Among You Secret Children
Page 70
‘You okay?’ Radjík said, coming to her side, and she stirred again. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, raising a smile. ‘Let’s say hello.’
The merchants were dark and tall and most had lips of painted green. Some bore elaborate tattoos on their hands and faces and some had assortments of patterned scars. Their teeth flashed as they spoke, and it took a few minutes for Jaala to understand some of their words and phrases, although to the locals and to Radjík their language was unintelligible.
They wore a colourful array of felts, and on the trestles they’d set out were folded samples of their clothing and powdered heaps of the dyes they used. Jaala looked round distractedly, noticing in another area a variety of carved goods and cookingware and cutlery and salts and oils. Then she joined Radjík and the villagers in looking through their wares, pointing and miming to communicate where necessary, and the merchants smiling and indulging them with patience and charm. She liked them. Liked them instinctively. Liked them as she knew she’d liked them before, going back years beyond calculation. She found herself mingling with them closely, tasting woodsmoke and old canvas webbings, the scent of dim and foreign towns ... and something else, for it was back again: elusive but very real, something she was hungering for.
Speaking to a man in a red hat, with a narrow beard sprouting from his chin, she asked what the smell was, finding enough of his language inside her to describe it as grass, as purple, as sun, as rain, as mud. He turned, looking to where the animals were sheltering, then to a number of baskets heaped with little sacks tied off with string. With a broad smile, he took her across to the baskets, moving through the locals with gentle probes, before plucking out a sack with a nod to the man overseeing the trade. Placing the dusty hessian cloth on a counter, he untied the neck and picked it open, and immediately the smell grew stronger. ‘Yes, that’s it,’ she said. He gestured with an air of ceremony for her to take a look inside, and she saw a dark mushy bed with spotted worms in it, writhing in the light.
‘So it is mud?’ she said, to which he answered, ‘Touch. You can touch,’ and smiled again.
She placed a pinch of it on her palm and brushed it with a finger. It was rich and black and moist. She held it to her nose, drawing in a strong muskiness that had her breathing it in and holding it and breathing it in again, this time more deeply.
He watched her, grinning, as if experiencing a rare pleasure anew.
‘Soil,’ she said, in his language and her own, ‘it’s soil, isn’t it?’ and he nodded.
‘Where’s it from?’
He answered her coyly, with hints and shrugs and a few words indicating an eastern origin. When she pressed him, he spoke of a ship, then corrected himself, using the word shipment instead. He seemed to be saying that there was more of it, plenty more at the place it originated.
‘... You’re kidding,’ she said, but her voice was already softening, held little doubt in it, and she found herself wanting to scoop out more, wanting to seize the soil in her hands and bury her face in its essence.
With a wink, he brought out a small pouch loosely stitched with twine, and handed it to her as a gift. ‘Soil for you,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ she said distantly, strangely absorbed. Something like a deeply sunken bell was tolling inside her, her thoughts an uncertain rippling.
Before they left, she tucked the sample away in the trunk, annoyed to find rust stains inside it, then she brought the pony out from shade and helped to get it harnessed, Radjík chewing at some bread she’d bought as they fastened the buckles.
Then with calls of farewell, they set off on the road. As they left, a couple of the children went out to follow them, their cloaks snapping at their feet as they watched the women slowly fade from view, the cart shimmering, distorting electrically in the haze.
Chapter 76 — Assembling A Plan
He was looking down from the top of a house located at the end of a rundown narrow street hung with tatty laundry and patrolled by thin and raw-looking dogs which came and went at all hours snapping and whining and following the citizens for meat until they turned to kick at them, shoo them into the alleyways. The rank smell of piss rose on high from the gutters and seemed to linger around the grimy windowframes, smearing with its odour the unwashed glass that the ageworn batons held in place. Gazing down from that dingy attic room, with its sloped roof and its peeling walls and the rigid cotlike bed taken perhaps from some nursing ward or house of silence, he watched a covered cart enter the street and stop and turn around and leave again, heading back the way it came.
He touched the dull pane with his hand and looked at it. Wiping the dirt down his clothes, he went back across his little room to where the glider stood, half out of its sleeve and awaiting attention. Downstairs, the commotion that had begun since they’d entered the property continued undiminished. It sounded like the helpers were still there, silent folk in dark drapes who undertook Paget’s every bidding. They still seemed to be moving things around, clearing the lower floor of the previous owner’s belongings. On it went, an endless scrape of wood and slamming doors and Paget ordering things to be lifted or put down or slung out or sold or burnt. Shaky, wondering how much longer he’d have to wait for the pipe, he extracted the glider from the sleeve and lay its long and battered form on the floor. Drawing out a wing so he could assess it properly in the day’s remaining light, he sighed. He’d had to beg Paget to be allowed to bring it with them, and on looking at it now, rent and torn in so many places, he wondered if it had been worth the trouble.
On checking its working parts, he was not surprised at what needed doing. He would need to ask Paget for resin and wooden splints, as well as some strong lightweight material for patching up the holes. After a second inspection he thought he might need more material than that, maybe even enough to rebuild his wings entirely. Sighing again as he tested a set of struts, he tried not to think of his landing in the tree and the washed-out morning after. Instead, he mused on why it was his father had been captured, and by whom, and on whether he’d been carrying his glider when they’d seized him. Perhaps he’d already hidden it, he thought, just as he’d stashed his own away at times.
Exploring his thoughts further, it struck him that if neither of them was able to fly, then perhaps they could ride donkeys together — or take a cart, or pay merchants to carry them as passengers. Or perhaps they could build new gliders from scratch, having ensured that the enemy could not find them while they made their preparations. It would take a lot of work, and most likely they’d need to rely on Paget providing for them while they ...
He turned, then stood, hearing a stomping on the stairs. There was a rattle at the lock, and Kol shoved the door open and entered. He went to the sidetable and deposited a tray of food, muttering, ‘Food first, you know the rules,’ before Moth could say a word. Then he trotted out the door and locked it shut and stomped away downstairs.
He sat on the bed and dragged the tray towards him, the smell of the cooked joint wafting his way as it steamed. He took the meat by the bone and bit into it and chewed. Then he chewed again. He sat there chewing harder and managed to force it down, but all the while his true hunger was towering over him, salivating, making lunges, and unable to withstand it any longer, he rose up trembling and ran to the door, banging his fist against it as he cried, ‘I’m ready now! Please Kol! Please! The pipe! I-I need it! Bring it up to me!’
~O~
The following day, the racket stopped. He was permitted downstairs, and on descending, he paused on the middle floor to see both rooms open — one stuffed with dusty junk and the other newly furnished. It had a neatly made bed and dresser; perhaps for a visitor, he thought. He looked jadedly from room to room, picturing one with a dark-haired woman welcoming him to bed; in the other himself: working at the shawl, the glider, shouting in rage. With a dull stare he continued downstairs.
At the bottom, he only dimly recognised the brickwork hallway floor he’d been ushered through that first night, hurried
along amidst a dreadful conspiracy of clangs and whisperings. At the top of the passage was the front door; at the opposite end was the entrance to the basement. There was a small bathroom to one side of it, and adjacent to this a tiny scullery in which a dowdy woman was mopping up something bloody-looking on the floor. He murmured a greeting, but she seemed not to hear. He was on his way across to the front room, recalling that most of the furniture had been piled inside it, when he heard noises coming from the basement. Wet chopping noises, the sound of Kol grunting as he laboured at some task. ‘Hello?’ he called, ‘ah, are you okay?’ — but no one answered, and the maid continued to ignore him.
Turning away uncertainly, he continued to the front room and stood in the doorway, looking round. It was a large space with polished floorboards. Wooden screens stood at the far end, accompanied by a table and chairs. There was a tall mirror on a stand and various bundles and boxes he recognised from the cart, including a large clothes trunk. The room was lit dustily through the open shutters, and he was about to go across and peer into the street, when Paget came marching out from the basement, beaming broadly as he said, ‘Aha, the very individual the very one,’ before taking him by the arm into the middle of the room, there to sweep round a hand as if to introduce him to what it had to offer. ‘Perfect timing,’ he said, ‘absolutely exstrawberry. Are you fed, child?’
‘Well, I …’
‘Come along, be quick. We have much to do, much to contemplate.’ As they sat at the table, Paget yelled to the woman to bring them lunch, and shortly Kol came in to join them, sweaty and dishevelled and flecked with blood.
Once the ribs were out of the way, they sat in a web of pipesmoke discussing their strategy for the rescue. Not for the first time during this discourse, Moth asked to know where the house was located, a subject Paget cautioned him to be wary of, explaining that were the enemy forces to gain wind of their knowledge of its whereabouts, the likelihood was that his father would be removed to somewhere far harder to discover, perhaps impossibly so. ‘Suffice it to say,’ he said, ‘the house is within the city bounds and therefore susceptible to us. So be of good cheer, my boy, for in not knowing its whereabouts, you also render it far less impregnable.’
‘But ... but you know where it is,’ he said.
‘I know enough, child, to lead us in time of operation, that is all. Let us be clear on that. The rest of the time I fool the enemy by maintaining a false image of a dwelling I spied upon the road. You would do well to do the same, in fact I strongly advise it.’
‘So what do we do, then,’ said Kol, ‘if we can’t picture it?’
‘Picture anything. Allow yourself to be guided. Faith is all in these circumstances.’
Drawing on the pipe, Moth watched Kol stare towards the shutters, where the hazy light was filtering through. Dogs were barking outside, and he assumed it was this that was distracting him until Kol muttered, ‘We need to go in round the back.’
Paget shook his head. ‘No. Never. Too well guarded. It has to be from the front.’
‘Why don’t we get an army together?’
‘An army, Kol, did I hear correctly? An army? Nonsense, man, the enemy is too powerful. They’d know in advance through their spies.’
‘Why don’t we pretend to be spies, then?’
Paget squinted at him through the smoke. ‘And why, pray, would we do that?’
‘To spy on em.’
‘Why would we pretend to do it?’
‘To get em fooled.’
‘And what exactly would we be fooling them about?’
‘That we’re spies.’
‘And why would we do that?’
‘I dunno. Help us get an army together.’
‘He ... he’s got a point, Paget,’ Moth cut in, as Paget grew flushed. ‘We could get some spies together and see what the enemy’s weaknesses are. That’d help us.’
‘But child,’ Paget said in exasperation, tearing off his hat, ‘how would you know to trust them, these spies that roam the streets? Do you not know that all here might be in the enemy’s pay? Who would be spying on whom, child? What purpose would it serve? How would we ever trust enough what we were told, to be able to act upon it?’
‘We ... we’ll just tell them the opposite, that way we’ll fool them. Like Kol said.’
‘He said no such thing, boy. In fact I believe he said the very contrary, did you not, Kol?’
Kol put out his hand for the pipe. ‘Just said we need an army, that’s all. You’re the one on about the spies.’
As Paget sat bristling, the maid came in to collect the dishes, keeping her face downturned the entire time she was at the table. When she’d left, Moth asked Paget if he thought that she too was a spy, whereupon Paget ordered them both to end such speculation before great harm came their way, and instead turn their focus to more practical aims.
‘Alright then,’ Kol said, shrugging, ‘why don’t we pretend to be cleaning the place?’
‘Better, Kol, better, but they have servants for that. It’d never work.’
Kol blew out a long grey plume from the side of his mouth. ‘We could smoke em out,’ he said, to which Paget replied with a terrible hangdog smile.
‘What about the costumes?’ Moth said brightly, nodding towards the baggage. ‘Can’t we go there in disguise?’
‘But disguised as what, child? Disguised as what? That’s the entire point we’re making.’
He looked down. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, anxious again, twitchy, and for some time no one had anything to say. Outside, the barking dogs were chased off and somewhere a door slammed. The pipe continued on its rounds, the smoke hanging over them in grey umbrellas.
Then Paget suddenly looked up, his eyes shining as they’d done during the visitation. ‘Of course,’ he gasped, beaming, and clapped his hands. ‘Why did I not see this? The Fraternity must look to its dreams. Kol, you start.’
‘Eh?’
‘Your dreams. Bedeck us with them. Speak, man. Prate, babble if you will, the clock is tickling.’
Kol shifted his feet. ‘Eh?’ he repeated, and as Paget raised a ragged eyebrow his way, glaring, Moth took the pipestem from his lips and said, ‘I, ah ... I had one, Paget.’
Paget swung his head. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I had a dream the other night. I ... I meant to tell you about it.’
‘Well spit it out, then, spit it out.’
‘It was my father.’
‘But of course, child. How could it be otherwise?’
‘Yes, my father. I-I saw him in my dream. We were going somewhere. But I ... I can’t remember what we ... I’m sorry.’
‘Try, child. Urge yourself. Perhaps you have something. A very message may have come to you unbeknownst to your senses.’
‘I … I can’t remember all of it.’
‘Try harder. Reach for it.’
‘But I can’t …’
Paget sat round as if to study him, staring fixedly. ‘Were you moving boy were you ambulant in any way?’
‘I think I was … but it ...’
‘Was a high dream, child, was it so very golden?’
‘No, I ... I think we were ...’
‘Singing? Carrying something?’
‘No, we ...’ He shut his eyes.
‘Were you armed, child? Were there others in your company? Think. This may be vital for us.’
‘It was ... it was more like we were ... I don’t know ...’
‘Flying?’ Paget said tentatively. ‘Running afoot?’
‘It was a bit like running, but ...’
‘Dancing,’ said Kol, taking the pipe from him.
As the pipe left his grip, Moth looked at him, frowning in thought. ‘Dancing ...’ he said slowly, ‘I think you might be ...’
‘Damn it all,’ Paget groaned, and Moth turned in alarm to find him gaping as though trapped in screaming nightmare, blue eyes straining, his mouth huge and black and wide.
‘What?’ he whispered, ‘wha
t?’ and then a moment later, Paget recoiled as though in agony. He clasped his hands together as he looked away from Kol, then started rocking forward and backwards, clutching his face. ‘It’s so unfair,’ he lamented, ‘he’s done it again, that … bastard. Why do some people seem to know everything? Why?’
As Kol packed fresh herbs into the bowl, Moth glanced between the men uneasily. ‘What ... what do you mean?’ he said, at which Kol shrugged a shoulder as if to suggest it was obvious. ‘We go in as dancers,’ he muttered. ‘They’ll never guess a thing. Not til we’re out of there. We could do the whole job inside an hour.’
‘You mean ...’ Moth said, marvelling to hear him speak with such clarity, ‘you mean you’d go in dancing? You, or all of us?’
Kol sat packing the pipe.
When he failed to respond, Moth turned to Paget, who by now was pouting sulkily as he followed the conversation. ‘Is that what he means, Paget?’ he said. ‘We pretend to be dancers?’
Paget snorted in contempt. ‘Child, I would hardly say we need pretend. One may dance, or dance not, just as one eats, or eats not. It is not possible to deceive in all fields entirely.’
‘So ... so how would we do it? Why would they let us in?’
‘Why, child?’ He smiled at Moth indulgently, as if somehow surprised, or even slightly saddened by the question. ‘Do you not listen to what I tell you? Have you not taken note of me?’