CHAPTER 14
Ouska had been absolutely right about Guy. When Cat returned to the cottage (without Bibby, who was playing with her cousins in the village for a few hours), the potter and his uncle appeared to be finishing an argument about whether it was prudent for Guy to get back to his work already.
“I need to get things done!” he insisted. “As I said, I feel fine; I’m going crazy just sitting here with you.” He limped through the door into his workshop.
Uncle shook his head in frustration.
“Champing at the bit, the young fool,” he muttered through his thick, greying beard.
Cat chuckled.
“That’s just what your wife said he’d be doing,” she told the older man, “in exactly those words.”
The corner of his mouth twitched up in a lopsided, eye-crinkling grin that was the mirror image of that of his nephew.
“Well, the woman, she knows,” he said. “If she thinks that’s what would happen, and she hasn’t sent any messages that I should keep the boy from his workshop and tied to his bed, then that’s good enough for me.” He stood up.
“Fact is, I need to get back to my own work; I’ve got some cider needs racking today. Should have been done yesterday, but, well, needs must.” He nodded his head in the direction of the workshop. “One extra day won’t have harmed my brew, but I don’t want to leave it any longer than absolutely necessary. Think you can manage here with him?”
Cat was feeling shy again.
“I think so…” She felt a blush climbing up her face and was so embarrassed by it she blushed even more.
“You’ll do, girl,” said Uncle, patting her on the shoulder as he crossed to room to pick up his leather satchel from the floor in the corner. Somehow Cat felt there was a weight to his opinion—that his approval was of more than just her presence in this house to look after his injured nephew for an afternoon. It was as if she had been appraised and passed the test. And curiously, it made her proud.
He slung the satchel over his shoulder so the strap ran across his deep barrel chest.
“There’s some of the soup and bread left to eat, and the ointment and more bandages are in the box on the shelf,” he said. “I patched him up just a little while ago; the wound is coming along nicely. He’ll just have to be careful with it, but that’s not something you can force on him. I’ll be off now.” He gave Cat a nod of his head that was almost a small bow, and with that he walked out the door.
Cat was unsure what to do with herself. She looked around the cottage—all seemed clean and tidy. The dishes had been washed, and the beds had been straightened, both the larger pallet in the corner that Uncle had slept on and Guy’s platform bed under the window. The fireplace had a small fire in it that was gently crackling to itself, spreading a pleasant warmth through the room. She wondered if there was a fire in the hearth on the workshop side, too, and decided to investigate.
Guy was in the corner of the room, by the drying shelves, examining the cups and lids Cat had looked at the previous day. He had put on a clay-smeared half-apron that looked as if it might be made of washleather; it was tied around the waist and covered him to the knees. He had his tunic sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and his feet were encased in a pair of clay-spattered half-boots. He looked up as he heard the shop door creak and raised his eyebrows in greeting as he saw Cat.
“These are ruined, I think,” he said, gesturing at her with one of the lids without a handle. “Too dry now to put the knob on. Ah well, we start again.” He chucked the lid into a bucket which sat on the floor between the wheel and the shelf and was filled with dried-up pottery pieces. It hit the contents with a dull thwack, and broke. Cat gasped—did he so casually discard his work? Guy looked up at the sound and gave her his crooked smile.
“There’s plenty more where that came from,” he said, sending half a dozen partially dried cups without handles after the lid. “It’s not a waste; I’ll reuse it. As long as it’s not fired, the clay can be re-wet over and over and made into new things.”
“Couldn’t you salvage these? Seems a shame to throw them out!”
“No, the handles won’t stick now; they’d just crack off during drying—or worse, after they’re fired, and then it really would be a waste. There’s not much use for a fired cracked pot. And, believe me, these aren’t a great loss; I can easily make more. Besides, sometimes this”—he narrowed his eyes, and hurled another cup into the bucket with extra violence—“can be quite satisfying.” The cup shattered into a dozen pieces.
He limped over a few paces, then awkwardly squatted down on the ground, stretching his injured leg out straight to the side to keep from having to bend it. He stuck his fingers into what Cat had taken for a knot hole in the plank flooring and pulled upwards. A section of the floor came up, showing itself to be a trap door covering a large hollow space beneath. Guy balanced himself on the edge of the opening with one hand, reached into the cavity with the other, and lifted out an oilcloth-wrapped bundle about the size of Cat’s head. Cat peered into the hole; it was full of these bundles and smelled strongly of clay. Guy put the lump beside the opening, closed the trap door, and tried to lift the bundle and stand up at the same time, but nearly lost his balance.
“Ouch!” The bundle dropped to the floor again as he caught himself on the edge of the table and pulled to a full standing position.
“Here, I’ll get it!” Cat said. She sprang forward to keep him from bending again, grasped the lump in both hands—and her eyes nearly started from their sockets. She could barely lift it! It must have weighed at least twenty, perhaps even thirty pounds. With a grunt Cat heaved the bundle onto the table. “Whoa, that’s no small peas!” she said.
Guy chuckled and unwrapped the oilcloth from the bundle, revealing a large lump of dark reddish-brown clay. He looked around, searching for something, then tried to step over to the wheel. He winced as he put weight on his bad leg.
“Could you…?”
“What do you need?”
“The cutting wire. With the other tools.” He pointed at the jar on the shelf by the wheel, and Cat saw something wiry hanging between the shaping sticks and looped tools sticking up out of the container. It turned out to be just that, a piece of thin wire, about twenty inches long, the ends tied around short pieces of doweling. She passed it over to him.
“Thanks.” Guy balanced himself on his good leg. He grasped the wire by its dowel handles, drew it tight between his hands, and garrotted the lump of clay, slicing it in half. He picked up the upper half, gave it a quarter turn, and smacked it back down on the lower half with a force that Cat could feel clear through the floorboards. He picked up the lump, brought it down on the wire, sliced, turned, hit, over and over.
“What are you doing that for?” Cat asked curiously.
“Gets the air bubbles out,” he explained, briefly. He gave the lump a final smack, then began slicing it into smaller pieces. He put three of them to one side, then took the fourth, still a good eight inches in diameter, and began kneading it on the canvas surface of the table. Both hands cupped the clay piece, squeezed inward, rolled thumbs-upward towards his body, released, squeezed again, and rolled. It was a swift motion, almost hypnotic in its steady rhythm. After a few minutes, the piece of clay was curled in a squat cylinder, almost like a ram’s head, with a stub nose and two horns spiralling on the sides where he had grasped it and rolled it towards himself. Guy picked it up, slapped one of the ram’s horns into his left palm, and smacked it into a rounded mound, continuing to rotate it in his palm in the same direction as the rolled ram’s head. He placed it on the side of the table, then picked up the next piece and began to knead it in the same way.
Cat watched, fascinated.
“What does this do?” she asked.
“Makes it ready for throwing,” he replied.
“Throwing?” Cat was having visions of pieces of clay being chucked against the wall. She unconsciously mimed the idea, moving her hand just slightly as if she was tossing a bea
nbag. Guy looked at her and laughed.
“No, turning the clay on the wheel. It’s called throwing, wheel-throwing.”
“Oh.” Cat felt a bit sheepish, but then, how was she supposed to have known that?
“Can I try this kneading thing?”
“Wedging,” he corrected. “Sure, go ahead.”
She picked up one of the smaller lumps—even that still weighed three or four pounds!—and tried to squeeze her hands around it the way she saw him doing. She barely made a dent in the clay, and the piece refused to be rocked towards her.
“Uh…”
“You’ve never done this, have you? You’d better start smaller.” He wired a small chunk off the lump, perhaps a third of the size of the whole, and held it out to her.
“Put your hands on either side, like so”—he demonstrated with the remaining piece. “Then squeeze, and turn.”
“Oh, sort of like the way you’d hold your hand to unscrew a pickle jar lid, except on both sides at once and with the jar lying on its side!” she said, delighted that she understood.
“Eh?” It was his turn to be puzzled.
“Um, never mind. I guess you don’t have screw-top jars here,” she said.
Her little piece of clay was just about the size that she could cup entirely in her hands, and she was able to squeeze and roll it.
“Look, it’s making that ram’s face!” she said proudly.
“I’ve always called it a bull’s head,” he said, “but, yes, it is.”
Cat looked up to see that in the time she had half kneaded—no, wedged—her little piece, he had finished the remaining three.
“Do you want this one too?” she asked, but he shook his head.
“These will do me for now,” he said, and scooped up the wedged pieces two to a hand. He limped over to the pottery wheel and deposited the clay on the bench. He frowned into the water bucket.
“Hmm. I suppose that’s enough to go on with,” he said.
Awkwardly he manoeuvred his injured leg past the shaft of the wheel and sat down on the bench seat of the wheel frame. He rested his left leg, slightly stretched out to favour the wound, on a bar of the frame, and propped his other foot on a corresponding bar on the right, while he fished with his hand in the water bucket. He brought out a small sponge, about the size of his fist, squeezed out most of the water, and wiped down the wheel head.
Cat had stopped wrestling with her clay chunk and turned to watch Guy.
He picked up the first of the rounded clay mounds, briefly held it over the wheel head, then smacked it down hard, dead centre. His right foot came off the bar on the side, and began kicking at the flywheel, hard, rhythmic kicks, faster and faster. The wheel spun into motion, hummed, flew. His hand reached out, he squeezed the sponge into the water bucket, brought it out dripping, and discharged it over the whirling clay mound. Water flew off the wheel, splattering the wall, the side of the fireplace, his apron (Ah, I see, thought Cat, that’s what it’s for!). Then he braced his elbows against his hips and cupped the clay on the wheel between his hands. He pushed the clay together so it spun perfectly true, exactly centred, then squeezed up. It rose into a dome, a column.
“A hoodoo!” Cat said out loud.
“What?” He looked up at her, his hands playing the spinning clay.
“Oh, it’s just that, where I come from, there’s these stone or earth columns in some places; they look just like what you’re making there. Hoodoos.”
“Ah. I think we have some of those too, out on the Plains,” he said, turning his attention back to the wheel. The hoodoo under his hands was changing, growing taller and thinner; he tilted the tip over with his thumbs in one direction and another, then he put the heel of his right hand on top and pushed down, and the whole whirling and spinning column collapsed again into a squat, round mound under his long, tapering fingers.
Now his motion changed. He squeezed the sponge into the bucket again, brought another inundation of water onto the round, smooth lump on the wheel, and cupped both his hands around the clay. His thumbs met on top, in the middle of the clay. They pushed down, dug in, pulled outward to hollow (muck was dripping off his apron onto his half-boots, spinning off onto the walls, onto his waist). His foot kicked the wheel again, ten, twelve fast, hard kicks, then went back to brace itself against the support bar. Another squeeze of the sponge. Guy shifted his position, tipped his head so he could look at his piece sideways. His hair fell over his eyes; he shook it back and pushed one wavy red strand out of his face with the back of his hand, leaving a smear of clay unnoticed across his forehead. He gave the wheel another few kicks and put his fingers in place on the inside and outside of the beginning pot.
Gently, smoothly, in front of Cat’s astonished eyes, whirling and spinning, a vessel rose under his hands. One upward pull of the knuckles, two, a third one, and a perfect cup was revolving on the wheel.
Guy’s motion did not stop. He reached for the sponge again, squeezed it dry, and this time sponged away the soft watery slurry that was coating the vessel and the wheel surface. Inside the cup and out, the sponge marked soft, fine ridges in the clay. He squeezed the slurry into the water bucket, rinsed the sponge, wiped up the slip on the wheel, then exchanged the sponge for a wooden tool, flat and pointed on one end like the tip of a knife. Inserting it into the angle between the cup and the wheel, he scraped away a wedge of clay at the foot of the piece. He dropped the tool back into the jar and reached for the cutting wire. His foot braked the flywheel to a stop; he tightened the wire between his hands and drew it across the wheel head, slicing the cup off the wheel.
Cat broke into spontaneous applause.
Guy looked up and grinned his crooked grin at her.
“It’s not that amazing, once you’ve seen it a few times.” He cupped his flat hands around the vessel and very gently lifted it off the wheel to the working surface in front of him.
“Well, it’s amazing to me!” she said. “I could watch this forever. It’s such a soothing motion—almost organic, as if it was growing. Do you enjoy doing that?”
“Yes, I do,” he said, smacking the second piece of clay into the centre of the wheel and kicking the wheel into motion. “I like the way the clay feels under my hand, how it moves and responds to what I do. And unlike some,” a quick shadow passed over his face, “I don’t mind the muck.” He bent over the wheel again and started centring the clay.
Cat smiled.
“No, I wouldn’t either. I still walk barefoot in the mud if I have the chance; I like that squishiness between my toes.”
He gave her a quick, upward glance, surprised, questioning; then silently he turned his face back to his work.
They spent the next hour in companionable silence. Cat watched Guy as he made a dozen more cups to replace the ones he had discarded. When she got tired of watching, she collected the chair from the cottage and sat at the table, playing with the piece of clay she had tried to wedge. She dug her fingers into it, twisted it, rolled it, poked it, squished it, and suddenly had made a small sculpture, stuck on the end of her raised index finger, without having really intended to do so. It looked like a little head, a gnome, grinning at her mischievously. She grinned back at it, enjoying what she had made.
“Nice,” said Guy over her shoulder. She looked up at him standing behind her (I never really noticed how tall he is, she thought). He had finished with the pieces he was working on and got up to clean off the wheel.
“Stick it on the drying shelf,” he said. “We can fire it with the other stuff.”
“What? Oh, nah. I was just fooling around.”
“No, it’s a nice little piece. If you really don’t want it fired when it’s dry, you can reuse it later.” He scraped the stuck-on clay off the wheel and ran the sponge around the edge of the wheel head where the wet slurry had accumulated in a thick round of sludge.
“Well, if you think so…”
“I do. I’m just going to go wash these off.” He gestured at her
with his handful of clay-covered shaping tools, then threw them in his water bucket and limped out the door with it. Cat heard him rattling the pump handle outside.
She looked at the gnome head on her finger.
“Hmph, you’re no beauty,” she told it. “But if the potter thinks we should keep you, I guess keep you we will.” She pried it off her finger, and it came loose with a soft little schlumpf. “There, now your ear is squished. Oh well.” She took it to the drying shelf and found it a spot at the back where the cups had been. She stepped back to look at it from a different angle and stopped in surprise.
Her foot had suddenly sounded hollow on the floorboards. Oh! She tapped her foot down again, and then again a little bit over. Solid here. Back one step, hollow. Was there another storage space under there? This was easily two yards over from the hole where Guy had brought out the oilcloth-wrapped lump; it couldn’t extend that far—could it? Cat squatted and inspected the floorboards. Rapping her knuckles on the wood, she found that the hollow-sounding part here was small, only about one by two feet. She couldn’t see a knot hole like the one Guy had used to open the other trap door, but when she ran her fingers along the edge of the boards that were covering the space, she suddenly noticed a little indentation, shallow enough to escape notice if you were not specifically looking for it. She pushed her finger into the notch, and it tipped down, pivoting up another section of the board about a foot away. As suspected, another trap door! Cat was intrigued.
She slipped her fingers under the raised edge of the board and lifted it up.
In the depths of the hole, sparkling up at Cat with an eerie, iridescent shimmer, rested three turquoise bowls.