The Changes Trilogy (20 page)

Margaret walked slowly up through the orchard, coming to terms with this new Lucy, not the slut who didn't fill the lamps or rake out the ashes or scrub the step clean, but a different girl, a stranger, who knew just what needed doing. Rather than risk Mr. Gordon's fierce and knowing glance she climbed the ivy and crawled in through Jonathan's window—much easier by daylight than it had been in the dark. When she tiptoed out onto the landing she saw Jonathan crouched at the top of the stairs; he looked around at her and put his finger to his lips.

“What's happening?” whispered Margaret.

He beckoned, then pointed to the floor; he must be showing her which board creaked, so she stepped over it and crouched by his side. He said nothing, but the steady clack of Mr. Gordon's rocking chair came up the stairs, mixed with his wheezing and clucking.

“He's waiting for her to break,” whispered Jonathan at last. “I don't know what to do. He's willing her to it.”

“Can you go in and interrupt them?”

“No, I daren't—she's protecting me. She knows, somehow, though I've never told her. And he seems to know she knows.”

“Oh.” Margaret felt despairing. It was so unlike Jonathan not to have a plan. Well, at least
she
could try.

“Find some of Uncle Peter's old clothes,” she whispered, “ones he never uses. Take them down to the witch. Lucy's washing him. I'll do something to stop Mr. Gordon.”

“Thank you,” said Jonathan, and slipped off down the passage toward Aunt Anne's room. Margaret, her gullet hard with fright, crept back into Jonathan's room, out along the shed roof and down the ivy. It would have to be a lie—a good big one.

When she threw open the kitchen door Mr. Gordon was still rocking and clucking, and now Aunt Anne was leaning forward in her chair like a mouse which has caught the eye of an adder. Neither of them looked around when the door banged against the dresser, though she'd pushed it so hard that the blue cups rattled on their saucers.

“Oh, Aunt Anne, Aunt Anne,” she croaked (and her terror was real), “a ginger cat just spoke to me. He said “Good morning.'”

The rocker stopped its clack. Aunt Anne eased herself back in her chair, gazed at the palm of her left hand, and then turned her head.

“What did you say, darling?” she said dully.

“I went down the lane to see if any of the crab apples had fallen at the back of Mrs. Gryde's, so that we could make some conserve, but before I got there a big ginger cat came out of the hedge from the six-acre and looked at me and said ‘Good morning.'”

Mr. Gordon jumped out of the chair, sending his blackthorn stick clattering across the floor. Margaret ran to pick it up for him, but as she knelt his bony hand clawed into her shoulder, so that she dropped the stick again and almost shouted with surprise and hurt. He pulled her close to him; she could see the individual hairs that sprouted from the big wart on the side of his nose. His bloodshot old eyes glittered.

“Mrs. Gryde's cat, that'd be?” he said fiercely.

“No,” croaked Margaret. “Hers is quite a little one. This was big, the biggest I've seen, and lame in one leg. It went away up toward the New Wood. Shall I show you?”

Mr. Gordon clucked once or twice, thinking. “Ah,” he said at last. “That's where we found the witch. Mebbe he didn't go back to his master after all. Mebbe he turned hisself into a cat—and he'd be lame all right, after the stoning we give him. You bring me along and show me what you seen, lass.”

He let go of her shoulder, but gripped it again the instant she'd turned. Aunt Anne had to scrabble for his stick. Then Margaret led him hobbling out into the road, hoping there were no witnesses about; but Mother Fatchet was driving her black pig up the slope toward them. Mr. Gordon stopped her, and the two old people at once began an excited cackling discussion about what might have happened, during which Margaret's invented cat seemed to grow bigger and bigger until she was afraid they wouldn't believe her when she showed them the rabbit run she'd decided on for it to have appeared through—a gravelly place where even the heaviest cat's paw-marks couldn't be expected to show up. But when she showed them the hole they didn't seem to mind that it was small. Mr. Gordon made her tell her lie all over again while he stared hotly up to where the young beeches of New Wood stood russet in the silvery sunlight. Then, at last, he let go of her shoulder and began hobbling up toward the center of the village to roust his cronies out of the pub for another witch-hunt. Mother Fatchet tied her pig to the farm gate and scuttled up the lane so that she should miss none of the blood-soaked fun.

Aunt Anne was at her stove, stirring uselessly at the big gruel pot which simmered there night and day. Margaret slid into the larder, opened one of the little bottles of cordial, poured half of it into a mug and placed that on the stove by Aunt Anne's left hand. Her aunt stopped stirring, picked up the mug and sniffed at it, looked sideways at Margaret, hesitated, then shut her eyes and took three hefty swallows. When she put the mug down she gave a long sigh and reached out to draw Margaret close against her side, as though she was afraid to say thank you out loud, as though even the crannies and shelves of her own kitchen might be full of spies waiting for the betraying word.

It would be dangerous to go back to the barn, Margaret thought—they wouldn't find anything up at the New Wood and then they'd come to look for her to hear her story again. When Aunt Anne let go of her she chose a couple of bruised apples from the larder and ran out to the paddock to talk to Scrub. He was sulking, jealous after three days' neglect, and wouldn't come when she whistled. But Caesar, Jonathan's unloved and melancholy gray, came boredly over and Margaret gave him one of the apples and started to fondle his ears. This was too much for Scrub and he cantered over with a clownish look in his eye as though he'd only just realized she was there. She accepted his pretense and gave him his apple too.

All at once she heard harsh voices shouting on the other side of the road, up in the six-acre; she climbed up onto the second bar of the gate and teetered there trying to crane over the tall hedge. When that wasn't any good she slid across onto Scrub's back and coaxed him along toward the gap further down the field—difficult sitting sideways without saddle or reins, because she had no control at all. But Scrub was in a mood to show how clever he could be, and did what she wanted.

There were eight or nine men standing in a circle just below the New Wood. Three old women in black watched them from twenty yards away. The men all had sticks or cudgels and were taking it in turn to beat something that lay on the grass in the middle of the circle; they shouted at each blow, egging each other on. She could recognize Mr. Gordon by his stoop, and Mr. Syon the smith by his apron, and the two black-bearded brothers from Clapper's Farm. While she was wondering sickly what they'd caught, one of the men struck so hard that he snapped his cudgel; he threw the pieces angrily on the ground and began to walk down across the six-acre toward her. As he came nearer she saw it was one of the stonecutters from the quarry on the Beacon: nearer still, and his cheeks were burning with cider though it was still only the middle of the morning.

“Think your uncle would mind if you lent us a spade, lass?” he shouted.

“I'll get one,” Margaret shouted back. She slid off Scrub's back, climbed the fence and ran around to the farmyard. The stonecutter was already staggering in through the gate when she came out of the shed where the garden tools were kept. Aunt Anne had come to the kitchen door to watch.

“What did you find?” asked Margaret as she handed the big man the spade. Her fear and disgust must have sounded just like excitement to him.

“Ah,” he answered with gloating pleasure, “he were a clever one, but he weren't so clever as he thought he were. He'd changed hisself into a rook, you see, so's to be able to fly away from where Davey Gordon could smell him out, but he'd forgot as how his arm was broke. The cat you saw was lame, weren't he, missy? So now he was a rook, his wing was broke, and he couldn't fly away after all.”

The man gave a bellowing, cider-smelling laugh.

“We smashed him up, that we did,” he shouted. “He won't do no more witching now. Thankee, missy—I'll fetch your spade back in half an hour. You done a good morning's work, you have.”

He stumped out, too drunk to notice how white Margaret had turned, or how she reeled and hugged the well-pump to keep herself from falling. When the whole hillside and valley had stopped slopping around she found Aunt Anne standing anxious beside her.

“You'd best be away for a few hours, Marge,” she said. “If I gave you a pot of damson cheese you could ride over to Cousin Mary's in the Vale. I should have sent it weeks back, but it slipped my mind. I'll pack you up a bit of bread and bacon, too, for your dinner. Mr. Gordon's sure to come round talking to Uncle Peter then, so you'd much best be somewhere else.”

“Oh, thank you, Aunt Anne. I'll get Scrub ready.”

Twenty minutes later Margaret was clear of the village, riding sidesaddle as she always did. She'd waved to old Mr. Sampson digging his cabbage patch by the almshouses; she'd craned over the Dower House wall to see the yew trees all clipped into shapes of animals; she had sniffed the thymy air as they came out of the woods, and leaned right down over Scrub's mane as the pony took the steep bank up the common grazing ground below the Beacon; it was just like any of a hundred other rides, hill and valley exactly the same as they'd always been, as though nothing had happened to change her world four days ago.

Scrub was skittish and restless with lack of exercise, tossing his head sideways and up as though he wanted to get a better grip of the bit; so she let him canter all the way up the steady slope to the corner of the cemetery, where no one had been buried since the Changes came because people preferred to be buried in the churchyard even if it meant jostling the bones of long-dead generations. As they swept around the corner they hurtled into the middle of a swirling and squawking white riot—they'd gone full tilt into the flock of village geese. Scrub reared and skittered sideways with an awkward bouncy motion, but Margaret had had half a second to see what was going to happen, so she gripped the pommel of her saddle tightly, allowed him a few moments to be stupid (he knew all about geese, really) and then reined him firmly in.

The geese subsided into angry gossip. Mother Fatchet's eldest grandchild was supposed to be herding them but he'd taken time off to swing on a low branch of one of the cemetery pines; now he jumped down, picked up his long stick, put his thumb in his mouth and stood watching her sulkily. Margaret said good morning to him as she rode on, but he didn't answer. For the first time she realized how suspicious everybody was nowadays—suspicious of strangers, suspicious of neighbors. Anyone could betray you. Perhaps other villages were different—friendly and easy—but this village was like a bitch with a hurt foot: move and it snarled.

Of course, people didn't
have
to like each other. Even sweet Aunt Anne had quarreled with jolly Cousin Mary, quarreled twenty years ago about a silver teapot. Now they never visited, never spoke; Cousin Mary sent Aunt Anne a pot of honey in high summer and Aunt Anne sent Cousin Mary a pot of damson cheese in late autumn, and that was all.

But nobody liking or trusting
anybody
—it couldn't have been like that before the Changes.

She made poor Scrub scrabble up the loose-stoned path to the very ridge of the Beacon, though it was just as short and much easier to go around the side. Another curious thing struck her: the great earth ramparts of the Beacon had been built thousands of years ago, before the Romans came, but she only knew that—only knew about the Romans coming, too—because she'd been told it before the Changes, when she was less than nine. Nobody told you that sort of thing nowadays: there wasn't any history. Everyone talked and behaved as though England had always been the same as it was now, and always would be; the only thing to mark one year off from another was a rick catching fire, or a bad harvest, or a big tree falling, or a witch being caught and stoned. No one ever mentioned the Changes, if they could help it.

And that was how she'd thought herself until four days ago, until Jonathan had spattered the petrol over the stocks and she'd remembered that seaside filling station.

She reined Scrub in for a breather at the very top of the Beacon, where the old triangulation point had been (some fanatic had managed to knock the cement into fragments with a sledgehammer), and looked at the enormous landscape with new eyes. Always before it had been the dim hills of Wales which had excited her, and the many-elmed green leagues between the two escarpments, and the glistening twists of the Severn. Now it was the gray smudge in the middle, Gloucester, the dead city.

Always before she had looked away from it, as though it were something horrible, a stone and slate disease. Now she wanted to see what it was like since all the people had left it. You couldn't live in a big city now: there was nothing to live on, no one to buy from or sell to; besides, the whole place must smell of the wickedness of machines.

Brookthorpe is the first village in the Vale, just as Edge is the last village in the hills. Margaret seldom rode down into the Vale, but she found a way by lanes and footpaths, cutting across fields where no path led in the right direction. There was much less arable land since tractors were gone, and cows were mostly herded by children, so many of the hedges had been allowed to go into gaps.

Cousin Mary had moved. A pretty young woman was living in her cottage and the old apple tree had been cut down. The new owner said that Cousin Mary had gone to live with a friend at Hempsted, right down by the river. She told Margaret how to get there.

The Vale has a quite different feel to it from the hills. It's not just that the fields are flatter and most of the houses are brick: the air smells different, and the people have a different look, sly and knowing; the farms are dirtier, too, and the lanes twist for no good reason (up in the hills they twist to take a slope the best way, or so as not to lose height when one is following a contour). Margaret had to ask her way several times, and the answer always came in a strange, soft voice with a sideways look.