Gunwitch (19 page)

The hands shifted, then were pushing her forward, and her head down, until her face was just above the plate, steam from the still-hot meat wisping against her face. Her mouth watered, but she made no move to eat. After a minute, her stomach growled, prompting Mr. Thomas to laugh. She could not see him, but it sounded as if he had food in his mouth.

“You should eat,” he said. “It’s just a coney. Sorry about the lack of chips. Still, it’s quite good.”

Margaret wished she had tried to kick him, even if it had hurt her. Finally she opened her lips and reached for the meat with her teeth and tongue. The meat was still warm. She chewed, and swallowed, then picked up the next piece the same way.

“Hardly lady-like,” Mr. Thomas said as he pushed more meat in front of her. “Eating right off the plate like that. Janett would be appalled, I have no doubt.”

Margaret tried to bite his hand, but the women holding her prevented her, and he only laughed in response.

When she had eaten more than she thought she could, hating herself for eating it no matter how hungry she was, Ducoed told the women, “Gag her, then take her to the other tent. I’m sure she’s tired.”

The women lifted her upright again, and one of them reached around to push a wad of dirty cloth into her mouth. She tried to keep her mouth clenched, ground her teeth, but the cold fingers of the woman did not relent. They pushed harder and harder until the fear of losing teeth made Margaret open her mouth. The cloth tasted foul, as did the fingers.

She bit down, as hard as she could. She felt her teeth penetrate flesh, felt tooth grind against bone, tasted something even more foul than the cloth.

The woman did not cry out. She did not even wiggle her fingers. She only continued to tug on her hand, time after time, trying to get it out of Margaret’s mouth.

Mr. Thomas laughed. “I didn’t realize how hungry you were, Miss Laxton.”

Gagging, from the fingers in her throat and the tastes on her tongue and the thought that she had almost bitten a finger off, Margaret let go. The women held her as she coughed and gagged. Then, at a word from Mr. Thomas, they pulled her to the front of the tent.

Still trying not to gag, Margaret squeezed her eyes closed as she was dragged out of the tent. The images on the backs of her eyelids were suddenly less threatening than whatever waited for her now. The smells of death and burned flesh hit her again, as if they had just found her, and threatened to make her vomit again. She swallowed bile and worse and concentrated on keeping her eyes shut and ignoring the smells and sounds of the camp as she was dragged through it. And on not thinking how she was naked in front of the hordes of men she refused to see.

After a minute, Margaret risked a peek through slitted eyelids and saw that the women had taken her out of the camp. They now dragged her under the trees, and the veil over the stars had gone, replaced by the golden-gray wash of dawn.

Then the trees and the sky disappeared behind black canvas as she was dragged into another tent, and dropped. As she scrambled to her feet, the women retreated out of the tent, and the flaps dropped.

Margaret pulled the gag out of her mouth and screamed and charged out of the tent.

Cold hands caught her before she had taken three steps. Cold fingers reinserted the gag, then the cold hands threw her back into the tent.

She landed in a heap, and laid there, crying. She spit out the gag, trying to think of a way that none of this could be happening. That Miss Rose had not left her alone. That Private Tishman still lived. That she had never met Mr. Thomas.

She wished Da were here.

No. She wished that she and Da and Mum and Janett were back in England, in their parlor, Mum knitting with Janett while she and Da played chess, all of them laughing, all of them together, and that they had none of them ever heard of the New World.

She did not know how long she cried before she realized that she had fallen on a pile of clothes. There was no light in the tent, and the clothes were torn and damp, but she decided that she would rather not see them. She pulled on two shirts, then found a pair of baggy trousers that she pulled on, as well. There were no shoes.

Clothed and warming, she risked a peek out the tent flaps. Dawn provided more light now. The two women, even more grotesque when seen more clearly, stood outside the tent. They did not move. They stood even more still than the trees, which rustled in a light morning breeze.

She pulled back into the tent, yawning. She was so tired. She crawled back to the pile of clothes and curled up. She did not close her eyes, though. She stared at the black canvas of the tent wall and wished her own mind was as blank.

* * *

Margaret did not know how long she lay like that, not sleeping–not letting herself sleep–when she heard the sounds of decamping. Feet marching, hammers ringing, ropes. Very few voices, though. And none that she recognized.

“Get her.” She knew that voice.

The tent flaps burst open, letting in the sunlight of early morning. The sudden brightness forced her to close her eyes. She saw the image from the first attack, the soldier nearly cut in two by a black axe. And the face of Private Tishman being peeled off his skull. She forced her eyes back open as cold hands grabbed her and pulled her out of the tent. The women held her as tight as ever, and stood her on her feet.

Mr. Thomas waited for her, smiling, holding the hand of the dead-faced little girl. The girl’s eyes still stared, the mouth still hung open, and one cheek was still flattened, but the girl’s hair had been brushed and combed so it shown. And her clothes–Margaret’s clothes–had been cleaned. Margaret gaped. It was almost like looking at herself in a mirror. Almost. Her hair seldom looked that good more than a few minutes after Janett or Mum finished with it.

“Good morning, Miss Laxton,” Mr. Thomas said, pulling her attention back to him. “I do hope you managed to sleep. We have a long walk ahead of us today.”

The five of them, Mr. Thomas and the girl dressed as Margaret, Margaret and the two women, stood alone in a small space between weeping willows and other trees she did not recognize. But now the woods around them moved with more than just the wind. Figures moved past them, featureless through the screen of branches and leaves, heading west, away from the sunrise.

“Are you,” Margaret asked, her voice hoarse. She coughed and spit out the something awful that came from her throat. “Are you taking me to my Da? My father?” She coughed again.

“Of course. I gave you my word, didn’t I?”

“Why …? Why are you doing this?” She looked at the girl again.

“For your safety, Margaret.” He noticed her looking at the girl, and smiled. “She cleans up quite pretty, doesn’t she? Not as … shall we say ‘expressive’? … as you, of course. But a remarkable likeness, don’t you think?” His smile became hard. “There are people who would try to take you away from me–”

“My father–” The gag was stuffed into her mouth. She gagged and coughed and spit it out on the ground. “My father will see you flogged and–and–hanged.”

Mr. Thomas let go of the girl’s hand. The girl stood there as he stepped forward, her hand still lifted where he left it. He bent down and picked up the gag, then stood again, leaning over Margaret.

She flinched, then steeled herself to meet his eye.

“Your father has seen me under the lash quite a few times before now,” he said. “But the next time he sees me, he’ll see me with his beloved Little Puncher.”

“How–?” She could almost hate the name now that he had spoken it.

“Don’t you think he’ll pay anything to get you back, Miss Laxton?” He leaned even closer so she felt his breath on her face as he continued. “Don’t you think any loving father would give me everything he has, just to get you back? And still more if I have Janett, as well–and I will, have no doubt about that.
Everything
, just to get you back, unharmed. He will give me that, and more. And I’ll take it all. And then some.”

“You’re going … holding me for ransom?”

He leaned back then and laughed. “For much more than that, Margaret. Much, much more than that.”

He still held the balled up gag in his left hand. Now he pulled a knife with his right hand and touched the flat side of the point to her cheek. The metal was cold against her cheek, and the breath from her nose clouded it, but it was no colder than the hands that held her.

“You have no idea how valuable you are.” He pulled the knife away from her face. The was a tug on her top shirt, and a ripping sound as he cut off a long strip. He put the knife back in its sheath, and handed the gag to the woman on her right. “Put this in her mouth,” he said. “And hold it there while I tie the gag.”

Margaret kicked at him, but missed. She bit hard enough that she almost lost a tooth against a knucklebone, but the women never faltered. They did as they were told and held her while Mr. Thomas stood behind her and tied the gag into place.

“Walk with the izidumbus,” he said, taking the little girl’s still-outstretched hand.

The women started forward, Margaret held between them, her feet off the ground.

“Come along, Miss Laxton,” Mr. Thomas said to the little girl. “Wonderful morning for a bit of a walk, don’t you think?” The little girl’s expression did not change. They were walking along, hand in hand, the last Margaret saw of them.

* * *

Being carried seemed, at first, an improvement over walking. But the women made no effort to remain in step with each other as they shambled and shuffled forward, and after a while Margaret’s shoulders began to ache from carrying her weight and from being jostled and pushed together in unexpected ways. She struggled against the hands, throwing her weight back and forth. The women said nothing, only continued to carry her, resisting her efforts in the same way an ancient oak resisted being pushed over by a kitten. Still, she was able to work her way down just enough that her feet touched the ground and she could take some of the pressure off her shoulders and back.

They walked in the midst of other women and men, most of them taller than her so she could see only bodies swaying around her and the branches of trees above her. The two women who held her were white, their hands and faces showing signs of the sun and work out of doors, but the bodies around them were of no single race. There were jet black men and women, and brown, the red of the Amerigon natives and even a few more whites. Those that wore clothes showed just as much variety, native buckskins and stained cotton shirts and trousers and petticoats and once she glimpsed the remnants of an English soldier’s red overcoat.

She tried not to see it, but the nakedness of the women that carried her was not uncommon. Men and women both had been stripped, or mostly stripped, their exposed flesh, from head to foot, showing horrible slashes and punctures and lacerations and mutilations. But no bleeding. All the blood from the wounds had clotted and blackened. And the flesh itself showed a hint of blue, as if they were chilled, and they moved stiffly.

Everything moved stiffly, or not at all. The folds of fat, the pendulous breasts, the dangling members of the men, all hung like dried or drying clay, pushed into a shape and then abandoned.

She could not close her eyes. And she could not look anywhere that did not provide more images of horror. She kept her eyes unfocused and wished they would become numb like her nose. She no longer smelled the rotting flesh and the stinks of death. At least the gag in her mouth prevented her from tasting them.

She did not have to watch where she was going, though, even after she started walking for herself. Unlike Chal and Miss Rose, the women holding her walked in a straight line, moving aside only for tree trunks or other immovable obstacles. They walked into the water between the small islands without turning or any signs of hesitation or squeamishness, even when the water reached up to their waists. Then they walked out the other side.

Once, to her left, she heard sounds of splashing in the water, then the crunching of bone. No one besides her seemed to notice it. All those around her continued trudging forward, one foot after the other.

Another time, she thought she heard gunshots, far away. A few minutes later, a pair of grunzers stomped back from the front of the column, ran past her position and continued to the rear. She did not get a clear view of them. She could only see the rounded tops of their boilers.

Other than that, the silence was almost complete. The only sounds Margaret heard were those of feet stepping on earth or trodden-down vegetation. And her own breathing. Neither the women carrying her nor the rest of those around her exhibited any signs of exertion. If they breathed at all, she could not see it or hear it.

The sun marched overhead, following them, rising higher, perhaps to get a better view through the trees, then sinking again.

The stones, the broken branches, the smashed vegetation, all of it tore at Margaret’s feet as she walked. Sometimes the people behind her trod on her heels. But the worst was walking into the water where she could not see what she was stepping on. The mud oozed between her toes and rubbed painfully against the cuts. Sharp sticks she could not see stabbed her soles or scraped along her calves, creating more cuts. Worst of all, she never knew how deep the water would be. A wide channel, fifty feet across or more, might not get higher than her knees, while a narrow channel could plunge them into water that came to her stomach. Either way, the women dragged her forward at the same, plodding speed.