by Sam Angus
Tears streamed down Dodo’s cheeks.
Hero pawed the ground, splashing, his neck straining forward. Dodo turned to Wolfie, saw all his strength pitted against his horse. She looked down at Scout’s flanks, saw the mud line over the belly, and screamed, ‘She’s in to her stifles! She’s sinking – there’s no bottom, Wolfie!’
‘I can’t hold him back, Dodo – I can’t!’he answered.
Scout whinnied. Dodo heard the heart-stopping cry, heard the raw fear in its every note. Hero heard it and plunged forward, snatching the reins from Wolfie’s hands.
Dodo turned and saw his grey legs flail and flounder, saw the spraying of the black mud, the terror in his eyes, saw Wolfie, frozen with fear, thrown forward over his neck.
‘OhGod,ohGod,’shebreathed,thenshouted,‘Stay on him – just stay on him – for God’s sake stay on!’
Hero pawed the ground, his forelegs struck the air. Wolfie recovered the reins, gripped a fistful of mane and jabbered, ‘Stay, Hero – stay – please don’t move – don’t move.’
Dodo’s body quaked, she couldn’t get her legs, her arm, to do her bidding, the pain was spreading, her frame convulsed with fitful shivering. Get the saddle off, she thought, I’ve got to get the saddle off . . . I must get off, then get it off. She lifted her leg, yanked up the saddle flap and fumbled with the girth. One buckle – the second – both buckles undone – now she must dismount. Slowly she leaned forward over the saddle, gently swung her leg over and slipped down, easing her trembling body into the dreadful mire. Holding Scout’s mane, she pushed the saddle with her good arm, tipping it off and letting it fall.
Clinging to Scout, she ran a trembling hand along the ridge of Scout’s neck, down her back, scratching gently where the saddle had been.
Hero cried out, a raw, shrill scream. Scout cried back, a low bark, mournful as an echo.
Dodo started. She ran her hand feverishly up and down Scout’s shoulder . . . her withers, her neck. They were still, the trembling gone. She clutched at Scout’s head, pulled at her mane.
‘No – no – try – please try – Scout, try – try . . . no one on your back, no saddle . . .’ She slapped at Scout’s rump, slapped at her neck, drummed and drummed at it and pleaded.
‘Dodo! Dodo!’ Wolfie was calling.
Scout’s head was dropping. Dodo screamed to her, slapped her again with her bare hands, but Scout’s lids were drooping, her head dropping, she was surrendering, giving in, sedated by the treacherous tropical warmth of the bog.
‘No – no no no no no, Scout – please . . . don’t give in,’ Dodo pleaded.
Scout half opened her heavy lids. The loving amber eyes gazed out dozily, blinked then closed. Dodo grabbed and pulled at her mane, crying to her, pulling at her head. She placed her hand beneath Scout’s muzzle to lift her head but she herself had nothing to stand on, nothing to push against. If she tried to move her legs the slime was resistant and solid as sand, yet she was sinking deeper through it.
Scout’s chin rested peacefully along the inky surface. Dodo saw that lovely head, the tender eyes, the golden mane, the golden ridge of her neck, she saw the black tide creeping, higher, inch by inch up the swell of her belly, and she clung to Scout, Scout the faithful, tender companion of so many days, and she was nauseous with the horror of what was happening.
Somewhere, Wolfie was shouting. ‘Dodo, he can’t move – he’s not sinking – I don’t think he’s sinking but . . .’
Wolfie sounded far away and long ago. Dodo was hot and cold and quaking, one arm only with which to cling to Scout, and the slime was seeping down her shirt, seeping down her back, the warmth of it sinister and soupy.
The crest of Scout’s neck stood in a ridge above the black, only her neck and her head were clear of the slime, but her muzzle was wide, as if smiling, her eyes closed.
‘Dodo!’ someone was screaming. ‘Please, Dodo, please come!’
The black tide was rising over the whiskery chin, over the mottled lips, seeping into the rosy nostrils. Dodo flicked away a small flying thing that had settled on the corner of Scout’s eye, then she rested her head against Scout’s cheekbone.
Somewhere someone was still screaming, somewhere a horse was shrieking but they were muffled and blurred, still far away and long ago. Around Scout strange yellow asphodels and sundews that Dodo hadn’t seen before, entwined in the emerald moss, like unearthly jewels. She whispered and she stroked and she whispered and stroked until Scout’s ear lay still, until all that was there were the last strands of Scout’s forelock, floating like spun gold on the mire.
Wolfie screamed, screamed and screamed again but Dodo wasn’t moving, wasn’t answering, her right cheek and one arm lay outstretched on the surface of the peat, clutching at the air.
He must get Hero to her, he must save Dodo. He must lead his horse forward to the place where another horse had drowned.
‘Never break faith with a horse, Wolfie.’ Pa’s words rattled in his head like knives. Tears slid down his cheeks, but he was kicking Hero with desperate, panicky jabs.
‘Go on, Hero, go on,’ he yelled. ‘Go, go, go . . . Dododododododo!’
Still she didn’t answer; that arm was sinking.
‘Go on, go on, go on . . .’ he yelled again, kicking and jabbing with his heels.
Hero snorted. He lifted his head, his eyes blazed and he plunged, flaying through the mud, stabbing at it, knees high, crying out as he went.
Four paces, only four, and they’d be at her side – not ‘paces’: four rears, four plunges and they’d reach her. Wolfie kicked and screamed and kicked and screamed. The young horse reared and plunged, reared and plunged, reared and plunged.
‘Never break faith with a horse, Wolfie.’ Wolfie couldn’t see for tears, for the horror and fear of it.
Wolfie pulled at the reins. Hero stopped, heaving, snorting, streaming, head high, legs testing the ground. There was solid ground beneath one hoof – beneath the right foreleg – on the side where Dodo was. There was solid ground. Wolfie leaned out, reached for her arm, and pulled, hands slipping and losing the slimy black of her sleeve, clutching at it again, grasping her hand, losing it, reaching, gripping, pulling the length of her arm, hand over hand, till he had her under the arm. He heaved her shoulder, her head against his knee. He turned her face towards him and screamed as he saw the closed eyes, slapped her cheeks, and cried, ‘Wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup!’
Her eyes half opened then closed. He dragged her, but the mud was squelching and sucking at her and it took all his strength to lift her an inch or two up, to pull her arm across the front of Hero’s saddle.
‘Still, Hero. Stay still, don’t move, just stay.’ Wolfie’s voice was whispery and panicked. Hero was adjusting his position, the left foreleg was carrying the weight of the three of them. ‘Still, Hero, stay still, don’t move, don’t move, just stay . . .’ Wolfie urged quietly. He slapped Dodo again, again and again, but her face was pale, her eyes closed and unmoving, her long hair in his hands turned to ropes of black all trailed with green. ‘Please . . . please . . . Someone come . . . someone come . . .’ he whispered.
But there was only the primeval, tractless waste, the glistening mire, the deafening humming of small flying things.
A dragonfly rested on Dodo’s cheek, then whirred away, its wings flashing satanic green.
Wolfie whispered to Hero, he whispered to Dodo. He whispered and called, called and whispered to them both, till he had no breath, till it seemed that hours, that days perhaps had gone by.
A wild duck clattered up from a silver runnel, starting Wolfie. He must have slept. Soft, misty rain was falling, dusk and mist and bog all merging. Everything was water, the earth, the air, were all water. He yelped, jerky with fear, shaking Dodo, finding her shoulders rigid, her face cold and damp to his palm. He called out in fear – ‘Hero, HERO!’
The horse blinked, turned his head a fraction and calmly shifted his weight. Dodo’s hand was cold in Wolfie’s, her forehead cold, but h
e felt the slow, steady pulse of her heart against his thigh.
‘Dodo, Dododododoodo!’ he yelled. ‘Wake up, wake up, wake up wake up, wakeupwakeupwakeup.’
But there was only the soundless silence, the air as still as if time were suspended. There was no sun, no sky, no dark, no distance, colour or sound, only the black mire and the thickening grey-white air.
Wolfie’s fingers fumbled for the warm withers, frantically stroking the hair and skin of the horse that was the only clear and solid thing in the disorientating white.
Some way away there was a movement, a shape, whiter than the surrounding white, slipping thinly in and out of the luminous whiteness, phantom-like.
His mind was playing tricks, the desolate white was worse than the black of night, everything dissolved, the hag line, the sunken alder, the brown hills, all blotted out.
‘Help!’ Wolfie called, but his voice was absorbed in the muffling whiteness as in a sponge.
A rustling made him leap from his skin, the rustling of something unseeable in the weird ghost world. Wolfie shook Dodo, pulled at her hair. Hero lifted his head and snorted a belly-deep bark. Wolfie pulled again at Dodo’s hair, shaking her, his hand falling on something metallic and cold. He grappled at the buckle, wretched and clumsy, yanking the bugle free. He blew, and blew again, but the sound was absorbed in the spongy white.
‘HalloooooOOO!’ came a voice.
‘Help!’ Wolfie called back.
There was movement somewhere, then the same voice closer now.
‘Pinford, they’re in Pinford. Or the Devil’s Stable.’
There was silence for a while. Then, nearer now, stood a brown shadow, bending and peering.
‘Don’t move.’
Ned – that was Ned’s voice.
‘Ned!’ Wolfie screamed. ‘Ned!’ He was shaking from top to toe, his knees banging against the saddle roll. He saw a coil of rope over Ned’s arm, the shape of a rifle under the other. ‘She won’t wake up – Dodo – she won’t wake up.’
‘Wait and don’t move. ’as the horse got solid under him?’
‘No . . . Yes – one foot, I think.’
The figure turned.
‘No! Don’t go! Don’t go!’ yelled Wolfie.
‘Wait an’ I’ll be back.’
‘Wake up, Dodo, wake up wakeupwakeup!’ Wolfie pleaded.
An age seemed to pass. Hero’s head was dropping. Tears of mist clung to the hairs of his coat. Wolfie was hoarse with whispering, he had no words left. Ned might never come back and his own head was sinking to Hero’s neck, he and Dodo both clinging to Hero like drowning men to a crag.
Ned came with a plank. Leaving his coat and gun on the ground, he snapped off a stem of alder and slid the plank out from the hag line towards Hero. Wading out, he slid and pushed it further, then crawled along it on all fours.
He saw Dodo’s blue lips, took a flask from his pocket and forced her mouth open, splashing whisky in. Her arms and legs jerked, her head jolted and she spluttered, suddenly wide-eyed and shivering.
Dodo’s sight focused. She saw Ned’s white face, the red stain on the cheek, and she turned, searching wildly, reaching out her hand. ‘Wolfie? Wolfie?’ she whispered. Her hand found his. ‘Wolfie, thank God, thank God.’
Ned took her under the arms. She screamed out in pain, but he pulled her over to the plank.
‘Broken,’ he said after a while. ‘Rib maybe. Collar bone. Arm.’ He smoothed the hair off her face, wiped the black off her cheeks and smiled at her. ‘Lots o’ bits of you broken. Aye, an’ you’re lucky to get out. So much rain, there’s bogs even where there’s been none afore.’
He crawled to the far end of the plank, then dragged it gently up on to the rush so Dodo could crawl off.
‘Get the saddle off him. Get yourself on to the plank,’ he called to Wolfie pushing the plank back out. ‘Then stay there.’
The plank swung on the strange green suspension, each movement of Wolfie’s as he struggled with the girth causing an echoing movement somewhere on the trampoline surface.
He looked up and saw the eyes that followed his every movement and he trembled before the fathoms of trust in them.
Dodo huddled, shivering on the rush.
Ned placed his feet on the end of the plank and said to Wolfie, ‘My weight’s on it now, start moving towards me.’
Wolfie looked at Hero then turned back to Ned.
‘No,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘No.’
‘Leave him. Won’t make it – nothin’ under him, no traction.’
‘He will . . . he will get out – he can—’
‘No.’ Ned’s voice was loud and angry. ‘Get yourself out. Now.’
Dodo was crawling across the rush. Wolfie saw her reach for the rifle, stagger to her feet, one arm held to her chest, the other holding the trigger, no hand to steady the barrel of it. She raised the rifle at Ned.
When Ned turned and saw, he froze.
‘Get him out. Get Hero out,’ said Dodo, her voice shaking, the barrel of the rifle wobbling.
Ned was silent for a few seconds, then, his eyes on Dodo, he shouted to Wolfie. ‘’Oow long? ’Oow long’s he been in there?’
‘I don’t know,’ he answered.
‘Get him out,’ said Dodo.
‘’E’s nothin’ under him,’ Ned said, ‘nothin’ to push off.’
‘He’s not sinking,’ Wolfie said. ‘There’s solid under him where two legs are, it’s solid.’
Ned thought for a minute, then said, ‘Put the gun down.’ Without turning to Dodo, he said to Wolfie, ‘Have you asked him to get out? Has he tried? Is he tired?’
‘No, no and no,’ answered Wolfie.
‘Tell ’er to put the gun down,’ said Ned.
Dodo lowered the barrel. Ned bent to pick up the coil of rope and began to poke around in the alder for a long branch.
Halfway along the plank, Ned tested the depth with his stick. He bent, bent further, then knelt, his arm submerged to the shoulder. ‘Ten foot maybe,’ he said. ‘Too deep.’
Dodo raised the rifle. ‘What are you doing?’ she said, pink rising in her cheeks. ‘What are you doing out here with a rope? With a rifle? It’s not your land.’
Ned, standing on an unsteady plank, in a bog, with a rifle raised at him, said nothing.
‘Why did the fire get out of control? You weren’t swaling, were you? Not now, not at this time of year?’
‘Sent to find you I was,’ he answered, his eyes on the horse. ‘You were lucky it hit that grass. The rush here’s thicker, doesn’t burn like the other stuff. It’s broken the path of the fire.’
‘Was it on purpose, Ned Jervis, that fire?’
Ned bent slowly, conscious of the rifle aimed at him. He crouched on the precarious plank and, after a few tries, managed to loop the rope around Hero’s neck.
‘Don’t move,’ he said to Wolfie. ‘Stay where you are – steady as you can – or I go in. When I tell you, you ask him, just the once, shout an’ lash together – good an’ hard – hard, hard as you can. At the same time I pull.’
Wolfie nodded.
‘All depends on his character, on the spirit in him. Some give in, some don’t. Depends on the fight in ’em.’
‘Hero will fight,’ said Wolfie, looking Ned in the eyes as he took the stick Ned held out.
Back on the rush, with the end of the rope in his hands, Ned nodded to Wolfie.
Wolfie rose and placed his legs apart, bracing himself. He looked at Hero. Hero’s head turned and gazed back at the boy, his eyes luminous with love and trust. Wolfie breathed deeply, then he, who’d never, ever taken a whip to his horse, raised a stick high above his head. The dark almond eyes watched him and watched the stick.
‘Hero, you’ve got to do it – got to get out . . .’ he whispered.
Wolfie took a deep breath and nodded to Ned. ‘Out. Get out!’ he yelled and lashed. ‘Now! Out!’
Wolfie lashed again, yelled again, lashed again.
‘
Gerr’on,’ shouted Ned, and pulled.
Wolfie lashed again, tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘Come, Hero,’ he pleaded. ‘Now!’ He raised the whip again.
Hero tensed, his nostrils flared, his neck arched, his spine arched, his neck was corded with swelling veins, his eyes blazing, and his forelegs were fighting free of the holding squelch – they were high and clear, doubled, like a jumping stag – he was swinging and falling – plunging down – spraying mud and water – his neck arching again, chest swelling as if to burst, as if an inner sun were on the point of exploding through it, the titanic effort clear in his bulging eyes and corded veins. His neck, cheeks, forehead glistened, streaked with sweat and mud and mist, his forelegs rose, neck and spine arching, leaping, falling, legs sloshing and plunging and staggering, and Wolfie was running along the plank, jumping on to the rush, calling out to him, and Dodo was screaming to Hero and clutching Wolfie and together they howled and hurrahed through the rafters of the evening.
Hero was on the rush.
He lifted his tail, shook his head, shook his withers, bent his knees, doubled his legs and sank to the ground. He rolled and he rubbed his streaming flanks, rolling and rubbing and shaking, kicking and rolling, rolling and kicking, his four hoofs to the heavens.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
A long, hungry winter followed the summer.
Sergeant Box made his statement. The court martial and the accusations against Pa were brought into the glare of public attention once again, chewed over once again, the children vulnerable to the insidious whispering of the village. The men talked of it in the pub, Mrs Potter and her friends in the Village Stores gathered and gossiped. Wolfie had quietly given up his liking for Torpedoes and pear drops. Outwardly he minded less than Dodo about other people but he’d never gone back into the Village Stores. In London public and media interest in the case was ballooning. Box’sstatement,thoughinPa’sfavour,didnotcommute the suspicion with which they were surrounded into warmth or kindness, but there would be an appeal, that much was certain. The court martial had sharpened the tongues, ignited the talk of the villagers. Now the newspapers’ interest in Box and his statement had brought everything to the fore once more.