IV. Cleaving Stone
Waldroup supplied him with tools and an off-the-shoulder bag to contain them. Like the mat he’d slept on, the tools had belonged to Lenox, the man who’d died and who, as it turned out, was the first marked grave in the new cemetery north of the abbey.
Thomas proved to be a fast learner. By the second day, he had absorbed the idea of there being cleavage and bedding planes, and was able to identify stress points in a slab of limestone and drive his copper wedges along a line with the precision to split it into blocks. Waldroup remarked, “Anyone would think you’d done this before.” Iachan and Shug were impressed, too.
He hadn’t, of course, but something about the work was akin to counting things—patterns opened to him in a kind geometry. Striations in the stone revealed themselves as lines and angles, almost as if drawn upon the slabs. Focusing on the work kept his thoughts from straying to Onchu and how he should have been taken instead. He was the damaged one. Nobody would have missed him, would they? Even if he ever remembered more people, they would all say that Onchu had mattered, had been of worth.
The one aspect of quarrying he had trouble with was carrying cut blocks to the oxen-drawn carts to be hauled to the abbey site. The other boys were stronger, and even they grunted and groaned at the sledges they used to pull the rough stones onto the carts.
The first day proved Waldroup true: He ached nearly to where he didn’t want to eat, just to crawl off and sleep. But Waldroup wouldn’t allow it and made him eat the mutton and bread and mashed-up turnips.
He was going to sit alongside the other boys, who seemed just as exhausted, but Waldroup led him off a ways.
It turned out he was ravenous—too hungry to care where he sat.
Waldroup asked, “Anything new come to you, today, Fingal? Remember more?”
It took him a moment to remember that he was Fingal. He shook his head.
“Well, let’s give you a few days, hmm? Can’t elude you forever.” He chewed on a chunk of bread awhile. “You always suffer from those fits?”
“Yes.” He bowed his head as if to ward off a blow.
“Anything you ever gabbled out before make any sense?”
Waldroup seemed to be teasing him. He glared through his brows. “Sometimes. Maybe. My sister thinks it’s prophecy.”
“A sister, then, you have a sister. See? You did remember something new.”
Waldroup was right. Innes. He had a sister named Innes. It was as if she had been hiding. He could see her face, and didn’t want to lose her. “Innes,” he said.
“All right, then. We got Innes, your sister. And Baldie, that was Onchu’s friend. That’s good. We’ll figure you out, name the whole of your family before long.” He reached over and gripped Thomas’s shoulder. “Just be careful who you share this with. Fingal.” He gave a nod of his head at the other boys.
“You think someone’s coming after me?”
“I think it’s better that we assume so.”
“Why?” He scratched at his cheek, then set down his bowl, watching Waldroup all the while. “The green fire—it meant something to you, didn’t it?”
“Here, more meat for you, little brother.” He snatched the bowl, got up, and returned to the ceramic pot, ladled more into both Thomas’s and his own bowls and brought them back. “Eat another portion, you worked hard.” He sat down and returned to eating as if they hadn’t been speaking at all.
Thomas waited for an answer. When it didn’t come, he ate the rest of his own food. He’d have tried again, but by the time he’d finished, all he could think of was crawling into the hut. Inside it, he clambered right over Shug, who didn’t even budge but did fart. Falling asleep, he realized that he hadn’t gone to the abbey ruins at day’s end as he’d intended.
In the morning, he hurt everywhere. The taller, more muscular Kerr smiled and told him, “It’ll get better. Few more days, an’ you’ll think ya done this yer whole life.”
“I don’t think I’ll live long enough for that to happen.”
Kerr just laughed.
They cleaved block after block that day. He and Iachan assisted Waldroup and another man, who seemed the best at placing the wedges, while a third man directed the other boys with hauling the cut blocks on the sledges.
Thomas drove one of the carts back to the abbey. Beholding the site in full operation amazed him. Dozens of men crawling about on scaffolding, some—including Lachie—working treadwheels to raise blocks into the air, the stones held in place only by giant calipers—Waldroup told him this was called a lewis—others mixing mortar, climbing up ladders while balancing their hods, working in seeming peril as the shaped blocks were guided over to them and lowered, all of it coordinated with whoever worked the treadwheel. They were ants lifting grains of dirt above them as they swarmed over a mound, raising its height with each grain they placed.
That second night, he still felt as if his joints were being separated. His hand trembled as he lifted the food the monks had prepared to his mouth. He sat with the other boys for most of the meal, but eventually crouched down beside Waldroup, who asked, “How is it for ya, now, Fingal?”
He thought a moment. “I’m an old man today,” he said. Waldroup and the other men nearby all laughed.
Clacher went off. Others turned in. He remained beside Waldroup, not exactly certain as to why.
But at the point where he started to get up, Waldroup abruptly said quietly, “I’ve seen your green fire. Once.”
Thomas eased back down.
“On a battlefield in France. Your spiky knights and queen, alongside people what looked like anyone else.” His food eaten, he set down his bowl. “Believe me when I say your brother had no choice. They picked him for her tribute and that was that. Once picked, you’re done. So stop thinking it should’ve been you. If it had, you wouldn’t be here.”
“But the Queen of Heaven—”
“Not who she is, boy. There’s more heaven in my compass.” He patted his satchel. “Your brother’s took by the Queen of Ailfion as a teind, though don’t ask me what he’s a tenth part of. No one who knows that is still on our side of the veil. But you can be sure they’ll come looking for you next if they want to keep it in the family, cover their traces. All the more reason for you to be Fingal, my apprentice. ’Tis nobody looking for him.”
“Ailfion?”
“Or sometimes Elphame or Elfheim. It has dozens of names, so I been told. Seems anywhere you go, they’ve a name for it.”
Worn out, Thomas sat with his head lowered, his face a mask of confusion.
Waldroup tousled his hair. “Yeah, I know. Too much, isn’t it? I tell ya, your best move is to let it go.”
But he couldn’t let it go. At least once each day, Thomas took the opportunity to visit the ruins. He didn’t know what he was looking for, exactly: some sign of Onchu, or at least an indication that someone else had been there. But there were no such signs. The only footprints in the dirt and mud were his own. Even so, he expanded his search, looking around the piles of rubble, even creeping into the old abbey crypt, which was dark and uninviting and, as a crypt ought to be, lifeless.
Every night he went to bed with a full belly, which was about the only part of his body that didn’t hurt. He would eat whatever meal the monks in their beehive huts had prepared (some were decidedly better cooks than others) and then collapse. That changed only gradually.
Every morning, he and his Selkirk friends walked alongside Waldroup and other quarrymen, beside the ox-drawn carts. He and Waldroup didn’t discuss what Thomas hoped to find, or what he should do if indeed he came upon another group of those elvish knights and their victim.
Days dragged on, became weeks, and he realized one morning that his fits had left him, as if they had taken wing along with his memory. But that didn’t fill in any further, either: He knew only that he’d had a brother and a sister, but no family name nor where he hailed from came to him. As they dared not seek for answers to the mystery of him without possibly endangering everyone working on the abbey, the matter was left for another time, Waldroup saying only that he expected the memories would return—he’d known plenty of soldiers who’d been knocked so hard that they were like chunks of wood, but always sooner or later some of what they’d lost returned. “Or else they died,” he added. Thomas couldn’t tell if it was intended as a joke.
After a while the subject of his past seemed to matter less. The exhausting routine of quarrying became his life and filled up the vague part of him that had been scooped out. His leanness filled out, too. He was shorter than Kerr, but his shoulders were broadening, his arms and thighs thickening with muscle. A light beard softened the sharp line of his jaw.
His daily visits to the abbey ruins might have tapered off, but then came the night Iachan disappeared.