Beyond the reaped stubble was a pasture field where cows stumbled and snorted, invisible from twenty yards. Knowing what inquisitive brutes cows can be the children steered to the right, where an extra loom in the dark promised the shelter of another hedge. But when it came it was double, and a lane ran down the middle. Nicky shook her head — such a path was a likely route for a patrol. They scouted left, and the lane bent at right angles; flitting through a gap in the hedges, they found themselves once more at a place where unreaped wheat ran beside stubble, and ran in what Nicky, even after that bout of dodging, still thought was the right direction. Then another lane to cross, and empty pasture beyond. It was too dark to see more than ten yards now.
After a whispered talk, Gopal dropped behind and Nicky tucked a white rag into her belt for him to follow her by, like the scut of a rabbit. (If they were chased, she’d have to remember to snatch it out.) Darkness made the middle of fields seem safer than hedges; but coming in darkness to the village, by this unfamiliar way, she might easily have missed her direction. The wind had been steady from the southwest all day, surely. Just as she decided to stop and reconsider, the church clock began to clang sweetly to her left. Eight. More to her front, but further away, urgent voices yelled. In the fresh silence the tussocky grass of the pasture seemed to swish horribly loudly, however carefully she moved her feet; anyone waiting in the coming hedge would be bound to hear her — though she couldn’t hear Gopal ten paces behind her. Encouraged, she stole forward.
This hedge was double too, but the path down the middle was only a yard across. So she knew where she was, at least; this was the footpath that ran south between the church and the school. The nearer hedge was strengthened with the thorny wire she hated so much. As she squatted and wondered whether there’d be a gap further along, Gopal edged quietly up beside her.
“Barbed wire?” he whispered. “Wait a moment.” He crouched by the fence, holding some sort of tool in his hand. Two clicks, and he dragged a strand of wire away.
“My very own notion,” he whispered. “Wire cutters. You can crawl through now. Is it far from here?”
“Only across the playing field.”
“Then tie your rag to the other hedge so that we can find the place coming back.”
Most of the householders in the council estate kept a dog, but Mr. Tom preferred his scarred old tabby; so if they came up straight behind the right house there oughtn’t to be any barking. Nicky lay in the dewy grass and tried to make out the roof lines; Mrs. Bower’s chimney, next door, had a big hunched cowl. So . . .
Only firelight showed through Mr. Tom’s parlor window. Nicky edged an eye above the sill, hoping that he hadn’t gone to bed yet. No. He was curled in a chair by the dying fire, his head in his hands but held so low that it was almost on his knees; he looked very old and beaten. Nicky tapped cautiously on the pane. At the third tap he looked over his shoulder like a haunted man, and then put his head back between his hands. She kept on tapping, in a steady double rhythm which couldn’t have been caused by anything accidental, such as a flying beetle. At last he staggered from the chair, crossed the room and opened the window half an inch.
“Who’s there?” he whispered.
“Me. The girl from the Devil’s Children. I want to talk to you.”
“I’ll have nothing to do with you,” he hissed, and tried to shut the window. But Nicky was ready for him and jammed the hilt of her knife into the crack.
“We want to help you,” she whispered. “But we can’t until we know what’s happening.”
“How many o’ you’s out there, then?”
“Only me and a boy. He’ll rap on the window if he hears anyone coming.”
“Okay,” said Mr. Tom after a pause. “I’ll let you in.”
“I’ll climb through the window,” said Nicky. He opened it wide and she flicked herself through. The moment she was in he fastened it tight, while Nicky tucked herself into a corner where she couldn’t be seen from outside.
“Sit like you were sitting before,” she suggested. “Talk as though you were talking to yourself. Mike Sallow came up to the farm and told us that robbers had come to the village and killed Mr. Barnard and taken all the children somewhere.”
“True enough,” groaned Mr. Tom. “They killed the Master. I was there, waiting for the fun of seeing him drive ’em off, but there was three of them on horses, wearing armor. They charged him down and skewered him through and through, so’s he never got not one blow in with that sword of his. And then they cut his head off and stuck it on the pole of the Five Bells, for the wide world to see what manner of men they are. And herded all the children together, all as they could find, and took ’em down to a barn behind White House; and they put ’em in a loft with a pile of hay and timber down below, and they made old Maxie cry through the streets that they’ll set fire to the whole shoot if they have a mite more trouble out of us during their stay.”
“How long will that be?” said Nicky.
“As long as there’s a morsel left to eat, that’s my guess. And the Master was that set on us coming through the winter short of starving that we’ve barnfuls of stores waiting. You mark my words, well have ’em for months yet.”
“How many of them are there?”
“Thirty. Maybe thirty-five.”
“But there must be more than a hundred men in the village!”
“I know what you’re thinking, girl, but they fell on us that sudden, and we had’t nothing to fight ’em with, save a few cudgels. The Master, he’d been set on getting us swords, so he could have his own little army, but your folk wouldn’t make ’em for us, remember? And these robbers come with spears, and horsemen in armor, and now they’ve got the children — though I’ve none of my own, thank God — and we’re bound hand and foot, hand and foot.”
“Do you think they’d actually burn the children if there was trouble?”
“I don’t know, a course; but I do know they’d do something, and something pretty cruel, too. There was one of ’em, one of the ones on horseback, and while the footmen were hacking off the Master’s head I saw him throw back his helmet to wipe his face. Curly hair, he had, and a broken nose, though he was scarce more than a boy. And when he saw Arthur’s head dripping up there on the pole, he laughed like a lover. Like a lover in spring. I slunk away and come back here, and the rest I know from Maxie’s crying.”
He had been half out of his chair, glaring round the room as he tried to tell her the horror of his story, but a faint rap on the window made him shrink and curl like a snail. Nicky made a dart for the window, heard the footsteps, knew it was too late and slid herself under an old Put-U-Up bed where she lay, barely breathing, against the wall. A hard fist thundered at the front door. She could see Mr. Tom’s feet rise from the floor, as though he were trying to curl himself even further into his chair.
“Go and answer him,” whispered Nicky. “It’ll be worse if you don’t.”
The feet doddered back to the floor. The legs stumbled past the dying fire. Then a bolt was drawn, slap. Then voices.
“What’s your name, Gaffer?”
“T-t-tom Pritchard.”
“Tom Pritchard, eh? Fetch us each a mug of ale, Tom Pritchard.”
More than one of them, then.
Shufflings, another door moving, palsied clinking of glass, more shufflings. Silence. Then the smash and tinkle of deliberately dropped tumblers.
“We hear you were a crony of the big man’s, Tom Pritchard.”
“N-n-no, not me. He broke my fork a-purpose.” “What d’you know about the lot they call the Devil’s Children, Tom Pritchard? We hear as you had dealings with ’em.”
“N-n-not much. They live up at Booker’s, ’tother side of the bad wires. Three months back they came there. I had a bit of dealings with the girl as lives with them. She’s an ordinary girl, to look at. The Master wouldn’t have none of ’em but her in the village, and then only to do dealings in smithwork. They make and mend iron for us, they do, and sometimes I helped with the dealings. I never seen none of the others, saving the girl.”