Heartsease

I

It was the last of the soft days of autumn. As dusk fell, you could feel the frosts coming, a smell of steel in the air.

If it hadn’t been so nearly dark Margaret would have gone the long way round; but she was tired and Scrub was even tireder, his head drooping, his mane clotted with sweat, his hooves not making their proper clip-clop, but muddling the sound with a scrapy noise because he wasn’t lifting them up properly. Even so she began to lead him the long way, without thinking about it. It was only the clank of a milking bucket from Fatchet’s byre reminded her that Uncle Peter would be finished milking soon; if she came back after he’d sat down in his rocking chair in the farm kitchen and begun to drink his evening’s cider from the big blue-and-white mug, he’d beat her with his belt until she was sore for days.

She turned back and led the pony down Tibbins

Lane, towards the stocks where the dead witch lay under the new heap of stones.

She started to sing a carol, “The Holly and the Ivy,” but found her voice wouldn’t rise above a mumble, and even that noise dried in her mouth before she was halfway down the lane. She tried again and managed a whole verse at a bare whisper, and then the muscles in her throat turned the words into no sound at all. She would have run if she’d been alone, but Scrub was past anything except his dragging walk. Clip, scrape, clop went his hooves on the old tarmac, clip, scrape, clop. She could see the heap of stones now, lying against the Rectory wall as though they’d just been tipped from a cart — not brought in baskets and barrows by a hundred villagers for throwing.

All at once she thought of Jonathan; just like him to be helping Aunt Anne with the baking that morning, so that he hadn’t been made to go and watch the stoning. He’d laugh at her, his sharp snorting laugh, if she told him she’d ridden so far to get away from this heap of stones that now she had to come back right past it. Jonathan always thought things out before he did them. Come on, Margaret, it’s only a heap of stones and what’s left of a foreign witch. Come on.

As she passed the neat pile the stones groaned.

Margaret dropped the reins and ran. Forty yards on, where the walls narrowed into an alleyway between two cottages, she waited, panting, for Scrub. He clopped down in the near dark and nuzzled against her shoulder, but nothing else moved in the dusk behind him.

Uncle Peter was still whistling shrilly at his milking

stool when she led the pony past the byre towards the little paddock which he shared with poor neglected Caesar. Jonathan was waiting for her, leaning against the pillar of the log-store, his little pointed face just like a gnome’s under his shaggy black hair.

“What’s wrong, Marge?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“Is it to do with the witch? You didn’t watch, did you?”

“No, of course not.”

“But it is, isn’t it?”

“Oh, Jo, it was ... I had to come back down Tib-bins Lane because I was so late, and when I passed him he groaned. I thought witches died, just like anybody else.”

Jonathan tilted his head over the other way, still watching her with his bright, strange eyes — like a bird deciding whether to come for the crumbs you are holding in the palm of your hand.

“You’re not making this up, are you, Marge?”

“No, of course not!”

“All right. Now listen. I’ll take Scrub out and put his harness away. You —”

“But why?”

“Listen! You go and offer to carry one of Father’s buckets in — he won’t let you, but it’ll tell him you’re home. Go and say hello to Mother, then go upstairs noisily and quietly into my room. Climb out along the shed roof and jump down into the old hay. I’ll meet you there.”

“But why, Jo?”

“Because he’s still alive, of course. We’ve got to get him out. Tim’ll help us, but we’ll need you too.”

“Jo, you’ll

“Yes, I’ll take care of your precious Scrub. Go slowly, Marge. Talk slowly. Try and sound just tired, and nothing else.”

She gave him the reins, started to walk towards the byre door, turned back to shout to him to see that there was enough water in the trough, realized that it would be dangerous to shout (dangerous now, in a house which was safe this morning) and walked on.

Uncle Peter was milking Florence, so he must be almost finished. There were two full buckets by the door, so he’d be middling pleased — last week he hadn’t managed to fill even two most days.

“Can I carry one of these in for you, Uncle Peter?”

He grunted but didn’t look up. “You leave ’em be,” he said. “Too heavy for a slip like you, Marge. Where you been all day, then?”

“Riding.”

“Long ride. Didn’t you fancy what we did to that foreigner this morning?”

Margaret said nothing.

“Ach, don’t you be feared to tell me. You’re a good lass, Marge, and I wouldn’t have you hardhearted, but you must understand that it’s necessary. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, the Book says. Look now, I took nigh on half a bucket out of Maisie, who was dry as an old carrot till this very day, when she should by all rights have been flowing with milk like the land of Canaan — what was that but witchcraft?”

“I suppose you’re right, Uncle Peter.”

“Course I am, girl. You go in now. You’ll have forgot all about it by tomorrow/’

Aunt Anne was in the kitchen, which had been the living room before the Changes came. She was rocking her chair an inch to and fro in front of the bread-oven, staring at nothing, her face drawn down into deep lines as though she wanted to cry but couldn’t. Margaret said hello but she didn’t answer, so it seemed best to go thumpingly up the stairs, tiptoe into Jonathan’s room, wriggle out through his window and crawl down the edge of the shed where the tiles were less likely to break.

The hay was last year’s, gray with mustiness, but thick enough to break a clumsy jump. She picked herself up and moved into the shadow of a stack of bean poles which Uncle Peter had leaned against the shed wall. It really was night now, with a half-moon coming and going behind slow-moving clouds, and the air chill for waiting in; but before she began to feel cold inside herself she heard a low bubbling sound which meant that Tim was coming up the path from his hut in the orchard. The moon edged out as he reached the shed, and she saw that he was carrying a sheep hurdle under one arm and a full sack on his other shoulder. Jonathan was with him.

“You there, Marge?” he whispered. “Good. Hold this. I won’t be long.”

He handed her a saw and scampered off down the path. Tim at once began to make his bubbling noise more loudly, because Jonathan was the only person he knew and trusted, apart from his own sister, Lucy.

Other people teased him and threw things at him, or were frightened of him and kept away; but inside his poor muddled brain he knew that Jonathan really thought of him as a person, and not as an animal who happened to be shaped like a man.

“It’s all right, Tim,” whispered Margaret, speaking as she might have done to Scrub, “he’s coming back. Be brave.” The whisper seemed to make Tim feel he was with someone who wouldn’t hurt him, so he settled down to wait and the bubbling quietened in his throat. Jonathan was away several minutes, and when he came back he walked slowly, bent sideways by the weight of the heavy thing he was carrying.

“What’s that?” said Margaret.

“Petrol, I think. It burns. I found a few tins hidden under the straw in the old barn where the machines are.”

“But you aren’t allowed to go there!” whispered Margaret fiercely.

“Tim can carry it,” said Jonathan. “And the sack. There won’t be anyone in the road now it’s really dark. I’ll manage the hurdle and you take the saw, Marge. Keep in the shadows. If someone does come, stand still until you’re sure they’ve seen you. If you have to run away, don’t drop the saw or they’ll know where it came from. Climb up the ivy on the other side of this wall and you can get back onto the roof. Off we go.”

Tim followed him like a dog at its master’s heels. The alley between the cottages was a black canyon, but beyond it the moon shone clear against the Rectory wall. Tim moved more quietly than the children be-

cause he didn’t have proper shoes, not even clogs; his feet were wrapped in straw which he tied into place with strips of old rag. The stocks had been set opposite the gate into Squire’s house, where the road was wider, so that there would be plenty of room for the villagers to gather round and throw things at whoever was in them — soft fruit and rotten eggs and clods of turf at ordinary bad people, stones at witches.

The pile was silent now, but Jonathan didn’t stop to listen to it. He started lifting the stones away, not dropping them but putting them down carefully so as not to make any noise. Tim watched, bubbling quietly, and then began to help. When Margaret lifted her first stone the witch groaned again.

There weren’t as many stones as there seemed. The pile looked big because Mr. Gordon, the fierce old sexton, had made the men pick the loose ones up when the stoning was over and heap them into a neat cairn. Before long Margaret tried to pull a bigger stone out but found it was soft and warm — a legging with a leg inside it. In a few minutes more they had cleared the legs up as far as the stocks.

“You two carry on with the top half,” said Jonathan, “while I cut through here.”

“But Jo,” whispered Margaret, “won’t they start hunting for him when they see it’s sawn through? They’ll know someone’s got him out.”

“That’s what the petrol’s for.”

He was already sawing, slowly but firmly, making as little noise as possible. Margaret and Tim labored on, lift, stoop, lift, stoop, lift, stoop. No single stone seemed to make the cairn any smaller, but soon they had cleared the body up to the waist. Tim had stopped his bubbling and was working with increasing urgency now that he could see enough of the witch’s body to know what it was; he cooed once or twice, a noise which Margaret hadn’t heard him make before. The witch had sheltered his head behind crooked arms, but these were now stuck to the mess of clotted blood and clothing and hair round his face; when Margaret tried to move an arm to get at a stone which had lodged in the bend of the elbow he groaned with a new, sharp note.

“He ought to be dead,” whispered Jonathan. “Perhaps he’s wearing some kind of armor under his clothes.” Tim knelt down beside the bloodied head and with slow tenderness, cooing like a distant pigeon in June, lifted the wincing tangle and cradled it against his dirty chest while Margaret picked out the last stone and eased the arms down into the man’s lap. Jonathan sawed with even strokes, as though he was in no hurry at all.

“Oak,” he whispered. “About three minutes more. Watch out up the lane, Marge, just in case.”

The last tough sliver gave beneath the sawteeth and he lifted the imprisoning timber from the man’s ankles. Then he fetched the hurdle and laid it beside the body. Tim, without being told, eased the wounded man on.

“We’ll each take a corner in front, Marge. Tim can carry the back.”

The weight was heavy but manageable. As soon as they were well clear of the rubble Jonathan lowered his corner to the ground so that Margaret and Tim had to do so too. Then he tipped the contents of the sack out to the night air, and all at once Margaret remembered the seaside, which she’d completely forgotten about for five years — a smooth sea, hot sun, sand crawling with people, and behind it all a road where just such a smell came from, because a lot of machines were waiting there for three ladies in white coats to — she remembered the right words — fill them up. She hadn’t thought of petrol, or the sea, or machines as things which took you to places, for ages — not since she was how old? The Changes were five years back, she and Jonathan were fourteen now, so not since she was nine. Now this smell, sharp, rather nasty, filling your nose like chopped onions, brought all the pictures back.

“We’ll let it soak while we get him down to the barn,” whispered Jonathan. “I’ll come back with a lantern to light it. People will run out if they see the flames now.”

“Why do you want to burn the stocks?” said Margaret as she picked up her corner of the hurdle.

“Burn the saw marks. Then people might think he got away by witchcraft.”

They didn’t talk again as they carried the witch through the alley, along the stretch of road at the bottom, down through the farm gate and yard and along the steep path behind the pigsties to the big asbestos barn where the wicked machines stood in their rusting rows. Jonathan seemed to know his way about and led them unstumbling through the blackness to a place where there was a little hut inside the barn. He pushed a door open, and another forgotten smell lifted out into the night, more oily than petroly this time.

“I think he’ll be safe here,” he said. “There’s a big engine without wheels in the middle; I don’t know what it was for but it drove a big fan and pushed air into those towers outside. Marge, you’ll have to climb up the ivy to my room and get some coverings to keep him warm. Straw, Tim. Straw. Straw. Good boy.”

Tim bubbled his understanding and slouched out. Jonathan was shuffling round in the blackness, making a sweeping noise. Margaret waited, jobless, to help shift the witch. Then the faint square of lighter blackness in the doorway was blocked and she could smell fresh straw — Tim must have robbed the stack by the pigsties.

“I’ve cleared a place here,” said Jonathan. “Hurry, Marge — we can move him.”

The ivy was harder to climb than Jonathan had implied, but she managed it on the third go. She whisked the blankets off his bed, threw them out of the window, and went slowly down the stairs. Aunt Anne was still sitting in tragic stillness by the ovens, but this time she looked up when Margaret came in.

“Pete should be back in ten minutes,” she said. “He’s talking to Mr. Gordon. You must be hungry after all that riding — there’s mutton and bread in the larder if you want something to keep you going.”

“Oh, yes, please,” said Margaret. “I’ve just remembered I didn’t check whether the ponies had enough water. I won’t be out long.”

She found what she wanted in the larder: two fresh rolls, apples, slices of mutton, and one of the little bottles of cordial which Aunt Anne had brewed last March. She took the bottle from the back of the shelf and hoped it wouldn’t be missed. As she was going out through the porch she had another thought and picked up one of the half-dozen lanterns which were always there. Aunt Anne didn’t even move her eyes when she crossed the kitchen and lit the wick with a spill from the fire. Jonathan met her just outside the porch.

“Bit of luck,” he whispered. “I thought I’d have to sneak in to light mine. Put it down — I’ve got a bit of dry straw. Shield the light as you go down the path, Marge.”

He knelt in the moonlight and flipped the little doors open; deft and sure he lit his straw and moved the quick flame into the other lantern in time to light the wick before the straw was all burned. Margaret carried her lantern round the corner of the house where the pile of bedding lay, picked the blankets up and hid its light among them.

The witch was moaning on his straw. His face in the yellow lantern light was an ugly mess of raw flesh, his lips fat with bruising, his eyes too puffy to open. Margaret tucked her blankets round him, put the food where he could reach it, opened the bottle and tried to push its neck between his lips. With a jerky movement the man’s hand came up and grabbed at the bottle, tilting it up until the yellow stuff was pouring out of the corners of the hurt mouth. He swallowed four times and then let his hand fall so that Margaret had to snatch at the bottle to prevent it from spilling all over him.

“Thanks,” he whispered.

She started to sponge the cordial from his jaw with a corner of her skirt, but stopped in a welter of panic — someone was moving out in the barn. She knelt, quite still, then realized that the lantern was more betraying than any movement — rats scuttle, but they don’t send out a steady gold glow. As she was moving to blow it out she heard the man in the barn make a different noise, a faint bubbling, Tim.

The big zany shambled through the door, carrying more straw and an indescribable mixture of old rags. He walked towards the wounded witch as if he was going to dump his load on him, then stopped. He stared at the blankets, then at the lantern, then at Margaret. Then he cooed and added a quiet little cluck of satisfaction before he took his bundle over to another corner of the hut and began to spread it about. Margaret realized that he’d brought his own bedding to keep the wounded witch warm, and now he intended to spend the night there to look after him. She decided to leave the lantern; Lucy was such a lazy slut that she’d never notice there was one missing when she cleaned and filled them in the morning.

As she stood up she looked for the first time at the other thing in the hut, the hulking old engine, bolted down into the concrete floor, streaked orange and black with dribbles of rust and the ooze of oil. She fitted her lantern into a nook where a lot of pipes masked it from three sides, in case there were cracks in the outside wall where the light could shine through and betray them. Then she left.

Uncle Peter was in his chair, and Aunt Anne and Lucy were putting supper out on the table, home bread and boiled mutton and turnips. The steamy richness filled the kitchen.

“Where you been, Marge?” he said.

“I’d forgotten to see if there was enough water for the ponies.”

“Good lass, but I can’t have you traipsing about the farm at all hours of darkness. You must learn to do things while it’s still daylight. But never mind this time. Where’s that son of mine, though?”

Feet clattered on the stairs and Jonathan rushed into the room, flushed and bright-eyed.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, “but I was looking out of my window and a great big fire started up suddenly in the lane. It doesn’t look like an ordinary fire. One minute there wasn’t anything, then it was like sunrise. What do you think’s happening?”

Uncle Peter jumped to his feet, picked his cloak off the settle and his cudgel from behind the door, and strode growling out. Aunt Anne stood with the ladle in one hand, the other clutching the back of a chair, her face as gray as porridge. Then she sighed, shrugged, and began to spoon meat and gravy and turnips into bowls. Lucy took the big cleaving knife and hacked off clumsy chunks of bread, which she handed round. Aunt Anne mumbled a quick grace and they sat down.

At once Jonathan was talking about a bird he’d seen that afternoon, which he thought might be a harrier. He held a piece of mutton on the point of his knife and waved it over the table to show how. the bird had spiraled up out of the valley; then he popped the meat into his neat little mouth (which looked too small to take it) and settled down to chewing. Nobody else said anything. Margaret knew that she ought to be hungry after all that misery and riding and excitement, but the excitement was still buzzing in her, making her blood run too fast through her veins to allow it to settle down to anything so stolid and everyday as eating and digesting. She dipped a morsel of bread into gravy and watched the brown juice soak up through its cells; she ate that slowly, and then picked up the smallest piece of meat on her plate with the point of her knife and managed to swallow that too. Lucy had gobbled, and was already giving herself a second helping. Aunt Anne ate almost nothing.

After twenty minutes Uncle Peter flung through the door, his cheeks crimson above his beard. He tossed his cudgel into the corner.

“Gone!” he cried.

“Gone?” said Aunt Anne, shrilly.

“Gone to his master the Devil!” shouted Uncle Peter. “I tell you. the stones were burning!”

“What does that mean?” said Jonathan in an interested voice.

“They were burning,” said Uncle Peter solemnly. “Not much, by the time I came there, but I could see where they’d been blackened with big flames. And they weren’t honest Christian flames, neither — the whole lane reeked of the Devil — the stink of wickedness — you know it when you smell it. And the little flames that were left, they were yellow but blue at the edges, not like mortal fire.”

“Were the stocks all burnt too?” said Margaret. Uncle Peter was too excited to notice how strained her voice came out, but Jonathan glanced sharply towards her.

“Burntest of all,” said Uncle Peter. “Roaring and stinking still.”

“Oh dear,” said Aunt Anne. “I don’t know what to think. We’ve kept your supper warm for you, Pete.” “We’ll know tomorrow,” said Uncle Peter, “when I’ve done milking Maisie. I reckon the witch has gone home to his master, and she’ll be carrying a full bag.”

He sat down and plunged into the business of eating, tearing off great hunks of bread and sloshing them round his platter before stuffing them into the red hole in the middle of his ginger beard, where the yellow teeth chomped and the throat golloped the lumps down. Margaret, who did not like to watch this process, looked away and her eye fell on Lucy. Lucy was a house servant, so she did not speak unless she was spoken to, though she sat at the same table with them all. (Where else was there for her to sit, if she wasn’t to share a shed with her poor mad brother?) Now her black eyes sparkled above her plump red cheeks as she drank the excitement, looking from face to face; but the moment she saw Margaret watching her she dropped her glance demurely to the table. She was a funny secret person, Margaret thought, just as much a foreigner as the witch, really. Four years back she’d led Tim into the village — she’d been twelve then, she said, and Tim must have been about fifteen, but nobody knew for certain — and asked for shelter. They’d stayed ever since, but Margaret knew her no better than the day she came.

The moment Uncle Peter had speared his last chunk of mutton and thrust it into his mouth, Lucy was on her feet to take his plate and bring him the big round of cheese. He was swilling at his mug of rough cider when the door was racked with knocking. Aunt Anne started nervously to her feet and Uncle Peter shouted “Come in!” It was Mr. Gordon, the sexton, his broad hat pulled down to hide most of his knobbly face, his shoulders hunched with rheumatism, but his blackthorn stick held forward in triumph like an emperor’s staff.

“The Devil has taken his own!” he cried.

“Off to bed with you, children,” said Aunt Anne, with a sudden echo of the brisk command she used to own before she became so silent. “I’ll clear, thank you, Lucy.”

Lucy curtsied and said good night in her soft voice and slipped up the stairs. Margaret kissed her aunt on the cheek, bobbed to her uncle and went too. Jonathan came last, and above the noise of his shoes on the bare stairs Margaret could hear Mr. Gordon and Uncle Peter settling down to excited talk over the meaning of the magical fire. As she undressed she saw^r how extraordinary it was that they shouldn’t even think of petrol — they’d been grown men before the Changes. Then she remembered that she’d only found the picture of the seaside in a dark cranny at the back of her mind — a place which she knew she was supposed to keep shut, without ever having been told so. And Jonathan was a funny boy, treating the adventure so calmly, knowing just what to do all the time, thinking things out all the time behind his ugly little cat-face. He must have remembered about petrol and machines long ago, if he’d been exploring in the barn enough to know his way through it in the pitch dark.

She herself remembered about central heating as she rushed the last piece of undressing, wriggled into her flannel nightdress and jumped into bed. Once the house had been warm enough for her to open her presents on Christmas morning, wearing only her pajamas. Why . . .

She sat bolt upright in bed, knowing that if she asked that sort of question aloud Uncle Peter and Mr. Gordon and the others would be stoning her for a witch. She shivered, but not with cold this time, and blew out her candle. At once the horrible business of the morning floated up through her mind — the jostling onlookers, and the cheering, and the straining shoulders of the men as they poised their stones for throwing. She tried to shut it out, twice two is four and four is eight and eight is sixteen and sixteen is thirty-two and thirty-two is sixty-four and sixty-four is, is a hundred and twenty-eight and . . . but each time she got stuck the pictures came flooding back. She heard Mr. Gordon cackle exultantly from the door as he left, and Uncle Peter’s booming good nights. Still she lay, afraid to shut her eyes, staring through the diamond-paned window to where Orion was just lifting over the crest of Cranham woods.

Something scratched at the door.

“Who is it?” she croaked.

“Me," whispered Jonathan through the slight creak of the opening door. “I must oil that. Come and listen. Quietly.”

She put on her cloak and tiptoed onto the landing. Flickering light came up the stairs as the fire spurted. Jonathan caught her by her elbow in the darkness.

“Stop there,” he whispered. “The floor squeaks further on. You can hear from here.”

Aunt Anne and Uncle Peter were still in the kitchen, arguing. Uncle Peter’s voice was rumbly with cider and not always clear, but Aunt Anne’s had a hysterical edge which carried every syllable up to the listeners.

“I tell you I can’t stand it any longer,” she was saying. “Everything that’s happened is wicked, wicked! What harm had that poor man done us this morning, harm that you can prove, prove like you know that if you drop a stone it will fall? And forcing the children up there to see him die. I kept Jo back, and I’d do so again, but Marge is like a walking ghost. Oh, Pete, you must see, it can’t be right to do that to children!”

“Rumble mumble Maisie nigh filled a bucket tonight when she was dry mumble rumble answer me that woman!”

“Oh, for God’s sake, you know as well as I do that you’ve only just moved the cows down to the meadow pasture. They always make more milk the first couple of days there.”

“Rumble bang shout off you go before I take my cudgel to you!”

A gulping noise. Aunt Anne was really crying now.

“Wouldn’t she help?” whispered Margaret.

“She’s too near breaking as it is,” whispered Jonathan. “But Lucy will be useful.”

“Lucy! But she’s . .

“You’ve never even thought about her, Marge. Just look what she’s managed for Tim. And anyway, Tim’s deep in it, so she’ll have to help. Thank you for asking about the stocks. Bed now.”

This time Margaret found she could shut her eyes and there was a different picture in her mind: she’d reined Scrub up for a breather on the very top of the Beacon and looked northwest towards Wales. The limestone hill plunged at her feet towards the Vale; there lay the diminishing copses and farms, and beyond them the gray smudge which was the dead city of Gloucester, and beyond that, green so distant that it was almost the color of smoke — but through those far fields snaked the gleaming windings of the Severn towards, in the distant west (often you couldn’t be sure whether what you were seeing was cloud or land or water, but today you could) the Bristol Channel. The sea.

THE frosts came, and shriveled the last runner beans. Even at midday the air had a tang to it which meant that soon there would be real winter. Any wind made whirlpools of fallen leaves in odd corners.

It was three days before the witch spoke. To either of the children, that is — maybe he talked to Tim, but if so Tim couldn’t tell them. And it was dangerous to go down much to the old tractor barn where the wicked machines stood.

“If you’ve got to go,” said Jonathan, “look as if you’re making for Tim’s shed. Carry something he might need — food or an old rag. Then sneak round the back of the barn. And once you’re past Tim’s shed walk on a fresh bit of grass each time, or you’ll make a path and someone will spot it. You do realize we’re stuck with a dangerous job, Marge?”

“Stuck?”

“Well, wouldn’t you rather you’d never heard him?

Rather someone else had? Then we could have rubbed along as we were.”

Margaret didn’t know what she’d rather, so she hadn’t said anything. Next time she went to the barn she carried a knuckle of mutton with a bit of meat still on it, and actually walked into Tim’s shed as if she was going to leave it for him. She looked round at the stinking heaps of straw, with the late-autumn flies hazing about in the dimness, and wondered how she’d never thought about the way Tim lived, any more than she thought about the cows who came squelching through the miry gates to milking. She’d thought far more about Scrub than Tim.

Ashamed, she looked round the dank lean-to to find something she could do now, at once, to make the zany more comfortable. There was nothing, but in her search she saw a triangular hole in the corrugated asbestos which formed the back of the shed. And on the other side of the hole was the wheel of a wicked machine, a ... a ... a tractor. Of course, this shed was propped against the back of the barn, and if the hole were larger she could slip through to where the witch lay, and there’d be no danger of leaving a track through the rank grasses below the barn.

She tugged at the ragged edge of asbestos, and the whole sheet gave and fell out on top of her. It left a hole just like a door. Inside were the derelict machines and the little brick hut in the corner. And inside that were the rusting engine, Tim, and the witch. He looked a little better, but not enough; it was difficult to tell because of the deceiving yellow light from the lantern and because his face was still livid and puffy with bruising. Tim squatted in his corner of the shed, watching her as suspiciously as a bitch watches you when you come to inspect her puppies. Margaret took the bone to him, then knelt beside the witch. She’d brought a corner of fresh bread spread with cream cheese; she broke bits off and popped them into the smashed mouth whenever it opened — it was like feeding a nestling sparrow, except that nestlings are greedy. It took him a long time to chew each piece, and longer still to swallow.

“Looks to me as if he could do with a wash,” said a soft voice.

Chill with terror Margaret swung round. Lucy was standing in the doorway, her hands on her hips, her face more foreign than ever — elfish, almost — in the faint light of the lantern. She wasn’t looking at Margaret, but down at the wounded witch.

“Yeah,” he said with a rasping sigh, “water would be good.”

“But how are we going to get it here without anyone . . .” She stopped. In the panicky silence she could hear Tim gnawing a morsel of mutton out from a cranny of bone. She stood up, trying to seem (and feel) like a mistress talking to a servant.

“Lucy,” she said hotly, “if you tell anyone . . .”

But Lucy was smiling, and Margaret could think of no threats that would mean anything.

“It’s I could be menacing you, Miss Margaret, and not t’other way about. But I’ll help you for Tim’s sake. I mind him sitting by my bed when I had the measles, afore they took him away, just bubbling, but he made me feel better nor any of the medicines they gave me. He’d have been a doctor, Tim would, supposing he’d been in his right mind.”

“Doctor?”

“Leech, then, but a proper un. I’ll be fetching hot water. Fruit’s what he needs, miss, not that pappy bread.”

“What shall I do? Can I help?”

Lucy looked at her again — not her secret, half-mocking glance, but something new, considering, only a little suspicious.

“Aye,” she said at last, “mebbe you could. We’ll make as if we’re mucking out Tim’s shed, which I should a done weeks back. The Master’s in Low Pasture, and your aunt’s too fazed to notice what we do. So I’ll go and set the big kettle on the stove, and you could mebbe fork all that straw out of Tim’s shed and set light to it. Mind you don’t burn his treasures — you’ll find ’em under a bit of planking in the back corner.”

She slipped out, silent as a stoat. Margaret had to run and scramble over the tow-bars in the dark barn to call after her in a straining whisper, “I’ll come and help you with the kettle, Lucy.”

Lucy turned, black in the bright rectangular gap where the asbestos sheet had been, nodded in silence and flitted away.

There was a hayfork by the midden above the orchard. Margaret scrattled the straw in the shed together — it was cleaner than she’d thought, just musty with damp from the bare earth beneath; and really there were no more flies under the low roof than there were in any other shed on the farm. The plank in the corner she left where it was, after inquisitively lifting it to see what Tim’s “treasures” were: a broken orange Dinky-toy earth-shifter; a plastic water pistol; the shiny top of a soda siphon; a child’s watch which could never tell the time because the knob at the side only made the big and little hands move round the dial together. As she put the plank back Margaret was astonished that she should know what they all were —four days ago they would have been meaningless, except that she’d have known they were wicked.

She picked the driest straw she could see from her heap, twisted it together and took it back into the hut where the witch lay. Tim began to croak with alarm when she opened the lantern to poke it into the flame, so she carried the lantern out into the shed, lit her wisp of straw there and thrust it into the heap. After she’d put the lantern back she stood for several minutes leaning on her fork and watching the yellow stems shrivel into black threads which wriggled as the fire ate into the innards of the pile. Her cheeks were sharp with heat when she began to walk up through the orchard towards the house.

Lucy was in the kitchen, struggling to carry the steaming kettle single-handed. Aunt Anne sat on one side of the stove in an upright chair and Mr. Gordon sat in the rocking chair between the stove and the fire, rocking and clucking. Neither of them looked as though they would pay any more attention to the comings and goings of children than they did to the tortoiseshell butterfly which pattered against the windowpane.

“Can I help you with that, Lucy?” said Margaret.

“If you please, Miss Margaret,” said Lucy. “I thought I’d best clean out Tim’s shed afore winter sets in.”

Margaret picked up a cloth and gripped one handle of the kettle with it. But it wasn’t a kettle, she thought. A kettle was a small shiny thing with a cord going in at the back. You didn’t put it on the stove, but it got hot from inside because the cord was . . . was electric. This big pan they were edging out through the door, very carefully so that the hot water wouldn’t slop over, was a . . . a . . . preserving pan. She looked excitedly at Lucy’s down-bent face.

“I say, Lucy, I’ve just remembered . .

“Careful, Miss Margaret, or you’ll be spilling it all, and then we’ll have our work wasted.”

The interruption was soft and easy, but the glance from under the little lace cap was as fierce as a branding iron. Margaret suddenly saw what a comfortable time she’d had of it since the Changes — Scrub to break and ride and care for, a share of housework, only the occasional belting from Uncle Peter to be afraid of. Wary, of course, but never till now Lucy’s cowering softness, like the stillness of a mouse when a hawk crosses the sky above it. Not even Jonathan’s dangerous adventuring.

Those times were over, since they’d rescued the witch. She would have to cower and adventure with the others. This was what Jonathan had meant about being stuck.

They could never have cleaned the witch without Tim. At first, while Lucy dabbed at the spoiled face, bristly with beard between the scabs, he squatted beside the bedding and watched with the soft glance of a clever spaniel. But as soon as they tried to lift their patient and undress him Tim pushed gently between them and ran his arm under the limp shoulders, lifting the body this way and that while the girls eased the torn and blood-clotted rags off.

“We’d best be burning most of this too,” said Lucy. “D'you think you could find some old clothes of the Master's, Miss Margaret — nothing that he'll miss, mind?"

“I'll try," said Margaret. “Jo was right — he is wearing some kind of armor.”

“Yeah,” said the witch faintly. “Bulletproof, but not rockproof. I figure I got two or three busted ribs, and a busted arm, and I don't seem to move my legs like I used to. You some sort of resistance movement, huh?” “Resistance?” said Margaret.

“I guessed . . said the witch, and paused. “Oh, forget it, you’re only kids, anyway. Who knows I'm here?”

“Me and Jonathan and Lucy and Tim,'' said Margaret. “I heard you groaning under the stones and I told Jonathan and we got Tim to help us bring you down here. Uncle Peter would kill you if he knew, though.” “Us too, mebbe,” said Lucy, so softly that Margaret only just caught the words. Then she added in a brisker voice, “Which is your bad arm, mister?”

“Left. Roll me over on my right side and you can unzip my armor.”

They had to show Tim what they wanted, and he turned the witch over as gently as a shepherd handling a lamb. The man’s legs flopped uncontrolledly, not seeming to move properly with him, like a puppet’s. Then the zip puzzled them for a few seconds, but they both remembered in the same instant and reached out to pull the tag down.

“You'd best be looking for them clothes, Miss Margaret,” chided Lucy. “If we let him chill off, he’ll catch his death, surely.”

Margaret walked slowly up through the orchard, coming to terms with this new Lucy, not the slut who didn’t fill the lamps or rake out the ashes or scrub the step clean, but a different girl, a stranger, who knew just what needed doing. Rather than risk Mr. Gordon’s fierce and knowing glance she climbed the ivy and crawled in through Jonathan’s window — much easier by daylight than it had been in the dark. When she tiptoed out onto the landing she saw Jonathan crouched at the top of the stairs; he looked round at her and put his finger to his lips.

“What’s happening?” whispered Margaret.

He beckoned, then pointed to the floor; he must be showing her which board creaked, so she stepped over it and crouched by his side. He said nothing, but the steady clack of Mr. Gordon’s rocking chair came up the stairs, mixed with his wheezing and clucking.

“He’s waiting for her to break,” whispered Jonathan at last. “I don’t know what to do. He’s willing her to it.”

“Can’t you go in and interrupt them?”

“No, I daren’t — she’s protecting me. She knows, somehow, though I’ve never told her. And he seems to know she knows.”

“Oh.” Margaret felt despairing. It was so unlike Jonathan not to have a plan. Well, at least she could try.

“Find some of Uncle Peter’s old clothes,” she whispered, “ones he never uses. Take them down to the witch. Lucy’s washing him. I’ll do something to stop Mr. Gordon.”

“Thank you,” said Jonathan and slipped off down the passage towards Aunt Anne’s room. Margaret, her gullet hard with fright, crept back into Jonathan’s room, out along the shed roof and down the ivy. It would have to be a lie — a good big one.

When she threw open the kitchen door Mr. Gordon was still rocking and clucking, and now Aunt Anne was leaning forwards in her chair like a mouse which has caught the eye of an adder. Neither of them looked round when the door banged against the dresser, though she’d pushed it so hard that the blue cups rattled on their saucers.

“Oh, Aunt Anne, Aunt Anne,” she croaked (and her terror was real), “a ginger cat just spoke to me. He said ‘Good morning.’ ”

The rocker stopped its clack. Aunt Anne eased herself back in her chair, gazed at the palm of her left hand, and then turned her head.

“What did you say, darling?” she said dully.

“I went down the lane to see if any of the crab apples had fallen at the back of Mrs. Gryde’s, so that we could make some conserve, but before I got there a big ginger

cat came out of the hedge from the six-acre and looked at me and said ‘Good morning.’ ”

Mr. Gordon jumped out of the chair, sending his blackthorn stick clattering across the floor. Margaret ran to pick it up for him, but as she knelt his bony hand clawed into her shoulder, so that she dropped the stick again and almost shouted with surprise and hurt. He pulled her close to him; she could see the individual hairs that sprouted from the big wart on the side of his nose. His bloodshot old eyes glittered.

“Mrs. Gryde’s cat, that’d be?” he said fiercely.

“No,” croaked Margaret. “Hers is quite a little one. This was big, the biggest I’ve seen, and lame in one leg. It went away up towards the New Wood. Shall I show you?”

Mr. Gordon clucked once or twice, thinking. “Ah,” he said at last. “That’s where we found the witch. Mebbe he didn’t go back to his master after all. Mebbe he turned hisself into a cat — and he’d be lame all right, after the stoning we give him. You bring me along and show me what you seen, lass.”

He let go of her shoulder, but gripped it again the instant she’d turned. Aunt Anne had to scrabble for his stick. Then Margaret led him hobbling out into the road, hoping there were no witnesses about; but Mother Fatchet was driving her black pig up the slope towards them. Mr. Gordon stopped her, and the two old people at once began an excited cackling discussion about what might have happened, during which Margaret’s invented cat seemed to grow bigger and bigger until she was afraid they wouldn’t believe her when she showed

them the rabbit run she’d decided on for it to have appeared through — a gravelly place where even the heaviest cat’s paw-marks couldn’t be expected to show up. But when she showed them the hole they didn’t seem to mind that it was small. Mr. Gordon made her tell her lie all over again while he stared hotly up to where the young beeches of New Wood stood russet in the silvery sunlight. Then, at last, he let go of her shoulder and began hobbling up towards the center of the village to roust his cronies out of the pub for another witchhunt. Mother Fatchet tied her pig to the farm gate and scuttled up the lane so that she should miss none of the blood-soaked fun.

Aunt Anne was at her stove, stirring uselessly at the big gruel pot which simmered there night and day. Margaret slid into the larder, opened one of the little bottles of cordial, poured half of it into a mug and placed that on the stove by Aunt Anne’s left hand. Her aunt stopped stirring, picked up the mug and sniffed at it, looked sideways at Margaret, hesitated, then shut her eyes and took three hefty swallows. When she put the mug down she gave a long sigh and reached out to draw Margaret close against her side, as though she was afraid to say thank you out loud, as though even the crannies and shelves of her own kitchen might be full of spies waiting for the betraying word.

It would be dangerous to go back to the barn, Margaret thought — they wouldn’t find anything up at the New Wood and then they’d come to look for her to hear her story again. When Aunt Anne let go of her she chose a couple of bruised apples from the larder and ran out to the paddock to talk to Scrub. He was sulking, jealous after three days’ neglect, and wouldn’t come when she whistled. But Caesar, Jonathan’s unloved and melancholy gray, came boredly over and Margaret gave him one of the apples and started to fondle his ears. This was too much for Scrub and he cantered over with a clownish look in his eye as though he’d only just realized she was there. She accepted his pretense and gave him his apple too.

All at once she heard harsh voices shouting on the other side of the road, up in the six-acre; she climbed up onto the second bar of the gate and teetered there trying to crane over the tall hedge. When that wasn’t any good she slid across onto Scrub’s back and coaxed him along towards the gap further down the field — difficult sitting sideways without saddle or reins, because she had no control at all. But Scrub was in a mood to show how clever he could be, and did what she wanted.

There were eight or nine men standing in a circle just below the New Wood. Three old women in black watched them from twenty yards away. The men all had sticks or cudgels and were taking it in turn to beat something that lay on the grass in the middle of the circle; they shouted at each blow, egging each other on. She could recognize Mr. Gordon by his stoop, and Mr. Syon the smith by his apron, and the two black-bearded brothers from Clapper’s Farm. While she was wondering sickly what they’d caught, one of the men struck so hard that he snapped his cudgel; he threw the pieces angrily on the ground and began to walk down across the six-acre towards her. As he came nearer she saw it

was one of the stonecutters from the quarry on the Beacon: nearer still, and his cheeks were burning with cider though it was still only the middle of the morning.

“Think your uncle would mind if you lent us a spade, lass?” he shouted.

“I’ll get one,” Margaret shouted back. She slid off Scrub’s back, climbed the fence and ran round to the farmyard. The stonecutter was already staggering in through the gate when she came out of the shed where the garden tools were kept. Aunt Anne had come to the kitchen door to watch.

“What did you find?” asked Margaret as she handed the big man the spade. Her fear and disgust must have sounded just like excitement to him.

“Ah,” he answered with gloating pleasure, “he were a clever one, but he weren’t so clever as he thought he were. He’d changed hisself into a rook, you see, so’s to be able to fly away from where Davey Gordon could smell him out, but he’d forgot as how his arm was broke. The cat you saw was lame, weren’t he, missy? So now he was a rook his wing was broke, and he couldn’t fly away after all.”

The man gave a bellowing, cider-smelling laugh.

“We smashed him up, that we did,” he shouted. “He won’t do no more witching now. Thankee, missy — I’ll fetch your spade back in half an hour. You done a good morning’s work, you have.”

He stumped out, too drunk to notice how white Margaret had turned, or how she reeled and hugged the well-pump to keep herself from falling. When the whole hillside and valley had stopped sloping around she found Aunt Anne standing anxious beside her.

“You’d best be away for a few hours, Marge,” she said. “If I gave you a pot of damson cheese you could ride over to Cousin Mary’s in the Vale. I should have sent it weeks back, but it slipped my mind. I’ll pack you up a bit of bread and bacon, too, for your dinner. Mr. Gordon’s sure to come round talking to Uncle Peter then, so you’d much best be somewhere else.”

“Oh, thank you, Aunt Anne. I’ll get Scrub ready.”

Twenty minutes later Margaret was clear of the village, riding sidesaddle as she always did. She’d waved to old Mr. Sampson digging his cabbage patch by the almshouses; she’d craned over the Dower House wall to see the yew trees all clipped into shapes of animals; she had sniffed the thymy air as they came out of the woods, and leaned right down over Scrub’s mane as the pony took the steep bank up the common grazing ground below the Beacon; it was just like any of a hundred other rides, hill and valley exactly the same as they’d always been, as though nothing had happened to change her world four days ago.

Scrub was skittish and restless with lack of exercise, tossing his head sideways and up as though he wanted to get a better grip of the bit; so she let him canter all the way up the steady slope to the corner of the cemetery, where no one had been buried since the Changes came because people preferred to be buried in the churchyard even if it meant jostling the bones of long-dead generations. As they swept round the corner they hurtled into the middle of a swirling and squawking white riot — they’d gone full tilt into the flock of village geese. Scrub reared and skittered sideways with an awkward bouncy motion, but Margaret had had half a second to see what was going to happen, so she gripped the pommel of her saddle tightly, allowed him a few moments to be stupid (he knew all about geese, really) and then reined him firmly in.

The geese subsided into angry gossip. Mother Fatchet’s eldest grandchild was supposed to be herding them but he’d taken time off to swing on a low branch of one of the cemetery pines; now he jumped down, picked up his long stick, put his thumb in his mouth and stood watching her sulkily. Margaret said good morning to him as she rode on, but he didn’t answer. For the first time she realized how suspicious everybody was nowadays — suspicious of strangers, suspicious of neighbors. Anyone could betray you. Perhaps other villages were different — friendly and easy — but this village was like a bitch with a hurt foot: move and it snarled.

Of course, people didn’t have to like each other. Even sweet Aunt Anne had quarreled with jolly Cousin Mary, quarreled twenty years ago about a silver teapot. Now they never visited, never spoke; Cousin Mary sent Aunt Anne a pot of honey in high summer and Aunt Anne sent Cousin Mary a pot of damson cheese in late autumn, and that was all.

But nobody liking or trusting anybody — it couldn’t have been like that before the Changes.

She made poor Scrub scrabble up the loose-stoned path to the very ridge of the Beacon, though it was just as short and much easier to go round the side. Another curious thing struck her: the great earth ramparts of the Beacon had been built thousands of years ago, before the Romans came, but she only knew that — only knew about the Romans coming, too — because she’d been told it before the Changes, when she was less than nine. Nobody told you that sort of thing nowadays: there wasn’t any history. Everyone talked and behaved as though England had always been the same as it was now, and always would be; the only thing to mark one year off from another was a rick catching fire, or a bad harvest, or a big tree falling, or a witch being caught and stoned. No one ever mentioned the Changes, if they could help it.

And that was how she’d thought herself until four days ago, until Jonathan had spattered the petrol over the stocks and she’d remembered that seaside filling station.

She reined Scrub in for a breather at the very top of the Beacon, where the old triangulation point had been (some fanatic had managed to knock the cement into fragments with a sledgehammer), and looked at the enormous landscape with new eyes. Always before it had been the dim hills of Wales which had excited her, and the many-elmed green leagues between the two escarpments, and the glistening twists of the Severn. Now it was the gray smudge in the middle, Gloucester, the dead city.

Always before she had looked away from it, as though it were something horrible, a stone and slate disease. Now she wanted to see what it was like since all the people had left it. You couldn't live in a big city now: there was nothing to live on, no one to buy from or sell to; besides, the whole place must smell of the wickedness of machines.

Brookthorpe is the first village in the Vale, just as Edge is the last village in the hills. Margaret seldom rode down into the Vale, but she found a way by lanes and footpaths, cutting across fields where no path led in the right direction. There was much less arable land since tractors were gone, and cows were mostly herded by children, so many of the hedges had been allowed to go into gaps.

Cousin Mary had moved. A pretty young woman was living in her cottage and the old apple tree had been cut down. The new owner said that Cousin Mary had gone to live with a friend at Hempsted, right down by the river. She told Margaret how to get there.

The Vale has a quite different feel to it from the hills. It’s not just that the fields are flatter and most of the houses are brick: the air smells different, and the people have a different look, sly and knowing; the farms are dirtier too, and the lanes twist for no good reason (up in the hills they twist to take a slope the best way, or so as not to lose height when one is following a contour). Margaret had to ask her way several times, and the answer always came in a strange, soft voice with a sideways look.

She skirted a dead housing development, came to a rotary and rode north along a big road for nearly a mile, looking for a lane to the left. The buildings by the road were rusting old factories and garages, and sometimes a little group of shops with their windows broken and all their goods stolen. Cars and lorries rusted in forecourts, and pale tatters of advertising posters dangled from walls. One place, an open-air used-car mart, had been set on fire, for all the cars were twisted and charred; you’d only have to walk along the lines of them, taking off the filler-caps and poking blazing rags in with a stick — dangerous, but some people were fanatical against machines.

As soon as she’d turned off along the lane to Hemp-sted Margaret had a disappointment. A bridge took her over a river, which she at first thought must be the Severn, only it seemed too mean and narrow. She stopped on the bridge and gazed north and south, and saw that the river ran unnaturally straight, and that there were man-made embankments on both sides and a path running all along its bank. So it wasn’t a mean and narrow river but a man-made thing, a noble great canal, far wider than the silted thin affair that ran through Stroud. This wasn’t dug for narrow barges, but for proper ships; she could see from the color of the water, a flinty gray, that it was deep enough to take seagoing vessels.

Supposing that they could get under the bridge. But no, that wouldn’t be necessary, because the whole bridge was made to swivel sideways, out of the way of passing ships. There was even a crankhandle to turn it with.

She was still wondering whether the bridge would really have swung if she’d had the nerve to turn the handle when she came into Hempsted. Cousin Mary’s new house was a little cottage close in under the churchyard wall. Cousin Mary herself was busy forking dung into the tiny garden, but she stopped her work to receive the precious pot of damson cheese and to ask formally after all her relations up in the hills. She seemed to be not really “living with a friend” as the woman in Brookthorpe had suggested, but to be more of a servant here, like Lucy was on the farm. But she offered to take Margaret into the cottage and show her the place where she’d spilled boiling water on her leg, and it wouldn’t heal because Mrs. Barnes down the road had put a spite on her. Margaret said, “No, thank you.” There was a great tattered bandage round Cousin Mary’s leg, all yellow with new dung and older dirt — no wonder it wouldn’t heal. She said good-bye, rode back to the little lane through Hempsted and turned left. She was going to see what Gloucester looked like.

There were houses all along the lane, with fields behind them. Their windows were broken and their tiles were all awry. In a gap between two such houses a man was digging; he stood up and shouted to her as she passed but she couldn’t catch what he said — it sounded like something about dogs — so she just waved cheerfully to him. From the slight rise on which Hempsted stands she could see the tower of the Cathedral, and the lane led straight towards it. She felt gay, almost heroic, with her adventure, so it took her longer than it usually would have to sense that Scrub was becoming more and more uneasy. Only when he shied across the lane at a big chestnut leaf that floated down in front of his nose did Margaret pay attention to his feelings, and by then they were on the edge of the city itself.

A level crossing over a light railway seemed to mark the real boundary, and there she almost turned back. She was hungry, and Scrub clearly was against going on. But it seemed cowardly, having come so far. What would Jonathan have thought of her? So she dismounted and led Scrub across the rails. The nape of her neck began to prickle; the long, low buildings on either side of the lane were windowless and very silent; by the side of the railway she spotted a bar of rusty iron as thick as a man’s thumb and two feet long. She picked it up before she remounted — any weapon was better than none.

The echo of Scrub’s hooves tocked back at her off blank walls. In one place the surface of the road had heaved up where frost had reached a pocket of underground water, a burst main, perhaps. On the other side the road became a bridge.

It was a bridge over a canal, the same canal as they’d crossed earlier. On her left was a series of V-shaped gates, two facing inwards to hold the water of the canal in, and one outwards to control the fast-flowing river which swept round the long curve beyond. On her right were the docks, a wide basin of water surrounded by grim, tall warehouses, and cranes and derricks. Sunken barges lay along the quays, all green with weed. There were two proper ships, with masts and funnels, further down the basin, but one of them was leaning sideways in the water. And against the left-hand quay was a line of three smaller boats, two floating, one waterlogged; the floating ones sat oddly in the water, but looked as though that was how they were meant to be, stern down, bows up, stubby and pugnacious; their funnels were far too big for them. Margaret remembered a jigsaw which she’d been given once when she was ill, a picture of the Queen Elizabeth docking. There’d been boats like this in it. They were tugs.

Despite the peeling paint and the rust and the streaks of gulls’ droppings they looked undaunted and powerful, an example of the forgotten forces which were on the children’s side, if they could be summoned into use again. Margaret began to feel cheerful once more.

But not Scrub. As they rode on, occasionally catching a glimpse of the Cathedral tower to guide them, he was tense and quivering. Margaret talked to him to keep his spirits up, but then the sound of her own voice seemed so naked in the empty street that she let it dribble into a whisper, and then into silence. She patted him halfheartedly on the neck and wished she hadn’t come.

The street bent left, in the wrong direction, following the curve of the flowing water. This again couldn’t be the true Severn — it was too narrow and controlled — but it must be part of it. Then the street jinked right, away from the water, and crossed a much wider road which led back towards the hills. Margaret turned right.

She almost missed the Cathedral because it lay off to the left of this larger road down a narrow alley, but she saw the knobbly pinnacles out of the corner of her eye and wheeled Scrub round into the Cathedral grounds. The grass was long and rank, which once had been shaved as close as a mower could be set; it didn’t even seem to have been nibbled by rabbits. All the doors were locked fast, so she rode round the gray mass wondering what it was like now inside; she had a dim memory of heavy and shadowed arches, with candles and high, lacy singing; but that might have been some other church. She rode back into the main street and on down to a big crossroads. The sun was halfway down the sky now, and that meant that the proper direction must be . . .

But as she considered the position of the shadows a white mongrel terrier ran out of a lane to her left, threw back its head and howled. The howl was answered by others from all around, and at once the terrier, very lean and dirty but very quick, sprang snarling towards her. Three more dogs wheeled out, baying, further down the left-hand road. Scrub shied, but she kept her seat and shouted and shook the reins. At once he was off up the street in front, the terrier yelping at his heels. Margaret glanced over her shoulder and saw that another dozen dogs poured out of side alleys and were tearing down the road after her. Scrub was already moving at a full gallop, jarring and frightening on the hard uneven road; there was no point in trying to make him go any faster — if he panicked they’d both fall at some pothole. She looked over her shoulder again. Now there were at least thirty dogs in the pack, trailing out all down the street, with the short-legged descendants of corgis and basset hounds far behind while the long-legged Labrador mongrels yelped at Scrub’s heels.

A big, wolfish creature with a lot of Alsatian in him made a spurt and leaped, jaws wide, for Scrub’s flank.

But Margaret happened to be balanced just right to whang him across the forehead with her iron bar. She heard a bone crack and saw him tumble head over heels, and then her eye was caught by an interruption in the level of the road ahead. There had been some sort of explosion — gas perhaps — and fifty yards further on, the whole width of the tarmac had been thrown up into a rough barrier which would slow a horse to a walk while the dogs came streaming over it. The streets on either side ran off at right angles, far too sharp to turn a galloping pony into. As they neared the upheaval she saw that right against the left-hand wall, up on the pavement, there was a gap. Scrub had been galloping down the middle of the road, between the blank traffic signals and unreadable police notices, but she coaxed him over towards the wall. He took the curb cleverly, flashed through the gap, pecked as his off forefoot banged into a loose brick, but recovered.

Only a rangy black Labrador was still with them now. Scrub could gallop faster than the dogs could run, but he couldn’t keep it up for as long as they could — at least not with a girl and the heavy sidesaddle to carry as well. He would have to ease his pace soon. The black dog bounded along, just out of reach; Margaret lashed at it twice with her bar, but missed; the second time she so nearly unbalanced herself from the saddle that she had to let the weapon drop. Desperately she unbuckled her saddlebag, felt for a slice of bacon, held it out as one holds a chocolate for a begging lapdog, then tossed it in front of the beast’s jaws. It slashed at the morsel and missed, but the smell of meat was enough to make it

slide to a stop, turn and investigate. The rest of the pack engulfed it while it was still swallowing, then came on. Margaret dug into the saddlebag and flung piece after piece of her picnic behind her, until the street was filled with squabbling hounds. Only the slowest ones came too' late to share the feast, and they followed halfheartedly on her trail. Soon she was a hundred yards ahead of the nearest one. Next time she looked round they’d all given up.

Scrub took some slowing, though. The road -curved through a section of the city where all the houses had caught fire; it ran under a railway bridge and straightened again before he could be induced to canter, and then to trot. They were still going a fair lick when they came out into open fields and the road tilted towards the hills.

Two miles further on, among inhabited cottages once more, she dismounted and led him. His coat was rough and bristling, his cheeks and neck rimed with drying foam. Every now and then he tensed and gave a great heaving shudder. When the hill really began to slope steeply, beyond the turning for Upton, she led him onto a wide piece of grassy verge to graze and rest; there were two crusts of bread and a strip of bacon fat left for her lunch, and now it was nearly teatime, but she ate them thankfully, thinking that there are worse things than hunger. Then she looked over his hooves, though it was too soon to see how bruised he’d been by the punishing gallop along the tarmac.

They went home very slowly, Margaret walking most of the way. It was dark before they started down

through the long wood that screened the village from the north, and she was already far later than even Aunt Anne’s merciful errand would give her an excuse for; so just before she turned the lane where the farm lay she picked up a small stone and rammed it into the groove between Scrub’s near front shoe and the tenderer flesh. She led him into the farmyard convincingly lame.

But all the playacting she’d prepared, all the believable lies, all the excuses — they were unnecessary. Uncle Peter was cock-a-hoop at the best milk yield of the year; Aunt Anne wanted to know all about Cousin Mary’s new house; Jonathan talked busily about the fox cubs in Low Wood; Lucy was her usual secret self. Any stranger coming in would have thought them a nice, dull, contented family enjoying a plain supper after an ordinary day.