‘Let me show you something. You must keep this to yourself for the moment. There will be time later for wonder.’ Solomon let his eyes adjust to the gloom, then set his pack down on the only table in the room. He undid the straps and smiled, knowing that only his smile would be visible. ‘Do you have a lamp?’ he asked.
Rose fetched a lamp that smelled of fish oil, and lit it with a hot coal from the smouldering peat fire. When she put it next to Solomon, he could scarcely tell the difference.
He opened his pack and began to pull out the tools of his trade: an odd flat-bottomed jar, a cork stopper with a hole bored through it, thin copper wires scavenged from some rubble field, a small rod of white metal. Lastly he drew out a square of folded cloth and carefully opened it out until it all but covered his lap.
‘Do you have any vinegar, or acid fruit?’
The woman frowned at all the strange objects and strange speech. ‘I’ve some apple cider. It’s on the verge of turning, and I was going to use it for pickling.’
‘Bring it to me.’
She brought him the glazed clay bottle and a horn beaker. She poured some out for him as if he were going to drink it. He sniffed at its contents. The odour was sharp and unpleasant.
‘There are ways of concentrating the essence of the acid to produce a more powerful effect. This should do for now,’ he said.
He filled the jar with the cider, and stoppered it with the cork, making sure to wedge one of the copper wires against the rim. He slid the metal rod down inside the jar through the hole, and wound the other wire around it.
‘What are you doing?’
‘It is easier to show you than to explain.’ He looked up briefly and smiled again. ‘Look on the might of the Kenyan empire.’
Rose only looked doubtful. Solomon touched the wires to opposite ends of the draped cloth.
The cloth began to glow until it was bright enough to cast shadows against the soot-stained ceiling. The woman stared with astonishment.
She stretched out her hand and touched the weave of the material. Her rough fingers caught the nap, and as she pulled away, she teased out white silk threads that made their own light. ‘How can this be?’
‘The jar is what we call an electropile. It is a little engine, which makes the cloth shine. My people, we grow the plant that makes the cloth. Does this answer your question?’
‘No. What’s an engine? Is it sorcery?’
‘No incantations, no spirits. Just liquid, metal and plant fibres.’
‘I don’t know about this. Father Padroig will have to be told.’ Rose looked around at the inside of her hut, then wet her fingers and snuffed out her own lamp. ‘Can you hang the cloth on the wall? Does it matter if the cloth is torn, or pierced?’
‘Yes, yes and yes. It is all the material I have, so we must treat it with the utmost care. But it is strong, and there – I can drape it over that roof beam. Move the table closer and I can place the electropile on it.’
She watched as he undid the wires, and the cloth turned dark, like a cloud passing in front of the full moon. ‘Will it last for ever?’
‘Nothing ever lasts for ever,’ said Solomon. ‘The electropile will need fresh vinegar regularly, new conductors occasionally, and eventually the cloth will rot and fall apart. It will last a while, good lady.’
He moved the jar onto the uneven stone-flag floor and carried the table to its new position. He climbed up on it, though with his height he had little need to do so, and folded the cloth over the dark balk of timber. He adjusted it so that it hung just free of the tabletop, and climbed down again.
‘What else do you have in that bag of yours?’ Rose asked.
Solomon put a hand over the backpack and tapped his temple with a long dark finger. ‘What is in that bag is of little importance compared to what I hold in here.’ He reconnected the electropile, and again soft white light exposed corners that had not seen illumination since the roof went on. ‘I am hungry,’ he said.
‘Lord have mercy, if He doesn’t strike me down for being a fool and a sluggard. Sit, Solomon. Bread, fish stew. You’ll have your fill.’
‘Thank you.’ He sat at the table. ‘You have welcomed me, and I am grateful.’
She came over from the fire with a wooden bowl full of steaming stew. ‘No more talk now. There’s eating to be done.’
After he had eaten three bowls of fish stew, she took him on a tour of An Rinn, and ended it by taking him up the hill to the church, where they sat on the graveyard wall.
‘It is very green,’ observed Solomon. ‘You are blessed with good rains.’
‘It rains all the time,’ said Rose.
‘Interesting. So the stream is always full and never dries up. It is not so in my country. And the wind.’ He turned his face to it, smelling the salt carried on the air. ‘It never stops, does it?’
‘I suppose not. Sometimes there are storms that last for days on end. There’s no fishing, and folk have to make do with what they have in stock.’
‘And what about those things that you cannot make for yourself? Where do you get those from?’
‘From the market in An Cobh.’
‘And how far away is that?’
‘Two days on foot. More with a cart; less by sea, but the tides are difficult and the wind unfavourable. Why do you ask so many questions, Solomon?’
‘Because,’ he said, ‘I need to know about you and how you live your life if I am going to help you. Things will begin to change here. For the better, always for the better. If you could, Rose, what would you change first?’
‘You talk strange,’ she said, ‘not just funny, but strange, like you’ve been touched by some madness. Can you bring back my husband? No. So I’m still a widow, no matter what you do. I should be at my loom now instead of wasting time up here. If I’m to have enough goods to trade before winter comes, I’ll need to make more cloth. We need pots and pans and needles and hooks and knives and linen, and if there’s anything left over, spices and herbs and wax and tar and a hundred other things.’ She got awkwardly down off the wall. ‘Can you help me with any of that? I thought not.’
She stalked off, back to her house, and left Solomon on the hillside, pondering. After a while he walked over to a stand of tall trees and began to pick up sticks. He would beg some wool for thread to bind up the wood, perhaps even make some fish-bone glue. Some off-cuts of linen for little sails. They didn’t have to be big; they just had to work well enough to persuade someone to apply themselves to a new task.
Then he’d show them just what he could do.
CHAPTER 12
RORY MACSHIEL WAS down on the shore, sitting on an upturned hull, caulking it with wool waste. Solomon watched the man drive in the knotted lines of twisted fibre with a bronze-edged tool, packing the joints between the planks to make them watertight. He used the caulker in hard, fast stabs, working off pent-up aggression. He didn’t look like a man who should be disturbed.
‘Sir?’ said Solomon.
macShiel carried on working the length of caulk until the last of it disappeared into the hull. Then he looked up. ‘What is it?’ he said sharply. He reached into a bag and twisted up more wool.
‘I have a gift for you,’ said Solomon, and held up his creation for macShiel to see.
‘I’ve no time for toys, stranger. I appreciate your peacemaking, but there’s no strife between us. Just between me and my wife’s mother, the witch.’ He drummed his heels on the wooden boards for a moment, listening to the hollow sound it made, then went on with his work.
‘I’ll leave it here,’ said Solomon. macShiel waved without looking, and Solomon carefully planted the main shaft into the sand. He made certain he got it as vertical as he could manage, then gave the wheel a little turn to start it moving.
It squeaked into life, and Solomon walked slowly away, back up the beach. He’d got as far as the first line of tussocky grass when a voice called him back.