Bitter Eden (16 page)

"Callie!? I brought the basket."

"I know," Peter grinned, pulling her down beside him. "But we both know Callie did the work. Sit down and let me tell you both what beautiful, wonderful women you are."

Shivering in spite of coats and scarves, they laughed together, ate together, and bemoaned the passage of time when Peter had to leave to meet Marsh in the south field. Callie was sorry to see the noon hour end, and was glad to see that Rosalind was sorry too. She took the basket and walked ahead, leaving Rosalind in

one of her more naturally romantic moods to linger over her leavetaking of Peter.

Callie felt warm and contented all the rest of the day and into the following morning. At breakfast, when James announced, "Tomorrow we furrow/' it seemed appropriate to her. She knew as well as did the others that today the season had changed.

Spring was here although it was still cold and as miserably wet as the winter had been. The "pigging," as the furrowing was called, would be grinding work this year. Though Callie had never watched a field being prepared, she had only to look into the faces of the men to know it would be unpleasant. As had become her usual course, she asked James what she could do to help. Normally he replied she should watch, learn, and then do what she could. This time, however, he told her she would be going to the streams with Stephen to prepare the hop twine.

"Oh, James, don't give her that task. It's so cold and she isn't used . . ."

James smiled, but his voice was stern. "Hush, Meg. You'll not interfere with what I think is best. The girl wants to be of help, and she shall be. None learns so fast as the willing. Callie is not fainthearted. That so, Callie?"

Callie glanced from Meg to James. There her eyes rested. "Is it a terrible task?"

"It couldn't be any worse than the first time you tried to milk the cows, could it, Callie?" Stephen said, laughing so hard he caused her to blush as she recalled being chased terrified and screaming into the farmyard by an indignant cow.

"Let her live with us a couple of years, Meg, and then you'll hear her crying for your protection. Everything is an adventure to her now. Give me the few minutes in time when a young one wants to work."

After breakfast Callie went with James to the barn. She gathered up the twine he showed her; then she met Stephen in the farmyard. Together they walked to the stream that ran through the hop garden, and began to wet and stretch the twine. They had to be more careful this year than most for the streams were swollen and running fast.

Stephen reached into the cold water and pulled out a long piece of sodden twine. "I wonder whose this was? Keep track of ours or someone further down will benefit from our labors/'

Callie nodded and continued to work. It was too cold to feel congenial, and too wet for her to do anything but concentrate on keeping her footing on the muddy bank. The pleasant, relatively dry afternoon she'd spent yesterday with Rosalind and Peter seemed in another lifetime. .

Stephen threw her a coil of twine. "Ho, Callie! Catch it"

A fraction late she dived for the twine and tumbled down the embankment. Stephen slithered down after her, pulling her back from the water's edee. "You were all but fish bait," he said cheerfully. "No damage done." He brushed her coat off roughly, succeeding in smearing the mud over a larger area. "I thought you saw me. Sorry."

"I'm all right, Stephen. Please don't brush me off anymore. You are making a terrible mess."

"Oh, sorry." He released her. She slipped and he grabbed her again. "Sorry."

She began to giggle, and struggled with his aid to drier ground. "No more sorrys, please, or I'll drown for sure." She cast a respectful glance at the stream.

Two streams of the river Medway wound through the hop gardens of Kent. The Medway was swollen and so were the Beult and the Teise. The little stream

on whose bank they now stood was a still smaller branch of the Beult. It was a beautiful area, and Stephen was quick to point out that beauty. "One day when it is a little warmer, 111 take you around and you'll see. There's no other place on earth like it."

But Callie was now thoroughly cold, wet, and wary of falling again. She had lost her sense of fun. She was convinced that there was nothing enticing about the stream. No matter how Stephen reassured her that it was not deep enough to be dangerous, to her it looked hungry and ominous.

"I am sure there are many such places," she said, clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering.

"Your enchantment center is frozen, that's all. Hurry up and finish this last batch. I'll return you to Ma and some hot cider."

She didn't bother to answer him, but discarded caution, following his lead as quickly as she could, the idea of hot cider and the hearth fire propelling her.

It was well that James started her out on a difficult task. As he claimed, she expected nothing easier, and that particular spring nothing was. It remained a cold, wet, miserable season for the farmers, and a frustrating riot-blighted one for the laborers.

As Callie now knew and was beginning to understand, the laborers' rioting and burning was not a thing of the moment. The cost of living had tripled, and wages had not. Economic pressures drove the laborers on.

With it all—the weather and the developing climate for trouble—James was expecting a fresh outbreak of rioting daily. He didn't question that it was coming, only how great a loss to home and crops he would suffer.

Much of what Callie heard and saw happening had been discussed in her flat when her father was alive.

There were so many times when she listened to James or Peter speaking and remembered hearing her father say nearly the same things. Perhaps there would never be an end to the problems, because no one seemed able to do anything.

What surprised Callie most was that her sympathies had become firmly implanted on the side of the farmers. In four short months the Bereans had taken her heart and her loyalties so completely that her father's lifetime of work had become less meaningful to her than the problems of a hop garden in Kent.

Still she remained loyal to her father, for she could now see clearly what she had never been able to see before: Ian and James and Peter were alike in spite of their being on opposite sides of a question. All of them wanted what was best for their country, all wanted what was just, and all were willing to fight for that. Ian would approve. Above all Ian had believed in and trusted God. And to Ian God and truth and right had been synonymous. Callie knew, with a warmth that spread over her, that Ian would want her to be standing beside her new family body and soul to do what was best for them, what was right.

By April, Frank and Peter and Stephen were stringing the top wires for the hop vines. Callie watched in fascination, apprehensive as the men moved along the rows on stilts. The top wire had to be twelve feet above the ground. The twine she and Stephen had prepared would be strung from the top wire and anchored to the ground. The hop shoots would be trained to grow up them.

"You've never seen the hops in bloom, have you, Callie?" Natalie asked.

"Never. It looks so strange. Why must the wires be so far off the ground?"

"The vines grow that tall, silly. The ropes will be

strung from the top wire to the ground, and then in another month or so we will twiddle the hop shoots around the twine to get them started properly. Before you know it this will look like a giant green tent, and it will be covered with the most delicate greenish-white flower you have ever seen. The October flower," Natalie said dreamily. "They are like flower feathers. I come out here at night sometimes in the summer after the flower has bloomed, and walk along under the rows of hops. Peter doesn't like me to, but I do it anyway. Papa used to let me come when I was little, so I think I should be able to come now that I'm grown. Peter has no business telling me what I may do. He's always going on about it being dangerous now with the laborers moving about the countryside."

"He's probably right," Callie said absently, her eyes fixed on the men on stilts.

"Gullywash. It's just his way of making himself important After all," she said acidly, 'Tie has to have some means of impressing Rosalind. Rosalind wants the world and when you come right down to it, what does Peter have to offer? Frank will inherit the farm."

Callie's attention shifted. She looked at Natalie, wondering why she hadn't considered this before. It was customary that the oldest son inherited. Then she looked back to Peter. How unfair. Peter was the hop farm. It was mostly his labor, his energetic good humor, that kept things running smoothly and quickly. Natalie watched her, easily reading the shifting expressions on Callie's face. She laughed lightly. "Actually in Kent it's the youngest son who traditionally inherits, but Papa wrote a special paper making Frank his heir. So two of my brothers—the worker and the rightful heir—won't get what they deserve. Don't vou think it strangely appropriate that the Bereans cultivate the hopsr^'

Callie looked at her, puzzled.

Again Natalie laughed. "The flower—the hop flower is the flower of injustice and destruction. Did you know that, Callie? Don't you think it appropriate?"

The high wires went up one after another. With nimble grace Peter and Stephen went from one row to the next on stilts as Frank stood solidly on the ground shouting useless orders and words of advice.

Watching the progress of the work had lost its appeal for Callie. She felt sadness and something like anger at what Natalie had said. And the symbolism of the flower—it seemed ominous, a herald of things preordained. "You didn't truly mean that about the flower?"

"Being the flower of injustice and destruction? Certainly I meant it. I know my flowers—all about them"

"Maybe you got it mixed up with another . . *

"I didn't," Natalie said impatiently. "And I'm tired of talking about it. Are you going to stand here all day? I'm bored, and so will you be before the season is over. All we'll hear about is hops."

"Oh, but it is so fascinating. I've never seen it before."

"Well, I want to do something else."

"Oh, I'm sorry. You don't need to stay here with me. Go ahead—don't let me keep you."

Natalie stamped her foot. "You do anything anyone in this family asks of you, but let me ask the simplest thing and you'll have no part of it!"

Callie stared open-mouthed at her.

"I want to take a walk—and have dinner in the woods. But of course, it would be only Rosalind you'd do that for."

"Natalie! You said nothing about it."

"I did!"

"You didn't ... I didn't hear you. I'm sure . . . anyway Peter said we weren't to go to the woods alone. It's not safe because . . ."

"Oh, Peter 1 I'll scream if I hear his name once more!"

"Why are you so angry? What has Peter done to you?"

Natalie laughed bitterly. "Things you'd never understand, sweet Callie. If he were any man at all—" she shrugged. "But he isn't."

"That's an awful thing to say! Peter is the nicest, kindest man alive. He treats you as most sisters only wish their brothers treated them. Who takes you for trips to Seven Oaks and drives you all over the parish so you can collect the flowers you want for your drying?"

"To make up for other things," Natalie snapped.

Callie walked several steps away from her but Natalie followed doggedly. "Who turned you against me? Rosalind? Peter? What has he said about me?"

"That he loves you!" Callie shouted, then lowering her voice glanced at the men in the fields. "He thinks you're dear and sweet."

Natalie had the grace to look momentarily ashamed. '"Then it must have been Rosalind."

"She doesn't say anything about you," Callie said, still angry.

Natalie was silent. Finally she said, "Then I'm sorry. But we never do things together anymore. I thought you and I would be close—sisters and friends."

"We are."

"Show me. May will pack a basket for us. Say you'll come, Callie."

"We're not supposed to be in the woods alone."

"The men are right here. No one would be lurking around with them so near. We'd need only to call out

And the almond is in bloom now. Please—I'd love to find one o£ the bushes. The blooms won't last long."

Callie remained reluctant, but Natalie sounded so earnest and apologetic. "We shouldn't."

"We won't go far. I promise. Please say you'll come. It would mean so much to me, and it's true you and I have not enjoyed an afternoon together for a long time."

With the dinner May packed for them, the two girls set out. Natalie walked to the far edge of the field and took the long way around to the woods, as if she thought no one would notice them. Callie knew they had been seen and wondered just how she would explain this disobedience to Peter this evening.

Peter had been very firm in warning them. Dangerous bands of laborers wandered the neighborhood, and the women were not to go near the woods even for berry picking unless one of the men went with them. He was sure to ask her about today's venture.

Her misgivings growing stronger, she called to Natalie who had run gaily ahead. Natalie looked back, laughing, then ran along the woods path. Callie hurried to catch up. Natalie remained several steps in front. Callie shifted the dinner basket to her other arm and ran a few more steps, then stopped. They were already deep in the woods. It was too late to protest "Natalie, wait. I want to rest. The basket is heavy."

The sounds of the woods closed around her. But no human sound. "Natalie!" Callie called, alarmed. She was still not familiar with the woods, and fearful of becoming hopelessly lost. "Natalie! Where are you?"

Callie stood still as stone, her ears straining, already edgy at her disobedience to Peter for coming into the woods at all. Every sound became ominous, a possibility that a band of men could leap out at her from the cover of any clump of underbrush. Leaves rustled; a

twig snapped. Callie dropped the basket and ran pell-mell into the thicket.

Natalie raced after her, finally catching the sleeve of her gown. Breathlessly she gasped, "Why are you running away? I found the almond bush. Come see."