One Crow Alone (26 page)

“It's Bethan.” Magda waved her arms frantically. Bethan hurried up the slope toward the house.

“What?” Bethan said, breathless, coming across the yard. “What's wrong?”

*   *   *

Magda burst through the back door of Rathged Farm.

“What is it?” said Anwen.

“It's Mrs. Gourty. She's ill—Callum has taken her to Barmouth for the Liverpool boat. Bethan's gone with them.”

“Bethan?”

The young collie pup ran circles at Magda's feet.

“I said I'd look after the ponies,” said Magda. “Alice can come up there with me until Bethan gets back.”

“Do you think Mrs. Gourty will be all right?” said Bran.

Magda pushed the pup away from her. “I have a bad feeling about it.”

 

33

It was strange to be alone in Callum Gourty's house. Strange with new smells and new sounds and not knowing really where the plates lay or the pots sat and feeling thief-like, eating the things from his larder and pulling the blankets over her in a strange bed that night. She felt better when Alice came creeping under the covers.

“Magda, look,” said Alice, wriggling free from under her arm and sticking her head up over the blanket. “Look! Snowing!”

“Snow?”

“Yes. Look!”

Magda sat up on her elbows. And, yes, snowflakes were fluttering against the glass in the eddies of a wind.

Already? It's barely November.

Alice slipped out from beneath the blankets and padded across the floorboards. She stood on her toes and pressed her nose against the glass. “I can see it on the fields.”

“Well, come back into bed then. It won't go away before the morning.”

Reluctantly, with a lingering glance at the world outside, Alice came back into the bed and snuggled close. “It's winter now, isn't it?” she said.

“Yes, Alice, I suppose it is.”

*   *   *

Magda woke. It was dark. But the horses were making a commotion in the field. Alice was still asleep and breathing heavy. Very quietly, Magda pulled back the covers and dropped her legs over the side of the bed. The springs creaked, but the child did not stir.

She pulled on her clothes and went to the window. The fields were already white, with grasses poking blades up through the thin snow.

Something moved behind the barn.

Her heart beat fast.

Who could it be? The others? Come to get the ponies in because of the weather?

No. It was a man. Two men.

She pulled back from the window. “Alice,” she whispered urgently. “Alice, wake up.”

Alice half opened her eyes and turned over and went back to sleep.

“Alice.” She shook her gently.

“Is it morning?”

“No. You have to be very quiet, Alice.”

“Why?”

“Here, put these on.” She dressed the child with fumbling fingers. Outside, the horses whinnied from the field again.

“Why we getting up? It's dark.”

“Alice, you're going to have to be very good and do everything I tell you and not make any noise. It's a special game. Do you understand?”

“But why?”

“If you do it very well, I will make you a cake and you can play in the dairy whenever you like.”

“A cake!”

“Yes, but remember! Shh!” Magda put her finger over Alice's mouth. The little girl nodded and Magda tied the laces on her shoes.

In the corner of the room was a cupboard. Magda took a large sheepskin coat and wrapped it around the child. “You have to sit in this cupboard, Alice, sit in here and keep as still as a mouse. Whatever you hear and whatever happens. Don't open your mouth or make a move.” She leaned down and kissed Alice on the head and stroked her hair.

She could see the whites of the girl's eyes so wide.

“Don't worry, Alice.” She closed the cupboard door, wedging it shut with a pair of shoes. With her heart banging in her chest, she came down the creaky stairs.

The smell of the kitchen rose up to greet her. And she stepped onto the flagstones, closed the stair door behind her, turned the lock, and put the key in her pocket.

She waited. Listening. Afraid.

Why did you bring the child here?

But it was too late for that. She stepped to the kitchen window and looked out. The yard was still. There was only the young stallion in the stable. She could just make out his head over the stable door, ears pointed toward the noisy mares in the field.

Maybe just sit tight. If they are thieves, they will only take the ponies.

But the ponies. Callum's ponies.

You can get over to Rathged and fetch the others. Alice is safe. The worst that can happen is that she is afraid. No harm will come to her. Not if you are quick.

She unbolted the front door and lifted the latch. Very slowly, she pushed it open and came out. With one hand she lifted the bridle from its peg in the porch. Closed the door quietly behind her.

The young pony whinnied from across the yard.

She stood still. Listened again.

Voices carried faint in the wind from the top field.

Quickly she stepped across the yard and into the stall. The pony stomped back, snorting. “Be good for me, boy, be good now.” She ran her hands over his neck and he stamped his feet and tried to nip her. She brought the bridle over his head, pushing the bit into his soft mouth, pulling the leather over his springy ears.

“Good boy.” She lifted the reins over his head and led him quietly from the stable. The darkness calmed him; he was not used to being taken out in the dark.

“Now then, you must promise not to kick.” She pulled out a bale and climbed up on it. Grasped the pony's mane and hauled her heavy body onto his warm back.

Magda felt his chomping and pulling as he sidestepped out under the barn door and into the snowy yard. She turned him up toward the track that led behind the house. And when they had come halfway down the edge of the wood, she stopped in the shelter of the dark trees and saw the shadowy figures leading Callum Gourty's ponies in a long string out through the gate toward the Dolgellau road and she kicked the beast on and he flung his head and went faster than it was almost possible for her to bear in her condition and they bore away into the dark of the woods toward Rathged.

 

34

The new collie pup lay out in the snow behind the back door.

Its head some way from its body.

It was dark, of course, and Magda could not see the redness of the blood. But she could see there was blood—seeping black on the thin snow.

Her breaths that were already so close and short jumped closer up under her ribs and her hand leapt up to her mouth and she let out a cry.

She had almost known when she led the pony into the yard and tied it with hasty, frozen fingers and seen that the store sheds and buildings were all flung open, one chicken sitting flustered on the open stable door in the nighttime. She had known then that something was wrong.

She remembered now the strange marks on the snow along the road and up the drive and mushy in the front although she had ridden over them without thinking somehow.

Tire marks.

But there was no vehicle here now.

The back door was open.

She came into the still-warm kitchen.

God in heaven have mercy. Her hand once more to her mouth.

The table had been shunted across the room and broken glass crunched underfoot.

“Mag?” She called it out quietly. But the old black collie was nowhere to be seen.

With shaking hands, she took a fallen candle off the counter, tapped with her fingers along the shelf, and found the matches.

When she had lit it, she wished she had not.

From the open door to the hallway was a pair of feet. And legs.

Bran. Felled like an oak.

She knelt down beside his prone body. His head was cold against the stone flags. Blood at the mouth. His eyes were open and she closed them.

She stepped over him with her arm to her face and her swollen body doubled, and hauled herself along the passage and into the other room.

It cannot be.

Slumped against the wall, her clothes torn, legs askew, head fallen forward with her gray hair bloody.

Magda stood and turned and vomited on the floor.

But Alice!

God in heaven, have mercy on us, have mercy on us.

She had to get back.

For Alice.

*   *   *

The pony's hoofs thundered down, cracking twigs, sliding on snowy leaves and clattering on rocks.

Alice.

She had no time to think, or think properly, and everything was like a mist in front of her eyes. The day had not yet broken fully and the sky was still low with clouds that threatened more snow.

On the pony galloped and she was ill with it and thought that maybe she would do herself some terrible damage but then the damage was already done and she had to get the girl.
God help you if they have come into Gourty's house already,
and the trees flashed past in the darkness and suddenly she was out on the field beside the stream, her breath so hard and her body moving in ways that were not good and her face wet.

Up above the shadow of the farm she pulled the sweating pony to a stop.

Coming from behind the thin line of trees, down in the dip where the Dolgellau road ran, there was a rumbling.

The heavy sound of an engine that drew nearer, but there were no lights. Then she saw something moving down by the road.

A truck pulled up from the lane. She saw its square snout nosing out from the hedge. Another vehicle rumbling somewhere near.

How long before they came up like an ill wind to Gourty's house, looking there for things to steal?

She pushed the pony on. Up through the trees on the slope. Soon she had come close behind the house, could see the mound of the manure heap, could smell it.

A snowflake fell, and then another.

She slid down and tied the pony to a tree, leaned against its flank, her body beating strange rhythms, churning, her breathing so hard and fast and things moving within her.

Not now. Please. Not yet.

Stumbling down the bank, she came to the back of the house, to the woodshed, with the barrows leaning against the wall, and she crept with her breath so loud and fast, and her head seething.

The barnyard was quiet. She dipped along the house under the windows and slipped into the porch. She opened the latch.

Heart thumping, she crossed the floor of the kitchen, the blood drained from her hands and feet and concentrated in her guts with the adrenaline almost bursting from her throat.

Please God, the key is still in your pocket.

It was, and she turned it in the lock.

Up the creaking stairs.

Into the bedroom so dark.

Push aside the clothes and crouch down to find Alice still there, asleep. Mercy.

Alice opened her eyes, blinking.

“Is the game over now?”

“Alice. The game is not over yet. The game is only just beginning. We have to leave the house and be so quiet that not even the mice can hear us. And then we will have to ride in the dark. We must go now.”

“Why?”

“Shh. No talking, remember.” She took the child by the hand and together they came down the stairs.

The front door was open as she had left it. They crept over the stones and came out into the farmyard. There was a little more light in the sky, but only just, and the snow was falling heavy again.

Alice was heavy in her arms as she carried her now, and she heard voices.

Close. Maybe back behind the barn. Someone had come. She slunk into the shadows as two rangy Liverpool slaughter-men came stealthy and ratlike into the yard with heavy sticks in their hands.

But Magda was up behind the manure heap and into the darkness of the trees where she had left the pony.

The slope was steep and she struggled with the little girl's weight. The pony let out a sharp whinny when he smelled the adrenaline on her.

The little stallion stamped his feet, tugging his head up against the rein. Magda lifted Alice onto his back—high up at the withers where the mane was short and stiff. She stuck her heel into the crook of a coppiced hazel because there was no saddle, no stirrup with which to haul herself up. She tried to pull the pony close, grabbing at its tail even to bring it broadside enough for her to mount.

The young stallion kicked out at such injustice. She slipped from the crook in the tree. Alice lurched, but grabbed the wiry mane and did not fall.

Now there were the sounds of voices loud.

“There's another one up here somewhere!”

Torchlight flickering from around the back of the house, wavering up through the trees.

“Magda—” Alice whimpered, sensing now that this was far from a game.

Magda put her heel back in the hazel crook and pulled the pony alongside, throwing herself up onto his back as he passed with an impatient skittering step—and she was on, her arms reaching around Alice to grasp at the reins. She hung, unbalanced, for several moments. The pony turned toward the farm, which is where he wanted to go. And she righted herself at last. Hauled him by the mouth. Up. Away into the forest.

There were footsteps in the darkness behind. Shouts, twigs snapping, torchlight dancing among the trunks.

She kicked with all her might at the poor young stallion's sides and he jumped forward and hastened away into the deep trees. How perilous it was to go so fast.

But no matter, and Alice safe between her arms as they headed wide into the woods with pounding hoofbeats under them. Into the woods that stretched around for miles and miles and miles. Into the tangled forest of Coed-y-Brenin, where Magda had never been before.

 

 

And the spirit of the forest, Lesh-ee, bent down with woody fingers and he looked at the girl, lost with her foolish dream of Crow.