The Click of a Pebble

by Barbara Spencer

  By contrast, the nearby church with its tall spire appeared well fed, prosperous even, on the tithes it received, the plain tiled roof of the presbytery next door positively shabby by comparison. On a particular day each week, local schools had been obliged to send their pupils to church … or risk eternal damnation, the threat accompanying every reluctant shrug or complaint. Forming a crocodile, pupils walked two by two through the graveyard of the dead, the notion of being set down in earth for all eternity reducing even the most hardened into repenting sins both real and imaginary.

  On experiencing the church’s glittering interior for the first time, with its gold lectern, embroidered altar cloths and jewelled cross, Yöst had wondered about a god who surrounded himself with every luxury, while the people who worshipped at his altar starved. He had confided this to Willem who had agreed. ‘Aren’t you grateful, you’re not one of those poor creatures forced into worshipping their cruel god. We’re so lucky to belong to Zeus. He pays no heed to vulgar trappings.’

  As the houses fell away, the land narrowed into a long promontory, with waves crashing over the rocks at high tide sweeping aggressively across the land. From high up, every nook and cranny of the causeway was exposed to view, the Judas rocks beneath the surface brushed by a line of ripples. The causeway had not been meant to be crossed. Not then, not ever. Yet those same rocks had recently become an accomplice to murder, and now Willem was dead.

  Was it their god’s revenge for laughing at him? Catching himself up, Yöst leapt for the next flight.

  An orange, perched precariously on top of the paper bag, spilled out and rolled down the steps. He heard it but didn’t dare stop, aware that the priest, or the god he served, had murder on his mind that day too. Yöst saw the man’s long legs devouring the slope, the wind his accomplice, using his black cloak as a sail to blow him up the hill to where Zande waited. Taking the steps two at a time, Yöst pushed his legs harder, his sense of urgency growing with every step, sensing evil like tentacles of black sludge creep up the hill behind him.

  M. Meijer was sitting at the kitchen table reading to Tatania, her tiny blonde head on a level with the table-top. Yöst caught the words, ‘Skirmishes are breaking out. Emissaries have been sent to our nationalist neighbour deploring their belligerence. Unless it ceases forthwith, we will have no option but to arm ourselves and retaliate.’ The little girl was listening intently, her face serious, as if she understood all the long words and was considering their importance. ‘She doesn’t seem to mind,’ he apologised. ‘Where’s my wife?’

  Panting harshly, Yöst clasped his arms round his belly as shooting pains doubled him over.

  Alarmed, M. Meijer hastily put Tatania down and stood up. ‘Don’t try to speak until you get your breath back. If I’m right and there is trouble, put the oranges in that drawer out of sight.’

  With his chest still heaving, Yöst pulled it open, pushing the fruit under the tablecloth. He closed the drawer again. ‘The priest, he’s coming,’ he gasped.

  Not stopping to ask how, or why, or are you sure you are not imagining it, M. Meijer beckoned Zande, who had been sat on the floor, drawing pictures of birds on a sheet of cardboard. ‘Come with me, child.’ He gave the pencil sketches a cursory glance before examining them more closely. ‘You draw well, Zande. Now, I need you to do another thing well. Hide and look after TaTa.’

  Zande stood up, his countenance shuttered and closed up tight, as if he were an automaton without feeling. Almost mechanically, he reached up to take the little girl’s hand. M. Meijer put her down and, still without saying a word, the young boy went and stood by the back door, waiting for Yöst to open it.

  Yöst tried to speak, to express his gratitude for taking them in, the words and phrases milling around his brain, conscious while he’d been at the market, M. Meijer had explained the role of the Black. Now Zande, young as he was, was assuming responsibility for one of his flock. There were other things too that he needed to say; sorry for bringing danger to their doorstep, and that perhaps they should have stayed on the island, after all, only the words got stuck in his throat and refused to budge.

  Taking down the tin bath, Yöst opened the food cupboard. Hoisting himself up, he clambered inside. M. Meijer, swinging round to help Zande, dropped a kiss on the little girl’s cheek before passing her across.

  ‘Dark,’ she whispered, settling on Yöst’s lap. She put her thumb in her mouth, smiling at M. Meijer as he closed the mesh door, pin-pricks of light seeping through the netting. Next second, they were gone and the tin bath replaced, the resulting space pitch-black.

  Yöst set himself to listen, hearing the elderly man’s footsteps as light as a bird’s patter to the kitchen, the latch on the door snapping into place. Wrapping his arm around Zande, he cuddled him closely. ‘I promise I will never let anything bad happen to you,’ he whispered into the silence, conscious he was simply repeating words he had said before. Puerile words, without anything tangible to back them up. He was a boy. He had no weapons, no magic formula to protect them from humans with violence in their heart.

  Monsieur Meijer waited, his newspaper spread out on the table, although he was no longer reading, nervously twisting the arm of his spectacles between his fingers. He hadn’t questioned Yöst’s tidings, demanding to know how he could possibly be so certain the priest would find them. Intuition counted strongly among the many gifts bestowed on the clan, particularly its higher echelons. Over the centuries, this ability to push aside the veil concealing the future had been their only weapon, against the annihilation planned for them. No doubt, Yöst’s survival of the most recent attempt had been due, in no small part, to this; his becoming aware, a fraction before the rest, that an attack was imminent. Sadly, Zeus had never considered him worthy of such extreme favour. His gifts had been limited to sight and hearing, and even those had dwindled somewhat as his marriage settled into permanency, exactly as his height had done. Never a tall man, as the years went by, he had visibly shrunk.

  He didn’t have long to wait before a sharp rat-a-tat sounded on the knocker. ‘Zeus have mercy on us,’ he whispered and rose to his feet. ‘Coming,’ he called in a louder voice. Almost shaking with fear, he walked slowly across the living room to open the front door.

  ‘Good morning, Monseigneur, is there something I can help you with?’

  Three men stood on the doorstep, the priest wrapped in his cloak, a symbol of the military order to which he belonged, in which obedience outdistanced the vows of poverty and chastity by some measure. With him was a young novice, dressed in a simple robe depicting his junior status. The third member of the group was a fisherman. A burly, thick-set fellow, whom M. Meijer recognised immediately, fervently hoping the man had forgotten their previous encounter.

  ‘We have had reports of a runaway child; a strange child, an outsider, not one belonging to our community. You were seen with him.’

  To M. Meijer, his words sounded like the knell of doom. Who of their acquaintance had seen him with Zande? None he could put a name to. ‘There must be some mistake, there’s no child here. My wife and I were never blessed with children. I have a nephew in the next town … he sometimes visits. Maybe …’ He heard his words speeding up with nerves and hastily stopped.

  ‘Nevertheless, we wish to check. Orphans are the business of the Church.’

  ‘You can be fined or imprisoned for sheltering such a child.’

  M. Meijer didn’t respond, aware the fisherman’s remark had been no more than a need to sound important. Imprisoned for sheltering a child? What nonsense. ‘You won’t find such a child here,’ he repeated.

  ‘It is Mother Church who asks. Would you deny her and risk damnation and the fires of hell?’

  The priest spoke almost casually, his words an adjunct, a something and nothing, yet M. Meijer felt them quick and piercing and as merciless as a rapier. He caught the eye of the young novice. The youth appeared uncomfortable, obviously wishing his Christian duty did not extend to harassing citize
ns in their homes and demanding entrance, no matter how softly couched the request.

  He stepped back, his hand on the latch. ‘Please enter. You are most welcome to search.’ The three figures swept past him.

  He stayed by the front door making no attempt to follow, conscious if he moved his legs would fail him. Besides, even if he drummed up courage enough to protest, they would ignore him. These men would go where they wanted, the priest obviously capable of citing a dozen religious tracts to validate their actions. He didn’t bother to watch which direction they took, upstairs or down, trusting to his hearing and letting the sounds of the house sweep over him. Footsteps sounded on the stairs and he caught the click of the latch on the back door, followed by the squeak of hinges on the garden door. He had promised his wife months ago to oil them. Then the door of the privy slammed back against the wall. That happened because the door had been weighted incorrectly. Yet another job he’d meant to do last winter.

  Now they were close, almost too close. He heard the clang of a boot as it struck the old lawnmower, and began reciting the words of Zeus, words of protection for little children that his mother had taught him.

  Silence, that went on and on. The latch on the back door clicked back into place and the heavy feet of the fisherman crossed the kitchen floor. Some muttered conversation, too low to overhear, and the cloaked figure of the priest pushed past him. He didn’t stop to speak or even look at him, yet M. Meijer felt his rage, scalding and bitter.

  ‘I’m sorry for our intrusion,’ the novice threw the words at him, breaking into a half-run to catch up with his superior’s speeding feet.

  ‘I know you.’ The fisherman fired his parting shot. ‘I thought I did. You were in that boat. He’ll come back, you know,’ he confided. ‘He’ll come back when he knows.’

  ‘Then Monseigneur will be disappointed and angry with you for wasting his time. As I told you, there’s no child here.’

  He went to close the door, reading uncertainty in the man’s face. Enough, hopefully, to get the three children away safely.

  The click of the garden latch and his wife’s footsteps sent him hurrying back into the kitchen. She stood unmoving for a while, still uncertain, peering round the door of their sitting room, running her eye over its walls, as if to check no intruders lurked behind the framed sampler on the wall.

  ‘Safe?’

  Feeling his legs give way, M. Meijer collapsed onto the kitchen chair, the newspaper remaining open on the table where he had left it. Mme Meijer took off her coat and went to hang it on a peg by the front door.

  ‘Shall I release the children?’ he called after her.

  ‘In a minute.’ She came back into the kitchen, smoothing her hair where her scarf had messed it. ‘First, I wanted to tell you that I have asked Ramon if he would take them back with him tonight.’

  ‘Tonight! So soon? I am not sure; I need to consider—’

  ‘Albert, when you consider things, it takes months.’ She glanced at the clock on the mantelshelf, its polished sides scratched and dull with age. ‘We have maybe an hour or two, no more.’

  His fixed his attention on the clock, wishing it might slow down, allow him a minute or two in which to make the right decision. ‘How can I cast them off and let them go to strangers? They are my responsibility.’

  She took his hand. ‘Albert, you are still trembling. Does that not answer your question? Besides, Ramon is no stranger. If anyone understands what it is like to be mistreated, he does. People here may buy his goods, yet they do not offer shelter nor welcome him to their homes.’

  ‘And rightly so. Gypsies are well-known to be thieves.’ ‘Albert! You are as bad as the priest.’

  ‘Marie!’

  ‘Then don’t say such stupid things.’

  He buried his head in his hands. ‘I’m sorry, my dear. Their visit must have upset me more than I imagined. If only I was braver. Such happenings leave me feeling nauseous.’

  ‘I’m sorry too.’ She got to her feet and, leaning over the table, kissed him fondly. ‘I didn’t marry you for your bravery in battle. On the contrary, I married you because you are a man of peace. Ramon is little different; he fled his country to escape the onset of war.’ She paused. ‘He had already heard about the islanders, though a very different story from the one told to you. Here, they maintain it was the islanders who attacked the fishermen, not the other way round. It’s rumoured two fishermen were killed before they managed to drive them out of town.’

  Her husband raised his hand in protest. ‘I cannot believe what I’m hearing. I saw the bodies on the beach myself. Besides, I have never known our people attack anyone. What did you say to Ramon?’

  ‘That we were looking for a home for three children and wondered if he had space at the farm because our house was too small. I told him the children were refugees, and although both boys had family, no one knew where they were or even if they were still living. I didn’t need to mention the island. Too many of his countrymen have already flown persecution.’

  ‘He believed you?’

  ‘It’s the truth, Albert,’ she retorted sharply. ‘Yöst and Zande do have a family, although, from what you told me, if and when they will reappear is anybody’s guess.’ Pulling out a stool from under the table, she sat down again, her head resting against his. The hand clutching hers tightened painfully. ‘Albert, we can do no more until Robert returns. Ramon will keep the children safe until then.’

  M. Meijer smiled up at her, the sparkling green of his eyes faded to dull grey with misery. ‘Maybe you’ll think me silly, but I truly cannot bear the idea of losing TaTa. I am already as fond of her as if she was my own child.’

  Sadness flickered across Mme Meijer’s face. The decision not to have children hadn’t been a conscious one, it had simply never happened. ‘Ramon will be busy in the market until the end of the day but will send his son to wait on the steps as soon as it grows dark,’ she said briskly and stood up. Filling the kettle with cold water, she placed it on the range to boil. ‘They must eat before they leave. There is milk and Yöst has bought more. They can take that with them.’

  ‘Oh, my dear, and you arranged all this in minutes.’ M. Meijer got to his feet and embraced his wife, holding her a moment longer than usual. His voice broke, ‘Marie, don’t ever leave me. How would I manage without you?’

  ‘Very badly. Now, release the children.’

  Tatania had fallen asleep and did not stir when M. Meijer unlatched the flimsy door, although Zande’s head jerked up, his pupils expanded in the absence of light, his steady gaze expressionless.

  Yöst swallowed, returning M. Meijer’s reassuring nod with a small smile, understanding that the men were gone for now and they were safe.

  ‘Come and eat.’ The elderly man lifted Zande to the ground. Reaching into the cavity, he pulled out the piece of cardboard Zande had been using to draw on, the head and wings of a seagull staring back at him. ‘And then you can finish your drawing.’

  Zande flicked his lashes, his expression stern. ‘I wasn’t afraid,’ he maintained, ‘my mother wouldn’t want me to be afraid.’

  10

  As if the gods were on their side the afternoon skies clouded over, steeples of dark brown and grey cloud swallowing the light, any leftover scraps of brightness hidden beneath its dense layers.

  Yöst had posted himself upstairs, dividing his time between front and back bedrooms, inspecting the garden and road outside for signs of the priest’s return. He would, of that Yöst felt certain, although he didn’t understand why. Why would someone fear a child so deeply that he was driven to scouring every street and every house? It was as if the priest was possessed. But by who or what? God or devil? After the priest had killed the little girl’s mother, he had left her body where it had fallen, considering it of no further interest. Had the little girl been older, she might well have seen it. In a panic, fearing the men might return, all Yöst had managed to do was cover her stiffening corpse with leaves from the ditc
h. Only much later, when Tatania had dropped into a doze, was he able to go back, and drag it over to the fire. At that moment, he understood that the devil was real.

  It did exist. And it wore a black wingèd cape.

  Restlessly he wandered into the front bedroom.

  It was an orderly room and neatly arranged, with little about: a hairbrush and comb on the small polished surface of the dressing table, a few scattered hairclips in a flowered pottery dish. For shabbiness and wear it mirrored the living room, the embroidered bedcover faded over time yet still spotlessly clean.

  Tatania’s soft murmur drifted up to him. She had seemed undisturbed by the events of the morning. Even sheltering in a dark hole had not fazed her, her interest reserved for the cup of warm milk and pieces of bread Mme Meijer was feeding her.

  Around the kitchen table, no one had said much apart from mundane pleasantries, neither husband nor wife wishing to reveal their concern in front of the two smaller children. After clearing the table, it had been left to Mme Meijer to draw Yöst to one side and explain what had been decided.