Now there were more coming. Ada and Miriam hooded as Reeds, their green fronds blowing about them. The voice of the Mistress grew louder and more shrill, but whether calling them back or urging them on I couldn’t tell.
As if pulled over the lawn by their long shadows they moved towards us. I told myself not to be afraid, though in truth I was faint with fear at the thought of what I was about to do. I stepped forward with the bag swinging heavily against my leg.
Sarah reached me first, moving with quick light steps. ‘Is she with you?’ she said, ‘is it my child?’ hardly stopping to hear my answer before hurrying on under the trees.
I knelt, sinking back on my heels. I heard the gasp of joy from Dell and the comforting murmur of Sarah’s voice and Walt grumbling between them. The bag lay open on the ground. A book came into my hand and I tossed it in Tal’s path. Another book spun towards the women, landing softly on the grass. A third book for Peter. A fourth and fifth for the women. The books perched on the lawn fluttering, holding themselves to the wind like curlews.
More faces turned from the crowd by the Hall, straining to read the meaning of what I did.
Tal had stumbled in his progress and now stooped to see what lay in front of him. Peter came up beside him, scratching his beard. Miriam and Ada turned this way and that to gather the books that fell flapping at their feet.
I heard Bessie’s voice behind me. ‘What are they, Agnes?’
A whisper grew among the villagers. Above our heads the branches ducked and strained. The old slates rattled on the roof of the Hall. The people moved back and forth across the lawn while the sky darkened and the wind howled down from the moor to riot in the wood.
Then there was Roland. I stood with my empty bag billowing at my side and waited for him to come towards me. I raised my voice to be heard above the storm.
‘So you’re the Reader now.’
‘What have you done, Agnes?’
‘You thought there were only four books. I’ve brought more to show you.’
‘I never thought there were only four.’
‘We all did, Roland. You never said different.’
‘What does it mean anyway?’
‘It means we think fresh about everything. If there are a thousand books.’
‘A thousand?’
‘Why not? Then there are a thousand ways to think.’
‘And this is what the scroungers have taught you?’
‘The books taught me this. And my own mind.’
‘And what good will it do?’ He looked about at the villagers, who passed books and held them open for the air to snatch at, muttering in their agitation. ‘They’re frightened already, Agnes. This is a hard time for us. You should have waited.’
‘For your permission?’
He laughed but I could see it was just to hide his own fear. ‘There’s still only one Book of Windows.’
‘Which will teach you nothing. Not to capture steam nor how to ride without a horse.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I know it’s just a trick of yours to say otherwise, to have your own way. For years Brendan studied the Book of Windows and he found so little sense in it, it made him mad.’ I stopped then, because I saw all at once that Brendan had led a sad and worthless life.
‘You haven’t asked about Brendan.’ Roland looked as if he thought this question would make me stumble.
‘Should I have asked?’
‘He’s not here. I thought you might have wondered what became of him. Unless you already know.’
‘I haven’t asked about Megan either. Weren’t you going to marry?’
‘You can’t lie to me, Agnes. We grew up together.’
‘You grew up at the Hall. I only lit your fires and washed your sheets.’
He smiled at that, because it was my old way of talking, I suppose. ‘There are others to do that now,’ he said. ‘But I’m not as idle as I was. Come to my room and see how I work.’
‘Your room in the turret? I’ve been there before. It’s too close to the red room. I’m afraid I might never see the forest again, or the fields, or the geese. How are the geese?’
‘The geese are laying and will go on laying without any help from you. Come to my room and we can talk about the books.’
‘And if I did come, what would Megan say?’
I saw I had unsettled him at last. ‘The night you left.’ He looked at the ground. When he looked up again his eyes were fierce. ‘Until the night you left, Agnes, I didn’t know.’
‘What didn’t you know?’
‘That without you the Hall is an empty ruin and the other villagers worth less to me than a rabble of scroungers.’
I was surprised to feel my heart beat faster to hear him say this, and my breath come less easily. I didn’t know what I would say in reply until the words came. ‘Then knock on my cottage door and I might answer.’
I made to walk away but was stopped by a thought. When I turned back, three or four women had gathered around Roland, old neighbours puzzled to see me, some holding books awkwardly in both hands, while the air tore at their scarves and the hems of their skirts. Bessie joined them, puzzling at a page of words. They were afraid perhaps the Book of Death was come for them in many faces and the world was soon to end. Behind them on the steps, the Mistress moved her arms through the air but her voice was drowned. Daniel, waiting beside her to be flogged, tilted his hooded head as if to catch a sound that would tell him what was happening to the village.
‘I met some scroungers on the road,’ I said. My words were for Roland but I didn’t mind who heard them. ‘They boasted they had killed a villager. An old man who limped in his walk. I thought of Morton. Is Morton dead? They said they cut his throat while he lay in bed asleep and left him to be eaten by rats.’
Roland watched me through narrowed eyes. ‘How did they know of his limp if they killed him in bed?’
I looked at the wild sky, then at the women who waited for an answer. ‘They followed him home from the forest where he’d been gathering firewood.’
‘A loaf of Annie’s bread was in the kitchen, Agnes. Did the scroungers tell you that? Cheese and freshly churned butter. In the yard a shed full of chickens. None of it touched. Only Morton, slashed from the ear to the throat, and enough blood to drench the straw and spill down through the floorboards on to his kitchen table. Is there no hunger any more among the scroungers?’
I shrugged. ‘Scroungers do what scroungers will, Roland, and there’s no accounting for it.’
I left him standing there, and the neighbours gathering round him, and hurried to where Dell stood with Walt, and Sarah clinging to her, while above them the trees tossed and churned. I told Sarah she should come with us to the cottage, but she pulled herself away from Dell and said she must see things right at the Hall. She held me tight for a moment, said she would come to us later, and set off into the storm.
So it was just the three of us again. I led the way on foot back down to the road and over the bridge towards my mother’s cottage.
Jason
The fire has died down, and I’ve come to dig Django’s grave. Inside the blackened shell of the church the roof timbers sit precariously in heaps. Embers break here and there into little runs of flame. The walls give off heat and I’m sweating before I’ve begun.
Django lies in the churchyard where he fell. On one side his clothes have burnt off and his flesh is singed. I chase off a couple of buzzards, throw a sheet over him and weigh it down with stones. Then I cover my face and start digging. While I work, the wind shifts direction and grows stronger. The air is pleasantly cool. I catch the smell of tree bark and damp leaves. Before I reach the water level the rain comes and I’m hoisting shovelfuls of mud.