Jimmy the Hand (18 page)

‘Slow and
steady gets the job done,’ her father always said. ‘And a
man can walk further than he can run.’

Her breath
caught in her throat as sharp as a fish bone when she remembered that
she’d never hear him say such a thing again; the pain was
physical, like needles stabbing into eyes and heart.

Turning toward
home she saw flames flash through the smoke churning over the
hilltop. Everything was burning. Lorrie thought of her mother and
father lying in their blood . . .

They’re
dead,
she forced her mind to say. Blackness threatened to rise up
and overwhelm her. She wanted nothing so much as to awake from a
horrible dream, or to discover this but a mad illusion from a fever.
She kept looking around, expecting things to change. She knew that if
she turned quickly, her father would be walking toward the house, or
if she ran home fast, her mother would be standing in the kitchen
doorway.

A great primal
sob shook her, followed by a scream—more than a scream: a deep
roar of rage, pain and defiance that caused her to clench fists and
throw back her head and shriek until her throat was raw and there was
no air left in her lungs.

Gasping for air,
she forced herself to look clearly ahead. She had to put pain aside.
Mourning would come later.
Rip’s alive!
she thought
again, and everything in her turned cold, her outrage and pain
turning from fire to ice.
Rip must be saved!
Hysteria and
confusion would serve only to put him at more risk. Obviously those
who took him wanted him alive for a reason, otherwise he would be
dead with his parents.

Rip might be
facing slavery or worse. And there was nothing she could do for her
parents. At least not now. She looked around once more, burning the
images of this moment into her young memory. She would never forget.

With silent
resolve, she set off toward her home.

Lorrie ran.

She wasn’t
quite home yet when she saw Bram’s father, Ossrey, coming
across the fields. His wife, Allet, was with him, and a field hand;
behind them more neighbours were coming, the whole valley turning
out. The men carried shovels and axes and the women carried buckets.
Lorrie ran to them, throwing herself into Ossrey’s arms,
weeping so hard she couldn’t speak.

Ossrey held her
for a moment, stroking her hair then, keeping one arm around her
shoulders, he guided her toward the house and barn.

‘Where are
your ma and pa?’ he asked gently. ‘Did they send you for
help?’

Shaking her
head, utterly breathless from weeping, Lorrie couldn’t answer
him. Just then they came in sight of the house and barn and the
bodies of her mother and father.

‘Sung
protect us,’ Allet whispered in horror.

‘Stay
here, Lorrie,’ Ossrey said, putting her gently aside.

But Lorrie
grabbed hold of his sleeve and wouldn’t let go as she struggled
to get herself under control. Finally she was able to speak.

‘Men who
did this . . . took my brother,’ she managed to gasp out.
Pointing down the road, she said, ‘Help me get him back.’

‘First we
must see if we can help your parents,’ Ossrey said calmly.

Lorrie shook her
head, tears flowing down her face. ‘You can’t, you
can’t,’ she said plaintively. Then once more, ‘You
can’t.’

‘Oh,
Lorrie,’ Ossrey said, gathering her into his arms. Over her
head he and Allet exchanged glances.

‘Please,’
Lorrie said, pushing herself away from his chest, ‘help me find
Rip.’

Just then a
piece of the barn roof collapsed, sending up a storm of sparks, and
Ossrey’s head whipped round at the roar of the fire.

‘We must
take care of the fire, girl,’ he told her. ‘If it spreads
to the crops, you’ll not be the only one around here to lose
your fields.’

By now other
neighbours had come up and were staring in horror at the scene before
them.

‘What’s
happened?’ someone asked in a dazed voice.

Lorrie looked
from face to face and could see that they’d all be occupied
with the fire in a moment and deaf to anything she said.

‘Murderers
have kidnapped my baby brother,’ she said. ‘Help me get
him back!’

‘Are you
sure the boy is . . . wasn’t in the house, girl?’

‘No, men
took him!’ Lorrie said, her voice verging on the hysterical.
Exhaustion and fear were driving her to the brink of collapse.

Ossrey asked,
‘Any of you see any men riding along the road today?’

A murmur of
voices answered in the negative. ‘I saw them!’ shouted
Lorrie.

‘Lorrie,
girl, someone will go for the constable, he’ll be the one to
hunt these men down.’ Ossrey nodded to several of the men who
started to hurry to the other side of the barn, while others ran to
the well to get water. They would see that any fire in the fields
started by blowing embers was quickly quenched.

She looked up
into Ossrey’s kind face and knew that no one would follow the
killers, at least not today. ‘I’ll go,’ she said
impulsively. ‘I’ll take Horace and ride to the constable.
That will leave more men to fight the fire.’

But Ossrey was
shaking his head. ‘You go with my Allet,’ he said.
‘You’ve had a bad, bad shock, girl. Someone else will go
for the constable. Try to rest,’ he advised. ‘We’ll
take care of everything.’

‘These are
teeth marks,’ Farmer Roben said, looking down at her father’s
body. ‘An animal did this.’

Lorrie looked at
them in wonder, more and more of them were starting to fight the
blaze. It was as though they hadn’t heard her, or understood
what she’d said.

‘It
wasn’t,’ she started to say.

Allet put her
arm around Lorrie’s shoulders. ‘We’ll leave it to
the men, shall we?’ She turned the girl toward her own farm and
patted her. ‘You could use a nice rest.’

Lorrie pulled
away, or tried to. Allet took her arm in a strong grip.

‘I need to
find my brother!’ Lorrie shouted. She waved her free arm
frantically. ‘Does anybody see him here? He’s been
carried off by murderers, not animals, and he needs our help! We have
to follow them now or we’ll lose them forever!’

‘That’s
enough!’ Allet snapped, shaking her arm. ‘You leave it to
the men and come with me right now! Don’t you get hysterical on
me, girl,’ she warned.

Lorrie stared at
her, open-mouthed. Then she looked around at the circle of her
neighbours, those who weren’t already fighting the fire. ‘You
don’t believe me,’ she said at last, her voice full of
wonder.

One of the women
stepped forward and put her hand to Lorrie’s cheek. ‘It’s
not about believing you, child. It’s about doing what we can.
You wouldn’t catch anyone on your old Horace, and any of us
would have to run all the way back to our farms to get horses not
much better.’ She sighed. ‘Meanwhile that fire might get
out of control—you’ve lost the house and barn, but
there’s still the crops, and if they go, the fire could spread
to other farms. Besides, if we left now we’d be no closer to
your brother. We’ll send word to the constable; he’ll
know what to do about this. Try to have faith, dear.’

Lorrie started
to weep again from sheer frustration, then began a keening that she
was horrified to discover was beyond her control. Allet gave her arm
another shake and a hard look. The other woman moved in to hold her
gently but firmly. ‘What can one girl do against grown men
except get herself into trouble?’ she asked quietly.

‘You leave
it to the men now,’ Allet said, ‘and trust them to do
their best.’

Lorrie let them
take her to Ossrey and Allet’s farm knowing that wouldn’t
be enough.

How can I
trust them to do their best for Rip when they’ve already given
up?

Her mind stopped
whirling, and a coldness came over her, like a wind cutting through
smoke or fog.
I’ll make a fuss, they’ll watch me
close. Go along with it, and I can slip away,
she thought.

Allet put her to
bed in Bram’s room—it was a mark of a good farm and a
small family that even the eldest son had a room to himself—and
Lorrie felt a pang at being surrounded by his familiar, dearly-missed
scent.

‘Here’s
a posset for you,’ Allet said: she was a notable herb-wife.
‘Drink it right down, dear.’

Lorrie gagged a
bit at the taste—sharp, musky, and too sweet at the same time.
Then the world spun as she set her head back on the feather-filled
pillows.

Waking was slow;
her head was splitting with pain, and her chest burned, and she had
aches and bruises all over.

Gods!
Lorrie thought, as memory came back with a rush.
What’s the
hour?

She started to
cry and buried her head in Bram’s pillow, forcing back her sobs
by sheer will. There was no time for that now.

Rising quietly,
she went to the door and found it barred—barred on the outside.

Stifling a hiss
of anger, she moved to try the shutters. Mercifully they opened,
letting in a flood of bright moonlight that revealed that her clothes
were missing. Shaking her head and mentally cursing Allet’s
thoroughness Lorrie went to the chest at the foot of the bed. After a
bit of rummaging she found some of Bram’s outgrown clothes and
shoes. They felt strange when she put them on, but she reckoned she’d
get used to them quickly enough. She swung an old cloak over her
shoulders and started out the window. Then stopped. Moving on
instinct, Lorrie felt beneath the straw-stuffed mattress on Bram’s
bed. Her fingers touched soft leather: a purse, half the size of her
fist, half-filled. The small, edged metal shapes of the coins inside
were unmistakable under her fingertips.

She hesitated
for an instant—it was probably the savings of years, from odd
jobs he’d done off the farm—and then took it. Like any
farm-child in the district she’d been raised to despise a thief
even worse than a sluggard, and nearly as much as a coward, but her
need was great.

It’s
like borrowing an axe or a bucket when there’s no time to ask,
she told herself; people did that as a matter of course.

Lorrie looked
out both ways; Bram’s family had the rarity of a second storey
to their home, added in a prosperous year by his grandfather, and it
was ten feet to the ground below. A quick look at moon and stars told
her it was halfway between midnight and dawn; not a time anyone was
likely to be stirring. There was a narrow strip of sheep-cropped
grass beneath the window; she let herself out, hung by her fingertips
and then let herself drop.

Thud.

Something
stirred. She waited, then let out a gasp of relief when she saw it
was only the family dogs, Grip and Holdfast, big mongrels who’d
known her since they were pups. They were out at work, making sure no
fox tried for the poultry or a lamb.

‘Quiet,’
she said, letting them sniff her hands—they were conscientious
dogs, and wanted to be sure she wasn’t a stranger violating
their territory. ‘Quiet!’

A glimpse around
the rear corner of the farmhouse, her face pressed to the gritty,
splintery logs. No lights, only silver moonlight across the yard, and
the two barns, a shed, and a rail-fenced paddock where the working
stock and the family’s milch-cow were kept.

As she’d
thought, they’d brought her family’s stock home with them
and she found Horace easily; he wouldn’t be fast, but she’d
ridden him now and then all of his life, taking him to be watered in
ploughing season, or shod, or sometimes just for fun. He nuzzled and
sniffed at her as though happy to see someone familiar and she rubbed
his velvety nose. Lorrie bit her lip and thought about what she had
to do. She needed a saddle and tack and some grain for the horse. It
was stealing, plain and simple, and she knew that her mother and
father would be disappointed in her.

Maybe not,
she thought fiercely,
maybe they’d be more disappointed in
their do-nothing neighbours.

There was an old
saddle just inside the smaller barn’s door—a simple pad
affair, for farmers didn’t ride often.

If I don’t
do it, nobody will. Rip will die, or worse.

And that, she
knew, would disappoint her parents even more.

She led Horace
from the barn, slid the bridle over his head, arranged the blanket
carefully, then slid the saddle on his back with a grunt of effort,
for it weighed about a quarter of what she did, and tightened the
girth. The horse gave a resigned sigh, knowing that meant work.

Back into the
barn. She looked through a gap between the boards back toward the
farmhouse, but there was no sign of life, only a drift of smoke from
the banked fire through the chimney. That made her hands start to
shake for a moment, but she forced herself to be calm, taking deep
breaths.

Oats,
she
thought firmly. The sweetish smell led her to the bin, and there were
always a few sackcloth bags near it. She filled two, then added a few
horse-blankets to her loot for nights spent on the road.

Horace gave a
whicker of interest as she threw the sacks over his withers; he knew
what that smell was. ‘Later,’ she whispered to him,
taking a moment to soothe him quiet before scrambling up on his back,
for he was a tall mount for a fifteen-year-old girl, and tightened
her thighs around his broad barrel of a body.

Obediently, the
horse set out down the road which wound like a ribbon of moonlight to
the south.

I’m
coming, Rip!
she thought.

Finding Flora’s
grandfather had been easy; there weren’t more than a couple of
law-speakers in a town this size. Getting up the nerve to see him had
been harder.

‘What if
he hates me for my father’s sake?’ Flora asked anxiously
and for the hundredth time, looking at the tall house of pale
mortared stone, not far from the town’s main square—it
oozed respectability, right down to the costly diamond-pane glass
windows.