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.
V
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.
Nicky asked the giant one day if he could pay for the next big load with a horse, but he stared at her angrily and shook his head.
“I hear as they’re carrying swords now,” he purred suspiciously; the huge hand crept to the pommel of his cutlass.
“Yes,” said Nicky. “It’s part of their religion. They were soldiers ages ago, and they’ve always carried swords. My friends used to wear a little toy sword before . . . before . . . you know; now they’ve made themselves proper ones again, in case they have to fight somebody.”
“And now they’re wanting horses too,” said the giant. Suddenly Nicky saw what was worrying him.
“But they don’t want horses for fighting on,” she said. “They don’t want to fight anybody. They’d like horses for plowing and pulling carts and so on.” “That’s as may be,” said the giant. “But I’m not sparing any horses. I’ve given you a fair price for the work so far, haven’t I?”
“Oh yes,” said Nicky and looked at a crate of baffled hens which was balanced across one of the barrows. “The Sikhs are very pleased.”
“And so they ought to be,” said the giant. “Well, if they’re making swords for themselves, they can make ’em for me, too.”
“I’ll ask,” said Nicky doubtfully.
“You do that,” said the giant, and sauntered down the hill. He moved nowadays with a slow and lordly gait which seemed to imply that all the wide landscape belonged to him, and every creature in it.
But Uncle Jagindar refused to make weapons for anybody except his own people, and the Sikh council (though they argued the question round for twenty minutes) all agreed with him. When he heard the news the giant became surlier than ever with Nicky, and the villagers copied him. Partly, Nicky decided, this was because they just did whatever he did out of sheer awe for him; but it was also partly because of the way they had built up a whole network of myths and imaginings around the Sikhs. One or two things that Maxie said, or that Mr. Tom said when he was talking over smithwork to be done, showed that their heads were full of crazy notions. They stopped looking her in the face when they spoke to her, as though they were afraid of some power that might rest in her eye. Also, if there were children in the Borough when she came past, mothers’ voices would yell a warning and little legs would scuttle for doorways. Once Nicky even saw a soapy arm reach through a window and grab a baby by the leg from where it was sleeping in a sort of wooden pram.
The giant still looked her straight in the eye, and raged in his purring voice if he heard anyone suggest or hint that the Devil’s Children were other than human flesh, but the scary whisperings went on behind his back. Nicky first realized how strong these dotty beliefs had become when she found the lost boy.
August had been a furiously busy month. The smithy furnace still roared all day, eating charcoal by the sackful. Ajeet and Nicky were officially in charge of the chickens, but that didn’t excuse them from any other work that needed doing — looking after babies, or chasing escaped sheep, or dreary milling, or binding and stooking the untidy sheaves as the first wheat was reaped, and there were six scythes now to do the reaping. And then, a few days later, the dried sheaves were carried down to the lane and spread about for threshing; and that was woman’s work, though after twenty minutes’ drubbing at the gold mass with the clumsy threshing flail your neck and shoulders ached with sharp pain and your hands were all blisters.
But even threshing was better than plowing, which Mr. Surbans Singh insisted on making an experimental start on as soon as the sheaves were off the stubble.
“We are learning new sums,” whispered Ajeet. “Four children equal one horse.”
Nicky only grunted. She was trudging with six-inch steps through the shin-scratching stalks, leaning her weight right forward against the rope that led over the pad on her shoulder and back to the plow frame. Ajeet trudged beside her with another rope, and Gopal and his cousin Harpit just ahead; behind her Mr. Surbans Singh wrestled with the bucking plow handles as the blade surged in jolts and rushes through roots and flinty earth. It was very slow, very tiring, and turned only a wiggling, shallow furrow. When at last Mr. Surbans Singh called a halt, all four children sank groaning to the bristly stubble and watched while Mr. Surbans Singh and Uncle Jagindar and Mr. Wazir Singh (who had once been a farmer) scuffed at the turned earth with their feet, bent to trickle it through their fingers, and discussed the tilt and angle of the blade.
“Not bad,” said Mr. Surbans Singh at last. “We cannot plow all these acres. The next thing is to take sharp poles and search for the best patches of earth.”
“You can run away and play now, children,” said Mr. Wazir Singh, who was one of those people who always manage to talk to children as though they are small and stupid and anything they do, even when they’ve been helping for all they’re worth, is of no interest or importance.
“Thank you, Nicky,” said Mr. Surbans Singh with his brilliant smile. She could see where broad streams of sweat had runneled through the dust on his face, and realized that he must have been toiling twice as hard as any of them.
“Thank you, Ajeet and Gopal and Harpit,” he went on. “Ask your Aunt Mohindar to give you each an apple.”
The apples in the artist’s cottage garden weren’t ready for eating yet, but the village had paid for some of the last lot of work with a sack of James Grieves. The children sat on the wall around the well and bit into the white flesh, so juicy that there was no way of stopping the sweet liquid flowing down the outside of their chins in wasteful dribbles. Nicky looked over the wide gold landscape, where the swifts hurtled and wheeled above wheat that would never be harvested, and felt the wanderlust on her. Suddenly the close community, busy with its ceaseless effort for survival, seemed stifling.
Usually she would have gone for rest and calm to sit by the old lady’s cart under the wych elm and watch the babies playing. Even when Ajeet came to translate, she and the old lady did not speak much, though sometimes the old lady would tell her of extraordinary things she had seen and done in that other life before she came to England — not really as though she was trying to entertain Nicky, more to teach her, to instruct, to pass on precious knowledge. And when they didn’t speak, it still was soothing to be near her, in a way that Nicky couldn’t explain; she guessed that the old lady felt the same, but there was no way of asking.