The Changes Trilogy (11 page)

There was no answer. The boy's weight was now quite limp. Fresh blood was seeping, bright scarlet, through the crackled dark rind of the blood which had dried on his shoe before. Gopal, who must have been watching through the doorway, ran in and held the bottom of the ladder. She came down the last few rungs in one rush, trying to hold the boy from falling by forcing the back of her head into his stomach to slide him down the rungs. The top of the ladder bounced and rattled in the trapdoor, but stayed put.

“I've got his shoulders,” said Gopal. “We've found something to carry him on outside. Can you manage?”

Nicky staggered out into the sunlight and saw Ajeet spreading hay onto a hurdle.

“This end,” said Gopal. “Turn your back to it. Now get down as low as you can and I'll lift him off.”

Nicky crouched, then sat; she twisted to ease the wounded leg onto the hay, and at last stood, shuddering with the long effort and feeling such sudden lightness that a breeze could have blown her away.

“Well done, Nicky,” said Gopal. “Lift his leg, Ajeet, while I put more hay under it. If we get it higher than the body it might bleed a bit less. And then we'll need to lash it into place, so that it doesn't flop about while we are carrying him. A rope or a strap.”

“No,” said Ajeet, “something softer. What about your puggri?”

“It's such a bind to do up again,” said Gopal, but he began to unwind the long folds of his turban. His black hair fell over his shoulders, like a girl's, but he twisted it up with a few practiced flicks and pinned it into place with the square wooden comb. The cloth was long enough to go three times around the hurdle, lashing the leg comfortably firm. The child muttered and stirred, but did not wake. His face looked a nasty yellowy gray beneath the tear-streaked dirt.

“Where shall we take him?” said Nicky.

“Up to the farm,” said Gopal.

“He won't like that,” said Nicky. “Nor will the villagers. They'll think we've stolen his soul away, or something.”

“Never mind,” said Gopal. “First, we don't know which house he belongs at, or even which village. Second, he must have proper medical attention, and he won't get
that
in the village.”

“All right,” said Nicky.

Gopal took the front of the hurdle, Nicky and Ajeet the two back corners. The first stretch along the deep lane was manageable, but after that it became harder even than plowing, and they had to rest every fifty yards. They were battling up through the barley field when a voice hissed at them from the trees. They all stopped and looked into the shadow, too tired to be frightened.

It was the risaldar, statuesque with his long bow, waiting for a rabbit or a pheasant. Obviously he was cross that they had spoilt his hunting, but after a question or two in Punjabi, answered by Gopal, he stepped out from his cover, handed the bow to Nicky, and took the girls' end of the hurdle. For the rest of the journey the children worked shift and shift on the front corners.

The communal supper was being carried out of the artist's cottage when they at last settled the hurdle wearily across the wellhead. The usual cackle of argument rose as the women gathered around the wounded boy, while the steam from the big bowls of curry rose pungent through the evening air. But Cousin Punam shushed the cooks away and had the hurdle carried into one of the sheds beside the farmyard.

“We will take the sock and shoe off while he's still fainted,” she said, snipping busily with a pair of nail scissors. “Then he will never know how much it hurts, eh? I did not think, when I was doing my training, that so soon I would have to be a qualified doctor. A little boiled water, a little disinfectant, cotton wool … Ai, but that's a nasty cut! Pull very gently at this bit of sock, Nicky, while I cut here. Ah, how dirty! That's it, good—throw it straight on the fire. And don't come back for five minutes, Nicky, because now I must do something you will not like.”

It was still more than an hour till nightfall. The last gold of sunset lay slant across the fields and in it the swifts still wheeled, hundreds of feet up, too high for her to hear their bloodless screaming. It was going to be another blazing day tomorrow, just right for the dreary toil of reaping and threshing. She leaned against the cottage wall and looked down at the square brick tower of the church, warm in that warm light. What next? The boy would be in trouble in the village if they learned he had crossed the bad wires; if the Sikhs simply put him on the hurdle and carried him down to the Borough, they could expect more suspicion than gratitude—and Cousin Punam
had
been going to do something “wrong” to him.… Nicky would have to remind her to tie the wound up with a clean rag, and not anything out of her bag.…

Cousin Punam had finished, but was talking to someone. Nicky heard the words “… tetanus injection …” before she called out to ask whether she could come in. Neena was sponging the grime off the sleeping face.

“When will he wake up?” said Nicky.

“Quite soon, perhaps,” said Cousin Punam.

“It sounds awful,” said Nicky, “but he'll be terrified if he sees you. Let me wait, and I'll find out where he lives. Then we can take him back.”

Cousin Punam sighed and shrugged, just as Gopal had done down at Swayne's.

“Have you had your supper, Nicky?” said Neena.

“Not yet.”

“I'll send you some.”

“Thank you,” said Nicky. “And thank you, Punam, for … for everything.”

She stumbled over the words, half conscious that she was speaking for the boy and his mother and the whole village words that they would never learn to say. The women left. Ajeet came back with a chapati—the heavy, sconelike bread which the Sikhs made—and mutton curry. Nicky was just learning to like the taste now that the Sikhs were beginning to run out of curry powder.

Perhaps it was the smell of food which woke the boy, because he tried to sit up when Ajeet was hardly out of the stall. Nicky rose from the floor, her mouth crammed with bread and curry.

“Don't try to move,” she mumbled. “How does your leg feel?”

He looked at it as though he'd forgotten how it hurt, then at her, then, wide-eyed, around the dim unfamiliar stall.

“Where's the rest of them?” he whispered.

“Having their supper. You're all right. We'll look after you.”

“I'm not telling you my name,” he whispered fiercely. “My mum says don't you tell 'em your name if they catch you, and they've got no power on you, 'cause they don't know what to call you in their spells.”

“If you'll tell me where you live, we'll carry you home as soon as it's dark.”

“Oh,” he said with a note of surprise.

“I thought we could say you'd been looking for birds' nests in that hedge below the bad wires, and one of us heard you calling and found you'd hurt your foot and brought you up here. Then nobody'd know you'd crossed the wires.”

“Much too late for birds' nests,” he said. “Where you come from, if you don't know that?”

“London,” said Nicky. “Well, you think of something you might have been looking for at this time of year.”

“Too early for crab apples or nuts,” said the boy. “Tell you what: I could have been looking for a rabbit run to put a snare in.”

“That'll do,” said Nicky, thinking that she ought to tell the risaldar about rabbit snares. “Do you live in the village, or outside it?”

“Right agin the edge,” he said. “You can cut across to our back garden through Mr. Banstead's paddock.”

“Good,” said Nicky. “We won't go till it's nearly dark. I'm afraid your mother will be worrying for you.”

“That she will,” said the boy.

“Are you hungry?”

Suspicion tightened the lines of his face again.

“I'm not eating the Queer Folk's food,” he muttered.

“I could bring you water from the well,” Nicky suggested. “That was here before us. And there's a bag of apples which came up from the village only yesterday morning.”

He thought for a few seconds, hunger and terror fighting.

“All right,” he said at last.

After supper they lifted him gently back onto his hurdle and four of the uncles carried him down the lane. He stared at his bearers in mute fear until, between step and step, he fell deep asleep. Nicky had to shake him awake at the edge of the village so that he could tell them their way through the dusk.

It was the last cottage in the lane to Hailing Down. The uncles lowered the hurdle onto the dewy grass and stole off into the darkness by the paddock hedge. A dog yelped in the cottage next door as Nicky pushed the sagging gate open. A man's voice shouted at the dog. The door at the end of the path opened, sending faint gold across a cabbage patch. A woman stood in the rectangle of light. Nicky walked up the path.

“That you, Mike?” called the woman.

The boy cried faintly to her from his hurdle.

“I found him hurt,” said Nicky, “so we bandaged him up and brought him home.”

The woman picked up her long skirt and rushed down the path. It was the same Mrs. Sallow who'd been complaining in court about her neighbor's dog. When Nicky got back to the paddock she was kneeling by the stretcher with her arm under the boy's shoulders.

“His foot's very bad,” said Nicky. “I think I could manage one end if you do the other.”

Mrs. Sallow stood up and looked despairingly around. Obviously her feud with the dog owner meant she could expect no help from there, and she had no neighbor on the other side.

“All right,” she said. “But mind you, I owe you nothing.”

“Of course not,” said Nicky.

The boy and the hurdle weighed like death. The boy groaned as they tilted through the gateway. The woman said nothing. Nicky lowered her end on the path outside the door.

“I'll cope from here,” said the woman. She knelt by the hurdle and pulled the boy to her. Then with a painful effort she staggered to her feet. Nicky held the door open for her.

“You keep out,” said the woman.

“I never told 'em my name, Mum,” said the boy.

“Good lad,” said the woman.

“But, Mum …” said the boy.

“Tell me later,” she said, and kicked the door shut with her heel.

Nicky had dragged the hurdle down the path and joined the uncles by the hedge when the cottage door opened again. Mrs. Sallow stood in the doorway, hands on her hips, head thrown back.

“You people,” she called. “I give you my thanks for what you have done for my boy.”

The door shut as the neighbor's dog exploded into an ecstasy of yelping.

“What was the significance of that?” said Mr. Surbans Singh.

“It's unlucky to take help from fairies,” explained Nicky, “if you don't thank them. All the stories say so. Goodness I'm tired.”

“In that case,” said Mr. Surbans Singh, “it is most fortunate that we happen to have a magic hurdle here, with four demons to carry it.”

So Nicky rode home through the dark while the uncles made low-voiced jokes about their supernatural powers. It was almost a month before she saw Mike Sallow again.

Chapter 6

THIEVES' HARVEST

They had been plowing all day, with four plows going and every man and woman, as well as all the older children, taking turns at the heavy chore. Between turns they worked at the two strips which were wanted for autumn sowing, breaking down the clods with hoes and dragging the harrow to and fro to produce a fine tilth. The thin strips of turned earth looked pitiful amid the rolling steppes of stubble and unmown wheat. The strips were scattered apparently at random over the farm, wherever prodding with sticks had shown the soil to be deepest or least flinty, or where there seemed some promise of shelter from the winds. There'd been no rain for a week, so the soil was light and workable, which was why the whole community was slaving at it today. On other days logging parties had been up in the woods, getting in fuel for the winter. And twice a raiding party had set off at dusk, trekked the twenty miles to Reading through the safe night, stayed in the empty city all day, and trekked back laden with stores and blocks of the most precious stuff in all England, salt.

But today had been stolid plowing. Resting between her turns, Nicky had been vaguely conscious that something was happening down in the village. The bells rang for a minute, not their proper changes, and then stopped. Shouts drifted up against the breeze, but so faint and far that she didn't piece them together into a coherent sequence, or even realize that they were more and louder than they might have been.

About six it was time to go and get the hens in by scattering corn in their coops. If you left it later than that they tried to roost out in the shrubs of the farmhouse garden. She was helping Ajeet search the tattered lavender bushes for hidden nests when she saw, down the lane and out of the corner of her eye, a furtive movement—somebody ducking into the crook of the bank to avoid being seen. Kewal, she thought, out checking the rabbit snares to escape his share of plowing. But Kewal had been up in the field, lugging at the ropes as steadily as anyone (it was really only that he didn't like
starting
jobs) and besides, hadn't the shape in the lane had fair hair? And wasn't there something awkward about the way it had moved?

Inquisitive, she slid down the bank and stole along the lane. They all went barefooted as often as possible now, because shoes were wearing out and making new ones was a job for winter evenings. No council workmen had been along the lanes of England that summer, keeping the verges trim, so you could bury yourself deep in the rank grasses. Mike, peering between the stems, must have seen her coming; but he stayed where he was. He had been crying, but now his mouth was working down and sideways as though something sticky had lodged in the corner of his jaw; his lungs pumped in dry, jerking spasms.