Harvest: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

All afternoon, Walter works with Mr. Quill and daydreams about finding employment with him when the sheep push him out of the village. It’s sad to think of leaving Master Kent, but he’d prefer that to living under Master Jordan’s rule. He works as meticulously as possible turning dried calfskin into vellum, although he doesn’t really know what he’s doing. Mr. Quill says he fears “for us,” but Walter points out that it’s Mistress Beldam who has most to fear. They agree that she must be found and warned, before someone eventually admits that the shawl belongs to her.

The two men are worried that Mistress Beldam will return to the cottage where she hid the shawl, and which the servants are guarding now. They know that her “native insolence and vulnerability” will attract the rough men, and that they will not behave kindly toward her. Mr. Quill says they must wait until Mr. Baynham isn’t around to look for her, and Walter suggests that they wait for her by the pillory, since she’ll probably come during the night to feed the young man.

Walter spreads out the calfskin and scrapes it smooth. It smells terrible, but Walter sees this as a test, an opportunity to prove his value as an employee. Meanwhile, Mr. Quill experiments with different colors, looking for the combination that will make the map easiest to read. He explains the process of mixing various colors to Walter as he works, as familiar with his implements as Walter is with the fields or the weather. Walter finds him a good companion for the long afternoon.

Thinking about the prospect of leaving the village, Walter know that he’ll miss long winter days most, when everyone is snug in their cottages, making new tools and fixing old ones. When Cecily was alive, she and Walter wove baskets for everyone in the village, enjoying each other’s quiet company.

Now that Cecily is gone, Walter tells Mr. Quill, he’s eager for a new adventure, and to leave the village before the sheep arrive. Mr. Quill nods, understanding Walter’s hint. Walter asks about his own background, and he explains that his parents are dead and that his eldest brother has inherited their house and merchant business; Mr. Quill can’t be of use to him, since he’s “unfit to work out of doors and too great an encumbrance to be employed within.” His disability has driven him to become a mapmaker, an occupation he enjoys.

Mr. Quill invites Walter to look at his sketches, and Walter is impressed by their strange beauty. To him, it looks like the patterns made by mosses or butterfly wings, which he observes in the land around the village. However, Mr. Quill’s drawings are neater and brighter than anything he’s seen in nature, “more pleasing than a barleycorn.”

First Mr. Quill shows Walter the sketch of the current village. With difficulty Walter discerns which shapes represent the barley fields and which lines delineate streams and boundary lines. He’s never had a true sense of the village’s shape. In fact, its outline looks like a man’s profile. It seems strange to view the common fields and forests in miniature, only the size of his thumb.

However, Walter says, the drawings aren’t completely accurate. Mr. Quill can’t capture the character of the land or the feeling of living in the fields. He’s made the village too beautiful, not taking into account rocky slopes and harsh terrain.

In the second drawing, the fields are even neater and more colorful. With the forests broken up, the profile Walter saw before isn’t evident. Walter praises the beauty of the maps and appreciates the vision they provide of his own world. Still, while they tell him where he’s standing now they say nothing about where he will be in a few days, and thus give him a sense of desolation.