by Paul Kearney
Stupid thoughts. I hug Pie close, and listen to the sound of nothing in the night.
THE MOON IS high in the sky and I am shuddering with cold. I was asleep, for how long I don’t know, but my teeth are chattering and the grass crunches with frost as I reach out for Luca’s jacket and pull it tight across my shoulders. Pie’s face has dew frozen upon it and my legs are numb below the knee. I try to flex my toes in my galoshes and wonder if I could even stand up. But the cramps in my stomach have bled away, which is something. I think of toast, and the kettle singing, and wish I was back in the tall old house in Jericho, which was never warm but was never as pitiless as this.
Then I hear noise upon the track, and all thoughts of Jericho and the cold are instantly gone, and I do not even shiver as I lie full length on the rime-stiff grass and peek over the edge of the bank.
A familiar noise; the clopping of a horse’s hooves and with it the clattering trundle of wheels coming up the hill to the edge of the dyke. I stare. A horse and cart, the animal leaning into the traces as it hauls its way up the hill – and a dark shape upon the seat of the cart, slapping the reins on the horse’s rump and clicking the way horsemen do out of the corner of their mouths.
I want to jump up, for I think I know who it is, but I also want to wait until I am sure. Before I move they draw level with me, and at once the shape on the cart reins in.
‘Whoa there.’
He turns in his seat, and scans the bank while the pale mare mouths her bit and shakes her ears, her breath coming out in hot clouds full of moonlight.
I want to stand up, but my feet are numb. I want to speak, but something stops me.
A match flares, and I see the face of the man on the seat of the cart as he leans into the flame and sucks it into the bowl of his pipe. It is the farmer, Gabriel, who gave me a lift to Oxford station in the morning that seems already a long time ago.
Before I can make my mouth open, a shadow leaves the grass at the side of the track, not twenty yards away, and strides over to the cart.
‘My Lord,’ it says.
‘Well?’ The pipe burns red in its bowl, lighting up Gabriel’s face with every draw.
‘They are in Boxing Hare Wood, all of them. They have sigils up around.’
‘Their watchers?’
‘Out wide, but coming in. Watching no longer.’
Gabriel smokes in silence, until his head is wreathed in it. ‘Then they know more than we,’ he says, and sighs.
‘The boy has been abroad, the skinchanger – he passed me on the track below not an hour ago, alone and moving fast.’
‘The boy has heart,’ Gabriel says. ‘I like him. A pity he is what he is. Even on Port Meadow, he stayed his hand until forced.’
‘That went awry. We picked the wrong men for the job. We are truly sorry.’ The dark figure says.
‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’ Gabriel says, and he puffs on his pipe a while. ‘The girl is on this road, that much is sure. I set her on the way myself, guided her steps, and your people followed her past the Long Barrow. I do not quite understand how we lost her…’
‘It is my fault, Lord. The barrow was open. The Smith was at work…’ The words hang there in the dark.
‘I know,’ Gabriel says.
‘I had to work round it. I lost ground, and followed the boy, but she was no longer with him. They must have split up. She is alone now. She has to be.’
‘She is here, brother, upon the Old Road within a scant mile or two of where we stand – you can be sure of that. Alone or no, she will find her way to them – we can be sure of that too, now.’
‘The barrow –’ the man on foot begins.
‘It was open. That is all there is to say.’
‘I thought there was something else, Lord.’
‘Do not speak of it. Not to me or anyone. To name it is to give life to shadow. Time enough for that.’
The dark figure bows. ‘What is it you wish of us?’
‘Watch, and wait, for now.’ I came here as a beater, to flush out the birds, and now it seems they have flown faster than I could wish. The boy was quick off the mark. Watch the road. Mark everything. When the time comes, we will move.’
‘How will we know –?’
‘I will decide. What happened in Oxford was perhaps inevitable, but it was not our finest hour. There will be no more hasty interventions. We are in our own country now. The crux of the matter is upon us. We must be patient. Do you hear me, brother?’
‘Always, Lord.’
Gabriel nods, and the red glow of his pipe bowl lights up his face from below as the breeze catches it.
‘I will turn back. The hills are busy enough tonight, and I want to watch at the barrow for a while. This is the lightless dawn of the year, and our powers are not what they might be, whereas they have the strength of the dark and the season within them, and all manner of things are stirring that should be asleep. I want no more blood, brother. Our folk must stand back until the time comes.’
‘Some take it hard –’
‘They will obey,’ Gabriel snaps. ‘Mind the road.’
The dark figure at the side of the cart bows deep. Gabriel clucks his tongue and slaps the reins on the back of the horse, then begins guiding the cart back down the hill. It tilts and sways in half-frozen bumps and ruts and begins rattling back into the west. The dark figure watches it go, and then silent as a hunting cat it glides back up the track to the east and cuts across country, disappearing into the quicksilver darkness.
16
‘THEY’S THERE ALL right, in Boxing Hare Wood,’ Luca says when he returns, panting and grinning like a dog in summer. I can feel the heat coming off him. I think I could almost warm my hands at it.
‘Well, that’s good,’ I say, trying to stop shivering. It is more than cold. It is an ache at the heart.
The kind farmer who let me ride on his cart is one of them…
I am wondering if there is anyone in the world I can truly trust. I am even beginning to ponder if Jack and Mr Ronald are part of some great conspiracy. The utter strangeness of it all would be almost funny, if I were not sitting here in the middle of nothing and nowhere, staring at a boy whom I know to be more than that, right here – in the black heart of a winter night so cold I wonder if Pie’s porcelain face might crack.
This is an adventure, I tell myself. More frightening and real than anything I could ever have imagined. Invariably uncomfortable, Jack said. Well, he was speaking the truth about that, at least.
‘The Roadmen were here,’ I tell Luca. ‘They stopped right in front of me. They were following us the whole time.’
His grin closes. ‘You sat tight? Did they see you?’
‘No. They didn’t know I was right by them. I heard them talking, but they didn’t see me.’
‘Then that’s all right,’ he replies, very calm. ‘Did you not know they watch everything, Anna? They’s everywhere. It’s all we can do to fox them for an hour or two.’ He smiles. ‘But I’m back now. You’re a right sharp, you are, not a flat at all. Queenie is right – you got our blood in you and no mistake.’ And he reaches out a hand and strokes my hair, just for a second. But it makes my blood thunder in my ears.
‘We have us a couple more miles to go, that’s all, and then you’ll be sat down with us, and the fire is going, and there is stew in the embers, and you need worry no more,’ he says.
‘Luca, why are the Roadmen so set on following me?’ I ask him, and I am genuinely puzzled. ‘What is it about Pa and me that is so important to all of you?’
He looks at me blankly. ‘They harry and hunt us, girl, us and all the Romani. It’s been going on for more time than anyone can recall. You’re one of us now, so they hunts you too.’
You’re one of us now – that warms me. But it is not enough.
‘They killed Pa,’ I say, and the words drop like stones out of my mouth.
He nods. ‘That they did. They have their own secret ways, the Roadmen, an
d they don’t mind spilling blood when it suits them. Now come, girl. We gots to go.’ He half-rises.
‘He let them in. He opened the door for them. Like they were someone he knew,’ I say stubbornly.
‘Most people open a door when it’s knocked,’ Luca says, impatient now. ‘Get up Anna.’ He lifts my rucksack. ‘It ain’t far now girl, and this is no place to linger.’
‘What will the Roadmen do to me if they catch me, Luca?’
‘Why –’ He blinks. ‘Why, they are the Roadmen, girl. They hates our kind.’
‘Your kind.’
‘You is one of us too Anna – don’t you listen to me? I swear, that doll o’ yourn got more sense than you.’
‘Because Queenie says so.’
‘Aye, because Queenie says so! She’s my ma, and she never speaks false, not to me nohow. If Queenie says I’m to bring you in, then that’s what I do.’
My heart falls, a horrible plummet in my chest. ‘So that’s the only reason you’re doing this – because Queenie said so – that’s why you’re here with me.’
‘Yes – no! God rot you girl, we don’t got the time for this!’
We clamber up the bank, and Luca stops there for a long time. He takes my hand and sniffs the night air again, and his head swings back and forth like a hound seeking scent.
‘Aye, they been here all right,’ and his tone is hushed. ‘Him o’ the pale horse was on this very spot. Why’d you not tell me?’
‘You didn’t ask,’ I hiss back. ‘I thought the Roadmen were all tramps and the like. How was I to know?’
He sways back and forth like there was a wind on him. ‘He was here his very self. Girl, you scare me. This ain’t right. There is summat else to all this; I knows not what.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just you hang on to me and get ready to run if you needs to.’
‘But Luca… he said –’
We are off, and Luca is dragging me in his wake once more.
WE RUN TEARING through the moonlight, and my galoshes become hot and slippery on my feet and I can barely keep up, for all that Luca has my knapsack bouncing on his back again. I stumble and trip, but every time I do his grip on my wrist yanks me up again. Once I go to my knees, and I cry out as I feel a flint gash one open. Luca does not even speak. He bends, looks at it, and then takes my arm and hauls me on again with blood trickling down my shin and into my sock.
I no longer know what all this is about, but whatever it is I know it has a grip of me now and will not let go, no more than Luca will let go of my hand as we pelt downhill towards the long wood on the right of the track.
It is a mile or two, he said, but it seems so much longer. I am hungry and thirsty and last night I slept in a wood alone and all day I have been walking, and I am so tired and bewildered that I just want to sit in a quiet, warm room for a while, just curl up with Pie and let the strangeness of the world leave me be.
We stop at last, and I bend over, trying not to be sick. The cramps are coming and going in my tummy again, and between my legs it feels horribly sticky and chafed. Luca is breathing hard too, and I see the strange dimensions of his face shift with every passing shadow of the moon. I do not know what I will do if he changes into the wolf right here in front of me. That would just be too much.
He shakes my shoulder gently. ‘Look, Anna,’ he says, pointing.
I follow his finger and see we are only a few hundred yards from the treeline now, and there is a tiny light coming and going in that darkness.
‘That’ll be Jaelle, with a lantern,’ Luca says with a smile. ‘All is well, now. One last dash, and we can get you beside a fire.’ He looks at me with that strange face of his and I see his nostrils widen into black holes.
‘You need to wash, girl.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’ I snap. I bend and rub my throbbing knee.
‘Your blood is on the air,’ he says, his gaze ranging back up the hill behind us.
I know it. I can smell it myself. ‘Let’s go,’ I say. I am so tired I just want to get it over with. ‘But not so fast, Luca. I can’t run another step.’
‘All right.’
We walk on down the long open slope that is amazingly bright under the moon. Luca catches me when I stumble and the heat of him makes me shiver, and I feel the hard bunched cords of his arm, and his nearness makes me a little dizzy for a moment. This is what they mean in the books when the heroine swoons, I thought. I always thought it was such rot, but it turns out to be true. Of course, the heroine has to be hungry and thirsty and tired beyond measure too. And bleeding – let’s not forget that.
‘Look to your left,’ Luca says quietly.
I do, and instantly shrink back against him. Standing like stones in the moonlight are one, two, three – half a dozen shapes black and silent not two hundred yards away.
The same on the right. And more behind us. They look as though they have been standing there forever, but in fact they must have just sprung out of the grass.
‘Roadmen,’ I whisper.
‘Aye. I never seen so many together before. Walk fast, Anna, and look ahead.’ He puts his arm about me and propels me forward more briskly.
The Roadmen stand still and quiet while our progress sounds ridiculously loud on the chalk track. I never thought I would be so glad to see a wood loom up in the night again, but as we draw near the line of trees so other shapes step out of the darkness, and the light moves with them. For a terrible minute I am sure it is a trick, and more of the Roadmen are luring us into a trap, but then I hear a girl’s voice, quick and sharp.
‘Move along Luca! Are you blind?’ I remember the voice. It is Jaelle.
‘The little maid is hurt and tired,’ Luca retorts. ‘Give us a hand then.’
I see Jaelle’s beautiful face above the light of the lantern, but it is severe and drawn now, and her black hair falls like a hood around it. Beside her other Romani men are fanning out, and they carry cudgels and knives. I shudder at the sight of the cold blades.
She holds the lantern up and peers down into my face, and sniffs. Her eyes widen a little. ‘Anna,’ she says, and smiles. ‘You has changed, since last we spoke.’ She sets a hand on my shoulder. ‘Come – you’ll be safe with us, little one. The enemy will not touch you now.’
Into the wood we go, and the moonlight is broken into a million little wandering pieces by the trees, and Jaelle and Luca support me, one on either side. The wood is more open than I thought, and dry underfoot. We turn right and follow it downhill. Beeches, I think, and some ash, and a big glossy holly which catches the light and shines like wet glass. Then there is more light ahead, a fire, and people around it, and a lovely smell of cooking meat.
A bulky figure stands there with the flame-light behind it, and I see silver shining on its forehead and glimmering in its eyes. It steps forward with its arms open, and becomes stout old Queenie with a wide smile on her face. She embraces me, and I sink into her arms with a sigh, and it is such a relief to stand still, to feel the running is over. For now at least.
She raises my head in her hands and looks down at me.
‘Anna me dear,’ she says, ‘You is most welcome.’ It is a lovely smile she has, and for a second I can see that she must have been as beautiful as Jaelle once. I just wish that her long teeth did not look quite so much like fangs.
17
THERE ARE FIFTEEN or twenty of them around the fire, men and women mixed. They are all ages from twenty to sixty it seems, and they all have the windburnt, bony faces of people who have been living out of doors for a long time. I never remarked on it before, but there are no children. Luca is by far the youngest here.
Jaelle sits by me as she did in Wytham Wood, and I am handed a tin bowl full of stew and a wooden spoon. I am very hungry, but it will be a race, I think, to see if hunger or tiredness wins out tonight. As I spoon the food down – it tastes dark and gamey this time, like kidneys – so Jaelle dabs at my gashed knee with a wet cloth and clucks
every time I wince.
‘Tain’t bad,’ she says. ‘These things always looks worse than they are.’ She stops and stares at me as I am eating, until I have to stop. ‘You done had your first bleed Anna, ain’t that so?’
I feel the heat creep into my face, and can only nod. She pats my arm. ‘That’s nothing to be ashamed of, girl. Means you are a woman now, well on the way to being growed up.’
‘I need a bath,’ I tell her in a low voice. ‘It’s filthy and feels horrible.’
Queenie draws near with a wide can of steaming water.
‘No bathtubs here,’ she says brightly. ‘But we’ll see what we can do for ’ee.’ She looks me up and down, and her face becomes solemn. ‘We is all daughters o’ the moon Anna. We feel the waxing and the waning of it in our bodies the way no man ever can. ’Tis our gift and our curse. We brings forth life, but must bleed for it. Blood must be paid for everything. Open your legs.’
‘What? No!’
‘Do as I say girl. You needs to be washed.’
I look at the others around the fire, my knees clamped together. ‘But they will see!’
‘No-one will look near us, I promises you that,’ Queenie says firmly. ‘Now you do as I say.’
She pulls aside my sodden knickers and peels off the wool sock, handing it to Jaelle. The younger woman takes it and sets it in the fire. I smell the blood on it as it burns. Then Queenie wipes me down like I am a little baby, and dries me, and hands me a clout of linen.
‘Use that. ’Tis a heavy bleed for one so young. You’ll change it again in the morning.’ She strokes my cheek. ‘’Tis a wonder you were able to keep your feet at all today.’
‘She’s white as a daisy,’ Jaelle says.
‘Eat up,’ Queenie tells me. ‘I’ll make some tea as will help. But you needs rest, more than anything.’
‘What about the Roadmen?’ I ask. ‘There are I don’t know how many outside the wood.’
