Jimmy the Hand (17 page)

The stone went
out in a long sweet curve, travelling almost too fast to see as more
than a grey streak. It caught the rabbit on the side of the head just
as it began its leap, striking with a flat smack sound that always
made her wince. Still, food was food, and the rabbit died before it
had more than a moment of fear—she hated pig-slaughter time far
more, because the pigs were smart enough to know what the
preparations meant.

The long furred
shape was kicking its last as she loped over.

‘Two or
three pounds at least,’ she said happily, picking it up by its
hind legs. Good eating. Rabbit stew with potatoes and herbs, grilled
rabbit leg, minced meat pie with onions and carrots . . . The guts
wouldn’t go to waste either: the dogs and pigs loved them, and
the bones would be broken and thrown onto the compost heap.

A good day,
she thought happily. Four pheasants and four fat little coneys. And
since they wouldn’t keep, dinner would be like a harvest
festival all week.

The sun was low
on the horizon as she lay at her ease beneath a great oak,
daydreaming. Bram would be home from Land’s End soon and she
was imagining what it would be like when he came to see her. He might
bring her a small gift, a hairpin, or some fine cloth for a shawl to
wear at a dance. If he lacked the means for those tokens, he’d
almost certainly bring her meadow flowers. He’d hand them to
her with that charming smile of his and perhaps he’d kiss her.
She felt her cheeks grow warm at the thought.

At fifteen
Lorrie was more than ready to start thinking about who her husband
would be and Bram was the best candidate in the neighbourhood.
Handsome, skilled at everything a countryman needed to know, and heir
to a good farm. He was hardworking, honest and sincere, but not
without intelligence and humour, qualities the hard life of a farmer
often beat out of a man even as young as Bram’s seventeen
years. And she was sure he felt the same way about her. With a
contented sigh, Lorrie remembered his handsome face, his golden hair
and the special smile he’d given her when he’d come to
say goodbye.

Bram’s
mother, Allet, wanted him to concentrate his attentions on plump,
spoiled Merrybet Glidden, whose father owned the grandest farm in the
area, and who put on airs that she never had to turn her hand to
honest work, what with three maids and a dozen farmhands. Lorrie
smiled grimly; no doubt that stuck-up Merrybet would prefer it that
way, too. Then she wrinkled her nose, and grinned, settling her
shoulders deeper into the soft grass beneath her. Both Bram’s
mother and Merrybet were going to be disappointed—Bram was
going to be hers. She just knew it.

Lorrie sighed.
It was time she headed back, even though it was earlier than she’d
intended. The plan had been to stay out until just after dark. If
this was to be her last time hunting alone, or ever, and she was
going to catch some punishment anyway, Lorrie hadn’t felt
obliged to be considerate. Let them worry, she’d told herself.
She’d wanted to have as much time as possible in the cool,
green solitude of the forest amongst the musty autumnal smell of
mushrooms and fallen leaves—she was going to miss it so.

But guilt was
calling her home. Lorrie hated the thought of worrying her mother,
and her father. Daddy would patiently take the brunt of her mother’s
worried temper until she turned up, listening to threats that became
more dire with each passing minute. But then they’d argue about
her punishment, each claiming the other was being too harsh, until
they settled on something that was hardly a punishment at all. Lorrie
smiled: they were so predictable.

As she stood up
to go a strange feeling began to grow in her, flowing down her neck
to curdle in her stomach. At first she thought it was her
imagination, but then she felt a flash of something that shrilled
like fear. Or even more than fear, but it was gone almost instantly.
Lorrie was so far away from home that the feeling had to have come
from Rip. It shook her so that she started back at a jog, trying to
think of every possible thing that could cause such a spurt of terror
in a six-year-old boy.

Now, as she grew
closer to home, her worry increased, until she was running flat-out,
her long slim legs flashing like a deer’s as she hurdled bushes
and ran right through a sounder of half-wild swine grubbing for
acorns.

She could sense
Rip, but it was as though he was asleep, and with a stab of fear she
suddenly realized that she couldn’t sense her mother at all.
All her life there had been that contact, the warmth of her mother’s
presence somewhere in a corner of her mind. Never had she felt an
absence there, like the aching void left by a pulled tooth. The bag
holding the string of coneys and pheasants banged against her leg,
and then her lungs began to burn and her heart to hammer. She ignored
it all.

Gradually she
became aware that she was smelling smoke.
What’s burning?
she wondered. Lorrie stopped and tried to tell where the smoke was
coming from. If this had been midwinter she’d have thought her
father was burning off a field. But it was far too late in the year
for that: the new seed was already in and any pile of weeds being
burned wouldn’t put this much smoke in the air. Besides, it was
too late in the day. Her mind jumped to the ashes she’d thrown
out this morning. No, she thought. The barrel wasn’t big enough
to throw up this much smoke and it was right next to the watertub by
the eaves which captured soft rainwater from the roof for the
leaching process, and you could dump it right in with the pull of a
rope.

A new thrill of
horror ran through her stomach as she thought:
The house is on
fire!

People died in
fires—there was a bad one in the district every couple of years
. . . ‘Mother! Father! Rip!’

Panic left her
gasping. She threw down the game-bag and left the trail, vaulting
over the snake-rail fence that separated the seven-acre field from
the woods. The hay had been cut, stubble only calf-high, and she
raced across it like the wind.

As she dodged
around a huge and ancient oak, that her father had judged too much
trouble to uproot—leaving it as a marker between fields, her
foot caught on a gnarled root. Her arms windmilled for balance, but
it was too late. The ground rose up and struck her as she landed full
length with enough force to stun; she could taste blood in her
mouth—iron and salt—where her teeth had grazed the inside
of a cheek.

She lay panting
for a moment and was about to rise and run again when she saw two
strangers. Both male; they were a rough-looking pair and Lorrie
dropped down again, frightened. The brown homespun and leather of her
clothing would be hard to see against the earth and faded straw, and
her hair was much the same colour. The late afternoon sun was
throwing long shadows, and the landscape was now painted in bright
edges around opaque darkness. In the shadow of the ancient oak she
was invisible to the men. They would have had to have been looking
straight at her as she ran down the hill to have seen her before the
fall.

The men looked
exactly like the kind of men who seemed to haunt her mother’s
nightmares, with their greasy hair and filthy clothes and faces that
bore witness to a life lived hard. They were young and strong,
though; she could see the corded muscle in their necks and forearms.

They were
standing over something on the ground that she couldn’t see
from where she lay, and one drew a tool out of a stained burlap bag.
It looked like the sort of long-handled pliers the blacksmith used,
but with a broad front end.

One of the men
worked the handles of the tool while the other bent over something on
the ground. With a cry of disgust the man with the tool yanked and
stepped back, something wet and floppy held in the grip of what
looked like teeth.

Lorrie realized
that it was blood and meat and her breath froze in horror. If they’d
butchered a sheep, why tear it apart like this? Why not cut it up
with the perfectly serviceable-looking knives they wore at their
waists?

‘Makes me
want to puke!’ the man with the pliers said. He dropped the
torn meat into a sack and reached forward with the tool again. ‘Why
do we have to do it this way?’ He dropped another strip of meat
into the sack.

‘We have
to do it this way,’ the other said, rising, ‘because this
is the way we’re being paid to do it.’ He gave a
snaggle-toothed grin. ‘And if I’d known you was a girl, I
could have got more use out of you.’

The other man
spat close by his companion’s feet by way of comment, but not
quite on them.

The second man
studied what they’d been tearing at. ‘Do you think that’s
enough?’ he asked.

‘It is for
me,’ the one with the pliers answered, dropping the tool into
the sack. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

They moved away
as Lorrie watched. She waited until they’d vanished behind a
hedge and she scuttled over to see what they’d been doing,
staying low. Glancing nervously in all directions Lorrie caught sight
of one of the strangers disappearing over the hill toward her home
and froze. She held her breath until she was sure they were gone,
then cautiously moved forward again until she stood over what they’d
been tearing apart.

For a moment
Lorrie couldn’t even breathe; was so shocked that all she knew
was that this used to be a man. Suddenly something went snap behind
her eyes, and she realized she knew him.

It was Emmet
Congrove, the man of all work; she could tell by his clothes, and the
thinning grey hair, and the wart on the back of his right hand,
always inflamed where he picked at it.

He’d been
with the family since just before Rip was born. How could they do
that to him? How could anyone do such a thing?

Tearing her
fascinated gaze from the terrible wounds on the body Lorrie turned
aside, her hands covering her mouth. Falling to her knees she was
instantly, helplessly sick; heaving and sobbing uncontrollably.
Finally the nausea passed and Lorrie hugged her middle to ease the
ache, spitting to clear her mouth.

A sudden stab of
fear that was not her own sobered her.
Rip!
Lorrie leapt to
her feet and ran toward home. Rip was in danger.
But where is
Mother? Why can’t I feel her?
In her heart Lorrie feared
the answer, and she refused to believe it.

The smoke was
growing thicker.

Coming over the
hill that hid the house and barn from view she ran into a pall of
black smoke so thick that she could see nothing. Lorrie stopped,
choking. She heard hoofbeats and the neigh of a horse, but no longer
felt the panicked fear that Rip had projected just moments before. A
puff of wind parted the smoke and she could see that the barn was
wreathed in orange-red flame, thundering where it had got to the
packed hay in the loft and turning almost white along the rooftree.
Beyond she thought she saw two figures on horseback riding fast down
the road.

Thick
sooty-black smoke poured out of every window of their house; wisps of
it were coming out of the thatch too, and as she watched a few
tentative tongues of flame. Lorrie let out a cry like the wordless
shriek of a hawk and ran down the hill, careless of where her feet
went, not minding the pounding shock as they hit the ridged furrows.

The wind shifted
again, sending billows of smoke toward her, blinding her, blurring
her eyes with tears. She coughed with a racking intensity, her lungs
dry and burning with her effort and the harsh smoke. Then she tripped
over something and fell forward with a thud. What had she tripped
over? Slowly she turned, her heart hammering with dread, and looked
behind her. It was her father, his throat torn out, his eyes staring
sightlessly upward, his beard moving slightly in the wind that bore
the smoke. His blood pooled out around him, so much blood that the
ground was turning to mud beneath it. His wood-chopping axe lay not
far from his outstretched hand, the edge still shiny.

She tried to
scream, but her throat closed and all that came out was a pathetic
squeak as she scuttled backwards across the dirt. Then with a choked
sob, she forced herself to stand. For a long moment she looked down
upon the grisly sight. Lorrie reached toward him, halted and drew her
hand back, holding it against her chest, shaking her head in
disbelief. Then she looked toward the house—her head moving in
little jerks—and saw her mother, mercifully lying face down.
There was blood pooled beneath her too, so much blood that Lorrie
knew her mother could not possibly be alive.

Lorrie gave one
sob and stopped herself. Rip was still alive! Rip had only her now,
and only she could save him. Forcing herself to turn away from the
horror, she wrenched her gaze away from her mother’s body,
turned and ran around the house, and down the road after the
vanishing riders.

She ran until
her lungs ached and she could taste blood in the back of her throat.
She raced up one hill and down another until she came to the top of a
rise and saw them; two men, one of them struggling with a small boy.

Rip,
she
thought. One of the boy’s shoes fell off, and the man holding
him clouted him across the side of the head. In what seemed like a
moment they were out of sight around a curve in the road and soon she
couldn’t even hear the hollow sound of the hooves on packed
dirt.

Running full out
Lorrie came to the place where her brother’s shoe had fallen.
She reached for it and fell to her knees, gasping as she was overcome
with sobs and desperation. Finally, still weeping, she forced herself
up and staggered down the road in the direction the kidnappers had
gone. After a few steps she stopped.

I need a
horse,
she thought. The only one they had was Horace, their old
plough horse. He was no champing stallion, but he was better than
shanks’s pony. The kidnappers couldn’t keep galloping,
they’d have to slow down sometime.