To Conquer Chaos

deadly.

Conrad felt a dazzling stab of pain below his kneecap, and his leg gave way. He went sprawling on the ground.

“Crawl, then!” said his father triumphantly, and jerked Conrad’s head back on his shoulders by hooking a toe beneath his chin. That hurt, too, though not so badly. “Are you still minded to argue with me?”

Conrad pulled himself up on his good knee. He saw that a dozen or so youths of his own age, despairing of getting close to the house, had turned to watch the new distraction. Conrad’s father was always good for some amusement, whether it was taunting him in the pillory or egging him on to another fight. One of the youths called out, “Why, it’s Idle Conrad! Did you go to sleep on your feet and fall down there, useless one?”

“Why not use your soap on yourself?” another put in, and they all squealed with foolish laughter.

Conrad braced his sound leg under him and launched himself arrow-wise on an upward slant. His head sank in his father’s belly and hurled him back against the crowd beyond. Many people turned, complaining angrily at being pushed.

“Wish me to the barrenland, would you?” Conrad said between his teeth. Somehow years of frustration had boiled up inside him and turned to pure, clear-headed rage, as the mix in one of his vats would turn to soap of a clean whiteness. “You a father who couldn’t support his family, who begs scraps of bread from his son and barters them for beer so he may wallow in a hog’s stupor till he’s dragged to the pillory! I’ll go to the barrenland if that’s your wish-then you can weep in the streets and no one will pity you!”

His father made to rush at him, but someone had called for the watchman Gelbay, who came now from his post by the door, brandishing his staff. Conrad waited passively, favouring his hurt leg, for Gelbay was a drinking- crony of his father’s and he could look for no sympathy there.

“You-fighting with your father!” Gelbay barked. “Disgusting! You’re not too young for the pillory, you wastrel, and that’s where I’ve a mind to have you put!”

“Do it!” Conrad said defiantly. “I’m tired of slaving for my drunken father.”

“Pillory! Yes, the pillory!” cried some of the eager youths, but a cautious look came over his father’s face.

“Perhaps not,” he said, plucking at Gelbay’s sleeve. “For it would ill serve the town to lack for soap next washday!”

Oh, the beer-sodden hypocrite! Conrad snapped, “What you mean is that you’d lose the money that keeps you liquored!”

“Enough of that!” Gelbay brought his staff down stingingly on Conrad’s shoulder. “Get gone-and be thankful that your father pleads for you after what you did!”

The jeers of the crowd were still ringing in his head as he let himself into the dirty upper room where he and his father eked out their existence. As he’d expected, the loaves that had been in the cupboard this morning had gone; one of them had been eaten, as crumbs on the floor testified, but the others would have been traded for mugs of beer.

He let fall his sack of soap in the corner and sat down on his blanket with his head in his hands. What point was there in living like this any more?

Something hard pressed against his chest, inside his shirt. With a start he remembered the soap-carving he had been making. He took it out, his hands trembling. By a miracle it was undamaged, except that a lock of the hair had broken off.

He hadn’t seen Idris outside Malling’s house, where most other people were, and since unchaperoned girls were seldom allowed out at night in Lagwich, she might well be at home.

Carrying the carving, he crept down the rickety outside stairs and went to the back door of the next house but one on the same street. He listened for a while in the darkness to make sure he wasn’t going to run into Idris’s mother, who disapproved of her daughter even talking to someone as generally disliked as Conrad. There was a line of yellow light around the door, and someone was moving around. A clear voice started to hum a tune: Idris’s voice. Cautiously he tapped the door.

“Who is it?” Idris called.

“Conrad. Are you by yourself?”

Quick footsteps came to the door and the bolt scraped back. “Yes-everyone has gone to Malling’s house to gape at the foreigners. Come in. I daren’t let you stay, but-Conrad, you’re limping dreadfully!”

He rubbed his injured knee and explained what had happened. Idris’s round, pretty face set in an angry expression.

“I think it’s shameful!” she said. “You’re not lazy-you work as hard as anyone, and no one else in Lagwich can make such good soap, and your horrible father squanders your earnings and on top of that Watchman Gelbay says you have to put up with it. It’s a scandal, really. What’s that in your hand?”

“Something I made for you,” Conrad said shyly. He held it out. “It’s only soap, and it got a bit broken when I was knocked down, but I hope you like it.”

Her fingers brushed his as she took the carving from him, and he drew away, hoping she wouldn’t notice. He had once held her hand, on harvest-day last summer; indeed, then she had let him kiss her cheek. But it was only at times like harvest-day, sowing-day or New Year’s that he had a chance to cleanse himself of his permanent layer of congealed ash and grease, and he had never felt it right to ask her to touch him when he was in his usual grimy state. So now he drew back, as usual.

“Conrad, you are clever!” she exclaimed with sparkling eyes. Looking at her, Conrad decided it was just as well he hadn’t tried to improve the likeness of the carving. It would take a master to catch the alive quality of her face, especially now as she flushed at the compliment she had been paid. Probably it would be easier to make a likeness of the whole of her; the buxom curves under her working gown would shape pleasingly to the hand. In fact-

Conrad checked his line of thought and reprimanded himself.

“Did you see the foreigners?” Idris asked, turning to put the carving on a shelf behind her.

“Yes,” Conrad told her bitterly, and recounted his story. Listening, Idris stamped her foot at the injustice of it.

“I sometimes wonder,” Conrad said at length, “whether I wouldn’t be better off if I just left here. Walked to another town-there’s bound to be work somewhere for a good soapmaker. Or just went to the barrenland where father wished me.”

“You mustn’t talk like that!” the girl said in alarm.

“Wouldn’t I be better off in another town, though? I’m not quite serious about the barrenland.”

“Maybe … Only I’d miss you, I think. I really would, if you went away.”

There was a noise outside, of the front door of the house being opened. Idris drew her breath in quickly and hissed at him. “You’ll have to go! Here, take this-it isn’t much, but it’s all I can spare.” She snatched handfuls of bread, cheese, onions and salad-greens from the table, and thrust an apple at him as well. “Quick now! Thanks for the carving-and we’ll have lots of ash for you tomorrow because we’ve been baking, so I’ll see you then.”

She rushed to open the back door for him, and as quickly as he could he limped out of the kitchen. Only just in time, for a moment after the bolt was slid home again he heard the sharp voice of Idris’s mother calling her.

He ate almost all the food, leaving a little to stop his father complaining when he came back later, and then lay down on the blanket which was the only bed he had. He stared into the darkness for a long time before he fell asleep; when he did doze off, he dreamed that he was riding a horse and waving a long black and red banner on a pole because he had finished carving a life-size statue of Idris without any clothes on and wanted everyone to admire it.

VI

“Nestamay! Nestamay!”

The girl rolled under her blanket and fought against the intrusion of the world.