My master's face fills a lit pane the size of a shutter, and he speaks into it, and no one hears him. This is his own doing. He has pressed some little seal to silence himself, so that he may speak curses at the pane while the others in it go on smiling, none the wiser. I have seen the same craft in confession, near enough, a man saying the true thing quietly where only God attends.
He is very busy. He has been very busy since the cock crowed, and he has not lifted a single thing heavier than the warm little tile he taps. His mouth moves. He nods at the faces the way a man nods at the priest when he has stopped listening. Then he unseals himself and says something soft and pleasing, and seals himself again to sigh.
I waited all the morning for him to go to a field, or a beast, or a wall wanting mending. He went nowhere. The work was the talking, and the talking was mostly the seal.
Once, when the pane was silenced, he laid his head upon the board and shut his eyes, and I saw him for what he was, as tired as any man after harvest, and with nothing brought in.
God keep him. I do not think this is idleness.
I think it is a penance he has not been told the name of.