There was still no sign of daybreak, but he reckoned that it would not be long before the sun came up. He felt incapable of moving the man’s body on his own. For a moment, it seemed to him that it really didn’t matter if the man stayed where he was. His quarrel was with the bailiff, not the deputy. He looked across at the well. The goatherd was sitting very still, with the dog at his side and the goats scattered nearby. An idea came to him.
He went to the well and hauled up several pitchers of water which he gave to the animals, letting them drink their fill. Then he climbed onto the wall of the well and detached the pulley from the well arch. The sheer weight of it almost made him topple over into the water.
He went back to the inn and put the pulley down on the table. He groped his way along the walls for any store cupboards in which he might find a length of rope. With only the pantry as yet unexplored, he stopped. In the silence, he could hear his own breathing. As he passed the bailiff’s body, his boot skidded in the pool of blood coagulating on the floor tiles. To clean the blood off his soles, he scuffed them along the floor as he made his way over to the pantry. With the cripple’s stinking body at his feet, he reached out and felt along the shelves, where he found the handles of tools, strings of garlic and a length of rope hanging from a nail.
The chain and manacle of his captivity were still there on the pillar. He managed to hook the pulley onto the manacle, then passed the rope through the rusty wheel. He pulled the two ends of the rope over to the deputy’s body and tied one end to the rope around the man’s ankles. He then tugged on the other end until the dead man’s boots were parallel, as if he were standing to attention. He tried to pull still harder, but the sheer weight of the dead body threw him off balance. Then he rested his feet on either side of the door frame and, using his own weight, pulled again as hard as he could. The corpse moved, only slightly, but it moved. Twenty minutes later, he had managed to winch the deputy far enough into the room to be able to pull the door to.
What he did next was not done on the orders of the goatherd. He went over to the bailiff’s body and, keeping his eyes tight shut, patted the man’s jacket, feeling for the silver lighter, which, once found, he slipped into his own shirt pocket. He then drenched the bodies with oil from a can he had found in the pantry. The liquid soaked the men’s clothes and, when these were saturated, spilled onto the floor, permanently staining the painted tiles. On top of the bodies he scattered wattle fallen from the roof, the rope from the pulley, and the broken wooden crates in which the cripple had kept soda siphons. He picked up the shattered remains of the wicker chair and added them to the pyre, keeping back one slat from which he made a torch by wrapping bits of sacking and cloth around it, secured with twine. Outside, it was beginning to grow light.
The boy returned to the well carrying a wooden crate, and when he got there, squatted down next to the goatherd.
‘Everything’s ready. We can go now.’
‘Are the bodies safe?’
The boy glanced across at the inn, whose whitewashed walls now glowed red in light from the rising sun.
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Hell will already have opened its doors to them.’
‘It will.’
He placed the straw hat on the old man’s head and helped him up. The goatherd scarcely had the strength to stand. His trousers flapped loose about his legs. His ragged jacket barely covered his bruised and beaten body. The boy had not realised until then how very thin the old man was. He helped him sit down on the edge of the wall, placed the wooden crate under his feet and, by pulling on his arms, managed to get him onto the box. Then he brought the donkey over and positioned it sideways on to the goatherd so that the packsaddle and the panniers were at stomach height. The boy helped him lie face down on the load and, by tugging on the old man’s arms and legs, finally got him sitting upright on the donkey’s back, his legs slotted in between the bulging panniers.
The boy returned to the inn one last time. It was light in the street now, but it would be several hours before the sun penetrated the room. He picked up his improvised torch and peered in, although he could see very little. He breathed in the rancid air and, for the first time, caught the familiar smell of mice. A smell composed of sawdust, nibbled corn grains and chocolate-brown droppings. He could smell the cripple’s body, whose insides were doubtless already beginning to putrefy, as well as all the other meaty aromas that still lingered in the atmosphere despite his plunderings. He grabbed the door knocker and pulled hard, but the door wouldn’t close. He tried several times without success, then noticed that the deputy’s hand was blocking it. He kicked the hand out of the way and this time managed to slam the door shut, listening for the latch to click home. He then looked across at the well and saw the goatherd still mounted on the donkey, head bowed and hands folded submissively like a captive.
He took the lighter from his shirt pocket and flicked it on. The bluish flame illuminated his grimy face. If he could have seen himself in a mirror, he would have burst into tears. He applied the flame to the torch and blew on it until the flame took hold. He held the torch head downwards and turned it slowly until the whole thing was alight. He opened one of the shutters, threw the torch onto the pyre and watched. Nothing happened at first and, for a moment, he feared that the pyre might not catch fire at all and that the torch might burn out. Then, after a couple of minutes, the wicker chair began to burn and the rest followed. Leaving the shutter ajar so that the air would feed the flames, he rejoined the goatherd and the animals. It was daylight by the time he once again took up the donkey’s halter and they set off northwards out of the village, heading for the mountains.
11
IT WASN’T UNTIL later in the morning, when they were far from the village and the smoke, that he realised the goatherd was dead. He had decided to stop and rest in a small grove of trees away from the road, because, now that night had passed, it seemed prudent to seek shelter from the sun and from other people, and to try and sleep a little. He thought the goatherd would approve, because that had been the way he himself had organised their journeys, travelling by night and lying low during the day.
This was the first time since they had met that he, rather than the old man, had been the one to decide when they should stop and, in taking that decision, the boy felt that he was now the person in charge and that the old man would perhaps be grateful for his collaboration.
During the journey, he had glanced round several times to make sure that the goats and the old man were all right. At one point, he had noticed that the old man had slumped forward and was actually lying on the necks of the flasks protruding from the panniers. The boy assumed he had fallen asleep and, knowing how deeply weary the old man must be, he was not surprised that a man his age could maintain such an uncomfortable position.
They left the road and crossed a dry, stony stretch of ground. He noticed the tracks they were leaving and felt an impulse to erase them, but although he could brush away the donkey’s tracks with branches, he wasn’t prepared to go back and pick up all the goats’ droppings. He thought about the previous night, about the deputy’s crushed skull and the bailiff’s head blown to pieces thanks to gunpowder, lead and the goatherd. He thought, too, about the days they had spent travelling, and about the sleepless nights, the hunger and the rare occasions when they had been able to stuff themselves with food. Close now to their destination, he felt his eyelids tremble and, at that precise moment, he really didn’t care any more. He could have stopped right there, in the middle of the plain, knelt down and fallen asleep, but they were so very near the wood that he determined to make one last effort.