The Changes Trilogy (21 page)

She skirted a dead housing development, came to a rotary and rode north along a big road for nearly a mile, looking for a lane to the left. The buildings by the road were rusting old factories and garages, and sometimes a little group of shops with their windows broken and all their goods stolen. Cars and trucks rusted in forecourts, and pale tatters of advertising posters dangled from walls. One place, an open-air used-car mart, had been set on fire, for all the cars were twisted and charred; you'd only have to walk along the lines of them, taking off the filler-caps and poking blazing rags in with a stick—dangerous, but some people were fanatical against machines.

As soon as she'd turned off along the lane to Hempsted, Margaret had a disappointment. A bridge took her over a river, which she at first thought must be the Severn, only it seemed too mean and narrow. She stopped on the bridge and gazed north and south, and saw that the river ran unnaturally straight, and that there were man-made embankments on both sides and a path running all along its bank. So it wasn't a mean and narrow river but a man-made thing, a noble great canal, far wider than the silted thin affair that ran through Stroud. This wasn't dug for narrow barges, but for proper ships; she could see from the color of the water, a flinty gray, that it was deep enough to take seagoing vessels.

Supposing that they could get under the bridge. But no, that wouldn't be necessary, because the whole bridge was made to swivel sideways, out of the way of passing ships. There was even a crankhandle to turn it with.

She was still wondering whether the bridge would really have swung if she'd had the nerve to turn the handle, when she came into Hempsted. Cousin Mary's new house was a little cottage close in under the churchyard wall. Cousin Mary herself was busy forking dung into the tiny garden, but she stopped her work to receive the precious pot of damson cheese and to ask formally after all her relations up in the hills. She seemed to be not really “living with a friend” as the woman in Brookthorpe had suggested, but to be more of a servant here, like Lucy was on the farm. But she offered to take Margaret into the cottage and show her the place where she'd spilled boiling water on her leg, and it wouldn't heal because Mrs. Barnes down the road had put a spite on her. Margaret said, “No, thank you.” There was a great tattered bandage around Cousin Mary's leg, all yellow with new dung and older dirt—no wonder it wouldn't heal. She said good-bye, rode back to the little lane through Hempsted and turned left. She was going to see what Gloucester looked like.

There were houses all along the lane, with fields behind them. Their windows were broken and their tiles were all awry. In a gap between two such houses a man was digging; he stood up and shouted to her as she passed but she couldn't catch what he said—it sounded like something about dogs—so she just waved cheerfully to him. From the slight rise on which Hempsted stands she could see the tower of the cathedral, and the lane led straight toward it. She felt gay, almost heroic, with her adventure, so it took her longer than it usually would have to sense that Scrub was becoming more and more uneasy. Only when he shied across the lane at a big chestnut leaf that floated down in front of his nose did Margaret pay attention to his feelings, and by then they were on the edge of the city itself.

A level crossing over a light railway seemed to mark the real boundary, and there she almost turned back. She was hungry, and Scrub clearly was against going on. But it seemed cowardly, having come so far. What would Jonathan have thought of her? So she dismounted and led Scrub across the rails. The nape of her neck began to prickle; the long, low buildings on either side of the lane were windowless and very silent; by the side of the railway she spotted a bar of rusty iron as thick as a man's thumb and two feet long. She picked it up before she remounted—any weapon was better than none.

The echo of Scrub's hooves tocked back at her off blank walls. In one place the surface of the road had heaved up where frost had reached a pocket of underground water, a burst main, perhaps. On the other side the road became a bridge.

It was a bridge over a canal, the same canal as they'd crossed earlier. On her left was a series of V-shaped gates, two facing inward to hold the water of the canal in, and one outward to control the fast-flowing river which swept round the long curve beyond. On her right were the docks, a wide basin of water surrounded by grim, tall warehouses, and cranes and derricks. Sunken barges lay along the quays, all green with weed. There were two proper ships, with masts and funnels, further down the basin, but one of them was leaning sideways in the water. And against the left-hand quay was a line of three smaller boats, two floating, one waterlogged; the floating ones sat oddly in the water, but looked as though that was how they were meant to be, stern down, bows up, stubby and pugnacious; their funnels were far too big for them. Margaret remembered a jigsaw which she'd been given once when she was ill, a picture of the
Queen Elizabeth
docking. There'd been boats like this in it. They were tugs.

Despite the peeling paint and the rust and the streaks of gulls' droppings they looked undaunted and powerful, an example of the forgotten forces which were on the children's side, if they could be summoned into use again. Margaret began to feel cheerful once more.

But not Scrub. As they rode on, occasionally catching a glimpse of the cathedral tower to guide them, he was tense and quivering. Margaret talked to him to keep his spirits up, but then the sound of her own voice seemed so naked in the empty street that she let it dribble into a whisper, and then into silence. She patted him halfheartedly on the neck and wished she hadn't come.

The street bent left, in the wrong direction, following the curve of the flowing water. This again couldn't be the true Severn—it was too narrow and controlled—but it must be part of it. Then the street jinked right, away from the water, and crossed a much wider road which led back toward the hills. Margaret turned right.

She almost missed the cathedral because it lay off to the left of this larger road down a narrow alley, but she saw the knobbly pinnacles out of the corner of her eye and wheeled Scrub around into the cathedral grounds. The grass was long and rank, which once had been shaved as close as a mower could be set; it didn't even seem to have been nibbled by rabbits. All the doors were locked fast, so she rode around the gray mass wondering what it was like now inside; she had a dim memory of heavy and shadowed arches, with candles and high, lacy singing; but that might have been some other church. She rode back into the main street and on down to a big crossroads. The sun was halfway down the sky now, and that meant that the proper direction must be …

But as she considered the position of the shadows a white mongrel terrier ran out of a lane to her left, threw back its head and howled. The howl was answered by others from all around, and at once the terrier, very lean and dirty but very quick, sprang snarling toward her. Three more dogs wheeled out, baying, further down the left-hand road. Scrub shied, but she kept her seat and shouted and shook the reins. At once he was off up the street in front, the terrier yelping at his heels. Margaret glanced over her shoulder and saw that another dozen dogs poured out of side alleys and were tearing down the road after her. Scrub was already moving at a full gallop, jarring and frightening on the hard uneven road; there was no point in trying to make him go any faster—if he panicked they'd both fall at some pothole. She looked over her shoulder again. Now there were at least thirty dogs in the pack, trailing out all down the street, with the short-legged descendants of corgis and basset hounds far behind while the long-legged Labrador mongrels yelped at Scrub's heels.

A big, wolfish creature with a lot of Alsatian in him made a spurt and leaped, jaws wide, for Scrub's flank. But Margaret happened to be balanced just right to whang him across the forehead with her iron bar. She heard a bone crack and saw him tumble head over heels, and then her eye was caught by an interruption in the level of the road ahead. There had been some sort of explosion—gas perhaps—and fifty yards further on the whole width of the tarmac had been thrown up into a rough barrier which would slow a horse to a walk while the dogs came streaming over it. The streets on either side ran off at right angles, far too sharp to turn a galloping pony into. As they neared the upheaval she saw that right against the left-hand wall, up on the pavement, there was a gap. Scrub had been galloping down the middle of the road, between the blank traffic signals and unreadable police notices, but she coaxed him over toward the wall. He took the curb cleverly, flashed through the gap, pecked as his off forefoot banged into a loose brick, but recovered.

Only a rangy black Labrador was still with them now. Scrub could gallop faster than the dogs could run, but he couldn't keep it up for as long as they could—at least not with a girl and the heavy sidesaddle to carry as well. He would have to ease his pace soon. The black dog bounded along, just out of reach; Margaret lashed at it twice with her bar, but missed; the second time she so nearly unbalanced herself from the saddle that she had to let the weapon drop. Desperately she unbuckled her saddlebag, felt for a slice of bacon, held it out as one holds a chocolate for a begging lapdog, then tossed it in front of the beast's jaws. It slashed at the morsel and missed, but the smell of meat was enough to make it slide to a stop, turn and investigate. The rest of the pack engulfed it while it was still swallowing, then came on. Margaret dug into the saddlebag and flung piece after piece of her picnic behind her, until the street was filled with squabbling hounds. Only the slowest ones came too late to share the feast, and they followed halfheartedly on her trail. Soon she was a hundred yards ahead of the nearest one. Next time she looked around they'd all given up.

Scrub took some slowing, though. The road curved through a section of the city where all the houses had caught fire; it ran under a railway bridge and straightened again before he could be induced to canter, and then to trot. They were still going a fair lick when they came out into open fields and the road tilted toward the hills.

Two miles further on, among inhabited cottages once more, she dismounted and led him. His coat was rough and bristling, his cheeks and neck rimed with drying foam. Every now and then he tensed and gave a great heaving shudder. When the hill really began to slope steeply, beyond the turning for Upton, she led him onto a wide piece of grassy verge to graze and rest; there were two crusts of bread and a strip of bacon fat left for her lunch, and now it was nearly teatime, but she ate them thankfully, thinking that there are worse things than hunger. Then she looked over his hooves, though it was too soon to see how bruised he'd been by the punishing gallop along the tarmac.

They went home very slowly, Margaret walking most of the way. It was dark before they started down through the long wood that screened the village from the north, and she was already far later than even Aunt Anne's merciful errand would give her an excuse for; so just before she turned the lane where the farm lay she picked up a small stone and rammed it into the groove between Scrub's near front shoe and the tenderer flesh. She led him into the farmyard convincingly lame.

But all the playacting she'd prepared, all the believable lies, all the excuses—they were unnecessary. Uncle Peter was cock-a-hoop at the best milk yield of the year; Aunt Anne wanted to know all about Cousin Mary's new house; Jonathan talked busily about the fox cubs in Low Wood; Lucy was her usual secret self. Any stranger coming in would have thought them a nice, dull, contented family enjoying a plain supper after an ordinary day.

Chapter 3

THERE'S WICKEDNESS ABOUT

Margaret was full of sleep—as full as a ripe Victoria plum is of juice—but something was shaking her. Her dream turned it into a bear, and she was too heavy to run away, and she was opening her mouth to cry out for help when she was all at once awake. Not very awake; longing for the warm and private world of sleep again; but awake enough to know that it was Jonathan who was shaking her and the world was too dangerous to cry for help in. She tried to say “Go away” but the noise she made was a guggling grunt, a noise such as a bear might make while shaking a person.

“Oh, wake up, Marge,” whispered Jonathan impatiently.

“I'm asleep. Go away.”

“Never mind that. He wants to talk to us.”

“Who does? The witch?”

“His name's Otto.”

“Oh, all right.”

She rolled on her back and with a strong spasm of willpower forced herself to sit up while the frosty night sent fingers of gooseflesh down her shoulder blades. Jonathan, thinking ahead as usual, had gathered her clothes onto the table below the window, where she could just see by starlight which way around she was picking them up; but she didn't feel warm even when she was dressed, and stood shivering.

“Shall I go down and get you a coat?” he whispered.

“No,” said Margaret, remembering all the betraying creaks in the passage and on the stairs. “I'll be all right. I suppose we're going out through your window. What time is it?”

“Nearly midnight. I took some thistles to bed to keep me awake. Put your cushions under your blankets to make it look as if you're still in bed—Mother might look in—she often goes creeping round the house in the middle of the night. That'll do.”

Outside, the frost was deep and hard, the true chill of winter. The stars were thick and steady between the apple branches, the grass crisp under her feet; dead leaves which had been soggy that morning crackled when she trod on them; the air was peppery in her nostrils. It would be hunting weather tomorrow.

As they stepped into the heavy blackness of Tim's shed Jonathan caught her by the arm and stopped her.

“He's ill,” he whispered, “and Lucy says she thinks he's getting worse. I've put a splint on his arm and I tried to strap up his ribs, but I don't know if it's any use. He can't move his legs at all. Perhaps he'll die, and all we'll have to do is bury him. But if he's too ill to think and then he doesn't die, we've got to know what we're all going to do. We'd have settled it this morning without you, but Lucy said he was too tired after his washing; he took one of the last of his pills, which are for when something hurts too much, and they make him sleep for twelve hours. So he should be awake now.”