Will said, ‘That is how communities begin. People must co-operate in order to survive.’
Magnus laughed. ‘You just pulled a knife on your spiritual leader.’
‘I wouldn’t have touched him.’ Will looked at his hands as if he could not believe they had ever grasped a knife. ‘I never used to get so angry but now…’
Father Wingate pressed his way into the centre of the room. ‘We must all listen to God. His will is paramount.’
Jeb had pulled on a sweatshirt and was sitting on the edge of the bed struggling to ease a pair of jogging trousers over his plastered leg.
Magnus said, ‘Want to hitch a lift out of here?’
Jeb’s mouth was set, the skin around his eyes tight, and Magnus saw what Jacob had meant when he had described him as looking like a battering ram. Jeb gave an unhappy smile. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’
Jacob put a hand on Magnus’s shoulder. ‘You still owe us two and a half fields.’
‘Tonight breaks any deal we had.’ Magnus nodded to Jeb. ‘Can you get yourself downstairs?’
‘Reckon so.’ Jeb knotted the string of his tracksuit trousers. ‘On my arse if needs be.’
‘I’ll grab a van and pick you up at the front.’
‘Sure thing.’
Jacob’s grip tightened on Magnus’s shoulder. ‘One of us will drive him somewhere in the morning.’
Magnus tried to shrug off the soldier, but the hand was clamped tight on the cords of muscle in his neck, the fingers a painful threat against his vertebrae.
Father Wingate fluttered, ‘This is a time for prayer…’
Jacob said, ‘Go to bed, James. You’re right, everything will be better in the morning.’
Father Wingate’s voice was high and urgent. ‘God did not save us to fight among ourselves.’
Jacob reached into his pocket and took out a bunch of keys. ‘Nor did he save us to starve.’
‘You’re not locking me in here.’ Jeb steadied himself against the bedstead.
Magnus saw Jeb reaching beneath the papers on the bedside table where the gun was hidden and shouted, ‘Don’t!’
Jeb faltered and some instinct made Jacob jab a hand towards him. Jeb toppled against the bed with a shout of pain.
‘Jacob!’ Father Wingate tried to push his way towards Jeb, but Will put an arm around his narrow shoulders and half carried him to the hallway.
‘This is not the best place for you tonight, Father.’
Jeb was pulling himself towards the table and the hidden gun, but he was too slow for threats or action. Jacob had Magnus’s arms pinned behind his back in an arm lock that made his muscles sing. The soldier applied a knee to his kidneys and huckled him out into the hallway, slamming the door behind them. Will turned the key in the lock.
Magnus shouted, ‘Sit tight for one more night or this mad fucker will shoot you. I’ll get you out in the morning.’
He hoped that Jeb had heard him and was not on the other side of the door, cocking the hammer of the ancient gun, ready to blow himself, or them, to eternity.
Father Wingate was trembling at the top of the staircase. ‘Jacob, I want you to know that I do not condone anything you have done tonight.’
‘I realise that, James.’ Jacob was more priest than soldier again. ‘But there are facts you’re not privy to. That man is dangerous. I should never have allowed him to stay, but I let compassion colour my judgement.’
‘You’re drunk,’ the old man said. ‘Drunk and jealous that he made love to living flesh, when all we have are memories to console us. It would have been better if we had died with the rest.’
‘Perhaps.’ Jacob’s voice was a rasp. ‘But drunk or not we’re alive and our obligation is to live on.’ He opened a door in the wallpaper and pushed Magnus towards a hidden set of stairs inside.
Magnus stumbled against a step. ‘It’s okay,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll go with you,’ but Jacob must have known that he was lying because he kept Magnus’s arms pinned behind his back until they reached a door at the top of the house. He pushed him on to a dusty landing and then along a dark corridor, hollow with echoes. Jacob unlocked a door and shoved Magnus into a room bathed in moonlight and darkness.
‘This used to be the nursery.’ The priest’s fury was evaporating into the gloom. He sounded tired. ‘Father Wingate probably slept here when he was an infant. The bars on the window were to protect children from the fate your friend elected for that poor little girl.’
Magnus rubbed his arms, trying to restore their circulation. He was still uncertain of Jeb’s innocence and did not bother to protest it. ‘You know your way around the house.’
‘I make it my business to know my way around any building I sleep in. This place is riddled with hiding places. People didn’t like to see their servants in the old days. They kept them below stairs or in between the walls.’
There was a bed equipped with a bare mattress in the room. Magnus sat on it and waited for Jacob to leave, but the priest walked to the barred window and looked out. ‘I don’t want Belle, I’m still married to Annie.’ The priest’s back was towards Magnus, his expression lost in the dark.
‘Why were you so angry?’
‘I don’t know. It hurt me to see her in bed with him. Perhaps Father Wingate is right. I’m jealous of anyone with a future.’
It felt like their roles had been reversed; Jacob had become the prisoner, Magnus the priest. He said, ‘As long as we’re alive we have a future.’
Jacob laughed in the darkness. ‘So much death has made me realise that ultimately all of our futures are the same.’
‘I thought you believed in heaven and hell?’
Jacob shrugged; a shadow in the moonlight. ‘I believe in hell.’
Magnus nodded. ‘Me too.’
They stood in silence for a moment and then Jacob said, ‘We need you here. I’m not going to put you in leg irons, but I can’t let you go until we have more able-bodied men. Without the harvest we’ll be completely reliant on what we can scavenge.’
Magnus said, ‘My family—’
‘Your family are dead. I wish it wasn’t so, but you don’t need to see their corpses to know that I’m right. The living need to stick together.’
‘Whether they want to or not?’
Jacob turned away from the window, his face a white presence in the moonlit room. ‘The dead are lost to us. Our duty is survival.’
‘My family are survivors and my duty is to them.’
‘It’s natural that you should think so, but you’re wrong.’
The priest touched Magnus’s shoulder as he left the room. He turned the key in the lock, leaving Magnus alone in the dark.
Thirty
Magnus was woken by a bang. It was not quite light yet and it took him a moment to realise where he was. Then he made out the shape of the unfamiliar room, the barred window. ‘Fuck.’ The noise was still reverberating in his ears, but the world was silent and he wondered if the sound had been the remnant of an unremembered dream.
Magnus pulled on his boots and got to his feet. He had slept in his clothes and his limbs were heavy. He tried the door. It was still locked. ‘Shit.’ He was thirsty but there was no sink in the room, no glass of water. Magnus went to the window and looked out from between its bars, into the grey dawn. He pressed his forehead against the cool metal. Soon the sun would creep over the horizon and Jacob would unlock his door. The priest had been drunk and angry. There was a chance that morning might restore his equilibrium. If not, Magnus would take the first opportunity to escape. He had managed to break out of Pentonville, he could break out of here too.
Somewhere in the not quite dawn a blackbird was singing. The nursery looked down on the kitchen garden. It was the same view that he had seen from Jeb’s room and Magnus wondered if he was imprisoned below. Jeb’s ruthlessness had enabled them to escape jail, but this time his injuries would make him a liability. Magnus recalled the way Jeb had stuck his knife into a prisoner’s gut during the final ruckus in Pentonville. It had been self-defence, but the action had been close to elegant in its swiftness. His own descent into violence had been messy. Magnus felt again the sensation of the man’s skull giving way as he had hit it with the fire extinguisher and shuddered. This time there would be no deaths.