Seed Barley at Sallow Cross

Gwen Hartop had come down to Sallow Cross with a sack of seed barley for her father’s spring field and light enough for passage at two drops a span, which was what the board said when she joined the bank. Then the Lantern stayed dark over the brown river, and kept staying dark.

She measured it by the ferryman’s pipe. He lit it, smoked it out, knocked it against the post and lit it again. Somewhere in the second bowl the clerk rubbed out the two and chalked a three. People behind her pressed coppers into strangers’ hands to keep their place while they went off into the willows. By the fourth bowl the board said four and more. Forty-nine minutes, the clerk said afterwards, as though a number made it shorter.

When the wire finally rang it was the Sun-House of Luxor, Delphine Copthorne’s people, opening the new Book. The bank surged and shoved and the ferry took most of it in one heave. Gwen was left on the mud with her sack. Four and a third, said the board.

She did the sum on her fingers. The barley crossed, or her cart fare home did. Not both. A drover beside her said wait till dawn, it always sinks. Her father’s ground would not wait for dawn; the soil was already softening.

Gwen paid the four and a third and handed the sack up to be marked. She would walk the thirty miles home in boots that had been bought for riding.