The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [202]
The woman replied by jerking her head toward the back of the premises.
Aliena beckoned Richard to follow and went through a gate to a yard where lengths of cloth were drying on wooden frames. She saw the figure of a man bent over one of the frames, arranging the cloth. “I’m looking for the master,” she said.
He straightened up and looked at her. He was an ugly man with one eye and a slightly hunched back, as if he had been bending over drying frames for so many years that he could no longer stand quite upright. “What is it?” he said.
“Are you the master fuller?”
“I’ve been working at it nigh on forty year, man and boy, so I hope I’m master,” he said. “What do you want?”
Aliena realized she was dealing with the type of man who always had to prove how smart he was. She adopted a humble tone and said: “My brother and I want to work. Will you employ us?”
There was a pause while he looked her up and down. “Christ Jesus and all the saints, what would I do with you?”
“We’ll do anything,” Aliena said resolutely. “We need some money.”
“You’re no good to me,” the man said contemptuously, and he turned away to resume his work.
Aliena was not going to content herself with that. “Why not?” she said angrily. “We’re not scrounging, we want to earn something.”
He turned to her again.
“Please?” she said, although she hated to beg.
He regarded her impatiently, as he might have looked at a dog, wondering whether to make the effort of kicking it; but she could tell that he was tempted to show her how stupid she was being and how clever he was by contrast. “All right,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll explain it to you. Come with me.”
He led them to the trough. The men and the woman were pulling the length of cloth out of the water, rolling it as it emerged. The master spoke to the woman. “Come here, Lizzie. Show us your hands.”
The woman obediently came over and held out her hands. They were rough and red, with open sores where they had got chapped and the skin had broken.
“Feel those,” the master said to Aliena.
Aliena touched the woman’s hands. They were as cold as snow, and very rough, but what was most striking was how hard they were. She looked at her own hands, holding the woman’s: they suddenly looked soft and white and very small.
The master said: “She’s had her hands in water since she was a little ’un, so she’s used to it. You’re different. You wouldn’t last the morning at this work.”
Aliena wanted to argue with him, and say that she would get used to it, but she was not sure it was true. Before she could say anything, Richard spoke up. “What about me?” he said. “I’m bigger than both those men—I could do that work.”
It was true that Richard was actually taller and broader than the men who had been wielding the fuller’s bats. And he could handle a war-horse, Aliena recalled, so he should be able to pound cloth.
The two men finished rolling up the wet cloth, and one of them hoisted the roll onto his shoulder, ready to take it to the yard for drying. The master stopped him. “Let the young lord feel the weight of the cloth, Harry.”
The man called Harry lifted the cloth off his shoulder and put it on Richard’s. Richard sagged under the weight, straightened up with a mighty effort, paled, and then sank to his knees so that the ends of the roll rested on the ground. “I can’t carry it,” he said breathlessly.
The men laughed, the master looked triumphant, and the one called Harry took the cloth back, hoisted it onto his own shoulder with a practiced movement, and carried it away. The master said: “It’s a different kind of strength, one that comes from having to work.”
Aliena was angry. They were mocking her when all she wanted was to find an honest way to earn a penny. The master was thoroughly enjoying making a fool of her, she