to it after supper, and no bed for you before it’s clear of them!’
The mill in the fen of Kosel ground grain every day, weekdays and Sundays, from early in the morning until night began to fall. Only once a week, on Fridays, did the miller’s men stop work earlier, and they started two hours later than usual on Saturdays.
When Krabat was not busy carrying sacks or sifting meal, he had to chop wood, shovel snow, carry water to the kitchen, groom the horses, cart manure out of the cowshed – in short, there was always plenty for him to do, and when he lay down on his straw mattress at night, he felt as if every bone in his body was broken. His back was aching, the skin of his shoulders was chafed, and his arms and legs hurt so much he could hardly bear it.
Krabat marveled at his companions. They did not seem at all bothered by the heavy day’s work, none of them appeared tired or complained. They did not even sweat or get out of breath as they worked.
One morning Krabat was busy clearing snow from the way to the well. It had snowed all night without stopping, and the wind had drifted up the pathways. Krabat gritted his teeth, every time he dug his shovel in he felt a sharp pain in his back. Then Tonda came up to him, and looking around to make sure they were alone, he put a hand on Krabat’s shoulder.
‘Keep going, Krabat …’
Suddenly the boy felt as if new strength were flowing into him. The pain vanished, he seized his shovel, and would have gone on shoveling away with a will if Tonda had not taken his arm.
‘Don’t let the Master notice,’ he said. ‘Nor Lyshko, either!’
Krabat had not liked Lyshko much from the first,- he was a tall, lean fellow with a sharp nose and a squint, who seemed to be a snooper and an eavesdropper and a creeper around corners – you could never be sure you were safe from him.
‘All right,’ said Krabat, and he went on with his work, acting as though he were making very heavy weather of it. Quite soon, as if by chance, along came Lyshko.
‘Well, Krabat, how do you like the taste of your job?’
‘How do you think?’ grumbled the boy. ‘You try a nice mouthful of dirt, Lyshko – that’s about how much I like the taste of it!’
After this, Tonda took to meeting Krabat more often and placing a hand unobtrusively on his shoulder. Every time, the boy felt new strength coursing through him, and however hard his work might be, he found he could do it easily.
The Master and Lyshko knew nothing at all about it – nor did the other miller’s men, not the two cousins Michal and Merten, each as strong and good-natured as the other, nor pockmarked Andrush, who was a great joker, not Hanzo, who was nicknamed ‘The Bull’ because of his bull neck and his close-cropped hair, nor Petar, who passed his spare time whittling wooden spoons, nor the popular Stashko, who moved quick as a flash and was as clever as the little monkey Krabat remembered gaping at years before, at the fair in Koenigswartha. Kito, who always looked as if he had just swallowed a pound of nails, noticed nothing either, nor did the silent Kubo – nor, of course, did stupid Juro.
Juro was a brawny young man with short legs and a flat moon face sprinkled with freckles. He had been there longer than anyone but Tonda. He was not much use at the work of the mill, being, as Andrush used to say mockingly, ‘too stupid to keep bran and flour apart,’ and but for the fact that he had fool’s luck, he would certainly have fallen into the machinery and been caught between the millstones long ago, said Andrush.
Juro was quite used to such remarks, and put up with Andrush’s teasing patiently; he ducked without protest when Kito threatened to hit him for some trifle or other, and when, as often happened, the other journeymen played a practical joke on him, he took it with a grin, as much as to say, ‘Well, I know I’m stupid!’
The housework seemed to be all Juro was fit for, and since someone had to see to it, they were all perfectly happy to let Juro do it for them: cooking, and washing the dishes, baking bread and lighting fires, scrubbing the floor and scouring the steps, dusting, washing, ironing and everything else that had to be done about the house and the kitchen. He looked after the chickens, geese and pigs too.
It was a mystery to Krabat how Juro ever got all his jobs done. However, it seemed perfectly natural to the others, and on top of that, the Master treated Juro like dirt. Krabat thought it was a shame, and once, when he took a load of firewood into the kitchen and Juro, not for the first time, gave him the end of a sausage to put in his pocket, he told him exactly how he felt.
‘I just don’t see how you can put up with it!’ he said.
‘What, me?’ asked Juro in surprise.
‘Yes, you!’ said Krabat. ‘The Master treats you shamefully, and all the others laugh at you!’
‘Tonda doesn’t,’ Juro objected. ‘You don’t, either.’
‘What difference does that make?’ cried Krabat. ‘I know what I’d do if I were you. I’d stick up for myself, that’s what! I wouldn’t take it any more – I wouldn’t take it from Kito or Andrush or any of them!’
‘Hm,’ said Juro, scratching the back of his neck. ‘Maybe that’s what you’d do, Krabat – well, you could! But what if you were just a fool like me?’
‘Well, run away, then!’ cried the boy. ‘Run away from here! Find somewhere else where they’ll treat you better!’
‘Run away?’ And for a moment Juro did not look stupid at all, merely tired and sad. ‘Try it, Krabat! Try running away from here!’
‘I don’t have any reason to!’
‘No,’ muttered Juro, ‘no, of course you don’t – let’s hope you never do …’
He put a crust of bread in the boy’s other pocket, cut short his thanks, and pushed him out of the door, a silly grin on his face just as usual.
Krabat saved his bread and sausage until the end of the day. Soon after supper, while the miller’s men were sitting in the servants’ hall, Petar busy with his whittling and the rest passing the time by telling stories, the boy left them and climbed up to the attic, where he threw himself down on his straw mattress, yawning. He ate his bread and sausage then, and as he lay there enjoying his feast, his thoughts went back to Juro and their talk in the kitchen.
‘Run away?’ he thought. ‘Run away from what? It’s no bed of roses here, with so much hard work to do, and I’d be in a bad way without Tonda’s help. But the food’s good, there’s plenty of it, I have a roof over my head – and when I get up in the morning, I’m sure of a bed for the next night, warm and dry and reasonably soft, with no bugs or fleas in it. That’s more than I could ever have hoped for when I was a beggar boy!’
CHAPTER FOUR A Dream of Escape
Krabat had run away once in his life already, soon after the death of his parents, who had died of the smallpox the year before. The pastor had taken him in, ‘to stop the child running wild,’ said he, which was much to the credit of the good pastor and his wife, who had always wished for a boy of their own. But Krabat, who had spent all his life in a wretched hovel, the shepherd’s hut at Eutrich, found it hard to settle down in the pastor’s house and be good all day long, never shout or fight, wear a white shirt,
