A Song Twice Over

by Brenda Jagger

  She paid no need to that nor to any of the other threats and recriminations he muttered as she ran beside him over the rough ground, jarring her ankles on stones and spiky grasses but keeping on going, running headlong to anyone, anywhere, gipsies or vagabonds or thieves, who might help her. She was aware of pain without really suffering it. She had no time for that. She had several vital and most specific things to do. Get to Daniel. Set him free. Tell him she had not betrayed him. Kill Christie Goldsborough. And if Ned meant to kill him too, as seemed likely, then she would just have to make sure she got to him first.

  But she had fallen some way behind when she saw the band of ‘physical force’men marching like a spectral battalion out of the dark, Ned falling in beside them and muttering urgently enough to make them change direction. They had agreed to go after Daniel, and she with them, desperate to keep them in view since she was completely lost by now in a night that was growing blacker and most unseasonably cold.

  They were not heavily armed. Only sticks and pickaxe handles, rather than their home-made pikes, but it was enough to put the fear of death into the special constables – only young bank-clerks and solicitors’and merchants’sons after all, enrolled for the occasion – when they breasted the hill and came roaring down on them, yelling Chartist slogans and ‘Vive la République’.

  Cara had seen enough violence to know that one never took in the whole of it, that it became fragmented, split, distorted, a raucous confusion lasting an eternity and over in moments, into which she plunged headlong as she had been doing all evening, regardless of the blows and curses thudding all around her, ready to walk through anything or anyone to get to Daniel and somehow getting there, to throw herself on her knees behind him and claw, with her strong, dressmaker’s fingers, at the cord about his wrists.

  Urgency was all that was in her now. The ‘specials’were giving ground, scattering, she could see that. But there might be others. Might well be soldiers somewhere nearby in the hills, a squadron of dragoons like the one used to such lethal effect in Bradford, coming at full gallop to ride them, and then to cut them down. Hurry then. Hurry with this damnable cord some nervous young idiot had pulled so tight. She could hear Daniel breathing heavily and felt a tremor of pain in him. Well, she was hurting herself too, splitting her nails and her fingertips so that when she finally tore the knot apart there was blood on it and on Daniel’s shirt cuffs, blood on her hands. Both his and hers.

  ‘Run,’ she yelled at him.

  ‘I didn’t believe what he said about you,’ he yelled back.

  What did that matter now?

  ‘Run,’ she shrieked. ‘Go. I’ll be all right. Run.’

  And when he caught hold of her hands to take her with him she wrenched them free. ‘No. I can’t keep up with you. I’d slow you down. Go.’

  ‘Cara …’

  ‘For Christ’s sake …’ Putting her bloodstained hands against his chest she pushed him as hard as she could and ran away in the opposite direction stopping for breath only when she saw a knot of ‘physical force’men close in around him and disappear, all together, into the night.

  They would know about the soldiers. They too would wish to move fast, not caring to go up against military sabres with their walking sticks. Having saved Daniel they would now, very naturally, set about saving themselves. Suddenly she was alone on an empty battlefield, the wind getting up, a weight of darkness falling around her until she came upon one of those hollow basins in the land walled in by high and always unexpected moorland stones, and saw, in a brief unveiling of the moon, that she had reached a killing-ground.

  The moon went in again and quickly, her own life perhaps depending upon it, she stepped back into the shadow of the most distant rock and froze there, her very breathing suspended, as she watched the half-circle of men close in upon their quarry. Ned O’Mara, former champion of the bare-knuckle boxing ring, and five others, big, gnarled men, every one of them, with the long arms and wide shoulders of manual labour, the blank half-mesmerized expressions of those about to perform an act of ritual slaughter. Not Chartists, these. Just men who had been branded as trouble makers and had allowed their grievances to fester. Men who hated authority, the millmaster, the landlord, and who had cornered themselves a prime member of the species now in Christie Goldsborough.

  Six of them moving very slowly towards him and Christie moving just as slowly away until his back was against the rock. The moon came out again and she saw him in what – in that dark place – seemed almost a flash of light, saw the sudden white gleam as he smiled, the white of his shirt as he threw back his cloak and shrugged it off.

  ‘Gentlemen …?’ he said.

  Once again she could do nothing but press herself against cold stone and wait. For murder to be done, this time, there seemed no doubt of that. Murder which reached her ears as panting, hot and animal through the gloom as he went down beneath the first hammer blows of those dozen fists, striking in unison, to be trampled into the earth by a dozen booted feet. And then their six dark, intent figures crouching over him, mangling and mauling like hounds worrying a fox, inflicting a far more leisurely and lethal damage now as systematically, almost lovingly, they reduced the great landlord of St Jude’s to a bundle of bleeding rags.

  She had not the least conception of how long it lasted. Time, like her breathing, being held in suspension, put in abeyance until first one, then two of them, broke away from the circle of human sacrifice, blood-lust cooling to a point where it was no more than a common beating and they had had enough of it.

  ‘Come on, lads.’ Somebody was calling to them from the brow of the hill. One of the ‘physical force’men she thought, for whom violence was strictly a political, never a personal matter and who, by his tone of voice, did not approve of this. He shouted something else she did not catch. Something more urgent. And even then Ned O’Mara launched a final kick from his studded, steel-toed boot before shambling away into the night, stumbling and cursing and needing a drink now, she supposed, far more than anything else.

  Christie remained very still. So did she. ‘Some day you’ll go too far.’ How often had she told him that? ‘Some day you’ll strip somebody too bare.’ So it had been Ned.

  Releasing her breath, almost learning to breathe again, she stayed a while longer in the shadows, doubting her ability to move had she even wished to try. Which she did not. Yet – eventually – she had to acknowledge that Ned might well come back again. And if he saw her here and had enough energy left, she thought he would probably rape her. What better way, after all, to round off his revenge? Christie dead on the ground. Christie’s woman used and humiliated and then left to die beside him. She knew how much that would appeal to Ned. She had better get away, then. Quickly, while she could still tell herself, with conviction, that he was dead and beyond any help she could give him. While she could just tiptoe away without looking, without having to reproach herself later …? Could she? Damnation. Why not?

  Emerging from her shelter she walked gingerly towards him, treading on eggshells, and knelt on the churned-up ground where he lay curled in what she knew to be an attempt to protect the most vital parts of himself against impossible odds, his knees drawn up to his chest, his arms around his head, trying to save his eyes and teeth and his brain at the sacrifice of his ribs.

  But they had managed to kick him in the face just the same, she noticed, blood pouring – as the blood of dead men did not flow – from his nose, one cheek gashed to the bone, one eye blackened and closed, the other cheek embedded with grit, made hideous by torn and hanging strips of skin. His ribs were certainly broken. The tortured scrape of his breathing told her that. One arm too, she thought, by the awkward set of it. What else?

  He was not dead. But if she left him to lie here she knew he would not last the night. For if the cold and damp failed to finish him off, and Ned O’Mara did not return, the hills were full of tramps and vagabonds who would make short work of him for the rings on his fingers and the money he wou
ld have in his pockets. Could she leave him long enough to fetch help? She thought not. Could she even be sure of finding him again, one stretch of moorland looking very much like another in the dark?

  She would have her work cut out, she thought grimly, to find Frizingley itself, let alone a man huddled in the shadow of a rock. Where was it? Somewhere to the left – surely? – and then downhill? She hoped so. Dare she even risk the road? Glancing down at him she decided she would have to. He was a big, solid, well-nourished man. And heavy. Oh Lord – Dear Lord. What a farce life was. What a tragedy.

  It no longer even entered her mind to leave him where he lay.

  ‘You’ll have to get up, Christie.’

  He was conscious and the obscenity he groaned at her made her smile.

  ‘Yes you will. Come on. I don’t care how much it hurts you. And neither do you. Because if you don’t make the effort you’ll die. Ned O’Mara will be back when he’s had another drink or two, with his axe to grind – right in your skull, I reckon. And if he doesn’t get you, then some tinker will come along and cut your throat as soon as look at you, for that gold medallion you wear, and your gold rings. So get up, Christie. Come on. Let’s hurry up about it, shall we?’

  ‘I’m coming,’ he said.

  If he fainted from the pain and effort she had no idea what she would do with him, his unconscious weight being totally beyond either her physical powers or her ingenuity. But at last she had him half-sitting, half-lying on a low rock while she wrapped his cloak around him to ease his shivering and hide the blood all over his shirt front. All over the front of her dress too, and her sleeves, seeping through the soft fabric to stain her chest and her arms, running down her hands. Giving her a brief and disturbing sensation of familiarity.

  When had this happened before? Because it had already happened, exactly like this. This same man. This same blood making patches of gore on her bodice; disgusting her. Although she had held on – that other time – just as she was doing now.

  The same thing? When? Her head swam with a spasm of dizziness and then cleared. Of course. On the night he had put the dog in her arms. The fighting dog which had lost the fight. One ear torn off. One leg horribly mangled. The ugliest, most vicious, most ungrateful brute in the world. That was it. The night of her twentieth birthday, eight years ago. ‘Happy Birthday, Miss Adeane.’ And, without any warning, he had tossed her that wounded carcase which even then, as she had clutched it and held it instead of letting it fall, had snarled and tried to bite her. And had been snarling at her ever since.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Stir yourself. You’re supposed to be a hard man, aren’t you? Put your arm around my shoulder – and get on your feet.’

  And even though she was prepared for it the weight of him crushed her, as the weight of the dog had made her gasp and stagger on that other night. But she had carried it, nonetheless, up the hill of St Jude’s, cursing and grumbling at every step, fretting about the bloodstains on her one good dress. Without the least idea what she meant to do with him when she got there.

  It had simply not occurred to her to put him down.

  The first steps he took now were so drunken, his breath grating so painfully through his shattered chest that, for a moment, hope left her.

  But he did not intend to die.

  Neither did she. And the fusion of their two wills produced, not a weapon, but a crutch adequate – if only barely – to their needs. She made no attempt to spare him pain. She had no time to discover the nature and exact location of his injuries. She simply grabbed him where she could and staggered on while her own strength lasted, her back-bone endured, her heart went on beating, her head remained steady enough to locate first the road and then which of its various twists and turns would lead her to Frizingley.

  She would be quite safe, of course, to ask help of any passing carriage. None came. She stumbled on. Not thinking. Enduring. As he was doing. If he fell she knew she could not pick him up. If she turned her ankle on a stone …? Thoughts. Suppositions. Useless things. If she paid any heed to them she would simply sit down and die. Of fright. Or violence. Or cold. And it was only speculation. Reality was the iron bar of his arm tearing a path of muscles from the nape of her neck and along her shoulders, the sound of breath rising through splintered bone, the jarring at the base of her spine with every slow, dragging step he took, the pounding and aching in her head and chest. Reality was the almost unbearable ferocity of his undamaged will, the complete absence of mercy with which it drove his wounded body on. Her will, too.

  It did not occur to her to drop him.

  It did not occur to him to fall.

  The first sight of St Jude’s hill in the distance came to her like a mirage in the desert. She did not believe it. Yet, ten agonizing minutes more, and there it was, grimy, squalid, incredibly – if only for that one night of her life – beautiful and blessed.

  ‘Leave me now,’ he said, ‘and run down to the Fleece.’

  But somebody could cut his throat here as easily as on the moor, for the same reasons.

  ‘No. Come on.’

  ‘You are saving my life, Adeane. I wonder why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She was speaking the truth.

  Down the hill of St Jude’s where drunken and wounded men abounded they were an unremarkable couple. And it was downhill now, no more rabbit-holes and the sudden, icy plunge into a moorland stream hidden in coarse grass. Just uneven, sharp-sided cobbles, gutters running foul with sewage, indifferent passers-by who did not recognize their landlord as he hobbled and groaned and cursed his way home.

  She took him in through the back door of the Fleece, knowing he would not care to be seen in the station hotel in this condition, spreading consternation among the pot-boys and barmaids who were all strangers to her now until Oliver Rattrie came hurrying down the passage, smooth and suave and painfully elegant, the strong musky scent of him – copied from Christie – mingling with the blood and mud and sweat to turn her stomach.

  ‘My word – Good Heavens.’ But Oliver Rattrie, who had seen his mother die of disease and childbirth, his father hanged by suicide, his brothers and sisters carried off to the workhouse where they had died like flies, one after the other, of ‘workhouse fever’, was not the man to be moved by a few broken bones and a little gore. Not the man to be moved by anything at all, these days, as he glided smoothly through the ‘administrative tasks’ of rent collecting and eviction which Christie had set him. A power in St Jude’s, Mr Oliver Rattrie. A man to be reckoned with. To whom the proper reception of his injured master, the whisking away of curious onlookers, and the calling of a doctor, were simple matters. Nor did the requirements of his master’s mistress prove beyond him.

  ‘I will have them send up hot water, Miss Adeane. And then tea – or something stronger? – by the fire. And we should all feel easier, I think, if you would permit the doctor to have a look at you, too. Such an ordeal. My goodness.’

  She was taken to the sitting-room – now Oliver’s – which had once been Christie’s; Christie himself in the room next door. Now Oliver’s too, she supposed. She sat down by the fire – a fire in July? This too he had copied from Christie – took off her shoes and tried hard, because her mind had emptied now of its immediate fear and pain, to fill it only with inconsequential things. Anything that was not Daniel – where was he? How was he? Not Christie, standing in the inn door, smiling at her and killing her with his ‘Thank you, Cara. I’ll make it worth your while, of course.’ Not Christie, bleeding all over her dress. Not that damned dog, doing the same thing, years ago.

  Why did she keep on remembering that? Why should it mean so much to her? She had been a green girl then, not half so clever as she pretended. And smooth, suave Oliver with his musky African perfume and his roaring log fire had been a scabby, flea-bitten urchin playing barefoot in the St Jude’s gutters and stealing rainwater from her barrels.

  And Daniel? Footloose and light of heart, fond of Justice, of
course, but madly in love with Fun and Freedom. Only Christie had been the same, all those years ago. Or was it that he had not appeared to change because he allowed no one close enough to notice? Well, he had nearly died tonight, and although he hadn’t pleaded with her to save him she had saved him nevertheless. Just like the dog. Would it make amends to the demon in him for finding her with Daniel? His woman with another man. Had that been it? The jewel he had polished and faceted for his own pleasure running around the moor in a plain wool dress without her petticoats, like the common trollop she used to be? But she had saved his life at the risk of her own. Her motives being uncertain, her feelings in such confusion that – oh, God dammit – she hardly knew where she was and certainly not why. There had been tremendous changes tonight. Tremendous forces. It had been one of those central pivots, those key experiences, after which things might be better or worse but never quite the same again.

  Getting up she walked through into the familiar bedroom and stood by the bed.

  He was lying on one side, his back towards her, one bulky shoulder visible above the heavy quilts, his head in profile on the satin pillow in evident pain, one eye bandaged over, the other closed.

  ‘Cara …?’

  She thought that he made an effort to turn towards her.

  ‘Yes?’

  Reaching down she put her hand carefully, lightly, on his shoulder and bent over him, a gesture which held all the beginnings of concern, which might have become very concerned indeed had not his body suddenly stiffened beneath her touch, his one eye shooting open and glaring as balefully as ever that damnable, vicious brute of a dog had glared, first at her and then at Oliver Rattrie who was hovering solicitously behind her.

  ‘Get that woman out of here, Oliver,’ he snarled, ‘and see to it she doesn’t come back.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six