Standing a few paces from the hut behind its screen, she remembered something that Lora had taught her. It was a way to make yourself invisible in a crowd; Joanna had laughed at the time and remarked that this was a skill for which she would not be likely to have much use. Lora had looked at her darkly and said, ‘You cannot know, child. Never turn down knowledge.’
The way in which this invisibility was achieved was to make people look straight past you. You had to blend, Lora had said, you had to become your surroundings. Like many of the old skills, it was a question of believing; in this case, believing yourself to have melted into the background. Deed followed thought, and there you were, unobserved.
Joanna wondered if it also worked for large objects such as huts. Taking a few moments to slow down her breathing and concentrate her mind, she began to make a picture in her head. She imagined that the hut’s outline was softening, that long strands of creeper and kindly, helpful leaves and branches were slowly covering it, hiding it, making it safe from eyes that had no business seeing it.
When she brought herself back to normal consciousness, she had quite a hard job seeing the hut at all.
Smiling, she picked up her staff, turned and strode out of the clearing.
Her destination was no great distance away. She knew she must hurry — the light was fading — but nonetheless she trod lightly, careful not to leave any record of her passage. After a short while she arrived at the foot of a huge, ancient yew tree. Looking up into the dense, dark green of its foliage, she studied the convolutions of the thick trunk. It would have taken three people holding outstretched hands to encompass it; legend said that the yew was a thousand years old.
Joanna raised her staff and, standing on tiptoe, poked it into the fork where one of the lowest branches met the trunk, perhaps two or three man-heights above the ground. After a few attempts, the hidden rope that lay curled up there came tumbling down. Checking that Meggie was secure in her sling, Joanna quickly climbed the rope. Once she was safe on the branch, she pulled the rope up after her and put it back in its hiding place.
She now did the same with a second rope that was tied to a branch further up the tree. Once she had gained that higher branch, it was easier; she had made herself a rough rope ladder, which hung there permanently since it was quite impossible to see it from the ground.
The rope ladder led up to a platform in the middle of the place where the yew’s great trunk divided into four. The platform was very old; it was made of oak planks, beautifully sawn and planed, smoothed to a glossy finish. The joints were pegged, as secure and solid as on the far-distant day that they were made.
Lora had told Joanna about the yew tree’s secret.
‘It’s a refuge, see,’ she said. ‘There’s been times when our ordinary places of concealment haven’t been enough, or at least we’ve feared so. Our forebears in their wisdom made the secret refuges, where our people could go when there was danger and where they could remain until it was past.’
She had taken Joanna to the yew tree and told her to make new ropes, since the old ones had rotted almost to nothing. It had been Joanna’s own idea to make the rope ladder for the topmost stage. She had sat for many evenings during her pregnancy cutting pieces of oak and whittling the rungs. The lengths of rope she had fetched from the house that her mother’s kin had left her.
It was not advisable, she had decided, to work on the platform whilst pregnant. However, soon after Meggie’s birth she had begun. First she had cleaned off many decades of dark green, sticky residue, apparently made up of foliage, berries and bits of twig, and she inspected the planks for damage. They were sound. Then she set about making a shelter; if she ever had to use the platform in bad weather, it was possible that Meggie, so tiny and so vulnerable, might not survive unless Joanna contrived to make waterproof, weatherproof walls and a roof up there.
The work was so hard that she almost gave up. She had to take up posts to make uprights for the walls, hazel to weave between the posts and then wattle and daub to fill in the gaps. Then she had to take branches and reed thatch for the roof. And she had already climbed up with two posts when it occurred to her to use the rope as a pulley.
After that, progress was a lot quicker. Even Lora, sternest of judges over any matter involving security, had to praise her for her speed. And for her thoroughness; kneeling up on the platform — the roof was too low to allow anyone taller than a child to stand upright — she bounced a few times, leant against one of the outer walls and nodded.
‘Good,’ she had said. ‘It’ll do.’
Now Joanna inspected her shelter. Opening the plank door, she peered inside. It was too dark to see much, but the place smelt wholesome. She put her hand down and felt the platform: very slightly damp, but not soaked. It looked as if the roof had not leaked.
Tomorrow, Joanna thought, I shall bring bedding, furs, blankets — everything that I have. Somehow I must make this shelter warm, for there is little use in saving us from those who would hunt us down if we all die of the cold.
She was very tempted to lie down inside the shelter and spend the night there. It was safe, and at that moment that was the main consideration. But already she was feeling chilled; her under-robe had been damp with sweat earlier, when she helped the woman back to the hut, and the exertion of climbing up to the platform carrying Meggie in her sling had made her sweat again. Now that she was still, the sweat was rapidly cooling and she knew she would soon begin to shiver. Besides, although Meggie was with her, dozing snug and peaceful in her sling, the woman was not.
No. She could not contemplate a move to the refuge until tomorrow.
Resolutely she fastened the door behind her and began the climb down.
She spent the night watching over Meggie and the woman. She dozed off sometimes, but each time it was to wake with a start of fright from some dire dream where black hands with long, claw-like fingers were stretching out to open the door of the hut. She was very relieved when dawn broke and the new day began.
She spent the first part of it waiting impatiently for the woman to show some sign that she was returning to consciousness. It’s my own fault, Joanna told herself, and it’s quite unjust to blame her, poor soul — I should not have made the draught so strong.
As the Sun reached the zenith, the woman stirred, but then slept again. Heartened by this, Joanna began on the plan that she had worked out during the night for heating the refuge in the yew tree. She had already taken up what blankets and coverings she could spare; now she fetched a heavy bucket made of stout hide and lined it thickly with straw. Then she took out the first of a series of large stones that she had put in the fire to heat. It was awkward to handle — she had to be so careful not to burn her hands and render herself helpless — and she tried several methods before hitting on the best, which utilised two short, stout sticks with which to raise the stone on to the surrounding hearthstones. From there it was relatively easy to flip the hot stone into the straw-lined bucket.
Then she covered the stone with more straw and took it out to the yew tree, climbing up with it and wrapping it, still in the insulating straw, inside the thickest of the blankets. She repeated this procedure seven times. Because she was carrying such a potentially dangerous load, she did not dare take Meggie up the tree each time; instead she laid her carefully in its roots, warm in her furs. It was a relief, in every respect, when the job was done.