The Changes Trilogy (23 page)

Then the lamp burned blue for a second, recovered, reeked with black fumes and went out.

Margaret sat in the dark, not knowing what to do. She could go up to the house and refill the lamp, or just get a new one; but it would be a funny thing to be seen doing in midmorning. And it would mean leaving him alone. And if she stumbled and made a noise in the dark she might wake him and sleep was better than medicine, Aunt Anne always said. She stayed where she was; it was quiet and warm and dark, and after the panics of yesterday and the busyness of the night she was as tired as a babe at dusk.

Voices woke her. Her legs were numb and creaking with the pain of long stillness, but she dursn't move because one of the voices was Mr. Gordon's.

“I smell summat,” he grumbled.

“Smell, Davey?” said Uncle Peter's voice.

“Arrgh, not smelling with my nose—in my heart I smell it. There's wickedness about, Peter.”

“Ah, 'tis nobbut those old engines in the big barn. There's a whole herd of 'em in there, Davey, but they're dead, dead.”

“Mebbe you're right,” said Mr. Gordon after a pause. “Mebbe you're not. That zany of yourn, Peter, what do you reckon to him?”

“Tim?” said Uncle Peter. Margaret could hear the lilt of surprise in his voice. “He's not in his right wits, but he's as strong as an ox.”

“Mebbe, mebbe,” said Mr. Gordon. “He'll bear watching, Peter. They're proper cunning, witches are. I wouldn't put it past 'em.”

“Making out to be a zany, you mean,” said Uncle Peter, still surprised. “But Tim's been with us these four years, and
I've
seen no sign of it. And why, Davey, I told you about the milk, didn't I—how much Maisie gave after we stoned t'other witch up in the stocks? But if Tim was one …”

“Your missus don't reckon 'twas more than a change of pasture as made the cattle give so well,” said Mr. Gordon sharply.

“Don't you listen to what Anne says,” said Uncle Peter with a growl. Mr. Gordon began to cluck. Very slowly, with a rustling like a cow browsing through long grass, they moved away up the orchard. It was minutes before she dared to shift a leg and endure the agonies of pins and needles. Just as the witch was stirring again there came the sound of someone moving quietly through the main barn; the door of the hut rasped as the rusty hinges moved.

“Why are you in the dark?” said Jonathan's voice, very low.

“The lamp went out,” whispered Margaret.

“There's another one,” he said. “You should have lit it from the old one before it went out. I'll run up to the house and fetch a new light.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't know. Be careful, Jo—Mr. Gordon's been nosing round outside.”

“Yes, I saw him. They've gone up to the pub, the Seven Stars. I won't be long.”

The witch looked no better when the light came, despite his little sleep. Margaret tried to dribble a sip of water between his parted lips as she'd seen Tim doing, but made a mess of the job and spilled half of it down the stubble on his chin. Then she told Jonathan what she'd heard.

“We'll shift Otto as soon as we can, down to those tugs of yours in Gloucester Docks,” said Jonathan. “No one goes there, and it's halfway home for him. If only we can last out till the snow comes we can take him down on the logging sledge.”

“That'll be at least a month.”

“I know. Will you tell Lucy or shall I? About Tim?”

“Tim?”

“What you told me Mr. Gordon said. They like the feel of killing now, that lot—smashing up rooks won't keep them happy for long. They want a real person, human, but somebody who doesn't matter to anyone.”

“Except Lucy,” said Margaret.

“They wouldn't think she counted. And even if Otto wasn't here, if he was really dead, they'd come and search and find Tim's treasures and stone him for that.”

“Jo, oughtn't you to come and see the tugs?”

“Father'll want me on the farm too much.”

“Couldn't you sprain an arm or something—something that didn't stop you riding?”

“I suppose so. I ought to have a look at that canal too. I want to know how it gets out into the sea.”

“Well, we've got a month,” said Margaret. “We'll just have to be careful. I'll go and tell Lucy. Do you think Tim understands about being secret?”

“Sure of it—he's more like a wild animal than a person in some ways. I've noticed he never comes straight down here nowadays.”

“How wrong in his mind do you think he really is, Jo?”

“What do you mean?”

“If he were in a country with proper doctors, like there used to be when we were small, do you think they could make him all right?”

“I don't know. Perhaps. We'll ask Otto when he gets better.”

They sat in the yellow gloom for several minutes. All the bright outside world seemed more dangerous than this secret cave with the sick man in it; but when Tim came back they got up wordlessly and left.

Margaret found Lucy putting away a big basket of late-picked apples on the racks in the apple loft. She did it very badly, not looking to see whether any of them were bruised, and sometimes even shoving them so roughly into place that they were sure to get new bruises. Margaret started to tell her off, checked herself in mid-nag and said, “I'm sorry. Let me do it.”

Lucy stepped away from the basket with her secret smile and Margaret's irritation bubbled inside her like milk coming up to boil over. With a wrench of will she stopped herself saying anything and began to stack the apples on the slats, gentling them into place so that none of them touched each other but no space was wasted. It was a soothing job; after she'd done the first row she told Lucy what she'd overheard Mr. Gordon saying about Tim. She finished her story just when the basket was empty, so she turned it over and sat on it. Lucy settled opposite, onto an old crate, biting away at a hangnail.

“Aye,” she said at last, “that's just about Mus' Gordon's way. What did Master Jonathan say?”

“He said I was to tell you.”

“He didn't have a plan, then, miss?”

“He thought we should try and move the witch down to Gloucester—I saw some boats in the harbor where he could hide—as soon as the first snows come and we can use the sledge. Perhaps Tim could go with him.”

“That'll be a month, maybe.”

“Yes, at least.”

“But will the old men stay happy till then, without another creature to smash up, miss?”

“I don't know. I think we might be able to invent one or two things to keep them busy.”

“Maybe.”

“Lucy …”

“Yes, miss.”

“I was talking to Jonathan about Tim. If he had proper doctors, like there were before the Changes, do you think they would be able to put him right in his mind?”

“That's why they took him away, miss. They put him in a special school, they called it. They said it was probably too late, but it was worth trying. Then, when the Changes come, my mum and dad took the babies to France—there were two of 'em, a boy and a girl. They wanted to take me, too, but the Changes were a lovely reason for not having to bother with Tim no more, so they was going to leave him behind. It wasn't right, I thought, so I run away and found him and took him away. Sick with worry they teachers was, half of them gone and no electrics no more and no food coming and a herd of idiot boys to care for—they was glad to see the back of one of 'em. So we traveled about a bit and then we come up here.”

“I've often wondered,” said Margaret. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Yes, miss.”

“But if we managed to get the witch away to America, you wouldn't mind Tim going with him?”

Lucy started on another nail, one that looked as if it had had as much chewing as it could stand.

“No telling, miss. He's happy here, now.
If
doctors could put him right in his mind, I'd like that. But if they can't, what then? A great big prison of a house, full of other zanies, that's most likely. He's someone here, miss, part of a family, even if he does sleep on straw. And now he's got Otto to fend for …”

“Oh dear,” said Margaret. “But Mr. Gordon's got his eye on him for his next stoning.”

“Aye,” said Lucy. “But if it were only that I'd just take him away. We'd find another farm where they can use a maidservant and a strong lad. But it's no use talking of it—I couldn't part him from Otto now. It'd break his heart.”

“Poor Tim.”

“Don't you go fretting for him, miss. You fret for your auntie.”

“I know,” said Margaret. “Lucy, if you hear anything … anything
dangerous
, you'll let Jonathan or me know quickly, won't you?”

“Yes, miss.”

She stood up, carelessly dusting her bottom, and slipped down the ladder. Margaret dropped the empty basket for her to catch and then followed.

The witch lay on his straw, too ill to make plans with, for four whole weeks. Sometimes he could talk sense, but very feebly. Twice they thought he was really better now; four or five times they thought he was dying. It was a hideous age of waiting.

But at least they didn't have to invent diversions for Mr. Gordon and his cronies, because two great excitements came to the village unasked. The first was a visit from the lord of the manor, a great earl who lived far up to the north, beyond Tewkesbury, but who had a habit of rushing around his domains attended by a great crowd of chaplains and clerks and falconers and kennelmen and grooms and leeches and verderers and landless gentlemen who had no job except to hang around, swell their master's retinue, and hope to be of service. Two of these clattered into the village three days after the midnight conference and rummaged around the houses looking for rooms where the small army could sleep. The squire had to move out of his house into the Dower House to make room for the great earl. It was like ripples in a pond all through the village, everyone being jostled into discomfort either to make space for one of the newcomers or for a villager whose bed had been commandeered. So Lucy had to make herself a bed on the floor of her little attic so that Margaret could sleep in
her
bed, so that Margaret's room could be occupied by a gentleman-groom, who slept in Margaret's bed, and a stableboy who slept on the floor. The stableboy normally would have slept in a room above the stables where his precious horses were housed, but the stables at the farm were really the cowshed, and had no room above them. Space had to be cleared to milk the cows in the hay barn.

Lucy slept down in the witch's hut, in fact, but she had to have a bed in the house in case questions were asked.

The gentleman-groom was a shy boy, and the stableboy was a garrulous old man. The gentleman-groom had to be up at the squire's house before dawn and didn't get back till after supper, but the stableboy had little to do except groom and exercise the rangy great horses and tell his endless stories. Margaret found herself spending all day in the stables, leaning against a silky flank and smelling its leathery sweat, while the stableboy talked about horses long dead, about the winners of the Cheltenham Gold Cup thirty years before (all the great earl's retinue rode what once had been steeplechasers or hunters). Sometimes his stories went further back, right into misty legends. He talked about Charles the Second staking the worth of half a county at Newmarket, about Dick Turpin's gallop to York, about Richard the Hunchback yelling for a fresh horse at Bosworth Field.

It didn't have to be racing: anything to do with the noble animals whose service had shaped his life was worth telling. One morning he sat on an upturned bucket and told her about the endurance of horses, about chargers which had fallen dead rather than ease from the gallop their masters had asked of them.

“I'm sure Scrub wouldn't do that,” said Margaret.

“Neither he would,” said the stableboy, “but he's a pony. Ponies ain't merely small horses—they're a different breed. More sense, they got. If ever you need to cross forty mile in a hurry, missie, you take a horse. But four hundred mile, and you'll be better off with a pony. They'll go an' they'll go, but when they're beat they'll stop.”

“But there must be lots with mixed blood,” said Margaret.

“Aye,” he said, “but there's blood and there's blood. Now I'll tell you summat. In the Armada, fifteen hundred eighty-eight, they Spaniards came to conquer England with a mortal great army, only they had to come in ships seeing the Lord has set us on an island, and Sir Francis Drake he harried 'em and worried 'em until they sheered off and ran right round the north of Scotland and back to Spain thataway. Only the Lord sent fearsome storms that year, and half of 'em sank, and one of the ships as sank had a parcel of Arab horses on her, and one of them horses broke free as the ship went down, and he swam and he swam through the hollerin' waves till he come to a rocky beach where he dragged hisself ashore, and that was Cornwall. And to this day, missie, the wild ponies in Cornwall have a streak of Arab in them plain to see.”

“I didn't know horses could swim like that,” said Margaret.

The stableboy ran a mottled hand along roan ribs, caressing the faintly shivering hide.

“It's the buoyancy,” he said. “They got these mortal great lungs in 'em for galloping, so they float high. Swim with a grown man astride 'em, they will, always provide he leans well forward and don't let hisself slip off over the withers—they keeps their shoulders up and let their hinder end tilt down, y'see. If ever you want to swim with a horse, you hold on to the tail of it, or the saddle.”

“But the waves,” said Margaret.

“They holds their head that high the waves don't bother 'em,” said the stableboy. “Mark you, they gets frighted if they're not used to it, but I'd sooner be a horse nor a man in a rough sea. We haven't the buoyancy, nor the balance neither. Too much in the leg, we got, and only two legs at that. Now another thing, missie …”