After looking at another two or three he favored, Pell said simply, “I’ll do the choosing from now on.”
It was an impossible arena in which to make decisions, and though she had no trouble picking a clean sane horse out of a herd scattered through a forest, she felt the strain of doing the same here. The place held so many people playing at smoke and mirrors and so many sizes and types of misfit men and animals, that she could easily begin to doubt the evidence of her own eyes. But thinking of the money, she squinted and watched, and eventually found a pretty little blue roan mare, delicately built and well put-together, and she knew immediately from the look of her that to ride her would be a pleasure and besides she was clean and healthy and had only not been bought because of her color.
“That one,” she said, and the man who owned her said, “The lady’s got taste, sir.” Which is what they all said when you wanted to see one of their horses. He trotted her up and down and, sure enough, she was a pretty mover with a temper to match. Harris bargained hard with the owner and got her for a good price. They led her away and she walked at Pell’s side sweet and light as a doe.
It was nearly an hour before she saw another animal worth taking seriously, a piebald Gypsy half-shire this time, broad and well-muscled with a nice willing manner and a kind eye. Except for people like Mr. Bewes, who bought horses solely on the basis of work worth, the fashion wasn’t much for a colored pony, especially one that looked to have been painted by a drunk. But a well-shaped head, sound legs, and a certain honesty attracted her. When Harris shook his head no, she ran her hand briefly down the horse’s neck and left a little sadly.
The next one she chose was a bony five-year-old gelding with a good deal of thoroughbred in him and a jagged blaze down his nose. He tossed his head and kicked out, and the man who owned him seemed relieved to see him off for little more than he’d have got at the slaughterhouse. But bad treatment and not enough food can make any animal look ruined, and this one, Pell knew, had the makings of something better. When she felt his legs and stroked his face he quietened right down, and she could tell from the length of his neck and the depth of his chest that once he was fed and treated well he’d be worth five times what they’d paid.
Two horses.
They made an offer on a black mare, but the owner turned them down, wanting a higher price. A rangy gray paced nervously on a short tether; he was bony and high at the withers, too big around the barrel, and stained green from living out. But having seen him move, she nodded. The same horse as he would look on good oats and exercise shone out at her, but she could not convince Harris.
And so the hours passed. It took all day to find six horses they both agreed on, and by the end of it Bean dragged his feet and Pell felt weary to the bone. Harris made fewer and fewer objections, but stood back and let her have what she liked, paying up each time while she silently kept track of the money and her cut of it. Occasionally he’d mark out a horse he thought looked good, and she’d point out a stiff hock or a bad way of moving, and sometimes she wouldn’t bother but just shook her head and went on, and by the end of the day he’d learned a thing or two about choosing horses and she’d learned a thing or two about driving a bargain.
He tied all six horses in a string behind his own, and told her he’d deliver her cut of the money in an hour, after he’d finished with another piece of business at the inn. At first she objected, not trusting him to return, but he threw down his bag and said, “That’s everything I own but what I’m wearing.” And she didn’t have much choice but to accept.
When an hour passed, and then two, and then more, the anxiety began to rise up in her. And it grew, and grew, until, not knowing what else to do, she left Jack with Bean and ran through the town toward the inn to seek Harris. It took only ten minutes, but when she arrived the innkeeper informed her that he’d paid up and gone.
It was with a sense of confusion that she ran back to the place where only moments ago she’d left a horse and a child, to find nothing but an empty square of trampled earth. On which, two frantic hours later, filthy, exhausted from searching, and near crazed with a sense of futility and the world’s injustice, she collapsed.
Fourteen
Bean had long practice in watchfulness. He knew how to recognize danger by the expression on an unwary face and to judge how a situation might turn. So when Harris began to thread his way back through the crowd with his horses, Bean watched carefully, to see what might happen next.
He watched the man dismount hurriedly, watched him cast about, bemused.
At last Harris approached him, reluctant to engage with the half-wit but anxious to conclude his business and get on.
“Where’s the girl gone?”
Bean pointed across the crowd, and Harris followed the direction of his finger. Seeing nothing there of interest, he scanned the vicinity and exchanged a few words with a man nearby who only shrugged. After another minute, Bean saw the wheels in Harris’s head begin to turn, saw a decision form in his brain.
The man turned to Bean, speaking in an exaggerated manner. “Tell her. I waited. As long as. I could.” And he laughed at the thought of the half-wit telling anyone anything, reclaimed his bag, mounted his own horse, tightened the tie of the lead rope, and rode away.
What was Bean to do then? If he didn’t act, all would be lost; the retreating crowds could be counted upon to hide any number of dishonest men leading strings of ill-gotten beasts. His brain spun wildly as he searched the crowd for Pell. She must be almost here, she must be. But she wasn’t. So he scrambled up on Jack and followed the man who would take his sister’s horses without paying for them.
Harris eschewed the obvious routes out of Salisbury, opting for a little-used cattle path that skirted the cathedral, and disappeared almost at once into a wood. The path’s obscurity made Bean’s job difficult, but he kept well back, relying on the noise and trampled ground left by his quarry to mark the path.
His anxiety increased as they moved farther and farther from the center of Salisbury. After one hour, then two, then three, he gave up hope of Pell catching them, and the decision he’d made in a moment of desperation suddenly filled him with doubts. Lost and frightened and hungry, it occurred to him that it might be beyond his power to right this particular wrong. More hours passed. He had no idea how to bring Harris to justice, no idea how to back down and find his sister. The more time that passed between the original crime and the present moment, the more dismayed Bean felt, until he began to consider his task impossible and his original decision to follow Harris wrong.
For two days and nights Harris traveled, stopping only for an hour or two at a time to sleep and rest the horses. And for two days and nights Bean followed him, increasingly exhausted and consumed with hunger, so that he began to ride Jack by balance and momentum alone, his head drooping forward over the horse’s neck while Jack walked evenly and gently so as not to unseat his rider.
Jack harbored no thoughts of returning to his mistress. This indicated no particular shortage of imagination on his part, for a horse will generally behave unremarkably unless ill-treatment or lack of food persuades him to do otherwise. Did he think of Pell, or wonder at the fact that Bean had taken sole charge of their journey? Perhaps he did. But more likely he wondered at his rider’s growing passivity, wondered when he would next be allowed to stop and eat or drink.
And so they plodded on, ever more slowly, until on the third night Bean slipped off and, tired as he was, malnour ished and cold as he was, did not get up again but lay still on the ground, hugging his arms around his small thin body, half-dazed and half-unconscious, waiting for something to happen that would change his luck, while Harris and his horses disappeared into the night and Jack cropped grass beside him.
Of course luck can always be depended upon to change, and Bean’s did just that within a very few hours. By the time the sun had half risen on the morning of the following day, he had been discovered by a minor parish councillor, who picked him up, spoke
to him softly and with sympathy, asked him who he was and whence he came and, receiving no answer, deemed him an idiot, took control of the horse that stood patiently nearby, and freed himself of all responsibility for the vagrant child by carrying him over into the neighboring town and depositing him at the entrance to the workhouse.
Such a fine-looking pony would be no good to the poor idiot child, the man told himself, whereas if he sold it to pay a debt he owed, it would relieve him of a most onerous mental burden. Cheered by this thought he set off for home, leading his serendipitous find and whistling a little tune, pleased with his luck and the way this unpromising day had turned out.
Fifteen
Pell’s search began with determination but few clues. A white horse. A man with two dogs. A boy who didn’t speak. A horse trader. Even as she described all that she had lost, she could feel the hopelessness of it. What she sought matched too many boys, horses, men, and dogs to be of use. She searched every square inch of the fair, increasingly desperate, describing the child, the men, the crimes as she saw them (kidnapping, horse-stealing, breach of promise, thievery), and praying for information with all the fervor of a person who had not, a mere half hour earlier, believed in the utility of prayer.
The one person she did find was Esther. The woman appeared just as she had before, surrounded by her hectic crowd of children. She scrutinized Pell’s tear-stained face and the empty space where there had recently been a horse and a child, and grasped the turn of events at once, shaking her head at Pell’s story and saying of the two men, “They’ll both be long gone. And neither wanting to be discovered.”
But she almost laughed. The child would not stay found.
It was the last day of the fair, and only the dregs of society remained. Harris and Dogman might never have existed for all anyone recognized their names, or expressed an interest in them. The men she questioned all looked at Pell, putting together stories in their heads about her. It was nobody’s business what she was after and why, but that didn’t stop them wondering. Most had seen women in just this state at the end of other fairs, and men happy to be away.
By midday, when most of the crowd had packed up and moved off, she had made no progress.
It was Esther who returned with information of a poacher “up Pevesy way,” whose description matched the man with the dogs. The information gave no specifics but was more than nothing and would have to do. “We’ll travel that way with you,” Esther said, and told Elspeth to pack up the wagon, just as if her company had been formally requested. And so, with a great creaking of harness and clattering of wooden wheels, they set off.
Dozens of other travelers shared the road, most leading horses bought at the fair, and Pell questioned each with a voice that quavered and lost conviction with each new rejection. They climbed onto the beginnings of Salisbury Plain and, turning back, Pell could see church spires marking out every hamlet for miles around, with handfuls of houses scattered about each, and paths running from one to the other like a child’s game drawn with sticks in the dust.
A peculiar dark gray ceiling of cloud covered the plain, underneath which ran an illuminated blue stripe of sky and the bright yellow-green of rolling grassland. As they traveled, Esther collected plants to dry and sell for remedies in little cloth bags. “Dogstail,” she muttered as she walked along beside the wagon, “fescue, red clover, sneezewort, scabious, horseshoe vetch, cat’s-ear.” Evelina followed, picking her own bouquet of flowers, which she later abandoned in a basket to wilt.
Pell could see the mounds of barrows in the distance, and Esther warned her to remain vigilant against spirits of the dead, which would arise and scramble up her legs, sliding over her waist, across her ribs, and into the empty places in her heart. Despite not believing in spirits, Pell couldn’t chase away this fearful image, and all evening as they rode through the uncanny landscape she shuddered at the ghosts whose cold tongues lapped at their ankles, hissing and threatening and plucking at their hems. Esther gave each child a small bundle of mullein and white sage to ward off bogles and revenants.
The rolling plain seemed to stretch forever in all directions. They progressed slowly, for Esther’s wagon was heavy, and Moses showed no inclination to hurry up hills. As they rested at the top of one, they could see the ancient giant’s ring far ahead, its massive stones toppled like building blocks. Pell shivered at the weird arrangement of boulders and Esther swung out to the east, giving the ancient stone circle a wide berth, tying her skirts tight around her ankles as they passed, not wanting the spirits to run up between her legs and impregnate her with phantom infants. They hurried along, staying off the ground and keeping the children inside the wagon until they’d lost sight of the ring and the barrows surrounding it. Whatever her beliefs, neither woman would risk disturbing the dead.
Every so often Esther made observations about what lay ahead on the road or what would happen if they turned here or cut across that meadow. “Just beyond here is a baker,” she’d say, and place a few pennies in the grubby hand of one of the boys, who’d fly off across a golden swell of waving grasses and grazing sheep, and return with a loaf of excellent bread. She knew every byway and huddle of houses on the plain, down to a dangerous ditch or an old elm up ahead that would make a good stopping point.
Pell noticed that once or twice a day there would be travelers she knew, either to nod at or talk to in her quick Romany, with much gesticulating up the road and down the road, pointing east or west or both. But they never invited her to share a meal, or their tea, or to set down and stay, and there was something in Esther’s manner during these encounters that made Pell wonder, for the Gypsies they passed on the road seemed to walk and camp together in sociable groups. Perhaps it had to do with the children’s father, if there was one, for his name was never mentioned.
At every crossing of paths, Esther left scraps of cloth tied on tree branches, or piles of sticks and stones. She did not discuss their significance, or for whom they were intended, and Pell did not presume to ask. Perhaps, Pell thought, this network of pointings and signs added up to some sort of map; perhaps the world surrounding Salisbury Plain existed intact in Esther’s head, complete with every tree and hedge and fork in the road. This made Pell imagine her as an owl, floating silently over the countryside, aware of each stile, each fallen branch, each rut in the road, each mouse and shrew.
But she didn’t know where to find Bean or Jack, which would have been a good deal more useful.
As they traveled along a quiet stretch of road, Esther turned to Pell and asked, in a voice that assigned no importance to the question, “Your father is a preacher?”
Pell nodded, baffled by the woman’s ability to know things. “Yes. A nonconformist man of God. From Nomansland. He lived with us only when no one would pay him to preach elsewhere.”
Esther turned away with a weird smile. “I met a man like that once.”
“He is not the only one plying such a trade.”
“True.” And then, “I hoped to meet that man again.”
Pell frowned. “Most meet such men only when they cannot avoid it.”
“He wronged me twice,” she said. But did not elaborate further.
For a time they were both silent. Then Esther turned once more to Pell, with a slow smile. “And you? You left home to seek your fortune?”
“I left home on my wedding day.”
The other woman threw her head back and laughed, nodding her approval. Neither of them said anything more.
The midday meal was kettle broth made of hot water and bread with a bit of lard and a handful of grubby bram bleberries. Esther stuffed tobacco into her clay pipe and puffed away, sipping her tea, while Pell took Evelina onto her lap and showed the little girl her book of birds. The child’s eyes hardly dared blink, and it occurred to Pell that she had never seen a book before. In an atmosphere of near-religious awe, the child pointed to each bird, her finger hovering off the page, fearful of touching the picture and silent with amazement. Pell
told her the names, which Evelina spoke in Romany along with the sound each made. Her favorite was a delicate pencil-and-watercolor sketch of a puffin, at the sight of which her eyes opened wide, astonished that such a bird—with its big bill and orange feet—existed.
Even after Pell put the book away, the child remained stock-still, staring at the place it had been, willing it to return, while Pell gazed at Evelina, willing the hard little face to take the place of the silent boy she’d lost.
Later, Pell found her squatted down, drawing her version of a puffin carefully in the dust with a twig, while the rest of the children gathered round hooting in disbelief. When she saw Pell watching, she stopped drawing and stared back with silent dignity, waiting for her to leave.
Esmé, who had been eyeing Pell with a look of misery and outrage since they set off together, continued to glare at every encounter, as if Bean’s disappearance indicated carelessness on Pell’s part. She had a disconcerting way of stealing up silently when Pell least expected it, hissing a single question over and over: “Where’s Bean?”
Eammon and Errol had different games in mind, running off across the plain in search of things to eat. They disappeared so often, and for such long stretches of time, that no one seemed to notice their absences, or to find it surprising when they appeared now and again with a scrawny chicken or rabbit for the pot. Pell asked if Esther ever worried she might lose them, and she replied that if one or two children went missing there’d be more food for the rest. Nothing in her face indicated whether this was her version of a joke.
On one particular evening, the boys turned up with a bag they’d half carried half dragged from some distance away. Pell had disposed of her scruples and felt pleased at the thought of meat that night. But what they pulled out of the sack was wriggling and whining and glad as day to be free, with two pointed faces, a soft black and gray coat, and a body swinging wildly in all directions attached to two wild sweeps of tail. Once separated, the creatures looked ugly as skinned rabbits, all ribs and bony legs and long straight feet, and just two more mouths to feed as far as Pell could see. When she asked the boys what their plans were, and could she put the beasts in the pot for dinner, Eammon grinned, picked the male up by its scruff and handed it to her, saying, “He’s for you.”