the rest of us is not needed, I shall run away before too long – when the good weather comes, I reckon – and make my fortune.’
‘Doing what?’
‘I shall find that out once I am doing it, I suppose.’
‘When the time is right for running away, Ben, I hope you will come to me. I have a farm at Kelmscott, and there is always a job for honest boys who are not afraid of working. Just make your way to Kelmscott and ask for Armstrong.’
Stunned by this unexpected stroke of good fortune, Ben took a deep breath and said a good many times over, ‘Thank you, Sir! Thank you, Sir! Thank you!’
The new friends shook hands to seal their agreement, and then they parted.
Ben took his first steps home, his thoughts in upheaval. It was not yet ten o’clock, but it had been an adventurous day like no other. Suddenly the significance of Armstrong’s sadness broke into his young mind.
‘Sir?’ he said, running back to Armstrong, who was already in the saddle.
‘Yes?’
‘Alice – is she dead, Sir?’
Armstrong looked at the river, at its directionless surface motion.
Was she dead?
He held the reins loosely in his hands and settled his feet in the stirrups.
‘I don’t know, Ben. I wish I did. Her mother is dead.’
Ben watched to see whether he was going to say anything else, but he didn’t, so he turned and made his way home. Mr Armstrong, the farmer at Kelmscott. When the time was right he would run away – and be part of the story.
Armstrong nudged Fleet forwards. They moved at a gentle trot and Armstrong wept as they went, grieving for the loss of the grandchild he had never known.
It was always painful to him to know that a creature was suffering. He would not allow his animals to suffer, and that was why he slaughtered them himself instead of giving the job to one of his men. He made sure his knife was sharp, he soothed the pigs with calm words, distracted them with acorns, then one swift and expert twist of the knife was enough. No fear and no pain. The drowning of a child? He could not contemplate it. There were farmers who got rid of sick animals that way and it was a common thing to drown unwanted kittens and puppies in a sack, but he had never done it. Death might be a necessity in farming, but suffering – never.
Armstrong wept, and he discovered as he went that one loss brings back others. The thought of his favourite pig, the most intelligent and kindly pig he had known in thirty years of farming, suddenly afflicted him afresh as poignantly as that first morning over two years ago when he had discovered her missing. ‘What happened to Maud, Fleet? I cannot reconcile myself to not knowing. Someone took her, Fleet, but who could have got her away so noiselessly? You know what she was like. She would have squealed if some stranger had tried to take her. And why steal a gilt? A pig for the table, that I can understand, people get hungry, but a breeding pig – her meat would be tough and bitter, wouldn’t they know that? It makes no sense. Why steal a pig the size of Maud when there were table pigs in the very next pen?’
His heart contracted in pain at the most unbearable thought of all: anyone ignorant enough to take the biggest pig instead of a sweet-tasting small one was bound to be clumsy with the slaughterer’s knife.
Armstrong was a man fully aware of his good fortune: he had health, strength and intelligence; the unorthodoxy of his birth – his father was an earl, his mother a black servant girl – had brought difficulties, but advantages too. Though his childhood had been lonely, he had received a fine education, and when he chose his path in life, he had been given a generous sum to get started. He owned fertile land; he had won the love of Bess and together they had created a large and mostly happy family. He was a man who counted his blessings and rejoiced in them, but he was also one who felt losses most keenly, and now his mind was in torment.
A child struggling in the river, Maud struggling against a dull blade, wielded by an inexpert slaughterman …
Dark images tore at him. Yes, one grief unleashes another, and another, and having torn open the wound left by the