“I’m not afraid. I could free you if you like.”
“I always free myself.” She twisted again.
“Why did they tie you?”
“Why? I suppose so they could watch. Watch me try to get free. But they’re gone now, to steal food.” Then she said: “I thought you villagers worked all day. Why does your mother let you wander?”
“I’m allowed because I finished three corners by myself already today.” Then he added: “My real mother’s not in the village any more.”
“Where’s she gone?”
“I don’t know. She was taken. I live with my aunt now.”
“When I was a child like you,” she said, “I lived in a village. Now I travel.”
“Who do you travel with?”
“Oh … with them. We pass this way quite often. I remember them tying me and leaving me here once before, this very spot, last spring.”
“I’ll release you,” he said suddenly. “And if they come back, I won’t be frightened of them.”
Yet something still held him back. He had expected her eyes to shift away, or her body at least to accommodate the prospect of his approach. But she had gone on staring at him, while under her arched back her hands continued their struggle. Only when she let out a long sigh did he realise she had been holding her breath for some time.
“I can usually do it,” she said. “If you weren’t here, I’d have done it by now.”
“Do they tie you to stop you running away?”
“Run away? Where would I run away? I travel with them.” Then she said: “Why did you come to me? Why don’t you go help your mother instead?”
“My mother?” He was genuinely surprised. “Why should my mother want me to help her?”
“You said she was taken, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but that was long ago. She’s happy now.”
“How can she be happy? Don’t you think she wants someone to come and help her?”
“She’s just travelling. She wouldn’t want me to …”
“She didn’t want you to come before because you were a child. But you’re nearly a man now.” She fell silent, arching her back as she made another concerted effort. Then she sagged back down again. “Sometimes,” she said, “if they come back and I haven’t got myself free, they don’t untie me. They watch and don’t say a word until I manage by myself and my hands come loose. Until then they sit there watching and watching, their devil’s horns growing between their legs. I’d mind it less if they spoke. But they stare and stare and don’t say anything.” Then she said: “When I saw you, I thought you’d do the same. I thought you’d sit and stare and not say a thing.”
“Shall I untie you? I’m not afraid of them, and I’m good with knots.”
“You’re only a child.” Suddenly tears appeared. It happened so quickly, and because her face showed no other sign of emotion, Edwin thought at first he was watching perspiration. But then he realised they were tears, and because her face was half-upturned, the tears rolled oddly, past the bridge of her nose and down the opposite cheek. All the while she held her gaze on him. The tears confused him, making him stop in his tracks.
“Come on then,” she said, and for the first time moved onto her side, letting her gaze fall away towards the bulrushes in the water.
Edwin hurried forward, like a thief spying an opportunity, and crouching in the grass began to tug at the knots. The twine was thin and coarse, cutting cruelly into her wrists; the palms, in contrast, spread open one across the other, were small and tender. At first the knots did not yield, but he forced himself to be calm and studied carefully the path the coils took. Then when he tried again, the knot gave under his touch. Now he went about his work more confidently, glancing from time to time at the soft palms, waiting like a pair of docile creatures.
After he pulled the twine from her, she turned and sat facing him at what suddenly felt an uncomfortably close distance. She did not, he noticed, smell of stale excrement the way most people did: her odour was like that of a fire made from damp wood.
“If they come,” she said quietly, “they’ll drag you through the reeds then half-drown you. You’d better go. Go back to your village.” She reached out a hand experimentally, as though unsure if even now it was under her control, and pushed his chest. “Go. Hurry.”
“I’m not afraid of them.”
“You’re not afraid. But they’ll still do all these things to you. You helped me, but you have to go away now. Go, hurry.”
When he returned just before sunset, the grass was still flattened where she had lain, but there was no other trace left of her. All the same, the spot felt almost uncannily tranquil, and he had sat down in the grass for some moments, watching the bulrushes waving in the wind.
He never told anyone about the girl — not his aunt, who would quickly have concluded she was a demon, nor any of the other boys. But in the weeks that followed, a vivid image of her had often returned to him unbidden; sometimes at night, within his dreams; often in broad daylight, as he was digging the ground or helping to mend a roof, and then the devil’s horn would grow between his legs. Eventually the horn would go away, leaving him with a feeling of shame, and then the girl’s words would return to him: “Why did you come to me? Why don’t you go help your mother instead?”
But how could he go to his mother? The girl herself had said he was “only a child.” Then again, as she had pointed out, he would soon be a man. Whenever he recalled those words, he would feel his shame anew, and yet he had been able to see no way forward.
But that had all changed the moment Wistan had thrown open the barn door, forcing in the dazzling light, and declared that it was he, Edwin, who had been chosen for the mission. And now here they were, Edwin and the warrior, travelling across the country, and surely it would not be long till they came upon her. Then the men travelling with her would tremble.
But had it really been her voice that had led him away? Had it not been sheer terror of the soldiers? Such questions drifted into his mind as he followed the young monk down a barely trodden path beside a descending stream. Was he sure he had not simply panicked when he had been awoken and seen from the window the soldiers running about the old tower? But now, when he considered it all carefully, he was certain he had felt no fear. And earlier, during the day, when the warrior had led him into that same tower and they had talked, Edwin had felt only an impatience to stand at Wistan’s side in the face of the oncoming enemy.
Wistan had been preoccupied with the old tower from the time they had first arrived at the monastery. Edwin could remember him continually glancing up at it while they had been cutting logs in the woodshed. And when they had pushed the barrow around the grounds to deliver the firewood, they had twice made diversions just to go past it. So it had come as no surprise, once the monks had disappeared into their meeting and the courtyard was empty, that the warrior should lean the axe on the woodpile and say: “Come a moment, young comrade, and we’ll examine more closely this tall and ancient friend who stares down at us. It seems to me he watches where we go, and takes offence we’ve yet to pay him a visit.”
As they had entered under the low arch into the chilly dimness of the tower’s interior, the warrior had said to him: “Take care. You think you’re inside, but look to your feet.”
Glancing down, Edwin had seen in front of him a kind of moat which followed the circular wall all the way to form a ring. It was too wide for a man to leap, and the simple bridge of two planks was the only way to reach the central floor of trodden earth. As he stepped onto the planks, gazing down into the darkness below, he heard the warrior say behind him: