The Lives She Left Behind (26 page)

‘What was the weather like?’ she asked on a hunch.

He nodded. ‘It was raining,’ said Ferney. ‘Drizzle. Britnod didn’t like rain.’

The name brought a broad face to her mind – often suffused red, a deep ravine of scar-tissue diagonally across one brow.

He started again with new strength in his voice.

‘We were called to the church in the autumn,’ he said. ‘You, me, all of us. The thane, Britnod, said he needed twenty men. He was a short man, wasn’t he? He stood up in
the pulpit wet through, in an ugly mood, and told us we owed him our service.’

He seemed in his stride now, talking from a place a thousand years away. He had his arm round her and she could feel the drops of water from his soaked sleeve trickling down her shoulder blade
and into the wool as they stood together towards the back of the nave. She was no longer listening to Ferney’s account but to Britnod himself. They both were. Ferney might have fallen silent
for all she knew.

‘You can come forward of your own accord or I can force you. It’s your choice.’

‘What’s it for?’ called a voice, and there was laughter because they all knew the answer.

‘William the Bastard, that’s what it’s for. Keeping your homes and your loved ones safe from the godless Normans, that’s what it’s for. Who’s
first?’

She felt Ferney shake his head and knew he had no intention of stepping forward. Harold and William were equally godless to him, as foreign as each other in the longer scheme of things. She knew
exactly what he thought about war or riot or rebellion – that when you let the fever, the bloodlust take over, you lost the triumph of humanity over the animal. Eight men volunteered right
away. The six brutes from the forest hovels who enjoyed any sort of fight, the scarred youngster with the wild eyes who was always boasting of his sword skills though he possessed no sword, and
muddled old Dern, who put his hand up to anything and usually did it badly.

‘Eight,’ said Britnod. ‘Well, I’ll count that as seven. I need thirteen more.’ There was silence. ‘I remind you it is the King’s service. It’s for
Harold Godwinson who is master of us all.’

‘He’s not my master and he’s never been my friend,’ called the same voice.

‘Harold needs you and Harold will pay you. If you don’t have weapons, I will provide.’

That brought three more shuffling forward.

‘What’s more, I will feed you on the way to the muster. After that the King will feed you.’

Two more joined them.

‘Where is the muster?’ called a voice from the back.

‘A week east.’

‘That’s a long way.’ It seemed to douse any remaining enthusiasm.

‘No more? Right then. I gave you your chance, now I’ll choose the rest.’

Standing near the back, Ferney and Gally were keeping their twin sons Edgar and Sebbi behind them as if to hide them – their fine twin sons, their wondrous mistake. Gally’s brews had
not stopped the twins’ conception. They told each other Edgar’s energy had overpowered anything she could have done to stop him. He showed every sign of having hogged her womb too.
Sebbi was a much weaker baby and always in the physical shadow of his twin. They had arrived to make a world of four where they had been two for so long and fifteen years of delight followed, full
of a fresh and different love.

‘They’re like spears,’ she had said one day, watching them breaking in a colt.

‘How?’

‘We hurl them forward into the future. They follow their own course, but they carry the faint trace of our hands on them always, and on the spears they hurl in turn.’

‘We have our own futures.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We have both but this is just as wonderful.’

Britnod called Edgar’s name out first.

Gally gasped as her son stiffened and stepped forward, then gasped again as Britnod called for Sebbi too. That was when Ferney discovered there was one single thing that could still make him go
to war.

‘Wait,’ he called. ‘Leave them be. I’ll take their place.’

Gally clutched his arm and he whispered urgently in her ear, ‘Let go. I know how to stay alive. They don’t and they only get one chance.’

Britnod glared at him. ‘You offer one of you for two of them?’

‘They’re boys. I’m a man.’

‘I don’t give a toss. They’re big enough and I have to come up with the numbers. You don’t make two, you make one. Come if you want. You’re a hard sod and
I’ll be glad to have you, but one of them comes too. You choose which.’

‘I can’t make a choice like that,’ said Ferney, horrified.

‘Then get your woman to choose, before I count to ten.’

The same rude voice from earlier said, ‘Didn’t know you could,’ which prompted a gale of laughter and left Britnod flushing even darker.

‘Choose now, woman, or all three of them go, I swear.’

And Gally was trapped in a mind-stopping moment of wanting to refuse but knowing Britnod held the power of the King’s law. Her arm went out of its own accord to pull weak Sebbi to her. She
saw Ferney step forward and Edgar follow him and called out in anguish to them and a voice was calling back – two voices calling ‘Jo, Jo!’

The note she had left behind in the tent said she was going back to the village. ‘We’ll have to look for her,’ Ali said and got out the map. The same picture
was in both their heads – the moment when they would have to tell Jo’s mother they had lost her daughter.

‘Where?’

‘The castles,’ said Lucy. ‘This all started with our stories round the fire.’

So they climbed the ridge in search of their friend, feeling like rescuers, but what seemed precise and easy in terms of symbols and inches on a map was much less obvious on the ground. The
first castle proved a disappointment. A field path led to a gently sloping valley.

‘Where is it?’ Lucy asked.

‘Look at the ground. Can’t you see the ramparts?’

‘Ramparts? Those are speed bumps. My granny could storm those and she’s got bad knees.’

‘Well, they would have been much deeper back then and they would have had palisades running along the—’

‘I think you’ve mistaken me for someone who’s interested.’

They could see down into the valley ahead and along the fall of the hill to both sides and there was no sign of Jo. Back on the road, a car pulled up opposite them and the driver called to them.
He was middle-aged, powerfully built in a dark jacket – a little bit dangerous.

‘You two,’ he said. ‘Do you know a boy called Luke Sturgess?’ Ali and Lucy eyed him warily and shook their heads. ‘You might have seen him,’ said the man.
‘He’s about your age. Take a look at this.’ He held out a photo but they stayed where they were, too far away to inspect it.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ said the man. ‘I’m a police officer. Here.’ He pulled out a card.

Lucy walked slowly closer and the policeman held the photo up to her. ‘What’s he done?’ she asked.

‘Never mind that. Do you know where he might be?’

Lucy frowned at the photo. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but we’re looking for someone too. A girl with dark hair and a blue backpack? Red jacket? We’re a bit
worried.’

‘When did you lose her?’

‘This morning.’

‘Then she won’t be very far away, will she?’

‘Oh thanks,’ said Lucy as the car drove off. ‘That helps.’ She turned to Jo. ‘Shall I tell you something really odd?’ she said. ‘I did recognise that
photo.’

The way to the second castle was a muddy ordeal, edged by a honeycomb of overgrown craters spreading through the woods as far as they could see. Half a mile in, they left the track and climbed
up the hill to their right. On the top, a steep mound rose amidst the trees. They scrambled up it to where a curve of stonework ran round its summit.

Ali inspected it. ‘This is it. This is the motte, you see. Look at the stones. It’s wonderful.’

Lucy cupped her hands and shouted, ‘Jo! Jo? Hello? Jo-oh!’ There was no answer. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘She’s not here either. That leaves one more.’

‘Let’s have a proper look at this one first – it’s interesting.’

Lucy glanced around her. ‘No, it’s not,’ she said. ‘It’s a pile of earth. There is nothing remotely interesting about that.’

‘Can’t you imagine the Normans up here?’

‘No. I can hardly imagine me up here. I can imagine me down there and I can just about imagine one more castle, then I can imagine a hot bath and a huge meal. Which way do we go
now?’

‘We’ve done Ballands. This is Castle Orchard. That leaves Cockroad Wood.’ Ali was studying the map. ‘It’s back the way we came, past the farm.’

‘More puddles. How lovely.’

Half an hour’s trudging took them through a gate into a well-kept wood and a track which curved around the contour of the ridge’s western flank, the ground falling away to their
left. They met a woman with a glad-to-be-alive Labrador.

‘Is the castle this way?’ Lucy asked to Ali’s annoyance, because the map showed it was.

‘Not far,’ said the woman. ‘Fork right in a hundred yards. It’s just along there. Down, Jessie.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Ali. ‘I can’t get any muddier. I don’t suppose you’ve seen our friend, Jo? Dark hair. Backpack, red jacket.’

‘Oh yes, I think I did,’ said the woman. ‘There was a girl sitting up on the castle mound just now. A girl and a boy.’

‘No, she’d be by herself.’

‘Well, the girl was definitely wearing a red jacket.’

‘A boy,’ said Lucy as they walked on. ‘She’s been gone for five hours and she’s found a boy.’

‘No, not Jo. She wouldn’t be in the middle of a wood with a stranger. That’s just not her, is it?’

Lucy was thinking about the photo the policeman showed her, thinking and wondering. ‘Walking out on us isn’t her either.’

Two hundred yards on they came to the fork. The carcass of a deer lay on the track right by it. ‘That’s funny, isn’t it?’ said Lucy. ‘You would have thought
she’d have said “Turn right at the ribcage”, wouldn’t you? I mean you can’t just walk past something like that and pretend it isn’t there.’

‘It’s the countryside. I expect she sees things like that all the time.’

Lucy prodded the bones with her foot. ‘That woman probably killed it. We disturbed her in the act of eating it. They’re like that in the country. She only just had time to wipe her
face.’

‘Look,’ said Ali. ‘She was right. There’s Jo, up in the trees.’ A girl in a red jacket sat on the top of the mound, looking away from them. A boy in green sat close
beside her.

‘Oh my goodness. It
is
Jo, so who’s
that
?’

‘He’s got his arm round her,’ Lucy hissed. ‘I don’t believe it. Let’s creep up on them.’

‘No, let’s not,’ said Ali. ‘Jo?’ she called. ‘Jo? Hello!’

The girl above took no notice and for a moment they doubted it was her, but when they called again she turned slowly to stare down at them then turned back to the boy beside her. They dumped
their backpacks at the bottom of the slope and climbed the steep bank.

‘Well, this is a surprise,’ said Ali somewhat crossly when they reached the top. She looked hard at the boy, who looked calmly back at her, then she looked at the girl next to him
and looked again, harder. ‘What’s wrong with you, Jo?’ she asked, shocked, and swung back to the boy. ‘What have you done to her?’

‘She’s a bit upset. I’m looking after her.’

‘What upset her? She’s our friend. What did you do?’

‘Come to that, who are you?’ Lucy stood over him with her hands on her hips.

‘I’m called Ferney, I’m—’

‘Balls,’ Lucy said. ‘You’re not called Ferney. You’re called Luke and you’re the one who fell into the trench at the dig and now the police are looking for
you. Jo, I think you should come with us, right now.’ She pulled out her phone and snapped a picture of him as if that might control him.

The girl blinked and seemed to come back to them. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I know about that. Yes, his name is Luke but he’s always been Ferney to
me.’

‘You already knew each other?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘How come? You didn’t say anything about him at Montacute. What happened – you just bumped into each other in the middle of a wood?’

‘More or less.’

‘
How
do you know each other?’ asked Ali.

‘From way back. Don’t worry about that now.’

‘What about the police?’

‘That’s not important,’ said Ferney. He seemed calm and assured.

‘Well, what now?’ Ali demanded. ‘It wasn’t very nice just to go off like that. We’ve been looking all over the place.’

‘I’m sorry. I suppose it wasn’t. Why don’t you both sit down?’

‘I don’t want to sit down,’ Lucy broke in. ‘I want to go. I’m tired, I’m hungry, I’m muddy, and I’m pissed off with fake castles which are just
piles of earth. Well, okay, the last one had a rockery on top but I’m bored stiff and somebody should tell somebody to stop writing “castle” on maps when all they mean is
“giant molehill”.’

‘Oh, they were deadly places once,’ said Ferney. ‘Imagine it. A big timber tower right where we’re sitting. Soldiers on watch, ready to kill. Stakes driven in all the way
round for a wall. The bailey down there, where they all lived.’

‘Are you making that up?’

‘There’s an information board,’ he replied calmly, pointing towards the track. ‘See it? They’ve even done a picture – you know, like a reconstruction. You can
go and read it.’

‘All right,’ said Lucy. ‘We’ll do that. Jo, would you come down with us? Just you. You don’t mind, do you?’ she said to Ferney. ‘We need a girls’
talk.’

They clambered down to the board and Ali began to read it. ‘Oh, for goodness sake! Don’t bother with that,’ said Lucy. ‘That’s not why we’re here. Jo, what
are you
doing
? Who is he? Where did you get him from? How could you just go off like that?’

‘I had to. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘Then this policeman showed us his photo. He could be a murderer for all I know.’

‘Of course he’s not. He’s the best man in the world, I promise.’

‘Man? He’s not a man. He’s our age. Anyway, you’ve never mentioned him once. I know everything else about you. How come I don’t know that?’

‘There are lots of things you don’t know about me.’