The Changes Trilogy (27 page)

“Ah, that's something like,” he said. “You've the right ideas, Marge girl.”

“I'm afraid it will be twenty minutes before I can give you anything properly hot, Uncle Peter.”

“Never mind, lass, never mind. I'll make do.”

He picked up the thin, gray-bladed knife and hacked off a crooked slice of bread and a crookeder hunk of bacon.

“Gone!” he shouted through a mouth full of yellow teeth and munched crumbs and lean and fat.

“Aunt Anne told me,” said Margaret.

“But why, but why?” shouted her uncle. “After all we did for 'em, too!”

“I think she must have overheard what Mr. Gordon was saying about Tim. Shall I fetch you another bottle of cordial?”

“Aye. No. Aye. No, better not. Bring me a mug of cider. What was Davey saying, then?”

“About Tim really being a witch. You were talking about it too, yesterday evening.”

“Ah. He's a deep one, Davey. What do you think now, Marge, hey?”

“I don't know. I still don't see how a zany could be a witch. This porridge is warm enough to eat now—would you like some?”

“Leave it a minute more. I like it proper hot. You go and dress, lass, and I'll fend for myself. I must go and tell Davey Gordon what's up, and soon as may be.”

Margaret spun out her dressing, and when she came down again the kitchen was empty. She opened the door into the yard and looked out; Uncle Peter's footmarks were the only blemish on the level snow, great splayed paces striding up toward the gate. If you knew what you were looking for you could just see two faint dimplings running side by side toward the shed—the lines made by the sledge runners when they'd come back, but covered with new-fallen snow; the marks of their outward journey had vanished. She turned at the sound of a light step behind her; Jonathan had sidled up to study the black-and-white landscape.

“Jo, I thought of something,” she whispered. “Won't someone notice that the sledge is wet?”

“I left it under the hole in the roof, where there was piles of snow coming in. I put some bundles of pea-sticks over the place when we left, so the ground's fairly dry underneath too. It ought to look all right.”

“How's Aunt Anne?”

“I don't know. Tell anyone who asks she's got a fever.”

Then Mr. Gordon and his cronies came catcalling down the lane and trampled to and fro over the yard until even the marks of Uncle Peter's first crossing were scuffled out, let alone the lines left by the sledge. Mr. Gordon stood in the melee, head thrown back to sniff the bitter air.

“Clear!” he cried at last. “Sweet and clear! Peter, your farm's clear of wickedness now, or my name's not Davey Gordon.”

“The zany, was it?” cried one of the stonecutters.

“Sure as sure,” cackled Mr. Gordon. “And that sister of his, too, like enough.”

“She always had a sly look,” said another of the men. “Where'd they come from, anyone know?”

“Bristol,” called Margaret from the porch.

“Aye, so you told me before,” answered Mr. Gordon. “That's where they'll be heading then. Out and after them, boys.”

But it was a quarter of an hour before the men even left the farm, because they kept telling each other how right they were, and repeating old arguments as if they were new ones. Amid this manly furor no one spared a second to ask after Aunt Anne; and when they departed Uncle Peter went with them.

He left a hard day's work behind for two children who'd been up most of the night—the cowshed to be mucked out, hay carried in, ponies to be tended, sheep to be seen to, hens to be fed and their eggs found, the two old sows to be fed too—besides all the most-used paths to be shoveled clear before the snow on them was trodden down to ice too hard to shift. Jonathan ran down to the stream and fetched the hired man to help with the heaviest work, so by the time Uncle Peter came back, bored with the useless hunt and angrily ashamed with himself for leaving the farm when there was so much to be done, most of the important jobs were finished. Aunt Anne stayed abed all day, and Margaret was staggering with tiredness when she carried the stewpot to the table for supper; but she opened another bottle of cordial for him (Aunt Anne rationed him to a bottle on Sundays) and he leaned back in his chair and belched and scowled at the roofbeams.

“Glad we didn't catch 'em, sort of,” he said suddenly.

Margaret cleared away in a daze of exhaustion and went to bed. When she looked down from the top of the stairs he was still lolling there, his cheeks red in the firelight and mottled with anger and drink, and his shadow bouncing black across the far wall. He looked like a cruel old god waiting for a sacrifice.

Too tired to bother with lanterns or candles she felt her way into bed and dropped at once into that warm black ocean of sleep which waits for bodies strained to the edge of bearing, and slept too deep for dreams.

Next day Aunt Anne seemed worse. She lay under her coverlet with her knees tucked almost up to her chin, and all she said when anyone tiptoed in to offer her a mug of gruel or a boiled egg was “Leave me alone. Leave me alone.” Uncle Peter, after two attempts to comfort her (quite good attempts—worried, voice gentle), lost his temper with the unreasonableness of other folk and stumped off around the farm, furiously banging the milk pails together and when milking was done starting on the unnecessary job of re-stacking the timber pile and refusing to be helped. Margaret took him out a flagon of cider in midmorning (having poured half a bottle of cordial in first) but was otherwise far too busy with housework and cooking to pay attention to him or anyone else. Luckily Aunt Anne had done the baking two days ago, so there was bread enough for two days more, but even so there were hours of work to be done. When you have no machines, a household can only be kept sensible if certain jobs are done on certain days of the week, others on certain days of the month, others every day, and others fitted in according to season. Margaret usually hated housework; but now that Aunt Anne was moaning and rocking upstairs she was in charge, so she polished and scrubbed and swept with busy pleasure, humming old hymn tunes for hours on end.

It was only when she was laying the table for lunch that she realized that Jonathan was missing; she ran out to the paddock, and found that Caesar was missing too. Scrub trotted up for a gossip, but she could only spare him a few seconds before she ran back to clear the third place away, to pour the other half-bottle of cordial into Uncle Peter's tankard so that he wouldn't notice when she sploshed the cider in on top, and to think of a good lie. Luckily the stew smelted rich enough to tempt an angry, hungry man.

“Where's that Jo?” he said at once when he saw the two places.

She ladled out the best bits of meat she could find and added three dumplings (Aunt Anne would frown and purse her lips when she found how lavish Margaret had been with the precious suet).

“I sent him down to Cousin Mary,” she said. “She's got a bad leg and I didn't know how she'd be making out this weather. I know Aunt Anne doesn't speak with her, but I thought she'd rather we did something than that we didn't.”

Uncle Peter chewed at a big gobbet of meat until his mouth was empty enough for speech, if only just.

“We'd all be happier if we hadn't any relations,” he growled. “None at all.”

Margaret tried to sound shocked, because that was obviously what he wanted.

“What a horrid thing to say—why, you wouldn't have any of us!”

He laughed, pleasedly.

“Aye, maybe,” he said, “but a man ought to be able to choose.”

He scooped up another huge spoonful of stew, which gave Margaret time to think what she was going to say next.

“But then you wouldn't have anybody who
had
to stick by you. You'd only have friends and … and people like Mr. Gordon.”

He munched slowly, thinking in his turn.

“Right you are,” he said. “But mark you, I didn't choose him neither. He chose me. And what I say is …”

Between mouthfuls he told Margaret more about the village than he'd told her in years. Mr. Gordon was right, but he had too much power and influence for a man in his station, and that had maybe turned his head a trifle. It was squire's fault, and parson's. Squire was a ninny and parson was a drunkard. The whole village was sick. But you couldn't fight Davey Gordon and his gang, because nobody else would dare stand up for you. It was better to belong with them, and then at least you knew where you were. And, certainly, Davey had an uncanny nose for witchcraft of all kinds, and it was better to live in a sick village than one riddled with witches. And mark you, Marge girl, witch hunting was good sport—better than cockfighting.

When he'd finished his harangue Margaret fetched him bread and cheese and went upstairs to see whether she could do anything for Aunt Anne. She was asleep at last, straightened out like a proper person. Margaret slipped out and settled down to a long afternoon of housewifery. She was feeding the eager hens in the early dusk when Jonathan came back, riding Caesar, who looked bewildered by the distance he'd suddenly been taken, as if he'd never realized that the world was so large.

“How's Mum?” said Jonathan in a low voice.

“Better, I think; anyway she's asleep and lying properly. I told your father you'd gone to see whether Cousin Mary was all right.”

“Good idea. Our lot are, anyway. Lucy's found a little row-boat and tethered the tug right across the dock so that she can't drift about—she's a clever girl, given the chance. And she and Tim got Otto down into the cabin, where there's a stove, so they won't freeze. I took them enough food for three days, I hope.”

“Did you try the footpath?”

“Yes, but there's a locked gate across it, so it was a good thing we didn't try it. It would be faster than going through Hempsted, if I can break the gate open. I didn't see your dogs, but I heard them; if they smell Lucy and the others it's going to be much more dangerous visiting the dock.”

“But couldn't we tow them further along the canal, down to the bit beyond Hempsted? No one lives there or goes there.”

“I can't start the engines, supposing they'll go, until Otto's well enough to show me how, and once they're started they'll bring people swarming round. When we do go, we'll have to get down the canal and out to sea all in one rush.”

“If you can break that gate, Scrub could tow them for a few miles: that'd be enough.”

“You and your Scrub! Could he really?”

“Oh, yes, I think so. You're so busy thinking about machines that you never remember what animals can do.”

“Well, you think about them enough for both of us.”

“Not so loud, Jo!”

“It's all right—it'd look funny if we spent all our time whispering to each other. Next time we can both get away I'll climb out the night before and hide that old horsecollar in the empty house at the top of Edge Lane. We mustn't be seen taking it.”

But that wasn't for a full week. Aunt Anne's mind-sickness left her, but a strange fever followed it which made all her joints ache whenever she moved, so she lay drear-faced in bed or else tried to get up and do her duty as a farmer's wife with such obvious pain that Margaret couldn't possibly leave her to cope. Twice Uncle Peter had to carry her up to her bed. Then he asked around the village for somebody to take Lucy's place and found a cousin of Mr. Gordon's who'd been living over in Slad Valley. Her name was Rosie, and she was a bustling, ginger-haired, sharp-voiced woman of thirty, chubby as a pig and with sharp piggy eyes which watched you all the time. Margaret and Jonathan agreed it was like having an enemy spy actually in the house, but at least her presence gave them the chance to get away for a whole day. Jonathan had been to the boat again, alone, in the meanwhile, but they both knew that the food on
Heartsease
must be getting low now.

They picked up the hidden horsecollar and rode down to the canal, Caesar still absurdly astonished at the amount of exercise he was suddenly expected to take after years of slouching about unwanted in the paddock. It had snowed several times since their midnight journey, so the world was starched white except for the scribbled black lines of walls and hedges and the larger blobs where the copses stood; the colors of the famished hedgerow birds showed as sharp as they do in a painting. It had frozen most nights, too, and the surface of the snow was as crisp as cake icing but gave with a cracking noise when the hooves broke through to the softer stuff beneath. (This wasn't the cloying snow which would stick and cake inside the horseshoes, so there was no need to lard the ponies' feet.) The lane was hardly used this weather, but an old man waved at them from where he was chopping up the doors and staircase of an empty and isolated cottage to carry home for firewood.

“Seasonable weather we'll have for Christmas, then,” he called.

“Yes,” they shouted together.

“I'd forgotten about Christmas,” muttered Margaret as they took the next slope. “It's going to make things much harder.”

“Easier, I'd say,” said Jonathan cheerfully. “With all those folk coming and going, no one will notice whether we're there or not.”

“They'll notice if there's nothing to eat, so unless your mother gets better I'll have to be there.”

“Won't Rosie …”

“If I leave her to do all the work she'll start asking people where on earth I can have got to—innocent, but meaning. You know.”

“Um. Yes. We can't risk that, seeing whose cousin she is, too. And another thing, when we've shifted
Heartsease
we'd better go and call on Cousin Mary. Messages get sent at Christmas, and if we keep using her as an excuse and never go there, someone might hear tell of it.”

“Besides,” said Margaret, “she seemed terribly lonely when I did see her.”