Chapter Text
Maggie dresses in trousers and boots and her thick oilskin apron, and then crouches down before her fireplace. The first omen of the day is a good one: in the back corner, pushing through the ash like sun through clouds, an ember glows gently. She reaches for the ash-shovel and, as with a quick flick of the wrist, tips the coal up and into its crook, sending up a puff of ash that settles over the layer of fire-dust that already covers the hearth. Carefully she walks the ember out the door of her house and into the smithy directly adjacent, holding a hand in front of the shovel to protect it from the wind, and tips it into her forge. She lays a handful of straw over it and blows gently, the ember glowing brighter, pushing its heat out until the straw begins to smoke and then flares up. She lays the kindling carefully overtop now, and when that begins to burn, adds a log, bark side to the flame. At the side of the forge she’s mounted her bellows - it’s easier, this way, since she has no apprentice to work it for her - so she dashes quickly to its handles to begin working them, strokes slow and firm, until the satisfying crackle and the scent of spruce tell her the fire is fully alive.
While the flame seasons, she tops up the quenching barrel with well water and then puts more water in a pan to cook morning gruel over the forge fire. It spares her the trouble of having to build another fire in her hearth; it earns her strange looks from the neighbors, too, but she pays them no mind.
She’s long been accustomed to the neighbors’ strange looks.
Once the forge is hot and her belly is full, there’s nothing to do but wait and hope for customers.
--
Her first of the day comes early. Maggie hopes that’s a good sign.
“Scythe blade cracked,” the man says. “Hell of a time for it, too, with the early hay harvest coming in. I usually go to Harper down the way, but he’s taken ill, so ‘s wife says. You sure you can handle that blade, girl? It’s a heavy one.”
Maggie hums, and resists an impulse to reply snidely as she taps the blade free of its handle and uses her tongs to heat it in the forge. If she fixes the blade well, maybe this man will come back and bring her more business, so it won’t benefit her to be rude.
Harper’s ill, so the day will be full of business and opportunities.
There’s probably some sin in being grateful for a working man’s illness, but the church gave up on Maggie’s mortal soul some time ago, so it hardly matters.
She can tell the blade was quickly and improperly made, the metal improperly tempered and not kept hot enough as it was hammered, creating spots of weakness that can chip and crack. She heats it and hammers it, heats it and hammers it until she’s satisfied with the repair, then cools it in the water barrel and gives it a few passes with her file to sharpen the edge.
The farmer looks closely at it. “I’m sure that’ll hold up, ‘least until I can get Harper to work it again,” he says. “How much?”
“Threepenny,” says Maggie. She knows that’s what Harper charges for this much labor.
“Oh, that’s hardly threepenny’s work,” says the farmer, “and it’s not like you’ve got a family to feed. I’ll give you halfpenny.”
They haggle. Maggie takes a penny and a half.
But that customer’s unimportant. It’s the second customer -- a woman leading a limping chestnut Clydesdale -- who’s the one who’ll change her life.
She’s taller than Maggie, but not tall . Striking, and beautiful, but not pretty . Her hands are weathered, her eyes tired, and she wears heavy work-trousers not unlike the ones Maggie, herself, is wearing beneath her oilskin apron.
“I’m looking for the smith Sawyer,” the woman says, eyes glancing from Maggie to the space behind her, searching for someone else in the darkness.
“You’ve found her,” Maggie says, holding her hands out and open in display.
The woman blinks, reaching one hand up to stroke the horse’s neck nervously. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I thought you were--”
“A man?” Maggie fills in.
The woman laughs a little. “A boy, actually. I knew Sawyer was a woman, everyone knows the smith Sawyer is a woman, but I didn’t expect--” she gestures vaguely at Maggie’s body, incorporating, Maggie knows, her working clothing, her muscled and ashen forearms, the lack of curves at her hips and waist, the hair tied back from her face but hanging down her back. “I thought you must be her apprentice or something. Which,” she gestures vaguely at her own body, her own workman’s boots and dirty hands and hair cut short to her chin, “is a stupid assumption for me to have made.”
When Maggie smiles, it feels full and genuine and not at all like the curve she forces into her lips to appease her customers most of the time.
“I’ve had worse assumptions made about me,” she says. She gestures toward the horse’s cocked foot. “I’m guessing you’re here for a horseshoe.”
The woman sighs. “She lost it in the mud somewhere. I couldn’t find it. I looked everywhere.”
Maggie hums and smiles again. “Well, fortunately, I’ve got a few horseshoes lying around. Do you mind holding her while I have a look? I don’t have an apprentice.”
The woman doesn’t mind. Maggie notices that she holds the horse’s head gently, so that she offers no resistance when Maggie asks her to lift the offending hoof onto her stand.
It doesn’t take long to find a blank shoe of an approximate fit. She heats it, shapes it on her anvil, heats it and shapes it again until it fits the hoof perfectly, but in between the clanging of her hammer and the hissing of the hot iron in the quenching barrel, Maggie hazards a glance over at the woman, as surreptitiously as she can manage. The woman strokes the horse’s blaze, from forehead to muzzle, and the horse lowers her head with each touch, leaning into its calm.
“All done,” Maggie says into the echo of the last ring of the hammer. She sets the hoof back on the floor. The mare stomps once, twice, as though surprised by the weight of the shoe, and then settles comfortably to stand.
“You’re incredible,” the woman says, as Maggie makes her way to the horse’s head. “What’s the price?”
Maggie thinks of the woman’s kind, soft touch for her animal, and the unaccountable warmth it pulled from her chest.
“Keep your coin,” she says.
The woman looks up from the coin purse she’s pulled from a saddlebag. “I don’t want your charity,” she snaps, and then looks ashamed, as though she hadn’t meant to speak in that tone.
“It’s not charity,” Maggie says carefully. “It’s… an investment. In you as a customer. Keep your money, so long as you promise to come to me again the next time you need a blacksmith.”
The woman eyes her, head cocked, eyes narrowed, appraising. And then she smiles. “Shrewd,” she laughs. “All right.”
In the street, the blacksmith helps the woman into her saddle, taking notice but no notion of the cracks in the leather and the fraying in the stitching.
“Do you mind if I ask you your name?” Maggie asks.
The woman stares down at her for a moment and then shakes her head, bemused. “You’re a strange woman, blacksmith Sawyer. I’m Alex Danvers.”
Danvers. Maggie has heard of the Danvers name - a landowner, not far outside of town.
She smiles. “Maggie Sawyer. And it is a pleasure to meet you, Alex Danvers.”
Maggie watches Alex Danvers ride away until she disappears over the crest of the hill.
It may be the mid-morning sunlight, and the way it draws the eye. Or it may be the fact that Maggie can’t help but notice her differently, as the daughter of a landowner.
She notices the uneven wear of the heels of her shoes, the pull of the fabric of her shirt where holes have been stitched, the old mare’s sway back and the thinness of her tail. She remembers the threadbare coin purse, and how light of coin it seemed to be.
She notices all this, wonders how the daughter of a landowner, kind and beautiful and well into marriageable age, could wind up wearing the clothes of a servant and bringing an old workhorse in for a new shoe.
--
True to her word, Alex Danvers is back two weeks later with a broken plough-blade and a gelding needing new shoes.
She smiles at Maggie like an old friend as she steps down from the gig and begins to unbuckle the horse’s harness from the shafts. “As promised, blacksmith Sawyer,” she says, “And I need four horseshoes this time, not just one.”
Maggie laughs: “See? I knew my investment would pay off, Miss Danvers!”
“Alex,” Miss Danvers says, a hint of something inscrutable in her voice. “Please, just call me Alex.”
Miss Danvers - Alex - sets the shafts of her gig carefully on the ground and the gelding stands patiently, huffing a soft breath until she comes to his head and leads him into the smithy. Maggie can see the toes of his hooves hooves long and spread, the sharp angle from his heel to the ground, and the overworn shoes beneath it.
“I know he’s overdue for the farrier.”
Maggie’s eyes shoot up to see Alex looking at her from overtop of the horse’s muzzle, her palm resting on the pink flesh of his nose, her smile faltering, turning inward. Maggie is embarrassed to have been caught staring, as she had been, in judgment.
“I know that’s why he’s not as sound as I’d like him to be, these days,” Alex apologizes.
“Never mind,” Maggie says, with a smile. “I have a rasp and I’ve worked with a farrier or two before. This is a little more involved than it was with Gertrude, but I can probably clean him up before we put the shoes back on.”
“Oh, blacksmith Sawyer, I- I haven’t got-”
“Maggie,” Maggie interrupts. “If we’re using given names, it has to go both ways.”
Alex’s mouth works, fish-like. “ Maggie ,” she concedes, “but still, I couldn’t ask you to-”
“I’m offering,” Maggie says, “It’s really no trouble.” She ends the argument by bending to lift the horse’s foot onto her stand.
They speak idly. Alex works her father’s land, Maggie learns. “The strawberries are coming in,” she says. “We sell them to the court, for their preserves, but I steal one or two at every harvest, just to eat. Have you ever had one?”
“When I was a child,” Maggie says. “They grew near my father’s home, in the wild. They were delicious.”
When the horse is shod and the plough-blade fixed, Alex pulls her coin purse from her gig and says, eyebrow cocked pointedly, “How much?”
“Fourpenny,” Maggie replies.
“Fourpenny,” Alex echoes, dubious.
Maggie nods.
“Mr. Harper would charge at least a half-shilling for the shoes alone,” Alex says.
“Mr. Harper would,” Maggie agrees.
Alex’s eyes narrow. “If you’re giving me charity, Maggie, I don’t want it.”
Maggie sees a familiar defiance in Alex’s glare, simultaneously a call to judgment and rebuttal of it. “Of course I’m not giving you charity.”
“Then take this!” Alex says firmly and holds out her hand, two threepenny coins nestled in her palm.
Maggie shakes her head. “Only if you’ll take tuppence in return.”
“Sawyer-”
“I enjoy your company,” Maggie says, in a rush.
Alex’s eyebrows raise slightly, and she tilts her head, waiting.
Maggie takes a breath and wipes her sweaty forehead with the back of a sooty hand. “You laugh with me,” she sighs. “Most women close to my age avoid me. I think I scare them. The men - they work with me if they have to, if Harper gets sick or if his wait is too long - but they think I’m strange. So please, Alex, just - just pay me the four pence and nothing more. And understand that if I’m being generous, it doesn’t come from some misguided charity: it comes from the goodwill of someone who’s really, really out of practice in making friends.”
Alex’s eyes, wide and bright, lock onto Maggie’s for a long moment until, with a soft clink, her hand closes over the coin and returns to its purse. She looks down only when she has to, to watch her hand as it filters through the coins, and when it re-emerges it produces a threepenny coin and a penny alongside it.
Maggie’s shoulders drop, loosening a tension she didn’t know they’d held, and she smiles as she takes the money.
Wordlessly, Alex goes to her gig and steps up into the driver’s seat. As she gathers her reins, she looks down over her shoulder at Maggie.
“I’m not-” she tries, and fails, eyes worried. A deep breath, and: “I don’t know how to have friends, really.”
Maggie shrugs. “I don’t either.”
That earns her a smile before Alex taps her gelding with the reins and urges him out into the road.
--
Three days later, Maggie returns from a trip to market to find a small package resting at the foot of her horseshoeing stand.
She sits down at her bench and unties the string, the fabric unwrapping in her lap.
Six strawberries, red and shiny and only slightly bruised, smile up at her.