“Perhaps he’ll follow us,” said Jonathan.
“Perhaps,” said Margaret. “Anyway the winter’s over, and he’ll be all right. Nothing the weather can do can hurt a pony — that’s what the old stableboy told me.”
“Only four more bridges,” said Jonathan with a slight change of voice which made Margaret realize that he’d only been pretending to worry about Caesar to keep her happy — left to himself he’d have abandoned his pony long before.
“One of them’s in Purton,” said Margaret, “and there’s people living there.”
“Two on the map,” said Jonathan.
“I only remember one.”
“Well, you’d best get right ahead and scout. It’s four miles yet, and round a bend. If we have to, we’ll stop the engine and let Scrub tow us through.”
“Do you think they’d allow us to open the bridges if we told them our story?”
“Let’s hope.”
Heartsease, as if in triumph over the battle of Splatt Bridge, spouted her largest and nastiest plume of smoke when she restarted. Scrub cantered easily down the tow-path, quite rested from his battle with the bull. The first gate moved like the others, but the second, in the middle of a huge emptiness with only the white spire of
Slimbridge Church to notch the horizon, was stuck. In the end Jonathan had to ram it open, backing Heartsease off and charging a dozen times with fenders over the bow before something in the structure gave way with a sharp crack. Then Tim and she together just managed to wind the opening section round so that the tug could go through. It seemed too much work to shut it again, so Jonathan ferried them across to the towpath.
“I didn’t enjoy that at all,” he said. “Purton’s about two miles on now. You get well ahead and see what’s best, and I’ll wait half a mile out until you come back — if I’ve got the contours right there’s a little hill which will screen us.”
So there was a long, easy canter, dead level, with Scrub’s hooves knocking out the rhythm of rapid travel. The estuary gleamed wide on her right, at about halftide — so if it was ebbing they’d have a dangerously long nine hours to wait before high tide, and if it was flooding they’d have a bare three. Three seemed nothing like enough to be sure of finding out how the lock worked, but quite long enough for angry men to come swarming after them.
Scrub suddenly became bored with hurrying when they were almost at the last bend and slowed to a shambling walk, so Margaret dismounted and led him along the towpath. She’d have liked to have left him to rest and browse while she went on alone to explore, but she hadn’t quite the courage to go among dangerous strangers without her means of escape — Scrub could gallop faster than the angriest man in England could run. The first bridge was open, which was why she
hadn’t remembered it, but the second was shut. Worse still, a fishing rod was lashed to the further railings, its float motionless on the gray water, and that meant that someone must be watching the bridge. But at least the locking-bar on her end was open. She led Scrub across, peering over hedges on either side of the street.
He was in the garden of the first house on the right, a fat lump of a man lying almost on his back in a cane chair, wrapped in blankets and coats against the bitter wind. A straw hat covered most of his face, so that Margaret couldn’t tell whether he was watching the float through a gap in his fence, or listening for the bell at the end of the rod, or sleeping.
“Good morning,” she called — softly, so as not to break his precious sleep, if he was asleep.
The hat was brushed back by a mottled hand, and an angry blue eye peered at her from above a purple cheekbone, but he said nothing.
“You’re a long way from your rod,” said Margaret cheerfully.
“Three seconds,” the man grunted, and shoved his hat forward.
Margaret felt sick. He was much too big and much too close — it took forty seconds to open a bridge, even if it moved easily. She walked back over the bridge but stopped close by the handle.
“Lame?” she said, as if she was talking to a baby. “Oh, you are a big ninny — let me have a look. Why, it’s only a tiny pebble. There, that’s better, isn’t it?”
Scrub was not a good actor; anyone actually watching could have seen how puzzled he was to have a perfectly
sound hoof lifted up, peered into, poked at and put down again. While she was kneeling Margaret flipped the locking piece of the bridge over, and as she rose she gave the handle a single turn, trusting the fidgeting hooves to drown the noise, to see whether it would move at all. It did, and at the far end she could see the crack in the film of dried mud which showed where the join had begun to part. Then she mounted and rode slowly up the canal and told Jonathan what she had seen and done.
“Three seconds is useless,” he said. “We’ll have to lure him away. Are there a lot of other people in the village?”
“I didn’t see any, but I think there must be — all the gardens are dug and weeded.”
“Probably they’re having dinner. If you rode back in a frenzy and said there was something wicked coming down the canal but you could only see it properly from the other bridge, he’d run up there and you’d have time to get that bridge open. If you time it right, you could point to the smoke.”
“I’ll try,” said Margaret, though she didn’t feel from the look of the fat fisher’s eye that he would be an easy man to lie to. She cantered back reining Scrub in every few paces and then letting him go again so that he would seem properly fretful when they reached the village. She rehearsed cries — was “Help!” a better beginning or “Please . . .”?
No need. The rod was there, but the fat man was gone from his garden.
She jumped down and started to wind frenziedly at the handle. The end of the bridge had moved a yard when there was a shout behind her and something flicked past her ear, banged on the railing and dropped into the water; she looked round — he was behind the fence, his hand raised to throw another stone. She gave a meaningless shout and, still cranking, pointed with her free hand to the space between rooftops where the familiar black puffs rose before they were scattered by the wind. He wheeled round, stared, ran to the far hedge, stared again, and bellowed. Windows in the village opened with bangs or squeaks.
“Oi, you girl, you lay off!” he shouted. “We’ll catch un here!”
Nearly far enough. Margaret cranked on. Pain blazed into her left shoulder. She gave the handle five more turns, dodged sideways and heard the splash of a stone, turned thrice more and ran to where Scrub waited out on the arm of the swinging bridge. Her shoulder was still fiery with pain when she twisted up into the saddle and urged him forward. A stone grazed his quarters and rapped her heel. Startled, he gathered himself and sprang straight out over the waiting water. There was a roaring splash, freezing water blinding her eyes, burning her nostrils, panic. But she’d remembered to lean right forward, and kept her seat as Scrub’s body tilted into its swimming posture. The roaring died, though the deadly cold remained, and they were swimming slantways towards the far bank with Scrub’s head and her own head and shoulders rising above the water but the rest of them covered from the old man’s stones.
Then she heard shouts behind, and a tinkle of breaking glass. They’d stopped throwing at her.
She looked back up the canal and saw half a dozen men bending and flinging as Heartsease surged round the curve, but they were too lost in the rage and drama of action to think of crowding onto the open bridge, from which they could have boarded as the tug went past. She was still watching the fight when something tickled her neck — a blade of grass. Scrub had reached