Jim Crace: Harvest

Still, the written law should be obeyed. Our Master Kent, who had yet to show his presence and authority, mounted Willowjack again and brought her forward until he reached the clearing by the den, where the three newcomers and Mr. Quill were standing like skittles, not uttering a word. I sympathize with Master Kent and what he chose to do. He understood that something out of reason had occurred and something out of reason had to put an end to it.

“Put those aside,” he said, indicating the two longbows. “This is not a place for ruff …” He would have called them ruffians had not the woman widened her eyes at him. “This is not a place for rough manners,” he resumed.

She laughed. “Those are the only manners we’ve seen since we arrived,” she said. “What shame is it that you shake sticks at us?”

“I’m not shaking any sticks at you,” the master said. “Nor shall I do so. But you two, sirs”—he pointed at the woman’s men—“must pay for dining out last night on fowl that don’t belong to you … we’ve seen the picked-clean bones … by contemplating better manners in the pillory. Let’s say one week. And let your offending bows be put underfoot and snapped in two. And each of you should have your head shaven, to mark you out as … well, suspicious travelers.”

One week, disarmed and bald? A modest punishment. And one which by happy chance would keep the woman on our land and separated from her men for long enough for every village hand to try his luck with her. She spat at this point, only at the ground between the horse’s hoofs but still a shocking act and one that Master Kent could not ignore without losing face.

“Count yourself as fortunate we do not boast a broader pillory,” he said, not looking at her in case she widened her eyes at him again. “And be thankful that we are too gentle here and careful of our water to duck you in our village pond. But you will lose your hair together with your men. And in the time it takes to lengthen you might consider your disdain for us.”

This time her phlegm reached Willowjack and left a rosary of pearls across her flank.

T IS THE EVENING OF this unrestful day of rest and the far barn that has survived the fire is full of harvesters, lying back on bales of hay and building up an appetite on rich man’s yellow manchet bread from Master Kent’s elm platters. We’re drinking ale from last year’s barley crop. Again we benefit from seasons. Lanterns throw out such deep and busy shadows that my neighbors’ faces are hard to place. They are grotesques, but only for a moment. I do not have to count the heads to see that everyone is here. There’s not a soul who’s stayed behind at home tonight. Even the twins’ old mother, who cannot shuffle a single step unless supported at both elbows and lifted like a plaster saint, has somehow succeeded, with the help of a wooden winnowing screen—“my lady’s litter,” as she says — in being carried to the feast. There’re parsley balls, salted offal pumps and stewed giblets. There’s cured bacon too. And the little hand-reared calf, rejected by its mother in the spring and kept by Master Kent in this same barn, has been slaughtered for its pains, skinned in one and shafted on a roasting pole. For us. Its hide is hanging from a rafter beam above the fire, being dried and cured in the smoke and odor of its own flesh.

We ought to be content. The harvest’s in. Our platters are piled high with meat. There’s grease on everybody’s chin. Our heads are softening with beer. Yet I can tell our village is unnerved. This morning’s fires and skirmishes hang heavily, especially with the twins and Brooker Higgs but also with the men who far too quickly volunteered to hold the spitting woman on the ground and scissor her. To tell the truth there’s none of us who feels entirely comfortable, who is not soiled with a smudge of shame. Chatter being what it is, I have no doubt that, apart from Master Kent and Mr. Quill, anyone who wants to know who truly took a flame up to the dovecote will have worked it out by now. Secrets are like pregnancies hereabouts. You can hide them for a while but then they will start screaming. So we are all conspirators tonight. We can be absolved only if these three guilty friends pin their valor to their chests and whisper in the master’s ear that the two so far nameless men who are now standing side by side, cuffed, collared and locked in the village pillory at the gateway to the church we never built, enduring the first chill of the evening and a little rain, should be set loose and brought into the feaster’s barn by way of an apology. A cut of veal could be our recompense.

It’s possible — no, likely, I will say — that Master Kent will not avenge himself on the twins and Brooker Higgs if they reveal the truth. Tonight they’re family, to some degree. Tonight we all are family. And Master Kent, especially since his wife passed on and left her unattended looms but not a single child to him, cherishes the fellowship we provide. Besides, it does not take a great amount of ale to make him warm and soft. Unlike a lot of us, the more he drinks the more he values harmony. So our merry men — so noticeably quiet, I see, and sitting in a huddle on the furthest bale, avoiding lantern light — could easily and without much fear design an almost-honest version of this morning’s fire and make amends, both to the master and to the newcomers — and also to my smarting palm; I was the only villager they scorched. But they do not. They do not want to risk the truth.

And neither, come to that, do I. Despite what I have seen myself while walking to the barn, it is unjust but sensible, I think, to let the pillory alone. The cup of hospitality is broken already. So far as I can tell, it is not likely that our visitors, once their seven days are served, will want to set up home among us anyway. We’ve not endeared ourselves to them. They’ll fold their sacking and go, the moment they’re set free. So maybe it is wise for all of us to hold our tongues for the time being and let them soak up all the blame. Seven days are neither here nor there with men like that, men who have no land or greater family, men who have no roots but are like mistletoe. Further, there is an account on which I cannot yet confer my sympathy, being absent from this morning’s scene, that says these newcomers are worthy of the pillory anyway, no matter who it was who took the fire to Master Kent’s old beams. No one forgets the two drawn bows, the impudence of telling people they’d better step away, or else.

Nevertheless, we are certainly unnerved. Our pillory has not been used for many years. Its iron bolt key, which Master Kent keeps with a dozen others on a bronze chain somewhere in his parlor, is rusty and has broken wards. Its last frequenters were two cousins — both Saxtons, so related to my wife — who went to war among themselves about the title to a pig. That’s no small matter. I’m not making light of it. Pigs are our backyard brethren, in a way, and worth fighting for. It took half a dozen of our lads to calm them down. To pin them down, in fact. It was an entertaining afternoon. The cousins spent only a night encased, as I remember it, and by the morning they had butchered their differences. They shared the pork out, snout to tail, two trotters each, weighing everything and even dividing the liver and the heart with the care of merchants cleaving an ounce of gold or cutting a length of cloth. Ever since they have enjoyed a reputation as our favorite rascals. They have only to grunt to have us clutching at our ribs. To this day they rarely miss an opportunity to claim, usually within each other’s hearing, that standing in the pillory was not a cruel punishment, though being in their cousin’s company was. And remains so. They’d paid too great a price for pork.