Chapter Two:  Young Master Ethan makes himself Disliked, and the Caravan Arrives in the Village of Saradell.

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The following morning saw the men, horses, wagons and mule teams assembling in the pre-dawn gloom, each man, like Tom, doing his best to pretend that he was awake and not at all cold as he gave a final tug to knots on tarpaulins and buckles on harness, and all thinking kindly of families they had taken their leave of and would not see for several weeks.  Tom’s mother had risen even earlier than he had, ostensibly to make tea for him, but also to present him with a new suit of clothes which she had secretively made for him — of tough material, but well cut and tailored specifically for him — and to give him a final kiss on the cheek and pat on the shoulder before he stepped out into the still lamp-lit streets to find his way to the caravan-yard.  Now, standing about waiting for the last members of the party to arrive and watching the mists pale, the bladder of tea hidden under his coat (which coat was a hand-me-down from his father and a little large, but his mother had kept it in good repair) provided so much warmth that he didn’t want to drink it.

Brackenstall preferred to get an early start on the first day, leaving as soon as it was light enough for the horses to see their footing, but this morning he was to be delayed.  It was a half hour after sunrise (if you could have seen the sun behind the persistent blanket of clouds), and the men, eager to be off after rising so early, were beginning to grumble, when the coach with the Phipps coat of arms and a smart driver joined them.  The coach was accompanied by the grizzled old family retainer who had made the arrangements the day before, and a thin boy — greyly sallow of complexion and well-dressed but sour of expression — both on horse-back.  Brackenstall satisfied himself with merely glaring, and jamming his hat down on his head, gave the command to the caravan to move.

As the caravan pulled out of the city and into the open country-side a reddish blur sped by on Tom’s right and the thin boy on his bay horse far outpaced the caravan, racing up around a sharp bend in the road.  Brackenstall glowered after him, but said nothing for the moment, which Tom found odd, as the Master tended to like all things in their order.  As the caravan rounded the bushes at the bend, Tom (lucky enough to be riding in the first cart so that he could take lessons from the best driver, Pickering) caught sight of the boy on the bay horse and a young man a very few years his elder, also on horseback, having a discussion.  Or, more likely, an argument, as the young man brushed the boy’s hand off his arm and spurred his horse back toward town immediately upon the lead wagon rounding the bend.  He was scowling blackly as he passed.

The boy was too far distant for Tom to read anything about his expression, though as Brackenstall rode forward, growling audibly that such behaviour could mean his life in the hills, the boy’s stance visibly straightened.

“The land hereabout appears distinctly flat,” he responded sharply, and reigned his horse around to head back toward where the coach had its place in line, his face set in hauteur.

“Ah,” Tom thought, “This must be the young lord, then,” for he had expected that the young lord would be riding inside the coach and had thought at first that this boy was another attendant, but he was sure no servant would have dared speak so to the caravan master.

It seemed a hard thing, to Tom, that a boy be asked to leave his school and friends, and, on his leave-taking, that his friend should have hard words with him, and he was just feeling a little sympathy for the supercilious Phipps — no wonder his expression was a bit sour — when Phipps, just passing by Tom’s wagon, looked up and caught Tom looking down at him.  Whatever Phipps saw in Tom’s expression made him frown, and hurry his horse along, back down the line of the caravan.

The rest of that day Phipps spent riding up and down the line as if he were one of their outriders (the hired guards who protected the caravan and amused themselves while in the civilized lands by riding up and down carrying news and messages, or just chatting to pass the time) or a junior to the caravan master himself, offering criticisms to every man’s work, until all heartily wished that he had not accompanied them, and the fact that he was often correct did nothing to ingratiate him to the men.  He took great care to inspect the cart Tom rode on and point out to Tom that the knots holding down the tarred canvas were slipping in two places.

The grizzled older man who’d made the arrangements with the caravan introduced himself only as George, not explaining whether this was his Christian or surname.  The men settled on calling him Mr. George, and readily accepted him despite their dislike of his master, as he was a friendly man with a pleasant disposition.  He also moved up and down the line, but seemed legitimately to have a role as an outrider as he carried his own well-oiled rifle, a beautiful piece in the preferred Enfield style with scrolled metal chasing on the dark, polished wood stock.

The first day’s travel brought them to the village of Saradell, where Brackenstall had a standing arrangement with one of the farmers to camp in a fallow field.  It was an easy day’s ride on horseback, but the caravan wagons moved more slowly, and Brackenstall liked to arrive in the mid-afternoon so that they would have time to conduct trading before sunset, therefore he pushed for them to make good time.  The roads were relatively good this close to Victoria City, so that, though men and mules were tired by the pace, travel went smoothly.

The ridge which preceded the dell was not high, and the trees were thick, so that no very good view was to be had of the village.  The first house was a miserly little affair half hidden in the trees, the hut of a woodcutter, and then there were several small, poor farms, which attempted to eke out some sort of living on the hillside.  Tom did not, in fact, even wonder where they got the water to irrigate their small fields, because he knew nothing of farming, but Zardiackas, one of the outriders informed him that the hillside here was ‘seasonally wet.’

“I’m not from here, I’m from Chu Holding, but the land looks quite similar to my family’s farm.  You can barely get the ground planted in the Spring, it’s so soggy, and in Midsummer it all dries up.  Most often the well would even dry up and we would need to take our cattle down to the river and haul our own drinking water up from the town well each day.  Very inconvenient.”

The most prosperous farms, with large and handsome houses, lay near the small river which ran through the bottom of the dell.  The village had grown up at the crossroad between Victoria Road, which crossed the bridge, and Highbank Street, which had originally connected the farms on the far side of the river.  As the caravan crossed the bridge children ran out from the school — the teacher having apparently decided that keeping them inside during such a momentous occasion was an exercise in futility as their concentration would not be upon their studies — and chased alongside the wagons as they wound through the square, West down Highbank Street, past the smithy and church to the Harmon farmhouse and eventually to the fallow field which one of the Harmon children pointed out as their appointed place this year.

The evening of the caravan’s arrival was a happy one for the villagers, who made it an evening of entertainment, crowding down to the encampment with fresh-baked goods and fresh meats which they offered in trade for things which Brackenstall’s caravan carried.

Pickering — a short, bald man whose ears stuck out and whose expression varied between amiable and worried — asked Tom to help him open their cart.  The particular cart which Pickering had the honour of driving was a special one, a clever contraption which, once they had undone the ropes which held the tarp down, folded out and up such that it turned into a small shop-stall, within which Brackenstall had arrayed examples of nearly all the merchandise which the caravan carried this year.  Among the products offered were seed stock, carefully packed cut crystal, and little telescoping candle-lanthorns such as Joe had given to Tom.  Certain spices, teas, oils, and preserved food delicacies came from Eugenia, an island in the warm North.  Cotton and dyes came from Eugenia as well, although the weaving and dying was mostly done in Victoria City.

The daughters of the farmer, Harmon, who owned the field were the first to arrive, and got to choose a few trinkets as part of the caravan’s payment for the night.  They were light haired girls, tending toward the buxom, friendly and chattering with the delight of seeing strangers, and somehow seeming far more numerous than their actual five.

Jennie Harmon, just in the middle and around Tom’s own age, had abandoned her braids of the year before and now pulled her hair up under a bonnet.  She was the quietest of the five and stood a little to one side, smiling shyly when he displayed for her the petticoats, christening dresses and embroidered boarder ribbons his mother and sisters had made, pointing out the delicate cursive “L” which they stitched into some obscure spot as their distinctive maker’s mark.

The littlest girl, Vallie, who had shown them to the field, was fascinated by a kaleidoscope, while Annie, perhaps two years older than Jennie, campaigned with her mother for a hand-mirror set which included a matching comb and brush all made with vary-coloured woods from Eugenia. (Several larger furniture items made of these exotic woods were carefully packed away in one of the wagons, a speculation on Brackenstall’s part — he felt he knew just the person in their eventual destination of Abernetty who would want those.)

Brackenstall, who was in company with the girls’ father exchanging the winter’s news, pointed out this or that which they might like, and came to an agreement with their father on the relative worth of what they might take.  Tom was proud of the price which was commanded by the work done by the women of his family, though he realized with some surprise that it was more than twice what Brackenstall had given for them.

As other villagers arrived the scene became more hectic, and Tom and Pickering were kept running, pulling out items for inspection and and making note of the things bought to help with restocking the cart for their next stop.  Brackenstall gave up his conversation for a while in the interest of haggling over prices, much of which was in the form of barter of fresh foods for the caravan men.  Old George hung about the stall making conversation, particularly with any pretty girl — who he seemed to think liked him well — and the little time they had before dinner slipped quickly away.  When the dinner bell was rung the stall was closed, and then the fresh foods which had been acquired from the villagers were shared by the men of the caravan around one fire, while Brackenstall hosted Mr. Harmon and his family as his particular guests at a separate fire.

Old George asked the young ginger-haired driver of the Phipps coach, who rejoiced in the name of Bartholomew Belvedier, to save him some pork pie, as he needed to wait on Phipps, who sat at Brackenstall’s fire.  Brackenstall, thought Tom, who looked over from the men’s fire, seemed not entirely pleased with Phipps’ presence, but the eldest Harmon daughter, who sat to Phipps’ right, smiled broadly at him when he first sat down.  Then Tom applied himself to a thick mutton stew and freshly baked bread with new butter, and thought he could hardly have been happier with his own mother’s cooking.

Later he stepped away from the fire where the men were drinking, and, his eyes slowly adjusting to the uncertain shadows between the carts, was rechecking the knots on the canvas where Phipps had pointed out their inadequacy, when the three eldest of the farmer’s daughters passed quite nearby as they walked back to the house, chatting about the pleasures of meeting new people and who they liked or did not.

“That young lord dresses quite nicely — he must be very rich,” observed Annie.

Her older sister, the one who had been sitting next to Phipps (Tom thought perhaps she was Maggie), snorted derisively.  “If only his manners were as nice as his dress!  He may know which fork to use at table, but his speech to me was not so courteous.  I thought at first we might make him a match with our Jennie, but I wouldn’t want him as an in-law.”

“That’s all right, though.  He may be rich, but I don’t like him as much as-,” Jennie broke off, obviously embarrassed to have said so much.

“Which?  Aren’t the men all a bit old for you?” asked Annie, poking her sister in the ribs and chuckling.

“Well...”

“Come on!”

“If you must have it, then!  The tall, freckled boy who was fetching for us from the cart.  He was with them last year, and he may be a few years older than I, but — Oh!”

Seized with something akin to guilt as he realized that she was talking about him, Tom had stepped from the shadow of the cart.

“Sorry, miss, didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Oh, she’s quite all right,” said her oldest sister, grinning at him broadly.

Poor Jennie was quite red.  “Lovely to see you again!” she stammered out.

“Thank you.”  He hardly knew how he had suddenly found himself facing her, only that it had seemed wrong to be listening to her thoughts on him while he remained unseen.  Now he was out of his element — he was not one like Old George, to be able to simply start talking to pretty girls.  “It’s nice to see you, too.  You’ve grown.”  It flashed through his mind that this could be taken badly, so he added, “Taller!  I mean, since last year.”

She stood for a moment, twisting the ribbon of her bonnet while her sisters smirked.

“So’ve you.  Er.”

It was obvious that neither of them had the slightest idea how to continue, so Maggie took pity on them and made introductions all round.

“This is your second year with the caravan, isn’t it, Tom?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Do you see a future for yourself in being a merchant?”

“Possibly, Ma’am,” he replied, hesitantly. “I do like the work.  I work with the mules, and I seem to be good with them.”

“Very good.  An ability with animals is valuable in many fields.  How old are you?”

“Only sixteen this year.”

“The same age as Jennie.  Tall for your age!  I had thought you were older.”

“Everyone does, Ma’am.”

“Well, at your age you have plenty of time to think on what you would like to do.  Now I think we need to be getting home.  Have a good evening, and we’ll hope to see you when you come back this way in a few weeks.”

“Good night, then!”  Jennie blurted out, and, with backward glances, hurried off, back the stone farmhouse which rambled over the top of the hill.

“Good night!” he called, disappointed and yet relieved.  What a terribly confusing situation.  She was a pretty enough girl, seemed quite nice, and her sister seemed to approve of him, but she was certainly above him, being the daughter of a wealthy farmer.  Wasn’t she?  Why would she be noticing him, a boy from Sandwell Corner?  On the other hand, perhaps these young ladies did not realize where he was from.  The men of the caravan might be anyone, and the Harmon sisters probably knew nothing about Victoria City and his neighbourhood.  His clothes should have given him away, but perhaps the new suit was nicely enough cut that the weight of the material did not signify to their eye and they may not remember the patches on his suit of last year.  In only the travel of this one day it had not had time to even get dirty, and he suddenly felt like an imposter.

Tom’s Grandfather sometimes muttered when he was in his drink about the way things worked in Victoria Colony — “They give us these huge houses but treat us like dirt!  I may have had to sleep in a unit the size of a coffin back on Rigelfour, but I could consider myself as good as anybody!” — but Tom had grown up in the Colony and wasn’t really sure what his Grandfather was on about.  His school teacher, in his brief period of formal learning, had explained that there was a natural order to things, and that as a working man his life would be much simpler than that of the Lords, who descended from the Investors and had the responsibility of keeping the Colony, and the minister who ran the parish school (and kept a watchful eye on all his parishioners) had explained to Tom and his friends that as long as they were honest and hard working they had nothing to feel ashamed of in their lot in life.

Now Tom resolved to work all the harder in the days to come in hopes that the suit would get properly broken in and no one would accuse him of putting on airs.  He could only find his bedroll, for now, and hope that none of the other men had noticed this conversation to have an opportunity to tease him.

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