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The muscles in my legs were shaking from standing still. I reached out and steadied myself against the wall, wishing my heart would slow down. A wedge of lamplight was shining through a gap in the kitchen curtains; as I watched, a shadow crossed and crossed again. My father, pacing.
‘We can’t stay out here all night,’ Alta said, the words almost a whisper.
‘It’s probably nothing.’ They’d quarrelled all week about the reaping machine, and why no one had checked it earlier. Neither of them mentioned that it should have been my job.
A thud: fists on the kitchen table. Pa raised his voice. ‘What do you expect me to do? Say no? That bloody witch will put a curse on us quick as—’
‘She already has! Look at him, Robert – what if he never gets better? It’s her fault—’
‘His own fault, you mean – if he—’ For a second a high note rang in my ears, drowning out Pa’s voice. The world slipped and righted itself, as if it had juddered on its axis. I swallowed a bubble of nausea. When I could concentrate again, there was silence.
‘We don’t know that,’ Pa said at last, just loud enough for us to hear. ‘She might help him. All those weeks she wrote to ask how he was doing.’
‘Because she wanted him! No, Robert, no, I won’t let it happen, his place is here with us, whatever he’s done, he’s still our son – and her, she gives me the creeps—’
‘You’ve never met her. It wasn’t you that had to go out there and—’
‘I don’t care! She’s done enough. She can’t have him.’
Alta glanced at me. Something changed in her face, and she took hold of my wrist and pulled me forwards. ‘We’re going inside,’ she said, in the high, self-conscious voice she used to call to the chickens. ‘It’s been a long day, you must be ravenous, I know I am. There better be some pie left, or I will kill someone. With a fork through the heart. And eat them.’ She paused in front of the door and added, ‘With mustard.’ Then she flung it open.
My parents were standing at either end of the kitchen: Pa by the window, his back turned to us, Ma at the fireplace with red blotches on her face like rouge. Between them, on the table, was a sheet of thick, creamy paper and an open envelope. Ma looked swiftly from Alta to me and took a half step towards it.
‘Dinner,’ Alta said. ‘Emmett, sit down, you look like you’re about to faint. Heavens, no one’s even laid the table. I hope the pie’s in the oven.’ She put a pile of plates down beside me. ‘Bread? Beer? Honestly, I might as well be a scullery maid …’ She disappeared into the pantry.
‘Emmett,’ Pa said, without turning round. ‘There’s a letter on the table. You’d better read it.’
I slid it towards me. The writing blurred into a shapeless stain on the paper. ‘My eyes are too dusty. Tell me what it says.’
Pa bowed his head, the muscles bunching in his neck as if he was dragging something heavy. ‘The binder wants an apprentice.’
Ma made a sound like a bitten-off word.
I said, ‘An apprentice?’
There was silence. A slice of moon shone through the gap in the curtains, covering everything in its path with silver. It made Pa’s hair look greasy and grey. ‘You,’ he said.
Alta was standing in the pantry doorway, cradling a jar of pickles. For a second I thought she was going to drop it, but she set it down carefully on the dresser. The knock of glass on wood was louder than the smash would have been.
‘I’m too old to be an apprentice.’
‘Not according to her.’
‘I thought …’ My hand flattened on the table: a thin white hand that I hardly recognised. A hand that couldn’t do an honest day’s work. ‘I’m getting better. Soon …’ I stopped, because my voice was as unfamiliar as my fingers.
‘It’s not that, son.’
‘I know I’m no use now—’
‘Oh, sweetheart,’ Ma said. ‘It’s not your fault— it’s not because you’ve been ill. Soon you’ll be back to your old self again. If that was all … You know we always thought you’d run the farm with your father. And you could have done, you still could – but …’ Her eyes went to Pa’s. ‘We’re not sending you away. She’s asking for you.’
‘I don’t know who she is.’
‘Binding’s … a good craft. An honest craft. It’s nothing to be afraid of.’ Alta knocked against the dresser, and Ma glanced over her shoulder as she swung her arm out swiftly to stop a plate from slipping to the floor. ‘Alta, be careful.’
My heart skipped and drummed. ‘But … you hate books. They’re wrong. You’ve always told me – when I brought that book home from Wakening Fair—’
A look passed between them, too quick to interpret. Pa said, ‘Never mind about that now.’
‘But …’ I turned back to Ma. I couldn’t put it into words: the swift change of subject if someone even mentioned a book, the shiver of distaste at the word, the look on their faces … The way she’d dragged me grimly past a sordid shopfront – A. Fogatini, Pawnbroker and Licens’d Bookseller – one day when I was small and we got lost in Castleford. ‘What do you mean, it’s a good craft?’
‘It’s not …’ Ma drew in her breath. ‘Maybe it’s not what I would have wanted, before—’
‘Hilda.’ Pa dug his fingers into the side of his neck, kneading the muscle as though it ached. ‘You don’t have a choice, lad. It’ll be a steady life. It’s a long way from anywhere, but that’s not a bad thing. Quiet. No hard labour, no one to tempt you off the straight and narrow …’ He cleared his throat. ‘And they’re not all like her. You settle down and learn the trade, and then … Well. There’re binders in town who have their own carriages.’
A tiny silence. Alta tapped the top of a jar with her fingernail and glanced at me.
‘But I don’t – I’ve never – what makes her think that I—?’ Now none of them would meet my eyes. ‘What do you mean, I’ve got no choice?’
No one answered. Finally Alta strode across the room and picked up the letter. ‘“As soon as he is able to travel”,’ she read out. ‘“The bindery can be very cold in winter. Please make sure he has warm clothes.” Why did she write to you and not Emmett? Doesn’t she know he can read?’
‘It’s the way they all do it,’ Pa said. ‘You ask the parents for an apprentice, that’s how it works.’
It didn’t matter. My hands on the table were all tendons and bones. A year ago they’d been brown and muscled, almost a man’s hands; now they were no one’s. Fit for nothing but a craft my parents despised. But why would she have chosen me, unless they’d asked her to? I spread my fingers and pressed, as if I could absorb the strength of the wood through the skin of my palms.
‘What if I say no?’
Pa clumped across to the cupboard, bent down and pulled out a bottle of blackberry gin. It was fierce, sweet stuff that Ma doled out for festivals or medicinal purposes, but he poured himself half a mug of it and she didn’t say a word. ‘There’s no place for you here. Maybe you should be grateful. This’ll be something you can do.’ He tossed half the gin down his throat and coughed.
I drew in my breath, determined not to let my voice crack. ‘When I’m better, I’ll be just as strong as—’
‘Make the best of it,’ he said.
‘But I don’t—’
‘Emmett,’ Ma said, ‘please … It’s the right thing. She’ll know what to do with you.’
‘What to do with me?’
‘I only mean – if you get ill again, she’ll—’
‘Like in a lunatic asylum? Is that it? You’re packing me off to somewhere miles from anywhere because I might lose my wits again at any moment?’
‘She wants you,’ Ma said, clutching her skirts as if she was trying to squeeze water out of them. ‘I wish you didn’t have to go.’
‘Then I won’t go!’
‘You’ll go, boy,’ Pa said. ‘Heaven knows you’ve brought enough trouble on this house.’
‘Robert, don’t—’
‘You’ll go. If I have to truss you up and leave you on her doorstep, you’ll go. Be ready tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’ Alta spun round so fast her plait swung out like a rope. ‘He can’t go tomorrow, he’ll need time to pack – and there’s the harvest, the harvest supper … Please, Pa.’
‘Shut up!’
Silence.
‘Tomorrow?’ The blotches on Ma’s cheeks had spread into a flush of scarlet. ‘We never said …’ Her voice trailed off. My father finished his gin, swallowing with a grimace as if his mouth was full of stones.
I opened my mouth to tell her it was all right, I’d go, they wouldn’t have to worry about me any more; but my throat was too dry from the reaping.
‘A few more days. Robert, the other apprentices don’t go until after the harvest – and he’s still not well, a couple of days …’
‘They’re younger than he is. And he’s well enough to travel, if he did a day in the fields.’
‘Yes, but …’ She moved towards him and caught his arm so that he couldn’t turn away. ‘A little more time.’
‘For pity’s sake, Hilda!’ He made a choking sound and tried to wrench himself away. ‘Don’t make this any harder. You think I want to let him go? You think that after we tried so hard – fought to keep a pure house – you think I’m proud of it, when my own father lost an eye marching in the Crusade?’
Ma glanced at Alta and me. ‘Not in front of—’
‘What does it matter now?’ He wiped his forearm across his face; then with a helpless gesture he flung the mug to the floor. It didn’t break. Alta watched it roll towards her and stop. Pa turned his back on us and bent over the dresser as if he was trying to catch his breath. There was a silence.
‘I’ll go,’ I said, ‘I’ll go tomorrow.’ I couldn’t look at any of them. I got up, hitting my knee against the corner of the table as I pushed back my chair. I struggled to the door. The latch seemed smaller and stiffer than it usually was, and the clunk as it opened echoed off the walls.
Outside, the moon divided the world into deep blue and silver. The air was warm and as soft as cream, scented with hay and summer dust. An owl chuckled in the near field.
I reeled across to the far side of the yard and leant against the wall. It was hard to breathe. Ma’s voice hung in my ears: That bloody witch will put a curse on us. And Pa, answering: She already has.
They were right; I was good for nothing. Misery rose inside me, as strong as the stabbing pains in my legs. Before this, I’d never been ill in my life. I never knew that my body could betray me, that my mind could go out like a lamp and leave nothing but darkness. I couldn’t remember getting sick; if I tried, all I saw was a mess of nightmare-scorched fragments. Even my memories of my life before that – last spring, last winter – were tinged with the same gangrenous shadow, as if nothing was healthy any more. I knew that I’d collapsed after midsummer, because Ma had told me so, and that I’d been on the way home from Castleford; but no one had explained where I’d been, or what had happened. I must have been driving the cart – without a hat, under a hot sun, probably – but when I tried to think back there was nothing but a rippling mirage, a last vertiginous glimpse of sunlight before the blackness swallowed me. For weeks afterwards, I’d only surfaced to scream and struggle and beg them to untie me. No wonder they wanted to get rid of me.
I closed my eyes. I could still see the three of them, their arms round one another. Something whispered behind me, scratching in the wall like dry claws. It wasn’t real, but it drowned out the owl and the rustle of trees. I rested my head on my arms and pretended I couldn’t hear it.
I must have drawn back instinctively into the deepest corner of darkness, because when I opened my eyes Alta was in the middle of the yard, calling my name without looking in my direction. The moon had moved; now it was over the gable of the farmhouse and all the shadows were short and squat.
‘Emmett?’
‘Yes,’ I said. Alta jumped and took a step forward to peer at me.
‘What are you doing there? Were you asleep?’
‘No.’
She hesitated. Behind her the light from a lamp crossed the upper window as someone went to bed. I started to pull myself to my feet and paused, wincing, as pain stabbed into my joints.
She watched me get up, without offering to help. ‘Did you mean it? That you’d go? Tomorrow?’
‘Pa meant it when he said I didn’t have any choice.’
I waited for her to disagree. Alta was clever like that, finding new paths or different ways of doing things, picking locks. But she only tilted her face upward as if she wanted the moonlight to bleach her skin. I swallowed. The stupid dizziness had come back – suddenly, dragging me one way and then another – and I swayed against the wall and tried to catch my breath.
‘Emmett? Are you all right?’ She bit her lip. ‘No, of course not. Sit down.’
I didn’t want to obey her but my knees folded of their own accord. I closed my eyes and inhaled the night smells of hay and cooling earth, the overripe sweetness of crushed weeds and a rank hint of manure. Alta’s skirts billowed and rustled as she sank down beside me.
‘I wish you didn’t have to go.’
I raised one shoulder without looking at her and let it drop again.
‘But … maybe it’s the best thing …’
‘How can it be?’ I swallowed, trying to fill the crack in my voice. ‘All right, I understand. I’m no use here. You’ll all be better off when I’m – wherever she is, this binder.’
‘Out on the marshes, on the Castleford road.’
‘Right.’ What would the marshes smell of? Stagnant water, rotting reeds. Mud. Mud that swallowed you alive if you went too far from the road, and never spat you back … ‘How do you know so much about it?’
‘Ma and Pa are only thinking about you. After everything that’s happened … You’ll be safe there.’
‘That’s what Ma said.’
A pause. She began to gnaw at her thumbnail. In the orchard below the stables a nightingale gurgled and then gave up.
‘You don’t know what it’s been like for them, Emmett. Always afraid. You owe them some peace.’
‘It’s not my fault I was ill!’
‘It’s your fault you—’ She huffed out her breath. ‘No, I know, I didn’t mean … just that we all need … please don’t be angry. It’s a good thing. You’ll learn a trade.’
‘Yes. Making books.’
She flinched. ‘She chose you. That must mean—’
‘What does it mean? How can she have chosen me, when she’s never even seen me?’ I thought Alta started to speak, but when I turned my head she was staring up at the moon, her face expressionless. Her cheeks were thinner than they had been before I got ill, and the skin under her eyes looked as if it had been smudged with ash. She was a stranger, out of reach.
She said, as if it was an answer, ‘I’ll come and see you whenever I can …’
I let my head roll back until I felt the stone wall against my skull. ‘They talked you round, didn’t they?’
‘I’ve never seen Pa like that,’ she said. ‘So angry.’
‘I have,’ I said. ‘He hit me, once.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘well, I suppose you—’ She stopped.
‘When I was small,’ I said. ‘You weren’t old enough to remember. It was the day of Wakening Fair.’
