Thirty-Four in a Hundred

Monday, October 21, 1816

“Thirty-four,” said Isaac Gwilliam. “Out of a hundred.”

“Count them yourself, Mr. Gwilliam. I had rather you did.”

The old man stood in the doorway of the castle malt house with the rain running off his hat brim. Gideon’s wife was holding out to him a square of wet flannel pinned on a slate. A paper label was tied to the corner. Upper Hope. Laid down 9th October.

Gideon had come up behind Gwilliam’s waggon in time to hear it. He stopped by the wheel and let her get on with it.

The wheat had been cut at last. The first sickles had gone in on the eighth of the month, seven weeks behind the proper time, into straw that was still green at the knot. For four days the dale had worked from dark to dark. Then the rain had come back. It had rained on eight days of the last nine, and the sheaves had stood out in it. He had opened a stook at Withy on Friday and found every ear bearded with white shoots.

Gwilliam bent his long back over the flannel. A hundred grains lay on it in ten rows of ten. A good many had put out a clean white root and a green spear as long as a fingernail. The rest had done nothing, or had swollen and gone grey with mould.

He counted with one brown finger, moving his lips. He counted to thirty-four and stopped.

“That’s off my Long Field,” he said. “The best ground I have.”

“It is the best figure but three in the whole book.” She nodded at Crispin, who was sitting on a malt bushel just inside the door with his ledger. “Read Mr. Gwilliam the others.”

“Twenty farms, sir,” said the boy. “A hundred grains from each, rubbed out of the sheaf by hand and laid on flannel at the warm end of the glasshouse. I counted them in and Pip counted them out, and then we changed over to see if we agreed. The best is Mr. Lloyd’s at Stanway, with sixty-one. Mr. Bebb has fifty-two. The worst is nineteen.” He looked up. “We did yours twice, sir, because Aunt Linnea did not believe it either. It was thirty-four both times.”

“Two grains in three are dead already,” Linnea said. “They sprouted in the ear, in the field, and then dried off and died. They look like wheat, and they will make a kind of bread if you are hungry enough. They will never grow. If you sow that as it stands, Mr. Gwilliam, you will have a third of a crop next year, and so will every man in the dale.”

“I can sow thicker.”

“You can, with what is alive. That is why I want it first. Every day it lies damp in the sheaf, more of it dies. Bring me the best you have, from the tops of the stooks where the wind got at it, flailed out and not a week old. I will dry it on this kiln at a heat that would not hurt a baby. Then it will keep sound until you can get it into the ground. After that you may thresh the rest for bread, and welcome.”

Gwilliam straightened. He looked past her into the malt house, where two men were turning grain on the kiln floor with wooden shovels. Then he looked back at his waggon. There were four sacks on it under a tarpaulin.

“I brought four, since the order came round under the Duke’s name. I’ll not bring more. Wheat was ninety-two shilling at Ludlow last market day. I’ve a barn full of sheaves and rent to find at the audit, and I mean to thresh for market while there’s a market.” His pale eyes came back to her. “I’ve grown wheat five and forty year, ma’am. I gave you best in June, in my own furrow, and you was right. But I’ll not be ordered about in my own barn by a woman with a bit of wet flannel. I say it with respect.”

Gideon came round the tail of the waggon.

“Her Grace’s orders are mine, Mr. Gwilliam.”

The old man turned. He had not heard him on the wet cobbles.

“Preece carried that order to every farm on Friday, and I signed it,” Gideon said. “The words were hers, and so was the reason. I should not have known to give it. In June she slit a stem in your wheat and told me to buy four hundred quarters. I bought them the next Monday. They are in that granary across the yard, and they are the only cheap bread there will be in this parish before next harvest. I should be a great fool to stop listening to her in October.”

“It’s ninety-two shilling, Your Grace.”

“It is. And next October it will be a hundred and twenty, if this dale has sown dead seed. I will speak of the rent at the audit, to all of you together. Nobody will be pressed for it this side of that day. In the meantime the seed comes first.”

He did not wait to see how that was taken. He threw back the tarpaulin, got his shoulder under the first sack and stood up with it. It was four bushels of damp wheat, and it weighed about as much as a well-grown recruit. He carried it past his wife and up the six stone steps to the kiln floor.

When he came down, Gwilliam had not moved. He was looking at the Duke of Brackenhope’s coat, which had a broad wet stripe of chaff across the shoulder.

Gideon took the second sack.

He heard a grunt behind him on the steps. When he had tipped his load and turned, the old man was coming up with the third on his back, stiff in the knees and scarlet in the face.

“I’ll not stand by while you unload my waggon,” Gwilliam said. He let the sack down. He looked about him at the kiln, with the long floor of pierced tiles and the horsehair cloth spread over it. The grain lay two fingers deep and steamed gently. “My grandfather carried barley to this floor. It’s not been lit since the old Duke gave up brewing.”

“Mrs. Hobday found me the cloths,” said Linnea. She had followed them up. She crouched and laid the inside of her wrist flat on the tiles, as she laid it on the glasshouse brick. “That is as hot as it may ever be. If my wrist cannot bear it, the seed cannot. It is turned every half hour by that glass, and it comes off when a grain snaps clean between the teeth. Your four sacks will go on at six o’clock and be ready for you by noon tomorrow.”

“How will I know it’s mine I get back?”

“Pip.”

Philippa appeared from behind a heap of empty sacks with a bundle of wooden tallies and a pot of red lead. She had chaff in both plaits.

“Upper Hope is number fourteen,” she said severely. “I paint it on the sack and on the tally, and Crispin writes it in the book, and nobody’s corn gets mixed with anybody else’s. I’ve done eleven farms and not lost one.”

Gwilliam looked at her, and at the pot, and at the boy with the ledger.

“Well,” he said at last. He did not say any more than that. But he went down for the fourth sack himself, and at the foot of the steps he touched his hat brim to the Duchess with two fingers before he climbed to his waggon seat.

“He will not bring the rest,” Linnea said, watching him go. “He will thresh for Ludlow tomorrow. He carried the Long Field on Saturday, in the one dry afternoon, and stacked it. I rode past it yesterday. It was put up too wet, Gideon. I told his son so.”

“What did the son say?”

“That his father had been building stacks since before I was born.”

“That is very likely true,” Gideon said, and went to find Preece.
***
There had not been a day like it at Brackenhope in his lifetime. Waggons came into the yard from noon until dark, each with a farm’s seed corn. Pugh had the furnace. Hotchkiss and three of the bridge labourers turned the floor in shifts. Tudge had built four tiers of slatted racks along the warm end of the glasshouse, over the line of the flues, and the smallest lots lay drying there in shallow trays under the leaves of the Strelitzia.

Gideon had looked in on them at four. The air in the glasshouse was thick and smelled of wet bread. She had every top light propped open a hand’s width, with the rain coming in, and she had carried the three heaths from Hackney across to the orangery with her own hands.

“You told me that they hate damp more than cold,” he had said.

“They do. I shall lose some.” She had been tying a label, and she had not looked up. “I can raise a heath again from a cutting. I cannot raise a parish.”

He had stood among her pots and found nothing whatever to say to that. He had gone back to the sacks.

He carried a good many of them. He could have stood in the yard with a list, as he had stood on the bank of the leat in June, and at first he did. But there were more sacks than shoulders, and a duke with chaff down his neck seemed to hurry the farmers remarkably. Bebb had gaped at him and then carried twice his own share.

At dusk he crossed to the granary with Preece. The four hundred quarters lay there in their bins, dry and gold and smelling of last year’s sun. He ran a handful through his fingers.

“Ninety-two shillings,” the steward said. “I never thought to see it. You’d clear three hundred pound and more on this tomorrow, Your Grace, without stirring from the yard.”

“I daresay. How many names are on the list?”

“Four hundred and eleven souls, with the two babies born at Withy cottages.”

“Then it goes out from the first of November, by the peck, to every house on that list, at what I gave for it. Seventy-six, and not a farthing over. Any family that cannot find seventy-six may work it off at the bridge approaches.” He let the grain fall. “Mr. Pargeter told me in my own drawing room that I should see ninety for this by Christmas. He was out by two months. I should like to know how much he is holding himself.”

“A corn-factor, in this year?” Preece shook his head. “As much as he could lay hands on, I’d say.”

Gideon thought of the fourth exception, and of the third of December, which was six weeks off tomorrow. Quince had written twice more. He still did not know what the fresh matter was.

He shut the granary door and locked it himself.
***
By half past eleven the yard was quiet. He had sent the children to bed at eight, over Philippa’s loud objections, and the farmers had gone home with their numbered sacks. Pugh was asleep on a heap of cloths in the corner of the malt house. He had earned two hours, and Gideon had taken the furnace.

It was a low brick vault under the kiln floor, with an iron door and a bed of charcoal behind it. One lantern hung from a nail. He had his coat off and his sleeves rolled. He was feeding the fire a shovelful at a time, as he had been taught at six o’clock.

Linnea sat on an upturned bushel with her back against the warm wall.

He did not think that he had ever seen a dirtier duchess. There was charcoal across her forehead where she had pushed back her hair, and more of it on one lens of her spectacles. Her apron was grey to the hem. Chaff had lodged in her plait and in the collar of her gown, and there was a blister on her palm, which she was examining with interest.

“Eleven farms dried and gone home,” she said. “Six on the floor or the racks. Three to come tomorrow. I have not been so filthy since I was nine years old and fell in my father’s peat stack.”

“Were you as pleased about it then?”

“No. I was whipped. Nobody has whipped me today, and I find that it makes all the difference.” She leaned her head back and shut her eyes. She was smiling. “Bebb’s second sample came off at four. I bit a grain, and it snapped like a twig. I could have kissed him.”

“I am glad that you restrained yourself. He has had a trying day already. He saw me carry a sack.”

“So did Gwilliam. I thought his eyes would drop out.”

“He will tell it in Ludlow that the Duke has been reduced to porter’s work by his wife.”

“He will tell it that the Duke unloaded his waggon for him, and he will be proud of it for the rest of his life.” She opened her eyes. “You said my orders were yours. In the open yard, before him and half the tenantry.”

“They were. I only signed them.”

“I know. I have been thinking about it all evening, between the turnings.” She looked at him across the small, hot space. The lantern lit her face, charcoal and all, and it was happier than he had ever seen it. “I never expected to be of use to anyone outside a glasshouse. I did not know that I wanted to be.”

He put down the shovel. He would have crossed to her then, soot or no soot. Her face stopped him.

The smile had gone out of it. She had looked down at her own hands, at the blister and the black nails, and something had come into her face that he had seen there once or twice in the last three weeks. She had gone quiet at odd moments. He had put it down to Quince’s letter.

She drew a breath and sat up straight on the bushel.

“Gideon, there is something about the Heaths I ought to have—”

The door at the head of the furnace steps crashed back against the wall.

“Your Grace!” It was Preece, bareheaded, with a lantern swinging in his fist. “Will Gwilliam’s ridden down. There’s a stack heating at Upper Hope. The Long Field stack. The old man put an iron in it at eleven and couldn’t hold the end when he drew it out.”

Gideon was already reaching for his coat. “Is it smoking?”

“Steaming, the lad says. Not smoke, not yet.”

“Wake Pugh to the furnace. Then rouse Hotchkiss and every man asleep in the stable loft, and send them after us in the waggon with hay forks, buckets and all the empty sacks there are. Horses, Preece.”

He turned. Linnea was on her feet with her cloak half on.

“You have been at work since five this morning,” he said.

“So have you. I know which sheaves can still be saved, and you do not.” She was already past him on the steps. “Run, Gideon.”

They ran.
***
He smelled it before he saw it. It came down the lane to meet them in the rain, sweet and sour together, like a brewhouse.

The stack stood in Gwilliam’s rickyard under a new thatch. It was as big as a cottage. In the light of four lanterns a white vapour was coming off it on every side, as breath comes off a hard-ridden horse. The old man stood at the foot with an iron bar in his hand. His sons were beside him, and Mrs. Gwilliam held a light.

Gideon was off Corporal before the gelding had stopped.

“Has anyone cut into it?”

“I was about to,” said Gwilliam. “Let the heat out of the side.”

“Do not. Let air into the heart of that, and you will have a bonfire in a quarter of an hour. I have seen a forage stack go so, in Portugal. It comes down from the top, course by course, the way it went up.” He was already looking about him, as he had on the bank of the leat. “Two ladders. Your sons on the top with me, stripping thatch. Buckets filled and stood along that wall, and every sack you own soaked in the trough and laid ready. Mrs. Gwilliam, the lanterns on the windward side, and well back. Nobody brings a flame within ten yards of it.”

He went up the ladder first.

The thatch came off in wet armfuls. The top courses of sheaves were only warm. Further down they were hot, and the steam came up round his boots so thick that he could not see his own hands. He pitched each sheaf down to the yard, and the Gwilliam lads pitched beside him, and after twenty minutes the waggon came in at the gate with nine more men.

He did not have to tell his wife her post. She had taken it. She stood at the foot of the stack with her gloves off, and every sheaf that came down went through her bare hands before it went anywhere else.

“Cool. To the cart, for the kiln, that is seed. Cool. Warm, on the barn floor, open the band and spread it. This one is hot. Throw it out in the yard in the rain, away from the rest, and do not stack two together.”

She said it over and over, in the same calm voice that had called drays for him down Oxford Street. The men learned her three words within the first ten minutes.

Somewhere past two o’clock Isaac Gwilliam came to her with a sheaf in his arms. He had been carrying to the barn for an hour, in silence.

“I can’t tell with this one,” he said. “My hands is gone numb. Which heap, Your Grace?”

She put her wrist into the heart of it. “The barn. Spread it thin.”

“Aye,” said Gwilliam, and took it there.

Gideon heard it from eight feet above them, and nearly missed his footing.

They reached the middle a little before four. The sheaves there were brown and slimy and too hot to hold without a wet sack round the hands. One, at the very centre, had gone black along the band. When he drove the fork into it, a thread of real smoke came up, thin and blue in the lantern light.

“Water,” he said, without raising his voice. “On that one. Now.”

Three buckets went over it. It hissed.

After that it was only labour. The stack came down to its staddle stones, and the yard was strewn with steaming sheaves from wall to wall. The rain did the rest. At some hour when the sky had begun to lighten, Gwilliam stood beside him and looked at the empty place where his best field had been.

“She told my lad on Sunday that it was put up wet,” the old man said. “I called her a bit of flannel to her face.”

“You did.”

“It’d have been afire by morning, and the barn with it, and likely the house.” He rubbed his walnut face with a hand that shook from weariness. “There’s forty sheaves on that cart she says are fit for seed. Tell her I’ll flail them myself, and bring every one down to her kiln. And the rest of the barn, in what order she pleases.”

“Tell her yourself, Mr. Gwilliam. She will like it better from you.”

“I would. She’s asleep.”

Gideon went into the barn.

The sheaves she had saved lay spread over the threshing floor, with their bands cut, drying in the draught from the great doors. In the corner by the winnowing fan there was a heap of empty sacks. His wife was lying on it, on her side, with her knees drawn up and one hand under her cheek. Her spectacles had slid down her nose. Somebody had put a horse blanket over her. He thought it must have been Mrs. Gwilliam.

Her face was black with charcoal and grey with dust, and there was a red weal across the back of her wrist where a hot sheaf had caught it. Her mouth was a little open.

He sat down on an upturned measure, where he could see her, and found that his legs were glad of it.

The east end of the barn stood open. Beyond the yard the long back of Brown Clee was coming up dark against a strip of yellow sky. It was the first clear dawn in a fortnight.

He remembered that she had begun to tell him something at the furnace, about her heaths. It would be the damp, most likely, or what she expected to lose. He would ask her when she woke. It would keep.

He thought instead of a wet evening in May. A bald man had stood at his library table and told him what he needed, a sensible woman of some standing who had a plain reason of her own and did not flinch. He had gone down the lane with that list in his head, like a quartermaster with a requisition. He had believed that he was getting a witness for a lawyer’s room.

He had got this. She could ring a pot and slit a wheat stem. She had turned a boy’s fear into a column of figures and a locked door into a lit candle. Last night she had put her bare hands into a burning stack for a man who had insulted her at noon. Now she was asleep on a sack in a tenant’s barn with soot on her nose.

They had thrown the bargain over two months ago, the pair of them, in front of a tub that would not flower. He knew that. He had said the words himself.

But he had made it first. He had set out his terms to a stovepipe and signed his name under them. Gideon Kynaston had put that name to a good many documents in four and thirty years, to commissions and requisitions and a marriage register. He sat in the cold dawn and watched his wife sleep, and he had never in his life been so glad of a bargain.
***