Black Feathers (9 page)

In her bed that night, Megan touches her scar, tracing its edges with a fingertip. She is exhausted by her day with Mr Keeper and has come to bed straight after her meal, barely saying a word to her parents about what has happened. She knows they are worried but she’s too tired and too full of new things to talk about it. What she needs is the comfort and warmth of her bed and the time alone it will give her.

Mr Keeper kept her busy all day. Together they wandered across the borders of the community searching in the hedgerows for various plants and herbs. Some of them she recognised and others she’d never seen before. It had been like searching for secrets and she loved it. He had talked only a little about what lay ahead. Perhaps he felt her branding had been enough for one day. And yet, she had the feeling that somehow the routes they took and flora they collected had a purpose, even though it was one she could not define. Often Mr Keeper would stop and look up. She would follow his gaze to a tree or fence post or a patch of meadow and there she would see magpies, flicking their tails and chattering out their raucous calls. And each time this happened, Mr Keeper would smile and then return to whatever his business had been.

Before she left the clearing that evening, he said:

“The magpies know about you. Did you see them?”

She’d nodded.

“You’ll walk in the night country tonight, Megan. Mark it well. I’ll want to know all in the morning.”

He’d called her Megan ever since she’d woken from the faint caused by her scarring. He’d handed her a small sheaf of blank onion-skin pages, bound with twine.

“When you wake, light a candle and capture it all in here before you forget. Bring it tomorrow.” He’d touched her on the shoulder. “Safe home, Megan. Safe home.”

Then he’d turned, letting her go.

She touches the mark of the Crowman now, his footprint on her heart, and sleep comes so very easily.

August 3rd ’14

My eyes only

Should I tell you about the shoebox in my wardrobe?

When I was ten, I caught flu. My body ached so much I couldn’t get out of bed to go to the toilet and Mum had to bring me a bottle to pee into. The fever went on for three days and I was delirious with it.

When my temperature got really high, Mum put wet flannels on my head and neck and armpits. It hurt like ice-cold fire but it worked. I remember opening my eyes and she gave me a kiss on the cheek. My head ached so much I was crying so she told me a couple of stories.

On the day she gave birth to me, she saw a crow sitting on her bedroom window ledge. It was huge, she said, and it pecked on the glass and fixed her with one intelligent, black eye. That was the moment her contractions started. She said that later, as I came into the world, a snowstorm blew her window open. She believed it was a sign that the world had reached out a hand to welcome me.

She also told me about a crow that had perched in the chestnut tree by the back terrace and how Dad had killed it with his shotgun. She said I cried all night and she couldn’t work out whether it was because I’d been frightened by the sound of the shot or if I was mourning the death of the crow. After that, no matter what Dad did, the crows and jackdaws always nested in our chimney pots, perched in our trees and did aerobatic displays over the house. In the end, Dad gave up trying to shoot them.

The first morning I felt well enough to get out of bed after the fever, it was to the sound of dozens of crows cawing away in the garden. When I sat up, still weak but out of pain for the first time in over a week, I found a feather on my pillow. I never asked Mum about it. I just assumed she’d left it there so I’d remember her crow stories.

It was the first feather I kept. And, from then on, whenever I found one, I put it in a shoebox with the one from my mother.

I suppose I ought to mention that the feathers I find are black. All of them. And they only ever turn up at moments when something important is happening or if I’m worrying about something or when I feel like everything is going wrong. I tell myself it’s a hobby or that I do it because I like to collect things. But that’s not really true. I do it because I don’t want anyone else to find them
.

Until Gordon had fetched the post from the wire box inside the front door, breakfast had been relaxed. Judith had stayed with friends in the village the night before and Angela was at university in Bristol. This left him, Mum and Dad to have a peaceful start to the day. The envelope, which Gordon knew contained something bad, bore the Evan Davies School crest. His father slit it and drew out a letter headed with the same symbol. The piece of toast he was halfway through sank back to its plate and Louis Black stopped chewing.

“What is it, darling?” asked Sophie.

Louis was silent a few moments longer as he finished scanning the document. Then he laid it on the table top.

“They’re shutting the school.”

“What?”

“They’re shutting Evan Davies indefinitely.”

His mother snatched up the letter but still asked:

“Why would they do that?”

“The attendance figures have dropped too low. Lots of people can’t afford to drive in since the buses stopped running. The headmistress says the Ward are concentrating all their resources on schools in urban areas.”

Gordon watched his mum read the letter, her eyes returning to certain passages over and over again when she lost concentration. She looked over at him and tried to smile but to Louis she said:

“Gordon’s barely done a year at the school. What are we going to do?”

Gordon was surprised to see his father break into a widening smile.

“We’re not going to worry about it.”

“Not worry? How can you sit there and–”

Louis reached across the table and took his wife’s hands in his.

“I understand why you’re worried, Soph. I really do. But there are no jobs out there even if Gordon did finish school. And what were they really teaching him there anyway other than how to be a drone for some corporation? Or worse, a career as a Wardsman? We can get him a couple mornings of tuition a week – I’m sure there are plenty of unemployed teachers out there who’d work for food and a few quid. The rest of the time Gordon can get stuck into making the place run like a proper smallholding.”

Sophie Black sat back on the bench, laughing without a trace of humour.

“Do you really believe you can dodge and weave your way through everything that’s happening, Louis? The world is falling
apart
.”

Gordon saw insanity flash in the whites of his mother’s eyes.

“I have to believe it, Sophie. And I
can
do it.”

“What, just like that?”

“Just like that,” said Louis. “Times have changed. Let’s not fight it, eh?”

Gordon watched his father’s optimism growing as the moments passed. Soon he’d chewed down the rest of his toast, guzzled a full cup of tea and pushed his end of the bench away from the table.

“Come on, Gordon. Get that food down you and get your boots on. We’ve got work to do.”

High winds had stripped both dead and live wood from the various trees. They spent the morning gathering fallen wood from every part of the garden, none of it large enough to be considered a log but the pile they created constituted almost a month’s supply of firewood. Judith and Sophie both helped and though they worked mostly in silence, the common goal they strived towards made for a harmonious hour or two. They exchanged quiet smiles and occasional words but that was all. When the pile was complete, Sophie and Judith went inside to make lunch, while Louis and Gordon sawed and chopped the timber into manageable sizes for the fires. They removed all the tiny twigs and set them aside for kindling.

It was as they covered the wood pile with a thick blue tarpaulin that they caught sight of two figures. The two strangers, men in long grey coats and broad-brimmed grey hats, entered the front gate, bypassed the front door and came around the side of the house towards them without any hesitation. Their eyes roved over everything they saw, studying, gathering in the details of both house and garden.

Louis pretended to bend down and resecure a corner of the tarpaulin. As he did so he whispered to Gordon.

“Don’t say a single word, no matter what they ask you. Let me do all the talking. Understand?”

“Who are they?”

“Just answer me, Gordon. Do you understand?”

The men were too close now for Gordon to say anything. He caught his father’s eye and hoped that would be enough. Louis finished fiddling with the tarp and stood up to his full height, feet planted slightly apart and arms folded. Even so, one of the men was taller than him by a good six inches. The other was a stumpy tub of a man, his spectacled eyes making a frog of him. They stopped a few paces away and Gordon studied their faces.

The frog, his tiny eyes magnified to bulging by lenses so thick he must have been almost blind without them, looked intelligent, his mind sharp and quick. The tall man’s face was wasted and mean, his sick-looking skin tight over his cheekbones, the area between them and his jaw angular and recessed. His jutting bone structure cast shadows into the pits elsewhere in his face; the vertical crack in his chin, the squarish hollows of his cheeks, the caves of his eyes. This man, who might have looked incisive at first glance, exuded only numbness from his eyes, as though the soul behind them was imprisoned deeply within. Gordon noticed his massive hands and long strong fingers. The knuckles were rough and scarred, the fingernails thick but chipped. He smiled now, an automated expression, a machine coming to life.

“Have you lost your way, gentlemen?” asked Louis.

Gordon’s throat tightened. He looked down at the ground, embarrassed. But he could only look away for a few moments. He wanted to see the response.

“Hardly,” said the frog, his voice husky but effeminate. He reached into the pocket of his coat. Gordon tensed but the frog drew out a black wallet which fell open to reveal a photo ID card marked with some stamp of officialdom. He held it up for them to see, flipping it away before either of them could read it.

“My name is Archibald Skelton and this is my associate Mordaunt Pike. We’re Sheriffs of the Ward.”

Louis shrugged.

“Never heard of it, I’m afraid. We don’t go in for religion. Now, the Robertsons, they love all that kind of thing. You’ll find them back towards the village on the right hand side. Lions on the gateposts. Can’t miss it.”

Louis nodded a silent goodbye, put his arm around Gordon and began to lead him away.

“I don’t think you quite understand, Mr Black. Mr Louis
Anderton
Richard
Black. Sheriff Pike and I are here on official Ward business. Government business. You’d do well to furnish us with a moment of your time.”

Louis turned back to them, smiling again.

“Government?” He looked Skelton and Pike up and down. “Well, I suppose sending a couple of brogued, macintoshed civil servants into the countryside is the kind of money-wasting, time-wasting activity the government engages in these days. They could have spent that money on keeping our local school open, don’t you think?”

“That would be a matter for your local councillor, Mr Black. Sheriff Pike and I have other… more pressing concerns.”

“As do I. So, I’ll politely request that you leave my property now. This is private land and, frankly, you’re not welcome here.”

Louis held out his hand, gesturing towards the front of the house and the gate through which they’d come. Neither of them moved.

“Right now, please, Mr Warden or whatever you said your name was. We don’t want you here.”

Gordon’s throat was so dry he couldn’t swallow.

“I’m very sorry, Mr Black, but we won’t be able to leave just yet,” said Sheriff Skelton. “This is a very sturdy-looking house you have. And I can’t help noticing these are rather productive-looking grounds. If it turned out you were hoarding items that other people could benefit from, it might not turn out well for you. Did you know that?”

“Our house and what we do here is none of your business.”

“I’m afraid it is. The Ward are very concerned with such things. If you don’t acquiesce to our requests, we may decide to scrutinise your property. We may find the community would be better served if we shared what you have here with everyone in, say, a three-mile radius.”

“You can’t do that.”

Sheriff Skelton smiled, exposing yellowed teeth.

“I hope it won’t be necessary for you and your family to find this out through personal experience, Mr Black, but the Ward can do anything we like. Anything. We have what you might call a special dispensation.”

Gordon, who’d been both proud of and frightened by his father’s defiance, now felt a cold snake of dread in his guts as he saw the spirit shrinking from his father’s stance. As if in response, expression came to Sheriff Pike’s gaunt face. Until that moment he’d stood like a dormant engine. It wasn’t a smile, merely a tiny flicker of interest from behind his faraway eyes.

“What is it you want?” asked his father.

“We just want to talk to you, Mr Black. You and your wife. And, if it becomes necessary, your children.”

“If it becomes necessary?”

“If we don’t hear what we want to hear.”

Sheriff Pike’s interest seemed kindled to a flame at the thought of it. Sheriff Skelton reached into another pocket of his grey raincoat and brought out an envelope. He handed it to Gordon’s father.

“Call us within twenty-eight days to arrange an interview and we’ll transport you to our substation in Monmouth. If we don’t hear from you within that time, you and all the members of your family will be collected. Goodbye, Mr Black.”

The two men turned and walked away.

Louis and Gordon stood watching them and even after they’d been gone for some time, neither of them moved. To move would be to enter the future.