The Wolf in the Attic (21 page)

I have no time to be sick. There is nothing to do but keep walking.

At last, I leave behind the streets of little houses and the hanging reek of coal smoke. There is open country ahead, on my left flat and wide; on my right the road skirts a series of hills, all joined up and spotted with copses and woods. It travels to the horizon, the high ground, and as I trudge on the sun comes out from under a gravel-grey cloud, and the light falls on my face as if to show me the way.

My spirits lift a little. I see a signpost – Wanborough – and the road takes me up along the side of the ridge, and I am rising with it, and to the north the vastness of the country opens out under the sunlight, patched with woods and villages, all quiet with distance.

Far, far off to the north-east, I can make out the spires and towers of Oxford, just for a moment while the light is clear. I am almost walking back towards it, but it looks so far in the distance as to be a different kingdom entirely, a far place removed by the miles and miles of quiet countryside in between. For a second I am so intensely homesick that I feel almost short of breath.

And the clouds roll over the sun again, greying out the splendid view. I tuck Pie in the breast of my coat, grasp the straps of my pack, and labour up the steepening slopes.

Near the top of the rise there is a crossroads where a road comes down from the hill and then arcs across my path and extends out into the distance, as straight as a ruler’s edge. The slope drops off steeply to my left, and there is a scattering of bare trees where the ways meet, and a single, squat stone as tall as a gatepost but much more massive.

And sitting upon the stone is a black shadow, a man. With the light behind him I cannot make out his face until I am closer, and I brace myself to say good day – but a hundred yards from that he leaps easily off the stone and begins walking towards me. And a few yards after that I see it is Luca, and I begin to smile and quicken my pace.

He stops as I draw close, and I see his thin face, and long nose, and he holds up a hand. I am so happy to see something familiar in the world again that I almost break into a run, but the pain poking through my stomach keeps me at a slow walk and I am panting as we come together.

‘Here’s a fine thing,’ he says, and he pats me on the shoulder. ‘Off on our holidays, are we?’

I bend over, clenching my eyes shut, trying not to be sick. ‘How are you here? How did you know?’

‘Bless you girl, everyone is out looking for you. Thank your luck it was me as found you first.’

‘Why… why should you be looking for me?’

‘Queenie said we must. We knows what happened to your Da. It was the Roadmen did that, she said, though we had been watching the place. They must’ve got by us, and your Da opened the door to ’em… I’m right sorry, Anna, for what happened. We should have stayed closer.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Let me take that sack o’ yourn. You look white as a snowdrop.’ He peels the knapsack from my back and slings it over one shoulder as lightly as though it were stuffed with cotton wool.

‘The Roadmen? Why would they hurt Pa?’ I am bewildered, but so glad to lose the weight of the pack.

‘Queenie’ll tell you. She knows. She had us all out watching the roads. She read things in the fire, and saw you was meant to be with us. You’s got the Old Blood in you, girl – on your mother’s side I suspect. I’m here to take you to the camp. We’re up on the Old Chalk Road, the Ridgeway. It’s a bit of a step, near eight or nine miles. Are you game?’

I manage to smile at him. A great relief runs through me, as welcome as hot chocolate on a cold day. I am not alone, and I am no longer lost. Someone else is here now who knows where to go.

‘I’m game. I want to go to Queenie. There’s nowhere else now. They were going to put me in the workhouse.’

Luca takes my arm, staring at my face all the while. A flash of anger lights up his eyes. ‘Workhouse my arse,’ he growls, and his fingers squeeze tight. ‘We’ll sort you out, Anna. We’ll keep you hid from the peelers and the Roadmen. You’re to be family now, Queenie says.’ He pauses. ‘You are special, like. I ain’t sure why, but there it is.’

We walk on, but Luca turns me around until we are on the long straight road which is running up the hill. ‘Up here,’ he says. ‘This was laid down by the ancient Romans, this track, and if we follows it up the ridge it leads to the Old Way our folk has been using for time out of mind. One good haul, and then we’re up on the high downs, and can look down on the whole world.’

But I feel faint, and now there is a wetness between my legs, a stickiness. I look down, and see there is a thin line of blood running past my knee. My legs buckle, and Luca takes my weight.

‘Lord, girl, you’re not well.’

‘I have to… let me sit down.’

The road is deserted. I reach down, and my hand comes up bloody. I stare at the blood in astonishment and fear. ‘Luca, I’m hurt.’

He stares. His mouth opens and closes. ‘Let me get you summat for that.’ He begins rummaging in the knapsack, and comes up with a woolen sock.

‘Here, use this.’

‘Luca, I have to see a doctor.’ I feel a rising panic. I don’t see how I could have hurt myself there, in that place.

‘This your first time?’

‘What do you mean?’

He puts the sock in my hand. ‘All women bleed, with every moon.’ His face is reddening. ‘It’s a normal thing. It means you ain’t a little nipper anymore. You is a woman now. Here – soak it up.’

‘Soak it up?’

‘Use the damn thing, girl.’ He stands up and turns away.

I do as he says, tucking the sock inside my knickers. ‘Will it stop?’

‘Takes a while, a few days.’

‘Days?’

‘So I hear.’ He rubs the back of his neck. ‘Didn’t no-one ever tell you this?’

‘No.’

He shakes his head, looking down at the wide countryside below. ‘T’ain’t nothing to worry about. It’s a womanly thing. Means you’re grown up, in a way.’

‘How horrible.’

‘Don’t be looking at me to tell you more. It’s not a man’s business.’ He bends and takes up the knapsack once more, still not looking at me. ‘When you’re ready, we’ll go on. Queenie and Jaelle can tell you all about it. T’ain’t my place…’

He rubs his long nose, and coughs. ‘Well?’

I stand up, feeling very odd. I feel even Pie is looking at me differently, or I at her.

‘All right then. Perhaps I’ll feel better walking.’ Irritated, I say, ‘You can look at me now.’

He glances back. ‘Well and good. Follow me, then.’

‘But not too fast.’

He growls a little. ‘Aye, right.’

W
E SET OFF
again, me trailing behind him as we make our way up the side of the ridge. Close-cropped grass, and a cold wind which strengthens as we get to the top. The view opens out even further, but I am not attending anymore. I feel as though my body has somehow betrayed me. More than that, I feel there is a barrier between me and Luca now, as though I have been set down on the other side of an impenetrable dark hedge and there are no gaps in it and never will be again.

We turn off the long straight Roman road, back into the face of the sun, and there is a last, steep slope which has me gasping and bent over.

‘This is Fox Hill,’ Luca says, not looking back. He sounds positively jaunty, and I envy him his quick, even stride that eats up the slope without obvious effort. I am like a little worn out slug in his wake, and the space widens between us as he strides ahead.

We are at the top at last, and I can see the line of high hills and plateaus extending out to the east for as far as the eye can see. A different world.

This is empty country, not like the Oxfordshire I have known, though I’m no longer sure which county we are in. The wind is cold and raw, and there is nothing to break its path up here. At another time it might be bracing and the view would be worth the chill, but right now I am almost dismayed at how strange England looks to me. I had always thought of it as a country with close horizons, but this is something else entirely. Wide open and vast under the sky. It is a land for wandering sheep, and the riding of horses, and it seems immense even in the grey light of the winter morning.

Luca looks up at the sky, and scans the hills like a jackdaw, quick and sharp. ‘We has four hours or a little more ’til dark,’ he says. ‘I wants us to be up with the others afore then. ’Tis an evil time o’ the year to be traveling the Old Roads. All sorts turn up on the track, not just the Romani. The dark turn o’ the year brings out all manner of weirdness from the earth and the deep woods, and things that were sleeping wake up, and takes to the hills and the tracks and wanders where they pleases.

‘This is the fastest way to go, and there ain’t no villages or houses on the way. ’Tis open country, bare and empty, and we is easy seen, up here. We has to set a good pace.’

He looks me in the eye for the first time since offering me the dratted sock.

‘You up for this, Anna?’

‘Yes. But stop running ahead of me. I’m not going to stare at your back all day.’

He grunts, but gives a half smile. ‘Well, then.’

We walk on, side by side this time.

T
HE HIGH RIDGE
seems a place taken out of time. To the north, I can make out the roads and villages of the world I know, a vast plain of them. And if I peer to my right I can see the rumpled folds of the hills go down into farmland and trees; but ahead there is only the grass and the stone-grey sky, the earth going up and down in enormous waves and swells, and nothing to measure it or break the spell of its emptiness except a few lonely clumps and dots of trees and the occasionally isolated barn.

I could have loved this place once, when Pa was alive and there was the old house to go back to, and a fire and a bed for the night. But now it only brings home more clearly to me all that I have lost. I feel that I have stepped outside anything that could be normal and ordinary, and the knowledge is not exciting at all. I feel sick and afraid, and I hug Pie to me and kiss her cold face. She is all that I have left now from that other life.

The sky breaks open in a bright blue maze and the cloud shadows shift across the face of the hills, tawny titans racing upon the wind. But the sun is westering, and our shadows are no longer behind us, but in front, and growing longer. I huddle in my coat and fight the pain in my middle and I want to talk to Luca about it, but that would not be right or proper it seems. And I know I am so snail-slow compared to him and I am holding us back, but there seems nothing left in my legs but weight to drag.

‘Idstone Hill,’ Luca says quietly. ‘Won’t be long now ’til the Long Barrow.’ He glances at the sky. ‘That is no place to be when the dark is thickening.’ He touches me lightly on the arm. ‘You gots to go faster, Anna. We can’t be this side o’ the Barrow if the light fails.’

‘I thought you liked the dark – what have you to be afraid of?’ I snap at him.

‘There’s worst things in the dark than me and mine,’ he says. ‘At this time o’ year, they says the Devil hisself goes up and down the old ways and paths, looking for lost souls to claim.’

‘What rot!’ I say. But even as I do, I feel a queer kind of sick feeling spread all through me, and I see again a white face hovering over firelight in the night.

15

T
HE SUN FADES
as we travel, and if I watch it for any length of time I can almost see it sinking down the sky. I start walking faster.

‘What’s the moon doing tonight?’ I ask Luca. I have almost forgotten, in the strange rush of the day so far. I know it is important, but the significance of these things is still soaking in. There are train timetables in the world, and Bank holidays. And now there is the moon to wonder after too.

‘’Tis growing,’ Luca says. ‘Half full, and a year’s-end moon too.’ He takes my hand, and I almost jump at the warm touch of his fingers. My own are cold and stiff.

‘At this time o’ the year, ’tis hard to fathom how it will go with my kind. The urge is there, plain as day, but maybe it can be fought, and maybe not.’ He looks at me and smiles. ‘That is part o’ the fun of it.’

He does not look as though he is having fun. ‘How did this come to be?’ I ask him.

‘It is as it was,’ he answers, almost automatically. ‘There bain’t be no gainsaying it. This is nature, Anna. T’ain’t nothing we can do about it.’

‘Do you wish it was different?’ I ask him.

‘Sometimes,’ he says shortly. ‘But no sense crying over milk as has already been spilt.’

T
HERE ARE WOODS
up ahead on both sides of the track, and as we approach them so Luca’s pace slows, and he begins to breathe more quickly, and his hand tightens upon mine. He keeps looking at the sky, and then he tugs me on until I am almost trotting and Pie is bouncing in the folds of my coat. The sun is well down in the sky now, a meagre, miserly sun, January at its selfish worst.

Luca stops in his tracks, looking at it. ‘The Long Barrow is up in yonder trees,’ he says, and his face has lost its ruddy health. It looks like parchment stretched over bone.