Arcadia (30 page)

The man straightens, leaning against the wall. He can't take his eyes off Per.

“What do you lot want here?” he says. It takes him a while to get the question out. His teeth are chattering like he's just been dragged out of the sea.

“Only to pass,” Silvia says. “With your . . .” She looks at Rory. “Allowing?”

“Permission.”

“With your permission.”

Now the man's staring between all of them.

Per loosens his grip on the staff and rolls his shoulders. “I bring the bags,” he says. He sounds bored. “We go.”

“You can jolly well find your own way,” the man mutters. “Hey.” Lino's begun to poke around among the objects around the phone box. “You shouldn't . . .” Lino looks up at him, quizzically, and the man's voice trails away.

“This is where I put the sacrifice?” Silvia says, stepping the same way. She means her hair. Per snorts and trudges away to fetch the bags. “Here?” She winds the strands into a curl around her fingers and puts them carefully down in the grass.

“He really shouldn't do that,” the man says. Lino's opening the door of the phone box.

Silvia smiles a What-Can-You-Do smile at the man. “You too,” she says to Rory. “Make sacrifice.”

“Me?”

“Like our friend says, there are gods here.” Inside the box Lino's picked up the phone and is talking to it in inquisitive Italian. “It's good to do. For your journey.”

“You mean . . .” Silvia marches over to him and yanks out a couple of hairs before he can even think about trying to stop her. “Ow!” She puts them in his fist.

“Go on.”

Rory feels pretty stupid laying his hair in the grass by Silvia's, but he's not going to argue with her. Lino reemerges, shaking his head. “
Niente
. This god, he is . . .” He shrugs, and mimes something like a feather blowing away.

“You'll have trouble,” the old man mumbles, very nervously but trying to be defiant. “Don't say I didn't warn you.”

Silvia only nods at him, peaceably. “This world is full of difficulty.” Per's coming back, all saddled up with the luggage again. Lino asks Silvia something and they exchange a few words, rapid and purposeful.

“Knew you was all foreigners,” the old man grumbles, though keeping his voice right down to make sure Per at least won't hear.

“So,” Silvia says, when they're all gathered. “We go on. Thank you for your blessing.”

“Eh? Oh.” He looks like he's about to offer a grumpy retort, but a glance at Per makes him think better of it. “All right then.”

“Remember this, please, if anyone asks. We go only one day, maybe two. We make no trouble if everyone leaves us alone.”

He sniffs. “Won't have to worry,” he says, half-swallowing his own words like Pink does when she's trying to be rude to Laurel but doesn't dare say it out loud. “No one ever comes back from the—”

“We wish you good day.” Silvia interrupts him perfectly smoothly but very fast. “Let's go.”

Per starts off without another word. She nods at Lino, who follows a moment later.

“What did he mean,” Rory asks her, as the two of them set off as well, a few steps behind, “no one comes back from—”

She gives him a strange sharp look. “That's just a crazy old man,” she says firmly. “I'm surprised you listen to anything he tells us.”

Her manner's confusing. “You mean that's not where it's hidden?”

She stops him with a hand on his shoulder.

“What?” she says quietly, glancing to make sure Lino and Per are carrying on ahead.

Rory's said something wrong, he can tell by her eyes. When they go cold like this it's easy to imagine her telling that man who came to the gypsy camp he was going to die. “It sounded like that's where you wanted to go,” he says, ashamed again. Sometimes she makes him feel like part of their gang, sometimes she makes him feel like a boy who doesn't know anything and shouldn't be here. “That Va—”

“Crazy man,” she says. She bends over him, both hands on his shoulders. “I don't want you to repeat his crazy man words. OK?”

“OK,” Rory says. Suppressed misery wells up in him. He wants to go home.

  *  *  *  

But there's no turning back. He tries picturing himself giving them the slip, running away. It turns out that the idea of taking a single step on his own in this weird unending wasteland is unimaginable. He drops back behind the others sometimes because his feet are getting tired and he hasn't had much to eat and it feels like they're just walking and walking, but whenever he gets too far behind he can feel the huge green overgrown strangeness like a monster at his back and he grits his teeth and scurries to catch up. He can't understand how Per can keep going carrying all that stuff, always at the same steady pace, whether the road's dipping or rising. Silvia walks behind him with her arms folded. She looks like she's thinking. Lino's gone ahead to scout. No one makes any suggestion of stopping for a rest or a snack.

Then, abruptly, Per's standing still, listening. Silvia turns back to Rory with her finger on her lips. He stops too.

There's a soft thumping sound in the distance. Slowly, Rory remembers it: hoofbeats.

Per puts his load down and frees his staff. For some reason this gesture makes Rory forget his aching feet and belly at once.

A few moments later and Lino appears. The hoofbeats are far off, somewhere on the higher ground to the left of the road. They're fading too, but Lino keeps his voice very low as he and Silvia have a long discussion. Then Silvia talks to Per. No one wants to tell Rory what's happening and he doesn't feel like asking, though he guesses from the way Silvia's giving quietly urgent instructions that it's not good news. He sits down in the road with his chin in his hands, thinking about the life he left behind. After a little bit Per and Lino turn around and start off back the way they came, back towards the crossroads and the phone booth, leaving Silvia and Rory and all the bags. The place where they've stopped feels high and lonely. Rory can't see anything over the billowing hedges except the sky. Silvia comes and sits next to him, pulling a flask from her pack. He turns his face away.

“Water?” she says. He's thirsty, but he shakes his head without looking.

She takes a careful drink. “It's not a good time to lose your voice,” she says. “I think soon we will have company.”

That gets his attention.

She puts the flask back without offering it to him again. “Lino sees people on horses, far ahead. He goes up a tree and watches. One of them goes alone and”—she draws a semicircle around the two of them with a finger—“goes behind, like this. I think it's to see where we are, while the others come along the road.” She moves fist and finger in opposite directions until they meet each other. “I said before. These are careful people.”

“Where did Per and Lino go?”

“These people don't know Lino sees them, I think. Per and Lino make a little surprise for the one who has gone behind.”

“What do you and me do?”

“We wait.” She smiles. “You want a rest, I think.”

“But what if they come?”

She lies back, propping her head on a sack like it's a pillow. “They know we are here already. They have horses; they ride faster than we can walk. We can't always hide. Maybe it's time to show them why they should leave us alone.”

“Are we going to fight them?”

“I hope not.” She stretches her arms, entirely untroubled. “It's whatever they choose. We will see what kind of people they are.” She prods the lumps in the sack under her head. “Some people will try to kill you for this.” She means the food. “Some people would kill you for this.” She pats between her legs. Rory doesn't know what she means but he knows it's embarrassing and to do with Sex, and looks away again. “Most people, they just want you to go away. Like your women on the island. They find a way of living in this world, they want to keep it, they don't want anyone to come and change anything. Ah.” She opens her eyes wide and raises a finger:
Quiet. Listen
.

It's hoofbeats again, lots of them, scuffling and jingling rather than thumping: they must be on a hard road this time. Rory scrambles to his feet. They're far away and they don't sound like they're moving fast, but it's a thick sort of noise, a crowd.

“That sounds like a lot of them.”

“Listen now,” she says. “If they come before Lino and Per, I try to talk to them. All right? But I want you to stay quiet. You pretend you don't understand English, OK? You listen very carefully but don't speak.”

His heart's thudding. He's one of the gang again but now he's not sure he wouldn't rather be the useless stowaway. He can't play tricks on an army; he's only ten. Silvia must be able to read his expression because she sits up and makes him look at her. “It's OK to be frightened,” she says. “They will expect this. Just remember, don't speak. And don't worry.” She grins at him. “Our road doesn't end here. I know this.”

The riders are coming along the road from the east. The noise fades in and out as the road bends and dips but he's sure it's getting louder overall. In fact he thinks he can hear voices as well. Then, very suddenly, it's much louder. Silvia stands up, unhurriedly, and faces down the road, arms crossed. Rory glances back, hoping desperately to see Lino and (preferably) Per, but it's just the two of them, a child and a woman against an army. He's edging behind Silvia. He's aghast at his own cowardice. He sees something bobbing above the hedge by the turn in the road, hears a single laugh—a woman's laugh—as clear as if it's in the next room. “Remember,” Silvia murmurs, “you don't know English.” Then the riders appear.

Their chatter falls silent. They rein in, the horses shuffling to a stop, nudging against each other, blocking the road completely.

It's an army of four, all women. They shift in their saddles, staring. The stares aren't at all friendly. One of them, her face hidden by a pair of enormous sunglasses, reaches down into a bag by her stirrups and draws out a length of chain. The woman who'd been riding at the front of the group leans forward to pat her horse's neck, and as she does so says to the one next to her (who looks a bit like a horse herself), “Where are the men?” She says it softly but Rory hears it well enough. Her horse-faced neighbor shakes her head briefly:
I don't know
.

“Good morning,” Silvia says, unfolding her arms. Rory can't stop himself glancing up at her in surprise. She's changed her accent, thickened it.

The women look at each other, all except the one in the lead, who keeps her eyes on Silvia. She has a weathered, freckly, serious face. She's wearing an overcoat with stripes on the shoulder like a general in a proper army, and a red scarf tying back her hair. She hesitates a moment and then eases the horse forwards with her heels. “Good morning to you,” she says. Her voice is quite deep. She sounds suspicious, unwelcoming. The horses are astonishingly enormous. They're staring too, big dark blank eyes all fixed on Silvia and Rory.

“Is fine day,” Silvia says, in her extra foreign voice.

“Not bad.”

Silvia spreads her arms, palms open. “I am stranger,” she says, “in your country.”

“Where're the others?” This is the horse-faced one, who looks even more hostile than the first woman. She's older, probably the oldest of the four. She has the kind of face that looks like it would break into pieces if you tried to remove its scowl.

Silvia gestures vaguely behind her. “They get something.”

“We should make a move,” the one with the sunglasses says. She's talking quietly and quickly, as if she's assuming Silvia and Rory won't know what she's saying. “While it's just these two.”

“Who's the boy?” says the general with the red scarf.

Silvia looks at Rory with an expression so unlike her normal face that he almost laughs. She's made herself wide-eyed, almost stupid-looking. “Friend,” she says, and clasps him around the shoulders. On the spur of the moment Rory can't remember what he's supposed to pretend to understand and what he isn't, so he just stands there looking stupid, which come to think of it must be more or less what Silvia wants. “Only boy.”

“Poor little bugger,” mutters the fourth one, the woman at the back. She's stocky and tough-looking. Her voice reminds Rory of Missus Anderson, a proper local voice, but nothing else about her is remotely the same. Missus Anderson's dithery and wittery. This woman looks like she'd happily wrestle her own horse. She's dressed in a thick black jacket with skulls and lightning bolts and faded jaggedy writing on it.

“Hostage,” says sunglasses woman. From her voice she's the youngest of the four. Her hands look slim and small, but she's winding the chain around them in a way Rory doesn't like at all. “Let's do it.”

“We don't want fight,” Silvia says. “Only walking through.”

“Heading for the Valley, is it?” says the horse-faced one.

Silvia makes her face look like she doesn't understand. “We go east,” she says. “One day. Then finish.”

“Thought so,” the same woman mutters.

“Where have you come from?” asks the general. As her coat suggests, she seems to be in charge.

“Sal,” the one with the sunglasses says to her, “let's not negotiate. We had a plan, remember? If you want to talk to her you can do it at the Mount.”

“Long distance,” Silvia says, ignoring the interruption, or pretending to ignore it.

“Across the sea?” says horse-face. The general's questions sound reasonably polite. This other woman makes everything into an accusation.

“Yes,” Silvia says.

The general, Sal, leans on her pommel. “We're quite interested in how you managed that, you see.”