‘You promise?’
Yöst sighed. How many promises did a child need? Was that what it meant to be an adult, that you spent your life keeping them? He squared his shoulders. ‘I promise.’
Before Zande had a chance to conjure up a further objection, he slipped over the side into chest-high water and waded ashore. Minutes later, he was back. He’d been running. Panting, he vaulted back into the boat. ‘All good, and the goat was very grateful, she told me so.’ He screwed up his nose, making Tatania giggle.
‘Goats can’t talk,’ Zande glared uncertainly as they sculled rapidly away from the breaking waves.
‘Yours does. She bleated … twice. Happy now?’ Yöst shivered, the water colder than he’d expected so close in. It must have been an abnormally high tide to have brought in such cold water.
Tatania pointed and clapped her hands. ‘Boat.’
M. Meijer shot round, the bright colour vanishing from his cheeks as he caught sight of its dark hull. ‘They mustn’t see you,’ he whispered, his voice barely above a whisper. Nevertheless, Zande heard its warning. He flinched, his eyes flying over M. Meijer’s shoulder towards the fishing boat, rapidly closing in on them.
‘Yöst! The tarpaulin! Underneath, quick.’
Ignoring the water swilling over the boards, Yöst pushed the two children into the bottom of the boat. Ducking down, he pulled the heavy canvas over them. It smelled strongly of rancid fish but that didn’t matter now. If these men possessed the same characteristics as those who had invaded the island, neither age nor innocence would prove an obstacle … and neither would stand a chance.
‘Shush, TaTa,’ he hushed the little girl who was singing quietly and pulled her onto his lap. Zande’s hand reached for his and he wrapped his spare arm around the boy’s shoulders. ‘It will be all right,’ he mouthed into Zande’s ear. ‘Nothing bad’s going to happen to you, I won’t let it.’
Cautiously, he lifted the edge of the tarpaulin and peeped out.
The vessel bearing down on their small dinghy had been cloned from the same rough pattern as the twenty or so other fishing boats that crowded the harbour morning and night. Yet from their position low down on the water, it took on the appearance of some vengeful deity, the bulbous eyes and fishtail of its figurehead encased in a forest of shaggy grey hair. It closed in silently, the echo of its engine doused by the rushing of waves against its hull. Only when it was almost upon them, did the hair on the figurehead resolve itself into netting, used by fishermen to trap their water-bound prey. It trailed down from the mast, its original colour bleached away by sun and salt water. There was scant colour in the boat, either. In places, its varnish had worn down to the bare wood, evidence, if any was needed, of a series of poor harvests. The three-man crew showed equal signs of poverty, their clothes shabby, and their faces red and raw, its skin dry and chapped from constant exposure to sun and wind, their hands blackened by toil.
Yöst released the flap of the tarpaulin, twilight instantly flooding the confined space. A brief glance had confirmed the identity of the newcomers, as being of the same ilk as those who had crept past his hiding place in the churchyard. His face softened at the notion of his grandmother, still reaching out a hand to protect him as she had so often done in life.
‘You fishin’?’
‘Was.’
Yöst could see nothing of their rescuer apart from his feet, as small and neat as the rest of him. Nevertheless, he sensed tenseness overtaking the older man’s body, a slight tremble marking his voice, conscious that he was demonstrating a different kind of courage. Wielding neither stick nor gun, he was purposefully courting danger by allying himself with the outcasts from the island.
Except, why were they considered outcasts? No, worse than that. These men and others like them believed them no better than vermin – something that needed to be eradicated. The fishermen had once driven the seals away; that he could understand because they’d almost emptied the surrounding seas of fish. His people hadn’t harmed anyone, nor stolen anyone’s living. So why had they been condemned to death?
‘I’ve given up. Nothing’s biting,’ the light voice of the elderly man rang out. ‘I was hoping for a bite of tuna. Baited my hook with a sardine too, never failed before.’ Yöst sensed a movement and guessed M. Meijer was displaying his evidence, a couple of scraggy sardines lying next to his fishing line. ‘Could have eaten them for supper.’ He had attempted to alter his accent into the coarse truncated speech of a working man, aware his own clipped vowels would sound out of place, more likely to create suspicion than to allay it. ‘Reckon now it’ll be bread and cheese.’
‘You see any movement on the island?’ Another voice, equally as rough.
Yöst felt Zande’s hand tense in his, hearing the man hawk saliva around his mouth and spit noisily.
‘Dark,’ Tatania whispered, as if she too was aware of the need to be silent.
‘Yes, dark,’ he gently kissed the soft cheek pressed to his. ‘No!’ M. Meijer’s voice sounded a shade stronger. ‘I was more interested in the fishing.’ he grunted out, ‘or lack of.’
‘You won’t be seein’ people there no more. They left. Only a light were seen and we was checkin’.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that. Good day.’
‘Not so fast.’ Yöst froze, listening intently. ‘Tuna don’t come in this close.’
The light-tenor voice rose, feigning annoyance. ‘Only a fool would fish for tuna off the island. Even herring give it a wide berth ever since the seals came. I was way out.’
Yöst caught the sound of oars squeaking in their rowlocks and the boat slowly began to move again. ‘Since when is it a crime to fish?’
‘It ain’t. We’re interested in makin’ sure no one stops off at the island.’
‘Why would they, especially with a storm brewing? Now, if you don’t object, I’d like to get home before it hits and eat my bread and cheese.’
Silence broke out except for the distant calling of seagulls, the dinghy lurching awkwardly from side to side. Conscious the fishing boat had remained stationary, with its engine idling, Yöst guessed M. Meijer was trying his hardest to set some distance between them. After a short while, feeling the boat slow, he raised the tarpaulin and peeked out, shocked to find him slumped over the oars. Catching sight of Yöst watching, M. Meijer instantly grabbed them up and began rowing again. ‘I’m not a brave man,’ he admitted with an embarrassed nod, ‘my size has always been against me. Those men could have fitted me into their coat pocket.’
‘Can we come out?’ ‘Better not.’
‘But it smells,’ Zande said, poking his face out and staring round, the coast with its houses and beach approaching rapidly now.
M. Meijer chirruped with relief, the colour gradually returning to his cheeks as the distance between them and the fishing launch increased. ‘At least you’re warm and dry.’ He rested his oars and held out his hand again, palm upwards. ‘There, I told you, it’s starting to rain.’
Yöst put out his hand feeling drops as light as the white thistledown that grew by his grandmother’s hut. Tears blurred his sight. He blinked them away, burying his face in Tatania’s soft hair. His home and the family who had brought him up, they were all gone. Nothing left. If only the rains had come earlier.
5
Wrapping his arm more firmly around Tatania, Yöst rested his chin on her hair, his eyelids drooping with weariness. The boat lurched and Zande burrowed deeper into the crook of his arm, his small hand resting on Yöst’s knee. Cautiously, he lifted a corner of the tarpaulin and peeked out. He didn’t bother to ask why they hadn’t yet landed, the fear on their rescuer’s face sufficient evidence that the fishing vessel continued to hover like some vast bird of prey.
Raising the sail, they swept past the port keeping a safe distance from shore. A heavy pall of cloud and rain, as dark as a mourner’s dark shawl, now coated both sea and sky and, as the temperature dropped still further, even within the shelter of the cliffs the
air struck cold, the two small children cuddled against Yöst for warmth. In the distance, chalk cliffs dominated the narrow hinterland. Rising up behind a scattering of buildings, their peaks stalked the air dusky white, their tips lost in a thick haze of mist, very different from the low-lying ground of the island or the close-knit streets of the town, where Yöst had once lived with his mother.
The end one in a long terrace, their house had been sited on a flat spur of land immediately behind the harbour, their back yard shared with a dozen others. If he stood on his bed to see out of the window, mastheads like a row of sharpened pencils hove into view. His school had been close by too and, once or twice, he’d been allowed to walk down the street on his own, swinging round every few steps to check his mother was still watching.
Burying his nose in the softness of Tatania’s hair, he caught a faint scent of lemons among the more pungent odours of sour milk and dried pee. They had had a tiny lemon tree in their garden, except you could hardly call it a garden, simply a strip of sun-baked earth that became a pool of mud in winter. They had taken the tree with them, when they moved to the island, and he had helped his mother arrange its roots in a large pot of earth. He wondered what had happened to it. Perhaps one of the women had cared for it after his grandmother died. If so, she was now dead as well.
Wearily, he listened to his pounding thoughts, as restless as the incoming tide. Repeating and repeating the same questions. Had he done the right thing in taking them away? If he had found a sharp knife or a blade in the ruins of the burned-out buildings, might his choice have been different? At the very least, he would have had a choice. Half a dozen rabbit pelts would have sufficed to make a sleeveless jerkin for Zande. He knew how to scrape their skins too, he had watched his grandmother often enough, using salt from evaporated sea water to cure the leather. It would have been an easy task, much easier than plucking feathers off small birds, and would have helped time pass until spring.
He began listing the positives to remaining on the island, counting them on his fingers and sweet-coating them, ignoring the imminent storm and the need for a fire on which to cook, and a needle and thread with which to sew the pelts. If any or all of that had taken place, he would have had no need to visit the beach and no meeting with Monsieur Meijer. No need to leave the island either, once they had warm clothes and the sea had washed the beach clear of bodies. The cave would have made a fine shelter, keeping them both warm and safe. Lulled by the rocking of the boat, he slipped into a doze, his fingers, still busy enumerating the reasons why and why not, lying slack.
Regardless, his mind continued down the track he’d set it on. The Black would expect that of him. That was how the clan worked and had always worked. He heard his grandmother’s voice. ‘The Black is a father to us all. He keeps us safe from harm, cares for the young ones, and in return we protect him.’
The boat lurched again and he opened his eyes. If that was so, why had the Black left them to face the onslaught alone?
‘Where are we going?’ he whispered, noticing the sky had darkened still further and, although they were holding a parallel course, the boat still stood well out from shore, clear of the breaking surf.
‘I would prefer those men to believe I have come from the neighbouring town, down the coast aways. Once we round this headland …’ M Meijer nodded towards a vast buttress of rock that rose from the sea in a giant upside-down flower, the long stalk of a lighthouse perched on its crown, ‘… they will no longer be able to see us and then we can land.’
‘This will do,’ he announced finally, hurriedly stowing away the sail.
The sandy spit he had chosen was deserted apart from a small dog chasing a flock of sanderlings, their grey and white plumage crisp and clear among the windswept flurries of sand. At the dog’s noisy approach, they rose unhurriedly into the air. Neatly tucking away their long legs, they landed a few metres away, the dog hurtling recklessly along the beach barking.
‘I will collect the boat later. Come, we need to get these children into the warm before they catch cold.’
It was a long walk back into the town, along narrow alleyways that ran uphill away from the beach, and by now rain was falling briskly, a keen wind stinging their faces. Built to provide an escape route against autumn storms that washed the incoming tide over the promenade, the lanes cut a straight line between dense rows of housing. No one was about, although their footsteps set a dog barking. A man bellowed a curse, threatening what would happen if the animal didn’t cease its noise.
Yöst, carrying Tatania, who was cuddled into his chest for warmth, found the steepness of the gradient made the muscles in the back of his legs ache, even her light frame heavy after a while. He was more used to running full pelt from one end of the island to the other, pretty much flat except for its cliff path. Even as a child he’d been able to cross it in ten minutes, fifteen if one of the adults stopped to talk or berate him for being careless and not looking where he was going. If there was no one about, he hopped, wishing he might fly the same as full-grown cobs.
M. Meijer carried Zande. At first, the small boy had insisted on walking, boasting he was equally as strong as Yöst. Nevertheless, without shoes, his feet soon dragged and his eyes began to close with weariness, slowing their progress even more. ‘How did you escape?’ he spoke quietly, hitching Zande more securely in his arms. Even so Zande’s eyes flicked open, dozing uneasily.
Yöst answered reluctantly, his voice tinged with bitterness and shame. ‘I should have stayed with Willem. Instead, I ran away and hid.’
M. Meijer slowed as they emerged on a main road, with little traffic apart from an old man riding a bicycle and a cart belonging to a rag-and-bone man. It had stopped outside a block of apartments, the donkey between its shafts standing on three legs and resting its fourth. Its grey head drooped listlessly, weary from pulling the heavy cart all day. He took them across in silence, still angling uphill, where roofs of blue slate remained visible above an unbroken run of yellow-brick walls, and grapes vines, their leaves chasing sunlight, clung to cracks in the bricks. On a stalwart few, the red flowers of the bean plant hovered like a row of firecrackers, optimistically hoping for a kindly bee to pass by and pollinate them.
‘Who was Willem?’
Yöst bit at his lip, reluctant to talk about his friend. ‘The leader of us boys. He would have changed this year. He got me out and told me to run.’
‘He must have been a good friend.’
‘He was.’ Yöst said the words confidently, remembering how Willem had cared for him after his grandmother died, helping him to dig her grave. It’s called taking you under my wing, he had joked. And when I fledge, he reassured him, as they smoothed the earth flat, I shall fly straight to the heavens and tell your grandmother you are safe and well. ‘He and some of the men stayed to fight. I should have stayed with them. It was cowardly to run.’
‘If you had not done so, you would now be dead like the rest,’ M. Meijer chided. ‘Because you survived, so have these little ones.’ He nodded at the boy curled up in his arms. ‘Yöst, never give your life needlessly. If you have to surrender it, make it count by choosing a cause more worthy than your continued existence. To have given your life for this …’ Impeded by the sleeping child, he moved his head slightly in a negative, ‘would have been a senseless waste.’
‘To give your life for the children of Zeus? A waste? I don’t understand.’
‘Never mind, you were saying?’
‘I hid under a gravestone,’ Yöst continued hesitantly. Perhaps his grandmother had helped him so that he might care for Zande and Tatania; maybe that was the reason he had lived when so many others had died. ‘It was toppled in last winter’s storms and had left a gap. TaTa and her mother were in a ditch nearby.’
‘And Zande?’
‘His mother hid him in the reed bed. When I first saw him, he was dripping wet and had lost his shoes.’
M. Meijer brushed a curl off the sleeping boy’s face. ‘Poor chil
d. Perhaps he is right and his mother did escape. If she took to the skies—’
‘No! She didn’t!’
Startled by the intensity of Yöst’s voice, M. Meijer’s swung round staring closely.
‘She couldn’t,’ he admitted, more quietly, his emotions as raw as if a knife had sliced away the outer layers of his skin, leaving its nerve endings exposed. ‘She tried, but she was clumsy carrying her unborn child. They used netting.’ He stopped, unable to speak about the screaming that had forced him to stopper his ears with his fists. ‘And she was so beautiful.’ He whispered the words to himself, experiencing once again the sense of loss that had overwhelmed him when his own grandmother had died. Now, they were all motherless. ‘Please, please, I can’t talk about it. Don’t make me; not yet.’
‘Cross here,’ M. Meijer pointed.
Their path had once again emerged onto a road, tram rails snaking down its middle, its houses replaced by glass- fronted shops. Yöst identified a cobbler on one side and a harness maker on the other, the leather work of his trade neatly set out on a trestle table on the pavement. The aroma of newly cured leather was pungent and mingled unpleasantly with that of the strong cheese from the next-door shop, making Yöst screw up his nose at the smell. A woman emerged from the cheese shop, stopping on the pavement to drop her purse into her shopping basket. She glanced curiously at the little group crossing the road, tut- tutting at the sight of the children’s bare feet. Yöst flinched prepared to run, and was relieved to see her swing round in the other direction, her steps taking her on down the hill. Another woman emerged from the shop, pausing on the threshold to place something in her basket. In the blink of an eye, she was gone too, lost in a crowd of women similarly garbed in unrelenting black. With their black headscarves and stockings, Yöst was reminded of the island’s colony of crows that built their nests high in the pine trees, scavenging among the huts for food.
The Click of a Pebble Page 5
