The Lantern Moon (7 page)

The chimney was a terrifying place. Wedged uncomfortably on the narrow ledge between the flues of the music room and the back parlour, Annie waited and listened to the sounds of the house. It was pitch black, a darkness that she had never known, for not a chink of daylight penetrated the chimney linings. It was not like that darkness of a room in the middle of the night when shapes and shadows gradually begin to make sense. She could see nothing. This was the darkness of the grave, Annie thought, and just as cold. The soot caught the back of her throat but she dared not so much as cough or clear her throat for fear someone in one of the rooms below should hear her. Every sound was magnified. She heard the bells of the parish church ring out every hour as Arthur had told her but she also heard footsteps running up and down the staircases, doors being flung open and closed, the raised voices of the servants and soldiers as they searched the house for her. She could hear little Paul-Marie crying, and wished someone would go and comfort him. All day carriages came and went.

Once, she heard someone entering the music room and
thought her heart would stop with fright. She prayed it was not one of the maids come to light a fire, but whoever it was drew up a seat in front of the spinet and lazily picked out a few notes of a dance tune. She could hardly believe they could not hear her breathing and the thumping of her heart, and had almost made up her mind to come tumbling down into the hearth and give herself up except that the very thought of moving terrified her even more than fear of the gallows. The climb up to the ledge, pushing her back against the chimney wall and levering herself upwards with her feet, had worn her out. Her ankles, knees, shoulders, felt skinned and bloody. To go down again was certain to be hell. She truly wished she were dead. The hours seemed interminable.

But when the parish church bells at last rang out four o'clock in the afternoon, she knew she must do what Arthur had told her. She braced her feet and back against the chimney wall and began the slow, careful descent down the black hole into the music room, inch by painful inch, fearful that every scraping of her shoes, every laboured breath would bring someone scurrying into the room. At last, when she thought her strength would give out, her feet jammed against the iron hand holds just above the widening mouth of the inglenook fireplace. She looked down and saw the light coming up from the room. She gratefully let herself slide down the last few remaining feet.

Blinking away the soot that covered her eyes and face, she ran to the window as Arthur had told her to. It was a sash
window, a modern style, not like the casement windows of the older houses that opened outwards. Panicking, she pushed and pulled at it with her black hands, terrified that she would never get it open, until she realised she had to push it up. It slid noiselessly upwards on its sash. Annie slipped over the ledge and dropped down, gasping in the sweet fresh air.

As her feet reached the ground, a hand closed over her mouth and something dark and heavy was flung around her shoulders. She was half-carried, half dragged away from the house. Too weak to resist, she let herself fall limply into her captor's arms.

‘Come on, Annie,' hissed a voice in her ear. ‘Don't make it any more difficult for me than you have to. Walk properly – and don't make a sound.' It was Arthur.

Annie's mind raced with a thousand questions. Why was Arthur arresting her now after he had allowed her to hide all day? Where was he taking her? Who was he taking her to? But above all, why?

He bundled her through the gates and under an archway into the castle gardens. Darkness had already fallen so the ladies and gentlemen who liked to stroll there had long since gone home. There was not a soul to be seen.

‘Right,' he said, pushing a bundle into her arms, ‘I've brought you some food for your journey and your red cape. Wrap it tightly around you for you are trembling with the cold. It will keep you warm – and hide your dirty clothes from
view for you have half the soot of Dinham on your dress and apron. Now the best way to go out of the town is …'

‘You're not handing me back to the sergeant?' Annie whispered. Her voice after all the hours of silence came out as a croak.

‘Of course not. Is that what you thought?' Arthur pushed her hair back from her face.

‘Is everyone looking for me?'

‘They were looking for you but now they think hunger and cold will drive you out of hiding. A reward has been offered for your capture – but I doubt anyone will earn it. For you, Annie Spears, will shortly be in Bristol.'

‘Bristol?' echoed Annie. The name meant nothing to her.

‘I have a brother, David, who is an ostler at the inn where all the coaches stop. The Lamb and Flag. Tell him I sent you. He will help you find work.'

‘But how ever shall I get to Bristol? How far is it from here?'

‘By a road no one will ever think of, so no one will follow you. By Offa's Dyke.'

Annie frowned.

‘It is like a wall, Annie, a high bank built of earth by an ancient king long ago,' explained Arthur. ‘It stretches from one end of Wales right to the other. All you have to do is follow the wall south, keeping high up on the hills and ridges, with Wales on your right and England on your left until you come down to the sea.'

Annie stared at him, confused and frightened. She knew nothing about the sea or travelling on hills and mountains. There might be wolves. ‘But, Arthur, where will I find this wall? And how long must I walk?'

‘At Knighton,' he said, mentioning a small town a dozen miles from Ludlow, right on the border with Wales. ‘Four days' walking from there will get you to the sea, I reckon.'

‘Four days?' Annie was shaking from head to toe with fear and panic. Arthur nodded.

‘I had rather give myself up to the sergeant-at-arms and let myself rot in jail than climb mountains for four days, all alone.' Tears rolled down her face.

‘But you will not be alone,' said Arthur. ‘William will take you.'

‘William? Is he here?' Annie sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve.

‘I found him up hiding in the shepherd's hut earlier and told him what happened.'

‘William was hiding? Why?'

‘He'll tell you the whole story himself when you see him. He is waiting for you now at the bottom of Corve Street by the bridge. God go with you both and bring you good luck.' Arthur hugged her closely to him. ‘Be brave, Annie, and soon this will all be behind you. Now go quickly before we are seen together.'

Annie followed the path through the trees around the outside of the castle walls. She rushed headlong along the
broad linney and down the old lane behind the churchyard where her mother and sister lay in their cold graves. As she came around the corner to the bridge across the river, a carriage went by but the driver did not give her a second glance. She could smell the unmistakable throat-tightening smell of the tannery yards by the river, that smell of leather that she had grown up with. A couple of men walked past her on the other side of the street. She recognised them, men who worked in the tanneries just a few hundred yards from her old burnt-out home, but they hurried past her as if she was a ghost, too taken up with their own conversation to pay attention to a small girl carrying a bundle of cloths.

This was the very edge of the town. Beyond it lay open countryside, and a road leading to places she had never been, for she had never been further from home than the meadows down by the riverbank where she used to play with William and Libby on summer afternoons. She crossed the bridge, looking right and left for any sign of her brother. A sheep in the field alongside her watched her and bleated inquisitively.

Where was William? And why was he not waiting for her? In the corner of her eye, she fancied someone or something moved. There was a flash, a dark shape scurrying past but when she turned back she saw nothing but the humpy uneven tussocks of grass and a few ewes huddled for comfort together by the hedge.

‘William,' she called out in a low whisper.

There was no answer but, from in among the sheep, a
figure stood up, a small boy wearing a top hat.

‘Hello, Annie,' said Sam Price, ‘Give us a hand up. I've run away again and this time, it's for good.'

‘So have I,' said Annie, ‘and so has William, I think.'

At that moment, there was a whistle from the other side of the bridge and William came running towards them.

That first night was long and hard for the three runaways. They left the town behind them and walked for hours along the old cattle drovers' road in the direction of Knighton. At first Sam whined and whinged, complaining that the others were going too fast for him, but when William made it clear he must keep up or fall back on his own, he eventually stopped moaning. They plodded on, saving all their energy for placing one foot after another, never once stopping until they had left Ludlow well behind them. They crept around sleeping hamlets and the brooding shadows of churches, taking fright at every rustling in the ditches and every barking dog, but they need not have worried. In the cover of darkness, they had the whole countryside to themselves for every honest soul in the county was fast asleep in bed, and nothing moved except prowling foxes and snuffling badgers.

The worst thing, more than the cold biting wind, the pain
in every limb and the hunger, was the fear that drove them on. Once, William stopped and said to Annie, ‘Did you do it?'

‘No!' she answered, shrinking back from him for she thought he was going to hit her. ‘I had forgotten the tray I brought out to Sam weeks ago, the day he first ran away.'

‘Oh,' said Sam, laying both his hands on his tummy, ‘what a feast that was, chicken and cheese and…'

‘So,' interrupted William, ‘you stole the food?'

‘Yes,' agreed Annie, ‘but Sam hadn't eaten all day. You were there when we hid him in the shed.'

‘That alone would be enough for them to get you,' said William grimly. ‘And it's your word against theirs that you weren't going to pawn the tray. You know that with our father already branded a criminal we daren't put a foot wrong. How could you be so stupid? And why did you give Sam his food on a tray anyway?'

‘Oh William, don't you see,' Annie said, ‘it was easier to walk out of the kitchen with food all set out on a tray than with my apron pockets stuffed.'

They walked on in silence until Sam's voice piped up in the darkness.

‘There was a woman from Diddlebury that was hanged for taking flax that was lying bleaching in a field.' He sniffed. ‘And another boy from Clee Hill that was transported to Botany Bay for taking a snuff-box and an umbrella from the vicar's house.'

Annie gasped. There was a loud groan as William's boot
shot out and caught Sam's shin. Nobody spoke again, though Sam slipped his hand consolingly into Annie's.

They trudged on through the darkness until they came to the milestone which told them Knighton was only one mile away. Ahead of them, rearing up into the night sky, were the stark outlines of the Welsh mountains. The town clock showed a quarter to midnight.

‘We'll stop here,' said William, ‘for I shan't be able to make out the dyke until it's light.' The sight of the mountains had shaken him. When Arthur had told him about Offa's Dyke, it had all seemed so easy, but now he was afraid he would never be able to recognise it. He looked at Annie who was gingerly examining the blisters on her ankles, and at Sam, shivering in his filthy, thin, ragged jacket. How would he ever find the trail and get them safely to the sea? They looked back at him with peaky, frightened expressions.

‘Cheer up,' he said, forcing himself to smile. ‘Let's find somewhere to shelter and have a bite to eat.'

There was a broken-down barn outside the town limits. Part of its roof had fallen in and the door was hanging off its hinges. The three children looked in at the bare, filthy floor. It did not look very comfortable.

‘Well,' said Sam, at last, kicking a heap of dirty rags out of his way, ‘I've slept in worse places, I can tell you, and then got kicked out of them to climb chimneys. I am never, ever going to do that again. This is good enough for me.'

They slept fitfully there that night, all three waking at the
slightest sound. The damp floor made Sam cough. Annie tossed and turned and made little whimpering noises as she dreamed. William fought with his conscience. As he had lain down on the ground, a chink from his trouser pocket had reminded him that he still had Abraham Smart's two gold sovereigns. That made him a thief in the eyes of the law too. He knew he should tell Annie but he was too embarrassed and besides, he wanted her to suffer a little longer for forcing them both into flight from Ludlow. He would never be a hatter now, would never see the name Spears written on the sign-post that swung out over the cobbles of Quality Square.

Before the first cock crowed, the three were on their way again, creeping through the slumbering village. ‘At Knighton,' Arthur had told William, ‘walk through the town up the main street, following the river – it's our river, you know, the Teme, same as here in Ludlow – then climb up the hill on the far side. Keep the town behind you and walk on.'

William and Annie and Sam panted their way to the top of the hill.

‘Is this the dyke?' asked Sam, pointing at every bump in the ground. ‘Is this it?'

William shook his head. He had bitten his lip so hard, it had begun to bleed. He scanned the hills, not really sure what he was looking for. Annie pointed at the same time as he did.

King Offa's Dyke was like a massive bank of earth, anything from ten to twenty feet high, with a wide ditch running to one side of it. It wound across the countryside
like a huge grass snake that constantly changed direction. It strode across hills and valleys, climbed up hills and followed the tops of ridges where, long ago, the ancient rulers of Mercia had kept watch against the marauding Welsh. In places it was wooded and the three children had to pass through damp, dripping forests, where every shadow and every sound frightened them. They walked swiftly, hardly speaking at all as the enormity of what they were doing hit them. They were runaways now, and labelled thieves and troublemakers into the bargain. There was no going back. William and Annie constantly looked over their shoulders, imagining the sound of horses' hooves or the distant holler of trackers bearing down on them. Sam shuffled along beside them, chatting cheerfully when the going was easy about how he was going to see the world, and panting grimly up the steep hills.

About four hours after they had left Knighton, after a long climb, they came down into the valley of a river. The river was flowing very fast, swollen from the melting snows of winter. In places, the banks were badly flooded. Flocks of upended ducks fished for food in what should have been meadows and a swan glided past them, jabbing at her back feathers with her beak like a woman poking at uncomfortable corsets.

They sat down on a wooden footbridge in the watery sunshine and divided out the rest of the pie and cheese that Arthur had put in Annie's bundle.

‘How did you know I was on the run? Was it Arthur who told you?' Annie asked.

‘No, I heard about it in the square. The sergeant was calling for people to help hunt you down. Evans set the crowd after me. I had to run away.'

Sam laughed and flung a bit of cheese at the ducks. ‘Then how did you know where to find Annie?'

‘Arthur told me. When he heard that the crowd had gone after me, he guessed I would go up and lie low in the old shepherd's hut. He followed me up there and told me to meet you at the bridge after dark.' William clammed up abruptly. He still could not bring himself to talk about the gold sovereigns which burned like hot coals in his jacket pocket.

‘Shall we make it, William?' Annie asked, after a while.

‘Of course we shall. No one will think of looking for us up here. If they have gone after us, they will be out searching on the London road. I even said as much to Mrs Stringer the day at the graveyard. I told her we'd rather run to London than be put in the workhouse.'

‘Do we have to go much farther before we stop for the night?' said Sam, throwing a piece of pie crust over to the swan.

‘It's no use asking me. I've never been here before. We'll walk until night falls. And stop throwing away good food,' he added, reaching out and grabbing Sam's wrist. ‘You don't know where your next meal is coming from. It could be four days before we reach Bristol.'

‘William,' said Annie, ‘what shall we do when we get there? Won't they still be after us?'

William looked sharply at his sister. ‘In Bristol we will be three among many thousands,' he answered. ‘Arthur's brother will help us to find work. You can work in a dressmaker's, or as a servant in an inn.'

‘And what will you do, William?'

‘Work for a hatter perhaps or, if I can't find one to take me on, I shall take a job in a tanner's like father used to do. We'll find something. We'll stick together.'

Sam stood up and stretched. He threw one last crumb to the swan before William could stop him. ‘There are ships in Bristol,' he said, his eyes shining bright with excitement, ‘ships that go all over the world. Whaling ships.' He grinned at Annie. ‘I'm bound for the South Seas.'

‘Then, come on,' said William, setting his top hat on his head, ‘let's get on our way before the Shropshire militia catch up on us.'

After that, the path climbed steeply again. All afternoon they stayed up high, giving the villages in the valleys a wide berth and steering clear of any isolated farm-houses for fear someone might spot them and set a search party on their trail. Occasionally they heard the warning barking of a dog or saw one running in the fields below but none came near. As the afternoon went on, the sky clouded over and the day grew darker. The wind was cutting through their clothes, chilling them to the bone. Flakes of snow drifted in from the
Welsh side of the dyke and settled on their hair and shoulders. There was no shelter to be had anywhere. Sam and Annie were already dragging their feet, lagging a hundred yards or more behind William. They looked worn out, with sad, pinched white faces, all the spirit drained out of them. They would not last the night out in the open, he knew. From further down the valley, he heard a church bell toll six o'clock and, squinting hard, fancied he saw the distant lights of a small village. It was impossible to know whether it was safe or not but, at the very least, they might find shelter for the night again in some old barn. He called to his sister and Sam to catch up.

‘Listen,' he said when they arrived, panting and wheezing, beside him. ‘We'll take shelter down there for the night.'

They came down the side of the hill, following the path of a little brook. Soon they could see the road into the village and the bobbing lantern of a carter trotting along on his wagon. A woman's sing-song voice cried out ‘chooky, chooky, chooky,' as she called her chickens home for the night. At the narrow wooden bridge over the stream and into the main street, there was a milestone.

‘Hay-on-Wye, fourteen miles,' William read out slowly.

‘But where are we now? What's the name of this place?' whispered Sam to Annie. ‘Are we even going in the right direction?'

Annie lifted her shoulders and let them drop. She was too cold to speak. They all looked down the long straight road,
dark except for the yellow pools of light thrown out by the candles in the cottage windows. They cautiously crossed the bridge and tip-toed down the village street, careful to keep in to the shadows. The entire village seemed to consist of no more than a string of old thatched and timbered cottages along a dirt road, a church with a graveyard full of leaning tombstones and, at the very end, an inn with a sign showing a cow with a crumpled horn. It creaked on its hinges. A lantern was hanging outside the door but they could not hear any sign of life inside.

‘Come on,' whispered William. He crept around to the back of the inn. There was a rough yard at the back, and a stable block at right angles to the inn itself. The doors were closed and bolted – if there were horses inside, they had already been bedded down for the night. He slipped the bolt back as quietly as any burglar and beckoned to the others to follow quietly behind him.

The stable was long and narrow with stalls on either side. It smelt foul, of wet straw and manure and rising damp that almost made the three children gag when they entered. There were two old chestnut horses lying together in one of the stalls. Sam heard their breathing and clambered up to peer over the half-door; the poor bony beasts did not even move. They had been driven too long and too hard that day and were too worn out to object to sharing their stable. In the tack-room at the far end, there was a broken cart-wheel leaning up against the wall, some saddles hanging on nails
and a few bales of straw, not as clean as they might have been, but dry enough to use as makeshift bedding.

‘We can stay here,' said William, ‘but we must leave long before dawn.'

‘What if someone comes?' asked Annie.

‘Annie!' William snapped. ‘No one will come. Try to sleep.'

But sleep did not come easily to either Annie or William. The horses wheezed and snorted and banged their hooves against the fragile wooden partitions as they shifted in their sleep. The roof-beams creaked and groaned. The fear of capture and a return to Ludlow's jail – or worse – was harder to put aside than the pangs of hunger or the discomfort of the damp straw. The smell of the leather saddles reminded them of the tanned hides drying in the tanneries in Corve Street and the burnt-out shell of their home. They tossed and turned but did not speak to one another even though each knew the other was awake. Between them Sam lay stretched out. His hands were raised above his head with the fingers curled towards the centre of his palms like a baby without a care in the world. All Annie could think of was how soon they could get far away and back up to the safety of the dyke.

Some time later Annie must have dozed off for she suddenly came to with a start. It was still pitch dark in the windowless stable but outside a cock was crowing. Then another one further off up the valley answered it with an even more raucous din. She picked a long piece of straw from her
hair and rubbed her eyes. Above her she could hear scratching sounds, and immediately thought of rats. Something brushed against her cheek. She looked up and made out the unmistakable shape of Sam in his top hat inching along the beam directly above her head. Almost at once, there was a violent squawking. An enraged hen flew down from her nest in the rafters and landed at her feet. Sam plopped down on to the straw beside her, his body dropping with the gentle thump of a fall of soot. He held open his cupped palms to show Annie three brown eggs.