The Changes Trilogy (12 page)

“What's the matter, Mike?” said Nicky, forgetting that she wasn't supposed to know his name. But he'd forgotten too.

“The robbers have come!” he gasped. “The robbers have come!”

Nicky stared at him, not taking it in.

“They was herding all the children together,” said Mike, “and taking 'em off somewheres. I was abed still, with my foot, but my mum shoved me out of the back gate and says to come to you. I been crawling across the fields, but I dursn't come no further, though you done me good once. My mum says you done my foot good.”

“But what about Mr. Barnard—the Master? Didn't he stop them?”

“They killed him! They killed him!”

Mike began to wail, and Nicky's whole being was flooded by a chill of shock at the thought of that huge life murdered. She put her arm around Mike's shoulders and waited for the sobbing to stop.

“Come with me,” she said. “My friends will know what to do. Shall I give you a piggyback again?”

“I'll do,” sniffled the boy. “There's not nowhere else to go, is there?”

“That's right,” said Nicky, and helped him, half hobbling and half hopping, up the lane. His foot was still clearly very sore, and she could see from his scrattled knees that he really must have crawled most of the way.

Ajeet was standing in the lane with the basket of eggs. The boy flinched when he saw her, but came on.

“Come and help me talk to your grandmother,” said Nicky. “Robbers have come to the village and killed the big man. They're taking all the children somewhere, Mike says—as hostages, I suppose. That means they're going to stay.”

Ajeet never looked as though anything had surprised her. Now she just nodded her small head and walked up to the wych elm where the old lady held court on fine days. The big tree stood right against the lane above the farmyard and here in a flattened and dusty area of what had been barley field the small children scuffled and dug, while the old lady lay on her cushions in the shade and gave orders to everything that came in sight, or gathered her grandchildren and great-grandchildren into a ring and told them long, marvelous fairy tales. One of the mothers was always there to do the donkey work of the nursery, but the old lady was its genius.

By the time Nicky had brought Mike hobbling up and settled him in comfort in the dust, Ajeet had told the news. Nicky turned toward the tree, put her palms together under her chin and bowed. The old lady did the same on her cushions, just as if Nicky were an important person come from many miles away to visit her. The old lady rattled a sharp sentence at the children who'd gathered to listen, and they scattered.

Ajeet said, “My grandmother wants the boy to tell his story again.”

Mike was staring at the old lady with quivering lips. Nicky remembered how terrified
she'd
been when she first faced those brilliant eyes.

“He told me that robbers had come to the village,” she said. “They'd started herding the children together and taking them somewhere. He was in bed with his bad foot, and his mother smuggled him out of the back door and told him to come to us. He said the robbers had killed the big man. Do you know any more, Mike?”

“My mum said they was on horses, in armor,” he whispered.

Ajeet translated. Mike couldn't remember any more. He'd seen nothing himself, though he'd heard the cries from his bed, and the church bell ringing its alarm and then stopping.

The old lady spoke to Tara Deep, the mother who'd been looking after the nursery. She nodded and began to walk up to the plowmen, quick and graceful in her blue sari. The old lady spoke directly to Nicky.

“My grandmother wants to know what
you
think we should do,” said Ajeet.

“First we've got to make ourselves as safe as we can,” said Nicky, “and then we've got to find out more, how many of them there are, and what they're going to do next. We can't decide anything until we get more news. The only thing is, the robbers won't mind crossing the bad wires—they must have passed things just as bad to get to the village at all.”

“I just shuts my eyes and ducks under,” said Mike.

“The farmyard's almost a fort already,” said Nicky. “We could get food and water in, and the sheep, and strengthen it. And as soon as it's dark I'll go down across the fields and try and find somebody I know. Mr. Tom's house has its back to the school playground, and then there's a path and then fields, so I might be able to get to him without going through the village at all. After all, we aren't really sure that Mike's got his story right—his mother must have been very hurried and worried.”

Ajeet had been translating as Nicky went along. The old lady raised a ringed hand, palm toward Nicky in a sort of salute, and answered. Ajeet laughed.

“My grandmother says you'll make a very good wife for a soldier someday,” she said.

Nicky nodded, unsmiling. She was frightened, of course, by what she had suggested, but another part of her felt a strange, grim satisfaction in the risks and dangers. They would force her to rebuild the armor around her heart, which during the last few weeks she had allowed to become so full of chinks and weaknesses. She bowed her head and stared at the scuffled dust; at the thought of the coming action her heart began to hammer—as though there were a small smithy in there, retempering the rusted steel.

By now the men were trooping down from the field, talking excitedly and looking northeast across the swooping acres to where the church tower stood peaceful among its lindens. The women called their own children to them as they came, and cajoled them into stillness and silence. A big orderly circle gathered under the wych elm, the men stopped chattering and the old woman spoke. Nicky heard her own name jut out from the fuzz of Punjabi; heads turned toward her. Then, as usual, twenty voices broke into argument together; the old lady screeched, and Uncle Jagindar was talking alone. Voices grunted agreement. He turned to Nicky.

“This sounds dangerous,” he said, “but we can send a guard with you.”

“I don't think it's
very
dangerous,” said Nicky. “If they catch me, they'll think I'm one of the village children and put me with the others as a hostage. But I don't see why they should—they can't watch the whole village, all the way around. If you do send a guard, you won't have so many men for the defense up here, supposing they decided to attack tonight, which would be the sensible thing for them. It'd be a waste of our men. You'll need sentries all night, too.”

She could see heads nodding.

“Perhaps Gopal could come with me,” she said. “Not to fight or anything, but to bring back news if I do get caught. The thing is, I'm sure I'm the only person Mr. Tom or any of them would talk to, so it's no use any of you going. They're a bit scared of me, but not half so much as they are of you. That's right, isn't it, Mike?”

“Yes, that's right,” he whispered, staring around at the dark and bearded faces.

“And we've got to
know
, haven't we?” she said. “We can't decide anything till then.”

Uncle Jagindar wheeled to the ring of Sikhs.

“That is agreed, my friends?” he asked.

“Agreed,” boomed the council.

He started to allot tasks in Punjabi. Gopal came, serious-faced, to Nicky.

“Our job is to eat and rest,” he said. “Mike looks as if he needs a rest too.”

The boy nodded, but they had to help him to his feet and support him, swaying, down to the farmyard. Already the water carriers were bringing bucket after bucket clanking from the well, while the carts creaked up from the farmhouse with larderfuls of dry stores and cans. Sacks of charcoal were carried in from the smithy, for cooking, and mounds of hay down from the big barn for the sheep. Soon the sheep themselves flooded, baaing with amazement, into the bustling square. The cooped hens were trundled up the lane; barrows of blankets and bedding came from the houses, sacks of new corn from the storage towers. The old lady was ensconced in an open stall, and the holy book carried reverently in from the bungalow.

As dusk fell the courtyard was still a shouting and baaing and cackling confusion. The communal supper was going to be very late, cooked on the faint-flamed and smokeless charcoal instead of the roaring logs they'd used when they first spent a night there. But Nicky had already eaten; her fair hair was covered with a dark scarf; she wore a navy blue jersey and a pair of dark gray trousers belonging to Gopal; she would have liked to blacken her face, but could imagine the effect on an already terrified Mr. Tom if a dark face hissed at him out of the night. His was obviously the first house to try.

After the clamor and reek and dust of the courtyard, the dewy air of nightfall would have seemed bliss to breathe if her heart hadn't been beating so fiercely. Gopal eased his sword in its scabbard, then frowned at the slight click. They stole down the familiar lane side by side. Mr. Kirpal Singh, crouched by a lone bush on the bank, whispered them good luck. (Five sentries watching for two hours each: everyone was going to be very tired tomorrow.)

There was a copse on the right of the lane below the bad wires. They headed south beside it, and on up the slope under the cover of a hedge which had not been hauled out because it marked the boundary between two farms. After two hundred yards they turned east again, leaving the hedge to slip like hunting stoats along the edge of a stand of barley. There was no hurry. The night was still dark gray, and Nicky didn't want to reach the playing field until it was fully black. So where the barley stopped, because that was as far as the reapers had mown, they lay on their stomachs, trying to suck the last inch of seeing out of the shortening distances, peering and listening for dangers. A lone pheasant clacked in a copse to their right.

“They can't post sentries all around a village as big as this,” whispered Gopal. “Not unless there are hundreds of men. In any case they don't need to defend the whole village now they have hostages. They'll guard the place where they've set up camp, and then perhaps they'll send out patrols. That's what we must watch out for.”

Beyond the reaped stubble was a pasture field where cows stumbled and snorted, invisible from twenty yards. Knowing what inquisitive brutes cows can be the children steered to the right, where an extra loom in the dark promised the shelter of another hedge. But when it came it was double, and a lane ran down the middle. Nicky shook her head—such a path was a likely route for a patrol. They scouted left, and the lane bent at right angles; flitting through a gap in the hedges, they found themselves once more at a place where unreaped wheat ran beside stubble, and ran in what Nicky, even after that bout of dodging, still thought was the right direction. Then another lane to cross, and empty pasture beyond. It was too dark to see more than ten yards now.

After a whispered talk, Gopal dropped behind and Nicky tucked a white rag into her belt for him to follow her by, like the scut of a rabbit. (If they were chased, she'd have to remember to snatch it out.) Darkness made the middle of fields seem safer than hedges; but coming in darkness to the village, by this unfamiliar way, she might easily have missed her direction. The wind had been steady from the southwest all day, surely. Just as she decided to stop and reconsider, the church clock began to clang sweetly to her left. Eight. More to her front, but further away, urgent voices yelled. In the fresh silence the tussocky grass of the pasture seemed to swish horribly loudly, however carefully she moved her feet; anyone waiting in the coming hedge would be bound to hear her—though she couldn't hear Gopal ten paces behind her. Encouraged, she stole forward.

This hedge was double too, but the path down the middle was only a yard across. So she knew where she was, at least; this was the footpath that ran south between the church and the school. The nearer hedge was strengthened with the thorny wire she hated so much. As she squatted and wondered whether there'd be a gap further along, Gopal edged quietly up beside her.

“Barbed wire?” he whispered. “Wait a moment.”

He crouched by the fence, holding some sort of tool in his hand. Two clicks, and he dragged a strand of wire away.

“My own idea,” he whispered. “Wire cutters. You can crawl through now. Is it far from here?”

“Only across the playing field.”

“Then tie your rag to the other hedge so that we can find the place coming back.”

Most of the householders in the council estate kept a dog, but Mr. Tom preferred his scarred old tabby; so if they came up straight behind the right house there oughtn't to be any barking. Nicky lay in the dewy grass and tried to make out the roof lines; Mrs. Bower's chimney, next door, had a big hunched cowl. So …

Only firelight showed through Mr. Tom's parlor window. Nicky edged an eye above the sill, hoping that he hadn't gone to bed yet. No. He was curled in a chair by the dying fire, his head in his hands but held so low that it was almost on his knees; he looked very old and beaten. Nicky tapped cautiously on the pane. At the third tap he looked over his shoulder like a haunted man, and then put his head back between his hands. She kept on tapping, in a steady double rhythm which couldn't have been caused by anything accidental, such as a flying beetle. At last he staggered from the chair, crossed the room and opened the window half an inch.

“Who's there?” he whispered.

“Me. The girl from Booker's Farm. I want to talk to you.”

“I'll have nothing to do with you,” he hissed, and tried to shut the window. But Nicky was ready for him and jammed the hilt of her knife into the crack.

“We want to help you,” she whispered. “But we can't until we know what's happening.”

“How many o' you's out there, then?”

“Only me and a boy. He'll rap on the window if he hears anyone coming.”

“Okay,” said Mr. Tom after a pause. “I'll let you in.”