It did not come. Instead, there was a thunderous roar of ‘Stay!’ and the dog, almost in mid-jump, lay down obediently at his master’s feet, although his beady eyes never left my face and he slobbered in frustration. The man himself was hardly more prepossessing than the beast; a big fellow both tall and heavily built with a bull neck and powerful thighs. His hair was grizzled and there were wrinkles around the slightly protuberant brown eyes. I judged him to be somewhere in his late fifties.
‘What do you want?’ His voice was harsh, suspicious.
‘I was hoping to beg supper and a bed for the night,’ I said, adding, ‘I’m an honest pedlar on his way home to Bristol.’
His gaze sharpened. ‘A pedlar, are you? Then where’s your pack?’
I cursed silently. For the moment I had forgotten that I didn’t have my pack with me. There had seemed no reason to take it to London when I had set out in pursuit of Adela, and indeed I had not needed it these past few weeks.
‘I — er. .’ I was beginning lamely, but the man gave me no chance to explain.
‘Be off with you!’ he shouted (or words to that effect), and indicated his inability to control the dog for much longer.
I held up my hands placatingly. ‘All right, all right! I’m going,’ I said and turned away just as the door of the farmhouse opened yet again and the woman I had seen earlier reappeared.
‘What’s the trouble?’ she asked. ‘Lower your voice, John. You’re disturbing the child.’
Close to, I could see that she was much younger than the man, perhaps by about as much as twenty years, but she wore a wedding ring and spoke in that proprietary way wives do when taking husbands to task; a way that is easily recognizable but difficult to describe. She was a pleasant enough looking woman with a pair of fine hazel eyes but a nose that was, unfortunately, somewhat too large for her face. Her apron, over a gown of grey homespun, was scrupulously clean, as was her coif, and she had pinned a sprig of greenery to one shoulder with a small, round pewter brooch in a seeming celebration of the newly burgeoning spring.
‘I’m afraid it’s my fault, mistress,’ I interposed before the man could speak. ‘I was hoping to find a meal and shelter here for the night, but my request seems to have given offence.’
The woman shot her husband — if I was correct and such he was — a venomous look from beneath lowered lids before she turned a smiling face towards me.
‘I’m sorry, master, if my husband was rude, but our daughter is sick and we are both very worried about her.’
‘That would be the young girl I saw running across the yard just now, would it?’ I enquired caustically. ‘She didn’t look very ill to me.’
‘No,’ the woman answered reproachfully, ‘that was our younger daughter. She’s been set to look after her sister while I do some of the household chores, but she’s only thirteen and resents the enforced inactivity. She tries to sneak out every now and then when she thinks I’m not watching. Indeed, sir, our older child is very sick and we don’t know what ails her. We wouldn’t want a stranger to take anything from her. No doubt if my good man here — ’ she gave him another searing glance — ‘had explained the circumstances, instead of shouting and threatening you with the dog you would have understood immediately.’
‘Of course,’ I said with a smile, ‘and I’m sorry for having bothered you. I’ll be on my way at once.’ I turned to leave, then turned back. ‘I seem to have wandered well off the beaten track. Do you happen to know of anywhere hereabouts where I might find a bed and supper for the night?’
It was the man who answered. ‘There’s an alehouse about a mile or so along on the opposite side of the ridge,’ he offered grudgingly, but then gave me a gap-toothed grin as though to apologize for his former incivility. ‘It’s not much used except by a few locals. We don’t get many strangers this far off the main roads to Bristol and Oxford and the like, but I daresay the landlord could find you food and a place to sleep if you’re not too fussy.’
I thanked him and retraced my steps to the top of the ridge. Halfway up the slope, I glanced over my shoulder and saw the couple still arguing or having an altercation of some sort, but by the time I had regained the summit, the courtyard was once again silent and empty, the pair having obviously retreated indoors.
An hour or so later — or so I judged from the position of the sun, still glimmering between the overhanging branches — I was beginning to wonder if the farmer had been deliberately lying concerning the distance involved, or if his notion of a mile was a country one. I had still seen nothing resembling an alehouse; indeed, when I came to think of it I had seen no dwelling of any kind. The track along the crest of the ridge had dwindled to a mere footpath, and on occasions not even that. Underfoot, cuckoo-pint gleamed palely from beds of glossy, opulent leaves, and tattered spikes of purple orchis stood sentinel in a matted carpet of ground ivy and wood sorrel, whose tiny, white-starred flowers were starting to close against the dusk.
I paused in a clearing to rest my back against a tree trunk, listening to a silence broken only by the singing of the birds. Then, from somewhere behind me, I suddenly heard the snapping of a twig as though it had been stepped on by too heavy a foot. For some reason I felt the hairs rise on the nape of my neck, but told my self not to be so foolish. Even if someone else was walking the ridge, there was absolutely no reason why I should feel threatened. This was a common right of way used by the local inhabitants. How else would they reach the alehouse mentioned by the farmer? If I waited for the man to catch me up, perhaps he would be able to direct me to the elusive hostelry.
But then I heard the faint whine and snuffle of a dog and immediately, against all rhyme and reason, felt convinced that it was the same brute I had met earlier. And if it were? the more rational half of my mind enquired. Why should the farmer not be exercising the animal before shutting it up for the night? But an hour or more distant from the homestead? No; it didn’t make sense.
I glanced hastily about me. The undergrowth had thickened hereabouts and an all-concealing brake of gorse and brambles offered cover. I scrambled behind it at the cost of no more than a scratched hand and a rent in my hose which Adela could easily repair, and crouched down, calling myself all sorts of an idiot, to wait.
The dog appeared first, followed by the man who paused in the middle of the clearing and stared around. I raised my head very slightly and noted a wicked-looking hunting-knife stuck in his belt, so I hastily hunched down again in my prickly hideaway and hoped that I had not been seen. But the movement, stealthy as it was, had attracted the attention of the dog who came bounding across, snuffling excitedly at the other side of the brake. I held my breath, certain of discovery, and found that the hand holding my cudgel was slimy with sweat.
‘Heel!’ his master snapped. And then again, more viciously, ‘Heel!’
I was sure the dog could smell me by the way he whined and scrabbled at the earth, but to my astonishment, he backed away and lay down, whimpering. The man kicked him into silence. This was no friendly master and dog relationship, just fear on one side and brute force on the other. In some dim corner of his brain, the dog knew that I was there, just a few feet from them, but in the long run his mother-wit was only as great as his master’s, and I had no very high opinion of the homesteader’s.
After more agonizing seconds had ticked by, my pursuer — for I felt sure he was that — suddenly swung on his heel and grunted, ‘Back!’ He continued, talking more to himself than the dog, ‘I’m damned if I’m going any further. He’s gone. I said it was a fool’s errand at the start. Women! They get these crotchets in their stupid heads. That oaf was no robber.’ He stamped one foot, obviously in a rage. ‘Got a fucking blister on my big toe now, God damn her!’