'I got a call from Mr Cunningham. Damn lunatic, calling me in the middle of the day. He tracked me down, he said, tracked me down, because his son's in a terrible state. Can't stop the boy crying, apparently, because of some damn thing you've been up to with him.' Hugo approached Will's bed. 'Now I want to know what stupid stories you've been putting in this brat's head, and don't shake your head at me like that, young man, you're not talking to your mother now. I want answers and I want the truth, you hear me?' 'Sherwood's ... not quite right ...' Will said. 'What the hell's that supposed to mean?' Hugo said, spittle flecking his lips. 'He says things without really knowing what he's saying.' 'I don't care what's wrong with the little bugger. I just don't want his father coming to find me and accusing me of raising a complete idiot. That's what he called you. An idiot! Which you may be, by the way. Have you got no sense?' Will was starting to get tearful. 'Sherwood's my friend,' he spluttered. 'He's not quite right, you said.' 'He isn't.' 'So what does that make you? If you're his friend, what does that make you? Have you got no sense? What were you up to?' 'We just went looking around, and he ... he got scared ... that's all.' 'You've got a peculiar idea of fun, putting nonsense into a little boy's head.' He shook his head. 'Where'd you get it all from?' he said, already giving up on his son. Plainly he didn't want an answer, though Will so much wanted to give him one, so much wanted to say: I didn't make up anything, you dead-eyed old man. You don't know what I know, you don't see what I see, you don't understand any of it- But he didn't dare speak the words, of course. He just cast down his eyes, and let his father's contempt fall on his head until it was all used up.
Later, his mother came in with pills for him to take. 'I heard your father having a talk with you,' she said. 'You know he's sometimes harsher than he means to be.' 'I know.' 'He says things.' 'I know what he says and I know what he means,' Will replied. 'He wishes I was dead and Nathaniel wasn't. So do you.' He shrugged, the ease of the words, the ease of the pain he knew he was causing, exhilarating. 'It's no big deal,' he said. 'I'm sorry I'm not as good as Nathaniel, but I can't do anything about it.' All the time he was talking, looking at his mother, it was not her he was seeing, it was Jacob, giving him a moth to burn, Jacob smiling at him. 'Stop it,' his mother said. 'I won't listen to you talking like this. The way you behave. Take your pills.' Her manner suddenly became detached, as though she didn't quite recognize the boy lying in the bed. 'Are you hungry?' 'Yes.'
'I'll have Adele heat up some soup for you. Just make sure you stay under the blankets. And take your pills.' As she exited she threw her son an almost fearful look, the way Miss Hartley had at school. Then she was gone. Will swallowed the pills. His body still ached and his head still spun, but he wasn't going to wait very long, he'd already decided, before he was up and out. He'd drink the soup (he'd need the sustenance for the journey ahead) and then he'd dress and go back to the Courthouse. With his plan made he got out of bed again to test the strength of his legs. They didn't feel as unreliable as they had a little while before. With some encouragement, they'd get him where he needed to go.
CHAPTER III
Tbough Frannie wasn't sick, she suffered a good deal more than Will had the day after the night in the Courthouse. She had managed to smuggle Sherwood and herself into the house and upstairs to clean up before they were seen by their parents, and had entertained the hope that they were not going to be questioned until, out of the blue, Sherwood had begun to sob. He'd been thankfully inarticulate about what was causing him to do so, and though both her mother and her father quizzed her closely she kept her answers vague. She didn't like lying, mainly because she wasn't very good at it, but she knew that Will would never forgive her if she let any details of what happened slip. Her father simply grew cold and remote when his first fury was spent, but her mother was good at attrition. She would work and work at her suspicions, until she had them satisfied. So for an hour and a half Frannie found herself quizzed as to why Sherwood was in such a state. She said they'd gone out to play with Will, become lost in the dark, and they'd got frightened. Plainly her mother doubted every word, but she and her daughter were alike in their tenaciousness. The more Mrs Cunningham repeated her questions, the more entrenched in her replies Frannie became. At last, her mother grew exasperated.
'I don't want you seeing that Rabjohns boy again,' she said. 'I think he's a troublemaker. He doesn't belong here and he's a bad influence. I'm surprised at you, Frances. And disappointed. You're usually more responsible than this. You know how confused your brother can get. And now he's in a terrible state. I've never seen him so bad. Crying and crying. I blame you.'
This little speech brought the matter to an end for the evening. But sometime before dawn Frannie woke to hear her brother sobbing pitifully again, and then her mother going into his room, and the sobbing subsiding while quiet words were exchanged, and then the weeping coming again, while her mother tried - and apparently failed - to soothe him. Frannie lay in the darkness of her room, fighting back tears of her own. But she lost the battle. They came, oh they came, salty in her nose, hot beneath her lids and on her cheeks. Tears for Sherwood, whom she knew was the least equipped to deal with whatever nightmares would come of their encounter at the Courthouse; tears for herself, for the lies she'd told,
which had put a distance between herself and her mother, whom she loved so much; and tears of a different kind for Will, who had seemed at first the friend she needed in this stale place, but whom she had, it seemed, already lost. At last, the inevitable. She heard the handle of her bedroom door squeak as it was turned and her mother said: 'Frannie? Are you awake?' She didn't pretend otherwise, but sat up in bed. 'What's wrong?' 'Sher-wood just told me some very strange things.'
He had told everything: about going to the Courthouse in pursuit of Will, about the man in black and the woman in veils. And more besides. Something about the woman being naked, and a fire. Was any part of this true, Frannie's mother wanted to know? And if so, why hadn't Frannie told her? Despite Will's edict, she had no choice but to tell the truth now. Yes, there had been two people at the Courthouse, just as Sherwood had said. No, she didn't know who they were; no she hadn't seen the woman undressing, and no, she couldn't be certain she would recognize them again (that part wasn't entirely true, but it was close enough). It had been dark, she said, and she had been afraid, not just for herself but for all three of them. 'Did they threaten you?' her mother wanted to know. 'Not exactly.' 'But you said you were afraid.' 'I was. They weren't like anybody I'd ever seen before.' 'So what were they like?' Words failed her, and failed her again when her father appeared and asked her the same questions. 'How many times have I told you,' he said, 'not to go near anybody you don't know?' 'I was following Will. I was afraid he was going to get hurt.' 'If he had that'd be his business and not yours. He wouldn't do the same for you, I'm damn certain of that.' 'You don't know him. He-' 'Don't answer me back,' her father snapped, 'I'll speak to his parents tomorrow. I want them to know what an idiot they've got for a son.' With that he left her to her thoughts.
The events of the night were not over, however. When the house had finally become quiet, Frannie heard a light tapping on her bedroom door,
and Sherwood sidled in, clutching something to his chest. His voice was cracked with all the crying he'd been doing.
'I've got something you have to see,' he said, and crossing to the window he pulled back the curtains. There was a streetlamp outside the front of the house, and it shed its light through the rain-streaked glass onto Sherwood's pale, puffy face.