The Book of the Crowman (16 page)

He returned with more meat than the previous evening. Three rabbits and a similar number of crayfish. Denise sat with her back against a tree, facing the river. His coat was in her lap.

He allowed his footsteps to announce his approach and she looked up.

“I was beginning to think you’d left me here to fend for myself.”

It was so close to the truth he didn’t know how to respond at first. In the end he shrugged as though time was the last thing on his mind.

“I found a high place to look out from and thought about where we’ll go next. I also did a full circuit of this area, just to be sure there’s no one else out here.” He held up his catch. “And there was nothing in the snares for most of the day. These guys all got caught within the last hour or so.”

Denise looked at Gordon with his bounty of food and any tension that had been in her face disappeared.

“You’re the ultimate hunter-gatherer, aren’t you?”

“You said you were starving.”

“I’m even starvinger now.”

Something in her smile tugged at him. His groin warmed and swelled. He tried to ignore the sensations and moved between the trees to gut and skin the rabbits. When he’d buried their offal, he returned to wash his hands in the river.

“I’ve been working hard too,” said Denise. “I found your needle and thread.”

When he turned she was standing up, holding out his coat. It was unrecognisable.

“What do you think?”

The coat was almost invisible beneath a layer of black feathers. She’d sewn them in from the end of the coattails and from the ends of the sleeves so that they lay over each other as they would on the body and wings of a bird. She’d put a lot of thought into which size of feather went where and at the lapels, cuffs and tails, feathers hung and fluttered from frayed strips of black cloth. A breeze moved the coat in her hands and it shimmered blue-black in the evening light.

“I cut up my best top for the ribbons but it’ll turn some heads next time we’re on a major road,” she said, grinning. “This’ll be the new fashion. I was thinking about what you said. Something like this could be a uniform for the Green Men; something to bring them together.”

He stood and shook his head.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything yet. Come and try it on.”

“I’m not sure I can.”

“Please, Gordon. I’ve worked on it all day. I’m glad you’ve only just come back or I wouldn’t have had time to finish. Just put it on and see how it feels.”

Gordon was paralysed.

“Look, if you hate it, I’ll unpick it all and you can keep the feathers wrapped in their old bit of rag. I haven’t damaged them, I promise you.”

He didn’t move, couldn’t even swallow.

“Oh, come on, Gordon. You’ve done so much for me. All I wanted was to give something back to you.”

…give something back…

The phrase went right to his heart. That was all anyone had to do to make the world better. He couldn’t refuse such a sentiment.

He stepped forward knowing he would never forget Denise’s smile of gratitude and relief. He put both arms out behind him and she place the armholes over his hands. In one movement, he shrugged into the coat. The sensation that the coat had
leapt
onto him would have been disturbing if it didn’t feel so good to wear it. It was a new skin and it felt right.

“Turn around then.”

Slowly, arms out to either side, feathers dancing at his wrists, he faced her.

“Wow. That’s looks even better than I thought it would. It suits you so well. How does it feel?”

“It feels amazing.”

“You know what, Gordon?”

“What?”

“It looks like a bit like armour. Maybe it’ll protect you.” She put her face up to his and kissed his lips. “But not from me.”

She stroked her hand down his arm, enjoying the silky bounce of the feathers. Then she looked away.

“What is it?” asked Gordon.

“I put Flora’s feathers in with yours. I wish she was here to see it. She’d have loved you like this.” She turned to face him again, her eyes shining with tears. “She loved you anyway. As soon as you left the attic that first time she told me how special you were. It was like she knew all along that you were going to come into our lives. Like she’d been passing the time until you got there.”

Without much confidence, Gordon put his arms out and around Denise. The fierceness of her returned embrace set him off balance and he stumbled backwards a step. She didn’t let go. He knew this hug. He’d seen it many times in his childhood. The hug of a daughter seeking solace in the strength of her father; Jude hugging Dad.

Gordon held Denise as tightly and fully as he could and they stood rooted that way beside the river as darkness took the shine away from his feathers. She was the one to pull away and he sensed a sudden hardness in the movement, a severance. Whether she’d had what she needed now or had simply found no answer in his arms, he couldn’t tell. When she looked at him, her eyes seemed once more as guarded as when he’d first met her.

“I need some poor man’s surf and turf,” she said.

It could have been the failing light, but to Gordon, Denise’s smile looked grim.

As night fell, Gordon grilled everything he’d caught. Leftover rabbit meat would last a day or two longer and keep their strength up as they walked. Sitting beside each other, they spoke very little as they ate. Denise went into the shelter as soon as she’d finished her food. He listened to her rustling as she moved around, preparing the bed and covers.

There was no reason for him to remain outside. Even though he wasn’t tired, he followed her into the shelter and covered the entrance with their bags. Denise’s hand was on his shoulder as soon as he scooted onto the bed; she pulled him down towards her and kissed him hard. He reached out in the dark to find her already naked and she stripped him with frantic, insistent tugs. Once again the night brought forth their animal spirits; a dark fire in the blood. They mounted each other again and again, sometimes sleeping in between, sometimes only resting. Gordon thought about the burning houses and cars he’d seen from the top of the hill. Maybe their frank, uninhibited unions were nothing more than acts of destruction inspired by the brevity of their future. Though each coupling was ecstatic, for Gordon the loneliness that followed was crushing. It was easy to believe that the world was out of hope and out of time.

If this is the end, then bring it on.

Let it burn, he thought. There is no future.

Let it burn.

This morning is the coldest of the season so far.

Megan’s ears ache and redden at the touch of the air as she searches for the right place between the pines. She has slept nearby Mr Keeper, waking each time she heard him stir or cough or groan, which was often. Even when his sleep and breathing seemed untroubled she woke and checked on him. Now she is stumbling with fatigue.

Wrapped in furs from the roundhouse, she walks between the silent trees looking for a space that feels right. She finds what she wants in an area where two pines have fallen, leaving a gap that stretches up to the sky. She sets the snares and places scraps of rabbit meat around them. This is one of the many things Mr Keeper has taught her how to do but she didn’t think she would need the skill; especially not so soon. Three should do it, she thinks, though she does not look forward to dispatching the creatures the snares catch. No matter how willingly they come, killing is never without its price; somewhere it is noted, remembered.

When everything is ready, she disguises the snares and kneels a short distance away, incanting the prayer Mr Keeper taught her for this kind of hunting She repeats the simple invocation about fifty times, barely whispering the words into the breath of the woods and yet knowing with total certainty that they have been heard.

She leaves quietly and returns to the warmth of the roundhouse.

Rather than a trembling act of bloodstained terror, the slaughter is quiet and sacrosanct. Megan talks to the three rooks, strokes their feathers and thanks them for their sacrifice before she breaks their necks one by one. She dismantles their bodies right there beneath the trees, where the sky can watch her hands working. She separates the usable meat from the bone and feather, the sinew and claw, placing it in a wooden bowl; warm vapour rises and fades into the silent, still air above it. What remains of the rooks she buries, adding a little of her own blood from a nick she cuts into her forearm.

Back beside the stove in the roundhouse, her fingers still creaking with cold, Megan puts the meat in a black cook pot with quick-bine, ale and some seasoning. Worrying about Mr Keeper’s many external wounds, she adds a whole head of crushed garlic to ward off infection. For most of the morning, the mixture cooks on the stove, bubbling gently, its aroma filling the warm air of the roundhouse. When it is ready she wakes him.

The canal’s surface was speckled with unmoving debris. Paper, plastic and half-submerged pieces of waterlogged timber. Here and there, the partially decomposed bodies of birds and other animals. Twice Gordon noticed bloated human carcasses, filled with gas and breaking down but as yet untouched by carrion eaters. Perhaps the water was poisoned. It didn’t matter; this wasn’t water they were going to drink. The canal formed a clear, relatively direct path, sheltered by hedges and trees and a good distance from the roads for most of its course. It was the perfect route north. And, if his hunch was right, the Grand Union Canal led all the way to the Midlands. If they hadn’t have left the motorway, if Gordon hadn’t climbed his hill the previous day, he would never have thought of it.

The narrowness of the path also meant Denise couldn’t have walked beside him even if she wanted to. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to lead and her to follow; he just didn’t want to have to talk. His excuse to himself was that she stopped him from concentrating. The real reason was harder to accept but that didn’t make it go away; this kind of closeness, with anyone, was dangerous.

He’d never travelled with anyone before. He’d always avoided friendships and kept moving to stop himself from growing roots it might be painful to cut later on. But if the end of everything was so close, why didn’t he want to spend as much time as he could with Denise, enjoying her company in every way possible? Even if he couldn’t hold it in his mind for more than a few moments at a time, the answer was simple. He didn’t love her. He didn’t even like her particularly. He didn’t want to play his last days out in a lie – a thought swiftly followed by:

But they’re already a lie, though, aren’t they?

This was all an act. To travel together, for him to provide for her; he was doing out of guilt. The one thing that didn’t feel false was their sex; not until the crashing waves of tristesse which swiftly followed every coupling. He wanted her and yet being with her hollowed him out somehow, left him barren. How long they could go on like this he didn’t know but he couldn’t just leave Denise out here alone. He’d get her to somewhere safe. Get her among the Green Men.

And then he’d move on.

The only thing that felt good was his coat of black feathers. She’d made a flippant comment about it looking like armour but it was true: the coat made him feel safe and strong. After years of hiding all the black feathers he’d found along his path, he now showed them to the world. Black was his true colour and the crow was the symbol he sought in everything. It was right that he wore this coat for the final part of his search. He was close now; there wasn’t any doubt in his mind. There were only two possible outcomes:

If he didn’t find the Crowman or didn’t find him fast enough, the land was done for. Everyone would perish, even the Ward. But if he could track down the Crowman, and quickly, the chances were that the Green Men would someday triumph over the Ward. Once the Crowman had reconnected the people with the land, the Ward wouldn’t have the strength to stand against them. Gordon would have completed his sworn duty. He would dismiss himself then, find a secluded spot where he could live out his days. He had grown to love the chase, he had become it. But when the chase was over, what then would he be?

Denise’s footsteps catching up to him made his shoulders tighten.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

“What are you thinking about?”

He’d lost track of how many times she’d used this opener since they left the M1. In the end he said:

“Why do you keep asking me that?”

“I don’t know. I mean why wouldn’t I? You’re always so quiet and intense. You seem so angry.”

“I’m not angry.”

“Well, you seem it.”

“I’m not.”

“So what
are
you thinking about?”

Fuck, he thought, why didn’t I leave her in London?

“Listen, Denise. There’s a reason why brains are encased in a shell of bone; it’s because they’re private.”

“Don’t you want to talk to me?”

“Sure. Of course I do, but… you can’t just ask people what they’re thinking like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not a real conversation. Why don’t you tell me what you want to talk about and then we’ll talk about it. It’ll happen naturally. You don’t have to do it this way.”

“I want to talk about what’s going on inside your head.”

Gordon stopped walking and turned around. He needed to know how Denise looked in that moment; whether she was winding him up or if she was serious about the question. Either way she was being incredibly stupid. From the look on her face, she seemed genuine.

Fine.

“I’ll tell you what I’m thinking about, Denise. I’m thinking about how the Ward took away my family and turned me into an outlaw. I’m thinking about the people I’ve killed while I’ve been searching for the Crowman – I lost count a long time ago. I’m thinking about what people have done to the world to make the land turn against them. I’m thinking about the millions who’ve died and the ones I could have saved. I’m thinking about all the things which have been lost already and I’m wondering if it’s even worth
trying
to carry on when things are this messed up. I’m thinking of the hundreds of thousands more people who will die at the hands of the Ward and I’m thinking about what will happen to this world if I don’t find the Crowman. I’m thinking about the things that need to happen if this land is ever going to heal and I’m wondering if I have the strength to keep searching and keep fighting. Most of all, Denise, I’m wishing that this wasn’t the life that was handed to me. I never asked for this, I don’t want it and I never have.”

His face muscles were twitching as he turned away and continued to walk, faster now; the pace he would have used if he was travelling alone. A mile or so later he slowed down and looked back. There was no sign of Denise.

“Shit.”

He retraced his steps, running.