Page 16 of The Armor of Light

‘So he wasn’t buried in a graveyard next to a church?’

‘No.’ Sal was fairly sure there had been no churches in the time of the Old Testament prophets, but she decided not to correct Kit’s error.

‘How did he get to heaven?’

‘He was taken up in a whirlwind.’ To avoid the inevitable question she added: ‘I don’t know why.’

He went quiet, and she guessed he was thinking about his father being up there in heaven with God and the angels.

Kit had another question. ‘Why do you need the big wheel?’

She could answer that one. ‘The wheel is much larger than the flyer it turns – you can see that, can’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘So when the wheel goes around once, the flyer spins five times. That means the flyer goes much faster.’

‘But you could just turn the flyer instead.’

‘And that’s what they did before the big wheel was invented. But it’s hard to turn the flyer fast. You’d get tired quickly. Whereas you can turn the wheel slowly all day.’

He stared at the device, deep in thought as he watched it turn. He was a special child. Sal knew that every mother thought this, especially mothers who had only one; but still she thought Kit was different from the rest. When he grew up he would be capable of more than just labouring, and she did not want him to live as she did, in a peat house with no chimney.

She had had aspirations once. She had hero-worshipped her Aunt Sarah, her mother’s elder sister. Sarah had left the village, moved to Kingsbridge, and started selling ballads on the street, singing them as a sales aid. She had married the man who printed the ballads and had learned arithmetic in order to become his bookkeeper. For a while she would visit the village once or twice a year, well dressed, poised, confident, bearing generous gifts: silk for a dress, a live chicken, a glass bowl. She talked about things she had read in the newspapers: the American revolution, Captain Cook in Australia, the appointment of twenty-four-year-old William Pitt as prime minister. Sal had wanted to be just like Aunt Sarah. Then she had fallen in love with Harry, and her life had gone in a different direction.

She could not quite imagine the course Kit’s life might take, but she knew the beginning of it, which was learning. She had taught him letters and numbers, and he could already scratch the three letters of his name in the earth with a stick. But she herself had not had much schooling, and soon she would have taught him everything she knew.

There was a school in the village run by the rector – the Riddick family controlled just about everything here. The school charged a penny a day. Sal sent Kit there whenever she had a penny to spare, but that was not often, and now that Harry was gone it might be never. She was as determined as ever that Kit would prosper, but she did not know how.

Kit said: ‘Shall we read?’

‘Good idea. Fetch the book.’

He crossed the room and picked up the Bible. He put it on the floor so that they could both see it while they worked. ‘What shall we read?’

‘Let’s read the story of the boy who killed the giant.’ She picked up the heavy volume and found Chapter Seventeen of the First Book of Samuel.

They resumed their work as Kit tried to read. She had to help him with all the names and many of the words. As a child she had asked for an explanation of ‘six cubits and a span’, so now she was able to tell Kit that Goliath was more than nine feet tall.

While they were both struggling with the wordcountenance, the rector came in without knocking.

Kit stopped reading and Sal stood up.

‘What’s this?’ the rector said. ‘Reading?’

Sal said: ‘The story of David and Goliath, Rector.’

‘Hmm. You Methodists always want to read the Bible for yourselves. You’d do better to listen to your rector.’

This was not the moment to engage him in debate. ‘It’s the onlybook in the house, sir, and I didn’t think the child would come to any harm from God’s holy word. I’m sorry if I’ve done wrong.’

‘Well, that’s not what I’m here about.’ He looked around for somewhere to sit. There were no chairs in the house, so he pulled up a three-legged stool. ‘You want the Church to give you poor relief.’

Sal did not say that it was not the Church’s money. She needed to be humble, or he might refuse her altogether. There was really no curb on the Overseer of the Poor, no one above him to whom Sal might appeal. So she lowered her eyes and said: ‘Yes, please, Rector.’

‘How much is your rent for this house?’

‘Six pence a week, sir.’