by Maeve Friel
Sam laughed and flung a bit of cheese at the ducks. ‘Then how did you know where to find Annie?’
‘Arthur told me. When he heard that the crowd had gone after me, he guessed I would go up and lie low in the old shepherd’s hut. He followed me up there and told me to meet you at the bridge after dark.’ William clammed up abruptly. He still could not bring himself to talk about the gold sovereigns which burned like hot coals in his jacket pocket.
‘Shall we make it, William?’ Annie asked, after a while.
‘Of course we shall. No one will think of looking for us up here. If they have gone after us, they will be out searching on the London road. I even said as much to Mrs Stringer the day at the graveyard. I told her we’d rather run to London than be put in the workhouse.’
‘Do we have to go much farther before we stop for the night?’ said Sam, throwing a piece of pie crust over to the swan.
‘It’s no use asking me. I’ve never been here before. We’ll walk until night falls. And stop throwing away good food,’ he added, reaching out and grabbing Sam’s wrist. ‘You don’t know where your next meal is coming from. It could be four days before we reach Bristol.’
‘William,’ said Annie, ‘what shall we do when we get there? Won’t they still be after us?’
William looked sharply at his sister. ‘In Bristol we will be three among many thousands,’ he answered. ‘Arthur’s brother will help us to find work. You can work in a dressmaker’s, or as a servant in an inn.’
‘And what will you do, William?’
‘Work for a hatter perhaps or, if I can’t find one to take me on, I shall take a job in a tanner’s like father used to do. We’ll find something. We’ll stick together.’
Sam stood up and stretched. He threw one last crumb to the swan before William could stop him. ‘There are ships in Bristol,’ he said, his eyes shining bright with excitement, ‘ships that go all over the world. Whaling ships.’ He grinned at Annie. ‘I’m bound for the South Seas.’
‘Then, come on,’ said William, setting his top hat on his head, ‘let’s get on our way before the Shropshire militia catch up on us.’
After that, the path climbed steeply again. All afternoon they stayed up high, giving the villages in the valleys a wide berth and steering clear of any isolated farm-houses for fear someone might spot them and set a search party on their trail. Occasionally they heard the warning barking of a dog or saw one running in the fields below but none came near. As the afternoon went on, the sky clouded over and the day grew darker. The wind was cutting through their clothes, chilling them to the bone. Flakes of snow drifted in from the Welsh side of the dyke and settled on their hair and shoulders. There was no shelter to be had anywhere. Sam and Annie were already dragging their feet, lagging a hundred yards or more behind William. They looked worn out, with sad, pinched white faces, all the spirit drained out of them. They would not last the night out in the open, he knew. From further down the valley, he heard a church bell toll six o’clock and, squinting hard, fancied he saw the distant lights of a small village. It was impossible to know whether it was safe or not but, at the very least, they might find shelter for the night again in some old barn. He called to his sister and Sam to catch up.
‘Listen,’ he said when they arrived, panting and wheezing, beside him. ‘We’ll take shelter down there for the night.’
They came down the side of the hill, following the path of a little brook. Soon they could see the road into the village and the bobbing lantern of a carter trotting along on his wagon. A woman’s sing-song voice cried out ‘chooky, chooky, chooky,’ as she called her chickens home for the night. At the narrow wooden bridge over the stream and into the main street, there was a milestone.
‘Hay-on-Wye, fourteen miles,’ William read out slowly.
‘But where are we now? What’s the name of this place?’ whispered Sam to Annie. ‘Are we even going in the right direction?’
Annie lifted her shoulders and let them drop. She was too cold to speak. They all looked down the long straight road, dark except for the yellow pools of light thrown out by the candles in the cottage windows. They cautiously crossed the bridge and tip-toed down the village street, careful to keep in to the shadows. The entire village seemed to consist of no more than a string of old thatched and timbered cottages along a dirt road, a church with a graveyard full of leaning tombstones and, at the very end, an inn with a sign showing a cow with a crumpled horn. It creaked on its hinges. A lantern was hanging outside the door but they could not hear any sign of life inside.
‘Come on,’ whispered William. He crept around to the back of the inn. There was a rough yard at the back, and a stable block at right angles to the inn itself. The doors were closed and bolted – if there were horses inside, they had already been bedded down for the night. He slipped the bolt back as quietly as any burglar and beckoned to the others to follow quietly behind him.
The stable was long and narrow with stalls on either side. It smelt foul, of wet straw and manure and rising damp that almost made the three children gag when they entered. There were two old chestnut horses lying together in one of the stalls. Sam heard their breathing and clambered up to peer over the half-door; the poor bony beasts did not even move. They had been driven too long and too hard that day and were too worn out to object to sharing their stable. In the tack-room at the far end, there was a broken cart-wheel leaning up against the wall, some saddles hanging on nails and a few bales of straw, not as clean as they might have been, but dry enough to use as makeshift bedding.
‘We can stay here,’ said William, ‘but we must leave long before dawn.’
‘What if someone comes?’ asked Annie.
‘Annie!’ William snapped. ‘No one will come. Try to sleep.’
But sleep did not come easily to either Annie or William. The horses wheezed and snorted and banged their hooves against the fragile wooden partitions as they shifted in their sleep. The roof-beams creaked and groaned. The fear of capture and a return to Ludlow’s jail – or worse – was harder to put aside than the pangs of hunger or the discomfort of the damp straw. The smell of the leather saddles reminded them of the tanned hides drying in the tanneries in Corve Street and the burnt-out shell of their home. They tossed and turned but did not speak to one another even though each knew the other was awake. Between them Sam lay stretched out. His hands were raised above his head with the fingers curled towards the centre of his palms like a baby without a care in the world. All Annie could think of was how soon they could get far away and back up to the safety of the dyke.
Some time later Annie must have dozed off for she suddenly came to with a start. It was still pitch dark in the windowless stable but outside a cock was crowing. Then another one further off up the valley answered it with an even more raucous din. She picked a long piece of straw from her hair and rubbed her eyes. Above her she could hear scratching sounds, and immediately thought of rats. Something brushed against her cheek. She looked up and made out the unmistakable shape of Sam in his top hat inching along the beam directly above her head. Almost at once, there was a violent squawking. An enraged hen flew down from her nest in the rafters and landed at her feet. Sam plopped down on to the straw beside her, his body dropping with the gentle thump of a fall of soot. He held open his cupped palms to show Annie three brown eggs.
‘Come on,’ said William, seizing his hat, ‘let’s get out of here before someone comes to see why the hens are in such foul temper.’
It was a long, hard trudge all that second day on the dyke. They tried hard not to be discouraged by the steep hills but just plodded on. One rocky ridge and peak followed the other. It was wild, lonely country with hardly a sign of life but for the flocks of black-faced mountain sheep and bleating newborn lambs. By early afternoon, they had descended into a wide river valley and saw the distant roofs and steeples of a town they thought must be Hay-on-Wye but were too nervous to go near. Besides, to the south loomed more mountains, blacker and high
er than any they had seen in two days’ walking, and they knew that their route lay in that direction.
Their path began to rise steeply, and even when they felt they must have reached the very top, the dyke would zig-zag around a corner and point them ever higher. Sam’s breathing was bad. He had to stop more and more often to cough and splutter, bringing up gobbets of black soot-stained catarrh. Once, far off, they saw a team of drovers and a herd of cattle coming in their direction but before they had got much nearer they had suddenly veered off on the English side between two mountain peaks. Now and then, flurries of snowflakes swirled around them. It was becoming impossible to follow their course. In the half-light and with the earth all around them covered with a sprinkling of snow, William could not make out the distinctive shape of Offa’s Dyke. Whole sections of it seemed to have disappeared altogether. The weather was closing in and seemed set to get much worse before it got better.
They began to make their way down the mountain side to take shelter in a small stand of trees. William, walking in front, suddenly stopped and put his hand to his ear. Somewhere nearby there was a distant knocking sound, the rhythmic sound of metal on stone like someone hammering. All three froze where they stood like wild animals who have scented danger, every nerve in their body primed to run. In the stillness, their eyes scanned the hills a few hundred yards above them. It was Sam who first spotted the solitary blackcoated figure beyond the trees. He had his back to them and seemed to be standing hammering at the rock cliff. After a while, he stopped and closely examined whatever it was he held in his hand. Abruptly the strange figure turned, raised his arms to the heavens and began to sing at the top of his voice although the words were carried off by the wind.
‘What on earth is he doing?’ asked Annie.
‘Who knows?’ replied William, ‘but we’d best keep out of his way. He’s a clergyman.’
They crept further into the shadow of the trees. Deep in the centre of the wood, it was very still and a good deal warmer. It was almost as good as coming indoors after the chill of the wind and snow on the higher ground.
‘I need to stop,’ said Sam, suddenly dropping down to sit on the exposed roots of a tree. ‘I’m hungry and my feet are done in.’
‘Mine too,’ said Annie, pushing a finger down at the back of her tough leather boots to rub her heel. ‘I’ve got a new blister.’
William looked at them both in exasperation. He was stronger than they were and would have preferred to press on but he knew the weather and the landscape were against them all, even if the little ones had not been so worn out. They would have to find shelter and rest up until the weather cleared.
‘Wait there,’ he said. ‘Don’t move.’ He pressed his finger against his lips, warning them not to call out after him, and walked off down through the trees. About twenty minutes later he was back.
‘There’s a ruined abbey down in the valley,’ he said. ‘We’ll stop there tonight.’
Sam and Annie followed him out of the little wood, and down into the valley towards the ruins of an old monastery. Its roof had fallen in almost entirely and its nave and sidechapels were overgrown with nettles, brambles and all variety of weeds, some of them waist-high. Free-standing stone pillars that once had supported the weight of the roof soared sixty feet up to the heavy snow-laden skies. Crumbling staircases led nowhere. Sam ran wildly through the arched doorways, climbed up on the sills of graceful vaulted windows and peered into the long deserted dovecote where, centuries earlier, monks had reared pigeons for their winter pies.
Annie stood still under the gaunt grey ruins, convinced that there were eyes watching her, people ready to pounce the moment she let down her guard. There was a doorway opposite her. Its door had long since disappeared but the frame had been blocked up with piles of fallen masonry. As she watched, the twitching snout of a fox appeared at a gap at the bottom of the rubble. She stood stock still, the stillest thing for miles around. The fox nudged aside a stone, sniffed the air, came out from under cover, then, too late, spotted her. Their eyes met for a moment and then it was off, running like a demon out of the ruins and across the meadow to the hill beyond.
Annie knelt down and peered into the hole where the fox had emerged. There was another room behind and, dimly visible behind a round column, she could see a flight of stairs leading down underground.
‘William,’ she called. ‘Come and see.’
With bare hands so cold they were almost too numb to feel the pain, all three cleared a hole big enough to crawl through into the room behind. The steps led down to the crypt, a low, dark basement whose walls felt damp and clammy to the touch, but the floor was dry and at least its roof provided shelter from the wind and sleet. They bedded down for their third night on the run, carrying down armfuls of bracken to lay on the floor, but it was hardly more comfortable than the night in the stable. The crypt was draughty and Annie, unable to sleep, lay petrified, listening to the patter of small feet criss-crossing the floor and the eerie screams of owls as they glided under the abandoned stone archways. She felt hungry, homeless and friendless and secretly wished they had never set out on this adventure. She could hear William tossing about and knew he was awake and thinking too. Sam’s breathing was deep and even as a baby’s.
‘We can’t go on like this, William,’ she said. ‘It’s worse than being a wild animal. Perhaps we should give ourselves up.’
‘No! They have you down for a thief, Annie; don’t you understand? You wouldn’t be put in the workhouse. They could hang you like they were going to hang father. And Bessell would whip Sam within an inch of his life if he laid hands on him again.’
‘I told you. I’m going to sea,’ said Sam quietly in the darkness. ‘I shan’t ever give myself up.’
‘I’m afraid, William,’ said Annie.
‘I’m just hungry,’ said Sam. ‘I can’t think of anything but my empty belly.’
‘Tomorrow I shall get us something to eat,’ William said. He thought of the two gold sovereigns tucked away at the bottom of his coat pocket but once again let the moment pass without telling Annie and Sam his guilty secret.
Chapter 11
‘More gravy, Mr Lewis?’
‘Thank you, Dai, I don’t mind if I do.’
The Reverend Charles Lewis raised his knife and fork clear of his plate so that the innkeeper’s young servant could pour more gravy over his Welsh mutton and potato pie. In the dining-room of the Bear and Ragged Staff in Hay, he could always count on a good dinner after a cold and exhausting ride down the mountains.
The Reverend Lewis was the curate of several small and impoverished parishes, not that he spent very much time attending to his duties in any of them. His passion was geology. It was the coming thing, he told anyone who would listen to him, for he could see that the crust of the earth held remarkable secrets, not just coal and gold and diamonds that could be mined, but fossils that made him question the whole of God’s creation. Only that afternoon, he had come across an exposed rockface on which he could clearly make out the fossilised remains of hundreds of little fishes, bivalves and molluscs. This cold mountainy land had once lain beneath the sea. He had spent hours making exquisitely detailed drawings of feathery fins, and delicate lacy edged scallops, set in stone more than five million years ago. Now as he ate his dinner, he kept glancing down at his notebook and wishing he had someone to talk to.
At the corner table, between the window overlooking the street and the door into the kitchen, Oliver Waring, the eldest son of the workhouse master at Ludlow, huffily observed the preferential treatment the clergyman was getting. He scraped his chair back and smartly banged the salt cellar on the table to attract the waiter’s attention.
The Reverend Lewis glanced over at him and politely nodded his head. He was a very thin man with a small bald head and a long delicate neck sticking up out of its collar, so that he looked a bit like an inquisitive, short sighted and good-natured tortoise.
‘A feast worth waiting for, I assure
you,’ he said to the young man, waving a forkful of food at him. ‘You cannot fault Mrs Knill’s mutton pie.’
‘That is why there is none left, no doubt. I am to be served the boiled beef.’
The clergyman ignored the young man’s surly tone. ‘An excellent choice, the beef is always excellent. Are you staying in the inn tonight?’
Mr Waring agreed that he was and looked impatiently towards the kitchen door.
‘Then perhaps you would like to share my table and have a glass of claret with me while you are waiting,’ suggested the clergyman, expansively pointing at his bottle of wine and beckoning the other man to come and sit down beside him.
‘That is very decent of you indeed,’ said Mr Waring, softening up at the prospect of a drink he would not have to pay for himself. ‘I would be delighted to join you.’
The Reverend Lewis poured out two brimming glasses of claret. He coyly slipped his notebook in the other man’s direction, laying it open at a faultless illustration of a section of the fossil beds he had been examining that afternoon. Mr Waring swallowed half his wine and replaced his glass on the open page, leaving a deep purple scar. The clergyman looked at his companion’s chapped hands, his blunt nails which were none too clean, his fraying collar and greasy jacket. He was disappointed not to have a more educated companion to share his wine with.
‘Are you travelling through?’ he asked.
Mr Waring lowered his voice and looked around the empty dining-room.
‘To tell you the truth, I have come from Ludlow, on a mission to hunt down some runaways. Bad’uns.’
‘Convicts?’ The Reverend Lewis took a large pinch of snuff from his snuff-box, laid it out carefully on the side of his hand above his thumb and noisily sniffed it up each nostril in turn. ‘What or whom are they running away from?’
‘It’s two children I am after, a sister and brother by the name of Spears. The girl escaped house arrest after stealing silver plate from Lord Powis’ house. And to make matters worse, her brother, trying to draw off the crowds who were after her, drew a knife upon a servant of Lucien Bonaparte’s and made off with two sovereigns belonging to a hatter in the town. They must be caught before they do more mischief.’ The young man sat back, pleased that he had managed to mention both a Bonaparte and a lord of the realm in one breath.