The Changes Trilogy (24 page)

And he was off again on his endless catalogues of the ways in which the horse excelled all other species, including Man.

Margaret was sorry when he left, swept off in the storm of the great earl's progress. But at least Mr. Gordon and his cronies had been kept active and interested for eight days and would have enough to talk about over their cider mugs for a week besides.

The other excitement didn't happen in the village at all. Just when the witch hunters were tired of gossip over the great earl's visit and were beginning to sniff the wintry air for new sport, a messenger came over from Stonehouse to say that two children had seen a bear in the woods. Nobody had ever been on a bear hunt, but all the men seemed to know exactly what to do. Wicked short spears were improvised and ground to deadly sharpness; Mr. Lyon the smith forged several pounds of extra-heavy arrowheads, to penetrate a tough hide at short range; the best dogs were chosen and starved. Then all the men moved out in a great troop to hunt the bear.

Mr. Gordon insisted on going too, maintaining that the bear must be a witch who had changed his shape but couldn't change back till the new moon, or had simply forgotten the spell. Even his drinking companions privately thought it more likely to be a survivor from the old Bristol zoo, but they didn't care to say so. Instead they built a litter and took turns to carry it; he rode at the head of the mob, hunched in his swaying chair, cackling to his bearers.

The whole of the village changed when they had left. Tensions eased; Aunt Anne smiled sometimes and began to look a little pink; the bursts of gossip you could hear up the street were on a different note—the pitch of women's voices; and it was quieter, so that betweenwhiles the only noise was the knock of the hired man's billhook cutting into an elder stump down in Low Wood.

With Uncle Peter gone, Jonathan was busy all day on the farm, but Margaret stole a satchel of food next evening and asked Lucy to creep up and wake her an hour before dawn. The stars were still sharp in the sky when she set off to explore the canal, and Scrub's breath made crisp little cloudlets in the frosty air. The stars were sharp in the sky again when she got back to find Aunt Anne waiting with a lantern in the porch. Margaret reckoned she'd done over forty miles. After supper Aunt Anne went out to visit a sick neighbor, so the children pulled their chairs up around the red embers of the fire; but in a minute Lucy slid off hers and sat right in under the chimneypiece, her cheeks scarlet with the close heat and every little spurt of flame sending elvish shadows across her face. Jonathan sat out in the gloom, quite silent but twitching like a dreaming hound. Margaret told them what she had found.

“I didn't start from the docks, Jo, because we can ride along that bit when we're taking food down to Lucy—besides, I didn't know how far I'd have to go the other way along the canal. It's miles and miles, and just the same all the way—just the canal and the path beside it. Except that at first it runs between banks and you can't see anything on either side, and later it's up above the rest of the country.
It
doesn't go up and down, of course, only the fields around it do. The towpath is easy to ride on, except for one bad stretch a little way down. There are lots of bridges—I counted them on the way back but I lost count—it's about fifteen, and some of them are open already.…”

“Open?” said Jonathan.

“Yes. It's like this: half the bridge is made of stone which juts out into the canal and doesn't move, but the other half's iron, all in one piece, and there's a big handle—you have to unlock the bridge at each end first with a piece of iron which you flip over—and when you turn the handle the whole iron part of the bridge swings around, very slowly though, until it's right out of the way and you can get a boat through. It's a funny feeling—you're moving tons and tons of iron, but it's all so balanced that it moves quite easily. There's a little cottage by each bridge where the people used to live who opened the bridges for the boats, but they're all empty now. Otherwise there aren't a lot of houses by the canal, except for a little village near the end. I got chased by a bull before that.”

“Rather you than me,” whispered Lucy. Jonathan laughed.

“It wasn't funny,” said Margaret, “it was horrid. There's a place where you come out of woods and the canal goes for two miles straight as a plank, but the river's suddenly quite close, across the fields on the right. There's a bridge in the middle of the straight piece—it's called Splatt Bridge, it says; all the bridges have their names on them—and when I got there I thought I'd ride off across the fields and look at the river. I've never seen it close, and I was tired of the canal. The fields were all flat and empty, and I wasn't bothering when I came around a broken piece of hedge quite close to the canal, and it was there, black, bigger than any of the bulls in the village, not making any noise, rushing at us. Scrub saw it before I did, and he got us away, but only just. It was tethered on a long rope through a ring on its nose. It looked mad as Mr. Gordon, Jo, furious, it wanted to kill us, and it came so fast, like a … like a …”

“Train,” said Jonathan. Margaret shook her head.

“I still can't think like that,” she said. “I didn't like opening that bridge, Jo. Not because somebody might catch me, but just for what it was.”

“Poor Marge,” said Jonathan cheerfully. “Still, you got away from the bull. What happened then?”

“Then there's a strange bit, with the river getting nearer and nearer until there's only a thin strip of land between it and the canal; and everything's flat and bleak and full of gulls and the air smells salty and Wales is only just over on the other side, low red cliffs with trees on them. It's funny being able to see so far when you're right down in the bottom like that, and the river gets wider and wider all the time—it's really the sea, I suppose. And then you get to a place where you're riding between sheds, and there are old railway lines, and huge piles of old timber, some of it in the open and some of it under roofs, and one enormous tower without any windows, much bigger than the tower of the cathedral, and a place like the docks at Gloucester but with a big ship—a really big one, I couldn't believe it. And then you come to another lock; at least I think it's a lock but it's far bigger than the Gloucester one and the gates are made of steel or iron. And beyond that the water's much lower, inside an enormous pool with sloping sides and places for tying ships to, and another gate at the far end, and beyond that there are two enormous wooden arms curving out into the river, and it's as wild as the end of the world.”

“How deep is the canal?” said Jonathan.

“About twelve feet. I measured it with a pole I found, from two of the bridges. And I couldn't see anywhere where it looked reedy and silted. There's a place about halfway along where a stream runs into it, which could help keep it full. How does a lock work?”

Jonathan took a twig and scratched in the film of gray ashes which covered the hearthstone.

“It's like this,” he said. “The water in the canal is higher than the water in the pool, so it pushes the top gates shut. If you want to get a boat out, you push the bottom gates shut, and then you open special sluices to let the water in the canal run into the lock. The new water holds the bottom gates shut, and the water in the lock rises until it's the same level as the water in the canal and you can open the top gates. You sail into the lock and shut them again, and then you shut the top sluices and open the bottom ones and the water runs out of the lock until it's the same level as the water in the pool, and you can open the bottom gates.”

Lucy came around and stared at the scrawled lines.

“I don't know how they think of such things,” she said at last.

“I see,” said Margaret. “At least I sort of see. Oh, Jo, can't we find a big sailing boat and not try to make any beastly engines go?”

“No,” said Jonathan. “It would have to be a very big one to go to sea in winter, and all the sailing boats which are big enough will have men on them, using them and looking after them. Besides, we'd never be strong enough to manage the sails, even with Tim's help, and we wouldn't know how, either. But if Otto can show us how to start one of the tugs, then we've got a real chance.”

Chapter 4

FIRST SNOW

The men came back on the third day, arguing among themselves all the way up the winding hill. Nine villages, it seemed, had gathered for the hunt, and all their eager sportsmen had so hallooed and trampled through the flaming beech groves that the dogs had never had a chance to smell anything except man-sweat. Mr. Lyon had broken an ankle, though; and several small animals had been slaughtered, including five foxes; and Mr. Gordon and his cronies had spent the whole of the second day digging out a badgers' set and killing the snarling inmates as they uncovered them. Mr. Gordon's litter still swayed high above the procession as they tramped wearily up by the churchyard, and in his hand he waved a stick with the gaping head of a badger spiked on its end.

They were busy with boasting for several days after that, and then with critical discussions of the behavior of the people from other villages. So it was thirty-six days (Margaret reckoned them up) after Mr. Gordon had last come nosing around the farm before he came again.

This time he arrived while she was helping Aunt Anne with the heavy irons, lifting them off the stove when you could smell the burning fibers of the cloth you handled them with and carrying them back when they were too cool to press the creases out of the pillowcase. It was a peaceful, repetitive job until the latch lifted and the hunched shape stood outlined against the sharp winter sunlight.

“Mornin',” he grunted, and without waiting for an invitation hobbled across and settled himself in Uncle Peter's chair.

“Good morning, Mr. Gordon,” said Aunt Anne, and started to iron a shirt she had just finished with an iron which was already cool. Mr. Gordon clucked.

“Sharpish weather we're having,” she said after a while. “There'll be snow before the week's out.”

Mr. Gordon clucked again.

When Margaret brought the freshly heated iron she could sense how tense her aunt was. At first she'd hoped to slide away, but now she saw she would have to stay, just in case she could help.

“That Tim,” said Mr. Gordon suddenly. “What d'ye reckon to him?”

“Tim?” said Aunt Anne, surprised. “He's just a poor zany.”

“Aye,” said Mr. Gordon slowly and derisively. “Nobbut a poor zany.”

He sat and rocked and clucked while Aunt Anne carefully nosed her iron down the seam of a smock.

“Where'd he come from, then?” he shouted suddenly. “Answer me that!”

Aunt Anne jerked her body upright with shock, and dropped her iron. It made a slamming clatter on the flagged floor.

“I think he came from Bristol,” said Margaret.

“Aye, Bristol,” muttered Mr. Gordon. “Wicked places, cities.”

“That's true,” said Aunt Anne.

Mr. Gordon clucked and rocked.

“Why do you want to know?” said Aunt Anne in a shivering voice.

“There's wickedness about,” said Mr. Gordon. “I can smell un. It draws me here, same as a ewe draws her lamb home to her.”

There was no answer to that, so Aunt Anne went on with her ironing and Margaret with her fetching and carrying of the heavy irons. Mr. Gordon watched them with fierce little eyes amid the wrinkled face, as though every movement was a clue to the wickedness which lay hidden about the farm. The kitchen seemed to get darker. Margaret found she couldn't keep her mind off the witch, tossing feverish on dirty straw. She tried to think about Scrub, or Jonathan, or even Caesar, but all the time the picture inside her skull remained one of dim yellow lantern light, the rusty engine, Tim squatting patient in the shadows, and the sick man whose presence drew Mr. Gordon down to this peaceful farm.

Twice Aunt Anne started to say something, and twice she stopped herself. When Margaret took a new iron to her their eyes met: Aunt Anne's said “Help!” as plain as screaming.

Next time Margaret fetched a hot iron she went over toward the open hearth as if to chivvy the logs, tripped over the corner of the rug, and sprawling across the floor brought the rim of metal hard against the old man's shin. He cried out with a strange, high bellow, leaped to his feet, and before she could crawl out of reach started to belabor her over the shoulders. She cringed under two stinging blows before she glimpsed Aunt Anne's shoes rush past her face; then there was a brief gasping struggle. When she came trembling to her feet Mr. Gordon was slumped back in the chair, panting, and Aunt Anne was standing beside him, very flushed, holding his stick in her hand. They all stayed where they were for a long while, until the rage and panic had faded from their faces. At last Mr. Gordon put out his hand for his stick.

Aunt Anne gave it to him without a word and held the rocking chair steady while he worked himself upright. He took one step, gasped, felt for the arm of the chair and sat down.

“Ye've broken my leg, between ye,” he said harshly. “Fetch your man, missus. I'll need carrying.”

Aunt Anne walked quietly out into the farmyard, leaving Margaret and the old man together. She wasn't afraid of him for the moment; the fire seemed to have dimmed in his eyes. She began to be sorry she'd hit him so hard until he looked sideways at her from under his scurfy eyebrows and muttered, “No child was ever the worse for a bit o' beating.”

Margaret slipped away to the foot of the stairs, where she waited until Uncle Peter came. As soon as he heard the heavy footsteps Mr. Gordon started moaning and groaning to himself. Margaret gritted her teeth and waited for another beating, but Uncle Peter paid no attention to her. Instead he stood in front of Mr. Gordon's chair with his hands on his hips and gazed down at the crumpled figure.