by Maeve Friel
William was greatly shocked by what had happened. Now he knew how the hare or the fox or the deer felt when it heard the barking of the hounds behind it. He had seen men and women, neighbours and traders that he saw every day, turn against him for no reason. Even if they realised they had made off after the wrong person, he was too frightened to go back yet. Anyone might point a finger at him and start the chase again. William knew that it was not only the guilty who were punished: his own father was as far from England as it was possible to be for a crime he had not committed. Now Annie was missing, accused of being a thief too – and the name Spears was enough for everyone to jump to conclusions. William was certain his sister could not have stolen anything – he would kill her himself if she had – but he had to find her and talk to her. Ludlow was no longer a safe place for either of them.
They would both have to run away, he thought, though he could not for the life of him think where they could go or how to travel, since they had neither money nor friends to help them. Rich folk could take the mail coach and reach London in a day and a half, but what could outcast children do? It took about ten days to walk to the capital, people said, and that was if they could find their way and keep out of sight of the militia. He and Annie would be worse than tramps, turned away and despised wherever they went. Towns were safe enough places for those who belonged to them but not for a pair of penniless orphans. He had seen the people of Ludlow staring suspiciously at strangers, had seen the bailiffs march beggars off to the jailhouse. It would be the same for them in other towns.
He looked down at the river Teme, at the water gliding over the weir beside the mill. All rivers flow to the sea, he remembered from his school days. Where did the Teme go? he wondered. If there was a boat moored somewhere along the bank, perhaps he and Annie could reach the sea. No, he thought unhappily, you cannot hide from people’s prying eyes out on the middle of a river.
He wished there was someone he could trust, someone who would help them get away, but he could think of no one, not even Abraham Smart, the mad hatter, who would shield a thief from the law. Oh, what had Annie done to have got herself and himself into such trouble? he thought in exasperation. And where was she hiding?
Chapter 9
The chimney was a terrifying place. Wedged uncomfortably on the narrow ledge between the flues of the music room and the back parlour, Annie waited and listened to the sounds of the house. It was pitch black, a darkness that she had never known, for not a chink of daylight penetrated the chimney linings. It was not like that darkness of a room in the middle of the night when shapes and shadows gradually begin to make sense. She could see nothing. This was the darkness of the grave, Annie thought, and just as cold. The soot caught the back of her throat but she dared not so much as cough or clear her throat for fear someone in one of the rooms below should hear her. Every sound was magnified. She heard the bells of the parish church ring out every hour as Arthur had told her but she also heard footsteps running up and down the staircases, doors being flung open and closed, the raised voices of the servants and soldiers as they searched the house for her. She could hear little Paul-Marie crying, and wished someone would go and comfort him. All day carriages came and went.
Once, she heard someone entering the music room and thought her heart would stop with fright. She prayed it was not one of the maids come to light a fire, but whoever it was drew up a seat in front of the spinet and lazily picked out a few notes of a dance tune. She could hardly believe they could not hear her breathing and the thumping of her heart, and had almost made up her mind to come tumbling down into the hearth and give herself up except that the very thought of moving terrified her even more than fear of the gallows. The climb up to the ledge, pushing her back against the chimney wall and levering herself upwards with her feet, had worn her out. Her ankles, knees, shoulders, felt skinned and bloody. To go down again was certain to be hell. She truly wished she were dead. The hours seemed interminable.
But when the parish church bells at last rang out four o’clock in the afternoon, she knew she must do what Arthur had told her. She braced her feet and back against the chimney wall and began the slow, careful descent down the black hole into the music room, inch by painful inch, fearful that every scraping of her shoes, every laboured breath would bring someone scurrying into the room. At last, when she thought her strength would give out, her feet jammed against the iron hand holds just above the widening mouth of the inglenook fireplace. She looked down and saw the light coming up from the room. She gratefully let herself slide down the last few remaining feet.
Blinking away the soot that covered her eyes and face, she ran to the window as Arthur had told her to. It was a sash window, a modern style, not like the casement windows of the older houses that opened outwards. Panicking, she pushed and pulled at it with her black hands, terrified that she would never get it open, until she realised she had to push it up. It slid noiselessly upwards on its sash. Annie slipped over the ledge and dropped down, gasping in the sweet fresh air.
As her feet reached the ground, a hand closed over her mouth and something dark and heavy was flung around her shoulders. She was half-carried, half dragged away from the house. Too weak to resist, she let herself fall limply into her captor’s arms.
‘Come on, Annie,’ hissed a voice in her ear. ‘Don’t make it any more difficult for me than you have to. Walk properly – and don’t make a sound.’ It was Arthur.
Annie’s mind raced with a thousand questions. Why was Arthur arresting her now after he had allowed her to hide all day? Where was he taking her? Who was he taking her to? But above all, why?
He bundled her through the gates and under an archway into the castle gardens. Darkness had already fallen so the ladies and gentlemen who liked to stroll there had long since gone home. There was not a soul to be seen.
‘Right,’ he said, pushing a bundle into her arms, ‘I’ve brought you some food for your journey and your red cape. Wrap it tightly around you for you are trembling with the cold. It will keep you warm – and hide your dirty clothes from view for you have half the soot of Dinham on your dress and apron. Now the best way to go out of the town is …’
‘You’re not handing me back to the sergeant?’ Annie whispered. Her voice after all the hours of silence came out as a croak.
‘Of course not. Is that what you thought?’ Arthur pushed her hair back from her face.
‘Is everyone looking for me?’
‘They were looking for you but now they think hunger and cold will drive you out of hiding. A reward has been offered for your capture – but I doubt anyone will earn it. For you, Annie Spears, will shortly be in Bristol.’
‘Bristol?’ echoed Annie. The name meant nothing to her.
‘I have a brother, David, who is an ostler at the inn where all the coaches stop. The Lamb and Flag. Tell him I sent you. He will help you find work.’
‘But how ever shall I get to Bristol? How far is it from here?’
‘By a road no one will ever think of, so no one will follow you. By Offa’s Dyke.’
Annie frowned.
‘It is like a wall, Annie, a high bank built of earth by an ancient king long ago,’ explained Arthur. ‘It stretches from one end of Wales right to the other. All you have to do is follow the wall south, keeping high up on the hills and ridges, with Wales on your right and England on your left until you come down to the sea.’
Annie stared at him, confused and frightened. She knew nothing about the sea or travelling on hills and mountains. There might be wolves. ‘But, Arthur, where will I find this wall? And how long must I walk?’
‘At Knighton,’ he said, mentioning a small town a dozen miles from Ludlow, right on the border with Wales. ‘Four days’ walking from there will get you to the sea, I reckon.’
‘Four days?’ Annie was shaking from head to toe with fear and panic. Arthur nodded.
‘I had rather give myself up to the sergeant-at-arms and let myself rot in jail than climb moun
tains for four days, all alone.’ Tears rolled down her face.
‘But you will not be alone,’ said Arthur. ‘William will take you.’
‘William? Is he here?’ Annie sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve.
‘I found him up hiding in the shepherd’s hut earlier and told him what happened.’
‘William was hiding? Why?’
‘He’ll tell you the whole story himself when you see him. He is waiting for you now at the bottom of Corve Street by the bridge. God go with you both and bring you good luck.’ Arthur hugged her closely to him. ‘Be brave, Annie, and soon this will all be behind you. Now go quickly before we are seen together.’
Annie followed the path through the trees around the outside of the castle walls. She rushed headlong along the broad linney and down the old lane behind the churchyard where her mother and sister lay in their cold graves. As she came around the corner to the bridge across the river, a carriage went by but the driver did not give her a second glance. She could smell the unmistakable throat-tightening smell of the tannery yards by the river, that smell of leather that she had grown up with. A couple of men walked past her on the other side of the street. She recognised them, men who worked in the tanneries just a few hundred yards from her old burnt-out home, but they hurried past her as if she was a ghost, too taken up with their own conversation to pay attention to a small girl carrying a bundle of cloths.
This was the very edge of the town. Beyond it lay open countryside, and a road leading to places she had never been, for she had never been further from home than the meadows down by the riverbank where she used to play with William and Libby on summer afternoons. She crossed the bridge, looking right and left for any sign of her brother. A sheep in the field alongside her watched her and bleated inquisitively.
Where was William? And why was he not waiting for her? In the corner of her eye, she fancied someone or something moved. There was a flash, a dark shape scurrying past but when she turned back she saw nothing but the humpy uneven tussocks of grass and a few ewes huddled for comfort together by the hedge.
‘William,’ she called out in a low whisper.
There was no answer but, from in among the sheep, a figure stood up, a small boy wearing a top hat.
‘Hello, Annie,’ said Sam Price, ‘Give us a hand up. I’ve run away again and this time, it’s for good.’
‘So have I,’ said Annie, ‘and so has William, I think.’
At that moment, there was a whistle from the other side of the bridge and William came running towards them.
Chapter 10
That first night was long and hard for the three runaways. They left the town behind them and walked for hours along the old cattle drovers’ road in the direction of Knighton. At first Sam whined and whinged, complaining that the others were going too fast for him, but when William made it clear he must keep up or fall back on his own, he eventually stopped moaning. They plodded on, saving all their energy for placing one foot after another, never once stopping until they had left Ludlow well behind them. They crept around sleeping hamlets and the brooding shadows of churches, taking fright at every rustling in the ditches and every barking dog, but they need not have worried. In the cover of darkness, they had the whole countryside to themselves for every honest soul in the county was fast asleep in bed, and nothing moved except prowling foxes and snuffling badgers.
The worst thing, more than the cold biting wind, the pain in every limb and the hunger, was the fear that drove them on. Once, William stopped and said to Annie, ‘Did you do it?’
‘No!’ she answered, shrinking back from him for she thought he was going to hit her. ‘I had forgotten the tray I brought out to Sam weeks ago, the day he first ran away.’
‘Oh,’ said Sam, laying both his hands on his tummy, ‘what a feast that was, chicken and cheese and…’
‘So,’ interrupted William, ‘you stole the food?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Annie, ‘but Sam hadn’t eaten all day. You were there when we hid him in the shed.’
‘That alone would be enough for them to get you,’ said William grimly. ‘And it’s your word against theirs that you weren’t going to pawn the tray. You know that with our father already branded a criminal we daren’t put a foot wrong. How could you be so stupid? And why did you give Sam his food on a tray anyway?’
‘Oh William, don’t you see,’ Annie said, ‘it was easier to walk out of the kitchen with food all set out on a tray than with my apron pockets stuffed.’
They walked on in silence until Sam’s voice piped up in the darkness.
‘There was a woman from Diddlebury that was hanged for taking flax that was lying bleaching in a field.’ He sniffed. ‘And another boy from Clee Hill that was transported to Botany Bay for taking a snuff-box and an umbrella from the vicar’s house.’
Annie gasped. There was a loud groan as William’s boot shot out and caught Sam’s shin. Nobody spoke again, though Sam slipped his hand consolingly into Annie’s.
They trudged on through the darkness until they came to the milestone which told them Knighton was only one mile away. Ahead of them, rearing up into the night sky, were the stark outlines of the Welsh mountains. The town clock showed a quarter to midnight.
‘We’ll stop here,’ said William, ‘for I shan’t be able to make out the dyke until it’s light.’ The sight of the mountains had shaken him. When Arthur had told him about Offa’s Dyke, it had all seemed so easy, but now he was afraid he would never be able to recognise it. He looked at Annie who was gingerly examining the blisters on her ankles, and at Sam, shivering in his filthy, thin, ragged jacket. How would he ever find the trail and get them safely to the sea? They looked back at him with peaky, frightened expressions.
‘Cheer up,’ he said, forcing himself to smile. ‘Let’s find somewhere to shelter and have a bite to eat.’
There was a broken-down barn outside the town limits. Part of its roof had fallen in and the door was hanging off its hinges. The three children looked in at the bare, filthy floor. It did not look very comfortable.
‘Well,’ said Sam, at last, kicking a heap of dirty rags out of his way, ‘I’ve slept in worse places, I can tell you, and then got kicked out of them to climb chimneys. I am never, ever going to do that again. This is good enough for me.’
They slept fitfully there that night, all three waking at the slightest sound. The damp floor made Sam cough. Annie tossed and turned and made little whimpering noises as she dreamed. William fought with his conscience. As he had lain down on the ground, a chink from his trouser pocket had reminded him that he still had Abraham Smart’s two gold sovereigns. That made him a thief in the eyes of the law too. He knew he should tell Annie but he was too embarrassed and besides, he wanted her to suffer a little longer for forcing them both into flight from Ludlow. He would never be a hatter now, would never see the name Spears written on the sign-post that swung out over the cobbles of Quality Square.
Before the first cock crowed, the three were on their way again, creeping through the slumbering village. ‘At Knighton,’ Arthur had told William, ‘walk through the town up the main street, following the river – it’s our river, you know, the Teme, same as here in Ludlow – then climb up the hill on the far side. Keep the town behind you and walk on.’
William and Annie and Sam panted their way to the top of the hill.
‘Is this the dyke?’ asked Sam, pointing at every bump in the ground. ‘Is this it?’
William shook his head. He had bitten his lip so hard, it had begun to bleed. He scanned the hills, not really sure what he was looking for. Annie pointed at the same time as he did.
King Offa’s Dyke was like a massive bank of earth, anything from ten to twenty feet high, with a wide ditch running to one side of it. It wound across the countryside like a huge grass snake that constantly changed direction. It strode across hills and valleys, climbed up hills and followed the tops of ridges where, long ago, the ancient rulers of Mercia had k
ept watch against the marauding Welsh. In places it was wooded and the three children had to pass through damp, dripping forests, where every shadow and every sound frightened them. They walked swiftly, hardly speaking at all as the enormity of what they were doing hit them. They were runaways now, and labelled thieves and troublemakers into the bargain. There was no going back. William and Annie constantly looked over their shoulders, imagining the sound of horses’ hooves or the distant holler of trackers bearing down on them. Sam shuffled along beside them, chatting cheerfully when the going was easy about how he was going to see the world, and panting grimly up the steep hills.
About four hours after they had left Knighton, after a long climb, they came down into the valley of a river. The river was flowing very fast, swollen from the melting snows of winter. In places, the banks were badly flooded. Flocks of upended ducks fished for food in what should have been meadows and a swan glided past them, jabbing at her back feathers with her beak like a woman poking at uncomfortable corsets.
They sat down on a wooden footbridge in the watery sunshine and divided out the rest of the pie and cheese that Arthur had put in Annie’s bundle.
‘How did you know I was on the run? Was it Arthur who told you?’ Annie asked.
‘No, I heard about it in the square. The sergeant was calling for people to help hunt you down. Evans set the crowd after me. I had to run away.’