by Sarah Moss
Mum had rescued the flatbreads and cooked the mushrooms, but I couldn’t eat. Filled yourself up with bubbles, Mum murmured, you’ll be hungry again before bed. The boys, presumably sobered by the stream and the bread, finished everything, and after some goading from Molly went to wash the plates. The sun came down into the trees. I’ll come with you to tell them, said Molly, or you go rest in my tent and I’ll say you changed your mind, you can’t do this, it’s ridiculous and stupid and wrong in every way. I shook my head. It was too late. They’re not going to hurt me, I said, I know that, I just wish – I couldn’t even say it. I wish I didn’t have to be tied up in front of everyone. I wish my father didn’t want to put a rope around my neck. It doesn’t matter, I said, it will all be over by morning. Maybe it will be interesting after all. No, she said. No, you can’t do this, they’re insane.
Mum was putting the turfs on the fire and I went to help her. Thanks, she said, is summat up, seems Molly’s in a bit of a taking? I knelt up. There was no point, I knew, there was nothing Mum could do, no point in telling her. I remembered her arm, the marks you get if you resist when someone’s trying to hit you, if you make him have to hold you down. Better just to take what’s coming to you anyway. Not that I know of, I said, you know she gets a mood on when she thinks the lads aren’t pulling their weight.
And come the moment, Molly wasn’t there. The Prof appeared with a camera strung around his neck – we might want to publish on this later, he said, I don’t think anyone’s done it before – and Dad laid a skein of rough rope around mine. We made it, he said proudly, it’s what we were doing yesterday, turns out it’s not hard to reach a fair breaking strain. It was heavy on my collarbones, itchy on my neck. He tied it behind me, somewhere between my shoulder blades, and caught some of my greasy hair in the knot. Not the hangman’s knot, said the Prof, it wasn’t meant to break the neck, remember? A slow dying, strangulation, in the end. We won’t tie her hands yet, the Prof said, don’t want you falling over on the way, do we Silvie?
I couldn’t look up. With a rope lying around my neck, I couldn’t meet his eyes. He took a picture of me. As I looked away I caught Pete’s grin.
Silvie, said Dan, Silvie, are you really OK with this, are you sure about it? Of course she is, said Dad, she knows we won’t hurt her, she’s not stupid.
Silvie, said Dan.
I nodded. Yeah, it’s OK.
You lead her, Bill, said the Professor, after all I suppose she’s your sacrifice.
The shadows were long in the grass, the whole moorland low and still in slanting yellow light. In the east the trees stood dark against the sky and all the colours were fading. A late flight of birds winged the air, homeward bound.
Dad walked in front of me, so that the rope pulled and loosened on the back of my neck and was always before my eyes. I could feel my hair catching and tangling around it but when I tried to gather my hair in my hand I lost my balance and stumbled. That’s what’ll happen if you don’t watch where you’re going, said Dad. Silvie, said Dan, you all right? Yeah, I said, fine.
When I could stay in step with Dad, the rope’s loop swung between us, but mostly I couldn’t and it tautened and fell, its shadow scribbling over the heather along the path. When we got to the bog, I thought, they – Dad, probably – would tie my hands behind my back, and the rope would be scratchy. The bog people didn’t struggle, went with dignity. Don’t fight, don’t panic. I remembered then Dad saying the blindfolds and gags were to protect the killers from the dying, but I didn’t know any curses and I didn’t think they, Dad and the Prof, would be scared of what was behind my eyes.
Behind me, Pete and Dan began to beat their drums, a rhythm slower than my heart but too fast for my feet.
We came to the bog. The sun was still above the rocks, there was still time. Strip her, said the Prof. Dad turned me to face the darkening water while the others watched him tie my wrists behind me. I held them back-to-back for him and immediately regretted it; my fingers would have liked the comfort of each other’s grasp. The boys were drumming still, the beat spreading across the dim moor, pulsing through marsh and reed, under the small shelter of the heather towards the mound on the horizon. There, said Dad. It was too tight, but perhaps any rope around your wrists is too tight. I found myself standing straighter, shoulders back. A wind came licking over the cotton grass, lifted my hair. And her legs, said Dad. Not yet, said the Prof, that comes later. Unless she tries to fight. Turn her to face us.
The drums beat. The chanting began. I didn’t join in this time but stood before them, bound and yet now no longer afraid or ashamed. Here I am then. So kill me.
They put a fresh flint blade to my hairline. There on her face for the shame of it maybe, I remembered Dad saying. Dad took his hunting knife to my arm, looked me in the face as he pressed down. Here and here, just done for the pain like. I held his gaze. The moon rose, full. They came at me with sticks raised and I lost my balance and fell on the water’s edge, was set on my feet again for more. For as long as I could, I watched the infinitesimal progress of the moon along the darkening sky, listened to the calls of the last birds crossing the cool of the evening. There was pain. They had a pile of stones, ready.
Molly brought two policemen as well as Trudi. I was still standing with the bog at my back which meant that I saw the torches coming up the moor and said nothing, gave no warning. Which meant that it was my fault when they arrested Dad.
TRUDI AND MOLLY untied the ropes. They had brought a blanket to wrap around me, although I was not cold, and they led me away, the light of Trudi’s torch scrolling the path ahead as the sun, at last, left us to the dark and the moon. It’s over, Silvie, said Molly, we’re looking after you now. Angry male voices came on the rising wind.
A police car and a small red car sat by the gate where the moorland track came down to the lane. Here, said Trudi, Molly, would you sit in the back with Silvie? If you’re all right with it, Silvie, we’ll just pop you round to the doctor now, he’s waiting to check you over, and then I’m taking you back to my house for the night. You’ll have to share with Molly but you’ll be safe and dry. It’s dry outside, I thought, but I said what about Mum, and my dad, he won’t like it. And I don’t need a doctor, really, I’m fine. Someone will tell your mum, said Trudi, and as for your dad – well, he should just be glad to know that you’re being cared for. Don’t worry about him. The doctor’s no bother, he’s already been called, might as well have him look at you. It might help later, Silvie.
Molly and I hadn’t fastened our seat belts and we bumped and leaned together as Trudi flung her car around corners and over hills. No, I said, I don’t want to, I don’t need anyone looking at me. Are you quite sure about that, Silvie, said Trudi. Are you sure there’s nothing you might wish we’d recorded, later? Someone cut you, didn’t they, and I saw a stick in that boy’s hand. Pete, I said, that was Pete, Dan left, quite early. Before the – the knife. Yeah, I’m sure. The car swung again, lurched. Molly put her arm around me. You’re OK now, she said. I went to the phone box and called my mum and she said call the police and find Trudi. What will the police do, I said, to my dad? Trudi glanced back in the dark. Whatever they think best, she said, Molly did the right thing and it’s out of our hands now. Branches and green leaves stood out spotlit as we rounded a corner. We slowed, turned, bumped along uneven ground. The handbrake squawked as Trudi pulled it up. She turned off the engine but left the lights on as she said Silvie, people will be asking you this again in the next few days but I have to ask you one more time, how much did they hurt you, apart from those cuts did anyone touch you in ways you didn’t like or didn’t want? No, I said, no, there was nothing, they did ask me and I could have said no. Are you quite sure about that, she said, because you know in some cases we might want to take some samples, to do an examination, before you get in the shower? We can go over to the surgery right now, it won’t take long, I could do the exam myself if you prefer. No, I said, no, there was nothing like that. He’s my d
ad. I don’t need to see a doctor. Yes, Trudi said, if you’re certain, if you’re quite sure.
In her untidy sitting room, Trudi took out her midwife’s bag and cleaned the cuts on my arm with something that stung. Close your eyes, she said, the one here doesn’t look too bad. She handed me a white cotton dressing like a sanitary pad. Apply pressure, she said, the bleeding’s pretty much stopped anyway, I’ll dress those properly when you’ve had a shower, don’t think we need stitches. They hurt again, blood trickled, when I took a shower in Trudi’s pink bathroom, raised my stiff arms to wash my hair in some stuff with a grown-up smell. I craned to see in the mirror the marks on my back fading, and the soft cream towel barely hurt my legs although my arm left smears of blood on it. There were sore patches now on my wrists and maybe some bruises coming but Trudi was right, the cut on my face was barely there at all, a red biro line already taut. I wrapped the towel around me when she knocked on the door and came in with a gust of cold air and a clean nightie and the dressing for my arm. I saw her glance at my shoulders but she said nothing. Here we go then, let’s get those cuts covered, shall we.
Trudi had made up a bed on the floor for Molly, beside the single bed which she said was for me, and when I came out of the bathroom in the nightie, Moll sat up. Oh Silvie, she said, the marks are still there, you poor love, and she knelt and touched my thighs with her cool fingers. I looked down at her golden hair, her breasts free under a borrowed T-shirt, and she stood up and held me, her arms gentle against my back. I laid my face against her hair and thought that as I breathed in I could still somehow catch inside me the scent of her bog myrtle crown. Stay with me, I said, please, just tonight. She moved away and pulled back the worn brown duvet cover for me. Lie down, she said, I’ll be on the outside, you’ll know I’m between you and everything else, and then she curled around me, her bare legs cradling mine, her fingers at rest on my belly, her breathing warm on my shoulder, and I lay watching the full moon and then the dawn through the ivy-framed window of Trudi’s cottage the rest of that short summer night.
Acknowledgements
This book began in two places: the first when I participated in a residency in Northumberland to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Hexham Literary Festival. I thank Susie Troup for inviting me and looking after me there; Claire and Hilary of Cogito Books in Hexham for their kindness to a wandering writer; Wendy Breach at Bridge House for providing the perfect base. Most of all I thank Andy Bates, who taught me everything I know about leather, replicas and re-enactment, and introduced me to the bog people. All errors of fact or probability are my own, but most of the truths are ones he told me.
My second inspiration was the ‘Scotland’s People’ exhibition in the National Museum of Scotland, where I went to spend time with the possessions and bodies of Iron and Bronze Age residents of the borderlands. I am grateful to Dr Fraser Hunter, Principal Curator of Iron Age and Roman Collections, who took some trouble to find and send me Pat McGuire’s haunting notes for the ‘Dead and Sometimes Buried’ exhibition when I suddenly decided I needed them.
I thank my colleagues in the Warwick Writing Programme and in the English Department at Warwick: Will Eaves, Maureen Freely, AL Kennedy, Tim Leach, Tina Lupton, David Morley and Chantal Wright.
Thank you, as always, to Sinéad Mooney for early reading; to Kathy MacDonald for archaeological conversations; to Anna Webber at United Agents for sage counsel and afternoon tea as well as excellent representation; to everyone at Granta Books, especially the brilliant Lamorna Elmer, and Max Porter, my editor and my friend.
Copyright
Granta Publications, 12 Addison Avenue, London, W11 4QR
First published in Great Britain by Granta Books, 2018
Text copyright © Sarah Moss, 2018
The right of Sarah Moss to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved.
This book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publisher, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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