The Knowledge Stone Read online

  Then came the day when her husband arrived with the village midwife. Maretta was washing some clothes when she heard a harsh, unfamiliar voice outside the farmhouse door. She had opened the door to find the midwife with her husband. She was a stooped old woman who wore a permanently sour expression and spoke angrily all the time.

  Maretta knew the midwife by reputation; she was well-known among the poor serfs of the area, not only for refusing help to them with any birthing problems, even when payment was offered, but for speaking out against them in an attempt to stir the villagers into violent action against their poor neighbours. ‘We don’t need their kind here,’ the midwife would say inflammatorily, ‘they are nothing but a band of thieves, cheats and liars. We should drive them out. Who cares if they live or die?’

  At her husband’s bidding, Maretta reluctantly invited the midwife to enter. The interrogation proved to be unkind and unsympathetic. There were many questions, some worryingly embarrassing, but out of loyalty to her husband, Maretta did her best to answer them all to the best of her ability. The physical examination was even worse, ranging over every part of her body and conducted in a far from gentle manner. Finally, it was over.

  ‘Do I have a problem with my body? Why cannot I make a baby?’ Maretta addressed the midwife’s back as she was packing away her cloths and tools.

  ‘My answers are for your husband,’ the midwife spoke contemptuously without turning around, ‘not for you.’

  Young Malik and the midwife spoke for a long time in the farmyard. Maretta strained to hear what was being said but could only make out an occasional word. After some time, the midwife climbed upon the cart and they left for the village.

  Maretta waited with great impatience for the return of her husband. She was desperate to hear what the midwife had told him. Maybe if they followed her advice, everything would be all right. Maybe a baby would grow in her body – twins, even! Maretta felt a great rush of delight within her: ‘Yes,’ she thought, ‘maybe it could even be twins. This could be a new start for us.’ She felt a great surge of love for her husband, remembering those far-off days when they were so ecstatically happy, so much in love. ‘Oh, how I wish he would return!’ She strained her eyes into the distance.

  Late in the evening, Young Malik finally returned, drunk and aggressive. He barged noisily into the farmhouse, calling loudly for more beer. Maretta opened a flagon and poured some for him. He took it without a word and quaffed it noisily, ignoring her completely. She sat quietly, waiting.

  After some time, she spoke: ‘What did she say?’ Her voice flat and expressionless.

  For some moments, he did not move. Finally he looked at her and she was shocked and repelled by the look of rejection in his eyes. Still he said nothing.

  ‘What did she say?’ she repeated. ‘Why can’t I make a baby?’

  ‘She said she could not find anything wrong,’ Young Malik replied slowly, almost inaudibly.

  Maretta was overjoyed. Her optimism had been justified!

  ‘But that’s wonderful,’ she cried ecstatically. ‘We can try…’

  ‘No.’ His voice crashed through her words and shattered them. A shocked silence followed.

  ‘Why not?’ she whispered finally. ‘If there’s nothing wrong…?’

  Another silence for several moments. Then: ‘She says you are not good breeding stock.’

  The world collapsed in upon Maretta. She felt totally numb, hardly able to draw her next breath. She had no idea how long she existed in that room with these eight words spinning around in her head, incising virtual grooves inside her skull. Eventually, very slowly, she came back to life. She was alone. He had gone from the room, she knew not where. She was left alone with these razor-sharp, devastating words: “She says you are not good breeding stock.”

  Maretta sat for some time in the apparent stillness of assessment and interpretation. Then came a burst of incredulous understanding, like the explosion of a rocket in the sky. She recognised with complete certainty that the midwife’s words were part of a vendetta against her and against her unfortunate people. Now she spoke aloud, quietly and without expression:

  ‘She examined me and could find nothing wrong. So she decided to poison my marriage because I am a poor serf.’ Tears filled her eyes, part rage, part grief.

  In the following days and weeks, Maretta tried to speak to her husband about the real meaning of the midwife’s assessments and comments but he refused point-blank to engage in any conversation. Despite her best efforts, she could not penetrate the wall of dislike that was now his attitude towards her. As time passed, his demeanour deteriorated further to become constantly withdrawn and even more bad-tempered. It became the norm for him to be very drunk every evening.

  From the farmhouse next door, Young Malik’s father continued to be kind to her in a gentle, absent-minded sort of way but his mother withdrew her goodwill, firmly taking sides with her son.

  ‘I knew it would never come out for the best; I told you you should never marry below your class.’ However these words were not spoken in triumph because Young Malik’s mother knew that her son was now very unhappy.

  As the situation deteriorated further, Maretta became deeply depressed. Left all alone every day, she started to seek solace in the beer which in the past she had brewed for Young Malik with so much love. Soon she spent much of her days in varying degrees of alcoholic haze and in consequence become slovenly and uncaring in her habits. Her face became set in a vacuous, ugly scowl. Young Malik hardly noticed. As they sat at the table together, he bolted down the food she prepared for him and never raised his eyes to look at her.

  Imprisoned in her world of unhappiness and alcohol, Maretta was vaguely aware of changes at the farm. The one she resented most was being compelled to move from her home into the farmhouse next door. Why did she need to move? She was perfectly happy where she was. She knew that both of Malik’s parents had gone, died, she thought: ‘I wonder what happened to them?’ She sometimes puzzled about that but could not remember.

  She also knew that all the farm workers had gone – again, she didn’t know why and she didn’t care; after all, it was her husband’s business. On one occasion she had asked Malik about it but, as usual, he had just ignored her. Also, she remembered that Malik had bought a little boy to work on the farm – that was years ago. He was sent to live in the barn and she knew he was still there because she had to prepare food and drink for him. She had absolutely no interest in this boy and usually could not remember his name. All these thoughts constantly swirled around in Maretta’s addled brain.

  Then one evening, one of her unfocussed reveries was rudely interrupted as the farmhouse door crashed open, heralding her husband’s usual drunken arrival. Normally he was taciturn and did not speak.

  However this evening was a rare event. As he entered, he asked her a question: ‘Do you want this?’ He grated these words as he pushed a small ragged child across the room.

  ‘What is it?’ Maretta, half asleep and absorbed in drinking beer in her favourite chair by the fire, could not be bothered to raise her eyes.

  ‘It’s a child that came with a market deal I did this afternoon,’ the man replied, ‘you’ve been nagging me for a servant.’

  Maretta could not remember any conversation on this matter. Nevertheless, her interest was slightly aroused and she stirred herself, squinting across the room blearily: ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ she enquired.

  ‘It’s a skinny little girl,’ he answered disinterestedly. ‘Do you want it or not?

  Maretta heaved herself out of the chair and seized the child rather roughly by the arm, pulling her closer to the light of the fire where she peered closely at her face, then lifted her clothes to inspect the small pathetic body below: ‘Goodness, it’s really skinny – and it’s absolutely filthy, too! Couldn’t you get a cleaner one tha
n this?’

  These comments infuriated Old Malik.

  ‘Look,’ he snarled in reply, ‘I told you it was skinny. Have it or not as you want. What’s all this about dirty? If it’s dirty – wash it. What’s wrong with you?’ So saying, he left the farmhouse in his usual bad humour, slamming the door loudly.

  There was complete silence for some minutes. The child did not move and waited with frightened eyes fixed on Maretta. Sighing wearily, the woman rose unsteadily to her feet and fetched a small wooden tub from a cupboard in the corner of the room. After some water had been poured into the tub, the cowed, feather-light girl was lifted into the water; in the same movement, the dirty, ragged dress that was her only garment was stripped from her and thrown aside.

  Maretta set to work. Firstly, dirt and grease was washed out of the girl’s matted hair, her face was washed several times, then all other parts of her emaciated body were scrubbed until they were clean. All this time, the girl made no sound. Maretta stood back to admire her handiwork.

  ‘She does look a bit better when she’s clean,’ she thought.

  ‘Sit over there,’ her very first words to the child were sharp and unfriendly, ‘while this disgusting thing – she held up the small ragged dress – is washed.’ The garment was plunged into the tub where it was scrubbed energetically and hung up to dry near the fire.

  ‘Haven’t you got any other clothes?’ was Maretta’s next question to the small huddled figure of the girl. The child shook her head. ‘Well you’ll just have to stay like that until the dress is dry.’ Maretta sat down heavily on her chair and picked up the pot of beer, drinking deeply from it and totally ignoring the child.

  Once again, there was complete silence in the room. After ten minutes or so, the woman looked up and spoke: ‘Have you got a name?’ When the little girl did not respond immediately, the question was repeated, more sharply: ‘Wake up! What are you called?’

  ‘Giana,’ the girl whispered.

  ‘Giana, is it?’ Maretta repeated, almost to herself. ‘Funny name, no-one is called anything like that around here.’ The child was silent. ‘What work can you do?’ the woman asked, sharply again.

  ‘Anything you want me to do, Mistress.’ The girl’s voice was barely a whisper.

  ‘Anything?’ Maretta’s voice was derisive and raucous in comparison. ‘Let’s hope so!’ she quipped grimly, momentarily enjoying her unkind joke.

  This was the manner of Giana’s eventual arrival at Old Malik’s farm.

  Giana

  It had been a long night of vicious weather. Now the dim light of dawn revealed churned, saturated ground peppered everywhere with deep pools of constantly rippled water. The wind, a ferocious, howling gale during the night with stinging, near-horizontal rain that chilled and soaked in an instant, had now given way truculently to a lower order of storm. Even so, the day had still dawned raw and angry, a bilious scudding grey augmented by cruel gusts of icy rain, driven pitilessly against those unfortunate enough to be out.

  The woman (though in truth hardly more than a girl) had by chance stumbled close enough to the mouth of a low, dark cave in the hillside and taken blessed refuge there at the height of the storm the night before. Although cold, the cave was dry inside and sheltered from the worst of the wind.

  As soon as she had penetrated far enough into the cave to escape the weather, the woman sank to the floor in a paralysing haze of increasing, pulsating pain. She was filled with terror as she realised her time had come and now she scrabbled around ineffectually with her hands, trying to prepare for the arrival into the world of the life that had been beating inside her for so many months.

  The night developed steadily into an unbearable, all-pervading crescendo of pulsating pain, worse than anything the woman could ever have imagined. Her shrill screams echoed in the cave but were quickly snatched away by the banshee howls of the wind outside.

  By morning, it had been fulfilled. The woman lay exhausted, desperately calling into the void for help, while trying to stem the crimson stream that flowed from her body. Her baby lay where it had been delivered from her womb; in her pain and exhaustion, the only thing the mother had been able to achieve was some padding layers of blanket below the tiny body, with the ends drawn up to enclose the baby in a loose cocoon.

  The child was alive, crying thinly but at the same time demonstrating that unique determination of the new-born. Despite her most powerful desires, the mother had no capacity to respond. Time passed. The crimson flow did not slacken. The mother’s cries for help weakened. The baby clung to life, protesting its innocence with increasing hopelessness. The cries emanating from the cave mouth diminished.

  ‘What a day!’ The travelling merchant muttered these words to himself as he and his family trudged along the narrow muddy track that would eventually take them to the village. When the weather was like this there was no question of anyone riding in the large covered wagon – not even the children.

  Years before, when this heavy wagon was being built for him, the merchant had wisely specified stout wide wheels; they were usually effective on muddy roads. However, this track was proving to be a serious trial. It was in poor condition and heavily pocked with deep potholes, now filled with slimy mud. The merchant sighed as one of the large rear wheels sank deeply into a pool of mud, bringing the heavy vehicle to a shuddering halt, despite the best efforts of the two strong mules harnessed to the front shaft.

  Like his father before him, the man was a travelling merchant in cloth; he and his family spent most of the year on the road, travelling widely around the country villages, selling from the extensive stock of cloth carried in the wagon. Each of the large bundles of cloth was very heavy and it was of course necessary to carry a comprehensive selection of material for sale.

  As he travelled across the country, the merchant also bought cloth from village weavers and sold this on at a suitable profit to individuals and other merchants further along his route. This had been a steady and successful business in the family for many years.

  ‘People always need good cloth for hangings, covers and clothing,’ the merchant often said, ‘and everyone knows I sell nothing but the best of cloth.’

  With one wheel stuck firmly in the deep mud, the merchant wearily fetched his shovel and began to dig out a ramp in front of the trapped wheel; if the excavated ground was firm enough, this would allow the wheel to roll up to ground level when the mules exerted all their strength to pull the wagon forward. His wife helped to throw the excavated mud over to the roadside with a smaller shovel.

  Meanwhile, their two children, a boy and a girl, did as children always do – they ran whooping up the hill, laughing, shouting and jostling each other with that mysterious joy of living that children have. On the track below, the cloth merchant now judged that the wagon was ready to be pulled from the mud so he returned to the heads of his beasts to tug at their head ropes, clucking his tongue to encourage them to pull forward. The powerful beasts strained forward and the wheel came free with a reluctant squelch and rolled up the excavated ramp to return to ground level.

  Ready to resume their journey, the merchant replaced the shovels in the wagon and called for his children. After some moments, the boy and girl came running back. His wife took one look at their little faces and, as mothers always do, knew something was very wrong. She caught the boy by the arm and enquired urgently: ‘What’s wrong? What has happened? Have either of you hurt themselves?’

  Eyes wide, gasping and white of face, the boy mumbled a reply: ‘It’s up there, in the cave. We thought it was a bird but I think it’s a baby. It’s all bloody.’

  The boy burst into tears and his little sister immediately howled in sympathy. The adults looked at each other blankly, shock mirrored in their eyes. Extended seconds ticked by.

  ‘It’s not our business, nothing to do with us,’ the man said uncerta
inly, ‘we’ve got enough problems of our own.’ He looked as if he wished he was somewhere else – somewhere very far away!

  However the woman was more practical and decisive: ‘No, we can’t say that. We can’t just walk away. The boy has told us what he saw. We need to investigate, to see what has happened.’ Still the man did not move. ‘Go and see what has happened. Go quickly.’ The woman was adamant.

  Reluctantly, sighing and muttering to himself, the merchant climbed up the hill to the cave. After a few long minutes he reappeared and returned to the wagon. The adults held a whispered conversation, observed fearfully by their quietly sobbing children. Then both adults climbed up to the cave, the man carrying his shovel.

  The baby was still alive, though now so weak that it was reduced to almost inaudible whimpering, its breathing rapid and uneven. The woman lifted the pathetic scrap of life from the ground, still wrapped in the blood-soaked blanket and carried it down to the wagon. There, she tended to it, washing away the blood and dirt and wrapping the tiny body in clean, warm cloth. Meanwhile, the man carried out his grim task on the hillside near the cave, digging a shallow grave and burying the small pathetic body of the mother therein.

  When the man returned, his wife asked about the identity of the mother – who she was, where she came from, where she might have been going.

  ‘I looked everywhere,’ he replied, ‘but there was absolutely nothing to identify her. We don’t know anything about her.’ Then he looked worriedly into the bunk bed where the baby lay. ‘What about the baby? Do you think it will live?’