Through the dark streets, he walked to his brother’s house at Lodge Road. To his relief, the rucksack, together with the rifles and ammunition he and Steven had carried from Gillingham, lay untouched in the kitchen.
He looked quickly through the house, gathering items he thought might be useful in an escape. As he walked up the stairs to the second floor, moonlight streamed through the upstairs passage window, illuminating the photographs lining the hall. One in particular caught his attention: the framed photograph he’d sent to Paul as a gift a year before the pandemic. It was an enlargement of one Mark kept in the wallet Jasper had confiscated, and it featured Jane, Zach and Nicole.
Mark lifted the photograph from the wall and slipped it into the rucksack. He was feeling extremely homesick. It would be midday in New Zealand. He wondered what Jane, his grandchildren, his brother Christopher, his nieces and their children were doing, and how they were.
He was also feeling hungry. Gathering up the rifles, he walked out of the front door, sat on the doorstep in the moonlight and ate a tin of beans he’d found in the rucksack. Then he filled a water bottle from the water butt beside the greenhouse, slung the rifles and pack over his shoulder and began his journey back to Haver Park.
When he reached the White Horse Inn, close to where he intended to re-enter the park, he groped his way into the deserted building and stumbled up the stairs to one of the guest bedrooms on the second floor. He took the water bottle and the framed family photograph out of the rucksack and slipped them inside his tunic. Finally he put the rucksack, rifles and ammunition in an empty wardrobe and closed the door.
It was one-thirty in the morning by the time he’d retraced his steps back across the park and along the wire fence and had dropped onto the outer limit of the figure of eight loop. He made his way back to the hollow oak tree, where he deposited the water bottle and his precious photograph, and retrieved the fox’s tail.
Then he wearily walked further along his figure of eight track for half an hour, trampled down a patch of bracken and made a crude bed of ferns. His sleep was fitful; he was afraid he would sleep too long and not complete the rest of his night’s work. At four-thirty he woke and jogged slowly around the whole of the double loop, dragging the fox’s tail behind him. He wanted to be sure the trail was fresh.
Having completed the circuit, he retraced his steps back along the track he’d used to run away from Haver House the day before. He arrived at the brow of the hill as the families were preparing to leave their quarters for breakfast. He could see Greg on the tower above the West Gate. He was reading a magazine instead of keeping watch.
Mark’s timing was perfect; he stood on the brow of the hill and hollered at the top of his voice. ‘Hey, Sir Damian, you haven’t given up, have you?’
He caught the attention of those whose windows overlooked the park; the occupants of the rooms began to wave enthusiastically and cheer. His bravado was greeted with a burst of machine gun fire from the top of the tower. He jumped aside and rolled away. He hadn’t anticipated the bullets. Neither had he expected the cheering. He picked himself up and zigzagged his way over the ridge and out of sight.
However, most of all, he hadn’t anticipated the sound of yelping dogs and the thundering of horse’s hooves as they swept through the gates of the West Tower towards him. He had expected the brothers to commence their search after breakfast. But keen to escape their father’s scorn, Jasper, Damian and Miles had decided to make an early start — leaving the unfit Greg to man the gun on the tower.
The dogs were running loose and baying for blood. Mark knew if they caught him he would be badly mauled, and he doubted whether the brothers would call them off. He found himself running for his life; twice he fell over in his haste to get away. He reached the oak tree with only seconds to spare and, with no time to gain the safety of the hollow, pressed himself against the trunk of the tree. Fortunately the brothers didn’t look up; their attention was concentrated ahead as they followed the dogs, anticipating the yelping that would accompany their quarry’s successful capture.
As soon as they’d passed, Mark scrambled a few branches higher and slipped down into his hiding place. He hadn’t given himself up because he wanted the brothers to remain in the park hunting for him for another day. He didn’t want it to occur to them that he might have left the park. If they suspected, and set off to investigate, there was the possibility that the dogs might pick up his trail and discover the rifles hidden at the White Horse Inn.
Keeping the Chatfield brothers searching for him within the walls of the park for another day was his insurance policy. By encouraging them to follow him again, and to discover the trampled bracken where he’d slept and the extension to his tracks, he felt sure they’d assume he’d spent the night in the park.
Despite the longer track, the use of the horses and free-running dogs brought the brothers back under the tree within the hour. Fortunately for Mark, the log beneath his tree had become the brothers’ designated meeting point and once again he was privy to their conversation.
‘He’s got to be in the trees,’ Miles said.
‘We’ll follow the same routine as yesterday,’ Jasper said, as he dismounted from his horse. ‘We’ll walk sixty feet apart around the whole track.’
‘Walk?’ Damian complained.
‘We can’t control the dogs from the horses. We’ll leave the horses here and go around on foot with the dogs on leashes.’
‘I’m not jogging today,’ Damian said as he slid reluctantly from his horse. ‘There’s no rush, we’ve got all day.’
‘And all night if necessary,’ Miles added.
‘No, we haven’t,’ Jasper corrected him. ‘His Lordship wants us back before the evening meal. There was no one in the hall last night and the informer reported that the peasants were having a field day at our expense — and I expect she only gave us half the story.’
Mark listened intently, hoping for more information about the informant’s identity, but they didn’t mention her again.
‘Those Kiwis have caused us more trouble in the last three weeks than we’ve had in three years,’ Miles muttered as he dismounted.
‘Well, let’s make sure that one of them doesn’t give us any more trouble,’ Damian said. ‘Once we’ve flushed him out, the dogs can have him.’
‘They’ll kill him,’ Miles cautioned.
‘We’ll just say the dogs got him before we could call them off. No one will ever know.’
‘First we’ve got to catch him,’ Jasper reminded his brothers. ‘Let’s call in the dogs and get the leashes on.’
The brothers tethered the horses to the log and, leading two dogs each, they set off. Damian followed Killer and an outsized pit bull terrier along the track while Miles and Jasper took their positions on either side. On Jasper’s command they began to move forward. They went slowly, searching the trees thoroughly. It seemed an age before they’d finally cleared the stand of oaks.
When they’d moved out of sight, Mark realised for the first time that he was shaking. The brothers’ declared intention to release the dogs filled him with dread. He couldn’t stay in the tree indefinitely, and he couldn’t leave the park and head back to Archangel without Steven. Yet he knew that if he got out of the tree and was caught, he was in mortal danger.
He considered running back up the track that led to Haver House, but he’d be risking another burst of machine-gun bullets. Given Greg’s anger, he doubted if holding his hands above his head in surrender would save him.
It was nearly lunchtime before he caught a glimpse of the brothers at the far end of the figure of eight loop. By that time he’d devised a plan; it offered him only a slim chance, but at least it was something.
He finished the last of the water from his bottle, retrieved the fox’s tail and the framed photograph from the bottom of the hollow and slipped them inside his tunic. Then he dropped down onto the track, walked to where the horses were tethered, untied Damian’s horse, and swung up
into the saddle.
He trotted the horse a short distance along the track and then swung at right angles away from the centre of the circle. Away from the track, well outside the outer circle the brothers were walking, he manoeuvred the horse alongside a tree and, careful not to touch the ground or let go of the reins, clambered onto the lower branches. As soon as Damian’s horse was pointing back towards the track, he gave it a slap on the rump. Startled, the horse bolted towards the track, but unfortunately it slowed and finally stopped to feed halfway between the tree Mark was hiding in and the track. He’d hoped the horse would make its way back to the other two, but it didn’t.
As the brothers completed their traverse of the loop, they must have noticed the horse was loose and immediately become suspicious. Damian released Killer, who followed the horse’s trail and sniffed around the base of the tree Mark was hiding in before continuing along the trail.
If Damian hadn’t been so exhausted, and had stayed with Killer rather than setting him loose, he would surely have noticed the dog hesitate. Then undoubtedly he would have discovered Mark hiding. As it was, Killer simply followed the trail back to the other two horses.
Mark was too far away to hear the brothers’ conversation but he could see them clearly. They rested on the log for about half an hour arguing among themselves. Then, to Mark’s relief, they let the dogs off their tethers, mounted their horses and began another circuit of the track, this time in the opposite direction.
As soon as they were safely out of range, Mark dropped from his hiding place and began a long, circuitous route to the southern corner of the wall that enclosed Haver House. It was a stressful journey. As he walked he listened for the pounding of horses’ hooves and the baying of dogs. Fortunately the brothers remained convinced he was hiding somewhere along the figure of eight track, and continued riding round and round the loop.
It was late afternoon by the time Mark reached the southern corner of the wall and began making his way towards the West Gate. He knew the wall hid him from Greg at the top of the tower. Part-way along the wall stood huge iron gates that allowed a view from the gardens out into the park. Mark reached the gap and peered cautiously around the stone pillar. His heart began to race; Nigel was sitting in the garden reading a book, not far from the opening. Allison sat opposite him, cross-stitching.
Mark looked anxiously at his watch. He needed to be back at the West Gate when his brother’s gardening party returned to Lawn Court. Time was running out.
He waited a few more minutes, but there was no sign of Nigel and Allison leaving. He was trapped again. There was no time to find another route back to the West Gate; he had no option but to crawl on his belly along the bottom of the gates about ten paces from where Nigel and Allison were sitting.
Nigel appeared engrossed in his book. His rifle was leaning against his chair and his pistol holster was unclipped. With three of his four sons away, he looked nervous. When Mark was halfway across the gap, Allison looked up and saw him. She gasped with fright.
‘What did you say?’ Nigel asked, looking up from his book. Mark tried to force himself down into the earth, wishing the ground would swallow him. He had no idea how Nigel would react if he found him sneaking past his gate, but guessed he might well shoot him out of either rage or panic.
‘Nothing, I just pricked myself with the needle,’ Allison said quickly, putting her finger in her mouth.
‘Silly cow,’ Nigel muttered as he returned to his book.
Mark waited a few seconds before continuing his perilous journey. Once he’d gained the sanctuary of the pillar on the other side of the gates he sighed with relief. He was alive, and now he knew there were two people in the community he could trust — Allison and Fergus.
He reached the western corner of the wall as Paul and his family began cleaning their tools and preparing to re-enter the house through the West Gate. He hugged the stone wall, remaining out of sight of Greg at the top of the tower. Even his own family did not notice him; for once the grey of his tunic was an advantage. Undetected, he reached some gooseberry bushes on the edge of the gardens where he waited. A few minutes later, as the gardening party passed his hiding position on their way towards the gate, he slipped in behind them.
‘Good day’s gardening?’ he asked. They all spun around.
‘Where have you been?’ they asked in unison.
‘Keep walking, I’ll tell you later.’
Greg, tired and bored, gave the gardening party no more than a cursory glance from the top of the tower.
‘You’re not wearing your hat, Uncle Mark,’ Mary-Claire said.
‘That’s the least of my problems at the moment,’ he muttered.
‘You’re right there. We’d better get into our quarters before they catch up with us,’ Paul said, pointing towards the park where the three brothers, followed by their tired dogs, were coming over the rise. ‘You’ve just got time to wash and change before dinner,’ Paul continued, as they neared the entrance to the family’s quarters. ‘We’ve made up a room for you, come this way.’
He led Mark along the twisting corridors of the Grey family quarters to a small room that looked out over Lawn Court. It was the first time Mark had seen his quarters. Every night he’d been at Haver so far had been spent either in the prison cell, the Punishment Room or hiding in the park.
The room was sparsely furnished, containing a single bed and a small chest of drawers. The only other furniture was a wooden table supporting a jug of water, a bowl and an old cut-throat razor. A clean tunic and a towel lay on the bed.
‘I’ll be back in ten minutes,’ Paul said. ‘We’ll try to get you into the Great Hall before the brothers find you. You’ve really made them angry. I don’t fancy your chances if they get hold of you when you’re alone.’
As Paul hurried away, Mark took out the precious framed photograph he’d secreted in his tunic and propped it on the chest of drawers beside his bed. He scraped the worst of the stubble from his face, washed, changed, tied the fox’s tail round his waist, tucked the end of it in his pocket, and joined the rest of the family as they set off for dinner.
As they entered the Great Hall, Mark let the fox’s tail fall from his pocket and trail behind him on the floor. There was whispering all around the hall as members of the other families noticed him. A chair squeaked in the Minstrel Gallery as Greg stood up to investigate. The whispers died down immediately. He looked around the hall, but as Mark was sitting with his back to the Minstrel Gallery, Greg saw nothing amiss.
The families had waited in silence for nearly half an hour before Nigel, Jasper, Damian, Miles and Allison arrived. As they entered, everyone stood up.
‘Sit,’ Nigel snapped, barely glancing at them.
The directive to sit also indicated permission to talk. There was an unusually noisy buzz of conversation in the hall as the community speculated on how Mark had returned to the house without being seen.
‘Less noise,’ Damian yelled.
The excited buzz continued but in whispered tones. The Chatfield family talked among themselves, reluctant to peer down into the hall. Mark guessed that they were afraid eyes would be staring back and mocking them.
The meal was almost finished when there was a tremendous commotion from the top table. Damian jumped to his feet, almost knocking over his chair in his haste.
‘He’s here, he’s here!’ he screamed, pointing down the hall towards Mark.
‘Hi, Sir Damian,’ Mark said, waving his hand.
‘What are you doing here?’ Jasper demanded.
‘Even a fox has to eat, Sir Jasper,’ he replied.
There was a ripple of laughter through the hall.
‘Get up here!’ Nigel yelled.
Mark stood up. Then he turned to Steven and said in a loud voice, ‘Would you kindly take your foot off my tail?’
There were peals of laughter as he walked up to the dais trailing the fox’s tail behind him.
‘Silence!’ Nigel snapped. The noise
died down immediately, though many were finding it hard to stop giggling. ‘Where have you been?’ Nigel demanded as Mark came up to the dais.
‘Running round and round the park like a lunatic.’
‘All this time?’
‘Of course. I did ask for a time limit, but Sir Damian said I had to keep going until he caught me. I’m afraid in the end I just got so hungry I had to come back for some food.’
‘How did you get back into the house?’
‘I walked through the West Gate.’
‘I didn’t see him!’ Greg shouted from the Minstrel Gallery.
‘Were you asleep?’ Mark asked, looking up towards him.
‘No, I wasn’t,’ Greg retorted.
Nigel looked accusingly up at his son.
‘How did you evade the dogs?’ Damian demanded.
‘Well,’ Mark said thoughtfully, ‘contrary to popular belief — Kiwis can fly.’
Steven, who was one of the few to get the joke about New Zealand’s flightless mascot, laughed out loud.
‘And Kiwis can also be insolent!’ Nigel shouted. ‘And for that you can have a week on the treadmill — starting now. Come on,’ he said to his sons. With that Nigel stood up and stormed out of the hall, followed by his family.
Mark took off the tail and threw it contemptuously on the top table. In his haste to get to the Punishment Room he hardly noticed the round of applause from his relatives.
‘What’s the hurry?’ Steven asked as he hurried after his father across Flag Court.
‘I don’t want those clowns escorting me across here. I’m likely to get a length of timber across my skull.’
‘I’ll share the shift tonight,’ volunteered Steven, keen to protect his father and to catch up on his news.
Blood Line: What if your family was the last left alive? (The Blood Line Trilogy Book 1) Page 26