The Trader

The new serving girl was kneeling in front of the fireplace clearing away ash and setting the fire anew. Barnet half-heartedly admired her form as she worked. There would have been a time, he thought, when he would have sent her straight to his chambers to await his pleasure. But now? Well, now he didn’t have the energy. In any event he and his predecessors had already fathered enough bastards to seriously threaten the shrinking population of the valley with consanguinity at every marriage.

Forgetting the girl, the High Priest turned to the man who had come into The Long Room minutes earlier. He was wet through from being out in the incessant rain; he stood shivering, glum, his eyes cast down onto the stone floor.

‘Well’ Barnet began, ‘I know that the news you bring is bad Steward, so tell me the details if you must.’

The Steward nodded and wiped water from his eyes even as more ran down from his hair. ‘The harvest is poor Holiness.’

‘How poor?’ Barnet sucked air through his teeth.

‘Not as bad as last year Holiness, but on top of last year and the several before. We are going to have problems.’

‘Problems is all that we have had these past seasons Steward. The question is what can we do about it?’

‘I hesitate to say what I believe to be the truth Holiness.’

‘Don’t be a fool. I have never punished you for speaking your mind. I know that there is nothing to be done about the weather.’

‘It is worse now than I have ever known it Holiness.’

‘I am familiar with the records.’

‘Yes Holiness.’

‘Leave now Steward’ Barnet turned his back on the man who had served him for three decades. ‘Oh, and think Steward to grow more of what thrives and less of what does not. We would all rather be bored than hungry.’

‘Yes Holiness.’

‘And Steward.’

‘Yes Holiness?’

‘How is your family?’

‘Well Holiness thank you.’

‘Good.’

Barnet waited for the door to close. He looked at the rain running in sheets down the thick glass of the Long Room’s famous curved window. One huge sheet of glass made it up, almost the height of a man and half as wide. No-one had made anything like it in a thousand years. The fanciful story was that it had once sat the other way up and at the front of some kind of carriage. Perhaps, Barnet thought. He imagined that whatever its original purpose the people who had made it had not worried too much about the weather.

The sound of the girl finishing at the fireplace brought him from his reverie. He turned to watch her leave, which she did without a backward glance. Moments later the arrival of the trader was announced.

‘Well send him’ Barnet roared irascibly. He was still annoyed that he could raise no more than a feeble interest in the girl; the thought that that might have come as a great relief to her stung him more sharply even than that.

‘My friend’ Barnet said, cheered considerably as the trader came in, ‘it is good to see you. We will eat and you will be my guest tonight.’

‘Holiness’ the trader beamed, ‘it will be my pleasure.’

The two shook hands warmly. They had been friends for many years.

‘Come now; tell me where you have been. You find me where I always am, here, trapped in the palace.’

‘On a day like today there are many who would dearly love to be so trapped.’

‘I know, I know. Spare me though your political speeches. I too have my burdens.’

‘You bear them in dry shoes.’

‘Enough of The Revolution. Tell me of your journey or I shall have you arrested.’

The trader snorted a laugh and told the High Priest of his journeys beyond the mountains and across the deserts of the country that had once been called Spain. The tale was a good while in the telling and as he listened, Barnet poured his friend wine and allowed himself to be transported to distant lands.

When the story was finished the trader took a long gulp of wine. It was the High priest who broke the short silence. ‘Well? What did you bring me? What did you find?’

‘I swear that you only listen to my stories because of the treasures I bring you.’

‘Now that is not true. I am a devotee of your tales of exotic people and places. It is just that, as you know very well, I am also an avid collector; this passion has always moved me.’

‘Yes indeed Holiness. You have the finest collection of artefacts from ancient times that I have ever seen. There may be no finer collection anywhere. Much of it has come to this valley in my hands.’

‘I have my collection, and you are richer than any trader has a right to be.’

‘Perhaps Holiness, perhaps. Well, I have found you something this time which you will truly adore. It is unbroken; there is not even a single crack and almost no scratching.’ As he spoke the trader opened his small satchel and carefully began to unwrap a cylindrical bundle he pulled from within.

‘Is it plastic?’ the High Priest asked in the closest he ever got to reverent tones.

‘Oh yes Holiness, pure plastic.’ The trader was still unwrapping. He had always had a flare for the dramatic.

‘Plastic endures. It endures forever, they say.’

‘Ah yes, but it endures in pieces. The problem is that people don’t know how to treat it. It cracks and can’t be mended; it burns or melts; it is left in the Sun and it discolours. But not this piece. Not this piece.’

At last he passed a plastic beaker, exquisite in its uniformity and smoothness to the High Priest. ‘So light’ Barnet marvelled. ‘I shall not ask you how you acquired it.’

‘It was in the hands of ignorant people Holiness. It is better here with you. Better by far.’ The trader’s words were formulaic, but pleased the High Priest no less for that.

The next day, the trading done and the trader gone back to his grand farmstead in the hills, Barnet stood at the curved window and watched the wind drive the rain before it. In his hands he held the beaker of pure plastic; he had held it there all day.

Oh, it was beautiful, as beautiful as so many items from ancient times, but it wasn’t really the beauty that he loved. No, Barnet loved the mystery. There had been an Age of Plastic. Men had made these marvels from materials so amazing that their wretched impoverished descendants could not even repair them when they broke.

A line of High Priests had ruled this valley for centuries, and as far as Barnet could judge, for all the hard work of these long years, everything had only become worse. He had read the records, there had been good times, but overall every year had taken the people here further away from the Age of Plastic.

The weather was killing them slowly. The valley was going the same way as the lowlands to the north and to the south. By devastating turns it was too wet or too dry, it was too hot or too cold. There was no respite.

Barnet looked away from the storm and gazed on the beaker. ‘Why?’ he said out loud. ‘Why am I doomed to live now? Why could I not have been born in the Age of Plastic when men had answers to all of their problems?’

At first the serving girl had been startled, she had thought the High Priest was talking to her. She was relieved to realise that instead he was talking nonsense to himself. She quickly gathered her brush and the bucket of ash and left the room.