A gas lamp flared as the billeting officer lit it, sending long shadows jumping across the walls and floor. A few scarred wooden chairs had been pushed into a circle near the door, and there the officer and the two teachers conferred in low voices. Lewis thought he heard the words “last resort” as they flicked worried glances at the remaining children.
At that moment he made up his mind to go home. As soon as their backs were turned he would slip away and find the road out of the village. A vision of the darkness sliding over the great, empty countryside he had seen from the coach gave him pause, but then anything was better than this waiting. He could thumb a lift back to London, and if he was lucky, maybe he’d find something to eat.
As he drew his legs under him, tensing his muscles for a chance to bolt, he heard a familiar sound. A horse’s hooves clip-clopped on the pavement, just like old Snowflake’s when he pulled the milk float at home. But milk came in the morning, not in the evening. A shiver of fear ran down Lewis’s spine as the hoofbeats stopped and the horse blew loudly just outside the open door of the hall. He stood, heart hammering.
The man who came into the hall didn’t look frightening. He wore a black uniform and a cap, like the chauffeurs Lewis had seen at the cinema, and might have been a bit older than Lewis’s dad.
“John, how good to see you,” Mrs. Slocum, the billeting officer, gushed with relief. “I knew we could count on Edwina to take the rest of the children.”
Removing his cap with a nod to the teachers, the man said a bit brusquely, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Slocum, but Mrs. Burne-Jones only gave me instructions to bring the one.” Glancing at the children, he pinched his lips together. “You say this lot is all you have?”
“I’m afraid so,” said the billeting officer, and Lewis wondered if the note of apology in her voice was meant for the children or for the man in the uniform. “But surely—”
“And needs must it’s a boy, as she means to put him in the room above the stable,” John said firmly. The thin line of his lips almost disappeared as he regarded Lewis and Bob Thomkins. He lifted a finger. “I suppose that one will do.”
Realizing that the finger was pointing in his direction, Lewis looked wildly behind him, just in case some other boy had materialized.
“All right … Lewis, isn’t it? Get your bag. You’ll be going up to the Big House with Mr. Pebbles here,” said Mrs. Slocum, her disapproval of the unknown Mrs. Burne-Jones’s stubbornness plainly evident. Then she forced a smile. “John, do tell your mistress that we’ve three more without a place to lay their heads. And there are the teachers, of course. Surely she could find room for them, even temporarily.”
John motioned Lewis towards the door. “I’ll put it to her, Mrs. Slocum, but you know what she’s like when she’s made up her mind.” He touched his cap and followed Lewis outside.
The white horse gleamed palely in the dusk. It stamped and shifted in its harness as they approached, rocking the dogcart. John jumped up to the seat and gathered the reins, then frowned down at Lewis. “Well, what are you waiting for, boy?” Then he added, a bit more kindly, “Have you never seen a pony cart before?” He patted the seat beside him with the flat of his hand. “Hop up here, quick now. We’ve a ways to go and supper’s waiting.”
The word “supper” fell enticingly on Lewis’s ears. Deciding he could always run away afterwards if he didn’t like the place, he tried to climb up on the cart as if he’d done it often.
John clucked to the horse and they set out at a gentle pace. The village was dark as pitch with the enforcing of the blackout, except for a splash of light as someone pulled aside the curtain over the door of the pub on the village green.
Lewis’s heart lurched with homesickness at the brief sight of the men gathered near the door, pints in hand, enjoying the warmth of the evening. But they soon left such comfort behind, and as the lane began to climb, the darkness grew ever more dense. The horse’s footfalls were muffled by a carpet of leaves, and Lewis sensed as much as saw the interlacing of the boughs above their heads. He felt lost in the blackness, as insubstantial as the mist he’d seen forming in the hollows.
Fixing his eyes on the faint glimmer of the horse’s rump in front of them, Lewis asked, “How does he know where to go in the dark?”
A snort that might have been a laugh came from the man sitting beside him. “Have you never driven a horse before, lad? He knows my signals from the reins, but he doesn’t need me up here. He can find his way home just as well as you or I.”
“What’s his name?” asked Lewis, encouraged by the patient answer.
This time the chuckle was unmistakable. “Zeus. Daft name for a horse if you ask me, but then nobody did.”
Lewis glanced at his companion, relieved that the sharp nose he could see faintly silhouetted under the peaked cap did not seem to indicate a bad temper. “Are you the groom, then?”
“You are a cheeky sort.”
“It’s just that I thought you might be a chauffeur,” Lewis hastened to add, afraid he’d overstepped the bounds with his new friend. “But you’ve not got a car.”
“It seems I’ll be driving whatever Miss Edwina requires,” said John, and Lewis was relieved to hear the undertone of amusement again. “Young Harry Watts, the groom, ran off yesterday to join up. It’s Harry’s room you’ll be getting, lad. Not that he did much anyway, with only two horses to look after, old Zeus here and Miss Edwina’s hunter. She prefers the automobile, but she wasn’t inclined to waste petrol on fetching a London ragamuffin up from the village.”
Lewis considered taking offense at being called a ragamuffin, but decided his pride didn’t warrant drying up his font of information. “What sort of an auto is it?”
“There are two, lad. The MG Roadster Miss Edwina drives herself, and the Bentley I drive for her.”
“Blimey,” Lewis whispered under his breath. The autos were the stuff of legend, beasts not glimpsed among the lorries and tradesmen’s vans of the Island. Just what had he got himself into? “Who is Miss Edwina?” he ventured. “Is she very rich?”
John chuckled. “That’s Mrs. Burne-Jones to you, lad, and I suppose she does well enough for herself. You’ll see for yourself in half a tick. We’re almost there.”
Lewis couldn’t see any change in the dappled, leafy darkness surrounding them, but talking to John had made him feel a bit less frightened of it. After a moment’s silence, he risked one more question. “Is there a Mr. Burne-Jones?”
“Broke his neck in a hunting fall the first year they were married. But if you ask me, she was just as glad to come back here. The house belongs to her family, the Haliburtons, drafty old pile that it is. Now hush, lad, and grab on to the cart.” Twitching the reins, John made a clucking sound to the horse. Zeus turned sharply to the left and the cart lurched into a rut, rocking Lewis half out of his seat.
When he’d righted himself he realized they had emerged from the trees. He could see stars now, flinty specks against a sky as black as deep water. A spicy, green scent filled his nostrils as the cart brushed against a hedge; when he reached out to touch the leaves they felt soft against his fingers.