by Adam Roberts
“I have another,” Denny said, pulling off his backpack and bringing out a handgun-sized half-bow.
“Then let us agree our deal,” said Henry, smiling. “I will ride this fine donkey down to my brother’s farm, carrying this beautifully constructed hand-bow with me for protection. And I will intercede on your behalf with my brother. With Stan. To ensure Hal’s future.”
“And the bag, here: it’s full of good food. This is also part of the deal.”
“I’m much obliged to you,” Henry said. “I’m sure I’ll be able to come by your place tomorrow, early, and let you know what’s been agreed.”
Old Denny didn’t do gushing. That wasn’t who he was. He nodded, once, firmly; and then he said, “Thank you, Henrietta Taylor,” and walked away, leaving his donkey behind.
Henry sat for a while, watching the birds flipping out of the forest, up and up, and rolling through the air, and settling back into the foliage. Chaffinches, little brown heads, tan bellies and tar-and-cream striped wings, and every now and again a woodpecker.
It occurred to Henry that a third-party observer, if they had seen what had just transpired, would assume she and Denny had negotiated a simple exchange: he giving her some riches, she doing him a favour. Of course, Denny thought he was cleverer than the outside world. That he believed he was completing a deal begun many years before, when she had ridden to his compound and refused his piglets. He believed that time, and diminishment in the eyes of the community, had worn her down, filed away her stubbornness, and that finally she was willing to settle. To settle for more than two piglets, to be sure, but to settle nonetheless.
It occurred to her that Denny thought he had won.
That was what was so amazing to her. It was amazing to her that he could be so obtuse. Because he had taken the most important step, the one most people are unable to take—which is to say, he had realised that the fundamentals of human exchange are never about the actual things swapped and traded, and always about the power dynamic of the people doing the swapping and trading. That was a big insight, real wisdom. And yet, having opened that door, he somehow still couldn’t see any further than what his own desires permitted him to see.
Was it because he was a man? Years later, when Henry and Amy were building the Wycombe community into something remarkable, they would sometimes discuss this particular question. Amy’s view was that there simply was a narrowness in the way men saw the universe, and that the narrowness was to do with the one-dimensionality of their structuring appetites. Fuck this, punch that, win, dominate. All very up and down. Women on the other hand, said Amy, could think more widely, and hold more possibilities in their minds. Could understand that life was a web of connections, not a straight path. But Henry was not sure this was the actual reason. Amy, she thought, was too young to understand how old age disappears a person from the social view. People simply stop noticing you. You become a background figure, a three-legged-stool or an old jug. People see you’re there when they want something of you, but otherwise you vanish from their minds.
Looking back, Henry wondered if Old Denny simply couldn’t conceive that this old woman was not finished with her life. As if he naturally assumed she believed she was at the end of her days, with nothing to win or lose but a few more undisturbed evenings nodding by the fire, and a slightly better stocked larder. Even though he was an old man himself, and didn’t think of his own potential in so limited a way. Despite that, he had looked at her and seen only the fag-end of a life.
“So,” Amy would say, “it was because he was a man after all—even if your theory is right. And either way it doesn’t really matter.”
“No,” Henry would agree. “But it’s good to understand how things work. What use is the past, if we can’t learn from it?”
After Denny left, Henry examined the gifts she had received: the strong young donkey, and the useful little one-handed weapon for self-protection. She waited. She waited long enough to allow Old Denny to walk back to his own farm: an hour, more or less (she kept no clock). Then she made up a small pack and chucked the donkey’s chin and patted him and got him used to her. Then she mounted up and rode the beast down the low slope of the Stately towards her brother’s farm, the farm that had once been her Mammy’s farm, that had once been her farm. She took it slow, and navigated the beast through the wide woods until she came to the back wall of the main compound. She had helped put posts up for this fence, with her own hands.
She tied the donkey to a bush, in reach of some edible vegetation to keep the beast quiet and peaceable. Then she climbed a tree and settled herself in amongst the leaves. She was old and the climb was not easy, but she was used to sitting still, and she had enormous reserves of patience. She had always had that.
From where she sat she could see over the fence into the courtyard easily enough. For a long time the scene was motionless. She saw Ted come out of the house and go over to the chicken hutch. He retrieved two eggs, and went back in the house. One of his kids—Rob, it was—came out and filled a bucket from the well, and went back in. There was a long pause, although little clues suggested movement in the main house. Henry didn’t mind the delay. She could wait all day.
Finally Stan emerged from the main house, yawning and scratching himself. He wasn’t coming out to do any chores, of course, because he didn’t do chores. Instead he went to the outhouse, to use the jakes, and went inside and banged the door shut after him.
Quiet as a squirrel, Henry lowered her old body down the tree, and crept up to the back wall of the privy. Inside, separated from her by one layer of thin planks, Stan was humming to himself. She could smell his spoor. She stepped silently, as close as she could, lifted the crossbow, put the tip of its bolt in at a knothole in the wood, and squeezed the trigger. The shot went into the back of Stan’s neck, tucking upwards just under his skull, with a sound like the bar of a lock clicking home.
Stan exhaled hard. It sounded hah!-like, as if he were half-laughing at a not-very-good joke. The only other sound was the knock of him slumping sideways and his head hitting the left side wall of the little hut.
Funny joke.
Henry slipped back into the trees, stowed the crossbow in her pack, checked that the donkey was tied securely enough that it would not yank itself free, and walked briskly through the undergrowth to her cottage. Then she made herself some nettle and spring onion soup, which she ate with—since one of her hens had laid—a whole egg poached in it. Delicious. Then she napped. She wasn’t a young girl any more, after all.
Her main precaution consisted in hiding the crossbow in a cache she had excavated out of the bricks of the kitchen wall. As well as that she separated out those elements of Denny’s food-offerings that wouldn’t look out of place with her stuff and put them in her larder. The rest she threw away in the forest. Then she went to bed and slept a deep and restful all-night sleep.
Eventually they came for her, of course. The whole Borough was in uproar. Stan’s body had been taken to Bicester, and a rider had gone out to break the bad news to Father John’s people—it had to be done, of course, for all that it would bring John’s anger upon them. The Borough was too weak to make any kind of gesture of defiance. Everyone knew very well: it was going to cost everyone. So they took Ted into custody and they sent a posse to Old Denny’s farm to ask him to give himself up. By all accounts, he acted surprised.
“It was one of your bolts in Stan’s head,” Denny was told. “There’s no mistaking it. And your donkey was tied up behind the outhouse, Denny.”
“That’s bollocks, that’s all bollocks,” Denny insisted.
“As may be,” he was told. “Still, you’ve got to come along with us.”
Denny wouldn’t come out from behind his walls. Of course he told them that he had given both crossbow and donkey to Henry, and was at first believed to be joking, or trying to pass the blame for his obvious crime onto the least likely culprit. When he persevered with his story, four men rode up the Stately and shouted f
or Henry to come out.
She dialled up her old-woman act a little and took the trouble to appear more forgetful than she actually was. Two of the men, she knew, were old enough to remember her Mammy, and everyone knew the brain-rot that had taken her could pass down the family line. The trick, of course, was in not overacting the amnesia. No, no, she hadn’t seen Old Denny, not since the Easter church service. No, no, though she saw him then, in church, she hadn’t spoken to him then. She hadn’t actually spoken to him in years. Come to her cottage? No, he hadn’t done that. Why would he come to her cottage? What did she have, in her cottage, that would draw a man as wealthy as Old Denny? They left her alone, but told her to pack some supplies, because it was likely they’d all be trekking to Bicester.
“Why?” she asked. “What’s happening in Bicester?”
“Haven’t you heard,” said Leo. “Stan is dead. Some fucker shot him in the head with a crossbow.”
Henry permitted herself a little flourish at hearing this news, and let her legs wobble, and plonked her arse down on the ground. “No,” she said. “No, no. no. Oh, but Father John will punish us all for that. Oh, but that’s terrible news. Where was he killed?”
“In your brother’s farm, of course. Where else did he spend all his time?”
“Poor Ted,” said Henry, staring at the grass. “This will go hard on him. That it happened in his farm is bad luck indeed. Terrible luck. Unless you think…? You think he…?”
“No,” said Gonzo. “Christ knows he’s stubborn, Ted, but he’s not fucking stupid.”
“Still, I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes,” Leo agreed. “Or Old Denny’s either. It was his bolt that killed Stan.”
“Denny’s?” Henry repeated, adding in an extra dose of shocked to her voice.
“Yeah. Fucking hell, isn’t it? I mean: Christ what was he thinking?”
“That’s why you were asking about him. I see, I see. Should I come with you gentlemen?” Henry asked.
“You stay put, granny. Talk to you, is all we were ordered. So we’ve talked, haven’t we? I’ll go see what the word is. Though they’ll probably want you to come down soon enough.”
The four men rode off, and Henry decided the most likely thing for her to do was put on a shawl and fill a pack with a few day’s provisions and wait by her cottage door.
The first thing was that Max, who’d been (rumour was) supervising the building of a big flat-bottomed boat over Woodstock way, rode into the Borough with twenty men. Henry wondered if the show of force was his own initiative, or if he’d contacted Father John first to receive instructions. Presumably the former: he’d want his boss to believe he had control of the situation. Send a messenger north, and then ride straight in here and knock heads together. Pacify the place, find the culprit, present John with the whole problem solved even as he came tearing down here in force.
When people finally did come up the Stately to collect Henry, they were strangers. She went meekly along with them, nothing but a mild old woman. Max had ordered the whole Borough to meet by the Common Pond, near the church, and a good proportion of the locals were there. Not Old Denny, though.
Ted was brought out, hands tied, and fixed by his wrists to a stump, where everybody could see him. The left side of his face was swollen, and there were little ruby lacerations on his cheek, chin and neck. He peeped at the gathered crowd out of his one eye.
“Old Denny refuses to leave his compound,” Maxim said, in a clear voice. “Coward that he is. We’ll smoke him out, or siege him to starvation, or maybe burn the whole place to the fucking ground. In the meantime we spoke to him, of course. Of course he denies the assassination. He says he gave the donkey to your sister.”
“He’s a fucking liar,” Ted yelled. “I haven’t seen my sister in two weeks.”
“This looks bad for you Ted,” Maxim declared. “At the very least you failed in your duty of protection to one of Father John’s most trusted officers. At worse, you killed him.”
“Why would I kill him? He and I were getting on fine. Ever since he came to stay my standing in the Borough has grown, just as Old Denny’s standing has dropped down, ever since…” and he craned his neck to look directly at Max, “…ever since he pissed you off. You think I wanted him dead? You think I couldn’t have foreseen exactly what would happen if he died? All—all this?” He spat on the ground.
“You’re saying Old Denny did it?”
“I don’t know who did it. I only know that Stan’s death is a fucking disaster for my family.”
Maxim stared at Ted. “The failure in the duty of protection is serious enough,” he said. “Henrietta, come over here.”
Henry pattered across like a little old biddy. Maxim was a foot taller than she was, and he brought his hand round and down very slowly, so that everybody could see what he was doing, to grasp her by the back of her neck. It hurt, but she didn’t flinch. “Denny says he came to talk to you.”
“He’s lying.”
“Why would he lie?”
“Because that’s what liars do.”
“Says he gave you the donkey and a crossbow.”
“Haha,” she laughed. “Really? Why on earth would he do such a thing? Give me a donkey? The very idea.”
“He says it was in return for you going down to intercede with Stan.”
“What does intercede mean, dear?”
“It means to talk to Stan about Denny’s boy. About him skiving his military service. Said you promised to get the boy off.”
“That sort of thing is hardly in my power, dear. And why would he come to me? Why wouldn’t he go to talk to my brother Ted, to ask him to talk to Stan? My brother at least has Stan’s ear. I don’t. Had Stan’s ear, I should say.”
“I suppose he figured Ted hates him.”
“Which I do,” barked the doubled-over Ted.
“I have more reason to hate Denny and his family than my brother does,” Henry pointed out.
“That’s the funny thing, though,” Max agreed. “It’s such a fucking bonkers story, it almost doesn’t sound made-up. But that’s not to say it com-” he coughed, hawked, spat, “-putes. Fucking rotten mess, the whole thing. Why couldn’t you people just play nice? Father John is going to be proper furious.”
He released his grip on Henry’s neck. She wobbled, kept her balance. Made sure her facial expression didn’t alter.
“Whip him,” Max told one of his people. “I want his back razored up good and gnarly, to make the point.”
“Fucking hell,” groaned Ted.
“Count yourself lucky I’m not hanging you by your neck. We’re taking your farm, too. Of course we have to do that. You—Henrietta. Old girl, you can toddle off up there and tell Angie—is it?” He turned back to Ted. “Angie’s your wife’s name, yeah?”
“Fucking, fucking hell,” groaned Ted again.
“Tell her to pack up her shit and clear out. We’ll give the farm to a loyalist. John will have a list of preferred candidates.”
“You reckon you’ll be able to grow wheat and barley without my help?” Ted called, struggling at the stump.
“I reckon I don’t give a shit if we do or don’t. I reckon this is a bigger fuck-up than any fucking arable crop is worth. Do him, make them all watch.” Maxim mounted a horse and took two dozen men and rode off in the direction of Old Denny’s compound.
Henry sat on the ground and watched as her brother had his shirt stripped off and his body lashed thirty times by two of Max’s men, each taking turns whilst the other rested after five strokes a piece. At the beginning of this ordeal Ted howled like an animal, but by the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth smites he was just sobbing and by the end he had passed out with the pain. They washed his back with pond-water, and that was the part of the whole thing that gave Henry the greatest cause for worry. That water really did not look clean, and the danger of sepsis was far and away the biggest risk of this entire undertaking. But, she thought to herself, there was a lot of salt in the farm’s stores
—one outward sign of Ted’s recent accumulation of wealth. They’d be able to wash the wounds in brine up there, before they bandaged them. And there were old stores of paracetamol and some willow-leaf concoctions too, for the pain.
In the end, she didn’t need to go over to the farm, because Angie got wind of the commotion and came down in a cart, arriving just as they unbuckled Ted from the stump. His hands were still roped together, but he rolled and lay on his side on the dirt. She would have been there earlier, but the cart—which, absent a horse, was being pulled by Rob and Xander—was a slow mode of transport. There were no histrionics from Angie or the two kids: the three went straight to Ted and helped him up as best they could. Henry offered her help, but she was not needed.
Just as they were settling a semiconscious Ted, groaning, onto a blanket on the back of the cart, Max and his men came galloping back up from Den’s compound.
“He has gone,” he yelled, “fucking fucked the fuck off. Come on!” And all the other Father John irregulars saddled up, and they all charged away.
Evidently Denny had weighed the odds of being able to convince Max he had nothing to do with Stan’s death and had decided they were as close to zero as made no difference. So he and his people had packed up in a hurry and ridden off.
Either that, or it was tantamount to an admission of guilt. Guilt was certainly how Max read it.
Henry went back to the farm in the cart, and helped tend Ted, and then helped pack stuff up. Since other people in the Borough were now wary of dealing with a family that had incurred Father John’s wrath, even indirectly, it wasn’t easy buying a horse to pull the cart; but with Henry’s help they eventually managed to get an older beast, at a ridiculously inflated price.
For a couple of weeks it looked as though they might not need to go. Father John mustered a whole troop of soldiers to hunt down Old Denny, with Maxim at their head, and the hunt took all his energies. This small army raged through the lands east of the Borough, generating enough unpleasantness to encourage the locals to give Denny up so as to get rid of them.
