Page 23 of The Armor of Light

She gave him a penny from her purse. The Methodists would let you attend without contributing if you said you could not afford it, and for a while Amos had done that, but when his mother found out she had insisted on giving him the money. Father had objected: he thought Methodists were troublemakers. But for once Mother had defied his authority. ‘My son isn’t a charity case,’ she had said indignantly. ‘For shame!’ And Father had backed down.

Amos thanked her for the penny and went out into the lamplight. Kingsbridge had oil lights along Main Street and High Street now, paid for by the borough council on the grounds that light reduced crime.

He walked briskly to the Methodist Hall on High Street. It was a plain brick building painted white, with large windows symbolizing enlightenment. People sometimes called it a chapel, but it was not a consecrated church, as the Methodists had emphasized when they were collecting for the building fund, seeking funds from the small clothiers and prosperous craftsmen who made up most of their members. Many Methodists thought they should break away from the Anglican Church, but others wanted to stay and reform the Church from within.

Amos did not much care about all that. He thought religion was about how you lived your life. That was why he got angry when his father said: ‘I’m not in business to feed other people’s children.’ Father called him a foolish young idealist. Perhaps I am, he thought. Perhaps Jesus was too.

He enjoyed the lively Bible study discussions at the Methodist Hall because he could give his opinion and be listened to with courtesy and respect, instead of being told to keep quiet and believe what was said by the clergy, or by older men, or by his father. And there was a bonus. A lot of people his own age went to the meetings, so the Methodist Hall was unintentionally a sort of club for respectable youth. A lot of pretty girls attended.

Tonight he was hoping to see one girl in particular. Her name was Jane Midwinter, and in his opinion she was the prettiest of all. He thought about her a lot when he was riding around the countryside with nothing to look at but fields. She seemed to like him, but he was not sure.

He went into the hall. It was about as different from the cathedral as possible – which was probably deliberate. There were no statues or paintings, no stained glass, no jewelled silverware. Chairs and benches were the only furniture. God’s clear light came through the windows and was reflected by pale painted walls. In the cathedral, the holy hush was broken by the ethereal singing of the choir or the drone of a clergyman, but here anyone could speak, pray, or propose a hymn. They sang loudly, with no accompaniment, as Methodists usually did. There was an exuberance about their worship that was quite absent from Anglican services.

He scanned the room and saw, to his delight, that Jane was already here. Her pale skin and black eyebrows made his heart beat faster. She wore a cashmere dress the same delicate shade of grey as her eyes. But unfortunately the seats either side of her were already taken by her girlfriends.

Amos was greeted by her father, the leader of the Kingsbridge Methodists, Canon Charles Midwinter, handsome and charismatic, with thick grey hair he wore long. A canon was a clergyman who served on the chapter, the governing committee of the cathedral. The bishop of Kingsbridge tolerated Canon Midwinter’s Methodism,albeit reluctantly. The reluctance was natural, Amos thought: a bishop was bound to feel criticized by a movement that said the Church needed to be reformed.

Canon Midwinter shook Amos’s hand and said: ‘How is your father?’

‘No better, but no worse,’ Amos said. ‘He gets breathless and has to avoid lifting bales of cloth.’

‘He should probably retire and hand over to you.’

‘I wish he would.’

‘But it’s hard for someone who has been master for so long to give it up.’

Amos was focused on his own discontent, and he had not considered that the situation might be a trial for his father too. He felt slightly ashamed. Canon Midwinter had a way of showing you yourself in a mirror. It was more telling than a sermon on sin.

He moved nearer to Jane and sat on a bench next to Rupe Underwood, who was a bit older at twenty-five. Rupe was a ribbon maker, a good business when people had money to spend, not so much otherwise. ‘It’s going to snow,’ said Rupe.

‘I hope not. I’ve got to ride to Lordsborough tomorrow.’

‘Wear two pairs of stockings.’

Amos could not take a day off, regardless of the weather. The whole system depended on him moving the material around. He had to go, and freeze if necessary.

Before Amos could get any closer to Jane, Canon Midwinter opened the discussion by reading the Beatitudes from the gospel of Matthew. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ To Amos this statement by Jesus seemed mystical, and he had never really made sense of it. He listened attentively and enjoyed the to-and-fro argument, but he felt too baffled to make a contribution of his own. It will give me something to mull over tomorrow, on the road, he thought; a change from thinking about Jane.

Afterwards tea was served, with milk and sugar, in plain earthenware cups with saucers. The Methodists loved tea, a drink that never made you violent or stupid or lustful, no matter how many cups you drank.

Amos looked for Jane and saw that she had already been buttonholed by Rupe. Rupe had a long blond forelock, and every now and again he would toss his head to get his hair out of his eyes, a gesture that somehow irritated Amos.

He noticed Jane’s shoes, sober black leather but with a ribbon tied in a big bow instead of laces, and a raised heel that made her an inch or two taller. He saw her laugh at something Rupe said, and pat his chest in a mock reprimand. Did she prefer Rupe to Amos? He hoped not.

While waiting for Jane to be free he talked to David Shoveller, known as Spade. He was thirty, a highly skilled weaver of specialty cloths that sold for high prices. He employed several people, including other weavers. Like Amos, he wore clothes that advertised his products, and today he had on a tweed coat in a blue-grey weave with flecks of red and yellow.

Amos liked to ask Spade’s advice: the man was smart without being condescending. Amos told him about the yarn problem.

‘There’s a shortage,’ Spade said. ‘Not just in Kingsbridge, but all over.’ Spade read newspapers and journals, and consequently was well informed.

Amos was puzzled. ‘How could something like that happen?’

‘I’ll tell you,’ said Spade. He sipped hot tea while he gathered his thoughts. ‘There’s an invention called the flying shuttle. You pull a lever and the shuttle leaps from one side of the loom to the other. It enables the weaver to work about twice as fast.’

Amos had heard of it. ‘I thought it hadn’t caught on.’

‘Not here. I use them, but most weavers in the west of England won’t. They think the devil moves the shuttle. However, it’s popular in Yorkshire.’