … well, no doubt she will follow her one surviving man away from here. In the meantime, let her be, let her peck about the forest like a goose. Do not concern yourself with her. A woman cannot do you any harm.”

What of the corpse? Again, Master Jordan could not see that this issue was problematic in the least. He snapped his fingers in dismissal. If Master Kent himself was too squeamish in such matters, he’d have his sidemen dispose of the corpse in the same place that any animal carcasses were abandoned. “He has not earned a place on hallowed ground, I think. So let the pigs complete what they’ve begun.” He clapped his hands. “You see, you see?” he asked, as delighted with himself as any boy. “Nothing is as complicated as you fear. Now, gentlemen …” His voice was lowered at this point. He did not want to waste more time on such frivolities. There were graver, grander things to talk about.

I listened to the squaring of the cousin’s feet as he began to outline his plans for Progress and Prosperity. “Do not blame me that I have an impulse to improve, a zeal for progress,” he told his audience this afternoon. “It is not by design or any subterfuge of mine that this estate and the duties that relate to it have fallen in my hands … But any final testament should be observed whatever the consequences. I think we will agree on that.”

Well, let him make excuses for himself. I will skirt round the details of his methods and procedures, the sums and calculations that he’s made, the reckoning. We’ve heard the drift of it before, from Master Kent’s own lips, when he addressed us between the veal and the dancing. The cousin’s version, though, was not so tender on the ear. There was no regret. He did not have a dream in which we “friends and neighbors” were made rich and leisurely, where we were sitting at our fires at home and weaving fortunes for ourselves from yarn. I think he judges us rich and leisurely enough already. No, Master Jordan only had a scheme, a “simple quest,” for a tidier pattern of living hereabouts which would assure a profit for those — he means himself — who have “the foresight.”

What matters most for now is that my master is allowed to stay. It is not the cousin’s wish to be “a country mouse,” he said. He would prefer to remain in his great merchant house in his great market town and simply check the figures once in a while: what rough wool from these old fields has arrived in his warehouse, what cloth his hired women have woven on their looms, what varying profits have been made from selling their worsted, twill or fustian, their pickthread and their petersham, and what profits have been lost to greedy shearmen and staplers, cheating chapmen, and lazy fullers, tuckers and dyers. “So many ravens to be fed and satisfied,” he said, letting his shoulders sag with the weight of his responsibilities. “We should not deceive ourselves that in a modern world a common system such as ours which only benefits the commoners (and only in prolific years) could earn the admiration of more rational observers for whom ‘agriculture without coin’ is absurd.

“Everyone among us plays his part, for the good of the whole,” Master Jordan concluded. “It is the duty of our part to make the others’ part more comfortable. This is society.” He pointed at his smiling village natural . “You, sir. Continue with your quills and charts, and let’s complete your mapmaking before the week is out. This gentleman is Mr. Baynham”—here I heard his steward civilly muttering his greetings—“and he, you will discover, is adept at preparing land for sheep. This is not the first community to benefit from Mr. Baynham’s stewardship. Of course, he needs to be acquainted with your land, my land. He will be guided by the charts. Before first snow he will have structured everywhere within these bounds with fences, dykes and walls, as he sees fit. He’ll be reclaiming forestry. How can it profit us that there are trees, an oak, let’s say, producing shade but not a single fruit to eat, except for beasts? We would be wise to hew it down and trade its timber rather than allow it to defeat the sun, for beauty’s sake, at my expense. Likewise, the commons will be cleared and privately enclosed. You’re pasture now. These lands are grass. We’ll never need another plow. You, cousin—”

“We have a little short of sixty souls to feed hereabouts …” Master Kent spoke up at last, his voice pinched and hesitant. And so it ought to be. But Master Jordan only spread his hands and shrugged, a shrug that counted our distresses as an inevitable proviso for his permanent advance. “That’s Mr. Baynham’s province now,” he said. “I’m sure that there will be a place for shearers and for sheep-boys. Or for some, at least. He will employ what hands he needs. But we will sadly need to make economies—”

“I do not think that you will make economies,” said Mr. Quill, who is, I have to say, the bravest soul for all his lumbering.

Master Jordan laced his fingers and looked down thoughtfully into the lattice they made. He offered Mr. Quill a fleering, patient smile of his own. “It is not my role to make economies but rather to provide expenditure,” he said finally. “Do not imagine that I come here empty-handed. There will be charity. Gratuities, indeed. I will fund at last the building of a church and I will employ a priest. I bring you sheep, and I supply a Holy Shepherd too. There’ll be a steeple, higher than the turret of this house, taller than any ancient oak that we might fell. This place will be visible from far. And I will have a bell cast for the very top of it to summon everyone to prayer. And hurry everyone to work. Those few that can remain, that is.” Again he stared into his hands, then added without looking up, as if talking only to himself, “It’s only Mr. Earle, I think, who is not obliged to make economies, and has no duties other than with maps, and besides is so hellishly unstable on his feet he must have …” He paused to find a witticism.

“Yes, I must have been kicked by a horse or struck by lightning. I’ve heard it all before. The heavens opened and a tongue of light gave me the body of an old gnarled tree. Oh, certainly, the devil himself concocted me in his cracked jar. And so I am deformed. Well, have it so, if that amuses you,” Mr. Quill replied, with only the merest edge of temper to his voice; a practiced speech, I think, which he has used to shield himself more than once before. And here my listening was hastened to an end by Master Jordan turning on his heels and striding down the gallery toward my lurking place. He was smiling — not unsweetly — to himself. I had to draw myself into the shadows until the man had passed.