“God, what I wouldn’t give to talk to someone in English for just a few minutes!” he mumbled to himself after one language lesson on past and future tense. “Someone other than myself.”
He found himself singing softly just to hear the lyrics, which got him more than a few stares. Singing and humming to yourself seemed common here, but his tunes were not any the locals had ever heard. He got smiles at the obvious gaiety of “Yellow Submarine,” “Jingle Bells,” and “I Get Around.” More mixed looks accompanied hearing him whistling or singing “Everything Is Beautiful,” “Imagine,” “I Walk the Line,” and various Bruce Springsteen numbers. He was surprised he could remember most of the lyrics to so many songs. Maybe whatever the Watchers did had improved his memory. An alternative explanation was more melancholy: Maybe the lack of English made his brain work harder to remember what it could before losing details of Earth forever.
Chapter 8: Thorns
Even with Yozef’s commitment to master Caedelli, there was a limit to what his brain would tolerate. As a counterbalance, he began helping Carnigan in his daily assignments a few days after he started language lessons. The weather was warm that day, with a breeze coming off the ocean, and increasing cloud cover suggesting rain later in the day. He had been on one of his slow walks around the grounds after morning lessons and came upon Carnigan hoeing weeds in a vegetable field outside the complex’s main wall.
Damn if this isn’t a scene that might go viral on YouTube. The hoe looked like a toothpick when handled by someone who looked like he could carry a horse.
Yozef stood watching, then, without a conscious decision, went to a shed he had seen workers taking tools from and picked out another hoe. He went out to where Carnigan worked and started hoeing in the next row. Carnigan looked up from his work, nodded to Yozef, and went back to the weeds. Yozef kept up with the hoeing for almost an hour the first day before lagging. Even hoeing weeds was a major exertion, given his condition. When he had dropped several yards behind and audibly puffed, Carnigan took the hoe from his hands, turned him around, and pushed him gently but firmly toward the buildings. He rumbled something to Yozef, who without understanding a word, knew Carnigan said, “Nice work, but that’s enough for today.” On subsequent days, Yozef met Carnigan either at morning meal or at the main abbey entrance and followed him to the day’s assignment.
Thus, Yozef learned more than just weeding. Within a month, six sixdays, or thirty-six total days to a month by local custom, he experienced cleaning stables, brushing horses, milking cows, chasing ducks for the evening meal, pruning in the formal gardens and orchards, loading and unloading wagons and, less to his liking, moving voiding vats to refuse pits, rinsing out the vats with buckets of water, and putting the vats back under the commode platforms of the voiding house. Fortunately, Carnigan’s turn for that task came only once a month.
Working with Carnigan gave Yozef’s brain a break, and his body strained with physical work unlike any previous experience. The rest of the hours into the evenings were absorbed with further language study. By the end of the first month, Yozef had learned enough Caedelli to pick up stray pieces of conversations and even carry on limited exchanges.
One morning Carnigan came to the morning meal, but instead of his usual loose trousers and pullover shirt, he wore heavier, tighter clothing and an over-vest of thick leather, like a version of a jerkin—a type of leather clothing worn on Earth in the 1500–1700s. Yozef scanned the room. Several other men in the hall wore similar clothing.
Yozef mimed and used his limited Caedelli vocabulary to question the different dress. After several minutes of stumbling through words and gestures, Yozef thought he understood Carnigan and other men would be gone for two sixdays for some unclear obligation.
After eating, Yozef followed Carnigan and watched the men saddle horses and secure packs to other animals. By the time they left, the jerkins were added to with helmet-like protective headgear of thicker leather with inlaid metal bands. Aside from those general features, there was uniformity in neither their gear nor the weapons. Each man carried an assortment of swords, lances, muskets, pistols, and a few large crossbows.
The number and array of weapons mesmerized Yozef. “Christ, man, what the fuck are you guys getting ready for?” He had previously noticed men from the village carrying knives, yet nothing more deadly.
Similar to clothing and weapons, the horses and the tack ranged in quality, sizes, and colors. Carnigan rode what resembled a grayish Percheron with a dark mane and tail, a horse suited to pulling large wagons or plows or as a mount of a very large rider. Two huge flintlock pistols hung from Carnigan’s saddle, he carried a lance two feet longer than other men, and a battleax hung across his back.
Yozef eyed the wicked-looking double blade. My God! he thought. That thing must have belonged to Paul Bunyan. I doubt I could swing it with both hands, but I’ll bet Carnigan twirls it like a baton. Yozef swallowed, and a taste of bile touched the back of his throat at an unbidden image of damage those blades could inflict.
A grizzled man shouted to the others, and the men followed him out the main gate. Carnigan nodded in passing. Yozef climbed a ladder to the rampart inside the complex main wall and watched the men ride toward the village a half-mile away. Other single men and small groups joined them on the ride. By the time they reached Abersford, the group had grown to perhaps twenty riders. They disappeared into the village, then reappeared several minutes later, and forty to fifty riders headed inland on the main road. Yozef couldn’t make out details, but they rode in a mass, reminding him more of a Western movie posse than a military unit.
“Well,” Yozef spoke aloud, “so things aren’t all idyllic here. This isn’t some Amish village. The people may live the simpler life, but something out there required guns and blades. Bandits? Rival clans? Predators? Whatever it is, it’s serious.”
When the last rider dipped behind a hill a mile away, Yozef climbed down from the rampart and walked back to the complex.
Carnigan had indicated he would be gone two sixdays, but it was four sixdays before Yozef saw the big man again. Then, one morning, Carnigan and the other absent men sat at morning meal. Yozef didn’t press where they had been, as he sat and ate with Carnigan. He hadn’t realized how much he’d miss the gruff man.
Maybe it was only because Carnigan was the first person Yozef connected with, but, even so, Yozef liked him. He might look menacing, and Yozef could believe it wouldn’t be a person’s smartest move to get on Carnigan’s bad side, but there was more to him. And Yozef had a hunch Carnigan was brighter than he looked, yet with a more common sense of the world smarts than book learning. He was also kinder than others might think.
With the men back, Yozef returned to the routine of following Carnigan in his daily duties, yet Yozef’s awareness had changed. Seeing Carnigan ride off with other men armed to the teeth, by the standards of this world, meant there were physical threats to warrant having armed groups of men.