The heat of Thomas's hands lingers, but the part that sears itself is that open, wild look in his face. He's had ten years to be tortured by the possibility of what had been done to him - a list of potential atrocities long enough that when news had arrived of Thomas's suicide, there might have been a part of him that thought it might be true and not just the lie told to cover Lord Alfred Hamilton's last act of assassinating his own son. But what it might have looked like in Thomas's face hadn't resolved itself until this moment. James finds himself having to turn away and duck his head to the task of securing the horse's noseband when the overseer appears in the yard; he can't clear his own expression fast enough for anything else.
In no hurry - or having taken some passive interest in seeing that their work is done - the overseer waits for them to be finished and rides down to the lower fields alongside the cart. James is surprised that his hands feel steady at the reins, but he can't manage what he should (small talk). Instead he works the day alongside Thomas, acquainting his mind with what his eye has already recognized: that there are two men on horseback here to see that they do what they're meant to; that they have rifles behind their saddles, but that the likelier weapon is blunt force. That there are a dozen men like them, then twice that in legitimate (ha) slaves.
They take their water from a bucket in the shade of an oak dripping with spanish moss and James sits on a stone and considers the distance from the bunkhouses to the wood beyond the back pastures. He thinks about running and dismisses it. He thinks about becoming a trusted friend and likes that less.
But he says nothing about it. They work in tandem and rather than Faustus he talks about Spenser's Arlo and the Titaness Mutabilitie as they chip stones from the field ahead of the plow. "You two," says Mister Browder at the plowhorse's head. "Are giving me a headache." James laughs, all teeth.
no subject
In no hurry - or having taken some passive interest in seeing that their work is done - the overseer waits for them to be finished and rides down to the lower fields alongside the cart. James is surprised that his hands feel steady at the reins, but he can't manage what he should (small talk). Instead he works the day alongside Thomas, acquainting his mind with what his eye has already recognized: that there are two men on horseback here to see that they do what they're meant to; that they have rifles behind their saddles, but that the likelier weapon is blunt force. That there are a dozen men like them, then twice that in legitimate (ha) slaves.
They take their water from a bucket in the shade of an oak dripping with spanish moss and James sits on a stone and considers the distance from the bunkhouses to the wood beyond the back pastures. He thinks about running and dismisses it. He thinks about becoming a trusted friend and likes that less.
But he says nothing about it. They work in tandem and rather than Faustus he talks about Spenser's Arlo and the Titaness Mutabilitie as they chip stones from the field ahead of the plow. "You two," says Mister Browder at the plowhorse's head. "Are giving me a headache." James laughs, all teeth.
KLANG!, the sound of metal striking stone.