by Meg Rosoff
She reported first to the master, a florid ex-soldier. He smiled a smile avid with desire, and she looked away, unable to conceal her disgust.
“Ridley, you say? A mute boy?” His expression was ugly, repaying her dislike in kind. “I don’t think we have one of those.”
She fought an urge to run.
“Of course, if a boy’s unable to speak there’s no way of knowing where he might be. Dead and buried, most likely.”
Pell flushed. “May I look, to be certain?”
The man bowed, tucking one hand beneath his stomach, in a mockery of old-fashioned chivalry. “As you wish, Miss Ridley.”
Despite his offer, he did not move aside for her to pass. Pell hesitated for an instant, and it was enough. He was quick, grabbing her arm, digging his strong fingers into her flesh, and drawing her so close that she could smell the onions and brandy wafting up from his gullet.
“The boy isn’t here,” he breathed, his face inches from hers, his other hand pressing her against him. “But I have connections that would make finding him easier.”
Pell held her breath and stood perfectly still, imagining herself frozen, or dead.
“It’s not much I’m asking in return.” His voice rumbled low in her ear. “Just an hour or so of nothing that costs you, miss.”
Pell didn’t flinch. She met his gaze with her own, perfectly level. “If you do not remove your hand from my arm,” she said quietly, “I will cut your throat.”
His eyes widened as he felt the tip of Dogman’s knife pressed against the underside of his jaw. He drew away from her slowly, face flushed scarlet.
“You harlot,” he hissed. “You’ll never see your bastard again.”
But she could smell his fear, and knew him to be a coward. Still holding the knife, she walked past him and out the office door.
It took nearly an hour for her to search the boys’ ward. As she walked around the miserable room, she observed heaps of stinking rags, which turned out to be children huddled together for warmth, too exhausted and hopeless to move. Only their eyes followed her. She chose one or two emaciated creatures still with the energy to pluck at her skirt, and asked if they’d seen a child matching Bean’s description. One boy with a head like a skull answered that he had indeed seen such a child.
“Never spoke a word, did ’e? They put ’im to work on the crushers, dint they, though ’e warn’t likely to live long doin’ that sort of work. Delicate thing ’e was, miss.”
“Was?” Pell’s heart stopped.
“Gone now, ent ’e, miss?”
“Dead?” Her voice shook.
“Not dead. Left, miss.”
“Gone where? When?”
“Disappeared, not long ’ence,” the boy said. “Dunno where to, miss.”
Her face fell, and the boy took advantage of the moment to insert his cold bony fingers with utmost gentleness into her pockets, feeling for bread or coins. He found a scrap saved for Dicken, stuffed it at once into his mouth, and looked up at her with burning eyes.
“Being mute, ’e warn’t likely to tell us, now, war ’e?”
Thirty-two
Dogman’s wife received him without enthusiasm.
Their son, a half-grown fair-haired lad, hung back in the shadows while his mam made tea, and emerged only when called upon to fetch more wood for the fire. The boy snatched glimpses of his father, torn between excitement and fear.
The pretty woman beside the hearth tended a baby with pursed lips and a pale nimbus of fine hair. “We called her Winnie,” she cooed. “After her gran.”
Dogman looked at the baby and nodded.
“Do you want to hold her?”
“I’ll leave that to the father.”
His answer didn’t suit her. “What brings you back?”
With a tilt of the head, he indicated the boy. “Time someone taught him to hunt.”
“Gareth could do that.”
“Could. Won’t, though.”
She puffed out her feathers like a hen. “Don’t start taking issue with him.” She sounded querulous to her own ears, and scolded herself for taking up his bait, and so soon. “He’ll be back anytime now. Doesn’t stay away so long nowadays.”
Dogman didn’t comment.
“And besides, the boy’s at school now. Doesn’t need to learn your ways.”
“So you say.” He looked away from her. “Tom . . .”
She persisted in needling him. “No one calls him by that name now he’s grown.”
He sighed. “Thomas. You want to come hunting?”
“Yes, Pa.”
“And who’s to pay the fine, or visit the lad in prison when he’s caught with a doe or a grouse that don’t belong to him? I’ll not be worrying about transportation neither, do you hear? Won’t have my son sent half round the world in chains.” She stopped, wiped a film of sweat from her forehead, and leaned her arms and head up against the great wooden beam of hearth in an attitude of defeat. He saw for the first time that she was expecting another child. “I thought I’d be rid of you by now, and your hold over us.”
Dogman stood up abruptly. His expression hadn’t changed, but the dog at his side looked up at him and trembled. “I’ll come at dusk.” As he went out, he heard her muttering her disapproval to the boy, or perhaps to herself.
Every night, Dogman called for Tom and they set off. The boy had to run to keep up with his father’s long strides as they walked for miles in the dark. At first it was agony for him, tripping and falling over every ridge and stone, catching every branch in his face or chest. Great sobs of self-pity welled up in him as he stumbled along behind the terrifying figure of this man he barely knew, who marched through the woods in seemingly endless pursuit of nothing at all—for they rarely stopped to draw breath, much less to trap something.
For more than a week the man pretended not to notice Tom’s desperate gait, his ungainly attempts to keep up; for more than a week he gave his son’s misery and his clumsiness time to pass. And much to the boy’s own amazement he began to feel how things were underfoot, began to sense the shape and camber of the ground, and to accommodate it as he ran. Slowly, he found himself knowing how and where a branch would spring back, his eyes detecting shape and movement where before there had been nothing but impenetrable dark. He heard things he’d never heard before, sounds that told him how near he was to water or to stone or how the land dipped up ahead. Now when he stood perfectly still he could hear birds flying or calling softly; he could hear footfalls that weren’t his own. The difference between one rustle and another let him know a bird or a mouse was nearby, or merely the wind. And all this he learned without being taught, merely by following Dogman when he walked and stopping to listen when he stopped. As he learned more, he began to relax, to walk more quietly and yet more freely, to hold himself less fearfully and embrace the dark.
When he had accomplished this first part of the boy’s training, Dogman, too, began to relax, to know the job could be done.
On the nights that followed, his teaching commenced in earnest. He taught the boy to lie perfectly still and wait for the moon or a lantern to reflect light on a pair of red eyes. He taught him how to make and set snares for rabbits and foxes, to fasten each carefully along well-used paths and adjust the tension to kill cleanly. He taught him to speak to his dogs so that they knew what was expected, and would bowl and kill or retrieve the prey, as he liked. He taught him to move silently through dry woods; to catch birds on misty mornings in low nets they couldn’t see; to treat a rat bite and draw a goose without leaving a mark on the body; to net dens or lure a badger from its sett.
Each morning he returned the boy to his mother, and disappeared before she could thank him. Which was just as well, as Tom’s mother had already paid her penny a day in advance for his lessons, and was angry at the waste, on top of everything else. She didn’t know where Dogman slept and didn’t care.
The boy learned. Dogman didn’t speak a great deal, but when he did, his son li
stened. Thomas felt proud of his new skills, and though he didn’t exactly enjoy the company of his father, he feared it less. After a month, Dogman began to feel that his duty had been discharged, at least for now. At the beginning he had wondered what sort of son he had, but by the end he knew: avid enough, clever enough, willing enough. But enough his mother’s son as well, so that he dragged his feet, just enough, unwilling to abandon himself entirely to the job at hand.
One night, Dogman returned the boy at first light and was greeted by the sight of a horse tied up outside the cottage. He recognized it immediately and sat down nearby with his dogs to wait.
Harris emerged a few minutes later. “Long time,” he said, grinning.
“That it is.”
“You checking up on your wife?” Harris leaned back against the front of the house with a proprietary air, still grinning. “Thought you no longer cared.”
“You thought right.”
Harris laughed and shook his head. “Marion says you’ve no faith in me to raise your son properly.”
“That’s right.”
“Don’t blame you. Not much good at it.”
“Damn good at something, though.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” Harris laughed again. “Want to drink to my next brat?” He crossed over to his horse and pulled a bottle out of the saddlebag. “Finest French wine,” he said, tugged out the bung, drank, and passed the bottle to Dogman.
“Don’t I recognize that horse?”
“This one?” Harris looked startled for an instant. “You might just. He’s one that girl picked out in Salisbury. Good eye she had, all right. Look at him. Turned out handsome, eh?” The deep bay glowed with condition. If it hadn’t been for the crazy blaze on the face, Dogman would never have recognized him. “Often think of that girl. Knew her business, all right.”
“Didn’t get paid, though.”
Harris frowned. “What’s that?”
“Didn’t get paid.”
Harris kicked at a stone in the path. “I waited and waited. Girl never showed.” He drank from the bottle again, and looked closely at Dogman. “What do you know about it, anyway? Hardly seems your business.”
“Girl lost her horse, her brother, and five pounds that day. A lot of people got to hear about it.”
Harris squinted annoyance. “And her spreading it far and wide that I’m some sort of criminal horse thief child-stealer?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“I’d give her the damned money if I ever saw her again. Not that it’s likely.”
Dogman held out his hand. “I’ll give it to her.”
Harris laughed. “That’s a good joke.”
Dogman didn’t move.
Harris paused, studying Dogman’s face until something in his brain added two and two and came to a conclusion. He burst out laughing. “Well, well, well. So now you’re a one-man benevolent society for the well-favored needy, are you?” He reached over to slap Dogman’s shoulder. “I see it all now, I see it all.”
“The money?”
Still laughing, Harris disappeared into the house and came back with five pounds. “If I hear she doesn’t get it . . .” He handed it over. “That’s food straight out of the mouths of babes. Including your own. Don’t know how you live with yourself.”
“Nor do I,” said Dogman.
Thirty-three
So Bean was alive, or had been recently. Pell searched the village and asked at every place if anyone had seen a small boy, mute, on his own, but to no avail. A thousand times a day she placed herself inside her brother’s head and attempted to imagine where he’d gone. But, apart from a burning desire to put a distance between herself and this awful place, she felt nothing. Whom did he know? At what place would he find shelter? There were no options.
With the exception of Nomansland.
Pell traveled all day and half of the next, with Dicken loping at her side, setting out as the first gray light dribbled over the horizon, and barely stopping to eat. A hundred times over, she thought of sending word to Louisa, certain that by now she would be pregnant with Birdie’s child, and all rancor nothing but a distant memory. The reunion she imagined with her sisters and Bean was a joyous one.
When finally she arrived at the edge of the New Forest, she walked slowly, quietly, wrapped in Lou’s fine knitted shawl. For the last stretch of the journey, she arranged herself with dignity, imagining herself the prodigal son, anticipating welcome.
The forest foals she’d helped to raise were now sturdy yearlings, and she recognized them with pleasure. Budding hedgerows, woven through with brambles and ivy and still with a supply of red and black berries, harbored a hundred varieties of birds. The sun shone warm against a dark blue sky; soft grasses swung glowing in the early-spring light. She exchanged greetings with one or two people whom she knew by sight, wondering a little at their faces. Nobody smiled.
It was the wrong time of year to be coming home; a few months later and all the women and children would be out in their gardens. Someone would have run ahead to alert Lou, who might (even now) be rushing out to meet her. Pell rehearsed her return over and over, the forgiveness each would show, the happy couple, even her good-for-nothing pa and poor, worn-out mam rejoicing. And, best of all, she saw Bean, having found his way back to the only permanent place he knew, smiling at her from the doorway.
As she walked through the hamlet, however, no one ran to greet her. Women who happened to be out of doors stared as she passed, nodding briefly in greeting, and the children she recognized stopped in their tracks and gaped silently. “Look at me,” she wanted to say. “Look at my dress, how new it is and how handsome, and my boots, polished and of excellent leather.” She was certain that someone must have run ahead to let her family know she was back; any minute now the little ones would be shouting her name and throwing grubby arms around her. But here she was, almost home, and still no sign.
What came to her first was the awful smell of catastrophe, the dampened soil and the charcoal odor of collapse.
The house, when she reached it, was ruined.
What remained of the roof had caved in, the sidewalls lay in crumpled heaps, the front door charred and smashed. What was left of the garden lay heavy under a thick blanket of old ash. Pell brought both hands to her mouth to contain a wail of disbelief. She raced along the road to Finch’s, which she found exactly as usual, shutters open, a polite trail of gray smoke curling up from the chimney. Pounding on the front door, Pell stepped back abruptly when one of Birdie’s sisters, her eyes wide as saucers, threw it open.
“Mam!” she cried, and Mrs. Finch came, meeting Pell with the corners of her mouth drawn down.
“So you’re back, are you? Well, I’m sorry for you, I suppose, but you got what you deserved.” Behind her, a figure appeared. The face had a red, unhappy look, with bruised-looking flesh around the eyes, and for an instant Pell didn’t recognize him.
“Hello, Pell.” He smiled. “I knew you’d come home at last.”
“Oh God, Birdie, what happened? Where is everyone?”
“That’s a fine dress you’re wearing. You’re looking well.”
“Birdie, for pity’s sake!”
“You been away months.” He spoke to her as if explaining to a child. “Lou’s gone. Your mam and pa both burned to death in the fire. Buried there.” He pointed toward the chapel.
Pell moaned, but he kept on.
“Didn’t know where you were, so’s to send news. I knew you’d come back, though.” Eyes empty, he smiled again. “I been waiting.”
“What happened? ”
He shrugged. “It started in the thatch, at the back wall, at twilight. A spark, maybe. Your father’d been drinking and your mam was in bed, ill. By the time anyone knew, it was too late.”
She could have smashed his face for the slow way he spoke.
“Lou and the girls were out when it happened.”
“Thank God.” She wept quietly.
“Lou’s gone now.
Married a man from Lover. Fancy that! Old Mr. Bellings.” He grinned mirthlessly as he said the words, and leaned in till his face was right up against hers. “Old man. And the little girls taken to Andover.”
She sank to the ground.
“Lou’s husband wouldn’t have ’em. And no one here to care for ’em. No house, and no money.”
“But couldn’t you and Lou—” She broke off and he turned the half-question over in his head, making sense of it.
Slowly, her meaning dawned on him. “You expected me to marry her?” He recoiled. “But it was you I loved.”
She looked at him dully. “There are other girls, Birdie.”
“Who’d marry a fool? That’s what they call me. No one’ll have me now. Except maybe there’s a girl in Lover, not right in the head. Maybe you could tell her family why you had to creep out in the night, because of it being such an awful prospect, marrying me.”
“Birdie, I—”
“But you haven’t got another husband, have you, so it’s not too late to undo what you’ve done.”
The ground spun.
“Go on, I’m asking you again, aren’t I? I got no place for pride.” He was beside her, had gathered her hands in his. “Marry me if you’re sorry, Pell. Put it right.”
She stared at him, dumbstruck, and he stared back, understanding at last that whatever plans she had made did not include him. His expression froze.
“Just leave here.” Anguish twisted his features. “You’ve brought enough sorrow, to me and to everyone else.”
She stepped toward him. “Birdie—”
“Go!” He was shouting now, threatening her. “And don’t come back.”
She fled.
