Harvest A Novel Read Online Free PDF

village hand to try his luck with her. She spat at this point, only at the ground between the horse’s hoofs but still a shocking act and one that Master Kent could not ignore without losing face.
    “Count yourself as fortunate we do not boast a broader pillory,” he said, not looking at her in case she widened her eyes at him again. “And be thankful that we are too gentle here and careful of our water to duck you in our village pond. But you will lose your hair together with your men. And in the time it takes to lengthen you might consider your disdain for us.”
    This time her phlegm reached Willowjack and left a rosary of pearls across her flank.

3
    T IS THE EVENING OF this unrestful day of rest and the far barn that has survived the fire is full of harvesters, lying back on bales of hay and building up an appetite on rich man’s yellow manchet bread from Master Kent’s elm platters. We’re drinking ale from last year’s barley crop. Again we benefit from seasons. Lanterns throw out such deep and busy shadows that my neighbors’ faces are hard to place. They are grotesques, but only for a moment. I do not have to count the heads to see that everyone is here. There’s not a soul who’s stayed behind at home tonight. Even the twins’ old mother, who cannot shuffle a single step unless supported at both elbows and lifted like a plaster saint, has somehow succeeded, with the help of a wooden winnowing screen—“my lady’s litter,” as she says—in being carried to the feast. There’re parsley balls, salted offal pumps and stewed giblets. There’s cured bacon too. And the little hand-reared calf, rejected by its mother in the spring and kept by Master Kent in this same barn, has been slaughtered for its pains, skinned in one and shafted on a roasting pole. For us. Its hide is hanging from a rafter beam above the fire, being dried and cured in the smoke and odor of its own flesh.
    We ought to be content. The harvest’s in. Our platters are piled high with meat. There’s grease on everybody’s chin. Our heads are softening with beer. Yet I can tell our village is unnerved. This morning’s fires and skirmishes hang heavily, especially with the twins and Brooker Higgs but also with the men who far too quickly volunteered to hold the spitting woman on the ground and scissor her. To tell the truth there’s none of us who feels entirely comfortable, who is not soiled with a smudge of shame. Chatter being what it is, I have no doubt that, apart from Master Kent and Mr. Quill, anyone who wants to know who truly took a flame up to the dovecote will have worked it out by now. Secrets are like pregnancies hereabouts. You can hide them for a while but then they will start screaming. So we are all conspirators tonight. We can be absolved only if these three guilty friends pin their valor to their chests and whisper in the master’s ear that the two so far nameless men who are now standing side by side, cuffed, collared and locked in the village pillory at the gateway to the church we never built, enduring the first chill of the evening and a little rain, should be set loose and brought into the feaster’s barn by way of an apology. A cut of veal could be our recompense.
    It’s possible—no, likely, I will say—that Master Kent will not avenge himself on the twins and Brooker Higgs if they reveal the truth. Tonight they’re family, to some degree. Tonight we all are family. And Master Kent, especially since his wife passed on and left her unattended looms but not a single child to him, cherishes the fellowship we provide. Besides, it does not take a great amount of ale to make him warm and soft. Unlike a lot of us, the more he drinks the more he values harmony. So our merry men—so noticeably quiet, I see, and sitting in a huddle on the furthest bale, avoiding lantern light—could easily and without much fear design an almost-honest version of this morning’s fire and make amends, both to the master and to