‘I’ll stay with you—’
‘Get inside,’ Tom said in the kind of voice one did not argue with. ‘And pile everything you can against the door after you.’
The dogs were quite close, and the woods were wild with the shouting of men and the yelp of a hunting horn. Damaris sprang back into the thick shadows, and Tom heaved the half-rotten door to behind her. ‘Whatever happens stay there and do not make a sound.’ She heard his voice through the timbers. ‘You could have the smell of fox on you.’
Half sobbing, she heaved the heavy log they used as a table across the door, and jammed it with a fallen branch they had been going to use for a new roof beam, by and by—Lady was somewhere behind her, crouched back into the darkest corner. She could hear the vixen’s terrified panting, and something of the same fear was in herself. Mr Farrington’s dogs knew her and she them, but she had never before met them running loose as a pack on the hunting trail; but more than for herself she was afraid for Lady, and for Tom Wildgoose with his blackthorn staff, in the doorway, who they did not know at all.
Her heart drubbing in the base of her throat, she ran to the narrow window-hole, and peered out through the dense tangle of ivy and traveller’s joy that curtained it over. Squinting sideways she could get a glimpse of Tom standing before the door; and next instant half-a-dozen hounds broke from cover, and on their heels young Mr Farrington winding his hunting horn and clad in an outlandish bright yellow coat trimmed with silver lace. She did not notice the coat at the time, but the odd thing was that she remembered it ever afterwards. And a couple of his London friends and Matthew Binns, all giving tongue like their ill-assorted pack.
She could not see much of what happened after that, it was just a shapeless, ugly swirl of sound and movement, men shouting, the baying of the hounds taking on a snarling note. She heard Mr Farrington shouting ‘Stand away from that door!’ And something about a fox that had killed his peafowl.
And Tom shouting back in a queer broken accent not at all like his own, ‘Ze fox, ’e is not ’ere, ’e go that way—’
‘You’re lying!’ Mr Farrington shouted, ‘Or why are you guarding that door?’
‘You startle me—I am sleeping and you come—’ Tom began in the same odd accent; and then a horrible tangle of noise that seemed to crash and worry against the thin shell of refuge in which she and the vixen crouched. Then up from the turmoil she heard Tom cry out again, sharply like a man badly frightened, ‘Sacré bleu!’ And then a whole string of foreign words falling over each other and mixed with English ones in the same foreign accent. ‘I tell you ze fox’e go that way—ah, mon dieu! Call off ze dogs, zey kill me!’—
There was a bellow of laughter from Mr Farrington, ‘’Tis a Frenchman, egad! We started out after a fox and we’ve caught a Froggie spy!’
‘Well ye can’t blame the dogs,’ somebody else shouted. ‘All the monsieurs stink as high as any fox, and the poor beasts couldn’t tell the difference!’
But at least the turmoil was growing less, and Matthew Binns seemed to be whipping off the dogs.
Tom Wildgoose was protesting furiously, but in a way that somehow did not sound like the truth, ‘I am not a spy! I am honest seaman; I mees my sheep!’
‘Unless she’s a smuggling craft, you’ve wandered a long way in searching for her,’ Mr Farrington whooped, and there was a splurge of laughter.
‘Well whatever he is, he’s up to no good, Sir,’ put in Matthew Binns, who had got the dogs back under control. ‘Been in a brush of some sort, too, by the look of his knee.’
They all looked at Tom’s knee, where he still had to wear his breeches tied loose over the bandage that showed underneath. ‘Aye, you’re in the right of it, Binns.’ Mr Farrington sobered up somewhat, and grew interested. ‘Tie his hands behind him, and we’ll get him back to the house. We can lodge him in the stables for the night, and find out who he is and just what he has been up to in the morning—Run him up before the magistrates in Chichester if need be.’ Laughter overcame him again. ‘Hang him with any luck!’
To Damaris, still clinging to what remained of the window-ledge everything had gone unreal; and when in a little while, with the hounds in leash, the hunting party turned back on its tracks, the sight of Tom with his hands lashed behind him, stumbling along in their midst on his wounded knee, seemed the most unreal of all, like something in a bad dream.
Only it was not a dream.
The sounds of their going died away. Only somewhere far off she heard again the alarm call of a jay to tell where they went by. And after that only the familiar sounds of the Manhood and the faint hushing of the incoming tide.
Damaris stayed by the window a short while longer; shivering with the shock of it all, and utterly bewildered as to why Tom should have led Mr Farrington and his friends to think that he might be a French spy. She remembered Mr Farrington’s laughter, ‘Hang him, with any luck!’ and she felt coldly sick. Why, why had he done such a crack-brained thing? And the answer came to her. He had done it to save her and Lady. He must have known that he could not hold them off for long, that the dogs would have the ramshackle door down and find her and the vixen, and she knew enough of hounds at the kill to know that unless the hunting party took in what was happening and were very quick to the rescue, she must have been in almost as hideous danger as Lady. He had to give them something that would seem to them more interesting than a cornered fox to set their minds going in another direction, gambling on being able to get himself out of the tangle later. But how if he could not? How if they would not believe he had only been out to save the fox? That alone would infuriate them; and why should they believe? It seemed an unlikely enough story. And come to that, who was Tom, and what had he been up to? Was it something they might hang him for anyway, if they found out about it?
Her thoughts were racing round and round inside her head like scurrying mice in a cage. But in a little, the ones that mattered shook themselves clear of the scurry and stood clear above the rest. For whatever reason Tom had run himself into danger, tonight he would be locked up in the Big House stables, waiting for whatever tomorrow might throw at him, and somehow he must be rescued before tomorrow came.
She stopped shaking and got to her feet, and heaved aside the log and the fallen branch from behind the door. A long last moment, she stood listening; then she pulled the door open. As she did so, a red shadow slipped free of the other shadows in the far corner, and was gone past her into the hazy evening sunshine and the mazy shadows beyond the clearing.
Lady had gone to her own world, and this time she would not come back again. The magic circle was broken.
Chapter 8: The Wicked Thing
DAMARIS HAD NO need to wonder this time who she should go to for help. No use going to the Vicarage, as she had done on the day, now seemingly so long ago, when she had found her smuggler lying face down among the dog’s mercury; there would be no possibility of Peter getting away this evening without somebody asking disastrous questions. That left only one person to turn to; and she set off for Genty’s cottage. Snowball would just have to bide where he was for a while, she would be quicker without him. But when her hurried way brought her past the usual place where she had left him hitched, he was not there; and the trampled grass and torn-off willow catkins told their own story. The noise of the hunt must have startled him, and he had dragged free and bolted.
She checked a moment, considering. Actually, it might be a good thing. Snowball would take himself home, and they would be frightened at Carthagena. She was sorry about that. Also of course it would start them looking for her, which was a pity. But it would give her a good excuse if she needed one, for being out late; for she could say that the hunt had startled him (that bit would be true, anyway) while she was looking for primroses, and she had been looking for him ever since. That might mean that they would forbid her to go off on her own for a while. But when you had a lot of problems on your hands the best you could so was to take them one at a time.
&nbs
p; She was already running again, her skirts bunched inelegantly to her knees. Branches whipped across her face, brambles like witches’ fingers clutched hold of her, and she left wisps of dark green worsted here and there in her wake. And as she had done that other time, she was praying as she ran, that she might find Genty at home; for if she didn’t, she could not think what she was to do.
She was only just in time, for when she reached the cottage in its woodshore clearing just short of the village, the Wise Woman had her cloak on and was stowing things in her basket on the table, while the little grey cat sat watching her from the window-sill.
‘What is it, then?’ she asked, as Damaris almost fell down the step into the strange-smelling room. And while Damaris poured out her story, she went on filling the basket.
Damaris was not even sure that she was listening properly; but when all was told, the old woman said, ‘Aye—in the stable, ye say? Then Mus’ Binns will be our man, my lover.’
‘Then you’ll go to the Big House? You’ll go now?’
Genty had turned to the carved old chest under the window and opened it, speaking with her head half inside, ‘Not I, my lover. There’a a child down at the fisher cottages needs me tonight, more’n your Tom Wildgoose.’
‘But Genty—Oh you must help him, you must!’
Genty had opened the painted leather box from which she had taken her surgeon’s tools, that other night, the box where she had said she kept her ‘Wicked Things’. ‘And let the child die? No, no, there’s a better way than that.’
‘But if you will not come—’
‘I said I wouldn’ come, I didn’ say I wouldn’ help the lad.’ Genty closed the box, then let down the lid of the chest carefully as though there were eggs within, and turned round with something in her hand. Damaris could not see what it was, for the shadows were gathering in the little crowded room. ‘But ’tis you that must carry my help to the right person and set it working. Now listen: Mus’ Binns will be at supper in his own cottage by now, an’ away back to the stables afore long, so ’ee must be quick to catch him on his own. Tell him I sent ’ee, and ask him to arrange for the ’scape of the lad they took by mistake for a fox this afternoon.’
Was that all Genty with her strange powers could suggest? ‘He won’t,’ Damaris said desperately, ‘Why should he? Not just for asking—when it might mean trouble for him?’
Genty nodded, ‘Indeed I think a’ won’t, just for asking. But, ’tis only courteous to ask, first. ’Tis clumsy way o’ doin’ things, to start wi’ a threat, afore ’tis certain-sure one’s needed.’
‘A threat?’ said Damaris.
The Wise Woman set down a little bundle on the table, and folded back the corners of the kerchief in which it was wrapped. Damaris saw a heart roughly shaped in wax, about the size of the palm of her hand or maybe a little larger. The thing looked innocent enough, but Genty had something else in the hollow of her other hand. Five long blackthorn spines. She picked up the heart, and deliberately and precisely drove the thorns into it.
Damaris watched her with widening eyes, seeing the thing in her hand change its nature and become suddenly evil. She had always known, of course, that Genty and her kind had other skills than medicine and the making of herb cheese and Sunday love charms—she had heard the maids whispering over their work—but she had never come in contact with this darker side of Genty’s skills before.
The Wise Woman folded the little bundle up again. ‘If the threat be needed, then show him this, and tell him that ol’ Genty bade you, and that she has another the like of this one, wi’ his name writ on it fair, an’ blackthorn spines are easy come by.’
Damaris’s throat felt tight. ‘And—will he believe—believe—’ she managed, but could get no further.
The Wise Woman smiled; a small inward turning smile. ‘Aye, he’ll believe. Mus’ Binns is the best Horse Master in these parts. He has the power of the Toad Bone that floats upstream; he knows the Words, and the Secrets of Control. He knows enough of his own skills to be afeared o’ mine.’ She held out the bundle, ‘Take it, and be away with ’ee.’
Damaris drew back a pace. It seemed to her that the shadows were crowding thicker in the corners of the room. ‘I—Genty, I can’t!’ she whispered.
‘There is no harm in it: I have not spoken the Words, I have not made the Signs, I have not mingled the dark-of-the-Moon herbs. ’Tis but a warning.’
Damaris half-reached out, then drew back her hand. She was more frightened of the thing Genty held than she had ever been of anything before. She looked up desperately into the old woman’s face.
‘Be ’ee still so feared?’ Genty said. ‘Then listen, my Lover, for ’tis as simple as this: if you cares enough what comes to this Tom Wildgoose of your’n, take this and get him free. If you don’t, then leave be, and go away. Like enough, they’ll not get to hangin’ him, anyways.’
And Damaris put out her hand, and took the little bundle. It felt very cold, and surprisingly heavy. She knew that she was handling something much better left alone. She was as frightened as ever. But it was that or deserting Tom. . . .
‘What must I do after that?’ she said. Her mouth felt dry.
Genty had already turned back to her basket, and was spreading a clean white cloth over the things within. ‘That be for you an’ Mus’ Binns to arrange a’tween you,’ she said. ‘But mind, the lad can’t go back to your Joyous Gard—Can ’ee get out o’ the house after you’re supposed to be in bed for the night?’
‘Yes, Genty.’
‘Good. Then bid Mus’ Binns to have the lad out by Dame’s Folly across the house paddock, at whatever time seems good to both of ’ee. Do you be waiting for him, an’ bring him on here. I shall still be away down to the fisher cottages, for ’tis sure to be an all-night sitting; but my door is ever on the latch as you do know.’ She was putting a loaf and a jug on the table as she spoke, followed by a candle and the household tinder-box. ‘Bid him eat, and sleep by the fire till I come. Then get yourself ’long home.’
‘And this?’ Damaris moved the little bundle.
‘Leave it on the mantel for me, here.’ Genty picked up the basket and turned to the door. ‘Now go, for the child’s needs are calling me, an’ I’ve no more time to spare.’
A few minutes later Damaris was coming up to the back gate of Matthew Binns’s cottage that opened onto the common at the far end of the village. She was wondering how she was to get word with him apart from his wife, but luck was with her for just as she got there, he appeared from the direction of the Big House stables, and she realized that he must have only just done with getting the prisoner locked up, and be coming home late to his supper.
She stepped out from the shadow of the hedge into his path. In the fading light and with her hood pulled well forward, he did not recognize her, but gave her a grunted greeting as though she were one of the village girls, and made to pass her by. She slipped round to be still between him and the gate. ‘I’ll not keep you for long from your supper, Mus’ Binns, but I’ve a message for you from Genty Small.’
He sounded faintly startled, ‘That ol’ hag? What do she want wi’ me?’
Damaris took a deep breath. ‘She wants, if you please, that you should arrange the ’scape of the lad you took by mistake for a fox this afternoon.’
He let out a ragged breath, ‘What lad would that be, then?’
‘The one you have shut up in the stables,’ Damaris said firmly.
‘How in the world—’ Mr Binns began, and then changed direction. ‘An’ what makes Genty Small think as I’ll do tha-at, just for the askin’?’
‘Because of this,’ Damaris felt her mouth shaking, but she managed to keep her voice steady, as she brought the small bundle from under her cloak and unfolded the wax heart. There was enough light to show it, palely ugly, and with the five dark thorns stuck deep in it. It was all she could do not to throw the thing on the ground. There was utter silence; and when she looked up, Matthew Binns’s face had ta
ken on much the same waxy paleness as the small wicked thing in her hand, which he was staring at as though he could not move his eyes away.
‘What do she want him for?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Take un away,’ he muttered.
‘There’s no harm in it,’ Damaris told him, in the same carefully steadied voice. ‘Not in this one. But she bade me tell you that she has another with your name writ on it fair, and blackthorn spines are easy come by.’
Matthew Binns wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, and she saw the sweat gleaming on it.
‘’Twill cost me my job.’
‘I should not think so. Not if you’re careful,’ Damaris said; and then very softly, ‘Genty says that you are the best Horse Master in these parts. She says that you have the Power of the Toad Bone that floats upstream, and you know Words, and the Secrets of Control. She says that you know enough of your own skills to be afraid of hers.’ She did not know that she was sounding so unlike herself that Matthew Binns was never afterwards sure who had brought him the Wise Woman’s message, but had a cold feeling that it was something Genty had called up for the purpose, out of the woods and the twilight.
He gave a kind of sick gulp. ‘Curses on the old besom!—Aye, I’ll do it. Only take that thing away!’
Damaris wrapped the wax heart up again and took it back under her cloak. ‘Thank you,’ she said politely. ‘At what o’clock will you have him free?’
‘How should I know?’ Mr Binns seemed bolder with the heart out of sight. ‘Isn’t it enough that I get him free?’
‘No,’ Damaris made a movement under her cloak to bring it out again.
‘Midnight,’ he said hurriedly. ‘No, that’s too early. By one in t’ morning Mus’ Farrington an’ his cronies will be too drunk to see straight, wi’ any luck. One o’clock, then.’
‘At one o’clock have him at Dame’s Folly.’