Poldarn pulled a face. 'Yes, all right,' he said, 'I'll try and fit it in, when I'm not building houses or dodging mudslides. Was there something important, or did you come back from the dead just to nag me about my homework?'
'You shouldn't talk to me like that, it's not respectful. And yes, there was something. There's a whole lot of stuff, and if you'll just shut up for a moment I can tell you-'
Poldarn opened his eyes. He'd fallen asleep after all (and he'd done it in such a way as to crick his neck and his back and put his right arm to sleep; hardly a good start to a busy day) and now daylight was seeping through the bald patches in the thatch, thinning and curdling the darkness. What's the betting I'm the last to wake up, as usual? But not this time: down below in the main body of the barn, the household was just beginning to stir, all at the same time. It was an extraordinary sight, to see so many people waking up at precisely the same moment. Well, I was right about that, he told himself, though that doesn't make it any the less weird. I really don't want to know why they do that.
He stood up, and his legs were stiff and cramped; he had to steady himself, or he'd have fallen out of the loft and broken his neck. He closed his eyes to get rid of a brief moment of dizziness; and when he opened them again, he realised that he knew what he had to do today. All of it, the whole thing, as if he'd known it all along and only just remembered it (but he hadn't, he was sure of that; if this was a memory, it wasn't one of his).
Just as well, really, he said to himself, otherwise it'd have been really embarrassing. His legs felt much better now, and he scrambled down the ladder like a twelve-year-old. For the first time in a long while, he actually felt cheerful and confident about the day ahead, because he knew what he was supposed to be doing and knew how to do it. Of course, he reflected, this is what it's like for them every bloody day of their lives, no wonder they're always so damned smug. Feeling like this, there's absolutely nothing you couldn't do, it'd be like you're omnipotent. This is what it must be like if you're a god.
He knew who to look for first; Autcel, one of the Colscegsford men, and Horn, the Haldersness cooper and wheelwright, were the best tool-grinders in the two households, and he needed them to put an edge on the axes, hooks and adzes they'd be using today. He ran his gaze round the barn and saw them, yawning and stretching on their way to the door, which someone else had already unbolted and opened. They would go and start up the big treadle grindstone in the middle house, and by the time they'd finished, the rest of them would be kitted up and ready to make a start. What else would they need? Shovels and picks, which Raffen and Carey would fetch from the trap-house, and baskets-Rannwey and Jelda would see to them-and a line and a basin of water, of course, he'd get them himself, he knew where they were kept. For a moment, he fancied that he could see the whole job, every detail of it from beginning to end, all at the same time (like an illuminated manuscript chained to the desk in a sword-monks' monastery, where scenes from the beginning and the middle and the end are all played out in the same picture against the same background, with three identical heroes-one of them hearing the call of religion, one of them killing the dragon, one of them suffering martyrdom thirty years later in a different city five hundred miles away).
Easy, Poldarn said to himself, piece of cake, slice of duff, child's play. I could do this standing on my head. I can remember it like it was yesterday, from the last time (-the last time I did this? But it's a once-in-a-lifetime event, that's the whole point.)
Beer, he thought, we'll need plenty of that, and cold beef and cold smoked lamb and bread and cheese, can't expect men to work hard on an empty stomach (and he saw the Haldersness women packing up food in baskets, out in the cider house, filling a row of half-gallon barrels with beer from a newly tapped hogshead; he could see the beer was bright and clean, which meant it must have been racked and fined and left to settle at least a week ago, and how the hell had they known to do that, when Halder was still very much alive and showing no signs of being about to die?). Of course there'll be at least one thing we'll find we haven't remembered when we get there, and we'll have to send someone running back for it while we all stand around waiting; that's inevitable, it wouldn't be right unless that happened, it'd be bad luck on the house or something. But it'd be nice if we could keep it down to the one token forgotten thing.
At the back of Poldarn's mind there was a memory, a genuine one; he could feel it, like a bone stuck in his throat or a fibre of meat lodged between his teeth, but he couldn't prise it loose. It was infuriating, because he was sure it was something relevant (just as the one piece of steel you can't seem to find in the scrap pile would undoubtedly be just the right width and thickness for the job in hand, and the more you search for it, the more clearly you can picture it in your mind's eye; and nine times out of ten, when you come across it by chance a week later, after you've used something else, it turns out that it wouldn't have been suitable at all, it was just your imagination playing games with you). But as he worried away at it, he could feel it growing vague and flimsy, as if he was trying to pick up a page that had burned to ash.
Chapter Twelve
It must have rained heavily in the early hours of the morning, after Poldarn had fallen asleep for the second time, because the grass was very wet, soaking through their boots as they made their way down the combe to the wood. Nobody seemed unduly troubled by that; it was a pleasure to see it again, after what had seemed like a lifetime of staring at a carpet of black ash. As soon as the sun was up, of course, it'd all dry out in no time. Every indication suggested a fine, bright day, warm but not so hot as to make heavy work a burden. They walked quickly, gradually speeding up as they got closer to their objective. Two large crows shadowed them all the way from Haldersness to where the river bent just before they reached the wood, and then pulled off in a wide circle, as if they were expecting to be shot at.
The first job, needless to say, was a solid stone platform for a foundation. Poldarn didn't need to bother with troublesome mental arithmetic; they would need ten cartloads of double-hand-span wide flat stones, which they should be able to find in the bed of the river just before and after the bend; failing which, there was always the old fallen-down linhay two-thirds of the way up the slope, but it'd be savagely hard work to ship them down from there. Far easier to grovel around in the water for a few hours.
Picking the stones and building the foundation turned out to be a miserable job, which wasn't helped by the heavy rain that set in at mid-morning and carried on till just before sunset. There was also the small detail of how long and wide the foundation should be. Since all four sills were still growing up out of the ground with needles on their branches, they were left with three choices; guess, or fell the sill-trees early, or climb up the shortest trees with a piece of string and measure the wretched things.
'We fell them,' Poldarn decided. 'Like we should be doing with all the timbers, only we seem to have started in the middle instead of at the beginning. Stands to reason, you cut and shape before you build the foundation.'