Master and Servant (Waterman)

by Dusk Peterson

CHAPTER SEVEN

  Spring Transformation gave way to Spring Rebirth, which was followed by Spring Childhood. As the weeks passed, the weather grew pleasantly warm. Rumors arose among the watermen that the blue crabs – the primary summertime harvest in the Bay – had been sighted off Smith Island, the southernmost isle of the upper landsteads. But Comrade Carruthers kept his fleet at home, using the slow spring days as a time to complete repairs on worn ships. The cold months of the year meant ice-storms stripping paint from the boats and stripping flesh from the men who dredged the oysters; both oysters and men needed this period of rest.

  Vacation was half over; in just over two weeks, Carr would have to return to school for Summer Term, but Jesse showed no sign that he planned to end his overextended stay at Cliffsdale Mansion. Neither of Carr's parents noticed. Carr's father had reached the stage where he had requested his wife to read aloud the galleys to him, so that he could identify by ear any typographic errors he had missed by eye. Carr's mother being who she was, she was suggesting small changes to the text along the way, and Carr's father being who he was, he often incorporated her suggestions into the manuscript. This was creating a headache for Carr's publisher, who rang up periodically to plead with Carr's father to confine his changes to necessary items.

  "Truth is always necessary," Carr's father would respond flatly.

  Carr meditated on these words often that spring. Jesse's daily activities had turned Carr's life into a regular routine. Each morning, Jesse would turn up for breakfast, sporting a newspaper with headlines about the latest Abolitionist atrocities, and often sporting several bruises as well. Carr's parents, excitedly discussing the galley proofs or expressing dismay at the Abolitionists' illegal activities, failed to notice either the bruises or Jesse's mocking smile.

  Later in the morning, Jesse would prowl amongst the servants while Carr tagged along, doggedly determined to offer at least the appearance of still being Jesse's host. They visited places that Carr had not paid attention to for two tri-years, since he first left for school: the woodshed where the watermen's young sons wearily chopped endless logs for the mansion's fireplaces; the packing house, where the watermen's wives stood for hours amidst the slimy remains of the oysters they shucked; the wharf, where a never-ending stream of oysters had to be unloaded from the boats. The servants, surprised by his unexpected appearance, showed an embarrassing tendency to be grateful for his renewed interest in their work. Jesse's smile grew yet more mocking.

  In the afternoon, Jesse would retire to bed for the sake of the sleep he didn't receive at night. Deprived of his study, Carr would take his schoolbooks down to the beach, watching the servants with half an eye, and being far more aware than he had been in the past of how much the House's fortunes depended on the sweating labor of its servants. Occasionally, pulled by some inner instinct, he would take off his jacket and help with some task for which manpower was short. He would have assumed that his Egalitarian training was responsible for this newfound desire to assist his House's servants . . . and perhaps it was, to a certain degree. But once, stepping back with labored breath from a particularly nasty bit of work of wrestling a new stove into a skipjack's galley, he looked up to find Jesse watching him from the terrace above. The mocking smile was absent that day.

  In the evening, after dinner, Jesse would sail into town. Carr would go to bed at his usual time, at ten o'clock in the evening . . . after his usual visit to the kitchen.

  But his pleasure there, which had never been unsullied by guilt, had disappeared altogether. Jesse had stripped Carr's mask to his motive for requiring the servants to fetch him tea. Carr sat there still, night after night, sipping at his tea, staring into the fire, and wondering, by all that was sacred, what kept him coming to this place.

  And why hadn't the servants made clear their displeasure at being forced to do extra work? Despite Jesse's assurance, Carr was certain they must guess at his motive and resent his presence. Yet even Variel – who was quite capable of being politely cold whenever he noticed Carr staring at him – had offered no indication that he disliked this burdensome service.

  Or perhaps he had, and Carr had not noticed? Carr's spirit fell as he contemplated this possibility. Yet the next night he was back again, accepting the fire and the tea and the cookies, as though the answer to some great mystery could be found in them.

  o—o—o

  The water on Carruthers Cliffs Cove was calm as the sun rose. A four-masted schooner carrying freight – casks of molasses from the Caribe, judging from the appearance of the labels – headed up-Bay toward the great markets at Balmer. A runner employed by a Solomons Island packing house slid by in the opposite direction, a bushel basket on the masthead proclaiming its mission. It did not pause as it passed a skipjack flying the colors of the House of His Master's Kindness. It was well known that the master of the heirship House owned his own packing house, keeping the profits from his crews' harvest tightly clamped within his own fists.

  A flicker of smooth motion caught Carr's eye. Held by the hand of the morning breeze, one of the House's smaller dredging boats sailed up to the wharf. It was a flattie; one of the men on it was struggling to bring down the sails, while the other jumped onto the wharf and secured the boat's rope. He shouted something at the first man, who was too busy with his sail-battle to respond with anything more than a hand-wave.

  The second man, evidently satisfied that his companion had matters in hand, walked down the wharf toward the shore, whistling, his hands in his pockets, a bounce in his step. As he grew closer, Carr blinked and leaned forward. Yes, of course; Bat was a waterman's son, so he knew how to sail. But how had he obtained permission to use one of the House's boats?

  A small figure was waiting for him on the shore: Sally, her hair whipping across her face. She was holding a wild columbine, its red-and-yellow bell-flower nodding in the breeze; she presented it to Bat as he arrived. He responded with a kiss. As he turned toward the north, his face came clearly into view against the rising sun: it was animated, excited. He opened his mouth to speak, and then looked around, as though fearing to be overheard. He drew Sally aside from the other docked boats and began talking to her, too softly for Carr to hear.

  The other man had finished his work with the sails. He swaggered down the wharf, holding something in his hand. Recognizing the man, Carr pushed himself away from the railing and headed for the stairs to the beach.

  He met Jesse halfway across the beach, where a group of empty barrels leaned slightly askew on the sand. " 'Morning," said Jesse cheerfully, throwing his newspaper onto the top of a barrel. It showed the front-page headlines of the morning news: "ABOLITIONISTS HIT AGAIN!" Below the headline, the story said, "The Second Landstead's Office of Police today stated that over forty households in the capital area have reported runaway servants. 'It is clearly evident,' said Comrade Benjamin Carruthers of the Bureau of Employment, 'that we are dealing with a large, sophisticated organization. It is likely that the Abolitionists are recruiting new members. . . .'"

  Carr looked over at Bat, who remained deep in quiet conversation with Sally. Then he looked back at Jesse, who gave him a lazy smile. "Well?" said the young foreigner.

  Carr cleared his throat. "Cook obtained the first crab of the season. She's planning to make crab cakes for lunch. You won't want to miss that dish."

  Jesse laughed. "Point," he said, as though he were a footer player keeping score. "Okay, question for you."

  "Yes?" He braced himself.

  "What the fuck does this mean?" Leaning over, Jesse pointed to the date on the newspaper. 'Eighth day, Spring Childhood week, 1962 Clover.' Clover? And in other parts of the paper, they talk about years with barley and fallow in them. I feel like I'm visiting a damn farm whenever I read the news."

  Carr smiled, partly from amusement and partly from relief as to the nature of Jesse's enquiry. "The terms originated in the First Landstead, back when it was the only landstead. They have good farming country there. Or at least, they did back
then. I don't know about now."

  "That's not what I'm asking." Jesse tilted up the waterman's cap that he had evidently borrowed. "What do years have to do with farming?"

  "Not years, sun-cycles. Come, I'll show you."

  He led the way back up to the terrace. There they stepped over the map of the Dozen Landsteads, which showed that all of the landsteads – even the First Landstead – bordered on the Bay. Just beyond the map was a mosaic of a Calendar Circle.

  After examining it for a minute, Jesse said, "Okay, I think I get this. There's three weeks in a month, and three months in a season, and three seasons in a year – no winter, I guess? Just spring, summer, and autumn. My question stands: What do years have to do with farming?"

  "Not years," Carr repeated patiently. "Sun-cycles." He took out his pocket-knife, pulled off a twig from the potted pepperbush on the terrace, and cut himself a pointer. "Look," he said, pointing at the circle. "The calendar is in the shape of a circle, just as time is. If this representation were three-dimensional, we'd see time rising in a spiral: one circuit of the earth around the sun, followed by a second circuit and a third. It's all seamless, with no divisions – but we're men, so we think in divisions. You use a base twelve numbering system in Tenarus, I suppose?"

  Jesse blinked. "Search me. Math isn't my thing."

  Carr gave him a long look before saying, "Yclau originally used a base three system; Vovim originally used a base four system; they compromised and use a base twelve system now. Mip uses a different system altogether – base ten – and since it's the economic center of the Midcoast nations, most of the world uses base-ten dollars as their money system now, rather than base-twelve pounds. But the Dozen Landsteads, from which Yclau is derived, has retained the base three system."

  "You're making my head ache," Jesse complained. He had seated himself cross-legged during the recital and was tracing the nine weeks of spring with his finger: Spring Waning, Spring Illness, Spring Dying, Spring Death, Spring Transformation . . . "Base three means three seasons of three months of three weeks, I guess. Now what the hell does this have to do with farming?"

  "There are three weeks in a month," replied Carr, tapping out their current month, Spring Beginning. "There are three months in a season. There are three seasons in a sun-cycle. And there are three sun-cycles in a year."

  There was a pause, and then Jesse said, "Now my head is really aching."

  Carr laughed as he tossed aside the branch. "It would be easier to see in a three-dimensional model. You can call it a tri-year, if you like; we started using that word a few decades ago – tri-decades – because foreigners were confused. The rest of the Midcoast nations, you see, consider a sun-cycle to be a year. So in Yclau and her colonies, as you know, last year was 586, this year is 587, and next year will be 588. But here in the Dozen Landsteads, last year was 1962 Barley, this year is 1962 Clover, and next year is 1962 Fallow."

  "And then you start over?" Squinting against the rising sun, Jesse looked up at him.

  "And then we start over, with 1963 Barley. It's all arbitrary, of course. There's nothing in nature that says we have three sun-cycles or three months or three weeks. Moreover, we could count a sun-cycle as having four seasons, the way the Vovimians do. My father says that it would be most sensible, here next to the Bay, to have two seasons: Oyster Season and Crab Season."

  "So why count everything in threes?" Dusting off the seat of his trousers, Jesse rose to his feet.

  Carr gave him the sort of look that a schoolmaster might give to a slow pupil. "Death, transformation, rebirth. That's not arbitrary; that's how nature works."

  "Yeah, except you don't call this year 1962 Transformation. Why do I have the feeling that you started off with farming years, and then tacked on a religious explanation afterwards?"

  Carr was silent for a long time. Below on the beach, servants were beginning to arrive for work, yawning into their fists. Bat and Sally had disappeared.

  Finally Carr set aside the pointer and said, "You take a cynical view of life, don't you?"

  Jesse shrugged. "Comes with the territory. . . . I'm starved. Let's grab something to eat in the kitchen."

  They walked along the terrace, heading toward the side of the house. Below, on the beach, servants walked toward the packing house or the wharf. A runner docked, only half full of oyster baskets; pickings were becoming slim at this time of year. Carr and Jesse rounded the corner of the house. Ahead, in the little outbuilding next to the Death Wing, smoke rose from the dependency's chimney.

  Jesse said, "So are you masters allowed to fuck as many people as you want?"

  Startled by this abrupt change of subject, Carr answered with the same promptness that he would have shown toward a school master's enquiry. "Before marriage, you mean? Well, we're allowed to bed any unmarried liegeman who has pledged himself to us; that's considered part of the service that a liegeman owes to his liege-master, though some liege-masters, such as my father, never require that service. Beyond that, it's considered a matter of judgment—"

  Too late, he realized the reason for the enquiry. He looked over and saw that Jesse was grinning.

  Tamping down his temper, Carr said, "I'm sorry, but the answer is still no."

  "Just checking," said Jesse cheerfully. "It's a standing offer, you know."

  Carr knew he ought to drop this topic at once, but his curiosity had been roused for some time about the homeland that Jesse never mentioned. "What about in your native land?" Carr asked. "What are the rules there?"

  "You mean, do we have to be monogamous? Nah, we're easy about such things in Tenarus. Mind you," he added with a grimace, "in my case, that's also part of the territory."

  He slipped through the kitchen doorway before Carr could ask him what he meant. Jesse's entrance was greeted by cries of approval: Millie gave a little screech of pleasure, Irene offered a warm greeting, Variel enquired politely after Jesse's health, Cook gruffly offered to let Jesse have whatever ingredients he wanted if he wished to make his own breakfast, and Bat and Sally – who had evidently just reached the kitchen – tumbled over themselves saying that the other servants must hear, oh it was so important that the other servants know—

  The voices stopped. Carr had stepped into the doorway.

  The servants' silence was familiar to Carr; their looks of consternation were not. Carr could guess why they were bewildered: this was not the time of day when he usually interrupted them for a cup of tea.

  Jesse filled the silence. "Nah, no big meal for me, folks. Maybe just a bun or two? Thanks. Carr, do you want one?"

  He shook his head mutely. He was trying to decide whether to withdraw from this embarrassing situation, but Jesse grabbed his arm and steered him into the next room. "Won't be long," he assured the servants. "Carr and I are due in the dining room soon. Here, have a little reading matter." He tossed the newspaper to Variel, who caught it with one hand.

  "Landstead servants can't read," Carr informed him in a low voice as soon as the door to the back room was closed.

  "That's what you think." Jesse smirked at him. "You forbid an entire Houseful of servants to read, and what do you think's going to happen? Anyway, your father taught Variel to read years ago."

  "Did he?" Startled, Carr paused as he was about to sit down.

  "Gods, Carr, you've been living with that guy for how long, and you didn't know he could read? Pay attention, will you? Servants aren't robots, passively awaiting your programming."

  "I know that." Carr frowned with annoyance. "It's just that my father never mentioned this. It's against the high law to teach a servant to read; the High Masters passed that law in the nineteenth tri-century. I know it's one of the laws that my father is fighting to abolish, but I didn't think he—"

  He stopped abruptly. His eyes met Jesse's. Then, by common consent, they rose and went to the door.

  His mother stood before the stove, in the midst of tying on an apron. "Now, then," she said, "I think the next ingredient is the eggs, is
n't it?"

  "Ma'am—" Cook's voice faltered as Carr's mother, without hesitation, tossed the eggs into the bowl and began mixing vigorously.

  A moment later, his mother paused. "Oh," she said. "We're supposed to shell the eggs first, aren't we?"

  Cook answered her with grim silence.

  "Well, that's all right; we'll just start over." With those words, his mother picked up the bowl and poured the contents into the rubbish bin. Cook's delectable recipe – the work of hours – trickled down amidst vegetable peels and fireplace ashes.

  Sally gave a stifled gasp. Bat groaned. Irene simply stared open-mouthed.

  "So where do we start again?" His mother looked around the kitchen table. "Cook?"

  "Those were the last of the eggs, ma'am."

  His mother failed to notice Cook's tone. "Oh, please don't call me ma'am. We're all friends here. Let's see . . . the Solomons Island market should be open by now, shouldn't it?"

  This time, Sally was the one who groaned. Bat put a comforting arm around her.

  "Now, then, money . . ." His mother patted the pockets of her apron, as though bills were to be found there. "Irene—"

  "I'll fetch your purse, ma'am," Irene said in a resigned voice.

  "Call me Comradess!" his mother cried after her. Then she added, "Let's see, we pour in this salt . . ."

  Millie, seeing Carr's mother reach for the sugar jar, emitted a giggle.

  His mother turned around, surprise written on her face. "Did I say something funny?"

  There was no response but another giggle from Millie, who was holding the edge of her apron over her mouth in an attempt to suppress the sound, but who had evidently reached the stage of hysteria.

  The hysteria was infectious; Cook and Bat and Sally were all covering smiles now. Seeing this, Carr's mother stood motionless, a flush covering her face and throat. Variel, frowning, opened his mouth, no doubt to reprimand the other servants.

  "I trust that you have all received pleasure from laughing at my wife."

  The voice, hot with rage rather than cold, could come from only one source. Everyone swung around to look at the doorway, where Comrade Carruthers stood, a murderous expression on his face.

  "Dearest," said his wife faintly, "I seem to have . . . I mean, I made some sort of joke, but I'm not sure I—"

  Carr decided that, in this respect at least, he was duty-bound to intervene. "It's all right, Mother," he said, stepping forward and putting his arm around her shoulders gently. "It's just one of those moments when everyone gets a fit of the giggles, for no particular reason. They weren't laughing at you."

  "Are you sure?" The look of bewildered hopefulness his mother gave him would have wrung the heart of the hardest villain. Millie was biting her lip now, looking chagrined.

  "Quite sure. Ah, Irene, there you are. Will you take my mother to her room, please? —I'll be up there shortly, and I'll explain all about the giggles," he told his mother. He would have to explain them to her, he knew; his mother, though emotionally vulnerable and frequently taken off-guard, was always eager to learn when she had taken a misstep. Explaining her mistakes to her usually turned out to be Carr's job, since his father was too busy blaming other people for his wife's mistakes.

  Now, with his wife safely out of the way, Carr's father gave a hard stare to everyone present, evidently trying to identify the chief offender. Millie had turned white.

  Not having heard the beginning of the tale, though, his father chose the easiest course. "Variel," he said, "you are in charge here. How dare you allow such a scene to develop! You and I had better have a discussion about this." He pointed toward the doorway to the back room, currently blocked by Jesse – who, for a wonder, was not smiling.

  In fact, there was something in Jesse's eyes that Carr liked not at all. The young foreigner stepped back, though, as Carr's father and Variel walked past. The door closed behind them. The servants exchanged looks.

  The "discussion" began at once; Carr's father kept a switch in the back room for occasions like this – though, to be fair, he used it less than most masters did. Carr tried to keep that in mind as they all listened to the crack of the switch against bare flesh.

  Six minutes later, the door opened again. Variel, with his collar still undone but otherwise fully uniformed, left the back room. His cheeks were clam-pale. Carr's father paused long enough to say the obvious – "I will not countenance the ridiculing of my wife" – and then left for the main house, Variel trailing behind him.

  Which left Carr to represent the "comrades" of the House. Everyone was looking at him now, including Jesse.

  Carr cleared his throat. "Excuse me," he murmured. "My mother is expecting me." And he slipped away, feeling very much like a forward who has lost control of the ball.