Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur - Страница 77

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was plaited into twin pigtails and pinned on top of her head, and she wore long modest but spotless skirts to her ankles.

She let out a cry and rushed at Manfred with arms outstretched, but Trudi Bierman seized her from behind and shook her soundly.

You lazy wicked girl. I left you to finish your sums. Back you go this instant. She pushed her roughly from the room and turned back to Manfred, her arms folded and her mouth pursed.

You are disgusting, she told him. Your hair is long as a girl's. Those clothes, Her expression hardened even more fearsomely. And we are Christian folk in this house. We'll have none of your father's godless wild ways, do you understand? I'm hungry, Aunt Trudi. You'll eat when everybody else eats, and not before you are clean. She looked at her husband. Menheer, will you show the boy how to build a fire in the hotwater geyser? She stood in the doorway of the tiny bathroom and remorselessly supervised his ablutions, brushing aside all his attempts at modesty and his protests at the temperature of the water, and when he faltered, taking the bar of blue mottled soap herself and scrubbing his most tender and intimate creases and folds.

Then with only a skimpy towel about his waist she led him by the ear down the back steps and sat him on a fruit box. She armed herself with a pair of sheep shears and Manfred's blond hair fell about his shoulders like wheat before the scythe. When he ran his hand over his scalp it was stubbly and bristly and the back of his neck and the skin behind his ears felt cool and draughty.

Trudi Bierman gathered up his discarded clothing with a pantomime of distaste and opened the furnace of the geyser.

Manfred was only just in time to rescue his jacket, and when she saw his expression as he backed away from her, holding the garment behind his back and surreptitiously fingering the small lumps in the lining, she shrugged.

Very well, perhaps with a wash and a few patches. In the meantime I'll find you some of the dominie's old things. Trudi Bierman took Manfred's appetite as a personal challenge to her kitchen and her culinary skills. She kept heaping his plate even before he had finished, standing over him with a ladle in one hand and the handle of the stew-pot in the other. When at last he fell back satiated, she went to fetch the milk tart from the pantry with a victorious gleam in her eye.

As strangers in the family, Manfred and Sarah were allocated the lowliest seats in the centre of the table, the two plump, pudding-faced, blond Bierman daughters sitting above them.

Sarah picked at her food so lightly that she earned Trudi Bierman's ire. I didn't cook good food for you to fiddle with, young lady. You'll sit here as long as it takes you to clean your plate, spinach and all, even if that takes all night., And Sarah chewed mechanically, never taking her eyes from Manfred's face.

It was the first time that Manfred had paid for a meal with two graces, before and after, and each of them seemed interminable. He was nodding and swaying in his chair when Tromp Bierman startled him fully awake with an Amen like a salvo of artillery.

The pastory was already groaning at the seams with Sarah and the Bierman offspring. There was no place for Manfred, so he was allocated a corner of the tool-shed at the bottom of the yard. Aunt Trudi had turned a packing case on end to act as a cupboard for his few cast-off items of clothing and there was an iron bed with a hard lumpy coir mattress and a faded old curtain hung on a string to screen his sleeping corner.

Don't waste the candle, Aunt Trudi cautioned him from the doorway of the tool-shed. You will only get a new one on the first day of each month. We are thrifty folk here.

None of your father's extravagances, thank you! Manfred pulled the thin grey blanket over his head to protect his naked scalp from the chill. It was the first time in his life that he had had a bed and room of his own and he revelled in the sensation, sniffing the aroma of axle grease and paraffin and the dead coals in the forge as he fell asleep.

He woke to a light touch on his cheek and cried out confused images rushed out of the darkness to terrify him.

He had dreamed of his father's hand, reeking of gangrene, that had reached across from the far side of the grave and he struggled up from under the blanket.

Manie, Manie. It's me. Sarah's voice was as terrified as his own cry had been. She was silhouetted by the moonlight through the single un-curtained window, thin and shivering in a white nightdress, her hair brushed out and hanging to her shoulders in a silvery cloud.

What are you doing here? he mumbled. You mustn't come here. You must go. If they find you here they will, he broke off. He was not sure what the consequences would be, but he knew instinctively that they would be severe.

This strange but pleasant new sense of security and belonging would be shattered.

I've been so unhappy. He could tell by her voice that she was crying. Ever since you went away. The girls are so cruel they call me vuilgoed, "trash". They tease me because I can't read and do sums the way they can and because I speak funny. I've cried every night since you went away. Manfred's heart went out to her, and despite his nervousness at being discovered, he reached out for her and drew her down onto the bed. I'm here now. I'll look after you, Sarie, he whispered. I won't let them tease you any more. She sobbed against his neck, and he told her sternly, I don't want any more crying, Sarie. You aren't a baby any more. You must be brave. I was crying because I was happy, she sniffed.

No more crying, not even when you are happy, he ordered. Do you understand? And she nodded furiously, and made a little choking sound as she brought her tears under control.

I've thought about you every day, she whispered. I prayed to God to bring you back like you promised. Can I get into bed with you, Manie? I'm cold. No, he said firmly. You must go back, before they catch you here. Just for a moment, she pleaded and before he could protest she had wriggled around, lifted the blanket and slipped under the corner.

She wrapped herself around him. The nightdress was thin and worn, her body cold and shivery, and he could not bring himself to chase her out.

,Five minutes, he muttered. Then you have to go. Swiftly the heat flowed back into her small body, and her hair was soft against his face and smelt good, like the fur of an unweaned kitten, milky and warm. She made him feel old and important, and he stroked her hair with a paternal proprietary feeling.

Do you think God answers our prayers? she asked softly.

I prayed the hardest I know how, and here you are, just like I asked. She was silent a moment. But it took a long time and a lot of prayers. I don't know about prayers, he admitted. My pa never prayed much. He never taught me how. Well, you better get used to it now, she warned him. In this house, everybody prays all the time. When she at last crept out of the tool-shed back to the big house, she left a warm patch on the mattress, and a warmer place in his heart.

It was still dark when Manfred was roused by a blast from the Trumpet of God in person.

Ten seconds and then you get a bucket of cold water, long. And Uncle Tromp led him, shivering and covered in goosebumps, to the trough beside the stables.

Cold water is the best cure for the sins of the young flesh, Jong, Uncle Tromp told him with relish. You will muck out the stables and curry the pony before breakfast, do you hear? The day was a dizzying succession of labour and prayer, the household chores sandwiched between long sessions of school work and even longer sessions on their knees, while either Uncle Tromp or Aunt Trudi exhorted God to step up their performance or visit them with all kinds of retribution.

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