CHAPTER SIX
The Bay crashed against the lamphouse with the force of a culling hammer.
The hammer was the wind, shrieking as it sought to break in the lamphouse windows. The hammer was the rain, pouring down so heavily that the four giant water-tanks within the lamphouse were soon filled with roof-water, causing the remaining water to stream off the roof like the great falls in western Mip. But most of all, the hammer was the Bay itself, smashing into the spindly spider-legs of the screwpile lamphouse, thundering against the windows of the hexagon-shaped cottage atop the legs, and making the lantern-room atop the cottage shudder with each passing wave.
Meredith, running from one window in the lantern-room to the other, felt the familiar combination of thrill and fear at this show of the Bay's force. He was well aware that, in his lifetime alone, three screwpile lamphouses had been destroyed: two by storms, one by a steamship that had missed seeing the warning light and had plowed straight into the lamphouse. In all three cases, the keepers and their resident families had been killed.
But still there was the thrill of feeling as though he were in the palm of some giant Vovimian god, who raged and appeared likely to dash Meredith to pieces at any moment, yet was undeniably worthy of awe for his power.
Reaching another window, Meredith wiped it free of the mist that was threatening to obscure the lamplight. The arrival of the northwest blow, only an hour after Meredith had reached the lamphouse at dusk, had caused the temperature to plummet suddenly – so suddenly that the windows inside the lamphouse were fogging up, even though Meredith's father had closed the door to the staircase at the center of the lantern-room. The staircase spiralled down past the second storey to the first storey of the cottage, where the kitchen's coal stove valiantly struggled to stay alive, though its ventilation pipe was clogged with stormwater.
So Meredith wiped and wiped, while behind him the eye-blinding lantern revolved, sending its message of white-red-white: warning – death – warning.
Over the bellow of the waves and the rhythmic gong of the fog-bell downstairs, Meredith did not hear his father enter the lantern-room. He turned his head to see that his father had dumped a new load of dry cloths on the floor next to the doorway. From the looks of it, the cloths were his own shirts. He was staring at the windows. "Blast!" he said.
Meredith nearly smiled at this appropriate euphemism. "What is it?" he shouted back; it was the only way to be heard in the storm.
"Ice!" His father gestured toward the windows.
Meredith looked where his father was pointing and saw to his horror that his father was right. The Bay water – crashing so high that it was reaching the lantern-room windows – had begun to freeze on the windows, turning the crystal-clear panes grey, and obscuring the warning light. "What can we do?" cried Meredith.
"Chip it off," said his father. Already he was pulling something from his pocket, apparently in preparation for this eventuality. It was a shucking knife, Meredith saw.
Meredith peered out. "But there's ice on the deck too! And waves are still crashing there! We'll be swept off!"
"No choice," said his father. "Look."
He pointed toward the window facing north. Meredith, squinting, just managed to see a flicker of bobbing light between the black waves of the night-storm.
"Steamer from Balmer," his father explained as he wrapped a rope round his waist. "Needs our help."
Meredith swung round to look toward the southeast. Throughout the night, like the warm wink of a firefly, he had seen periodically the glow of light from Richland Point, where his school lay. The school was located on the west side of the island, facing the Bay. On the east side of Hoopers Island, which faced the Honga River, the great Balmer steamboat would be sheltered somewhat from the northwest blow and could make its way safely to the steamboat wharf at Hickory Cove, on the middle island, less than a mile from the school.
But the steamer's path south was a narrow one; if it went too far east, it would founder in the shallow waters near the island. The steamer depended primarily on the warnings of the Hoopers Lamphouse to determine its position.
"Whole lot of folk on that steamer," said his father. He was tying the loose end of the rope to a bracket on the wall. "Families too. They'll be counting on us to show them the way."
Meredith, his mind filled with visions of children drowning, began to grab his overcoat as his father approached the door that led to the deck circling the lantern-room. His father shook his head, though.
"Now, you stand here and hold onto this door," he instructed. "Keep it as closed as you can. I need that rope to come through the doorway – it'll help keep me from falling off the deck. But you got to be sure that the wind stays out of this room. Otherwise, it'll blow out the light."
Meredith nearly made the mistake of looking back at the great lantern, revolving behind them. He said, "Yes, sir," and opened the door for his father, who had already hurried himself into his overcoat, scarf, and gloves.
The wind screamed into the room; the lantern light flickered dangerously. Putting his shoulder against the door, Meredith just managed to close it. But he could not close it entirely, for that rope which was now jammed between the door and the doorpost was his father's safety-line, like the line harpooned by the sea-coast guard to men on sinking ships.
Struggling to keep the door from flinging open again, Meredith watched his father stagger as he met the full force of the wind. For a moment it seemed that the wind alone would carry him off the deck, but he caught hold of the rope and steadied himself. Behind Meredith, the lantern-light flickered wildly in the wind.
Dimly the steamer's lights showed briefly. The steamboat was due east now, very close to shallow water. The fog-bell boomed its message of warning.
And then the bell stopped.
His father, clinging to the rope as waves crashed around his knees on the icy deck, lifted his head. His eyes met Meredith's. Then, with the careful deliberation of a waterman assessing odds, he brought his knife down and sliced the rope neatly in half.
"Go!" he mouthed to Meredith, and Meredith, the choice taken from him, pulled back the strand of broken rope and slammed the door shut. He turned—
—and his eyes met the lantern-light full-on.
He closed his eyes, but it was too late; when he opened them again, staring at the floor, all he could see was the dazzle of the light, remembered by his eyes like an image from a past life.
He groped his way forward, slipping once on the wet floor and falling to his knees so hard that he bit his tongue and tasted blood. He crawled after that, finding his way by touch to the doorway to the stairwell. Then he stood up—
—and immediately tripped over the pile of cloths there.
He just managed to keep from falling on his head by twisting; then he shouted in pain as the fall carried him past the landing and down the steps. He slid on his back, all the way down the spiral staircase to the next landing, as though he were returning to a previous life. Then he lay still, feeling red pain shoot through his back and limbs.
The lamphouse shuddered under the wind. Faintly, he heard the whistle of the steamer, like a plea for help.
He managed to claw his way to his feet. He still could not see, but he knew where the fog-bell was located: just beyond the second-storey landing, facing south. He found the bell, then located the winding mechanism.
No time now to rewind the automated mechanism so that the machine would ring the bell automatically. The steamer was too close to the shoals for delay. Falling to his knees again, he found the clapper and began ringing the bell by hand, over and over and over. The sound of the great bell, so close to his ears, nearly deafened him. His mind was filled with images of his father on the icy deck, battered by wind and rain and wave, taking the full force of the Bay's fury without aid of his lifeline.
The strain of reaching over to ring the bell was making his back ache even more than before, but he dared not stop. His eyes were beginning to clear; he could see dimly the flas
h of the lamphouse's light upon the scudding dark clouds and slicing rain. But if he had seen the steamer's lights only dimly, it was possible that the steamer could not see the lamphouse's light; if so, the steamboat would be depending on the fog-bell alone to determine its location. He rang the bell again and again, nearly sobbing from the effort and from the thought of what might be happening to his father.
And then – oh my blessed! – his father was beside him, gasping, "Keep ringing! Keep ringing, lad!" His father began hefting the great handle that would wind the ringing mechanism.
It took five minutes, five long minutes before the mechanism was wound. He signalled Meredith, and Meredith crawled back to let the mechanized bell do its own work. Then Meredith rose and flung himself into his father's arms.
"I thought I had lost you!" he cried, burying his face in his father's shoulder.
"Thought I'd lost you too." His father held him tight. "Saw you fall down the stairs. Then I heard the bell, and I knew— Should have known all along you'd never fail to do your duty. . . . Look!"
Meredith turned his head toward the window facing south, just in time to see, through a break in the storm, the lights of the steamer disappear as the boat passed round the southern tip of Hoopers Island, entering the mouth of the Honga River.
o—o—o
Meredith's father gave deep thought to what his son said before replying, "Any second-ranked masters in the 'bus who was pals with you? Or with your liege-master?"
Meredith hesitated before saying, "Master Davenham is civil to me. I'm not sure he saw what happened, though; he was busy talking to Master Oates."
His father nodded as he turned his attention back to the prisms of the lantern's lenses, which he was polishing with a chamois-skin cloth. "Here's how I tell it, then. If you find yourself like that 'gain, then you just get up on your feet and say in a right loud voice: 'Master Davenham, would you like me to rescue that poor little gal who just fell into the Bay?' That way, all the masters in the bus will hear you speaking, and there's bound to be one or three who is with enough honor that he'd make the driver stop the bus to help."
Meredith smiled, resting his cheek against the tip of the long broom handle. "Sir, that's perfect! I wish that you'd been there."
"Well, now, it's just a matter of keeping your wits 'bout you." His father paused to breathe on the glass before polishing the next spot. "But you ask your liege-master for his advice. He's second-ranked, so he's bound to have a few tricks of his own."
Meredith's smile disappeared. He bowed his head, concentrating his attention on sweeping clear the deck. He had already finished most of his work for the morning: polishing the windows of the lantern-room, dusting the sashes, and sweeping the stairs. All that was left was the deck.
His father, who had taken charge of all the duties connected with the great prism-lamp, peered at him, saying, "Look to your work, lad – you're scattering dust up toward the lamp. Be sure you clean up the floor good. We don't want the fleet master cussing us when he comes to inspect."
"Yes, sir." Meredith quickly returned his attention to the broom.
After a time, his father said, "Everything going well at school? No hard times with your liege-master?"
"No, sir." He kept his head bowed as he spoke. He could not remember why he had originally hidden his school troubles from his father; most likely it was because he could not bear to disappoint his father's high hopes for his performance at school. But he had developed a new motive in the past sun-circuit: fear that his father would report to Captain Pembroke on his son's lackadaisical performance as a liege-master, and that Master Pembroke would be punished. Meredith often wondered how other liegemen managed to keep their oath to serve their liege-masters faithfully, under circumstances like this, but of course there was no one he could ask.
"That's finished," said his father, stepping back to admire the prism-lens, which shifted rainbow colors across his face: red, blue, green . . . "You close those curtains now – and make sure they're tight."
Meredith leapt to obey. Behind him, his father pulled a great linen hood over the prism-lens, putting it to sleep for the day. Off in the distance, a whistle sounded: the steamboat, making its way back to Balmer.
o—o—o
"Father," said Meredith, "how can you consider yourself a master when you do servants' work?"
His father, who had been laboriously writing an entry in the lamphouse's official log, paused and frowned. "Servants' work?"
Meredith spread his hand to indicate the collection of working tools. "Just think of what you do each morning: You rub off the crust that has formed at the top of the lamp's wick. You clean the float strainers. You put oil in the lamp . . . and then you lug that heavy lamp upstairs. You polish the lamp brass, the lamp ventilators, the lamp reflectors . . ."
His father was smiling now. "Does seem like I'm still at the culling board, don't it? It's all a matter of where your mind is set, Meredith. I'm keeper of the Hoopers Lamphouse. I'm master of all this—" He spread his arms wide, in the same manner that Meredith had. "If I get down on my knees and scrub a floor, it don't make me any less a master than if your liege-master had to serve himself his own food in a trench during some battle, 'cause you wasn't there to serve him."
Meredith stared down at the paper he had been drawing upon, trying to think. If he considered what he did for Rudd to be a master's work . . . But always there was Rudd's voice, ridiculing him, addressing him as only a despised servant would be addressed. If Meredith could only scrub floors for Master Pembroke instead. . . .
"You're third-ranked; you've never had a liegeman," he said, and then instantly regretted the remark as he looked up and saw how his father's face tightened.
But his father's voice was calm as he said, "No, and maybe I won't never get one, even if I rise in rank. Maybe I won't get me a servant neither. It don't matter. —What's that you're drawing?"
Meredith picked up the paper and displayed it. It was part of a series of sketches he had begun making of the Bay's wildlife when he was quite young. He was not a good enough artist to make his living from his drawings, but he had what his tutor had called "a scientific eye," which captured details. He had found that his sketches provided as much scientific information about the wildlife as his careful, written records of them.
"Now, ain't that nice." His father had come over to look. "You shown those to your liege-master yet?"
"I just made them," he said, hedging.
"Your liege-master's going to be right proud of you when he sees those, along with all those notes you been taking about when the birds come back each autumn and how many crabs you see each sun-circuit and such like. Think notes like that might get you into the university at Hurlock?"
Meredith rolled his pencil lightly over the plover he had been drawing. "I've been thinking, actually, of applying to the Second Landstead University, sir, rather than the Third Landstead University."
"Why you want to do that?" said his father with surprise. "Ain't your liege-master going to 'tend our university?"
So was Rudd . . . and he would be at the Third Landstead University for two sun-circuits before Pembroke arrived. "The Second Landstead University has a better program in history, sir." Then, seeing his father frown, Meredith added, "It's right on the shore of the Bay. The Third Landstead University is in Hurlock, well into the mainland – nowhere near any of the Bay's tributaries."
Meredith's father's expression cleared. This was an argument he could understand. "Hard to be away from the water," he agreed. "And with you making all those studies of the Bay . . ." He waved his hand over the papers. "Well, as long as it's what your liege-master wants too."
Meredith, who had not yet figured out a way to raise the subject with Pembroke, said hesitantly, "Then I have your permission, sir?"
His father smiled as he sat back down on the chair next to his writing desk. "You're a journeyman now; you don't need anyone's permission but your liege-master's. But I know you'll do me prou
d, whatever it is you decide."
Meredith's eye drifted over to the window, where a flock of geese was flying by. "Sometimes I think it would have been better if I'd stayed here and become your journeyman."
His father continued to smile. "And been as alone as I am? Son, you're meant for better things. . . . No, you listen." He waved his hand as Meredith tried to speak. "I don't have a liegeman. I don't have no servants. Maybe I never will. But I got a son. You know, I once thought it mattered a lot whether I did a master's work or a servant's work. Now I ain't so sure. But one thing I'm figuring, certain. If I hadn't been made a master, you'd never have got the chance to be making all those pretty pictures and writing down those notes I can't half read." He waved his hand toward the glass-enclosed bookcase where Meredith's notebooks were stored. "Some day, you're going to be a right important master, 'cause of all that work you're doing. And maybe you'll be able to pass on what you've learned to a liegeman, and maybe you'll be able to pass on what you've learned to a child. Maybe, maybe not. But folks, they're gonna look at you and say, 'Ain't he remarkable! He done all this, and yet he don't have one hundred percent masters' blood in his veins, like as we do.' And then maybe some other lad who's just now being reborn will get the chance you got, to better himself. You'll be giving him that chance, by the work you do as a master."
It was a long speech, an abnormally long speech from Meredith's father. And at the end of it, the two of them simply sat in silence, listening to the baying of the geese heading south. Finally Meredith's father said, more quietly, "Daddies always try to live out their dreams through their sons. Don't want to make you into nothing more than my tool, Meredith."
"You're not," said Meredith softly. "You know you're not, sir. It's what I want as well."
"Well, then," said his father, and turned his attention back to painstakingly writing down the letters that Meredith could have written in a flash.
o—o—o
Meredith emerged from the outhouse, rubbing his bottom as he endeavored to wake it. His father, who was standing at the rail, checking his long fishing line, laughed when he saw what Meredith was doing. "Bit warmer doing that at school, ain't it?"
The porcelain chamber-pots that the students used weren't much of an improvement over the lamphouse's outhouse, but Meredith said only, "At least the Bay isn't rough today. I hate when the waves hit my bottom." He looked back at the outhouse, whose toilet hung over the side of the lamphouse, open only to the Bay's waters.
His father chuckled softly. "Better than trying to do it in a boat that's heaving across the waves. Look now – ain't the Bay something remarkable after a storm?" He waved his hand to indicate the broad expanse of the water. The Bay was so smooth and calm on this day, a week after the storm, that it resembled a looking glass. Above it, the sky was so deep a blue that it looked like a second Bay, hiding creatures in its depths.
"Remarkable," agreed Meredith, leaning against the railing. He cast a glance at the old oyster barrels nearby, cut in half and filled with earth. They looked as though they had weathered the storm well. Come spring, his father would plant seeds in them, until, by Summer Transformation, the lamphouse would look like a greenhouse, with vines and vegetables and fruits overflowing onto the broad deck that encircled the first story.
"Just the day for a sail," his father said, and Meredith could hear the longing in his voice.
Meredith picked at the storm-weathered railing, half considering in his mind whether to paint it before he returned to school. "Father," he said, "do you think, if I asked, Sol might be willing to teach me—?"
But his father was distracted from the conversation. "Hey, there!" he said. "Postal boat's arrived." Hooking his line fast, he hurried over to the side of the lamphouse where the postal boat was bobbing in the waters below.
"You're early this week!" shouted down Meredith's father.
"Ordered to be." The waterman servant who delivered the post was more than usually laconic. "Stand by." He stuffed the letters into a watertight canister, attached a line, and then, with a great heave of the arm, threw the canister upwards.
Meredith's father caught it on first try. "How they doing on the island?" he asked as he took out the letters and tossed the canister back down to the postal deliverer. "Everyone survive the storm okay?"
But the postal deliverer was busy turning his jib to the wind; he made no reply. Meredith's father looked down at the letter in his hand. "This is from your liege-master, Meredith. Must be for you."
He had never received a letter before from Pembroke. Eagerly he tore open the envelope, but his eagerness faded as he saw the salutation and opening words. "It's for you," he said to his father. "He's writing for Captain Pembroke."
"Well, now, you read it aloud," his father replied. "I ain't got my glasses with me."
What he meant was that Meredith was a far better reader than he was. Meredith read aloud, "'Dear Master Hooper, I am writing to you on behalf of my father, Captain Pembroke, who is unable to take up pen at this time. You may not be aware that he was badly injured during the recent storm, in a failed attempt to save his crewman, Servant William—'"
Meredith stopped reading abruptly. He looked up at his father, who was staring out at the upward reaches of the Bay, his eyes narrowed against the morning glare. "Go on," he said.
Pembroke's characteristically terse style of writing nonetheless did justice to the narrative. Captain Pembroke, hearing that his crew had volunteered to help the other captain gather oysters for the High Master, had offered to take everyone out on his own boat, since his crew had more familiarity with sailing it. The other captain had agreed, and with the hard work of everyone present, they had managed to bring ashore several loads of oysters, despite the choppy water.
But on the last trip home, after dark, they were caught by the full force of the northwest blow. Billy was swept overboard, but managed to cling to a rock above water. Not wishing to risk bringing the Elsie Pembroke close to the rocks, Captain Pembroke tried to reach Billy by sailing to him on his yawl, but the small boat was dashed by the waves onto the rocks, crushing Captain Pembroke against the hard stone. Within seconds, Sol had stripped down and dived off the Elsie Pembroke, into the now furious storm-waters. He managed to save Captain Pembroke, at the cost of having his own leg bashed against the rock, but Billy had been swept away by the same wave that destroyed the yawl. His lifeless body drifted onto the shore of Hoopers Island the following day.
Sol was recovering at home and was expected to live. Captain Pembroke had hovered near death for several days, but it was now thought that he would survive. His health had been badly broken, though, and the doctor's assessment was that he was likely to remain an invalid.
"'Because my father is unlikely to be able to return to captaining, his liege-master has released him from all his duties,'" Meredith read aloud. "'The title of Supervisor of the Lights of Hoopers Island and Barren Island has been handed down to my eldest brother, who will tell you in due time if he has need of your services.'" Meredith stopped again, caught by the word "if."
Meredith's father continued to gaze out at the water, his eyes watering in the wind. He cleared his throat. "Go on. Anything else?"
"No, sir. Just a sentence saying that his father is still barely conscious but sent a message of regret that he can no longer remain your liege-master. Master Pembroke will write to you when he knows more." Meredith carefully folded the letter and tried to think of something to say. Out on the Bay, the gulls wheeled and dove over the calm waters.
His father finally broke the silence. "That's a good liege-master you have, writing to tell me himself, amidst everything else he's got to do at this time."
"Maybe Captain Pembroke asked him to write," Meredith suggested.
"Maybe." His father cleared his throat. "Well, it's time we was both in bed. Got to be up in time to tend the light. You go now – I just want to check this line."
"Yes, sir," murmured Meredith.
He made his way slowl
y up the spiral staircase to his bedroom on the second floor, across from the fog-bell. He poured oil into the lamp there, checked that the matches were nearby, and spent a minute fiddling with the cloth covering the bed-stand. Then he picked up his copy of Remigeus's Sayings and read a few lines from it. Three minutes later, he could not say what words he had read.
White sunlight poured into the room, falling across the white paint on the iron bedstead and the white coverlet on the bed. Meredith pushed the bed back from the wall, opened the window, and looked down. His father still stood at the railing below, his head bowed.
Meredith rested his crossed arms on the window-frame and stared across the waters toward Barren Island, where the gulls were weaving. It had been a long time since he had set foot on the island. He supposed it was unlikely he would ever visit there again.
o—o—o
Meredith was born on Barren Island. His father had been a Hoopers Island waterman, working as a servant under Captain Pembroke; his mother had worked within Captain Pembroke's household on Barren Island before her marriage. After Master James Hooper's wife died, Captain Pembroke's wife took Master Hooper's son into her own household, for she had recently lost a baby and was able to assuage her grief by nursing the baby of her husband's liegeman.
These were the final years of Barren Island's community; shoreline erosion was causing the villagers there to move to nearby Hoopers Island or to the mainland. Barren Island, like Hoopers Island, lay within the boundaries of the Third Landstead's heirship House, the House of Mollusc; because of this, many of Barren Island's former inhabitants drifted naturally toward Golden Hill. As Captain Pembroke made plans to move his own household to Golden Hill, he sought work for his liegeman, but in vain; nobody in the Hoopers Island fleet wanted Meredith's father on their boat.
Captain Pembroke was second-ranked, not by virtue of his boat-mastery, but by virtue of the fact that he was also Supervisor of the Lights of Hoopers Island and Barren Island. Having failed to find a waterman's job for his liegeman, Captain Pembroke appointed him as keeper of the beacons on and near Barren Island, which served as guides for boats. Thus Meredith's father became the last man living on Barren Island.
Meredith became the last boy there. By the time that Captain Pembroke moved his household to Golden Hill, his third son had been born, and his wife had transferred her affections to her own baby. Meredith was old enough to be weaned, and was self-sufficient enough that he needed little guidance during the day. And so the Pembrokes sailed away, leaving Master Hooper and his son alone on the island.
Meredith's earliest memories began then: of being on the island with his father. He did not think of himself as being alone with his father, for while the humans had left Barren Island, the wildlife remained. Every day he would explore the beaches, where the least terns nested and where each new wave would bring in some exciting new form of Bay life. Great blue herons, double-crested cormorants, herring gulls, gadwalls, boat-tailed grackles . . . he got to know them all, as well as the lesser masters of the island's marshes, such as saltmarsh snails. He scarcely had time to wonder what lay beyond the island.
Barren Island had occasional visitors. The fleet master of Hoopers Island, who was liege-master to Captain Pembroke, would pay periodic, formidable visits to check that Master Hooper was carrying out his duties properly. Sol came every few months, always under the excuse that he was delivering supplies. And at age six, Meredith began receiving visits from a tutor. The tutor had been hired by Captain Pembroke, after the boat-master became concerned by the fact that his liegeman had been unable to locate a masters' school that would admit his son.
Meredith found that he liked studying as much as he liked exploring the island. His tutor, while gently correcting Meredith's speech until he talked like a master, was wise enough to capitalize on Meredith's strengths; he set Meredith to work translating ancient authors of natural history, and he loaned Meredith many books on mathematics and science. One such book was about the amazing technology of the First Landstead; Meredith promptly began devising ways he could visit the First Landstead some day. The nearby islands and the Third Landstead's mainland remained a distant vision to him.
Captain Pembroke visited the island as well, of course, sometimes accompanied by his third-born son. In time, Meredith came to understand that, when he grew older, he was expected to serve the younger boy in the same manner that his father served Captain Pembroke. Shyly, Meredith showed the younger Pembroke his treasures: the sword-pointed shell of a horseshoe crab, an osprey's untidy nest, and the red-flecked shell of a periwinkle snail. The other boy seemed uninterested in the natural world; all his talk was about the strategies of footer, a game that Meredith had never seen. Their conversation lagged. Meredith asked his tutor to teach him footer.
Finally Meredith reached his apprenticeship years, when he was expected to enter into higher studies than his tutor could provide. On the very morning that he reached his eleventh sun-circuit, two pieces of joyful news arrived: Meredith's father had been promoted to be keeper of the lamphouse off Hoopers Island, and Meredith, by virtue of his planned allegiance to Master Pembroke, had been accepted as a student at Narrows School. He was scheduled to begin first form in one turn of a sun-circuit, just before his fourth tri-year began.
Within one week of his arrival at Narrows School, Meredith realized that he knew nothing about being a master.
He had never thought much before about that topic. He knew, in a practical sense, that he was a master, and he also knew that his rank as a master was provisional. But what the difference was between a master and a servant he did not know. The only servant he had ever met was Sol, who treated Meredith's father like a beloved younger brother who has taken a wrong turn in life but must nonetheless be humored.
The first lesson Meredith learned – or rather, had beaten into him by his fellow students – was that he must not lower his eyes. He must not lower his eyes, but he must not look too boldly at higher-ranked students. He must not call servants sir – even if they were twice his age – and he must not fail to call second- and first-ranked masters sir, even if they were half his age. He must be willing to help higher-ranked students, but he must not appear too eager to help them, for that was the sign of a servant.
The rules for being a third-ranked master were hopelessly complicated. In moments of despair, Meredith suspected that, even if he had been trained to follow the rules from the day he was born, he would never have mastered how to be a master. In the meantime, making mistake after mistake, and being known everywhere in school as the boy whose wrist remained unmarked with his rank sign, he endured harsh words and harsher blows from practically every student in his House.
He would spend his nights sobbing into his pillow, dreaming of the day when Master Pembroke would arrive at the school and put an end to the torture. Pembroke would care for him, just as Pembroke's father had cared for Meredith's father.
Pembroke finally arrived at the school. He was promptly named as Rudd's fag. Meredith scarcely saw him during the first term, or the second, or the third. Swallowing his disappointment, Meredith awaited the day when he would formally vow his allegiance to the second-ranked master. After that point, surely, Pembroke would take notice of his liegeman.
o—o—o
The sun dipped toward the horizon. Meredith, still standing sleepless by the lamphouse cottage's window, turned and fumbled with the matches, seeking a spark of light.
Master and Servant (Waterman) Page 25