He went and stood at the edge of the copse, looking out down the road. He heard girlish shrieks of laughter behind him. Yet there was no sadder fate than an orphan’s. He should know, he was one.
They had no chance. One small breakfast of eggs and mushrooms might lift their spirits for an hour. But their lives were ruined, and they were too grand folk in their laces and bodices and linen caps and nice neat shoes to know it yet. What to do? In the end, that verminous Crake was right. They would be best off in the poorhouse, even with the narrow wooden beds and the fevers and the gruel for supper.
It was their only hope.
Susan retired behind a bush, and when she returned, the others gasped. She had sliced off her fine long hair, that glowed almost red in the sun. Mere patches and tufts remained, with shining glimpses of white skull between. Like one committed to the asylum of Bethlem, head shaved to let out the heat of her madness.
She smiled at them. ‘To stay neat. Easier that way.’ And for some reason she sat down beside Nicholas.
Susan, always so organised and orderly. Her mother dying so young, she had been female head of the household since she was seven, and early bowed down with seriousness and responsibility. A cold fear gripped Nicholas’s stomach. It was Susan who wasn’t going to survive. The little ones would chatter on through — at least until they fell ill in winter. But Susan … there was something in her eyes already, roving about the empty fields and the bare sky. A look of something lost.
‘Come along now,’ she said. ‘Off to Shrewsbury we go, all sprightly and spry.’
Yet she stayed sitting where she was.
He took her hand and pulled her up. She had no weight in her at all. She drew her hand away from his and walked on ahead, alone, looking neither left nor right.
Later that morning he heard her softly singing a psalm under her breath.
‘I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him …’
6
The blood-red sun went down below the horizon of the western hills and the afternoon darkened into twilight.
‘I’m scared,’ whispered Agnes.
They were walking down a long lane in a bleak country with hills to east and west. The evening star began to rise. They would have to find shelter soon.
Then they crested a rise and there was a small wood ahead. As they came near, Lettice’s sharp eyes glimpsed an orange glow through the trees.
‘Firelight!’ she cried, and started to trot towards it.
‘No,’ Hodge whispered urgently, and actually dared to seize her grubby dress. ‘Hold back, maid. You know not what kind of folk they may be.’
‘And singing!’ added Agnes.
They waited, hushed. And an old woman’s voice, strange and low, sang in the darkening wood.
Nicholas and Hodge looked at each other uncertainly. The air was growing colder by the minute, they must find shelter, and where else was there? Yet there was something here that made their skins prickle with dread.
‘Let go of me!’ Lettice said, suddenly imperious. And she twisted and broke free of Hodge’s grasp, and she and Agnes ran on into the wood before the boys could stop them.
The girls pulled up sharp in a clearing. Hodge and Nicholas came rushing up behind them.
There was a warm glow of fire, and something sizzling over it on a spit. There was a cauldron beside. And in the darkness beyond sat three, no, four people, backs against the trees, faces deep shadowed in the firelight. An old woman who smiled at them, black-toothed and nodding. Three men. And further off, a beaten-down donkey standing asleep, and a low donkey-barrow with frayed rope traces.
‘Why,’ said one of the men, looking up from the wooden bowl he was slurping from. ‘Here’s a pretty one. Come nearer, maid.’
He smiled, and the men looked at each other. Then they noticed Hodge and Nicholas standing behind them.
‘What a tribe, is that all of ye?’
Hodge was just about to say that the rest were back on the road, a dozen or more, but Lettice blurted out, ‘Five’s all we are, and fearful hungry, mister!’
‘Then come closer,’ he said softly. ‘And tell us your story.’
Agnes shook her head. ‘We have none. Our father died!’
The second man clucked. ‘You fell on hard times but lately though, I see from your boots and garb. Do any know you be here?’
Hodge again tried to speak first but Agnes’s high pitched voice wailed above him, ‘Nobody! Not a soul in the world knows of us now!’
Hodge shoved Nicholas in the ribs and they both stepped nearer the fire, close by the girls.
‘Stand tall,’ he whispered.
The men slurped more broth. ‘Ye’ll sleep here?’ said the first man, wiping his lips.
Nicholas said they would. What choice did they have now? Even the air on the back of his neck and legs was cold.
‘But we two may lie awake a good deal,’ he said pointedly.
There were only shreds left on the spit, but the vagabonds hung the cauldron over the fire again and threw on more sticks to reheat the last of the stew.
There was little enough meat, but big white bones floated in the thin broth. Hodge stared at the stew and wouldn’t eat. He asked for bread but they had none.
‘You must eat, lad,’ said the old woman, but Hodge only stared at her woodenly and said nothing.
‘Then ye’ll sleep well enough, right down by the fire! Eh?’
Again the men looked at each other.
Nicholas felt uncomfortable. Something was wrong here. Yet if they went out onto the road now, it would be bitter cold, the hoarfrost settling, the poor creatures of the field limping through the stiff grass. Owls hunting. There were still wolves in the Welsh forests, they said. This was a good shelter.
He would stay awake, that was all.
The vagabonds gave them blankets that smelt foul. Or maybe it was just the air. The odour of poorly butchered meat. But perhaps he was wrong to be so mistrustful and suspicious. All they had done so far had been kindly and hospitable.
He drowsed then stirred. ‘Hodge,’ he whispered. ‘Stay awake.’
Hodge nodded. ‘My belly’s too empty to do otherwise. Besides, I’d no more sleep here than at the gates of hell.’
In the small hours, Nicholas pushed his blanket off to go and empty his bladder. He had been fast asleep.
Hodge was snoring gently. The girls all lay in a row, huddled up to each other. The vagabonds lay the other side of the embers. He had been wrong to be so suspicious.
He went some way away behind a tree, and there was something there, half under the leaves. The moon passed behind a cloud. There was a foul smell here, even in this cold air. He stared down, his throat tight, and then up. Thin cold cloud raced past and the moon sailed out. Something hung from a branch above him, twisting with the wind.
With stomach knotted, ears ringing with terror, he turned and ran back.
In the clearing, two of the men were already on their feet, one looking over to where the girls lay.
‘Hodge!’ he yelled.
The sleeping servant was awake and on his sturdy legs in a second, squat dagger in his hand.
The men stood stock still.
One smiled his blacktoothed smile, lit by the eerie moonlight.
The girls were slowly awakening.
In the darkness behind, Nicholas heard the old woman cackling. Then she shucked her rotten teeth and crowed, ‘Well, a lively night for all!’
‘What’s with the dagger out, lad?’ said one of the men.
Hodge held it out steadily before him.
‘There’s something in the woods,’ said Nicholas, trying not to let his voice shake. ‘Hanging from a tree.’
The man turned on him. ‘There’s lots in the woods, lad. Badgers and hedgepigs and-’
‘I mean a body, half butchered.’
The man’s face darkened visibly, even in the dark of night. ‘So if we steal a sheep, well, what is that to thee? Mortal men must keep flesh and spirit together. You woudn’t turn us in for sheep thieves and see us hanged at Shrewsbury assizes, would ye now?’