The boys are waking.
2
I STEP OUTSIDE AND SEE FATHER ANDREW WAITING BY the gate which leads to the crops. He waves and I wave back. Boys clamor past me with a divided urgency: excited to be outdoors, but wary of the labor ahead. Aaron, a pink-cheeked boy with blonde hair so fair it looks white in the morning sun, falls in next to me. He’s only thirteen but tall, if skinny, and one of a few orphans who almost matches my height.
“Fields again?” he whines. “We’ve stored enough food for an army.”
“You’ll be thanking the priests a few weeks from now, when the storm has us snowed in, trapped like rats. Remember last year?”
He groans dramatically and I laugh, patting his shoulder. “Get the boys divided, will you? Help Father Andrew.”
Aaron nods and begins pulling at coats, shoving the little ones lightly. “You lot who were in the field yesterday are with the animals today. You others, in the field. Come on, ya rascals.”
The other priest in residence, ancient Father White, emerges from the large front doors of the orphanage and begins sorting the remaining children. The ones destined for the barn head off in a tightknit horde to tend the animals and squeeze what milk can be had from the goats. More cow milk will need to be purchased, along with our meat and bulk items, from the Hill farm a couple hours’ ride to the east.
The Hill farm is the furthest I’ve ever traveled from the orphanage since the day I arrived. The coastal city of Chester is yet another three hours past the farm, and that by horse. The valley is remote, and the priests like it that way. One road in and one road out, a brown ribbon flowing like a reverse stream up the green hills to the east, seeming to vanish at the crest of the swell into crisp blue sky. Heavy forest rises to the north and west; a barren plain lies to the south, a sea of heather that ultimately rides upward, a heaving wave.
For better or worse, our home is a reclusive haven, settled deeply in the hollow of the valley’s throat.
I take a moment to look over the children—a habit of mine in recent months—to make sure everyone is accounted for. It can be tricky since the boys, with their short haircuts and matching pale blue coats, are almost indistinguishable from one another. Almost, but not completely.
I note Bartholomew—a quiet, sulky teenager who arrived two years ago—standing alone alongside the barn, kicking at something in the grass. He’s a dreamer, easily distracted, but I’m not sure I like him. He seems to always be alone . . . but watching, as if studying the others. I dislike myself for thinking it, but I find him a touch peculiar.
Finnegan and Jonathan, or the “twins” as we call them, are of course side-by-side. Their dirty blonde hair and pale skin, equal height and build, along with their harmonizing personalities, makes them seem brothers instead of who they really are: two boys brought together in the same month—a stormy December three years past—who bonded so quickly and effortlessly that it seemed destined. Now they’re inseparable and charming. Both laugh easily, and if one is punished the other cries. Even Father Poole seems taken with them, often letting them get away with more than he might the other kids. It says something about their charm that nobody really minds.
I glance around for Simon and see him talking, in an animated fashion, with Byron, a tough kid from the city who, frankly, was a considerable problem when he first arrived, often getting in fights and bullying the younger ones. A trip to the hole settled the first concern, and I like to think I helped with the second. One afternoon I sat him down and explained the importance of sticking together, especially here. I explained what it meant to be one of the older boys （although him being only eleven hardly qualified, but we say what we must）。 He appreciated my candor and my treating him, I think, with respect. The only issue I’ve suffered since that warm afternoon chat is his ensuing, and unforeseen, over-protectiveness of my person. Which is kind, if sometimes embarrassing. But at least his bullying days are behind him.
I turn back to see if any of the boys are straggling. Father Poole stands directly behind me, filling the open doors of the orphanage, watching all of us. Just past him are David, Ben, and Timothy, all carrying buckets and brushes. I can almost feel David’s rebellious smirk as he makes ready for a long day of scrubbing floors. He and I are the same age—both sixteen years—and the de facto big brothers of this strange clan, even if he doesn’t see it that way. He pretends to not notice, or care to notice, how the younger ones look up to him. Regardless, he and those other two will be scrubbing floors until lunch, a light punishment for failing to learn the Bible verses they’d been assigned . . .
Caught in my inner thoughts, I’m startled to notice Poole’s cold blue eyes locked onto me. I turn away and head for the shed.
A rough line has formed at the shed door. The structure stands amidst high grass near the barn, clustered with two large outhouses and a dilapidated, older structure now used for little but housing mice and spiders. The large shed primarily holds farming tools, and although newer and sturdier than the older buildings, still has a slight lean. Father Andrew says the shed and the other structure will likely be torn down next summer, the tools transported to the larger, and much newer, barn.
Standing at the shed’s open door, like a bulwark, is the massive brute Brother Johnson. He hands each boy a field tool—rake, scythe, shovel, etc.—as they approach.
Johnson is a hateful man. A towering giant with long, dingy hair, brown teeth. Heavy eyebrows shade dull brown eyes. He’s never clean-shaven like the priests, and although he wears a cassock it’s unadorned and coarse, heavy as a saddle blanket. All the boys know the rumors of how Brother Johnson came to be with us, a sentence of servitude to Poole for crimes committed in the city. What kind of crimes, and the specific horror of them, are rumors and no more, but I have my suspicion it is no mere thievery for which Johnson serves a life of penitence. Whatever he did was far worse than stealing, and oft repeated. I’d stake my life on it.
Even now, I feel Johnson’s dark eyes glower at me at the rear of the line. I refuse to meet his eye and wait patiently as the last few boys are given their tools for the morning’s work.
“It’s too heavy, Johnson!”
I step to the side and see Basil at the head of the line, a tall shovel with a heavy iron spade gripped in his pale hands.
“You can’t work, you don’t eat.” Johnson’s voice is guttural and flat. “That’s the rule.”
“But I can work,” Basil says, trying to balance the unwieldly thing in his arms. His roughened English accent always a strange, rogue sound coming from his slight frame. “Just not with this bloody shovel!”
Whatever amusement had been playing on Johnson’s face vanishes. “You watch your mouth, boy, or you’ll spend the day in the hole,” he growls, then leans down to poke Basil in the chest with a gnarled finger. “Now get!”
“Ow!”
A sudden anger fills me. I leave my place and walk past the few remaining boys to the front of the line. Blood rushes in my ears, and my face feels hot, but I focus on keeping my mind calm, my breathing steady.
“I’ll take it, Brother Johnson,” I say. “Give him one of the hoes. He can manage that much.” I point to a slim-handled hoe rested against the shed.