‘There’ll be someone,’ said Rowan. ‘Some man who won’t mind living in the same place all his life.’
‘But what would you do over there? How would you make a living?’
‘I can shoot, trap, fish, grow food and cook. I can fell trees, chop wood, and I’m all right at carpentry. I can carve wood. I can care for animals.
I can train them.’ Rowan shrugged. ‘World’s changing, but I think it’ll need people like me for a while yet.’
James was silent, his thoughts travelling along two different lines. On the one hand, he would miss Rowan. Rowan’s company still had the power to make James feel better about himself. Safer, less under scrutiny from whatever powers detected good and bad in a person. But with Rowan gone, James would have no competition for Lily at all.
James knew that he and Rowan were the only young men Farmer Blythe allowed near his daughter. Ellis Blythe could do nothing about the men James’s father chose to introduce her to, but he could close the gate on the village lads and farmhands who whistled as Lily went by and ogled her freely. Lily as ‘The Potts Girl’ is public property now, thought James. It didn’t matter that they could only look and not touch, because in their minds they could do what they liked with her. The girl in the picture smiled and looked beautiful, and would never protest.
In James’s mind, Lily smiled and allowed him to kiss her. But if he pressed too close in his dream, her face would change. Her smile would become bewildered, then alarmed, as if she feared he meant her harm. James could never see himself in these fantasies. He wondered what expression came on his own face to make her look at him like that.
‘Have you seen Lily today?’ he said.
‘Her father’s keeping her on the farm. Too many roughs around for his liking.’
‘We haven’t met a single one yet. Are you sure Old Ted’s not making it up, just to keep people out of the woods?’
But Rowan had stopped dead. He turned to James and put his finger to his lips.
James shut up and heard what had made Rowan halt. Voices. Men’s voices. James could make out no words but could tell what type of men they were by the tone. Rough. Uncouth.
Rowan began to creep forward. James did his best to follow him as silently.
The woods were dense there, and the trees provided good cover for them. Rowan and James made it undetected to the edge of a clearing. On the far side, there was a hollow tree. Facing it, and away from James and Rowan, were two men standing shoulder to shoulder. James recognised one instantly from the S-curve of his spine. Wilkes, the ferrety farmhand. The other was not Oby, but a man James did not know. From the rear, he looked thin but tough and wiry. His dirty black hair was slicked back so that it curled in an oily wave just above his collar.
James and Rowan were close enough now to hear what the men were saying. But their words did not immediately make sense.
‘Well, my beauty,’ said the unknown man. ‘What shall we do first? What game would you most like to play with us?’
There was no reply. What were they talking to? James wondered. A dog?
Rowan sucked in a breath, the sound horribly loud to James’s ears. Rowan had gone quite pale, James thought, unless it was just the dim light?
Beneath shocked eyes, Rowan mouthed a word. James knew exactly what it was but could not comprehend that it was possible. He shook his head, disbelieving, denying, but Rowan, mouth now in a grim, tight line, grabbed his arm hard, and nodded.
Lily. The men were talking to Lily.
A surge of adrenaline, rage and fear made James’s heart pound, his breathing fast and shallow. He had to save her. He had to.
He started forward, but Rowan, still gripping his arm, roughly pulled him back.
Rowan shook his head once, adamantly. No. He flipped the safety on the rifle, set the bolt. Raised the weapon. Aimed it straight at the wiry man’s head.
‘Now,’ he murmured. ‘Now you can go and get her.’
James’s first step broke a twig. Both men whirled round, alarm but also aggression on their faces. When he saw who it was, Wilkes smirked. He was right beside Lily, James could see her now. She was between both men, on her knees, hands in her lap, head bowed, as if she was saying prayers in church. Her blonde hair hung down on either side like pale silk and offered no more protection. Towards her, the wiry man was pointing a black-handled knife, its blade slickly sharp. Wilkes had his own knife, a curved hunting blade, made for smooth and efficient slaughter.
‘There’s two of us, boy,’ Wilkes said to Rowan. ‘You shoot and one of us cuts her. We might not get her whole throat but we’ll do damage right enough.’
His hand had already darted out. The curved tip of his knife had penetrated the curtain of Lily’s hair and was now resting on her cheek.
‘What are going to do, bastard boy?’ said Wilkes. ‘If I was you, I’d back away quiet-like and pretend you never saw.’
Rowan shot him. Through the fleshy part of the shoulder. Wilkes flew backwards and collapsed on the ground, where he writhed, clutching his arm and yelling in pain.
Snick-snick went the rifle bolt. Rowan shot the second man. Same place. Same result. The shots were less than a second apart, though James swore he lived a whole life in between.
‘Get her now,’ said Rowan. ‘Quick.’
James ran, hoping that she wasn’t tied to the tree. Only her hands were bound. James grabbed them, pulled her to her feet and tried to drag her from the men who were still squirming on the ground like skewered adders, unable to get up.
Lily was slow and listless, as if the shock had drugged her. Her head was still lowered. She might not even know, James thought, who it was who was rescuing her.
‘Run!’ He yelled right in her ear, and yanked on her bound hands.
She lifted her head. Glanced around at the men, and then back at James, blue eyes huge and blank with terror.
‘Run,’ he ordered. ‘Run with me.’
And they ran, Rowan falling in as soon as they reached him. Ran back through the woods, using the unmarked trails they knew well, praying that the two men had none of their knowledge.
They ran straight to the Blythes’. Farmer Blythe said not a word, but stood and took his shotgun from above the fireplace.
‘Ellis, no,’ said his wife.
‘They took my daughter from my own barn,’ said Farmer Blythe. ‘On my own farm, right under my nose.’
‘If you murder them in cold blood, you’ll hang,’ said his wife. ‘Please, Ellis. Sit back down. Sit with your daughter.’
Farmer Blythe replaced the shotgun on its rack, and slammed his great fist down onto the mantelpiece. The pieces of Rowan’s nativity set shook. Mary and one of the Magi toppled over.
His wife rose. ‘I’ll call the police.’
‘No!’
‘Ellis—’ his wife protested.
‘I’ll not have every man and his dog knowing what happened!’ he said. ‘I’ll not have anyone questioning my daughter’s character! You know what they’re like. They’ll say she asked for it. I can’t …’ He wiped a huge hand over his face. His voice faltered. ‘I won’t let them do that to her …’
James could see his own alarm mirrored on Rowan’s face. All their lives, Farmer Blythe had been a calm giant, as steady as a mountain and with the strength of ten big men. Now, here he was, on the edge of breaking. Now he was looking to them, the boys he’d known from infancy, because he had no idea what to do.
‘Rowan, lad,’ he said, ‘will you come and work for me? Come and live here on the farm? I’m in need of good, willing labour and, most of all, someone to care for Lily, keep her safe. I haven’t the time; there’s so much to do here and no one to do it but myself. My boys have families of their own now to care for. Will you do that, lad? Will you work for me?’
James saw Rowan’s hesitation, and he knew what drove it. Rowan wanted to escape this place, not become indentured to it for who knows how long.
Farmer Blythe saw Rowan’s hesitation, too
. ‘You don’t want charity and that’s fair enough. You want to make your own way when you leave your home. But I have real work needs doing, and a daughter to protect. I’m asking you for her sake as well as my own.’
A white-hot arrow of envy shot through James. Why Rowan? Why would Farmer Blythe choose Rowan as Lily’s protector and not him? He had so much more to offer — a big house and money and servants who’d do anything she wanted. All right, so he’d be away at school, but Lily could move in and Sunny could look after her. It would still be under his aegis, and it would be a bloody sight more fun for Lily than being constantly tailed by Rowan!
James considered making the offer, but knew he really should ask his parents first.
And then the chance was gone.
‘All right,’ said Rowan.
Farmer Blythe beamed with relief. Moist-eyed, he enveloped Rowan’s slim brown hand in his giant blond-haired one and shook it.
‘Thank you, lad. From the bottom of my heart — thank you.’
Rowan’s smile was tentative. There was something on his mind.
‘Those men are wounded,’ he said. ‘They need a doctor’s help.’
‘They don’t deserve it!’ said Farmer Blythe.
‘I shot them to save Lily,’ said Rowan, ‘not to make them suffer.’
It was agreed that an anonymous call would be made to the police from the phone box in the lane.
Next day, the rumour went round that the police had found two men in the woods. It had taken the examining doctor a while to detect the bullet holes in both men’s shoulders because their throats had been ripped out. By a feral, possibly rabid dog, or a particularly big and vicious fox. The police did not intend to investigate further. Though he had no weapon on him, the wiry man was a suspect in four knife attacks on young women, and Wilkes, as the police sergeant said when he came to tell Farmer Blythe of the death of his farmhand, was ‘a bad egg’ that Ellis Blythe was ‘well shot of, if you’ll pardon the choice of words’.
‘Would a fox do that?’ James asked Rowan that afternoon.
It was Sunday, Rowan’s only day off. They were sitting in Empyrean’s walled garden, backs against the apple tree, basking in the sun. Rowan was whittling a piece of oak.
‘Unlikely. They’ll scavenge a dead body, but they’re not killers.’
‘Then it must have been a dog. I didn’t know there were any wild dogs in the woods.’
‘There’s all sorts in the woods,’ said Rowan. ‘More than you might think. Even so, most wild creatures won’t attack without reason, so chances are those men provoked it. It probably scared them and they went for it with their knives, but because they were weak and wounded it got the better of them.’ He screwed up his mouth. ‘I suppose that was partly my fault.’
‘I wouldn’t waste any guilt or remorse on those two,’ said James. ‘In a rather grisly way it was a fitting punishment — a violent death for violent men. Eye for an eye. Very Old Testament.’
‘I doubt a wild dog had divine retribution on its mind.’
‘Sergeant Barnes said a knife was missing. I don’t suppose the dog carried it off?’
‘As I said, there’s all sorts in the woods. Might have been someone saw an opportunity to take what was useful to them.’
‘I’m not sure I like the thought of a strange person loose in the woods with a very sharp knife,’ said James.
‘Most who live in the woods just want to be left alone to live their lives. They’re not bad people; they mean no harm. Unlike those two.’
Rowan rested the whittling knife and wood in his lap.
‘Still,’ he said, ‘bad as they were, I can’t help feeling sorry for them. It must have been a hell of a nasty way to go.’
CHAPTER 26
early July
‘What happened to that baby bird I found back in May? The one that had fallen out of its nest?’ said April. ‘I feel bad for not having asked before, but I suspect the fact you’ve never mentioned it means I might be glad I didn’t.’
‘I fed it,’ said Jack. ‘When it got big enough to fly away, it did.’
‘Are you lying to spare my feelings?’
He smiled. ‘Does that seem like something I’d do?’
‘Thank you,’ said April. ‘For saving its life.’
‘I didn’t really. I offered it food and it took it. It saved its own life.’
‘Aren’t you splitting hairs?’
‘If it hadn’t taken the food, I couldn’t have forced it to. If it hadn’t had a will to live, I couldn’t have given it one.’
‘A will to live’s not always enough, though, is it?’ said April. ‘Not if you’re weak or sick, or you’re preyed on by something bigger.’
She was thinking of Fatso, who had taken to hunting baby rabbits. The ambience of Sunny’s courtyard was not enhanced by the cat lying under the maple and stripping the furry skin off his latest catch, with a sound like separating Velcro.
Jack drank from Kit’s water bottle, glanced up at the cloudless sky, and around at the garden, which was closer now to looking like the wild had never taken hold.
‘It’s a beautiful day,’ he said. ‘Smells like paradise. Why are we talking about death?’
April hitched up her knees and hugged them. ‘I had word that a friend of mine just died.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He put his arm around her shoulder. April didn’t resist. ‘Illness? Accident?’
‘Cancer. She was old, but still. She hung on for so long.’
‘Yes — still. Death might bring peace, but dying is hard.’
April hugged her knees tighter. ‘Unless it’s quick …’
She could feel his breath on her face as he leaned in closer, his hand firm and warm on her shoulder. But she felt no pressure from him. No expectation. If she did not want to tell him, then he wouldn’t push her.
‘He ran out right in front of the car,’ said April. ‘He knew all about roads, and looking both ways — he used to tell me off if I didn’t. He knew where the school crossing was, about waiting till the poles were out and the teacher had said “Cross now”. But he saw me, on the other side of the road — I was so obvious, in my yellow dress and my bright green bag — and he saw me wave to him, and he ran out. The teacher told me later that he’d had a brilliant day at school, and couldn’t wait to show me the picture he’d made. He was so excited. He couldn’t wait. His name was Ben,’ she said. ‘He was five.’
She heard him inhale, slowly, and press his mouth down gently on her hair. April unlocked her arms from her knees and wrapped them around him instead, burying her face into the hollow of his shoulder. His skin was sun-warmed and smelled like the fresh earth he’d been digging for the strawberries. She felt he would have held her as long as she wanted, but Gabe the dog, made curious by the stillness of the pair, came up and licked her bare arm. Jack pushed him away with his boot, but the spell was broken. April separated herself from him, and sat up.
‘That dog has no manners,’ he said.
‘He’s a dog,’ said April. ‘What can you do?’
His dark eyes were steady as he regarded her. April could see the tawny slivers of light deep inside them.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘For telling me.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘For not telling me it wasn’t my fault.’
‘Only one person can tell you that,’ he said. ‘And that’s you.’
‘You’re not going to lecture me after all, are you?’
He braced his hands briefly on his thighs and stood up.
‘I’m going to put new mulch on the fruit trees, and then I’ll leave you be.’
Ambivalence rose up in April. She did not want him to lecture her — that was true. But she had enjoyed being held by him more than she could comfortably admit. It had been years since she’d embraced or been embraced by anyone, male or female, young or old, and the comfort of another’s arms, the reassurance of their heartbeat, provoked a yearning for more that April was struggling to contai
n. She did not want him to leave her now, so abruptly. She did not like the nagging voice insisting that if she mattered more to him, he would stay.
‘What would you say? If you did have permission to lecture me?’
The question took him by surprise, and he hesitated.
‘I’m not sure now’s that moment.’
‘I doubt I’ll be offended. If that’s what you’re worried about.’
‘No. That’s not it. It’s more that—’
April had never known him to be unsure of his words. He rarely used many of them, but they were always confidently expressed.
‘It’s more — what?’ she prompted.
‘Knocking the scabs off too soon can hurt,’ he said. ‘It can make you look for comfort anywhere you can find it. Not always in the right places.’
April felt the blood rush into her face.
‘You think I’ll throw myself at you?’ she said, annoyed both with him and with her inability to conceal her embarrassment. ‘That’s a bit arrogant, isn’t it?’
He scratched behind his ear, mouth screwed up in the way that signals both an apology and regret that, you’ve dropped yourself right in it.
‘Sounds that way, I guess.’
Annoyance was swiftly turning into anger. April knew she did not make herself attractive, and that, in any case, sex and romance were out of the question. But it hurt to be rejected in that way — rejected even before she’d made an overture, being told quite clearly that he did not ever want her to make one.
‘I’m pretty sure I can control myself. But if you’re concerned, feel free to keep your distance.’
‘Who says it’s you I’m concerned about?’
That stopped her. What it did not do was reduce her embarrassment.
‘Come on.’ He held out a hand. ‘The fruit trees can wait. I have something to show you.’
I should refuse, April thought. But somehow she did not. He led her into the woods, dog at his heels. He followed no paths and soon April did not know which direction meant home. The trees around them all looked the same. She could glimpse the sky through their leafy roof but not the fields or lanes beyond. She hoped Jack would not leave her to find her own way back.
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