The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [34]
I shook my head and fell into step behind him, hoping he was not to be my teacher for the afternoon. I was beginning to ache from the morning’s work. We went to a big barn, which Rushton said was the dairy. A bearded man was sitting on a barrel near the entrance.
“Louis, this is Elspeth Gordie,” Rushton told the man. “You can have her for the afternoon.”
The old man’s deeply weathered face twitched, but it was too wrinkled to tell if he smiled or not. “I hope she’s quicker than th’ last,” the old man said abruptly.
“Oh, she’s quick all right,” Rushton said pointedly as the old man got to his feet and led me inside. I looked back, expecting to see the overseer’s departing back, but he stood there watching me.
Louis instructed me on milking cows, thoroughly and at such length that I began to wonder if he thought me a halfwit. I understood what he meant long before he completed his explanations.
He reminded me of a tortoise. That is not to suggest, however, that there was anything foolish or absurd about him. Tortoises, though slow, are dignified and self-sufficient. On the other hand, I had the distinct but unfounded impression that his thoughts were not nearly as slow as his appearance would have me believe. He grunted his satisfaction when I demonstrated that I could milk the cow according to his instructions. Then he gave me terse directions on emptying the bucket into the correct section of a separation vat.
“Nowt like it,” he said wistfully, and I jumped because so far, the only words he had spoken had been orders. He pointed to the milk, and I nodded, wondering if he was slightly unbalanced. “Ye don’t gan milk like that in th’ towns. Watery pale stuff tasting of drainpipes,” he said, patting the cow’s rump complacently. “Ye mun call me Larkin,” he said.
“Oh,” I said, startled at the realization that this was the man who Matthew and Dameon had told me about.
“Lead her out, then,” Louis said easily.
Leading the cow outside to graze, I returned to find that Louis had brought in a second cow and was emptying the bucket of milk into a wooden vat.
“Dinna mix th’ vats up,” Louis cautioned me, and bid me get on with milking.
Sitting at the milking stool, I grasped the cow’s udders. I apologized to her as I began to milk her, but she merely sighed and told me that it was a relief. Louis came to watch me, and I wondered if permission to use his last name was a good or bad sign. It was hard to be sure how he felt with that beard and his leathery face. As I milked, I took the opportunity to question the cow about him. Like most cows, she was a slow, amiable creature without much brain. But she was fond of Louis, and that disposed me to like him.
“Niver gan done that way!” Louis snapped, and I jumped. I had fallen into a pleasant drowse, leaning my head on the cow’s warm, velvety flank. As I sat up and went on milking, Louis pulled a box up and sat, scraping at a pipe.
“I suppose you’ve been here a long time,” I ventured. He nodded, still busy with his pipe. “I suppose you would know just about everybody here.…” I looked up quickly, and he seemed unperturbed by my questions. But I decided it might be better to ask him about himself before questioning him about anything else. “Were you born in the highlands?” I asked daringly.
Louis chewed the end of his pipe and looked at me thoughtfully. “I were born here,” he said. I stared but he did not elaborate. “After this place became what it is now, I went to work in the highlands, but I dinna fit there, an’ soon enow they put me right back here.” He gave a smile that was both sly and childishly transparent. “Them smart townsfolk think they know everything. They think they can keep things th’ same forever. But change comes an’ things have gone too far to drag ’em back to what they was. Every year there be more Misfits an’ seditioners, an’ one day that Council will find there’s more in th’ prisons than out.” He chuckled.
Matthew had been right about the old man’s interesting ideas. I wondered how I could get him to talk about Obernewtyn. “This place … it’s been here a long