CHAPTER 15
Xian-Li thrust her hand into the bowl cradled on her hip. She smelled the dry, sweet, floury scent of the cracked corn as she filled her palm, then flung the handful in a wide, generous arc around her. The chickens, already flocking to her, squawked and fluttered as they scurried to snatch up the kernels she had scattered. She watched their sleek heads bobbing as they pecked at the corn. A simple chore, feeding chickens, yet she took great pleasure in it-knowing that it was something her mother and grandmother had done all their lives. The uncomplicated act linked her to generations past and present and yet to come, and that gave her a comfortable feeling.
“I thought I would find you here,” said Arthur, a slight reproof in his tone.
She turned and smiled as he came to stand beside her.
“We have servants to do this, you know,” he said. “You are the lady of the house. You don’t have to feed chickens.”
“I enjoy it.” She flung another handful to her circle of plump brown hens. “And they like it.”
He caught her wrist as she returned it to the bowl. “Your hands, my love,” he said, lifting her palm. “They are getting rough. You do too much.”
“I do what pleases me, husband,” she countered. “Would you deny me that?”
He kissed her palm and released it. “It will be tomorrow,” he said after a moment. He felt her stiffen beside him. “I cannot put it off any longer.”
“But he is only six years old,” Xian-Li declared. Her face clouded, and her lips pursed in objection.
“He is old enough.” Arthur waited, watching the chickens scratching for errant kernels they had missed in the first flurry of feeding. “We’ve always known this day was coming. It is time he began his apprenticeship.”
“But he is only a child,” she complained, resisting what she knew to be true.
“The boy must learn.” Arthur was adamant. “He must be taught.”
Xian-Li turned and flung another handful of grain to her flock.
“He won’t be going alone,” said Arthur, pointing out the obvious. “Do you imagine for a moment I would let any harm to come near him?”
She frowned, her normally smooth brow furrowed now.
“Xian-Li,” he said softly. “It is time.”
She sighed, lowering her head in submission.
To assuage her anxiety, he added, “Besides, he must have some experience of it if we are to consider taking him to see your father and sister in Macau.”
“You are right, husband. I worry too much. But if anything happened to-”
Arthur interrupted before she could finish the thought. “I know.”
Since coming back to England, Xian-Li had taken charge of the small holding that had been in Arthur’s family for over a hundred years. Tucked away in the Cotswold countryside, she had devoted herself to her family and made a good life for herself and Arthur and little Benedict-away from the judgemental stares of city sophisticates who considered her a member of an inferior race. To the country folk of Oxfordshire, Xian-Li was a curious and somewhat exotic novelty whose presence among them provided interest in what was often a drearily mundane existence. As people in the neighbouring holdings and settlements had grown to know her, they accepted her, according the family a higher rank and status in respect of Arthur’s learning and manners. Arthur became known as “the squire” and Benedict, affectionately rechristened Ben by the locals, became “the young squire.” The boy was their sole pride and joy-all the more so because both Xian-Li and Arthur knew there would not be another child.
Later, Arthur took his turn at tucking little Benedict into bed so he could deliver the good news. “Tomorrow,” he said, “we are going on a journey.”
Ben looked up, excited. “Are we going to town?”
“No.” His father shook his head. “We are not going to Banbury, or Whitney, or even Oxford. We’re going somewhere far away from England.”
“China!” The little black-haired boy rose up in bed.
“No, not China. Not this time. That is a difficult journey, and you must be older for that.”
“Where are we going?”
“We are going to Egypt.”
“Egypt?”
“That’s right. Remember I told you about my friend Anen who lives in Egypt?”
The boy nodded.
“We are going to pay him a visit.”
“And I can go too?”
“Yes,” his father assured him. “You will come with me this time. There is much to learn, and it is time your lessons were begun.”
The boy sat up in bed again and clapped his hands. His father pressed him back down. “We must leave very early in the morning, and you must get your rest. Now, say your prayers and blow out the candle. Morning will be here soon enough.”
When Arthur came to wake him the next morning, he found his son already awake and dressed, shirt laced, shoes buckled. “You look a fine traveller,” Arthur told him. “Did you sleep at all last night?”
Ben nodded. “Are we leaving now?”
“Right this very minute,” replied his father. “The carriage is ready. We can eat our breakfast while Timothy drives.” He tucked in the boy’s shirttails and tightened his belt. “Now, run and kiss your mother good-bye. Then put on your coat. I will be waiting for you in the yard outside.”
Ben ran downstairs, his feet clumping heavily on the wooden floorboards as he ran. Arthur followed, retrieving his own coat and hat on the way. Xian-Li was waiting for them in the yard, a bag of provisions in her hand. Arthur gave her a farewell kiss and pressed both her hands in his. “Never fear, I will take good care of him.”
“Of course you will,” she said, forcing a smile.
Daybreak was still some time off when the coach rolled out from their farm and into the gently folded hills and valleys of the Cotswolds. Their farm, on the edge of the village of Much Milford, was only a little way off the main thoroughfare linking the nearby towns and hamlets. Timothy, the farm manager, drove along the deep-rutted road, letting the horses trot along easily while keeping a sharp eye for any holes likely to break a wheel or an axle. Arthur opened the bag Xian-Li had prepared for them and passed his son a barley cake, which had been split and buttered. He took one for himself and leaned back in his seat.
“Papa,” said little Benedict thoughtfully, “will we see God?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You said we will jump up beyond the clouds and stars to a new place,” he said, picking off a bit of his barley cake. He chewed for a moment and observed, “That is where God lives. Can we see him?”
Arthur recalled the previous conversation with his son when he had just returned from one of his travels. Benedict, only four years old at the time, had asked where he had been, and Arthur had told him, in a lighthearted way, that he had been to a place beyond the clouds and stars. In his childish way, the boy considered this just one more way people travelled whenever they went on long trips to distant places.
“Would it surprise you,” Arthur replied, “to know that God cannot be seen-even up among the stars?”
“Why not?”
“Because he is a spirit, and spirits are invisible. No one can see God.”
“Vicar de Gifftley does,” Ben pointed out. “He talks to God all the time.”
“I do not doubt it,” allowed his father. “But even the vicar does not see God with his eyes.”
“Vicar says that if you see Jesus, then you see God,” countered Ben. “Lots of people have seen Jesus.”
“Well, yes, but that was a long time ago.” Arthur enjoyed these little talks, challenging, as they so often did, his own assumptions of the universe and its exceedingly odd mechanisms. “When we take a journey using the force lines we will see people from other times. The man we are going to visit-Anen, remember me telling about him?-he lived a very long time ago.”
