The Changes Trilogy (9 page)

“Is it all right?” he said. His anxiety seemed to make his squint worse than ever.

“Oh yes,” said Nicky. “Only it's so
noisy
. What are they making?”

“Just a practice piece, a small sword for one of the children. It may not be very good because Jagindar isn't sure of the quality of the steel he is using. Steel is a mixture of iron and carbon in exact quantities, and the hot charcoal adds more carbon to the iron, so you achieve steel of a different temper. In primitive conditions like this it is all a matter of judgment, so the first few things he makes will probably be flawed or brittle.”

Nicky looked down the slope to where two extraordinary figures were prancing on the unmown lawn behind the farmhouse. Their padded necks and shoulders made them look heavy and gawky, but they skipped around each other like hares in March, taking vicious swipes at the padding with short, curved staves. Few of the swipes reached their target because the figures ducked and backed so agilely, or took the blow cunningly on the little round leather shields which Uncle Chacha had cut from old trunks in the farmhouse attic. Suddenly Nicky realized that the six-yard folds of fine linen from which the Sikhs contrived their turbans would be almost as useful in battle as a steel helmet. The fencing practice stopped, and Uncle Chacha and Mr. Harbans Singh leaned on their staves and discussed what they had learned.

“Yes,” said Nicky, “I suppose a brittle sword wouldn't last long with that amount of bashing. But I thought proper fencers prodded at each other with the points of their swords, instead of swiping like that.”

“It's a different type of sword,” said Kewal. “We Sikhs have always used the tulwar, which you call a saber. The curve of the blade helps the cutting edge to slice through whatever you strike at. You Europeans invented the dueling sword, using the point to pierce your enemy before he could reach you, but even European cavalry has always used the saber, because the horse carries a man to close quarters where the cutting edge is handier than the point.”

“I hope he doesn't make Mr. Tom's fork brittle,” said Nicky. “Let's go and help in the hayfield.”

Kewal made a face, but walked up the path beside her. Nicky was learning all sorts of surprising differences between the Sikhs, who had at first seemed so like each other. Kewal, for instance, was quick and clever, but lazy and vain; most days he seemed to have some reason to wear his smartest clothes, and the clothes then became a reason for not doing any hard or dirty work—though he was usually on the fringe of any working party, criticizing and giving advice. If Nicky had suggested going up to the wood to help in the endless job of carting charcoal down to the forge, he'd have found a reason for doing something else. The black and brittle treasure from the opened mounds filled all the air around with a fine and filthy dust. That was work too dirty for Kewal.

Suddenly Nicky laughed aloud.
She
was going up to the hayfield as an excuse for not taking her turn at the flour milling, which she thought the dreariest job on the whole farm: you pounded and rubbed and sieved for an hour, and finished with two cupfuls. Kewal looked to see if she would share the joke, but she shook her head.

The toy sword was given to Kaka, and he swaggered about with it stuck into his straining belt, looking just like a miniature version of the giant down in the village. Uncle Jagindar was pleased with it, because it didn't snap when you bent it or banged the anvil with it, and the edge came up killing sharp. He practiced all next day at the forge and on the third day he mended Mr. Tom's fork, welding a new length of steel up the back. The risaldar shaped a new handle, and the finished job looked almost as good as a fork from a shop. Nicky was ready to take it down at once, but Gopal said, “No, listen!”

The bells were going in the church tower, tumbling sweetly through their changes. It must be Sunday. The Sikhs didn't keep Sunday or any other day as special; instead they had long prayers and readings from their holy book morning and evening. Yes, it would be a mistake to go down on a Sunday, another sign of how different the two communities were.

She found Mr. Tom at his house on Monday morning. He fingered the weld and the new handle with hands so harsh that you could hear his skin scrape across the surface.

“Clean and sturdy, I'd say,” he said. “We'll show the Master. He's in court, Mondays.”

They found the giant in what had been a classroom in the school. Mr. Tom led Nicky quietly in and pointed to a bench where she could sit. Twenty other villagers were there, cramped behind child-sized desks; the giant sat up on the dais, also cramped, though his desk had been made for a grown man. Maxie sat at a table below the dais, scribbling in a ledger. A dark, angry-looking woman stood in front of the desk complaining about something. When she stopped she sat down. The giant looked at the room in silence for a full minute.

Then he nodded to Maxie, who had stopped writing. Maxie leaped to his feet and crowed like a cock.

“Now hear this!” were the words he crowed. The giant purred into the silence.

“Mrs. Sallow,” he said, “has brought a complaint against her neighbor Mr. Goddard, saying that his dog spoils her flower beds by burying bones in 'em. There are three points to this case. Firstly, it is the nature of a dog to bury its bones where it feels like, and you can't change that. Secondly, flower beds aren't of no account in Felpham no more—it's vegetables we'll be needing, beans and such, to see us through the coming winter. Thirdly, which falls into two parts, a man must have a good dog, and if that dog goes digging up the neighbor's flower beds the neighbor has to put up with it, though it would be different, like I said, if it was vegetables. And moreover it is the use and custom of Felpham that a woman is subservient to a man, and when it comes to a complaint, other things being equal, the man shall have the best of it. Case dismissed.”

“Case dismissed,” crowed Maxie, and began to scribble again in his ledger.

The dark woman, looking angrier than ever, bustled out of the classroom.

“That's the last case, eh, Maxie?” said the giant.

“Yessir.”

Mr. Tom stood up.

“The girl's brought my spud fork back from the Devil's Children,” he said. “Seems like a good mend to me.”

“Let's have a squint at it,” said the giant.

Tom took the fork up to the dais and the giant rose from his desk. First he waggled the tool to and fro in his huge hands, then he peered at the actual join, then he took the tines in one hand and the handle in the other, put his knee to the join and heaved.

“Oi!” cried Mr. Tom. “Don't you go busting of it, Arthur!”

The giant stopped heaving and gazed at Mr. Tom from under reddish eyebrows. Mr. Tom looked away, and the giant resumed heaving. Nicky could see the squares of his checked shirt change shape where they crossed his shoulders as the oxlike muscles bulged with the effort. The classroom was silent as a funeral. Suddenly there came a crack and a twang, and the fork changed shape,

The giant straightened and held it up. He had snapped the wooden handle clean in two, and one of the steel supports had broken with it, but the other had held. It was the piece Uncle Jagindar had mended which had stayed unbroken.

“Now hear this,” purred the giant, panting slightly with the aftermath of that great spasm of strength.

“Now hear this!” crowed Maxie.

“We'll be needing a fair whack of honest tools,” said the giant. “Some will want mending, and some we haven't got. You all know how the Devil's Children have settled in up at Booker's, and how near we came to raiding up there and driving 'em out, bad wires or no bad wires. Now it turns out that they've blacksmiths among them, as will make and mend ironwork for us, and do an honest job at it. So I say this: if a man wants a piece of iron mended, or made, he'll come to me and tell me what he wants, and I'll fix a fair price for him with this girl here as lives with the Devil's Children. If you want a job done, you must pay a fair price. But I won't fix a price which the village or the man can't spare, I promise you that. It'll be a bag of carrots, maybe, for a mended spade, and a lamb or two for a new plow. And I hereby appoint Tom Pritchard my deputy to handle this trade, seeing as I broke your fork, Tom, though I'll oversee it myself till we've got it running smoothly. But if I find one of you, or any other man or woman in Felpham, dealing with the Devil's Children direct, other than through me or Tom Pritchard and this girl here, I'll skin 'em alive, I promise you that. We have to trade with 'em, but they're heathen, outlandish heathen, and apart from trade we don't want to see nor hide nor hair of 'em. I've heard some of you talking fancy about them, saying as they're the Queer Folk and suchlike rubbish. I don't want to hear no more of that. They're mortal flesh, like you and me. But they're heathen foreigners besides, and it is the use and custom of Felpham to have nothing to do with 'em. Now, such of you as've got metal to make and mend, you're to bring it to the Borough, or drawings of what you want. Maxie, you can cry the news through the village. Court adjourned.”

“Court adjourned,” crowed Maxie, and whisked out of the room like a blown leaf. Tom went ruefully up to the dais to collect his ruined fork; Nicky saw that he was too afraid of the giant to complain. She sat where she was while the room cleared; all the time the giant stared at the wall above the door, as though he could see through it.

When the last of the villagers had gone he yawned, scratched the back of his head, stood up, settled his cutlass strap over his shoulder, covered it with an orange cloak which he pinned in place with a big brooch, clapped a broad hat with a plume in it onto his head and strode toward the door. Nicky saw that he was wearing boots now, and that the cloak had once been a curtain. The room boomed at every footfall. He stopped suddenly, as though he'd only just noticed her.

“What are you waiting for, girl?” he said.

“I wanted to ask you how we're going to fix a proper price for the work if you won't meet any of the Sikhs.”

“The Devil's Children,” he said.

“They aren't like that at all,” said Nicky. “They're proud, and they wear funny clothes, and they talk a lot, but when you get to know them they're really like anybody else. Just ordinary.”

“None of my folk's going to get to know the Devil's Children,” said the giant without looking at her. “But I give you my honor I'll strike a fair price. Think, girl, it's in my interest till we can find a smith of our own; there's a heap of metalwork to be done before winter if we're to come through it short of starving. I don't want your people trading over to Aston, nor Fadlingfield, because they think we've cheated 'em here. Now you run along. This afternoon I'll send a barrow of stuff up as far as the bad wires; you can fetch it back, mended, this day week. We're vicious short on scythes, too, so you can get your friends to forge us half a dozen new 'uns—we'll shape the handles.”

“All right,” said Nicky, and turned to go.

“Come back, girl,” said the giant. “I've more to say. You heard what I told my people about having nothing to do with the Devil's Children. You tell your friends the same. If I see one of those brown skins down this side of the bad wires I'll tear him apart, man, woman or child. Joint by joint I'll tear him.”

There was no point in arguing, so Nicky walked out into the midmorning glare and ran down the street, left through the Borough and up the lane to where Kewal was waiting for her in the shadow of the hedge. (Now that the job was known to be safe he had volunteered for it because it was also known to be easy.) He was almost as interested by the description of the court as Uncle Chacha had been by the first meeting with the giant.

“Yes,” he said. “He is becoming a feudal baron, and he is setting about it the right way. It would be curious to know whether he has thought it out or whether his behavior is instinctive. The first step is to make all the villagers obey him, and this he must do partly by frequent demonstrations of his physical strength—that was why he broke the fork—and partly by laying down strict rules which they
can
obey. And at the same time he must channel all the business of the village through his own hands. Now a man who wants a fork mended or a scythe made must come to him, and if that man is out of favor with him then the work will not be done. So our forge is another source of power for him.”

“He protects them too, don't forget,” said Nicky. “And I thought they seemed to like being bullied like that, in a funny way.”

“Oh yes, of course. Most people prefer to have their thinking done for them. Democracy is not a natural growth, it is a weary responsibility. You have to be sterling fellows, such as we Sikhs are, to make it work.”

That afternoon two barrow loads of broken implements waited where the power lines crossed the lane. Uncle Jagindar and his assistants toiled in the roaring and clanging smithy as long as there was light. By Friday the work was done.

The giant scrutinized tool after tool in the Borough before handing them back to their owners, but as far as Nicky could tell from the blue, unwinking eyes and the blubbery cheeks he was satisfied. She explained about the pieces which Uncle Jagindar had said were past mending, and he nodded. Half an hour later she was herding two fat lambs up the lane, while a disgruntled Kewal toiled behind her shoving a barrow piled high with vegetables.

Chapter 5

LOST BOY

The sheep meant more work—hurdles to be woven from thin-sliced strips of chestnut wood, posts to be rammed into the ground to hold the hurdles steady in sheep-proof fences around an area where the hay had been cut. Then the fences had to be moved every two days to allow the flock to get at fresh grass. And men had to sleep out at the sheepfold all night to scare away wild dogs and foxes. The flock grew to about thirty animals by the end of August, so steadily did the smithy work; in fact Nicky and Kewal decided that the giant must be extending his empire by trading in metalwork with villages on the far side of Felpham, so many broken tools did he seem to find, so many orders for scythes and plowshares and horse harness were left each week with the barrows.