Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller

Author:Andrew Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Published: 2019-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

They were on a hill above the sea. The hill was shaped like a sugar-loaf and had a trench, fifteen feet long, cut into the sea-facing slope. It was mid-morning and the day was already hot, the sun beating a scent out of the land. Pine? But it could not be pine. There were no pine trees, few trees of any kind, none at all on the hill. Lacroix wondered if he was remembering Portugal, that month after they landed, when he began to understand what the south and southern heat might mean. He had not expected to meet it again on the islands.

‘Now tell me squarely,’ said Cornelius, rising, trowel in hand, from the bottom of the trench, ‘are you with Buffon? On the age of the world, I mean. And putting aside for the time being the whole question of his being French.’

The wind on the hill was a muddle. Warm gusts blew one way and then the other. It made hearing difficult, though Lacroix believed his hat helped him a little, a broad-brimmed hat, a reaper’s hat, dog-coloured and borrowed from among the collection in the hallway. Those words that found their way under the brim stayed with him. As for the rest.

‘Remind me,’ he asked. ‘What does Buffon say?’

‘Seventy-five thousand years,’ said Cornelius. ‘Thorpe says it might be even more. He believes it is. Intuitively. Ranald won’t venture an opinion, on religious grounds, I think. My sisters just make up numbers. The bigger the number the better they like it.’

‘Well,’ said Lacroix, ‘I will go with Buffon. If we have set aside the question of his nationality.’

‘I would ask your opinion of Hutton,’ said Cornelius, ‘but I am afraid you will not have heard of him. He is too new!’

The two of them ducked down into the trench again and began to scrape and probe with their trowels. It was peat mostly, a few stones. They worked one behind the other, turning the ground and stooping to investigate anything that made the trowel blade chime. The next time they surfaced, Jane and Emily were walking over the brow of the hill. They were carrying a bag between them, one handle each. Jane wore her white muslin (was it the same or were there several?). Emily had on something cool with green stripes. Both had hats of straw tied with ribbon.

‘Have you found anything?’ asked Emily.

‘A crown?’ asked Jane. ‘Or a chariot?’

‘Ha ha,’ said Cornelius. ‘Très amusant. I hope you have brought something nice for us and have not just come to talk nonsense.’

Emily unpacked the bag. It had bottles in it – old wine bottles stoppered with paper and filled with water stirred through with oatmeal, the water still mostly cold from the spring behind the house. Lacroix and Cornelius had been at the trench two hours. They had not done much work, not real work, but enough for a sharp thirst. Lacroix drank most of a bottle, apologising if he had taken more than his share.

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