Fawkes handed over the bottle of port, marvelling at the cheek of the man. Offering him to drink out of his own store! Once again, as Adam tilted back his head to swallow, he was tempted — very tempted — by the idea of striking him on the exposed throat. But he did nothing apart from take a draught from the bottle after Adam had returned it, in his own good time. Adam stuffed the papers back into the knapsack and slung it over his shoulder as a sign that he was ready. Then he shot out his arm and did something odd. He pressed his thumb into the great dimple on Fawkes’s chin.
‘There,’ he said, ‘been wanting to do that for a long time, brother.’
‘Keep your dirty hands to yourself,’ said Fawkes. ‘Don’t be so familiar.’
The two men clambered down the ladder to the ground floor of the stable and made their way past the stalls. The horses — there were only three of them since Percy Slater kept as reduced an establishment in here as he did elsewhere — moved uneasily at the presence of a stranger.
Fawkes found the shovel. He was quite glad to be holding something which might double as a weapon even if it was awkward carrying both shovel and lamp. He took care to walk behind Adam, holding up the lamp to throw some illumination ahead of them both. They entered the yard and Fawkes paused before unlatching the gate, wondering whether Adam had really come over the wall of the stable yard. They stepped out into the open.
‘What now?’ he said.
‘Kill that light,’ said Adam.
‘There’s no one to see,’ said Fawkes, though he’d earlier claimed not to need a light.
‘Even so.’
Fawkes obediently doused the light. They waited for a few moments until their eyes grew used to the dark. As Adam had said, the night was for once free of mist or fog. A quarter moon hung in the sky. The bulk of Northwood House was to one side, beyond the wall of the stable yard.
‘Lead the way, my friend,’ said Adam. ‘Take us to Hogg’s Corner.’
This was what usually happened when Fawkes was in company with Adam. He disliked and sometimes feared the other, but he tended to comply with his suggestions or orders.
They rounded the house and skirted the terrace and the planted beds which extended beyond it. The area was as neglected as the rest of the estate. Weeds sprouted between the flagstones of the terrace and the flower beds were barren or bedraggled. Fawkes looked back at the house. No lights in any of the windows but then there were rarely lights in Northwood House.
There had once been a clear division between the cultivated area and the parkland beyond the terrace and flower beds and lawn, marked by a ha-ha as the land dropped away. But the grass had grown up on both sides and the stone of the hidden retaining wall had been allowed to crumble, so the division was no longer clear even by day-light. All that was left was an abrupt drop between the two levels.
Fawkes knew it was coming and he knew that the drop wasn’t much more than four feet or so. Placing shovel and light on the edge, he leaped off into the dark. He half hoped Adam might leap after him and sprain his ankle or worse. Adam did jump but he was so light and limber that he seemed to bounce back up as he hit the ground, like a jack-in-the-box.
‘See there,’ said Fawkes, once he’d retrieved the shovel and the lamp. He was pointing ahead of him. ‘Those trees there, that’s Hogg’s Corner.’
The two men set off across the rough ground in the direction of a cluster of trees which stood in isolation on a kind of knoll about two hundred yards away. The little hillock stuck up oddly, as if a great head adorned with a few wild tufts had abruptly thrust itself up through the ground. An owl hooted. The men’s breath frosted in the air. The grass underfoot was so thick and tussocky that they were almost wading through it. The moon gave off a feeble glow. As they approached the oaks the ground began to rise slightly. It was obvious that the trees were old from their outlines alone. The trunks were thick and the branches twisted like ropes. The trees were grouped in a rough circle on the fringes of the knoll but it was so ragged and incomplete that it did not seem as though they been planted deliberately in that way. There was a cleared space in the middle like a bald patch.
As Fawkes and Adam moved under the low-lying branches, their feet crunched on the nuts and mast strewn on the ground. Adam halted in the centre of the approximate circle.
‘Now light the lamp again,’ he instructed his companion.
When Fawkes had done as he was told, Adam crouched down and loosened the knapsack from his back. By the light from the lamp, he examined a sheet of paper which he drew from the bag and laid flat on the ground. He stabbed his finger at a point on the sheet. Fawkes stood behind him, holding the shovel. He might have brought it down on the other’s head. But he didn’t. Instead he followed the next lot of instructions.
There was a reason why Seth Fawkes did nothing to Adam, despite the provocation and the opportunities. There was a reason he did not strike him across his exposed throat or whack him over the head with a spade. It was because the two men were brothers and because the fraternal bond still held, frayed as it was. Seth Fawkes was the older by a little more than a year. Until recently, they had not seen each other since childhood. Both had been born to a couple who worked on the Northwood estate in old George Slater’s time. They came from a large family in which all the children were given Old Testament names. Discipline was strong but there was also some attempt at education by the mother. The children had been taught to read and write, in a rudimentary fashion. Despite the mother’s care, though, Seth and Adam were the only survivors.
In fact, Fawkes had long believed his brother Adam to be as dead as the rest of his siblings. Adam had got into frequent scrapes as a youngster, then the scrapes turned to petty crime. He drifted to the city of Salisbury, become involved with the law when acting as a ‘crow’ or lookout for robberies and, before long, disappeared into the smoke and anonymity of London. After a few years with no word or sign, Seth Fawkes assumed that his brother was dead or in gaol or transported. If he ever thought about it — which he didn’t much — then he was relieved rather than sorry. He’d always regarded himself as the respectable one, growing up on the Northwood estate when George Slater lived there with his various wives and continuing to work there even as the place decayed further under Slater’s son. Eventually there were only the two of them left, him and Nan (and Percy Slater of course), to occupy a great echoy house.
So you could have knocked Seth Fawkes down with a feather when, one evening in The Nethers scarcely a year before, he noticed a weathered individual eyeing him. The moment Seth caught his glance, the other moved towards him though he was plainly sitting and drinking and minding his own business in a corner. Seth wasn’t a great one for company but he did enjoy a jar or two after he’d been to visit Mrs Mitchell. He liked to wet his whistle and sink himself in memories of Mrs Mitchell’s frowsty bed before it was time to return to Northwood House and the stables.
‘Mind if I join you?’ said the weather-beaten man with a crooked grin.
Seth Fawkes looked round. The place was full of laughter and smoke. There were other empty seats and benches. He shrugged, although when the other sat next to him on the bench Fawkes instinctively shifted a few inches away. He would have moved further but he was wedged into a corner.
‘You don’t know me, do you?’ said the man, placing his pint carefully on the table before tapping his fingers on the battered surface.
‘No.’
‘I know you though. . Seth.’
Fawkes looked at the other man properly. ‘Mr Fawkes to you,’ he said. His companion wore an expression that wasn’t so much cheerful as filled with glee. He said, ‘It’s like a birthmark on you, that hole. Can’t get rid of it this side of the grave.’