by Paul Hazel
elbows propped up on the table. His bleary eyes, undeterred
by the chairs and tables circling past him, tracked George
Tennison until he sat far back in the corner and brought a
glass to his lips.
Jakey moved over. He still had his watch cradled
importantly in his palm. It was too big and expensive a watch
for a man like Jakey, but then, he had made half the innards
himself. It gave him exquisite pleasure just to hold it.
“Things aren’t what they w ere,” he said mildly, not
exactly sad but slightly perplexed.
“And what is?” asked Adam France. He lifted his glass.
“It’s the bankers,” someone said.
Jakey smiled down in a fatherly way at the watchface and
nodded. “Bloodsucking capitalists,” he muttered. “Squeezing
out the last penny. One mill closing after the next.”
“Yet,” George Tennison said, the whisky warming his
belly, “well, you know, this is something too.”
And they nodded, for his sake if not for their own. Jakey
examined his watch ruminatively and sighed.
When George Tennison came back from the toilet, where
he had stopped perhaps a moment longer than he had
intended, the table at which he had so comfortably passed
two hours was empty. I’ll be goddamned, he thought, disappointed but without hostility. They had their work and morning came early.
In any event, if he hurried, he would probably catch up
with them. He considered the last little bit of whisky in his
glass but, pricked by a barb of conscience, left it regretfully.
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In his pounding head there was still a small cold com er
of sobriety, enough so that he recognized the hulking shape of
Fred Norfolk climbing unsteadily to his feet from among the
confusion of tables. Regretted it later— although he explained
carefully to Olivia that he had been too far gone to remember. In fact, however far he had got, it was not quite far enough since, afterward, he remembered a great deal more
than he liked.
Preemptively, with an apelike arm, Norfolk covered his
shoulder. "You see who your f-friends are, G-Georgie,” Norfolk
announced. His grin was more lopsided than it had been
before; his large smug face was whiter. “You c-come along
with of F-Fred.”
Somehow George Tennison eluded him. He made his
way erratically to the front of the bar, through the door whose
latch, incomprehensively, was either too high or too low but
which, found, submitted at last with a groan. Only out in the
street Norfolk was again beside him, looming suddenly out of
the darkness, dark himself and swaying without the benefit of
a wind. Once more Norfolk’s arm secured its place on his
shoulder.
“J-Just across the green,” Norfolk whispered.
There were no eyes to follow them. The dogs that might
have howled had already been whistled for and lay curled
indoors on their carpets in the houses of the Browns and the
Underwoods. The Reverend Mr. Longford, his sermon— by
his own lights—-finished, dropped his head to his pillow and
was instantly asleep. Slipped in beside him, Plum clutched
his broad arm contentedly, reviewing the few minor changes
she would make in the morning before he woke. In the
pocket of the apron hung over a chair in the kitchen was an
envelope, barely remembered, addressed to Nora but delivered
to the parsonage. The first of the week would be soon enough
to run it up to her. She had meant to pay her a call, poor
child, to see how things stood. But there was time for that.
Her hand found Tim’s elbow. Nothing to worry over. With
half the village coming and going from the place, working
inside and out, she would have heard anything worth listening to. She smiled at the darkness. With amusement and an ecstasy she knew was foolish but never minded, Plum listened
to her husband’s rough snores.
Faces in the Earth
1 1 9
George Tennison was listening as well. But all he heard
were silences.
“No one home,” he said timidly.
“Don’t matter,” Norfolk said, pushing in with his shoulder.
“Up them stairs,” he said, unmindful of any difficulty.
“Him and me t-together in this. W-were from the s-start.”
His loud slurred voice trailed off into a snigger. “ ’Cept, of
e-course, hiss s-start was a little before yours t-truly.”
George Tennison grunted. He tried to make his legs
follow one after another. The stairs wound off into darkness.
Unable to negotiate the steps and exasperated beyond measure, he began to swear.
“Y-you’ll d-do al-rright,” Norfolk called back encouragingly.
At the top of the staircase was an even darker hallway. At
the end of it, when Norfolk had managed to discover the
light, there was a door. Norfolk pressed his disordered face
next to George Tennison’s. “H-here we are!” he whispered.
With a constricting hug he drew him back under his arm.
With his free hand he pawed at the latch.
All at once Norfolk’s vigorous grin faded. He shook his
big head slowly.
“Y-you ain’t f-frit?” he demanded.
George Tennison made a rueful noise. But to Norfolk
one answer was as good as another. He pawed again at the
door until it opened.
The light flooded in from the hall, illuminating a spare
but otherwise ordinary bedroom. Charon Hunt was sitting
beside the bed, a length of rabbit wire between his brown
fingers. He was a large man, even larger than Norfolk. He
was dressed in a blacksmith’s burned and patched trousers.
Despite the warmth of the room, a great coat covered his
shoulders. The coat, like his face and hair, was red. Indeed,
the man and his clothing gave out a ruddy glow. Even his
great fingers, which were patiently tightening the snare,
seemed to shine with an odd radiance. But however extraordinary, Hunt was a man, or nearly that. The other was not a man so clearly, George Tennison’s mouth, soured by whisky,
fell stupidly open.
On the bed, what might have been a large quilt made of
feathers shifted suddenly. In the glare from the hall the
feathers, which might once have been vivid, even defiant
with color, appeared lifeless, a dull brown muddied here and
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WINTERKING
there to a dark sepia. Moving under them, a lump of a head
opened its mouth and screamed. It was not a sound a man
would have made, although a hoy, bitter, unrepentant, even
in the face of an inescapable destiny, might have.
“Not even his death keeps him quiet,” Hunt said glumly.
He let the clawed fingers, now skillfully rebound, fall from
his lap.
Once again the young Indian bellowed.
“I care nothing for your bellowing,” Hunt bellowed
back. “Burn what you will when the High King comes. But
until then, by Duinn, you shall damn well wait like the rest!”
George Tennison stood gawking. Because there was nothing else he dared look at, his stare fastened desperately on Norfolk.
When Hunt rose, it was like a hill rising. His shoulders
got in the way of the light.
“Whose soldier is this?” he asked coldly. “Whose side
will he fight on?” Norfolk went right on grinning.
“H-he is s-solid behind us,” Norfolk answered. “W-works
at the h-house, w-works for W-Wykeham.”
Hunt moved. He placed himself firmly in front of George
Tennison and stared hard at him.
“Whose side?” he said.
His voice was louder and colder and yet, in an odd way,
it was sadder as well. George Tennison stumbled backward. If
his mouth would have worked, he would have uttered a cry.
It was Norfolk who answered.
“W-Wykeham’s,” he said hesitantly, without a twitch of
concern or apology.
From the bed, as if that as well were an answer, there
came a high-pitched wail.
Hunt’s lips curled at the edge.
“What makes you think,” he asked, “that this time, after
so long, Wyck has chosen?” His voice, now softer, was colder
still. “Tell m e,” he said, “is the Sea-Road open? Have the
Stone Kings put aside their sorrow?”
Hunt dropped his head.
The questions were addressed to no one in particular.
When George Tennison staggered alone into the street,
he couldn’t remember if anyone had answered. But he knew
the green was in front of him. In the whirling space between
the trees he could see the great burning stars, now greater
F a ce s in the Earth
121
and brighter because of drink. Disgusted, he turned away
from them.
He wasn’t altogether certain what he had heard or seen,
but he had heard and seen quite enough. Like the stars, they
were somebody else’s business. He pitched himself forward.
At the very least he knew the dark street climbed toward
Greenchurch, that the hard grunting breath, very close at
hand, was his own.
His head was swimming.
On the margins of South Wood, he failed to notice the
clop of too many hooves, never felt the thick hands that lifted
him onto the broad white back. Yet the wind did seem to sail
more swiftly through the fringe of his hair. Under him too
many haunches and shoulders rose and fell.
“How many legs?” he asked, despite himself. But it was
a foolish question. Wykeham only laughed.
4.
There were really two kitchens at Greenchurch. The grand
kitchen, with its five stoves and too many copper-sheathed
tables, Lizzy Norfolk, although she did most of the cooking
there, thought of as the men’s kitchen. It was where the men
sat for breakfast and dinner, pulling their bread with fingers
that were never sufficiently scrubbed. Invariably they left
their plates and their cups on the tables. Lizzy much preferred the smaller kitchen in the back with its one frugal stove and its single oak table. There, the men gone, she
could sit with Olivia and, on rare occasions, with Nora. There
she could keep a good lookout on the yard, on tradesmen,
and, most particularly, on Fred Norfolk, who had a habit of
slipping off. And there, having from the side door window an
unhampered view, she presided over the house, over its
routines and its schedules. Without regard for her failures
with her own husband and with something less than the
formal support of Wykeham, she had gathered about her not
unsubstantial shoulders.the sober cloak of authority; and, like
an empress surrounded by savages, she felt it her given duty
to chasten and instruct.
“It’s a pity,” Lizzy said that morning before Nora, carrying
her own cup, had quite found her seat by the stove.
Nora detected a guilty look in Olivia’s eyes.
“What is?” Nora asked blandly.
“Why, George has missed his breakfast.”
“It’s his leg, miss,” said Olivia.
Lizzy folded her fat arms. “Funny things, legs,” she said.
"Your Fred— ”
Lizzy smiled triumphantly. “My Fred had his breakfast!”
Olivia examined the narrow front of her dress.
1 2 2
F a ce s in the Earth
1 2 3
“Well, it was Mr. Wykeham,” she announced, “he came
home with.”
Nora’s head turned up suddenly.
But it was Lizzy who saw the face at the door, or rather
the chest and the hairy arms first, and the face a moment
later, pulled down uncomfortably to the window and peering.
It was an alarming face, ruddy and thickened like the sun just
poking over the ridge.
“That man!” Lizzy exclaimed. “Now what can he want?”
But although she went to the door, she opened it no
more than a crack. Nora could see one leg and one great
shoulder and the grotesque half of a face, grinning. Nora
examined the face with a curious stare. Something was missing. It was, she thought, as if another face, balancing the first, a face darker and less ridiculous, lay just out of sight.
Nora put down her cup. She could hear the rumbling of the
man’s voice but she could not make out what he said. Lizzy
shook her old head.
“No, Mr. Wykeham isn’t here. Went away this morning.
Down to Bristol, 1 think. Couldn’t say why.” Her voice had
grown petulant. She wanted to be done with him.
“No,” she repeated, taking a deeper breath, “I wouldn’t
know which car he wanted worked on,” She was about to shut
the door.
“It would be the Pope-Hartford,” said Nora.
Lizzy turned.
Looking straight back at her, Nora repeated it. The
astonishing thing was that her tone carried an unqualified air
of conviction. Lizzy screwed up her own broad face.
“The Pope-Hartford,” Lizzy said to the man at the door.
Charon Hunt grunted. His footsteps went away. In a few
moments they could each see him lifting his long toolbox
from the back of his truck. When he disappeared into the
barn, Lizzy moved again to the table. But at the back of her
mind a new and startling thought was forming. She was all
too aware of Nora’s talent for woolgathering. Right or wrong,
she realized, it would be said it was at her direction, not
Nora’s, that the work had been started.
“That is what he wanted?” she snapped.
“Yes.”
“He told you directly. You weren’t by any chance,” she
improvised, “listening to little blue birds or— ”
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WINTERKING
Nora smiled composedly. “Not little or blue,” she answered.
Her confidant, in fact, had been neither. That it had
been feathered, she imagined, was nobody’s business but her
own.
The May weather was sultry and electric, filled with the
delayed promise of thunder, and got on his nerves. Grown
desperate, George Harwood went one last time through his
lecture notes, finding among the scraps of paper and torn
index cards the Duke’s letter. It was to be today, he realized,
shocked with himself for having forgotten. Not two days
<
br /> before, on the very morning he had received the letter, he
had sent a message back to His Grace, agreeing (I shall be
honored, he had written) to meet with him. On just what
matters the Duke had been vague. Something, in any event,
to do with Will Wykeham. His memory jogged, Harwood
unfolded the paper. But he put it aside on the desk. The
lecture first, he thought and felt a mounting sense of alarm.
What he sought, what, in fact, he had spent three
quarters of an hour unsuccessfully seeking was the source of a
quote and, if possible, the precise language, describing the
moment of synthesizing imagination when the ordinary tangle
of human thought converged dramatically on a single compelling abstraction. It was to be the climax of the term’s last lecture. In the fall, in another course altogether and relying
strictly on memory, he had used it. Unaccountably his students had cheered him. In a dozen years such a thing had not happened. He still basked in the glory.
Only, of course, he had misplaced it.
Harwood fussed with his shirt. He was perspiring. Nonetheless, fearing rain, lie took the greatcoat under his arm and switched off the light. On the stairs he turned, went back to
the door and locked it.
Halfway up the street he remembered.
For a moment the coat, which had grown heavier and
more awkward than it had ever been in April, no longer
troubled him. His strides became longer.
“Imagine a table,” Harwood commanded. The crowd of
young men, bearing sluggishly along, took neither notice nor
offense. Scores of backs, all of them coatless and damp,
milled in front of him. With gentle but well-directed prods
he steered past them. Just as the rain began to splash on the
F aces in the Earth
1 2 5
sidewalks, he went through the doors of the lecture hall and
climbed to the podium.
He was early. Except for a pocket of stragglers from
another class, the room was empty. A smaller group stood
gossiping in the corridor. Yet slowly, driven in by the weather,
tlie young men began to fill the hall. Their sleeves rolled up
like laborers’, they drifted down the aisles. A few anxious
scholars, their notebooks already open, sat in front. But they