V
BUT even in sleep there was no safety. She dreamed about the bull which had chased her at Splatt Bridge, and woke from the nightmare in a wringing sweat, to lie in the faint grayness of first light and remember how huge and murderous he had seemed, how slowly Scrub had answered the rein and then had vanished, so that she was standing in the sopping grass while the bull hurtled down towards her, foaming, mad, untethered ... It was a long time before she slept again.
The proper morning began with bellowings, not a bull’s but Uncle Peter shouting and slamming round the house. Luckily this happened when the light was already broad across the uplands and the unmilked cows beginning to low plaintively in the byre, because (as often happens when the first snow falls) everyone slept longer than usual. Margaret dozed on, conscious at moments of the rummaging and thumping, until in the middle of a meaningless dream her shoulder was grasped
and shaken hard. She opened her eyes and saw Aunt Anne, still in her nightrobe, face taut with worry, bending over the bed.
“Marge, Marge,” she whispered.
Margaret sat up into the numbing air.
“What’s the time?” she said.
“Marge, they’ve gone, Tim and Lucy, and they’ve taken Pete’s second pair of boots and a shoulder of mutton and some bread. What shall I do?”
“Does he know what they’ve taken?” The habit of secrecy kept Margaret’s voice low.
“No. I noticed the boots. He’s mostly cross because the stove isn’t lit and the porridge not on.”
“I’ll light it. Lucy must have heard Mr. Gordon talking to you. I shouldn’t tell him anything. Can’t you just be sleepy, Aunt Anne? If he’s really angry he won’t notice.”
“He’s milking the cows now. But what’s happened to them? In this weather, too?”
“Oh, I’m sure they’re all right. Lucy knows what she’s doing.”
Margaret realized as she spoke that she’d got her emphasis a little too strong. Aunt Anne stared at her, opening and shutting her mouth several times.
“What about Jo?” she hissed at last.
“Jo?” said Margaret, misjudging the surprise this time. “Has he gone too?”
Aunt Anne’s bony fingers dug into her shoulders and she was shaken back and forwards until her head banged the wall and she cried out aloud.
“You know what I mean,” whispered Aunt Anne.
“Yes,” said Margaret, “but you can’t stop Jo doing what he wants to, can you?”
Aunt Anne sat on the bed and said, “No. No. Never.”
“I’ll do Lucy’s work until you can find someone else. Can’t you tell Uncle Peter it’ll be two mouths less to feed through the winter? And you could tell him what Mr. Gordon said too — then he’d know why they’ve gone — I’m sure he’s worried about it. I was talking to him in the byre last night.”
Aunt Anne began to rock to and fro on the bed, moaning and saying, “Oh dear, oh dear.” Margaret sat and waited for her to stop, but she went on and on until Margaret was frightened enough to slide out of bed and run along the passage to find Jonathan, who was yawning while he dressed.
“Come quick,” she whispered. “Your mother’s not well.”
He walked to her room and stood for several seconds in the doorway, watching the rocking figure. Then he slipped his arm round her waist, pulled her wrist over his shoulder and walked her back towards her own bedroom.
“Get some breakfast for Father,” he said as he went through the door. “Don’t dress — go down in your gown.”
So there was kindling to be fetched from the scullery and the fire to be lit in the still-warm stove and little logs to be fed into it through the reeking smoke (that chimney was always a pig in a north wind) and the pots and kettles to be arranged in the hottest patches. Uncle Peter stormed in before anything was ready and threw himself into his chair where he glowered and growled. Margaret tiptoed to the larder and found a corner of boiled bacon and one of yesterday’s loaves; while she was looking round for something to appease an angry and hungry farmer she noticed the little bottles of cordial, so she unscrewed the top of one and poured it into a pewter mug, which she carried into the kitchen and put on the table at his elbow. He picked it up, sniffed it and took a sip. When she came back with the bread and bacon he was tilting the mug to swallow the last drop. He banged the pewter back onto the table.
“Ah, that’s something like,” he said. “You’ve the right ideas, Marge girl.”
“I’m afraid it will be twenty minutes before I can give you anything properly hot, Uncle Peter.”
“Never mind, lass, never mind. I’ll make do.”
He picked up the thin, gray-bladed knife and hacked off a crooked slice of bread and a crookeder hunk of bacon.
“Gone!” he shouted through a mouth full of yellow teeth and munched crumbs and lean and fat.
“Aunt Anne told me,” said Margaret.
“But why, but why?” shouted her uncle. “After all we did for ’em, too!”
“I think she must have overheard what Mr. Gordon was saying about Tim. Shall I fetch you another bottle of cordial?”
“Aye. No. Aye. No, better not. Bring me a mug of cider. What was Davey saying, then?”
“About Tim really being a witch, You were talking about it too, yesterday evening.”
“Ah. He’s a deep one, Davey. What do you think now, Marge, hey?”
“I don’t know. I still don't see how a zany could be a witch. This porridge is warm enough to eat now — would you like some?”
“Leave it a minute more. I like it proper hot. You go and dress, lass, and I'll fend for myself. I must go and tell Davey Gordon what's up, and soon as may be.”
Margaret spun out her dressing, and when she came down again the kitchen was empty. She opened the door into the yard and looked out; Uncle Peter’s footmarks were the only blemish on the level snow, great splayed paces striding up towards the gate. If you knew what you were looking for you could just see two faint dim-plings running side by side towards the shed — the lines made by the sledge runners when they'd come back, but covered with new-fallen snow; the marks of their outward journey had vanished. She turned at the sound of a light step behind her; Jonathan had sidled up to study the black-and-white landscape.
“Jo, I thought of something," she whispered. “Won’t someone notice that the sledge is wet?”
“I left it under the hole in the roof, where there was piles of snow coming in. I put some bundles of pea-sticks over the place when we left, so the ground’s fairly dry underneath, too. It ought to look all right.”
“How’s Aunt Anne?”
“I don’t know. Tell anyone who asks she’s got a fever.”
Then Mr. Gordon and his cronies came catcalling down the lane and trampled to and fro over the yard
until even the marks of Uncle Peter’s first crossing were scuffled out, let alone the lines left by the sledge. Air. Gordon stood in the melee, head thrown back to sniff the bitter air.
“Clear!” he cried at last. “Sweet and clear! Peter, your farm’s clear of wickedness now, or my name’s not Davey Gordon.”
“The zany, was it?” cried one of the stonecutters.
“Sure as sure,” cackled Mr. Gordon. “And that sister of his, too, like enough.”
“She always had a sly look,” said another of the men. “Where’d they come from, anyone know?”
“Bristol,” called Margaret from the porch.
“Aye, so you told me before,” answered Mr. Gordon. “That’s where they’ll be heading then. Out and after them, boys.”
But it was a quarter of an hour before the men even left the farm, because they kept telling each other how right they were, and repeating old arguments as if they were new ones. Amid this manly furore no one spared a second to ask after Aunt Anne; and when they departed Uncle Peter went with them.