“It might have been worse, master. Shall we make the shrine here?”
“Below. Make it below. She took more there.”
A long time later Tagart realized the voices had gone away. Vaguely he could make out the sound of activity at different levels, and when he heard the gong it was not long before the ladders creaked close by and he knew the day-shift men were going above ground.
There were varying weights on his lower back and legs. His feet seemed to be splayed at an odd angle and he hoped they were all right. He was trembling, shivering with the cold, yet there was sweat on his forehead. With care he began turning his back, putting more weight on his right side. Lumps of chalk rolled off him. He turned completely and found he was no longer trapped: his legs, like his body, were bruised but otherwise undamaged, and all he had to do to free himself completely was pull them from beneath the pile of rubble.
Boak’s voice, feeble and hoarse, came from the darkness behind him. “Tagart? Tagart?”
“Boak?”
“I can’t move.”
Tagart reached up and his fingertips sculptured the outlines of the crossed struts that had fallen against each other in the cave-in and spared him the full force of the final collapse. The floor of the gallery had shifted sideways and down, forming a small chamber where he and Boak were left alive.
Boak was in pain. He said, “I’m cold.”
“Keep still.” On hands and knees, Tagart crawled towards the sound of Boak’s breathing. His hands lit on the water-bag: he felt it, the leather, the bung, the strap, acknowledging what it was. “Are you thirsty?”
Boak groaned. Tagart reached him and quickly found his face. It felt slimy. Boak was lying on his back, breathing quickly. He coughed. Tagart felt his jaw, his nose, behind his head. Much of his scalp had been torn off. Lower down, at the nape, Tagart touched something hard, wet, and strange, gritty with dust, the place where his neck was broken and his spine exposed.
“What are you doing to my feet?”
Tagart was trembling badly. He tried to hold the water-bag to Boak’s lips. A trickle came out. He retched and coughed and Tagart took the water away.
The rocks under which Boak had been buried were too heavy to shift. For the moment Tagart had been able to clear Boak’s mouth and nose so that he could breathe more freely. That was all. He knew that Boak was already finished. Even if they were rescued, even if Boak were given the best treatment with comfrey and splints, he would never survive. A broken arm might be cured, with luck; perhaps even a broken shin. But not a broken neck.
“I’m cold,” Boak said. “I’m cold. I want to be in the sunshine.”
Tagart sat rocking from side to side with eyes closed. His chest hurt. He hugged himself, trying to ease his pain.
“Boak?” he whispered.
No answer. Tagart held a palm under his nostrils. Nothing. Boak was dead.
Tagart crawled to the other end of the chamber, to the place where he had heard the voices, and put his cheek to the rocks. Sounds of picks and hammers were reaching him from another level. He moved his face from side to side, listening, watching, and tried to catch a glimmer of light. There was none.
Tentatively he explored the pile of rubble in front of him, desperate not to make a sound. It was composed mainly of small fragments of chalk, distinguishable by its greasy texture, some larger chunks, and a few flints. Here and there he felt broken planks and spars, and the shapes of wooden pegs and rope, and leather bindings that had burst from their brackets.
Piece by piece, he moved the rubble behind him.
* * *
The major obstacle was a pit-prop, wedged at an angle across the blockage. Even if he could have managed it, removal of the prop would have brought down the rest of the gallery about him and summoned help – the last thing he wanted. He was forced to work round the prop. The necessity for silence slowed his digging still further, but the blockage was less than four feet thick and his progress towards the other side was sure.
He had actually pierced the blockage, made a hole large enough to put his arm through and feel air, when the gong sounded and he thought he had missed his chance.
But he heard, instead of the night-shift men coming up the ladders, the descent of the meal slaves with their bags of stew.
He continued to pick at the rubble, making the hole wider, wide enough to get through, and then he put some larger lumps back to fill the gap and settled down to wait and to examine himself properly, to take stock.
He had not suffered any internal injury, of that he was fairly sure; but the bruising in his chest was very painful and spreading further, into other regions, especially down his left side. The trembling in his hands had scarcely improved. But his limbs were intact, especially his legs, for which he was glad: whether or not he had received a concussion, he could still run, and for the moment he could think. There in the complete darkness of the collapsed gallery his thoughts ran clear and cold, uncluttered in a way he had never known before. He felt he could see into the future, if he wanted. He knew what was going to happen. It was no mistake that events had fallen in the way they had.
For him it had all been a lesson. The forest, impersonal, indifferent to him in his time of need, now promised to take him back. He saw the pattern. He saw the end, his release from the acrid loneliness that had been with him since the massacre.
He waited, as if he were waiting for deer, exploring his thoughts. The water-bottle lay at his side. No mistake. Fifty miles to Burh. He could not risk using the Valdoe roads. A forest route, then. Twenty miles a day, his usual speed, would be too much for him in his present state. Fifteen. Allow three days. Four at most. He would have to feed himself on the way. Burh in four days. Four back to Valdoe. That left two spare days before Crale Day.
It could be done. He could get the girl out somehow.
He gave his mind to luring the head man from the village. Among the trees, he wanted him among the trees. Easy.
Everything easy, falling into place …
How to deal with Valdoe afterwards, how to bring Segle out, as he had promised her brother by the ferry station with the clouds blowing over Thundersbarrow and the spokes of sunlight across the river, giving the weight of his honour; and, because he was the one chosen to be left, the weight of the tribe’s honour, given to a small boy struck dead later that day because he loved his sister more than his own life.
Valdoe would not be so easy, not so easy as the village, but in his delirium Tagart knew he could do it too.
* * *
At the second gong Tagart was ready. He pulled the lumps of chalk from the gap; before the first slave had started up the shaft he was squeezing through the hole and into what was left of the gallery. He lay there momentarily, overcome by the excruciating pain in his chest, forcing himself by an act of sheer will to do what he had planned next.
By the time Tagart had finished it, the painstaking task of filling in the hole, the ladders were creaking with the weight of men passing upwards. He waited his chance in the darkness near the gallery mouth and, the water-bag thrust inside his tunic, swung himself onto the ladder and joined the exodus.
A rainstorm was blowing above ground. The guards and soldiers, clad in sodden sheepskin capes, were shouting to each other above the howling of the wind. Tagart was the sixth or seventh miner to emerge blinking in the morning light; he turned with a comment to the man behind him.
“Let’s hope they’ve got something better for us than the mid-shift meal.”
“At least we get a drink with it.” The rain was pelting the ground, sweeping across the face of the hill, obscuring and then revealing the shape of fortress at the summit.
All the miners were filthy, grimy with chalk. Tagart’s appearance excited no interest or comment, for he had cleaned most of the blood from his face and beard. He moved forward, covertly glancing at the piles of timber newly removed from the west workings.
Tagart traded more remarks with his new-found friend, establishi
ng himself, or so he hoped, as a member of the night-shift.
“Quiet there!”
More men were appearing at the entrance of the other shafts, while the soldiers watched and the overseers shouted orders, marshalling the slaves into a rank. The soldiers and overseers looked cold and wet. Some of them had been standing in the open all night, and would get no shelter until this shift was safely behind bars.
Tagart heard Stobas’s voice issuing instructions. The rain was blowing in curtains across the workings, streaking chalk on the miners’ faces, plastering hair to heads. Tagart felt his clothes increasing in weight.
The line of men was moving too fast, too far away from the pile of timber Tagart had chosen; he stooped and pretended to see something in the grass before shuffling on. The man with whom he had spoken went ahead.
“All up!” shouted the overseer from the west workings, and one by one the others reported the same.
“All up!”
“All up!”
Tagart felt a flood of gratitude. The weather was doing it for him. The weather.
They halted. From the back of the rank he glimpsed the overseers standing tall, moving their hands edge-on, counting off the slaves in threes. The first had finished his count and was frowning. He started to count again.
On either side of Tagart the slaves were looking straight ahead. One was a thin, spare man who looked like a farmer, the other a shorter man who could have been a foreigner like Chorn. Neither seemed to have noticed him particularly. Like the others, like the guards, they were keen to get the count finished and hurry back to the buildings for shelter.
The back of the rank was being observed by at least three soldiers. From the rank to the pile of wood he thought it twelve or fifteen paces, too many to cover undetected with the soldiers watching, even in this rain.
A hundred or so heavy struts made up the pile of wood, laid parallel to the line of the rank. Just beyond it lay other piles of wood, and a series of white chalk spoil-heaps discoloured by topsoil, leading downhill and away from the fort. The ramparts were nearly a mile off. In this weather there was no danger of being seen from the Trundle.
“One over!” the first overseer shouted, and for a moment all heads turned.
It was enough. Tagart, backing gingerly at first, cleared the rank and ran to the pile of wood. He glanced behind. Everyone was listening to Stobas demanding how ninety-three could have come up when only ninety-two had gone down.
Everyone except one man, the farmer who had been standing next to Tagart.
Tagart met his eye.
The farmer smiled, glanced sideways at the soldiers, and turned back with every sign of renewed interest to watch the dispute between overseers.
“One over!” the second overseer shouted.
“Check count!” Stobas ordered. “Rank form into pairs!”
But Tagart had already found a place to hide in the middle of the pile. He crawled through a triangular gap, constricting his chest again, pushing with the heels of his hands on the rain-soaked timbers. The pain of working himself past the struts threatened to make him cry out. But his chest was through and he dragged himself further inside, into a space lower down. Vision fuzzed by pain, he forced himself into it and, just as the rank re-formed and the soldiers again began their supervision, his ankles and then his toes slid through the triangular entrance to his hiding-place and disappeared from view.
4
Tagart listened. After completion of the check count, Stobas became even more suspicious and there was talk of sending someone back to the fort to advise the Trundleman. But for the weather, and the fact that the check count had given, after all, the right total, a search might have been ordered, and the dogs brought down. Tagart drew himself further into the pile of timber. He was hungry and very tired, suffering the symptoms of shock and concussion. The pain of his bruises was growing steadily worse. Later in the day, more timber was flung on the heap, and Tagart feared that he might be trapped. But at nightfall, when the shifts had long since changed and the soldiers were least expecting anything unusual, he silently extricated himself and hobbled into the darkness unobserved.
That night he made only five miles, stopping in the early hours to rest and await the morning. Any exertion made the discomfort worse. His sleep, a few minutes together, was coloured by nightmares that seemed to persist in his waking thoughts. The same dream repeated itself. Segle was with him in some unfamiliar place, a lake in a clearing. He knew they were safe, a great distance from Valdoe. They were beside the water, drowsy in the afternoon sun. Tagart had shot a wild-cat and they were roasting it over a bed of embers. Beside the lake stood the brown stems and umbels of chervil and kex. Creamy blossoms of hemp agrimony billowed pink across the water, in line with the course left by the passage of their bodies through the weed. They had been swimming, out through the frog-bit and into the centre of the lake, where from a deep spring the water welled limpid and cold. The girl was naked, her hair wet and lying close, revealing the shape of her head, but as he looked into her eyes they became the sockets of a grinning skull. He ran to the water’s edge and knew what he would find. She was floating just below the surface, white and swollen.
There were other dreams involving the girl. Frequently he shouted himself awake and sat up, shivering and trembling. At last he got to his feet.
The strength had gone from his legs. He found it hard to keep moving, even from tree to tree: he was bone tired. Full daylight was coming on. He ate a few berries, felt better for them, and in the dry leaves under the bushes discovered a hedgehog, curled up in sleep. As he had no knife or hand-axe he urinated on the animal to make it uncurl, then killed it by pinching the snout. With a broken pebble he did his best to skin it, and ate it raw. A little later he came across a wood pigeon’s nest in the ivy against an oak and gulped down the contents of both eggs.
He was travelling north-east, into the deep forest behind Eartham Hill, keeping away from the coast and open ground. The sky cleared gradually and by the time he reached the first of the great rivers there was intermittent sunshine. The sun stayed with him on most of the following days, days of slow progress and weariness. He was finding it increasingly hard to think straight, to remember details. Not only were his thoughts sluggish, but his body refused to respond properly. The second day was the worst. After that he began to improve and was able to cover more ground.
On the third day he came across the remains of a temporary camp, vacated less than a week earlier by a tribe whose bark-cut signs he identified as the work of the Jays – people he knew. Not for the first time, he considered seeking help. But he had no time to spare. The Jays had gone north-west and might be days ahead, and he was moving east.
On the fourth night, under a gibbous moon that made the marshes silver and black, he came out of the forest and used one of the punts to cross the wide river in the reeds, the last of the great rivers in his path. And on the fifth day, at mid morning, he found himself once more in sight of Burh.
He had been absent for twelve days. Outwardly, there had been little change. From the escarpment he watched people in the compound and on the steps of the Meeting House. Work had resumed in the fields, which now were markedly greener. After a while he made out the beardless man, Groden, working with several others, cutting hay from a field by the river. Tagart wondered if his hole in the silo, his entry and exit, had yet been discovered.
He could not find his yew tree straight away. It had been concealed and camouflaged too well, and his memory deceived him: the tree was more to the north than he remembered, and it looked different in shape. But he found it with his nose. The strips of venison had putrefied. A fox had taken many of them. The rest were crawling with maggots. Tagart carried the strips away and flung them into the undergrowth.
He checked over what remained of his stores: a few flints, three bows lacking strings, an arrow, short lengths of twine and rope, two water-bags. He would need to arm himself before going back to Valdoe. The village: the
y would have weapons down there; and he would have to have clothes and clogs to get inside the fort. Those too could be found in the village.
Yes, he knew the way it was all going to unfold.
He shut his eyes and covered his face. His hands were still trembling: they had not stopped, not completely, since the cave-in. He felt as if he were burning his reserves at a profligate rate, fighting alternate waves of chill and heat. Still his thoughts were not normal. There were blank spots, areas of impenetrable or hazy memory, moments of lucidity followed by a kind of delirium in which his mind raced extravagantly, inconclusively. The toll of the past weeks was catching up with him. He undid his tunic and examined himself again. The bruises had begun to heal.
He told himself had been in low states in the past. He had been hurt before. This was nothing new. The bruises, the exhaustion and fever, the delirium, these were nothing new. He tried to console himself.
But alone, and in his condition, he had no defence against mistakes.
He pushed the thought aside, fastened his tunic, stood up, and went outside to find food.
Only in the evening, after he had slept, did Tagart remember there was something else in his camp that he still had to investigate. He found the oak tree after a short search and climbed into it.
Hernou was still hanging upside-down. The blood had drained into her head and the upper part of her body. From the contortion of her features he gleaned an idea of the circumstances of her death. In her throes the rope had been worn almost to its last fibre wherever it rubbed on bark. The gag had been half eaten. Tagart undid it. Her face was unrecognizable. She had been dead for about eight days.
Remembering at last what he had planned to do with her, he cut the body down.
How could he have forgotten?
How could he have forgotten such a thing?
No answer came. Trying to ignore the smell and the flies, he put her over his shoulders and, gasping and struggling with the weight, set out through the undergrowth on his way to the escarpment.
The Stone Arrow Page 16
