It rained before dawn, and the leak woke Arthur before the rooster did.
He lay there in the dark waiting for the next drop. It came, and it landed on his forehead. He'd moved the bed three times over the years, and three times the leak had found its way back.
He got up before the room went grey. Dressed in the dark, took the wooden sword from beside the door, and went out stepping soft, which was a waste of care — the oven light was already trembling in the bakery window, and the smell of the first bread filled the whole street.
"Take the bundle off the table," Dona Cecília said, her back to him, not lifting her eyes from the dough. "And don't eat the raw dough."
"I have never in my life eaten raw dough."
"You're eating it now."
"That's slander."
"Boy, I raised you. I know the sound."
Arthur went out with the bundle under his arm and the ball of raw dough in his mouth.
The training ground was behind old Tomas's house: a headless scarecrow, two logs, and a fence the old man leaned on to supervise. The scarecrow's head had been lost three years back, in a stroke Tomas swore he'd seen coming and Arthur swore was luck. They were still arguing about it.
When Arthur got there the old man was at the fence with his arms crossed, chin on his chest, eyes shut.
"Morning, master."
"You're late."
"You're asleep on your feet."
"I'm watching with my eyes shut." Tomas scratched his chin without opening them. "A swordsman listens for his opponent's steps. Yours are landing crooked on the left. You slept badly."
Arthur looked down at his own feet.
"It was the leak."
"It was the leak," the old man repeated. "In my day we slept with a rock for a pillow."
"And were grateful for the rock."
"And were grateful for the rock. You know the story by heart and you still haven't learned a thing from it. Five hundred cuts. Go."
Arthur went.
The sun came up slow behind the corn. The village woke around the two of them in pieces: the soft bells of the goats heading down to pasture, Dona Marta arguing with her husband over a hoe, the smell of bread reaching all the way to the training ground. Arthur counted the cuts in silence. His arm started burning somewhere around three hundred and he didn't slow down, because slowing down was the only thing the old man really held against a man.
Near four hundred, Tomas snored.
He woke himself with it, coughed once, and said:
"Elbow's dropping."
Arthur's elbow was not dropping. He fixed it anyway.
"Master." Another cut. "Did you really fight a bear?"
"Two."
"Last week it was one."
"Last week you hadn't earned the second one."
Tomas settled against the fence. He looked out at the corn for a while.
"It was in the pass at —" The voice stopped. He made a gesture with his hand, waving something away. "But that's talk for another day. Five hundred. Then go get water."
"Water for the scarecrow?"
"Water for me. The scarecrow doesn't complain. Learn from him."
The well was on the far side of the village, and the way there went past the Tuesday market.
Nine stalls, two of them belonging to the same family. Seu Rufo sold cheese on one side of the street and his sister, Inês, sold cheese on the other, set up facing each other for twelve years now. The village bought half from each. There were those who said the fight had ended long ago and the two of them kept the stalls apart because the arrangement turned a profit. Nobody asked.
"Arthur!" Seu Rufo called. "Try this one. Four months cured."
"Don't you try it!" Dona Inês shouted from across the street. "Mine's cured five!"
"Hers is cured five because she forgot it in the cellar."
"I can hear you, Rufo!"
"I know you can hear me, Inês! The street's six paces wide!"
Arthur tried both, praised both with equal sincerity, and moved on before either could demand a verdict.
The shout came from the far end of the street.
After the shout came the hen, flying low between the stalls. Behind her, Bru. Behind Bru, Bento, hollering out a plan nobody heard the end of. And behind the two of them came Sardine, Dona Cecília's goat, galloping along for reasons entirely her own, a whole link of sausage hooked on her horns.
"My sausage!" the butcher bellowed.
"My hen!" Dona Marta bellowed, appearing from somewhere, the hoe still unaccounted for.
"Grab the goat!"
"You grab her!"
The whole market went in. Seu Rufo covered his cheeses with his body. Dona Inês covered hers and still found time to shout that the trouble was how children were being raised these days. A dog belonging to nobody crossed the street with a piece of bacon in its mouth.
Arthur dropped the bucket and went into the chase at an angle, cutting behind the basket stall, because a runaway goat turns right where the street narrows. Nine years of Sardine.
The goat turned right.
He was already crouched there, arms open.
"Sardine. Drop the sausage."
The goat held his eye a long moment. Then she spat the sausage on the ground and came to rub her head against his knee, bleating low.
"I don't understand that animal." The butcher arrived out of breath and stood looking at the sausage on the ground. "Last week she put me up on a roof."
"How does a goat put a man on a roof?"
"Climbing up was my idea. But it's her fault." He pointed at Sardine, who was now chewing the hem of Arthur's shirt. "Why does she listen to you?"
"Luck."
Arthur had never given it much thought. The village dogs liked him, Seu Nando's ox liked him, and he'd assumed it was that way for everyone, all evidence to the contrary.
Bru and Bento arrived last, out of breath and without the hen.
"We were —" Bru began.
"Training her," Bento finished.
"For the hen race."
"That we invented."
"The hen went back to the yard on her own," Dona Marta reported, walking past with the bird under her arm. "And if I catch the two of you out there again, I'm telling headman Tomas."
The twins went pale at the same moment, in the same shade. Nobody in the village could remember old Tomas ever doing anything to any child, but the threat had worked for three generations, and the old man tended it the way a man tends a fence.
Arthur came back with the water half an hour later. Tomas was awake, sharpening a knife that didn't need an edge.
"Took your time."
"Sardine robbed the butcher."
The old man grunted and drank the water without asking for details. The story would reach him in four different versions before lunch, and he preferred it that way.
He looked at the sky. Then at the boy.
"On guard. I'm going to come at you."
"You just woke up."
"A swordsman is always —" Tomas pushed off the fence. His knee cracked. He stopped, put a hand on his hip, and stood there a second longer than he needed to. "This afternoon I'll come at you."
"Yes, master."
"Don't laugh."
"I'm not laughing."
"You're laughing on the inside. Go deliver your bread."
The sun was high by the time Arthur made the deliveries on the way back.
To the widow Alda, who paid with a blessing and two oranges. To Seu Nando, who complained about the price, as he had since before Arthur was born, out of a habit that had long since had nothing to do with the price. To the two cheese stalls, one loaf each, weighed in front of both so neither could claim a difference. And to the forge, last on the way, which paid nothing because it repaired the pans for the bakery oven, on an old account nobody audited anymore.
Lena was in the doorway, soot to the elbow, small hammer in hand. She took the bread with a jerk of her chin.
"I hear Sardine beat you again."
"I won. She dropped the sausage."
"She spat out a chewed sausage and you paid the butcher for the link." Lena bit into the bread. "That isn't a victory. That's a ransom."
"It's diplomacy."
"It's a loss."
"It's expensive diplomacy."
"There you go."
She laughed out of the corner of her mouth, the way she'd laughed since she was six, and went back into the forge. The hammer started up again before Arthur reached the corner.
He walked up the street peeling the second orange. The goats were coming back from pasture. Rufo and Inês were calling out prices over each other. Somewhere behind him, the twins were arguing the rules of the hen race.
It was a Tuesday like every other Tuesday of Arthur's life.
In the bakery, on a high shelf, behind the jars of yeast, there was a letter wrapped in clean cloth. It had been there almost ten years.