Chapter 4 The Boy with the Wooden Case

The boy arrived at the yard at two in the afternoon on the second day with a wooden case and nothing else. He was fifteen, which Kessin knew because he had written it on the back of the card he had pinned to the gate. He was small for fifteen, with a coat one size too large and boots mended at the toe with wire, and on his arm a wooden case with iron corners and a latch fitted by a hand that knew its trade, and on his face the look of a boy who had walked a long way and had not been paid. "Name," said Turrel from the kitchen door. "Peth Dunmorrit," said the boy. "Peth." "Peth," said Turrel. "You are the smith's apprentice." "I was the smith's apprentice," said Peth. "I am looking for a hall." "Find one." "I found this one." "Find another." "I can't find another." Turrel looked at him and Kessin, who had come down from the hall with the ledger in her hand, looked at the boy, and the boy looked back at her with the flat honest eyes of a person who has not been lied to and has not learned how to lie yet. "He is not going anywhere," said Kessin. "He is not going anywhere," said Turrel, and she went in, and the door shut, and the boy stood in the yard with his wooden case and his coat and his boots and the morning light coming up off the mist, and the donkey came over to him and put his muzzle in the latch of the case. "There's nothing in there," said Peth. "I know," said the donkey. "You talk to him," said Peth. "He talks to me," said Kessin. "I do not think he talks back." "He does," said Peth. "He talks to the bread." Kessin put the ledger down and sat on the wheel and asked the boy his story, which he told her, because he was fifteen and he had walked and he had not been paid and he did not know how to refuse a person who had sat down to listen. He had been the smith's apprentice for two years, and the smith had died in the spring, and the smith's wife had sent him away in the winter, and the smith's wife had a son who was a man and did not want a boy in the yard, and Peth had no mother and no father and no brother and no sister and no house and no hall and no road and no one who had written his name on a card. He had walked out with his tools and a case and a coat and had come to Cawthorn because a man on the road at Gillanwick had told him there was a hall there that took boys. The man had been wrong about the boys and right about the hall, and the boy was here now. "Will you stay," Kessin said. "I have not thought that far," said Peth. "Start there," said Kessin. She wrote him a card. It was the second card she had written and it was small and it was on the back of the first card she had taken down, and she wrote it with the brass seal and the ink that had been in the chest of drawers, and she gave it to him and he took it and read it. It said: *Band. First job: Hobb's knife, to Gillanwick and back. Fare: half a crown, payable in bread. Second job: the lane in the river fog, to be walked and the corners marked. Fare: one crown. Third job: the wagon for Mistress Tull, to be guarded. Fare: one crown and supper.* "I'll do all three," said Peth. "You'll do one," said Kessin. "The knife. Today. Tomorrow the lane. The wagon after." "The wagon is the best one." "The wagon is the longest." "Then I'll do the wagon first." "You'll do the knife first," said Kessin. "Because the knife is a small thing and no one wanted to go, and because you are here with a case and a coat and a latch and a face like a person who will do a small thing because it is small. That is the skill of this work and I will not let you waste it on a wagon." Peth looked at her for a moment and then he nodded, and put the card in his pocket and took the case and went out through the gate without looking back, and the donkey watched him go, and Kessin watched the donkey watch him go, and she sat on the wheel with the ledger and felt, for the first time since she had come home, the pleasure of having someone to send. She went in and told Turrel. Turrel did not look up from the stove. "He'll do the knife," she said. "Yes." "He'll not come back today." "I know." "He'll come back tomorrow with the knife and the coin and a story, and the story will be true, and the coin will be small, and the knife will be dull, and the boy will be tired, and you will know what the Hall is." "I think I do," said Kessin. "No," said Turrel. "You know what the Hall is owed." That night they ate bread and the coin and nothing else. The boy was not there. The donkey was. The kitchen was warm. The lamp went out at ten, and Kessin lay in the room at the back of the hall and heard the road go on outside, and thought about the seventh name on the list, and Brin in the yard, and a boy who had walked a long way and had not been paid and had come to a hall that had not been paid either. She fell asleep with the ledger under her arm and the lamp out and the mist coming up off the grass and the donkey saying something impolite in the yard. ---