Against The World

Chapter 106: What We Could Teach

Brother Cael asked for a room with a door.

I looked up from the council papers.

“Is something wrong with the one you have?”

“My room is comfortable.”

“Then—”

“For teaching.”

Mary turned a page in her book.

“The apprentices have been using the infirmary table.”

“Yes.”

“Has that become too small?”

“It has become too occupied.”

He folded his hands.

“Yesterday we were interrupted by a delivery, a patient’s nephew, two people looking for Nessa, and a duck.”

I put down my pen.

“The duck was looking for Nessa?”

“I didn’t ask.”

Across the table, Evelyn pressed her lips together.

Cael looked at her.

Then, reluctantly, he smiled.

He had brought a proposal.

Three pages.

The first described the lessons he was already giving.

The second listed what he thought the apprentices needed next.

The third concerned people who could not become apprentices but still needed to know what to do when someone fell from a ladder.

Evelyn read that page longest.

“For the settlements?”

“And the workshops. Carters. People who live too far from a healer to send for one quickly.”

“How many teachers would you need?” Mary asked.

“I’ve spoken with Arwen. She would help. Maelin might take some lessons in Stoneford.”

“And you?” I asked.

Cael looked at me.

“I would like to stay.”

He said it carefully.

Until then, we had spoken about his accommodation, his recovery, the patients who had come with him.

We had left the larger question alone.

Now he placed his hand on the papers.

“If there is useful work for me here.”

Evelyn set down the third page.

“There is.”

We went to look at rooms after the morning meeting.

The first had a good window and a ceiling Eleanor distrusted.

The second was already full of spare bed frames.

The third lay off the passage between the infirmary and the lower courtyard.

It had once been used for household accounts.

A narrow cupboard remained against one wall. Pale rectangles showed where shelves had been removed.

Cael stood in the doorway.

I watched him take in the window, the empty hearth, the space between the walls.

“Too small?” I asked.

“How many would you expect me to teach?”

“How many can you teach well?”

He glanced back at me.

Then stepped inside.

“Eight to begin with.”

Evelyn walked to the window and lifted the latch.

It stuck.

She tried again.

From behind us, Eleanor said, “Don’t encourage it.”

My wife released the handle.

The dwarf examined the frame.

“Swollen wood. We can fix that.”

Cael opened the cupboard.

Empty.

He smiled slightly.

“We could keep the lesson things here.”

By the time we left, he had decided where the table should go.

Evelyn’s own attempt at teaching began that afternoon.

She set one of the grooved clay dishes between us in the workshop.

Brin sat opposite her.

I stood nearby with my hands behind my back.

My wife looked at me.

“You may sit down.”

“I’m observing.”

“You look like you’re waiting to inspect his taxes.”

Brin’s mouth twitched.

I found a stool.

Evelyn turned the dish so that the groove caught the light.

“Before we put any power into it, can you feel where the circle closes?”

Brin rested two fingers on the rim.

He was quiet for a long time.

Then he nodded.

“Here.”

He pointed near a tiny irregularity left by the potter.

Evelyn leaned closer.

“That’s where the clay joins. I meant—”

She stopped.

Looked at the dish again.

Then at her own hand.

I knew the expression.

Something that had felt perfectly clear while doing it had become much less cooperative when asked to become words.

Brin waited.

Evelyn drew the dish back toward herself.

“Let me begin again.”

She made the smallest line of gold I had seen her hold.

It lay along one short section of the groove.

“Can you feel this?”

Brin nodded.

“What does it feel like to you?”

He frowned.

“A pulled thread.”

My wife considered that.

“Good. Follow where it would go if you continued it around the dish.”

This time, his fingers moved slowly along the rim.

He stopped at the place where he had begun.

“I think so.”

“Now try a little.”

His light was faint enough that I had to lean forward to see it.

It traveled halfway around the groove.

Then faded.

Brin looked up.

“I lost it.”

“I did too,” Evelyn said. “Quite a lot.”

He tried again.

On the fourth attempt, the circle closed.

He stared at it.

So did Evelyn.

I reached toward the dish.

My wife caught my wrist.

“Let him settle it first.”

I withdrew my hand.

There were apparently advantages to being married to the teacher.

None of them involved special privileges.

The warning lasted only a few breaths.

When Brin passed his finger through it, he startled.

Then laughed.

A small sound, almost disbelieving.

“I felt that.”

Evelyn’s smile spread slowly.

“Yes.”

He looked down at the dish again.

“Could I try once more?”

Afterward, when he had gone to tell Oswin, my wife remained seated.

I moved my stool beside hers.

“You did well.”

“I nearly confused him before we began.”

“But you noticed.”

She traced the little join in the clay.

“Aurelia makes it look easier.”

“Aurelia has had more pupils.”

“Were you going to say something about my patience?”

“I was deciding whether I wished to survive the afternoon.”

She leaned against my shoulder.

For a while, we watched Brin explain the dish to Oswin with increasingly animated hands.

“I’d like to remember this,” Evelyn said.

“What?”

“What it feels like to be new at it.”

I took her hand beneath the table.

“We’ll have two people to remind us.”

The teaching room took six days.

Eleanor repaired the window.

Garrick found a table in storage and shortened two benches to fit.

Yara claimed the cupboard before anyone else could fill it with things that belonged elsewhere.

Arwen brought a sack.

I was present when she emptied it onto the table.

Cloth.

Cord.

Several smooth sticks.

A worn leather glove.

A wooden cup with no bottom.

Cael regarded the collection.

“Are those your teaching materials?”

“Some of them.”

“What is the cup for?”

“Making people look before they pour.”

He picked it up.

Turned it over.

Then nodded.

“A useful lesson.”

There was something different about him that morning.

He had begun rolling his sleeves before we entered, and a smear of dust marked one forearm.

When the courtyard bell rang, he paused.

Only briefly.

Then he went back to helping Yara arrange the cupboard.

Abigail heard about the room before the benches were finished.

She found me in the passage with two older pupils and a bundle of papers.

“Could we borrow it when the healers aren’t using it?”

“For what?”

“The history interviews.”

I looked at the papers.

She looked at the room.

“It would be easier to hear people here than beside the school kitchen.”

One of the pupils nodded with feeling.

“Especially on bread day.”

We took the question to Cael.

He listened, asked when they would need it, and checked the lesson schedule with Yara.

“Two afternoons,” he said. “Provided everything goes back in the cupboard afterward.”

Abigail agreed.

The boy beside her peered through the door.

“Will there be bones?”

“Sometimes,” Cael said.

The boy looked pleased.

His companion looked less certain.

“For lessons,” Cael added.

That helped somewhat.

Evelyn finished her painting before the first class.

I knew because she stopped asking me to move away from the window.

The service courtyard lay beneath a pale sky.

A cart stood under the arch. Laundry moved above the far passage. Della had one hand on her hip.

Near the middle, a small figure in a dark coat occupied exactly the space two people carrying a crate appeared to need.

I studied him.

“Is that me?”

“Yes.”

“Could I be helping?”

“You were.”

“With what?”

“Eventually, you moved.”

I looked more closely.

There were things I had missed while seeing it unfinished.

The woman leaning down to speak to a child.

A repaired patch in the paving.

Light beneath the open gate.

No one was arranged to face the painter.

Everyone had somewhere to go.

“Where do you want to put it?” I asked.

Evelyn stood beside me.

“The teaching room, if Cael likes it.”

I turned toward her.

She shrugged a little.

“I thought people waiting for a lesson might enjoy looking at something.”

“They will.”

“You haven’t asked them.”

“I’m prepared to risk the statement.”

She smiled.

Then handed me one end of the frame.

Cael chose the wall opposite the window.

We hung it high enough to clear the bench.

Arwen stood back with us.

“That’s Della.”

“Yes,” Evelyn said.

“She looks as though someone’s put muddy boots on her clean floor.”

“She had just discovered something similar.”

Arwen nodded.

“A good likeness.”

Cael studied the little figures near the gate.

His gaze lingered on the people carrying the crate.

Then he looked at Evelyn.

“Thank you.”

My wife brushed a speck of dust from the frame.

“You’re welcome.”

He moved the nearest bench a little so that it no longer crowded the doorway.

The room was ready.

Aurelia asked about the lesson when we next saw her.

Evelyn described Brin’s pulled thread.

The false beginning.

The moment he felt the warning answer.

Our teacher listened from her stool beside the worktable.

“Did he make the same shape you did?”

“Almost.”

“Almost?”

“He held one section differently. I thought I should correct it, but the circle worked.”

“Did it strain him?”

“No.”

“Then let him show you next time.”

Evelyn looked thoughtful.

I was examining a faint mark on the table beneath my dish.

Someone had scratched several uneven lines into the wood.

“Was this another pupil?”

Aurelia glanced down.

“My son.”

I took my hand away.

“He was practicing letters. The paper apparently became inconvenient.”

Her fingers rested beside the scratches.

I tried to picture the boy from the old recording seated where I was.

His feet not quite reaching the floor.

Aurelia younger, looking up from her own work.

“Did you keep the table because of that?”

“I was furious when I found it.”

She smiled faintly.

“Later, yes.”

The first class contained eight people.

A cart driver.

Two workshop apprentices.

A woman from the north shelter.

Three infirmary pupils.

And Davin, who had washed so thoroughly that his hair was still wet.

I took the remaining place at the end of a bench.

Arwen looked at me.

“Have you come to inspect us?”

“To learn.”

She considered that.

Then placed the bottomless cup in front of me.

“Good.”

Evelyn sat beside the woman from the shelter.

Cael stood at the table.

For a moment, he looked at all of us without speaking.

Then he took up a piece of chalk.

“Before we discuss what your hands can do,” he said, “we’ll discuss what you should notice.”

Arwen passed around a small bundle of cloth.

Inside were ordinary workshop objects.

A bent nail.

A cracked buckle.

A length of frayed rope.

She asked each person what might have happened.

The first answers came quickly.

Then Cael asked what we still did not know.

The room grew quieter.

Davin turned the buckle over.

“Whether it broke before someone fell or after.”

Cael nodded.

“Yes.”

Evelyn glanced at me across the table.

I was beginning to understand why he had wanted a door.

Halfway through, someone knocked.

Yara opened it.

Helena stood outside with Garrick against her shoulder and Carol in the nurse’s arms.

Both children had opinions about the length of the lesson.

Evelyn rose.

“So much for our uninterrupted room.”

Cael smiled.

“We can pause.”

We took the twins into the adjoining sitting room.

Our son settled almost immediately against his mother.

Carol required me to stand, walk to the window, turn, and repeat the journey before deciding I had understood the assignment.

Through the wall, I could hear Arwen asking Davin why he had chosen that particular knot.

Then his answer.

Then a chair scraping as someone came closer to see.

Evelyn looked toward the sound.

“They carried on.”

“Yes.”

She smiled down at Garrick.

I stood beside her until Carol’s fingers loosened on my coat.

Outside the window, people crossed the courtyard beneath the open arch.

For once, I could watch them without wondering which problem would reach us first.

In the next room, Brother Cael began explaining something again.

This time, a second voice joined his.

Davin.

Showing someone else what he had just learned.

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