Page 54 of The Armor of Light

‘That would be a godsend,’ said Sal.

Ellen led them into the dining room. Amos was sitting at the table with Roger Riddick. They were both startled to see Sal and Kit.

Sal curtsied, then said abruptly: ‘I’ve been banished from Badford.’

Roger said: ‘What for?’

Sal said shamefacedly: ‘I’m sorry to say, Mr Roger, that I punched your brother Will’s head and knocked him to the ground.’

There was a second of silence, then Roger burst out laughing, and a moment later Amos joined in. ‘Good for you!’ said Roger. ‘Someone should have punched his head long ago.’

When they quietened down she said: ‘It’s all very well to laugh but I’ve got no home now. Mr Barrowfield, if I can find a place to live here in Kingsbridge, I’m hoping I could continue to spin yarn for you, if you still want me.’

‘Of course I want you!’ said Amos.

A weight fell from Sal’s shoulders.

Amos went on: ‘I’ll be very happy to buy your yarn.’ He hesitated for a moment, then said: ‘But I’ve got a better idea. I might be able to offer you work that would pay you a bit more than hand spinning.’

‘What work would that be?’

Amos stood up. ‘I need to show you,’ he said. ‘Come to the warehouse. Roger and I have a new machine.’

PART TWO

The Revolt of the Housewives

1795

11

SAL ANDKIT HAD WORKEDfor Amos for more than two years. In that time the location had changed. The enterprise was too large for the warehouse behind Amos’s house: he now had six spinning engines and a fulling room. He had rented a small mill by the river, in the north-west of Kingsbridge where the river ran fast enough to drive the fulling hammers that shrank and thickened the cloth.

They toiled from five o’clock in the morning until seven at night, except on Saturday – blessed Saturday – when they worked only until five in the afternoon. All the children were tired all the time. Nevertheless, life was better than before. Kit’s mother had money, they lived in a warm house with a real chimney, and – best of all – they had escaped from the Badford bullies who had killed his father. He hoped he would never live in a village again.

However, the war had changed things, slowly and gradually, for the worse. Kit at the age of nine was aware of money, and he understood that war taxes had raised the price of everything, while cloth workers were paid the same. Bread was not taxed but it went up because of a poor harvest. For a while after learning to operate the spinning jenny, Sal had been able to afford beef, and tea with sugar, and cake; but now they ate bacon and drank weak ale. All the same, it was better than life in the village.

Kit’s best friend was a girl called Sue, who was about his age and, like him, had lost her father. She worked with her mother, Joanie, on the spinning engine next to Sal’s in Barrowfield’s Mill.

Today was a special day. All the hands had realized that as soon as they walked into the mill and saw, on the ground floor near the fulling engine, shrouded in sacking, an object about the size of a four-poster bed, or a stagecoach. It must have been delivered last night after they had all gone home.

They had talked about it all through the half-hour dinner break, and Kit’s mother had said it must be a new machine, though no one had ever seen a machine that big.

Amos Barrowfield’s friend Roger Riddick showed up around mid-afternoon. Kit would never forget Roger’s kindness to him back in Badford. He also remembered that it was Roger who had adapted Amos’s first spinning jenny. Now there were six such machines, and Amos had been planning to get more until the war began to affect business.

Amos stopped the work half an hour early, and asked the hands to gather with him and Roger on the ground floor around the mystery object. He ordered the men to stop the fulling machine, for no one could talk over its thumping and clanking. Then he said: ‘Not long ago, Mr Shiplap of Combe asked me for five hundred yards of linsey-woolsey.’

That was a big order, even Kit knew, and they all cheered.

Amos went on: ‘I priced the order at fifty-five pounds, and was willing to be beaten down to fifty. But he offered me thirty-five and said he knew another Kingsbridge clothier who was ready to make a deal at that price. Now, I know that the only way a clothier could make that deal would be by reducing what he pays his hands.’

There was a discontented murmur. The men and women around Kit looked wary and mutinous. They did not like talk of reducing piece rates.

Amos said: ‘So I turned him down.’

The hands were relieved to hear that.

Amos said: ‘I didn’t like to refuse an order, because we’re notgetting as many as we used to, and if things go on the way they are then some of you will have to be laid off.’