Page 42 of A Column of Fire

‘How dare you?’ Francisco went on. ‘My daughter!’

Carlos found his voice. ‘But . . . may I ask why?’

Barney was asking himself the same question. Francisco had no reason to feel superior. He was a perfume maker, a trade that was perhaps a little more refined than that of metal worker; but still, like Carlos, he manufactured his wares and sold them. He was not nobility.

Francisco hesitated, then said: ‘You are not of pure blood.’

Carlos looked baffled. ‘Because my grandmother is English? That’s ridiculous.’

The brother bristled. ‘Have a care what you say.’

Francisco said: ‘I will not stand here to be called ridiculous.’

Barney could see that Valentina was distraught. Clearly she, too, had been astonished by this angry refusal.

Carlos said desperately: ‘Wait a minute.’

Francisco was adamant. ‘This conversation is over.’ He turned away. Taking Valentina’s arm, he moved towards the west door. The mother and brother followed. There was no point in going after them, Barney knew: it would only make Carlos look foolish.

Carlos was hurt and angry, Barney could see. The accusation of impure blood was silly, but probably no less wounding for that. In this country, ‘impure’ usually meant Jewish or Muslim, and Barney had not heard it used of someone with English forebears; but people could be snobbish about anything.

Ebrima and Betsy joined them. Betsy noticed Carlos’s mood immediately, and looked enquiringly at Barney. He murmured: ‘Valentina’s father rejected him.’

‘Hell,’ said Betsy.

She was angered but did not seem surprised, and the thought crossed Barney’s mind that somehow she had expected this.

*

EBRIMA FELT SORRYfor Carlos, and wanted to do something to cheer him up. When they got home, he suggested trying out the new furnace. This was as good a time as any, he thought, and it might take Carlos’s mind off his humiliation. It was forbidden for Christians to work or do business on a Sunday, of course, but this was not really work: it was an experiment.

Carlos liked the idea. He fired up the furnace while Ebrima put the ox into the harness they had devised and Barney mixed crushed iron ore with lime.

There was a snag with the bellows, and they had to redesign the mechanism driven by the ox. Betsy abandoned her plans for an elegant Sunday dinner, and brought out bread and salt pork, which the three men ate standing up. The afternoon light was fading by the time they had everything working again. When the fire was burning hot, fanned by the twin bellows, Ebrima started shovelling in the iron ore and lime.

For a while nothing seemed to be happening. The ox walked in a patient circle, the bellows puffed and panted, the chimney radiated heat, and the men waited.

Carlos had heard about this way of making iron from two people, a Frenchman from Normandy and a Walloon from the Netherlands; and Barney had heard something similar talked of by an Englishman from Sussex. They all claimed the method produced iron twice as fast. That might be an exaggeration, but even so it was an exciting idea. They said that molten iron would emerge from the bottom of the furnace, and Carlos had duly built a stone chute to carry the flow to ingot-shaped depressions in the earth of the courtyard. But no one had been able to draw a plan of the furnace, so the design was guesswork.

Still no iron emerged. Ebrima began to wonder what might have gone wrong. Maybe the chimney should be taller. Heat was the key, he thought. Perhaps they should have used wood charcoal, which burned hotter than coal, though it was expensive in a country where all the trees were needed to build the king’s ships.

Then it began to work. A half-moon of molten iron appeared at the outlet of the furnace and inched into the stone chute. A hesitant protuberance became a slow wave, then a gush. The men cheered. Elisa came to look.

The liquid metal was red at first, but quickly turned grey. Looking hard at it, Ebrima thought it was more like pig iron, and would need to be smelted again to refine it, but that was not a major problem. On top of the iron was a layer like molten glass which was undoubtedly slag, and they would have to find a way to skim that off the top.

But the process was fast. Once it got started, the iron came out as if a tap had been turned. All they had to do was keep putting coal, iron ore and lime into the top of the furnace, and liquid wealth would pour out the other end.

The three men congratulated one another. Elisa brought them a bottle of wine. They stood with cups in their hands, drinking and staring in delight at the iron as it hardened. Carlos looked more cheerful: he was recovering from the shock of his rejection. Perhaps Carlos would choose this celebratory moment to tell Ebrima that he was a free man.

After a few minutes Carlos said: ‘Stoke the furnace, Ebrima.’

Ebrima put down his cup. ‘Right away,’ he said.

*

THE NEW FURNACEwas a triumph for Carlos, but not everyone was happy about it.

The furnace worked from sunrise to sunset, six days a week. Carlos sold the pig iron to a finery forge, so that he did not have to refine it himself, and could concentrate on production, while Barney secured the increased supplies of iron ore they needed.