The Changes Trilogy (25 page)

“What the devil d'ye think you're up to, Davey?” he said. “Laying into my kin without my leave?”

Mr. Gordon stopped groaning, gave a pitiful snivel and looked up at the big, angry man.

“I'm hurt, Pete,” he said. “Hurt bad. Get me home, so as I can lay up for a couple of days.”

“Let's have a look at ye,” said Uncle Peter curtly. He knelt down and, pulling out his knife, ripped open the coarse leggings. There seemed to be no end of sackcloth before the blue and blotchy shank came into view. Margaret tiptoed forward and saw where there was a small red weal on the skin that stretched over the shinbone. Now she wished she'd hit him harder.

“I'll fetch the barrow,” grunted Uncle Peter, “and I'll wheel you up to the Stars. Two jars of cider and ye'll be skipping about, Davey. But don't you take it into your head to wallop my kin again, not without my say-so.”

He lashed the leggings untidily back into position and went out. There came the rumble of an iron-shod wheel on the flagstones outside; then he strode into the kitchen, lifted Mr. Gordon clean out of the chair and carried him to the door. As he turned himself sideways to ease his burden through the gap Mr. Gordon gave a wild cackle.

“Ah,” he cried, “what I couldn't do if I was as strong as yourself, Peter lad.”

The words sounded forgiving, but the voice rang with mad threats. Uncle Peter didn't say anything, but carried him out and dumped him in the barrow and wheeled him up into the lane.

That afternoon, when she went out to tend to Scrub's needs and poor old Caesar's, she found the stonecutter from the quarry leaning on a low place in the hedge. She called a greeting to him, but he didn't say anything, only watched every move as she walked to and fro. She went back into the house when she'd finished and looked out of an upstairs window; he'd moved up onto the little knoll in the six-acre from which it was possible to see almost every movement on the whole of the farm. He stayed there until it was too dark to see.

Darkness, in fact, came early, under low heavy clouds; but in the last moments of daylight she saw a few big snow-flakes floating past the window. There was an inch of chill whiteness in the yard when she went out to the cowshed to tell Uncle Peter it was time for supper. He was milking the last cow, Daisy, his favorite, by the light of a lantern set on the floor by his stool; the beams were full of looming shadows, and she couldn't see his face when he looked up.

“What the devil happened in the kitchen this morning, Marge?” he said. “Davey will have it you banged his leg a-purpose.”

She hesitated, taken by surprise, until it was too late to lie.

“He was worrying Aunt Anne,” she said. “I didn't think she could stand it anymore, and I thought I had to try and do something. It was the best thing I could do. Do you think I was wrong, Uncle Peter?”

“No,” he said slowly. “No. But Davey's not so crazed as he acts. Just promise me one thing, Marge. You haven't been mucking around with wicked machines, have you, Marge?”

“No, really, I haven't. I promise.” She was surprised and frightened. If they didn't get the witch away soon, they'd all be found out.

Uncle Peter turned slowly back to his milking, leaning his cheek against Daisy's haunch as though he were listening for secrets inside her.

“All right,” he said at last. “I believe you. But I won't spare nor hide nor hair of you if I find you've deceived me. That's a promise.”

“Yes, Uncle Peter. But can't we do something to help Aunt Anne? He doesn't seem to let her alone.”

“I don't know, Marge. Honest I don't. Davey's a weird one, but he wouldn't come worriting down here if he didn't feel something was wrong. I don't know what it is. Mebbe he's right about Tim.”

“Oh, no!” cried Margaret. “Tim's only a poor zany. He wouldn't hurt anyone.”

“You never know,” said her uncle darkly. As he stood up and lifted the heavy bucket from under Daisy's bag he said it again, almost to himself, as though he were talking about something else: “You never know.”

A glance and a warning jerk of the head were enough, so tense were the children, to call a council after they had all gone yawning up to bed. They sat in the dark in Lucy's room, furthest away from where the adults slept, and talked in whispers. It was very dark outside, with snow still floating down steadily from the low cloud-base. Margaret told them everything that Mr. Gordon had said and done, and then what Uncle Peter had said in the milking shed. When she'd finished she heard Jonathan stirring, then saw his head and shoulders black against the faint grayness of the window.

“If we went now,” he said, “the snow would blot out the marks of the runners.”

“Now?” said both the girls together.

“Yes. And if we leave it for another night the snow will be so thick that everyone will be able to see the tracks going down to the barn, and we'd never be able to get the sledge across the valley anyway.”

“Oh dear,” whispered Margaret. Her shoulders began to ache for a mattress and her neck for a pillow.

“Tim must come too,” said Jonathan. “And you, Lucy—you'd go with him if he ran away, wouldn't you? They'll just think you overheard something that was being said and decided to take him away. You could stay if you really want to, Marge, but Scrub will pull much better if you're there. Besides, you know the way.”

“I could tell you,” said Margaret sulkily. “You go up Edge Lane and then … then … no, it's much too difficult. I'll have to come.”

“Good,” said Jonathan. “I don't think I could do it alone, honestly. Lucy, there's a pair of Father's boots drying in the pantry. We'll take them for Tim.”

Lucy sighed in the dark. “I've never been a thief before,” she said.

“You aren't now,” said Jonathan. “I'm giving them to you.”

Scrub didn't seem at all surprised to be harnessed and led through the orchard to where Jonathan had dragged the log sledge. While Lucy and Jonathan cajoled Tim into his new boots, and then, talking very slowly, persuaded him to carry the witch outside into the dangerous night, Margaret picked up Scrub's hooves one by one and smeared them with lard from a little bowl which she had taken from the larder. That meant the snow wouldn't ball inside his shoes.

All the time the soft, feathery flakes of snow floated down. When they brushed her cheek they felt like the down from the inside of a split pillow, but when they rested for more than a second on bare flesh and began to melt they turned themselves into nasty little patches of killing cold. Tim came cooing out into the darkness. The witch groaned sharply as he was laid on the sledge, made comfortable, and then wrapped by Jonathan in an old tractor tarpaulin.

“Tim,” whispered Lucy, “we're going. Going away. We're going.”

Tim's bubbling changed, deepened, wavered and then restored itself to its usual note. He lurched into the darkness and they heard him scrabbling in the straw of his shed; then he came back and knelt by the sledge; the tarpaulin rasped twice as he readjusted it. Margaret realized he was taking his treasures with him.

It is steep all the way up to the ridge of Edge Lane. Margaret led the pony between the dark walls of silent houses, only able to see where the road was because of the faint glimmer from fallen snow. The runners of the sledge whimpered gently as they crushed the fluffy crystals to sliding ice. Tim's boots crunched and his throat bubbled. Once or twice Scrub's shoes chinked as they struck through the soft layer of whiteness to a stone underneath. Otherwise they all moved so quietly that Margaret could hear the tiny pattering and rustling of individual flakes falling into the dry leaves of Mrs. Godber's beech hedge.

Scrub took the slope well enough, but Margaret was beginning to worry how he'd manage the real steeps down into the valley and out again, where sometimes the lane tilts almost as sharply as the pitch of a roof. But at least she could see better now. As they came to the short piece of flat at the crest she understood why: the sky ahead really was lighter. Soon they would come out from under the snow cloud into starlight.

“I'll take the brake,” said Jonathan. Margaret had been so rapt in her world of stealth and silence that she was startled to hear him speak aloud. She reached up to pat Scrub's neck and steady him for the descent, then heard the iron spike on the end of the brake bar beginning to bite through the snow into the pitted tarmac. Scrub plodded on, unamazed; but when a hundred yards down the hill and just as they were getting to the steepest place, the moon came out and he saw the treacherous white surface falling away at his feet, he snorted and tossed his head and tried to stop. The brake grated sharply as Jonathan hauled at it, but even so the sledge had enough momentum to push the pony forward onto the frightening decline. She felt the wild tide of panic beginning to rush through his blood, and put her hand right up inside the cheekstrap, so that she could at least hold his head still.

“Easy,” she said. “Easy. Easy. You'll do it easy.”

For a second she thought he wasn't going to believe her. Then he steadied and walked carefully down.

“That's the worst bit,” said Jonathan.

The stream in the bottom was a black snake between the white pastures; it hissed like a snake too, and moonlight glistened off its wavelets as it might off polished scales. The old mill, which somebody had rebuilt just before the Changes, was a ruin again now; nobody cared to live so far from the village. They halted for a minute to allow Tim to move the witch around so that his feet would be below his head during the climb.

“We aren't going fast enough,” said Jonathan. “It'll be morning before we get back.”

“It's not so bad after Edge,” said Margaret, “and it'll be much easier with the moon out.”

She looked around at the black trees, the ruined mill, the white meadows with the black stream hissing between them; everything in the steep and secret valley looked magical under the chill moon. She'd never have dreamed that a world so dangerous could be so beautiful.

There are two very steep stretches on the far side. Jonathan showed Lucy how to work the brake, then cajoled Tim into hauling on one of the traces on one side of the sledge while he took the other. Scrub stumbled on the second slope, but was on his feet and pulling almost at once, which was lucky because Lucy was thinking about something else and hadn't even begun to use the brake. The pony's knees seemed unhurt, thanks to the cushioning snow, and he toiled bravely on.

Edge, on the last rim of the Cotswolds, was fast asleep, and the road to Gloucester curved through it and into the darkness of beechwoods.

“Do you think you could ride him down here, and get him to trot for a bit?” said Jonathan as soon as they were past the last inhabited house. “There's room for the rest of us on the sledge.”

It meant rearranging the sick man again, but they crowded onto the rough slats, with Jonathan at the back to work the brake and Tim clutching the sack of food Jonathan had stolen from the farm. Scrub was uneasy about the changed arrangement, and suspicious of the surface beneath his feet, but Margaret coaxed him into a trot. He faltered, changed pace to a walk and tossed his head.

“Oh, don't be silly,” said Margaret. “It's quite safe, and you'll enjoy it. Come on.”

She felt his mouth with the reins and nudged his ribs and he tried again, and this time he kept it up. The slope was just right for the sledge: left to itself it would have stopped, with that weight on it, but it needed very little pulling to keep it going and in a minute Scrub had completely changed his mind about the whole affair and was tugging at the bit and trying to stretch into a canter. Margaret looked over her shoulder to her passengers as they passed through a patch of moonlight where no trees masked the sky. Tim was crouched over his sack, staring out sideways at the blinks of light between the trunks. Lucy was smiling her elf smile, looking as wild as the wind that slipped icily past her. Jonathan perched on a nook of sledge between the witch's head and the brake bar, looking intently forward, ready for the next disaster. They could never have got this far without him: he knew what to do because he had thought about it before it happened—and he could think in secret because nobody could tell what was going on behind that funny crumpled face.

“Scrub wants to go faster,” she shouted.

“Provided you don't miss your turn,” he shouted back. “Throw your hand up when you see it coming.”

The next few minutes were heroic adventure—real as the touch of timber but quite different, as different as dreams, from the everyday bothersomeness of roofs and clothing. The icy night air burned past her, long slopes of moonlit snow opened and closed on her left as the trees massed and thinned, Scrub covered the dangerous surface with a muscled and rhythmic confidence while she moved with his movement as a curlew moves with the northwest wind, and the road curved down the long hillside with the generous swoops imposed by the contours—and all the time a lower level of her mind kept telling her that what she was doing was dangerous. And right. Dangerous and right. Right and deadly.

Something nicked the corner of her awareness, the corner of her eye as they raced past—the cottage before the turn. She threw up her arm for a second (you could trust Jo to rely on the briefest signal) and busied herself with the problem of coaxing Scrub to a walk without letting him fall. The brake grated harshly just as she let him feel the pull of the bit.

“Too good to last, boy,” she said.

He understood at once, slowing as fast as was safe on that surface and with the danger of the sledge banging into his hind legs. (No horse is really happy about pulling something which hasn't got shafts down a slope—he can't hold it back.)

The ten yards into the lane after the turn is very steep, as steep as Edge Lane, but they took it slowly. After that it levels out and they were able to trot several times, but the exhilaration of the ride down the main road was lost. The night was wheeling on; the high, untended hedges closed them in; they began to feel the secrecy and strangeness of the Vale; the empty city now seemed very near.