The Knowledge Stone

by Jack McGinnigle

  The two younger children, twin girls, would sometimes protest to their father about this favouritism but he would smile at them warmly, saying: ‘No, you’re wrong. Your mother loves you all equally and so do I.’ Then, to prove it, he would give each of his children an equal share of food and a small cup of beer. Of course the younger children were unconvinced but as members of a happy family, they accepted the situation with equanimity on most occasions.

  The years passed and Young Malik grew into one of the most physically attractive young men in the area, receiving many admiring glances from the young local girls when he accompanied his father to the surrounding villages. Also, the people of the area treated him with increasing respect, since they recognised him as the heir to the farm, which, in these days, was one of the finest in the region. In this country, it was the norm for the eldest son to inherit family-owned land from their father; if the land had a farm operating upon it, then the inheritance became the farm in its entirety.

  Old Malik’s father was a very successful and progressive farmer, knowledgeable in all matters of cultivation. In addition, he was notably shrewd in business and particularly good at dealing with people. Unlike the many tenant farmers in the region, he actually owned his farm. Many years before, he had been able to buy the farmland from the local landowner; rumour had it at the time that some sort of favour had been involved with the deal but the exact details of the transaction were unknown.

  Naturally, the handsome eldest son of a local farm owner was especially attractive to those families who had daughters in the appropriate age range! In the local community, there were quite a number of families who were anxious for their daughters to become known to the attractive Malik; this even included the family of the rich landowner who had sold the farmland to Malik’s father. This important family lived in a large stone house in the middle of a large tract of forested land. Young Malik’s mother was ambitious for him and, as mothers do, she did all she could to direct him in the direction of the landowner’s daughter.

  On the other hand, Young Malik’s father was indifferent to this possible union of families. He was interested in the continuation of the farm under the ownership of his son and he had for years done his best to train him in all the various skills and techniques he would need. Although he recognised that his son certainly had the physical stature to handle all aspects of the farm work, he was disappointed that Young Malik was slow to learn the more complex skills of farming and business. In truth, Young Malik could not comprehend the more complex ideas his father wanted him to understand. The teaching was repeated many times but progress was slow and unreliable. Young Malik continued to be confounded and confused while his father despaired.

  Time passed and, after very delicate negotiations between the two families, Young Malik had been introduced to the daughter of the local landowner. Unfortunately, she proved to be a thin, dull and insipid girl with an extremely haughty manner. Young Malik’s mother was highly delighted; she had worked long and hard to achieve this situation and now all her plans were coming to fruition! She calculated that the status of her family would be greatly enhanced by this union. Who knows, maybe her husband could use his knowledge, skill and charm to become an important landowner himself, instead of just a farmer. She could see herself living in a big house with many servants: ‘Oh, life could be so wonderful!’ she cried in delight – and danced around the room!

  Her husband, poring over some accounts at a table in the corner of the room, looked up and gave her a wan smile. He guessed the train of her thoughts. He wished that Young Malik could acquire his farming skill or business sense or, at least, some of his mother’s sparkle. In his father’s company, the young man seemed particularly slow and dull: ‘Maybe he’s a really good match for that pathetic girl,’ he thought sadly. But in his heart he knew better, because he knew that the wife of a farmer needs to be strong, dedicated and hard-working. From what he had seen of the landowner’s daughter, she would certainly not fit the bill as a wife for his son. Putting down his pen, he sighed.

  More months passed and it was now arranged that Young Malik should make visits to the landowner’s house to become acquainted with his daughter. He would arrive each time with a small gift for the girl, giving it to her nervously as she sat waiting. On each occasion, she would set the gift aside without comment. She made no attempt to make conversation, merely indicating that he should sit down. Of course the two young people were never allowed to be alone together.

  The visits normally involved Young Malik seated rather uncomfortably on a carved wooden chair in the large and dark main room of the house with the girl sitting on another chair some distance away; a third chair was always occupied by a chaperon – the girl’s mother or another female relative. Their stilted, very sparse conversations were monitored carefully. Very occasionally, if the weather was particularly fine, they would be allowed to walk outside for a short time but were never allowed to be close to each other; the chaperon was always nearby, watching and listening carefully.

  As the weeks and months went by, Young Malik became increasingly disquieted by these visits. He felt uncomfortable and unwelcome in this large pretentious house and he had no liking for the people who occupied it. When he met the landowner and his wife, they treated him with disdain and almost ignored him. Even worse, he found nothing attractive about the appearance or attitude of their daughter, who seemed to be totally uninterested in anything he tried to say or do.

  After a number of these visits, he complained to his mother, suggesting that it was all a mistake.

  ‘These are very early days,’ his mother replied brightly, ‘there is no way you can get to know much about their daughter in such a short time. Just give it time. You’ll see. I’m sure she’s an absolutely lovely girl and you will be very lucky if she agrees to marry you.’

  Young Malik thought about these words and was increasingly depressed. He was trying his hardest. He had been on his best behaviour with her. He had tried what he considered to be his best wiles. He had smiled at the girl many times, using his most winning smile, but she looked either bored or slightly alarmed. He had tried to be witty and charming but she had remained impassive or grimaced ever so slightly – probably in disgust, he thought. If she responded to anything he said her answer consisted merely of monosyllables.

  So it was unsurprising that Young Malik became increasingly disconsolate as he trudged along the rough roads to the landowner’s house. His route took him past a barren tract of land where the poorest people of the area lived in tumbledown shacks, attempting ineffectually to scratch a precarious living from tiny infertile smallholdings. He did not lift his head as he passed these pathetic places; he did not know any of these people – and did not want to, either!

  ‘If they get to know who I am, they might accost me and try to beg money from me,’ he thought.

  However, one very hot day as he was trudging back from another extremely depressing visit to the big house, he was startled to hear beautiful singing. Surprised, he lifted his head and found himself abreast of one of the poorest and most ramshackle smallholdings. As he looked, he saw a tall young girl with flowing dark hair feeding a few scrawny hens in a tiny pen. As she threw meagre handfuls of grain to the hens, she continued to sing in a haunting, tuneful voice. Young Malik noted that she was dressed incongruously in a worn and rather ragged black dress that was clearly too big for her.

  ‘An old dress of her mother’s,’ he thought, wryly. Suddenly aware, the girl turned and looked straight at him with large questioning eyes. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he thought, ‘actually, I think she is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.’

  This totally unexpected thought struck Young Malik dumb for a moment; then, collecting his scattered wits, he faltered: ‘I’m very thirsty, do you have any beer?’

  The girl hesitated and frowned.

  ‘I’ll pay,’ he added hasti
ly. Her face lit up with a fleeting smile and Young Malik’s heart leapt!

  ‘Wait,’ the girl said quietly and disappeared into the shack, reappearing a moment or two later with a pot of foaming beer, handing it to him over the rough fence. He took a coin from his pocket and she accepted it gravely, examining it carefully. ‘It’s too much,’ she said, ‘but I have no other money to give you.’

  ‘No, I want you to have it,’ Young Malik replied, his eyes never leaving hers.

  Close up, he thought she even more beautiful still: ‘What a pity she is a low serf, suitable only to be a slave worker,’ he could not help thinking with regret. The beer was good and he drank it quickly. ‘I thank you,’ he said gravely. She took the pot from him and was silent as he walked away, his mind in a turmoil. Suddenly he stopped and turned; she had not moved and was watching him intently.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Maretta,’ she replied quietly.

  Young Malik’s mother noted that her eldest son had suddenly become happier and more eager to visit the big house: ‘Something must have happened,’ she concluded wisely, ‘I knew it would – these things take time.’

  Little did she know how accurate her conclusion was; certainly something had happened – but it was something she could never have imagined! Every depressing visit to the big house was now a preface to a subsequent meeting with the beautiful girl from the poor smallholding. Young Malik became increasingly enchanted by her beauty and he found her personality absolutely delightful. He looked forward eagerly to their every meeting.

  At first, the excuse was Young Malik’s thirst as he walked back from the big house. She would wait for him to come and when she saw him would run to fetch his pot of beer. As he drank it very slowly, they would talk of many things. Her life of grinding poverty had taught her little of the world but he was astonished at her quickness of mind as he imparted his knowledge to her. He loved to watch her face. There was in her a vital freedom which fascinated him: ‘She is like a wild bird,’ he thought, ‘perhaps an eagle or a falcon.’ This thought filled him with wonder and delight.

  Young Malik’s sterile visits to the big house continued without any material change. Meanwhile his friendship with Maretta blossomed. At first, Maretta’s mother was puzzled by the change in her daughter but judicious questioning soon revealed that a young man had come into her daughter’s life. Her mother was not surprised because she knew that her daughter was very beautiful. But who was this young man?

  In the end, Maretta told her mother the whole story and this became quite a dilemma for the older woman. She knew that Maretta’s relationship with such a high-status young man was fraught with danger and could easily result in retribution against her family. She recalled that such things had happened to others in the past and shuddered as she remembered how a poor family had been attacked at night by men armed with swords and clubs. Men, women and children had been killed, injured or abducted as slaves. Their pathetic smallholding had been razed to the ground.

  Maretta’s mother was in no doubt that the attractive young man’s family would be very shocked by his relationship with her daughter and she was wise enough to know that any prospect of wedlock was out of the question.

  ‘His class never marry beneath them,’ she thought. However she hoped it might be possible for her daughter to become a servant at his farm – in this way, Maretta could have a better life than she had. So, although fearful, the mother turned a blind eye to her daughter’s friendship with the handsome stranger.

  Thus, no restrictions were placed on Maretta and soon she and Young Malik took to walking in the forest nearby, sometimes talking seriously, sometimes laughing together or chasing each other through the forest like children at play. He became more and more enchanted with her and he knew that she loved to be with him.

  So it was that the two young people set out to walk and talk in the forest on a fine, warm summer’s day. He was dressed neatly in his best clothes – only the best was good enough for his visits to the big house! His boots and breeches were of fine leather and his shirt a soft linen, the rolled up sleeves revealing the powerful muscled arms that Maretta loved. By contrast, she was dressed in the only clothes she possessed, the baggy, worn black dress made of heavy, coarse material; a dress that had indeed belonged to her mother in her younger days. On Maretta, the dress was voluminous, covering her shoulders and hanging loosely around her, almost covering her slim bare feet.

  They had talked seriously, gazing ever more deeply into each other’s eyes. They had held hands. They had laughed together at little private jokes. Suddenly she sprang up to enact a game they had played many times before in the forest.

  ‘You can’t catch me,’ she cried and ran off as fast as she could.

  Joyously, Young Malik sprang to his feet and raced after her, calling: ‘Bet I can!’

  So the game proceeded as always, down the paths, round the trees, through the bushes; she dodging and ducking, he pretending that he could not catch her.

  When she began to tire, the game always finished in the same thrilling way. Maretta judged the moment when her pursuer had drawn close, then threw herself face down on a soft bed of leaves. She would utter a little scream as he flopped down beside her, his arm falling across her back.

  ‘Caught you!’ A cry of triumph. Then they would lie together for a few moments, breathing hard, blissfully enjoying this moment of contact.

  This time, however, something very different happened. When Maretta launched herself onto the bed of leaves, the heavy black skirt was caught by a sudden gust of wind and billowed up around her upper body, entangling her arms. The heavy material dragged with it the only other piece of clothing she was wearing – the long linen under-garment worn by all the girls and women of the region.

  Unaware that anything had happened, Young Malik flopped down beside her as usual, crying the familiar “Caught you” and throwing his bare muscular arm across her waist. Almost immediately, he realised that his arm was not touching the familiar coarse material of her dress but the living warm softness of her flesh. Astonished, he turned his head and saw the length of her slim naked body fully revealed.

  Young Malik had once seen a tree struck by lightning. A terrifying blue arc like a rope of fire had momentarily connected the black cloud to the fragile tree. Instantly, the tree had burst into a ball of fire, transforming it in seconds to a fragile skeleton of black ash. Then there was an eerie silence, a silence of suspended reality, before the air exploded with a noise greater than anything he had ever heard; surely a noise make by God himself?

  This was exactly how Young Malik felt now. The flash and explosion occurred like a hammer blow within his head as his eyes focussed upon her body. Time was arrested; he and the girl were a frozen tableau in a timeless world. Then, the world sprang back to life; some sense of normality was reasserted as the normal forest noises encroached into his consciousness.

  Wild-eyed, he snatched his arm away and sprang to his feet. She did not move or make any attempt to cover herself. At first he was dumbfounded by this but then a flash of understanding energised him into explanation and action: ‘Of course! She is entangled in the heavy folds of the dress and cannot make any movement.’ As he thought this, he seized the hem of her skirt now lying in folds across her shoulders and quickly drew it down to her ankles, covering up her nakedness. As he did so, he was careful to ensure that that no part of his hand came in contact with her soft flesh.

  The next weeks and months were cataclysmic. The visits to the big house ceased. Young Malik was adamant that he would go no more to meet the daughter of the landowner. There were a number of meetings between Young Malik’s father and the landowner, formal, difficult, delicate meetings; angry meetings at which furniture was thrown. Later, there were conciliatory meetings when the farmer applied his personal negotiating skills to the situation; this also incl
uded a brief mention of past favours done for the landowner, an element that seemed to inject a welcome calmness into the discussion.

  Eventually, working relationships between the farmer and the landowner were re-established, although they remained uneasy and fragile for many years. Young Malik’s mother was at first devastated by the failure of all her careful work. However, in the end she was persuaded by her husband that the landowner’s daughter would not have been a good match for her beloved son. Deep in her heart, she had known this all along.

  Meanwhile, Young Malik’s relationship with Maretta became common knowledge in the region. Of course his mother was opposed to his relationship with this poor serf girl.

  ‘You must not marry beneath your class,’ she told him severely on a number of occasions.

  He received similar advice from many of his village friends. ‘Be sensible, take her on as a servant,’ they suggested, ‘then you can have her anytime you want.’ And they laughed uproariously, augmenting this mirth with the usual coarse indicative gestures that young men are prone to make.

  Young Malik ignored them all. He was resolute. He had gone to see Maretta the day after the incident in the forest.

  Looking deeply into her eyes, he was blunt, firm and direct: ‘I want you for my wife.’

  At first, she demurred.

  ‘You should not,’ she told him, ‘you know I am a poor serf and my family has nothing. I cannot possibly be a fit wife for you. Go away and forget me.’