Simon shakes his head, but his eyes are shut and his teeth are clamped together.
The window is brighter now, the medieval saints are stirring into life, and I see that it’s more than candles burning. Django’s built one of his bonfires on the altar and the whole of the chancel is ablaze.
‘Behold,’ he says, gesturing at Simon, ‘mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth.’ He lifts his instrument and plays a little upward run of notes. ‘I will cause the sun’s shadow to move backward on the sundial. Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy righteousness shall go before thee.’
I don’t know if there’s a way to stop this without making it worse. I’m measuring the distance I’ll have to cover to catch Simon if he falls. Can I move now without disturbing his balance, without prodding Django into greater madness? Would I do better to go inside and up to the tower?
‘You shall be like a watered garden, Simon, like a spring whose waters fail not. Your descendants will rebuild the ancient ruins. You will be called repairer of broken walls, the restorer of paths to dwell in. All they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet.’
Simon is nodding his head, though his eyes are shut tight. He’s heard this before – he already knows what’s expected of him.
‘Rise on the back of an angel and be seen on the wings of the wind. Fly, Simon. Fly in the midst of heaven.’
Simon raises a foot and puts it out into space and I’m thinking the world’s about to end all over again. There’s no end to the ending of things. Our life is one long sickening plummet into loss and more loss. I hear footsteps in the grass behind me and a hum of distress, but my eyes are fixed on Simon. Whatever power Django has over him, Simon thinks he can fly, or thinks he has no choice but to behave as though he thinks he can fly. This is what I should have been attending to, only this – taking care of Simon. Because if Simon dies nothing makes sense.
A swallow swoops over the roof of the nave, a blackbird starts up nearby, and I notice the birdsong again that I’d forgotten to hear – a chorus of inattention and indifference.
My body reacts to the explosion. My eyes are shut for no more than a second, but when I next look Simon is gone. I heard a scrabbling sound and the thud of a falling weight, but see nothing now except the sun over the porch roof and the sheen of damp slates. From the neighbouring fields and woods all the birds have taken flight, flitting into the air or rising on slow wings.
Behind me Abigail is talking. ‘Maud,’ she says. She’s calm, but means to be obeyed. ‘Maud, give me the gun.’
I turn for a moment and see them, Maud staring in shock, the shotgun sinking in her arms towards the ground. Abigail has one hand on the barrel and the other round Maud’s back. Deirdre is behind them and Aleksy further off, still running. The monkey passes me, scampering through the grass towards them.
I turn back to shout Simon’s name and his face appears above the parapet. He makes the noise he makes before speaking. I see the effort, the motion in his neck and lower jaw. The first word comes out and it’s my name.
‘Don’t move,’ I tell him. ‘You’re all right. I’m coming to get you.’
I take the stairs two at a time and reach the top breathing heavily. He’s kneeling by the door, rubbing himself. ‘Uncle n-Jason,’ he says, ‘There was a bang. I hurt my mm-bottom.’
I take my jacket off and wrap him in it. ‘You’re freezing,’ I tell him. ‘You need to come home with us and sit by the fire and have some breakfast. Let’s see if those bantams have laid us any eggs.’
I see Abigail and Maud down among the gravestones, clinging to each other. The monkey’s chatter rises to a scream. He’s found Django sprawled beside the porch, a dark stain spreading around him on the grass. He clambers over the body, making noises of alarm, glancing back to see who’s with him. He pulls at the hole in Django’s jacket. White flakes come out of it and scatter on the ground. He pulls again and there are more flakes. I think for a moment that Django is stuffed like a toy bear. Then I see that it’s paper. The monkey is pulling the pages from Django’s Bible, which wasn’t quite thick enough to save him. The swallow soars up over the church, drawing my eyes across the trees until I lose it against the sun.
I’m startled by another burst of noise. The chancel windows are shattering in the heat. Some of the roof tiles crack at the far end of the nave and flames appear.
‘Come on, Simon. Time to go.’
‘But where’s…?’
‘We’ll talk about Django when we’re on the ground.’
‘He said I had to…’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘…I had to…’
‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.’
‘…I had to fly.’
‘No one can fly, Simon. Only birds can fly.’
‘But Jangle said.’
‘Quick, Si, before the fire gets us.’
I lift him and he climbs into my arms.
‘If the mmm-bantams have laid an egg, can I have soldiers?’
‘No bread, Si, remember. Not this year. Later we’ll have bread and you can have all the soldiers you want.’
I take a last look over the parapet and I see the monkey chattering away among the gravestones with Django’s clarinet. He crosses the road and scampers across the lawn, diminishing as if into an unimaginable future where babies will be born to replace the dead and everything lost will be found.
Agnes
Since I last opened this book, a horrible thing has happened, and we have left the O, Walt and I, for ever. Dell is with us. Until last evening we had no thought of making this journey. But now we shelter in the shadow of a fallen house and wait for the rain to ease before we set off again on the road to the village. Dell is asleep. Neither of us slept last night. Gideon stands patiently, head down against the wind. Walt lies beside me in his basket while I write. He holds one foot above him and makes small contented noises. He knows nothing of the danger we are in, trusting his safety to my care.
Yesterday at dusk Dell sent me to the canal for water, while she skinned some rabbits. When I had scooped up the last bucket and was loading it on the cart, a boy came, leading a cow along the pathway. The cow tugged a boat. Inside the boat a man stood to steer it with a paddle. I have seen other scroungers travel like this, usually with a horse or a donkey, sometimes with nothing but a pole to push against the riverbed. This cow was white all over like no cow in the village and bigger than any I’ve seen, with strong muscles in her rump. The boy was so small beside her that I took him at first for a child, until I saw the wisps of hair on his chin. The man shouted something from the boat and I couldn’t tell if it was me he was shouting at or the boy. The cow seemed to understand him, anyway, because she stopped and dropped her head to graze at the side of the path. The boy waited, leaning against her side, looking so frail and sickly that I thought he might have fallen over into the water if the cow hadn’t been there to support him. The boatman spoke again and I heard enough of his words to know he was asking where a person with a thirst might get a drink.
I told him he could follow me to the O. If I had known what trouble I was bringing to us all, I would have dropped the water and run into the darkest alleys of the forest. But how could I have known?
There was a dog chained up on the boat that growled at me, until the man slapped its muzzle. Quick and jerky in his movements this boatman was, in a way I’ve observed here among the scroungers where a man can’t stand easy among his neighbours but must watch for danger. He had a voice with a creak in it like a door shifting in a draught. When he stepped on to the path, his hot stink blew against me.
He took a swipe at the boy, sent him to fetch some things from the boat and set about untying the rope from the beast’s harness. He winked at me and more words came out of his mouth. I moved so that the cow was between us, making a show of patting and stroking her. Seeing her so close, I wondered at her bulk and her milky colour.