The Knowledge Stone (2 page)

Joachim remembered how he trudged pathetically across the yard to the barn. It was getting dark and, when he got there, it was difficult to see inside the barn. When his eyes had adjusted to the dim light, he could just make out a rough ladder leading to the hayloft above. He climbed up gingerly, taking his little bundle with him. Most of the hayloft was stacked with bales of hay but he could just make out a narrow bunk made of rough planks of wood set along one wall. There was a single worn blanket in it.

He remembered how exhausted he felt as he stripped off his shirt and breeches and put on his spare shirt – the only other garment he had in his bundle. Putting a generous layer of hay into the bunk, he climbed in and covered himself with the thin blanket. Then, he cried himself to sleep, fearful of what the next day would bring.

The boy’s mind now snapped back to the present. Work always started very early on the farm and he knew that Old Malik would be shouting angrily for him very soon if he did not appear, scrubbed clean and ready for a full day’s work when the light became strong enough for the farm activities to start. The boy reflected with regret how easy it was to make Old Malik angry – in fact he seemed to be angry all the time. When the anger was directed at the boy, which it frequently was, the situation often developed into physical beatings; Old Malik would seize the nearest stick (he had a number of beating sticks placed at strategic points around the farm) and lay it across the shoulders, back and legs of the unfortunate boy.

Such an event had happened the day before.

‘Well, it was my own fault,’ the boy thought ruefully ‘I did drop that bag of grain and it split open.’ In fact the bag had been far too large and heavy for Joachim’s slight frame but, despite this (or perhaps deliberately), Old Malik had ordered him to pick it up and stack it in the barn.

The subsequent beating had been very painful and the boy hoped that the wheals on his back had not been bleeding in the night. If they had, he knew from experience that his shirt would be sticking to his wounds and that the bleeding was likely to restart when he pulled the shirt off. His back would then be very painful all during the day and make it difficult for him to do his work as quickly as normal. He shivered at the prospect. Old Malik might notice and become angry again, putting him in danger of more beating.

‘Oh well, I’ll soon find out if I’ve been bleeding,’ he thought ruefully, still snuggling deeply into the straw.

Remarkably, despite the harshness and periodic brutality that marked his daily life, the boy was not downcast or frightened. Lying in his bunk, for now warm and comfortable, he looked around the cramped, dimly-lit hayloft that had become his home since he came to the farm. ‘Life really isn’t too bad,’ he thought, ‘I’m not beaten every day and the food that Maretta gives me is usually quite good, although it’s never enough.’ Then he paused and added to his thought, ‘but I’ve learned how to survive.’

He smiled secretly as he thought of the extra food he sometimes managed to take when no-one was looking. Neither Maretta or Old Malik ever suspected he would do such a thing! So small pieces of bread or cheese, sometimes even an apple or pear, were quickly taken and hidden in his clothes, later to be eaten on an “official” visit to the privy.

The boy knew that the dark, dirty and fly-infested environment of the privy was highly unsuitable for eating food but it was the only place where he could be alone and was unlikely to be disturbed suddenly. He smiled again, this time quite cheerfully. ‘Yes, life is really quite good. Maybe Old Malik will not be angry with me today. I’ll try my best to do exactly what he tells me. I’ll try to be really good.’

Joachim now judged it was time for him to get up. He sat up gingerly and stepped out of the bunk, easing his shirt from his back and pulling it off over his head. In the dim light, he examined the garment.

‘Only one little streak of blood,’ he thought, ‘I’m really lucky.’ Naked, the boy climbed lithely down the rickety ladder to the earthen floor of the barn. Stepping outside, he paused and looked around with great care before slipping around the side of the barn, out of sight of the farmhouse. Here he urinated quickly on the ground – something Old Malik had expressly forbidden him to do. As he did so, he recalled how unpleasant it was to go to the privy.

There were several reasons for this. On the daily occasions he found it necessary to use the privy, he often found it occupied by Old Malik, Maretta or even Giana. Giana was a scrawny, graceless girl several years younger than Joachim, who had been acquired by Old Malik some months before. She now worked for Maretta in the kitchen or farmyard. Joachim was forbidden by Old Malik to have any contact with Giana or even approach her anywhere on the farm.

Of course Old Malik and Maretta took precedence at the privy and must never be disturbed when they were occupying it. However the boy could not understand why Giana also took precedence over him. After all, he was older than her and had been at the farm much longer. ‘It’s not fair,’ he thought. At the same time he felt sorry for Giana because it was obvious that she was treated unkindly by Maretta. ‘Even so, it’s not fair that she is allowed to use the privy before me,’ he thought again, still standing naked by the side of the barn.

Then an impish grin lit up his face. He looked down at the wet patch on the ground before him and whispered: ‘But I’ve certainly solved that problem for this morning!’

At the doorway of the barn, a large barrel of scummy rainwater provided the boy with the only means he had of washing himself. Shivering a little, he scooped away the algae and threw cupped hands of icy water over his head until the whole length of his body was glistening; he winced as the water stung the red and purple wheals on his back. Scrubbing himself clean with a rough cloth, he then rolled in the straw to dry his wet and reddened body. Finally, he plunged the blood-stained shirt into the water, scrubbed the blood stain and rinsed the garment out before hanging it up on a high beam: ‘I hope that will be dry by this evening,’ he thought, ‘otherwise I’ll have to sleep in my skin.’ He hoped this would not happen because the straw in his bunk would be prickly and hurt the healing scars on his back. Climbing the ladder to the hayloft, he dressed quickly in shirt and breeches and then combed his hair flat with a roughly-hewn wooden comb that he had carved from a flat branch. The light strengthened. He was ready.

He knew he had to hurry now. Old Malik only allowed him a few minutes to eat the food and drink that Maretta angrily threw down for him every morning. Running, he arrived just as Maretta tossed the familiar small wicker basket down on a flat stone just outside the door of the farmhouse. He tried to thank her but she ignored him, muttered something under her breath and slammed the door shut.

The boy had tried very hard to please Maretta when he first arrived but she either rebuffed him icily or shouted angrily for him to go away, sometimes slapping his face if he didn’t move fast enough. At first, this harsh and unkind treatment made him cry but he had long become hardened to it. Nevertheless, he had made it a rule to be scrupulously polite to Maretta; maybe someday she would be in a better mood and smile at him – or better still, let him have more food.

As he perched on the fallen tree trunk where he ate his morning and evening meals, he heard loud shouting from the farmhouse. Obviously, poor Giana had done something wrong and the shouting was punctuated by the sharp crack of a hard hand hitting soft flesh. Joachim dropped his head in compassionate fellowship but at the same time was pleased that the sound was not the so-familiar muffled thud of a heavy stick bruising and cutting into taut flesh and muscle: ‘I’m glad they don’t beat her with a stick,’ he thought, ‘slaps are really sore but they don’t injure you so much.’

In the past, the boy had tried many times to show friendship to Giana. He was forbidden to talk to her but inevitably they met at times because the area of the farm was not very large. Meeting face to face, he had smiled at her a number of times but his smile was never returned. She looked either blank or cross.

‘In fact,’ Joachim remembered, ‘there was that day when we met on the narrow path to the field and she pushed me right into the mud, whispering: “Get out of my way, you horrible boy!”’. Momentarily, he felt rather sad that everybody hated him.

Meanwhile the boy ate quickly from the scarred wooden bowl perched on his knees. This morning there were two slices of coarse brown bread and a small piece of hard cheese, all made by Maretta from their own farm produce.

‘This tastes pretty good,’ the boy thought as he ate, ‘I just wish there was more.’ He was always hungry and sometimes experienced quite sharp pains in his stomach. She had also given him a large earthenware cup of goat’s milk and he drank that down quickly.

It was always a problem for him to find enough to drink. Sometimes, he was driven to drink water from the small muddy stream that crossed the farm at the bottom of the field. Before drinking the water from the stream, he always examined it carefully, meticulously removing any dirt, insects or rotting vegetation; even then he knew from past experience that the water might still make him sick.

‘The trouble is, you can’t see the evil spirits,’ he always reminded himself, ‘I wish I was like Old Malik and never had to drink this water.’ While working, Old Malik drank from bottles of beer that Maretta had brewed for him. He never offered any to the boy and Joachim knew better than to ask for some.

The door of the farmhouse opened with a crash and Old Malik appeared. Without looking at the boy, he spoke harshly: ‘Get moving. You’re ploughing today. Get started at the top of the field and make sure your furrows are deep and straight. I’ll be examining them and they had better be right.’ As he spoke he tossed a cloth bundle towards the boy – this was Joachim’s daytime meal, to be eaten during a very short break in work when Old Malik gave permission.

The boy deftly caught the bundle before it spilled its contents on the muddy ground; this was an important skill he had learned after many occasions of scavenging his precious food from the stinking dirt. He tied the ends of the cloth around his belt, already moving towards the pen where the bullocks were kept. Old Malik kept two bullocks for heavy work on the farm; the boy was directed to use the smaller animal with a lighter plough to deal with the rather poor, stony soil at the top of the field while Old Malik used the larger beast with a heavier plough which was more suitable for the lower field where the ground was softer, more fertile and much easier to plough.

Fortunately, both bullocks were quite docile creatures and the boy usually had little trouble with them. In addition to the animal he was to use, it was also his job to fasten the harness around Old Malik’s bullock, so that it was ready to be hitched to the plough.

‘Better do his bullock first,’ he thought, ‘otherwise I might get into trouble.’ He made soft clucking noises to reassure the bullocks as he approached with the sets of harness ropes and had no problems putting them on, achieving this just before the arrival of Old Malik.

The farmer glared at him and growled, ‘You still here? Get moving and make it quick.’

The boy immediately left the pen with his bullock as quickly as he could, avoiding the kick that Old Malik aimed at him as he passed. As he led the bullock along the packed earth of the path that led up to the top of the field, he delighted in the crisp, sunny morning and hummed a little song he had learned from his mother when he was a little boy. ‘At least the bullock likes my singing,’ he thought with a little smile, ‘even if no-one else does.’

The wooden plough lay at the edge of the field where it had been left at the end of the last ploughing season. Its metal parts were rusty but the boy knew that the rust would be cleared away as soon as he started ploughing. Heaving and straining, he pulled the plough upright and propped it up with a stick. Then he manoeuvred the bullock round to the front of the plough and fastened the harness ropes to the cleats. Holding the plough upright on its single wooden wheel and keeping the ploughing blade clear of the earth, he tapped the bullock on its back with a stick, calling for it to walk forward. The animal complied and, in due course, they reached the top of the field where they turned around and were ready to begin ploughing.

There were times when the boy really enjoyed his work on the farm and this was one of them. Despite his inexperience, lack of strength and diminutive stature, he knew he did a good job of ploughing.

‘Not that Old Malik ever says so,’ he thought ruefully, ‘but the fact he doesn’t complain means that he must be satisfied. I do wish he would be nice to me, just occasionally.’ He sighed wistfully.

As expected, the ground was dry and difficult. The plough stalled and jammed many times and the bullock had to heave with all its power to pull it free. There were some occasions when even the strength of the bullock was insufficient and then the boy had to dig around the large jagged stones and heave them out of the furrow. Some stones were so big and heavy that the boy could not lift them and they had to be rolled laboriously, end over end, to the edge of the field. Soon, his hands became reddened, bruised and sore.

When the boy eventually reached the end of the first furrow, he looked back to admire his work: ‘Not bad,’ he thought, ‘quite straight and it looks to be deep enough.’ He hoped fervently that Old Malik would be satisfied with his work.

The plough was turned around and the second furrow made in the same agonisingly slow way. These first two furrows were followed by the third, the fourth and the fifth, all neatly parallel to each other. The sun was now high in the sky. The boy stopped and mopped his beaded forehead with a rag, squinting upwards at the blazing sun.

‘Whew! It’s really hot now,’ he said aloud. Then he jumped as the harsh, strident tones of Old Malik’s voice pierced his delightful reverie.

‘Talking to yourself, are you? Just about what I expect. You’ll grow up to be a madman – that is, if you live long enough to grow up!’ Old Malik thought this a very good joke and laughed loudly and unkindly. By this time he had walked to the top of the field where he scrutinised Joachim’s furrows narrowly.

The boy waited in silence, trembling a little.