The Knowledge Stone Page 9

  ‘Is this a dream? Will I awaken in a moment to find myself in my bunk at the barn?’

  These thoughts, and many others, raced through his mind at lightning speed. He was totally bewildered, yet there was a sense of elation, too. One moment, he had been pinned to the ground by the heavy plough, literally a terrified sacrifice awaiting death – or unbearable pain, at least – and the next moment, here he was, sitting on the ground, alive and well, in no pain of any kind: ‘Well, perhaps my leg is just a little sore.’ This incongruous thought leaping from his racing consciousness brought a shadow of a smile to his lips.

  One thing was clear to him. Something had happened to Old Malik at the instant he was approaching with that terrifying whip held high; something that had transformed him completely.

  ‘That something saved my life.’ The boy was serious as he thought that. ‘I’ve never seen him change like that. I’ve never seen him act like that. I’ve never seen him look like that, either. What could have happened? Did the spirits take him over to save me?’

  Joachim thought that unlikely. As far as he could remember, the spirits had never done anything for him in the past; in fact he was always a little nervous when he brought them to mind.

  ‘You need to be careful what you say or even think about the spirits,’ he thought, ‘you never know what they are thinking about you, so it’s better to be safe than sorry.’ Instinctively, he looked around – just in case the spirits were gathering around him!

  Uncounted time passed as the boy sat thinking. Gradually his whirling mind slowed its pace and re-assembled itself back into a more normal, practical mode. He looked around him; the light was beginning to fade and it was clear that the ploughing work of this day had come to an end.

  ‘Old Malik has gone to the farmhouse, so I’ll need to attend to his plough and take his beast back.’ This was no problem – something he had done many times before. He rose to his feet to make a start on this essential work. He talked quietly to his bullock as he unhitched it from the plough and then led the animal down the hill to where Old Malik’s plough stood in the furrow he had been working on when Joachim’s unfortunate accident happened. A shiver ran through the boy’s body as he relived the memory of his terror.

  It took just a few moments to unhitch the second beast and the two large animals were soon on their way to be fed, watered and bedded down for the night in their pen. On arrival, the hitch ropes were taken off and, after checking that plenty of sweet hay and fresh water was available for them, Joachim patted each animal and spoke to it gently: ‘You’ve done well, today. Have a good rest.’ He believed that farm animals should be treated kindly. ‘After all, we need them just as much as they need us.’ He often thought that.

  Now, in the rapidly fading light, he couldn’t help feeling uneasy. It was time for the evening meal. Normally, this was placed outside the farm door for him, just like the morning meal. Joachim was increasingly worried as he drew nearer and nearer to the farmhouse. What if Old Malik was still angry with him for the mistake he had made at the field? As usual, Joachim had begun to blame himself for the event. What if he was waiting in the farmhouse to rush out and administer the beating he had promised the boy when he was pinned under the plough?

  Joachim found that he was trembling with fear as he approached the farmhouse; his pace become slower and slower and he wondered whether he should hide in the barn and forgo his evening meal. As he tried to decide what to do, his faltering steps brought him ever closer to the farmyard.

  Suddenly the farmhouse door was thrust open and the light from the lamp inside streamed out to illuminate the figure of the boy. Joachim gasped, looking fearfully for the powerful figure of Old Malik striding out to seize him in a painful grasp, as he had done so many times in the past. However relief flooded over him as he recognised the familiar figure of Maretta framed in the doorway. As usual, she stepped forward and put down his platter and bowl on the stone beside the door, as she did every evening. Then, unusually silent (she often muttered curses as she put out his meal) and without looking up, she turned to re-enter the farmhouse.

  The boy was about to move forward to collect his meal when he realised that Maretta had stopped. She was standing quite still in the doorway with her back to him. He also stood quite still, waiting to see what would happen next. Then, very slowly, she turned around and gazed at the stars. Long seconds ticked by.

  Next, something incredible happened; Maretta dropped her gaze slowly until she was looking straight at him. The boy was transfixed and his mind raced once again. What was happening? Was he in trouble? She never looked at him. She had not done so for years. At the same time, another channel of his mind registered a very surprising fact – her eyes were dark pools of beauty!

  Now confused, his brain raced through the facts of his relationship with Maretta, in the hope that this would start a process of understanding. These days, she ignored him, although sometimes there were muttered curses or even a slap on his face if he came too close. In the past, when he was much younger, she had hit him often and told him many times that she hated and despised him. He had never known why but her looks either of blazing anger or withering contempt had made him very unhappy. But now, at this moment, her eyes did not transmit the hard look of hatred or anger – her gaze was soft and gentle, wistful and unfathomable.

  So the world stood still … until …

  ‘Good evening, Mistress.’ To his astonishment he heard his voice say these words, softly, timidly; the words followed by a gut-wrenching pang of panic, physically real, as he realised he may have made a terrible mistake by speaking. Another silence. Then her response; not words of reply but an inclination of her head and a brief smile – the first smile he had ever seen on Maretta’s face. Then she re-entered the farmhouse and closed the door gently.

  The boy stood absolutely motionless as his mind tried to process what had just happened. Then, remembering his evening meal, he tip-toed forward cautiously and lifted the dishes from the flat stone and withdrew quickly to the imagined safety of the fallen tree trunk where he sat to eat most of his meals. Here, he uncovered the food in the bowl and felt a wave of pleasure: ‘I’m lucky tonight,’ he whispered. In addition to thick slices of good wholesome bread, butter and cheese, there was some meat stew – a rare treat. Incredibly, there was also a flagon of beer to drink. Joachim settled down to enjoy this excellent meal, possibly the best he had ever had!

  ‘This is wonderful,’ he said to himself, ‘I know Old Malik will have returned to his usual angry self by tomorrow but, whatever happens, at least I will have really good food in my belly.’ The boy felt deep contentment and resolved to work extra hard for his Master on the following day. ‘If I work well, maybe he will forgive me for the accident with the plough. Maybe he will not be so angry with me.’ Joachim, filled with good food and beer, now felt quite optimistic!

  In fact, although Joachim could not have known it, there had already been very dramatic happenings at the farm. Earlier that evening, Old Malik had strode back from the field to the farmhouse. Opening the door, he called for his wife but the room was empty. Maretta and Giana were working in one of the outhouses – a spacious barn that housed the dairy and the bakery.

  They had been very busy for some hours and a large batch of loaves cooled beside the wood-fired oven in one corner of the barn, filling the surrounding area with the delicious aroma of freshly-baked bread. Guided by this most pleasant of aromas, Old Malik had made his way to the bakery outbuilding. As he approached, he could hear sounds of activity from within.

  Maretta was startled and taken aback by the sight of her husband in the doorway – she could not remember the last time he had come to any of the farm outbuildings where she carried out her tasks.

  ‘Women’s work!’ he had always growled, ‘I have no interest in women’s work or where it’s done.’ Normally, when he returned from work, he
went straight to the farmhouse, washed at the tub around the back and then settled down with a flagon of beer. Woe betide anyone who disturbed him before the evening meal! The woman paused and looked at him with questioning eyes while the girl ran to cower in a far corner of the room.

  ‘Wife,’ he said, looking straight into her eyes, ‘we need to talk. At the farmhouse. Now.’ This last word spoken not with his normal aggression but expressed in an urgent tone which contained a hint of pleading. She looked at him in great astonishment. Firstly, he was actually looking at her! Looking at her face, into her eyes. She thought that many years had passed since he had done that. Secondly, he had made a request to her, admittedly spoken bluntly but nevertheless containing none of the anger or harsh derision that usually pervaded his words to her. He was treating her with respect!

  Was he ill or injured? She looked at him carefully. Certainly there was something different about him but he looked fit and healthy enough, she thought. Had there been a disaster on the farm? Again, she looked at him and did not think so. A disaster would have resulted in fury and she would have heard him coming from afar. A mysterious happening? A sign from Our Lord? He would just have ignored anything like that, she thought, wryly! What could it be?

  Her emotions were mixed. She was curious, though filled with trepidation, too. At the same time she became acutely aware of her unkempt and slovenly appearance; he never looked at her these days so she had lost interest in her appearance. Now, under his gaze she felt grubby and ashamed.

  Another scene paused in time. He, unmoving, waiting, his eyes fixed on hers. She, looking at him, physically still also but mind racing, sifting possibilities. The girl, crouching in the corner, terrified at his sudden appearance but aware of a strange tension in the room; hoping fervently that this would not culminate in anger towards her.

  ‘I will come.’ Maretta spoke quietly and his face relaxed.

  The woman then turned to Giana and spoke sharply.

  ‘You are to clean up here, girl, and make everything tidy. Then you can churn some milk for butter. Make sure you do it properly.’

  So saying, the man and woman left to walk the short distance to the farmhouse.

  Increasingly aware of her unkempt appearance, Maretta said: ‘I must clean myself before we talk.’

  ‘No,’ he said quietly, ‘first, we talk. It will not take long.’

  Intrigued, the woman followed him into the farmhouse.

  He indicated they should sit at the table. When she sat down, he reached across and grasped her hands, firmly but with gentleness, too. Even so, surprise and some alarm could not stop her uttering a little cry. Still looking intently into her eyes, the man was now having difficulty speaking, difficulty in choosing the right words which would express what he felt he must now say.

  ‘Wife.’ He paused.

  ‘Maretta ...’

  She started. He had not spoken her name for a very long time!

  ‘I have wronged you.’

  She looked at him carefully. Yes, his features were lined and coarsened but in them she could recognise the Malik she had married, the Malik she had loved so much. She saw he had tears in his eyes! In response, she felt a rebirth of that love she had for him.

  However, Maretta did not disagree with what he had just said. He had wronged her but if, for some inexplicable reason, he now understood even a tiny part of what she had been through, then this could be the start of a new life for them. She did not have to consider her response for long: ‘We can start again, if it is your wish?’

  This was spoken as a query. She knew instinctively this was the right response although with the wisdom of woman she acknowledged to herself that the way was unlikely to be easy and the result unpredictable. Nevertheless, if there was effort, good will and, yes, love, a course around most of the dangerous rocks of destruction and disillusionment could possibly be negotiated.

  ‘There is more,’ the man said, without averting his gaze. ‘I have also been a bad farmer and a bad master, too; these things must change and I will need your help to change them. We must talk about these things and consider them very carefully.’

  ‘You will have my help, if these are things you wish to do,’ the woman answered immediately. Despite her doubts, a cautious wave of optimism coursed through her. ‘In any event,’ she now thought, ‘surely some good will come out of this.’

  Still with his eyes fixed on hers, the man felt a great love for this beautiful woman. Having virtually ignored her for many years, he was seeing her anew – and his gaze did not reveal the ravages of age and neglect but travelled with ease through to the beauty beyond, the beauty he remembered so well.

  ‘We will clean ourselves from the dirt of our work and change our clothes. Then we will eat,’ he said quietly. ‘Afterwards, we will talk more.’

  Maretta was relieved that this intense conversation was over, although she was also cautiously elated at what had happened.

  ‘I pray that his new mind will continue,’ she thought.

  For the first time in many years, she felt happy as she rose from the table, looking forward eagerly to being clean and dressed neatly in fresh clothes.

  In the dairy room at the outbuilding, Giana had worked hard with the butter churn. She had produced a good quantity of butter in the way her mistress had taught her. She now scooped the butter out of the churn, heaped it upon a large dish and covered the whole with a cloth. After draining overnight, the fresh butter would be ready to be divided into blocks and stored. She had also poured the residue of buttermilk from the churn into a large bowl and placed a heavy cloth over the top.

  When the churn had been thoroughly cleaned, Giana stepped back and admired her work with a good deal of satisfaction: ‘I have worked long and hard. I do hope the Mistress will be pleased with me.’ However, the girl thought it very unlikely that she would receive any praise for her work. ‘The best I can hope for is a “no comment”,’ she thought ruefully.

  Soon afterwards, the girl walked slowly from the dairy to the farmhouse in the rapidly diminishing daylight. She was musing on the dramatic conversation she had witnessed between Old Malik and Maretta. Giana did not understand what had happened but she thought the Master had been “different”.

  ‘Very different,’ the girl whispered. Then her thoughts continued. Ever since she had come to the farm, her Master and Mistress had seemed to dislike each other intensely. They were together only at mealtimes when they largely ignored each other; any words spoken seemed to be uttered in anger or contempt. ‘I think they must always have hated each other,’ Giana thought. ‘It’s very puzzling. The village handyman seemed to like his wife, even if he was unpleasant to his children and especially to me. I wonder why the Mistress married the Master if they hated each other so much.’ The girl could not fathom it and shook her head sadly.

  As she approached the farmhouse, daylight had been all but extinguished, so she was unaware of Joachim sitting silently in the deep shadows where he had eaten his splendid meal. If she had known he was there, she would have hurried past with a pointedly averted gaze, because she was strictly forbidden to have anything to do with him; she knew she had to be careful when she was so close to the farmhouse because it was possible that her mistress would be watching. Also, as a simple and impressionable girl, Giana had long accepted her mistress’s opinion of the boy and, in consequence, was convinced that poor Joachim was very stupid and completely lazy; a bad boy who deserved to be beaten by the Master.

  Hidden by the darkness, the boy saw and heard her progress but kept silent, knowing that she would not want to see him. It was then that something very strange happened. Suddenly the girl felt she had to stop and look around her. She felt she must scan the darkness which now surrounded her and, as she did so, that scan came to a stop at one particular spot in the deepest of the darkness; in fact, she was looking
directly into the face of Joachim, sitting motionless and watching her with bated breath. As Giana continued to look intently at this one spot in the darkness, an incomprehensible feeling of happiness came over her.

  Overwhelming happiness was a feeling that Giana had never really experienced before. From the time she had become sentient, her life as a child had been one of suffering, either by the internal pains of hunger, thirst or general neglect, the sharp agony of ill treatment or the debilitating hopelessness of being unloved. Although her suffering had diminished to some degree when she came to Old Malik’s farm (at least she was fed adequately and slept in a bed), she still had to face the periodic pain of punishment and the despair of indifference towards her.

  As Joachim watched, transfixed, he saw her smile, a smile of pure joy, a smile directed straight into his eyes. However he knew that she could not possibly see him: ‘If she could see me, she would not be smiling, she would be scowling,’ he thought sadly.

  After some moments, the girl turned away and resumed her journey, still bubbling with joy. Arriving at the farmhouse, she slipped through the door unobtrusively, hoping that no-one would see her and angrily demand a full account of her work.

  To her surprise, she found the Master and Mistress sitting at the table, deep in quiet conversation; she noticed immediately that they were both dressed in neat, clean clothes and was surprised to see that the Mistress looked quite different; yes, attractive, even. From the shadows, Giana looked at Maretta carefully; it was not only the dress she was wearing, it was the expression on her face. She was listening intently to the Master and her expression was soft, gentle and radiant.

  Then the girl noticed something else. The evening meal had been prepared – and the food for the farm boy was not in its usual place, ready to be taken out by the Mistress. Giana was astonished. The preparation of the food was a routine task that she had to carry out after she had finished her work in the farmyard. But this evening, the Mistress had already prepared the meal; the platters and bowls of food were all ready to be taken to the table and she must have already put out the food for the farm boy. It did not occur to the girl that Joachim would have been eating in the shadows when she came back from the dairy.