by Mary Stewart
Under my hands Hodge stiffened, and started to pull back. The purring stopped abruptly. I let him go and he dropped silently back into the room and slid like a shadow towards the bed. The fur was ridged along his back and his ears were laid flat.
Seconds later, I heard what he had heard, the distant, insistent barking of a dog. For the first few nights of my stay at Thornyhold it had troubled me, but if some farmer or woodman kept his dog chained up, there was nothing to be done about it, so I had closed my mind to it, and had grown used to the sound, and presently after a few nights it had stopped, and I had forgotten it. Now it was here again, and sounding, on this still night, louder and much nearer. And now no longer barking, but howling, like a wolf baying the moon.
An eerie sound, an uncomfortable sound that brought the hairs brushing up along my arms, myself reacting just as the cat had done. I told myself it was nothing, an atavism, a primitive reaction to the wolf in the night just as the dog itself was harking back, calling dog to dog, wolf-pack to wolf-pack, enjoying the only freedom a chained dog could have, the pleasure of communication with its kind.
It was enjoying nothing. The howling broke off, into a sharp cry of pain or terror. Then a series of wild, barking yelps. Then silence.
I found myself at the front door, and running down the path to the front gate, before I even knew I had moved. Not that there was anything I could do. There was no way that I was going adventuring into the woods in the middle of the night. That was for heroines, not for sensible me. But something in sensible me had responded violently, and without thought, to the dog’s scream of pain, so here I was at the wicket gate, groping in the darkness to find the latch.
The moon was clear of the trees, and beyond the shadow of the thorn hedge the driveway was as light as a winter’s day. I saw him even before I heard him, Jessamy Trapp, running towards me, his footsteps muffled on the moss of the driveway, his breathing ragged and sobbing. Then I saw how he was running, with one shoulder hunched, his left forearm held tightly to his chest and his other hand gripping it, so that his body was crooked, and he lurched as he ran.
He had not seen me. He was heading for the path at the side of the house, and the short cut to the lodge.
‘Jessamy!’
He checked with a gasp of fright, turned, saw me, and came, slowing to a walk, still hunched over that arm.
‘What’s happened? What is it? Are you hurt?’
‘Oh, miss …’ It was not just breathlessness; he was sobbing, swallowing tears. He sounded much younger than his years. Like a hurt child, he held his arms out in front of him for me to see. He still clutched the left forearm with his other hand, and now between the fingers I could see an ooze of black. ‘He bit me. Bit me bad. It hurts. Got me in the arm, he did.’
‘You’d better come in. We’ll clean it up and take a look at it. Come.’
No questions. They could come later. He followed me into the kitchen, sat where I pointed, at a chair by the table, and waited docilely while I ran a basin of hot water. Thanking my lucky stars that Cousin Geillis had believed in conventional medicine as well as her still-room remedies, I lifted her first aid box down from its place, and proceeded to wash Jessamy’s arm clean.
It was a nasty wound, the deep bruised punctures of a sharp bite. Jessamy, his tears dried now, and some sort of stoicism returning as shock dwindled, watched with shrinking interest, then finally with a kind of pride.
‘It be bad, miss?’
‘It’s a nasty bite. Now tell me what happened. Not your own dog, surely?’
‘No. No. Don’t have no dog. Ma don’t like them. Dirty things.’
‘Vermin. Yes. Well, whose dog, and why?’
‘Just a dog. Stray dog, likely. Letting him out. But he bit me.’
‘Out of where?’ I saw that, in a fist clenched against the pain of the bitten arm, he held a tuft of black hairs. ‘A trap, was it? Hang on now, Jessamy, this might hurt. Does someone set traps in the woods?’
A gasp as the antiseptic bit into the wounds. Then a vigorous nodding. ‘That’s right. A trap. Gipsies set un, likely. I let him out, and then he bit me. Savage, he was.’
‘Where was this?’
There was a sort of hesitation in the look he slid sideways at me. A vague gesture of the uninjured hand took in the woods to the west. ‘Up there. In the woods. Over to the big house.’
‘Well, you can show me, tomorrow maybe.’ I was thinking, anxiously, about Hodge. Traps were something I would certainly have to see about. ‘You got the dog out all right? Why did he bite? Was he hurt?’
‘Don’t think so. Didn’t see. He ran.’
I finished tying the bandage. ‘There you are. That’s the best I can do, and it should be all right for now. You’d better see a doctor in the morning.’
‘She don’t have no truck with that sort. Does her own. She’d be main mad at me if she knew. Say it served me right.’
‘You should get it seen to, though. How do you feel now?’
‘Fine. That hurts a bit still, but fine.’ The anxious child’s look came back. ‘You won’t tell her, miss? See, if I pull the sleeve down, she’ll never know.’
There was no point in arguing. He did look better. The pallor of fright had gone, and the wound was clean. I tipped the stained water away and lifted the top off the stove. ‘All right. Hand me the rags, will you? I’ll burn them. And those dirty hairs … Is that all? There. Well, let me see it again in the morning, will you? We’ll decide then about a doctor.’
He flashed me that brilliant smile, so like his mother’s, and smoothed the sleeve carefully down over the bandage, while I made him a mug of strong, sweet tea and cut him a slice of the cake I had baked yesterday. I did ask another question or two, but got no answers that made sense, and eventually it occurred to me to wonder just what Jessamy had been doing in the woods at that time of night. Visiting traps that he himself had set? It seemed likely. But nothing was to be done or said tonight. Tomorrow we should see. So I gave up, and let him eat and drink in smiling silence, till presently he left me to lock up and go to bed, once more in search of that peaceful and dreamless night.
17
‘Do you know anyone who sets traps in the woods?’ I asked William.
He came soon after breakfast, with another gift of eggs, and the declared intention of finishing the weeding of the herb beds. We went out together to the toolshed.
‘No. I didn’t know anyone did. They’re not legal, are they?’
‘Gin traps, no, thank goodness. But snares? Your father said you got gipsies here sometimes. They might try to trap rabbits.’
‘I suppose so. There haven’t been any gipsies here, though, not for ages. They used to camp down in that quarry where Dad found you with the sheep, but it’s too overgrown now, and they were given a site somewhere on the other side of the forest. An old lane that’s not used any more since the road cut it off. I’ve seen them there. But not near us, Mr Yelland won’t let them. Why?’
The shed door was ajar. I pushed it wider. ‘Because last night—’
I stopped dead. William, close behind me, blundered into me and started to say ‘Sorry’, but that, too, got bitten off. We both stood like dummies in the toolshed doorway, staring down at something in the corner.
In Hodge’s bed. Curled tightly among the sacks and newspapers, trying to make itself even smaller, and blinking up at us with scared, ingratiating eyes. A collie dog, thin and filthy and shivering with fright. Black and white. A ghost from the past, from a dream.
I don’t think I even remembered Jessamy and the bitten arm. I was down on my knees beside the dog as once I had gone down on the flagstones of the vicarage kitchen. And the savage dog crouched and shivered, with his rat-like tail clamped tightly into his body, only the tip free in a feeble attempt at a wag. A tongue came out, trying to lick. There was a frayed rope round his neck. It had been carelessly knotted, and the knot had tightened cruelly. The end had been gnawed through.
William was
down beside me, stroking the dog’s head. ‘He’s dreadfully thin! He’s starving!’
‘Yes. Careful. I’m sure he’s all right, but if you hurt him he could snap.’ All the time I spoke I was patting, smoothing, feeling the dog’s body, keeping my voice soothing and my actions gentle and slow. ‘William. Run to the kitchen and warm some milk. Blood heat. Try it with your finger. Break a slice of bread into it, little pieces, and bring it in a basin. Don’t let Hodge out. And bring the sharp kitchen knife to get this rope off. All right, boy, all right, boy. Lie still.’
William ran. The dog reached up and licked my chin. I talked, and handled him. He was dreadfully thin, his nose was cracked and dry, his coat tangled and filthy, but gradually the shivering lessened to brief spasms, then stopped, and he lay still. There was blood on the newspapers where he lay, and probing very cautiously I found, just at the root of the tail, a bare patch, raw and still bleeding a little where the dog had been licking at it, as if a piece of skin or a tuft of hair had been pulled out and the skin and had torn with it. Jessamy’s attacker, certainly, and if Jessamy had handled the wound incautiously as he set the dog free, then the ‘nasty bite’ was explained.
William came, carefully, with the basin and the kitchen knife. Keeping the blade out of the dog’s line of vision, I managed to slide the knife in under the rope and cut it. It fell away. William put the basin on the floor, and I gently persuaded the dog towards it. He got up and crawled forward uncertainly, the starved body still crouched and cringing. We watched in silence while he lapped. Swallowing seemed difficult, but he managed almost all the bowlful before he turned and crept back into his nest.
‘Shall I bring some of Hodge’s food?’ asked William.
‘No. He’s been starved too long. The bread and milk’s enough for now. We’ll let him sleep on it.’
‘May I pat him?’
‘Of course. Talk to him while I get my bike outside. Take it slowly. I don’t think he thinks much of the human race as yet.’
We left the dog then, shutting the shed door on him.
‘Was that why you were asking about traps?’ asked William.
‘Yes.’
‘But you didn’t know about the dog, did you?’
‘No. But in a way, yes. Listen.’ I told him about the night’s adventures with Jessamy. ‘And if the dog was caught by the tail, and Jessamy hurt him trying to get him out, that’ll be why he got bitten. The wound looks too bad for a snare, unless the dog was worrying at it himself. But whatever kind of trap it is, I’m going to find it and take it away.’
‘Can I help?’
‘Of course. I’m counting on it. Jessamy said it was “over to the big house.” How far is that?’
‘Not far. About half a mile.’
‘Then let’s go.’
Though the ‘big house’ had certainly been pretty big, it was easy, even in the spectacularly tumbled ruins, to see that no trap, in the normal sense of the word, would be set there. Jessamy had either failed to understand me, or had seized on an easy explanation to save further questioning.
The front steps were still fairly well intact. They mounted in a handsomely splayed sweep to the main doorway, and in doing so bridged a sort of dry moat, a narrow courtyard where sunken half-windows had once lighted the basement rooms. Here, presumably, had been the offices; billiard room, gunroom, cloakrooms, and at the rear of the house the kitchens, pantries, boot-room, boiler-room. The cellars would be lower still.
‘No one would set a trap here,’ said William, as we gingerly clambered up the steps and peered over the balustrade into the basement area.
‘You wouldn’t think so. If it – the dog – had got into the house itself, it might just have fallen in somewhere and got trapped that way.’
‘With a rope round its neck?’
‘Well, no.’
‘I’ll go down and see what’s through that gap, shall I?’
‘All right, but for heaven’s sake be careful.’
I watched while the boy climbed carefully down into the sunken area, across the wedged and fallen blocks of masonry, till he could lean in through what was left of a basement window.
‘Can you see?’
No reply. Then, without turning, he beckoned. I clambered down beside him, and he moved aside for me. I peered in.
The shell of a small room, where cracks in the walls and ceiling let light in. A floor deep in plaster and fallen stone and splintered wood, long rotten. A wooden door jamb sprung from its bed, with a piece of frayed rope knotted round it. A chipped enamel bowl, empty and dry. Dog’s droppings, many of them, in the small space round the door jamb. And even above their stink, the prison smell of fear and despair and the death of trust and love.
We said nothing. I had to bite hard on the words I would have liked to use, and I think William was swallowing tears.
We climbed out of the pit and up into the clear air, and padded in silence back to our bicycles.
William made no attempt to mount. He stood holding his bicycle, looking not at me but back at the big house.
‘Can they claim him back?’
‘They?’
‘Whoever put him there. You told me Jessamy said it was gipsies.’
I shook my head. ‘Whoever left that dog to starve hasn’t a chance in – hasn’t any sort of chance to reclaim him. They’d be lucky to avoid prosecution. No, if it was gipsies, we won’t hear from them again.’
‘Will you keep him, then?’
‘Oh, yes. But—’ I hesitated. ‘Just for the time being, would your father let you keep him, William?’
‘Me?’ He looked pleased, but with a shade of doubt.
‘Yes. There are a few questions I want the answers to, and until I get them, I think we must keep the dog pretty quiet. It’s a queer sort of business, you see. I mean—’
He was there instantly. ‘You mean they would hurt him? Jessamy wasn’t just letting him out?’
‘I don’t know. I just know that … It’s something to do with … Oh, I can’t tell you yet, William. Honestly, could you just leave it with me for now?’
I could not tell him that it was to do with a nightmare of witchcraft, and the memory of something like a promise made to me beside the River Eden. But my assumptions were the same as his own, and he knew it. I added, slowly: ‘All right. If you think about it … The dog gnawed through that rope, and probably broke it itself. And once the rope broke, it could – and did – jump out of that place and run away. So, granted even that Jessamy climbed in to rescue it, what did he do to get himself bitten like that? There was that scream of pain I heard. If something hurt, and frightened the dog so that it threw itself against the rope and snapped it, and then ran away … Well, there it is.’
‘That wound? Yes. Oh, Miss Geillis!’ He drew a breath. ‘Well, of course I’ll take him. Straight away?’
‘The sooner the better. Will your father mind?’
‘Not if I tell him what’s happened. It can’t be today, because he’s had to go to London to see the publisher. He’ll be late back. But it’ll be all right, I know it will. He likes animals, you know, he really does, but he doesn’t have time, and a dog takes a lot of time, he says. I’ll have to tell him about it, won’t I?’
‘Of course. And make it clear that I’ll take the dog myself once everything’s cleared up. You must keep him safe for now, and feed him up. I’m sure there’s nothing wrong that kindness and good food won’t cure, but I’ll get him to a vet as soon as I can. I’ll go into Arnside and get food for him, but for the moment, brown bread and milk and maybe an egg, beaten up or even scrambled. You can manage that?’
‘Oh, yes!’
‘Then let’s get back, shall we? You’re the expert on keys, William. Does the toolshed lock?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then let’s get back and lock it before I have any more callers.’
Back at Thornyhold, we checked on the dog, which was fast asleep, locked the toolshed door, and took ourselves to the kitc
hen, where I made coffee for myself, and gave William a mug of sweet cocoa and a slab of the cake I had cut last night for Jessamy.
He had asked no more questions, seemingly content to leave the past to itself and to dwell on the exciting prospect of looking after the dog and bringing it back to health. I hardly listened. I was still half in, half out of that strange moonlight world of dreams and memories, where other mysteries remained to be solved.
‘Who hereabouts keeps pigeons?’ I asked.
‘Pigeons?’ William, interrupted in mid-flight about sheep-dog trials and the dazzling merits of collie dogs, repeated it in the tone of voice he might have used for pterodactyls.
His expression brought me back to earth and made me laugh. ‘Yes. Pigeons. Birds. With feathers. That say “coo” and live in lofts. Or in attics like mine. You told me you used to help Miss Geillis look after hers.’
‘Sorry,’ said William, grinning. ‘What about pigeons, Miss Geillis?’
‘Don’t you think you could just make it “Gilly?” Less muddling, perhaps? And drop the “miss”?’
‘I – I’m not sure.’
‘Try it. Go on. Gilly.’
‘Gilly.’
‘Again.’
‘Gilly.’
‘That’s fine. Now, what I asked you was, who around here keeps pigeons?’
He knitted his brows. ‘Let me think … Well, for a start, there used to be pigeons nesting at the farm, not our house, the one where the farmer lives, Black Cocks, but I think they were wild ones, you know, rock doves. Dad says all the tame sorts were bred from them, so they take easily to nesting in boxes and things, because in the wild they go into caves and holes—’
‘Not wild pigeons. Homers. Carriers.’
‘Oh, yes, well, there must be a few in the town. There’s a big field just outside, by the river bridge, and it’s divided into allotments; you know, little gardens. Lots of the people who have those keep pigeon lofts. Why? Were you wanting to start keeping them again yourself?’