Pattern

'Are you going to lie there all day?' Elja said.

Poldarn turned his head. Light was flooding through the crack between the shutter and the window frame. 'Bloody hell,' he groaned, 'what time is it?'

'Well after sun-up,' Elja replied. 'Come on, there's work to be done.'

'Is there really,' he grumbled. 'Can't see what that's got to do with me. Why can't they just get on with it, they all seem to know what they're supposed to be doing. Wish I did.'

'Get up.' She prodded him again, and he howled.

Elja wasn't very sympathetic. 'Now what are you fussing about?' she said. 'You're not the one who's laid up with a busted head.'

Poldarn groaned. 'No, but I wouldn't give more than scrap value for the rest of me. Can't I go back to sleep and wake up in a month or so, when I'm better?'

'No.'

'Oh, all right, then.' He swung his legs off the bed, but they were cramped and painful. His ankle protested as soon as he put his feet on the ground. 'I don't suppose you'll tell me, but I'd really like to know what I'm meant to do this morning. Just for once, it'd be nice to be in on the deadly secret. I thought it'd be different, after we all worked together building this house, but now it's like we're all back to where we were before.'

Elja laughed. 'You're strange,' she said. 'You really don't know, do you?'

'No.'

'All right,' she said, 'I'll tell you.'

'You will?'

'Of course, why shouldn't I?'

'Thank you,' Poldarn said gratefully, and tried to stand up, but his knees weren't up to the challenge. He sat down again and massaged them with the palms of his hands. They were painful, too.

'Well,' Elja said, pulling her shawl around her shoulders, 'mostly the men are working on the cattle pens, and laying the stone foundations for the main barn. We're going to be sewing, mainly: curtains for the doors and some shirts. That's the morning taken care of.'

Poldarn nodded gravely. 'That seems reasonable enough,' he said. 'What about this afternoon?'

'The pens should be finished by then, barring accidents, so the men'll probably head off down to the old house and start tearing down the outbuildings.'

'Oh. Why?'

'For the lumber, silly. Where else are you going to get materials from?'

Poldarn frowned. 'But your father and his lot,' he said. 'I thought it was settled, they're going to move in down there until they can rebuild Colscegsford.'

There was a disapproving tone in Elja's voice as she replied. 'They've agreed to stay in the house, for now,' she said. 'But you can't let them have the barns and buildings too, there just isn't enough timber to go round. Not unless you've got another plantation squirrelled away somewhere that you haven't told us about.'

Best not to argue, Poldarn told himself; after all, it wasn't as if he was talking to just one individual here. Everything Elja was thinking and saying had undoubtedly come direct from the Colscegsford household, popped into her mind like a pinch of sage sprinkled into a pot of stew. Somehow or other, what he'd assumed was the generous gesture of letting Colsceg and his brood have the use of Haldersness had turned into a mortal affront to their dignity, or something of the kind. He wished Elja'd explain how that worked too, but he didn't want to overtax her patience.

'Fair enough, then,' he said. 'If that's the way everybody wants to do it. But where's your dad supposed to get his timber from?'

'That's his business,' Elja replied promptly. 'I'm part of this household now, so there.'

She stood up and pushed her hair back over her shoulders, a gesture that Poldarn found strangely familiar. 'You really ought to get up,' she said. 'You know they can't start without you.'

Poldarn sighed. 'You mean,' he said wretchedly, 'that every day for the rest of my life I've got to be awake and up and about before everybody else, or nothing will ever get done. That's a really depressing thought.'

'You're just lazy,' she told him. 'Comes of spending all those years abroad, I guess. No wonder we can walk all over them, if they're all like you.'

It proved to be a very long day indeed. Against all expectations, theirs and his own, Poldarn found that he was able to do his share and more on the cattle pen, swinging the massive iron post-rammer and hauling rails; but the pain in his back and shoulders didn't go away, however hard he tried to ignore it, and by midday he'd had more than enough. But instead of crawling away and lying down somewhere out of the way he had to go and sit in the hall while the midday meal was eaten, because they couldn't have it without him, and as soon as it was over he had to get up and lead them all back to work. That made him feel ridiculous, like a duck leading a gaggle of ducklings down to the pond.

Prising apart the long barn turned out to be a nightmare of a job. The nails were mostly rusted in and wouldn't draw out, which meant their heads had to be chiselled or filed away. Even the dowels and pegs refused to come out clean; they broke off flush or cracked halfway through, leaving one or two inches of inaccessible taper to be drilled or bored out. Plank after plank proved to have splits or cracks in them-of course, they only found this out after they'd got them free, at which stage it was impossible to put them back, or use them for anything except firewood. The main timbers were in a rather better state by and large, but there were still a great many casualties (and each timber that failed would have to be replaced with a new one, which meant felling rather more of the scarce and precious trees than anybody would have chosen; nobody raised the problem of combining green and seasoned timber in the same structure, presumably because it was too depressing to contemplate). In the end, they were reduced to splicing patches into some of the broken timbers, which everybody knew was the wrong thing to do, but it wasn't as though they had any realistic alternative. The job was nowhere near finished by nightfall, but they left it and trooped back up to the new house, tired and silent. The evening meal was porridge, leeks and flat beer, because that was all that was left, thanks to the strain on the stores of feeding two households. When Poldarn expressed concern on that score, Rannwey told him there was nothing to get worried about, they had enough porridge and leeks and flat beer to last almost indefinitely; a prospect that depressed Poldarn rather more than the threat of starvation.

After the meal was over and the tables had been stacked away, the household immediately grabbed their blankets and got ready to go to sleep; Poldarn, who was tired but not at all sleepy, had no alternative but to retire to the inner room, since the pattern suggested that they couldn't close their eyes till he'd closed his. The mental image of a hall full of exhausted people wrapped in blankets and waiting impatiently for his first snore to filter through the partition was extremely disconcerting, and made him feel more awake than ever.

'It's all right,' Elja assured him. 'They can get their heads down now you're in here.'

He looked at her. 'How did you know what I was thinking?' he said.

She smiled at him. 'I saw it in your thoughts,' she said.

'But I didn't think you could do that.'

'Usually I can't,' she replied, slipping off her dress. 'But I guess you're so tired and fed up you let your guard down, and there it was, plain to see. It's all right,' she added with a grin, 'it's back up again now, I can't see a thing. Just goes to show, though, you really are one of us-you've just got this knack of shutting us all out.'

'Oh.' Poldarn sat down on the bed and tried to reach his boots, but his arms and legs were knotted with cramp. 'But I don't want to do that. I just want to be normal, like the rest of you.'

'Obviously you don't,' Elja replied. 'Not deep down. And I think I know why, too. You see, really you think you're normal and the rest of us are weird. That's why you keep us out. It must be very difficult.'

'You could be right,' Poldarn sighed. 'But I wouldn't know, I can't see. I guess I'm as closed off to myself as I am to the rest of you. Mostly though,' he added, 'I'm worn out.'