Ebony Hill (6 page)

As I come down the stairs next morning, angry voices drift up to meet me. I pause a moment to listen, not to eavesdrop, but to try to find some way of understanding everything that’s changed since yesterday.

The argument follows the line it began with last night. Some want to send a party up to Summertops, while Truso counsels patience. “Tino will have reached Vidya by now,” he tells them. “The Scouts should be here by evening.”

I picture the news of Esha’s death reaching the city; the shock and grief the handful of words will send spiralling through the community.

“Scouts are equipped to deal with a situation like this,” Truso adds. “We’re not.”

A burst of disagreement springs up. Truso folds his arms and waits. He looks as if he’s not slept, his face haggard, ochre stubble creeping its way across his cheeks.

As I slip past the meeting room doorway, Manet looks
up and sees me. “Ness,” she says, hurrying across to take my arm so that everyone turns to stare. “I didn’t expect you to wake so early. Come and eat.”

The kitchen is mercifully empty. “Is Ronan up?” I ask.

“I don’t think so.” She pushes me into a chair. “I’ll make you some porridge.”

I’m hungry but something in me resists the thought of food. “Esha,” I begin, then can’t find words to follow.

Manet squeezes my hand. “We’re all grieving for her, and for our friends at Summertops.”

“She cared for me when I first arrived in Vidya. She was…” I hesitate, fumbling for words. “She was the closest I had here to a family.” Esha’s loss sits hard and sharp-edged in my chest, like a lumpy mouthful, half-chewed, that won’t go down. “I miss her,” I say, and swallow. “It’s not fair.”

The childish plaint brings sympathy to Manet’s face.

“I know. Yet in some ways it’s easier with Esha.” Her expression hardens. “At least we know she’s dead.”

Her words remind me that Manet’s partner Ben was raised at Summertops. Most likely he still has family there – but my grief is all for Esha.

“We can’t just leave her – her body, I mean. We have to bring her back.”

The image of Esha, left to the unkind mercies of weather and wild creatures, is one of several images that troubled me through the night.

Manet glances towards the door into the hall and lowers her voice. “You’re right. Ben and Zeek went up
last night to fetch her back – only if she’s been left on the track: they won’t go near the farm itself.”

“Does Truso know?”

She shakes her head. “Now.” Her voice rises to normal volume, taking on an artificial cheeriness. “Let’s get you that porridge. You must be starving.”

I am. Even so, chewing each mouthful is an act of will.

The farm has a security alert policy. Manet tells me they’ve never needed it during her years in the community, though in the early days they did. One of the men whose name I’ve forgotten stamps into the kitchen and snaps the details at me in a staccato burst, sentences sharp as gunfire. “No one goes out alone. No one acts alone. No one leaves the building after dark unless on an approved activity. Work continues as normal but all work groups will include two sentries – to be unobtrusive, Truso says. All groups carry alarm flares. Groups report on the hour. Children remain indoors at all times. Lookout points are manned. All procedures will be reviewed when reinforcements arrive.”

He scowls, as if he thinks I might be tempted to ignore his decrees, or as if I’m somehow to blame for them. Behind him Manet smiles placatingly. Maybe he does think I’m to blame – that Ronan and I invited violence through some careless or provocative act. Perhaps he’s simply wishing it was one of us lying dead and Esha sitting here alive and hungry at the table.

After his visit my appetite has gone. I take my bowl
to the sink and tip the remains of my porridge into the slops bucket, glancing towards Manet from beneath the fall of my hair.

“The people at Summertops,” I begin. “Will they be – will they be prisoners?”

Manet’s smile grows transparent so that I see the fear beneath it.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I—”

Shouting from outside draws us both to the window. It’s Zeek – I recognise him from the fields when he laughed and joked with Ben and Manet. Two days ago.

He sags between two men, his shirt stained dark. Truso bursts from the house and half a dozen voices vie to be heard. I look to Manet but she’s crumpled back onto her chair, her face paled to clay. “Manet! What is it?”

“Ben,” she gasps. “Where’s Ben?”

“Ben … but—”

Truso comes charging into the kitchen, lurches to a stop and draws a slow breath. Squatting in front of Manet, he takes hold of her hands. His voice is gentle. “You knew they’d gone?”

She says nothing.

“Manet, Ben’s dead.”

She lets out a low, guttural moan. Truso’s face seems to age as he continues. “Zeek says that when he and Ben reached the top of the pass, Esha—” Truso pauses to clear his throat. “Esha’s body was still on the road. Zeek kept a lookout while Ben went to retrieve her. Her body was booby-trapped. Ben’s gone.”

Tears fall silently down Manet’s cheeks. A wailing breaks
out in the other room and an older woman comes hurtling in, careening off the doorframe and spinning across the floor towards Manet. Wrapped in each other’s arms they begin to rock, the older woman maintaining a shrill, continuous keening. Truso beckons me into the hall.

“I don’t understand,” I tell him.

“Last night we agreed that securing Home Farm is our priority, at least until reinforcements arrive from Vidya,” Truso says tightly. “Ben and Zeek ignored that decision. It’s a costly lesson.”

“Not that.” My hands fly out, batting the air as if I might slap answers from it. “I don’t understand who would do this. Or why.”

Truso takes a shuddering breath. “None of us do. Not yet. But one way or another, I intend to find out.”

When he looks at me again, his cheeks are wet. “Ness, I’m sending you and Ronan back to Vidya. As soon as the Scouts confirm that it’s safe to travel, I want everyone who can’t or doesn’t wish to be part of this to leave. The first jigger-load can take Jago, the youngsters, two of the women who are pregnant. After that, the older children and any of the adults who—”

“I can fight.”

We both turn to see Ronan, stiff and straight on the stairs. His left eye is swollen shut. Truso shakes his head. “Not against weaponry like this: rifles, we can match, explosives, we can’t. And there could be worse. This is a problem for Decon and Scouts.”

“I’m not going back to Vidya,” he insists.

“It’s not your decision, Ronan. It’s about what’s best
for everyone. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

Truso has a lot on his mind, but the set of Ronan’s chin suggests there might have been a more constructive way of presenting his views.

“They’ve just found out that Ben’s dead,” I say, by way of apology.

“I heard.”

We stare at each other in silence. “Is there any food?” he asks at last. “I’m starved.”

The normality of it brings a smile flickering over my face. One side of Ronan’s mouth lifts in reply, cracking his lip so that a tiny trickle of blood bursts brightly past the scab. “Does that hurt?” I ask.

“A bit.”

“There’s porridge,” I say, glancing into the kitchen, guessing by its silence that we’ll find it empty. “Do you want yoghurt or milk with it?”

The mundane tasks – ladling porridge, pouring tea – settle my nerves, allowing me to shut out the memory of Esha’s dead-eyed face. Despite seeing her that way, I still can’t quite believe it. I wonder how the others can – perhaps that’s why Ben and Zeek ignored Truso’s  ruling. But now Ben’s gone as well, and that’s just as hard to believe. Death has no business being so sudden and finite.

“How else can it be?” Ronan asks.

I didn’t realise I’d spoken my thought aloud. I shrug. “When my mama died, then my aunt Bella and later my pa, at least they were sick. I wished I could make them better, especially Pa, because I was old enough to
understand by then, but it wasn’t like Esha. They didn’t go from alive to dead in a single sound.”

The crack of the rifle seems to echo around the kitchen. Ronan nods. “My mother and brothers too. I knew it was coming.”

“Ronan, if you stay, I’ll stay too.”

He looks at me and I feel something happen, some shift between us. When Saice comes to call us to a meeting, we go to face it together.

“It was like … like one minute he was there, then he wasn’t. Just …”

Zeek slumps into silence. Everyone in the community, save for sentries, is gathered in the hall. I look for Manet but she’s wrapped in a weaving of women’s arms.

“Going against the decision we made last night has cost us a life,” Truso says. “Zeek, I don’t lay the blame on your shoulders. I know others supported you and we none of us expected this. All of you, though: no one acts on their own. Is that understood?”

There’s no whisper of dissent. Not so when Truso lays out his plan – which in the short term involves pretending nothing has happened. First on his feet is one of the men who was vocal last night. He’s swiftly followed by others. “We can’t just plant potatoes and corn as if nothing has changed! What about our people at Summertops? What about my sister? And little Minka? What about—”

“It might have been a mistake to go at night, but we know the terrain. If we—”

“I’ll go. I’d like to teach those bastards a lesson or two!”

“What about us? They might be heading here even now.”

The argument runs in circles of grief and fear.

“Enough!” Truso says at last. “Until reinforcements arrive, we have no choice but to wait. We’ve already seen that we’re out of our depth.”

“We’ve got rifles.”

“Rabbit guns. They don’t compare to the sort of military hardware the paras used in their booby-trap. And we’ve precious little ammunition.”

“So you’re saying that we just let them take Summertops? Our people and livestock and the land that we’ve nurtured?”

“In the short-term, we’ve no alternative. We’ve seen what our inexperience leads to: we’ve already lost two lives. We can’t afford to lose more.” Truso pulls a hand roughly through his hair, lifting it into wild tufts. “We’re farmers not fighters. I’m asking you to be realistic. Once the scouts get here, we can—”

“How do we even know they’re coming?”

“What if the message didn’t get through? What if—”

“I’m not going to just sit here and—”

“You’ll not do anything without agreement from around this table!”

“Who says I won’t? You can’t—”

“Stop it!” I shout. “Can’t you see that turning on each other is the worst thing to do? We have to stand together.”

I subside, but my interruption has served its purpose. There’s no more shouting.

“Well said, Ness,” Jago murmurs.

Truso clears his throat. “The way I see it, the best course is not to put any more lives at risk. We’ve sent word to Vidya and we’ve got our defences in place. No one –” Truso stares around the room, meeting every eye. “No one goes anywhere near Summertops. The paras will expect that and they’ll be ready. We already know how they intend to treat our approaches.”

“But what about our people up there? What about—”

“If they’re still alive,” Truso stares around the room. No one has yet voiced this fear, though I don’t doubt they’ve all thought it. “If they’re alive, they’re safer if we keep our distance; if we don’t put these para-militaries, or whoever they are, under pressure. Not until we know what the situation is and that whatever action we take will be successful.”

There’s a heavy silence.

“And we look at our own community. This might get a lot uglier.” He pauses. “As many as possible will be evacuated to Vidya. That way we minimise our risk.”

Ronan meets my gaze. I can guess what he’s thinking. I raise my shoulders in a shrug.

The scouts arrive just before midnight, thirty of them. The community gathers silently in the meeting room, waiting to hear what they have to tell us.

“The governors are treating the situation as serious,” their leader, a dour-faced man called Brenon, tells us. “Two Decon teams are on their way to Dales and Pinehill. They’ll assess the situation and report to me. Home
Farm has been designated our base. We’ll reconnoitre Summertops from here.”

Silence: assuming the threat came from the north, we’ve not given much thought to the farm communities that lie east. Dread slides around the room like fog rising from a peat bog.

“Truso has filled me in on events to date, and on the security policy you have in place. That will need tightening.” He eyes the room. “As of now this is a military zone. Decisions will be made by me, ratified by Truso and Lynd, head of Decon. Till this is over, it’s martial law people. Your complete co-operation is required.”

No one speaks. Brenon nods briskly, satisfied that he has us all suitably cowed, and dismisses us to our beds. Lying wide-awake I stare into the dark and think how quickly the community’s peaceful life has been disrupted. Will changing back be as simple? Will it happen at all?

At breakfast the farmworkers, usually so talkative, sit shadow-eyed and wary around the table, the absence of Ben and Esha filling the room. There’s little sign of Brenon and his unit, but we feel no less marginalised for their absence.

As people begin to file out into the hall Ronan catches my eye. I follow him through the kitchen and into the scullery beyond. “Brenon has agreed to Truso’s plan to send a group back to Vidya,” he tells me. “I’m not going Ness.”

I didn’t expect he would, not after the way he reacted when Truso proposed it. “I’ve no ties to Vidya,” he adds,
though he has no need to justify his decision to me. “It’s wrong, what’s happening. I’d rather stay and help.”

All I can do is nod.

“You don’t have to stay for my sake,” Ronan adds. “You should do what’s best for you.”

I clamp my teeth on my confusion. Yesterday I’d begun to think Ronan wanted me to stay; that a bond had begun to grow between us.

“You’d be safe in Vidya,” he says.