The Devils Children

VI

THIEVES’ HARVEST

THEY HAD BEEN PLOWING all day, with four plows going and every man and woman, as well as all the older children, taking turns at the heavy chore. Between turns they worked at the two strips which were wanted for autumn sowing, breaking down the clods with hoes and dragging the harrow to and fro to produce a fine tilth. The thin strips of turned earth looked pitiful amid the rolling steppes of stubble and unmown wheat. The strips were scattered apparently at random over the farm, wherever prodding with sticks had shown the soil to be deepest or least flinty, or where there seemed some promise of shelter from the winds. There’d been no rain for a week, so the soil was light and workable, which was why the whole community was slaving at it today. On other days logging parties had been up in the woods, getting in fuel for the winter. And twice a raiding party had set off at dusk, trekked the twenty miles to Reading through the safe night, stayed in the empty city all day, and trekked back laden with stores and blocks of the most precious stuff in all England, salt.

But today had been stolid plowing. Resting between her turns, Nicky had been vaguely conscious that something was happening down in the village. The bells rang for a minute, not their proper changes, and then stopped. Shouts drifted up against the breeze, but so faint and far that she didn’t piece them together into a coherent sequence, or even realize that they were more and louder than they might have been.

About six it was time to go and get the hens in by scattering corn in their coops. If you left it later than that they tried to roost out in the shrubs of the farmhouse garden. She was helping Ajeet search the tattered lavender bushes for hidden nests when she saw, down the lane and out of the corner of her eye, a furtive movement — somebody ducking into the crook of the bank to avoid being seen. Kewal, she thought, out checking the rabbit snares to escape his share of plowing. But Kewal had been up in the field, lugging at the ropes as steadily as anyone (it was really only that he didn’t like starting jobs) and besides, hadn’t the shape in the lane had fair hair? And wasn’t there something awkward about the way it had moved?

Inquisitive she slid down the bank and stole along the lane. They all went barefooted as often as possible now, because shoes were wearing out and making new ones was a job for winter evenings. No council workmen had been along the lanes of England that summer, keeping the verges trim, so you could bury yourself deep in the rank grasses. Mike, peering between the stems, must have seen her coming; but he stayed where he was. He had been crying, but now his mouth was working down and sideways as though something sticky had lodged in the corner of his jaw; his lungs pumped in dry, jerking spasms.

“What’s the matter, Mike?” said Nicky, forgetting that she wasn’t supposed to know his name. But he’d forgotten too.

“The robbers have come!” he gasped. “The robbers have come!”

Nicky stared at him, not taking it in.

“They was herding all the children together,” said Mike, “and taking ’em off somewheres. I was abed still, with my foot, but my Mum shoved me out of the back gate and says to come to you. I been crawling across the fields, but I dursn’t come no further, though you done me good once. My Mum says you done my foot good.”

“But what about Mr. Barnard — the Master? Didn’t he stop them?”

“They killed him! They killed him!”

Mike began to wail, and Nicky’s whole being was flooded by a chill of shock at the thought of that huge life murdered. She put her arm around Mike’s shoulders and waited for the sobbing to stop.

“Come with me,” she said. “My friends will know what to do. Shall I give you a piggyback again?”

“I’ll do,” sniffled the boy. “There’s not nowhere else to go, is there?”

“That’s right,” said Nicky, and helped him, half hobbling and half hopping, up the lane. His foot was still clearly very sore, and she could see from his scrattled knees that he really must have crawled most of the way.

Ajeet was standing in the lane with the basket of eggs. The boy flinched when he saw her, but came on.

“Come and help me talk to your grandmother,” said Nicky. “Robbers have come to the village and killed the big man. They’re taking all the children somewhere, Mike says — as hostages, I suppose. That means they’re going to stay.”

Ajeet never looked as though anything had surprised her. Now she just nodded her small head and walked up to the wych elm where the old lady held court on fine days. The big tree stood right against the lane above the farmyard and here in a flattened and dusty area of what had been barley field the small children scuffled and dug, while the old lady lay on her cushions in the shade and gave orders to everything that came in sight, or gathered her grandchildren and great-grandchildren into a ring and told them long marvelous fairy tales. One of the mothers was always there to do the donkey work of the nursery, but the old lady was its genius.

By the time Nicky had brought Mike hobbling up and settled him in comfort in the dust, Ajeet had told the news. Nicky turned toward the tree, put her palms together under her chin and bowed. The old lady did the same on her cushions, just as if Nicky were an important person come from many miles away to visit her. The old lady rattled a sharp sentence at the children who’d gathered to listen, and they scattered.

Ajeet said, “My grandmother wants the boy to tell his story again.”

Mike was staring at the old lady with quivering lips. Nicky remembered how terrified she'd been when she first faced those brilliant eyes.

“He told me that robbers had come to the village,” she said. “They’d started herding the children together and taking them somewhere. He was in bed with his bad foot, and his mother smuggled him out of the back door and told him to come to us. He said the robbers had killed the big man. Do you know any more, Mike?”

“My Mum said they was on horses, in armor,” he whispered.

Ajeet translated. Mike couldn’t remember any more. He’d seen nothing himself, though he’d heard the cries from his bed, and the church bell ringing its alarm and then stopping.

The old lady spoke to Tara Deep, the mother who’d been looking after the nursery. She nodded and began to walk up to the plowmen, quick and graceful in her blue sari. The old lady spoke directly to Nicky.

“My grandmother wants to know what you think we should do,” said Ajeet.

“First we’ve got to make ourselves as safe as we can,” said Nicky, “and then we’ve got to find out more, how many of them there are, and what they’re going to do next. We can’t decide anything until we get more news. The only thing is, the robbers won’t mind crossing the bad wires — they must have passed things just as bad to get to the village at all.”

“I just shuts my eyes and ducks under,” said Mike.

“The farmyard’s almost a fort already,” said Nicky. “We could get food and water in, and the sheep, and strengthen it. And as soon as it’s dark I’ll go down across the fields and try and find somebody I know. Mr. Tom’s house has its back to the school playground, and then there’s a path and then fields, so I might be able to get to him without going through the village at all. After all, we aren’t really sure that Mike’s got his story right — his mother must have been very hurried and worried.”

Ajeet had been translating as Nicky went along. The old lady raised a ringed hand, palm towards Nicky in a sort of salute, and answered. Ajeet laughed.

“My grandmother says that you will make a very good wife for a soldier some day,” she said.

Nicky nodded, unsmiling. She was frightened, of course, by what she had suggested, but another part of her felt a strange, grim satisfaction in the risks and dangers. They would force her to rebuild the armor around her heart, which during the last few weeks she had allowed to become so full of chinks and weaknesses. She bowed her head and stared at the scuffled dust; at the thought of the coming action her heart began to hammer — as though there were a small smithy in there, retempering the rusted steel.

By now the men were trooping down from the field, talking excitedly and looking northeast across the swooping acres to where the church tower stood peaceful among its lindens. The women called their own children to them as they came, and cajoled them into stillness and silence. A big orderly circle gathered under the wych elm, the men stopped chattering and the old woman spoke. Nicky heard her own name jut out from the fuzz of Punjabi; heads turned towards her. Then, as usual, twenty voices broke into argument together; the old lady screeched, and Uncle Jagindar was talking alone. Voices grunted agreement. He turned to Nicky.

“This sounds dangerous,” he said, “but we can send a guard with you.”

“I don’t think it’s very dangerous,” said Nicky. “If they catch me, they’ll think I’m one of the village children and put me with the others as a hostage. But I don’t see why they should — they can’t watch the whole village, all the way around. If you do send a guard, you won’t have so many men for the defense up here, supposing they decided to attack tonight, which would be the sensible thing for them. It’d be a waste of our men. You’ll need sentries all night, too.”

She could see heads nodding.

“Perhaps Gopal could come with me,” she said. “Not to fight or anything, but to bring back news if I do get caught. The thing is, I’m sure I’m the only person Mr. Tom or any of them would talk to, so it’s no use any of you going. They’re a bit scared of me, but not half so much as they are of you. That’s right, isn’t it, Mike?”

“Yes, that’s right,” he whispered, staring round at the dark and bearded faces.

“And we’ve got to know, haven’t we?” she said. “We can’t decide anything till then.”

Uncle Jagindar wheeled to the ring of Sikhs.

“That is agreed, my friends?” he asked.

“Agreed,” boomed the council.

He started to allot tasks in Punjabi. Gopal came, serious-faced, to Nicky.

“Our job is to eat and rest,” he said. “Mike looks as if he needs a rest too.”

The boy nodded, but they had to help him to his feet and support him, swaying, down to the farmyard. Already the water carriers were bringing bucket after bucket clanking from the well, while the carts creaked up from the farmhouse with larderfuls of dry stores and tins. Sacks of charcoal were carried in from the smithy, for cooking, and mounds of hay down from the big barn for the sheep. Soon the sheep themselves flooded, baaing with amazement, into the bustling square. The cooped hens were trundled up the lane; barrows of blankets and bedding came from the houses, sacks of new corn from the storage towers. The old lady was ensconced in an open stall, and the holy book carried reverently in from the bungalow.

As dusk fell the courtyard was still a shouting and baaing and cackling confusion. The communal supper was going to be very late, cooked on the faint-flamed and smokeless charcoal instead of the roaring logs they’d used when they first spent a night there. But Nicky had already eaten; her fair hair was covered with a dark scarf; she wore a navy-blue jersey and a pair of dark gray trousers belonging to Gopal; she would have liked to blacken her face, but could imagine the effect on an already terrified Mr. Tom if a dark face hissed at him out of the night. His was obviously the first house to try.

After the clamor and reek and dust of the courtyard, the dewy air of nightfall would have seemed bliss to breathe if her heart hadn’t been beating so fiercely. Gopal eased his sword in its scabbard, then frowned at the slight click. They stole down the familiar lane side by side. Mr. Kirpal Singh, crouched by a lone bush on the bank, whispered them good luck. (Five sentries watching for two hours each: everyone was going to be very tired tomorrow.)

There was a copse on the right of the lane below the bad wires. They headed south beside it, and on up the slope under the cover of a hedge which had not been hauled out because it marked the boundary between two farms. After two hundred yards they turned east again, leaving the hedge to slip like hunting stoats along the edge of a stand of barley. There was no hurry. The night was still dark gray, and Nicky didn't want to reach the playing field until it was fully black. So where the barley stopped, because that was as far as the reapers had mown, they lay on their stomachs, trying to suck the last inch of seeing out of the shortening distances, peering and listening for dangers. A lone pheasant clacked in a copse to their right.

“They cannot post sentries all around a village as big as this,” whispered Gopal. “Not unless there are hundreds of men. In any case they do not need to defend the whole village now that they have hostages. They will guard the place where they have set up camp, and then perhaps they will send out patrols. That is what we must watch out for.”

Beyond the reaped stubble was a pasture field where cows stumbled and snorted, invisible from twenty yards. Knowing what inquisitive brutes cows can be the children steered to the right, where an extra loom in the dark promised the shelter of another hedge. But when it came it was double, and a lane ran down the middle. Nicky shook her head — such a path was a likely route for a patrol. They scouted left, and the lane bent at right angles; flitting through a gap in the hedges, they found themselves once more at a place where unreaped wheat ran beside stubble, and ran in what Nicky, even after that bout of dodging, still thought was the right direction. Then another lane to cross, and empty pasture beyond. It was too dark to see more than ten yards now.

After a whispered talk, Gopal dropped behind and Nicky tucked a white rag into her belt for him to follow her by, like the scut of a rabbit. (If they were chased, she’d have to remember to snatch it out.) Darkness made the middle of fields seem safer than hedges; but coming in darkness to the village, by this unfamiliar way, she might easily have missed her direction. The wind had been steady from the southwest all day, surely. Just as she decided to stop and reconsider, the church clock began to clang sweetly to her left. Eight. More to her front, but further away, urgent voices yelled. In the fresh silence the tussocky grass of the pasture seemed to swish horribly loudly, however carefully she moved her feet; anyone waiting in the coming hedge would be bound to hear her — though she couldn’t hear Gopal ten paces behind her. Encouraged, she stole forward.

This hedge was double too, but the path down the middle was only a yard across. So she knew where she was, at least; this was the footpath that ran south between the church and the school. The nearer hedge was strengthened with the thorny wire she hated so much. As she squatted and wondered whether there’d be a gap further along, Gopal edged quietly up beside her.

“Barbed wire?” he whispered. “Wait a moment.” He crouched by the fence, holding some sort of tool in his hand. Two clicks, and he dragged a strand of wire away.

“My very own notion,” he whispered. “Wire cutters. You can crawl through now. Is it far from here?”

“Only across the playing field.”

“Then tie your rag to the other hedge so that we can find the place coming back.”

Most of the householders in the council estate kept a dog, but Mr. Tom preferred his scarred old tabby; so if they came up straight behind the right house there oughtn’t to be any barking. Nicky lay in the dewy grass and tried to make out the roof lines; Mrs. Bower’s chimney, next door, had a big hunched cowl. So . . .

Only firelight showed through Mr. Tom’s parlor window. Nicky edged an eye above the sill, hoping that he hadn’t gone to bed yet. No. He was curled in a chair by the dying fire, his head in his hands but held so low that it was almost on his knees; he looked very old and beaten. Nicky tapped cautiously on the pane. At the third tap he looked over his shoulder like a haunted man, and then put his head back between his hands. She kept on tapping, in a steady double rhythm which couldn’t have been caused by anything accidental, such as a flying beetle. At last he staggered from the chair, crossed the room and opened the window half an inch.

“Who’s there?” he whispered.

“Me. The girl from the Devil’s Children. I want to talk to you.”

“I’ll have nothing to do with you,” he hissed, and tried to shut the window. But Nicky was ready for him and jammed the hilt of her knife into the crack.

“We want to help you,” she whispered. “But we can’t until we know what’s happening.”

“How many o’ you’s out there, then?”

“Only me and a boy. He’ll rap on the window if he hears anyone coming.”

“Okay,” said Mr. Tom after a pause. “I’ll let you in.”

“I’ll climb through the window,” said Nicky. He opened it wide and she flicked herself through. The moment she was in he fastened it tight, while Nicky tucked herself into a corner where she couldn’t be seen from outside.

“Sit like you were sitting before,” she suggested. “Talk as though you were talking to yourself. Mike Sallow came up to the farm and told us that robbers had come to the village and killed Mr. Barnard and taken all the children somewhere.”

“True enough,” groaned Mr. Tom. “They killed the Master. I was there, waiting for the fun of seeing him drive ’em off, but there was three of them on horses, wearing armor. They charged him down and skewered him through and through, so’s he never got not one blow in with that sword of his. And then they cut his head off and stuck it on the pole of the Five Bells, for the wide world to see what manner of men they are. And herded all the children together, all as they could find, and took ’em down to a barn behind White House; and they put ’em in a loft with a pile of hay and timber down below, and they made old Maxie cry through the streets that they’ll set fire to the whole shoot if they have a mite more trouble out of us during their stay.”

“How long will that be?” said Nicky.

“As long as there’s a morsel left to eat, that’s my guess. And the Master was that set on us coming through the winter short of starving that we’ve barnfuls of stores waiting. You mark my words, well have ’em for months yet.”

“How many of them are there?”

“Thirty. Maybe thirty-five.”

“But there must be more than a hundred men in the village!”

“I know what you’re thinking, girl, but they fell on us that sudden, and we had’t nothing to fight ’em with, save a few cudgels. The Master, he’d been set on getting us swords, so he could have his own little army, but your folk wouldn’t make ’em for us, remember? And these robbers come with spears, and horsemen in armor, and now they’ve got the children — though I’ve none of my own, thank God — and we’re bound hand and foot, hand and foot.”

“Do you think they’d actually burn the children if there was trouble?”

“I don’t know, a course; but I do know they’d do something, and something pretty cruel, too. There was one of ’em, one of the ones on horseback, and while the footmen were hacking off the Master’s head I saw him throw back his helmet to wipe his face. Curly hair, he had, and a broken nose, though he was scarce more than a boy. And when he saw Arthur’s head dripping up there on the pole, he laughed like a lover. Like a lover in spring. I slunk away and come back here, and the rest I know from Maxie’s crying.”

He had been half out of his chair, glaring round the room as he tried to tell her the horror of his story, but a faint rap on the window made him shrink and curl like a snail. Nicky made a dart for the window, heard the footsteps, knew it was too late and slid herself under an old Put-U-Up bed where she lay, barely breathing, against the wall. A hard fist thundered at the front door. She could see Mr. Tom’s feet rise from the floor, as though he were trying to curl himself even further into his chair.

“Go and answer him,” whispered Nicky. “It’ll be worse if you don’t.”

The feet doddered back to the floor. The legs stumbled past the dying fire. Then a bolt was drawn, slap. Then voices.

“What’s your name, Gaffer?”

“T-t-tom Pritchard.”

“Tom Pritchard, eh? Fetch us each a mug of ale, Tom Pritchard.”

More than one of them, then.

Shufflings, another door moving, palsied clinking of glass, more shufflings. Silence. Then the smash and tinkle of deliberately dropped tumblers.

“We hear you were a crony of the big man’s, Tom Pritchard.”

“N-n-no, not me. He broke my fork a-purpose.” “What d’you know about the lot they call the Devil’s Children, Tom Pritchard? We hear as you had dealings with ’em.”

“N-n-not much. They live up at Booker’s, ’tother side of the bad wires. Three months back they came there. I had a bit of dealings with the girl as lives with them. She’s an ordinary girl, to look at. The Master wouldn’t have none of ’em but her in the village, and then only to do dealings in smithwork. They make and mend iron for us, they do, and sometimes I helped with the dealings. I never seen none of the others, saving the girl.”

“Ah.”

A low discussion.

“What are you doing still dressed this time o’ night, Tom Pritchard? Thinking of going out, eh?” “I ... I couldn’t sleep. I was sitting by the fire. I hadn’t a light showing. I heard the orders.”

“At least you ain’t deaf, then, Tom Pritchard. Well, it’s time good little gaffers were in bed, even them that can’t sleep. I want to see you going up them stairs, Tom Pritchard. You can sleep now, gaffer. The Devil’s Children needn’t fright your dreams no more, not now we’re here to look after you. We’ll nip up there and sort ’em out for you, soon as we re settled. Up you go now, like a good gaffer.”

A grunt, and the stumble and thud of Mr. Tom being shoved so hard along the hallway that he fell. Slow steps on the stairs. More talk at the porch, then footsteps coming, but turning off through the other door. A curse as something fell from a larder shelf. Voices in the hallway.

“Nice drop of ale they brew, leastways.”

“Yeah. Cosy old spot to winter out. Scour around for more hosses, get them Devil’s Children to run us up armor for the lot of us . . .”

“How’ll you manage that, then?”

“Same as here. Devil’s Children got children of their own, ain’t they?”

Laughter.

“Be getting along then. Hey, Maxie, who’s next?” The crow of the clerk’s voice from the street, shrill with terror.

“Sim Jenkins, sir.”

Heels crunching through the broken tumblers on the doorstep. Going.

Nicky lay in the stillness and counted two thousand. She had an instinct that the robbers were the sort of people who would do the thing properly, when they wanted to scare a village into obedient terror. They wouldn’t leave Mr. Tom quivering in the shameful dark without letting him know that they were still keeping an eye on him. And sure enough, when she was in the sixteen hundreds, another light tap came from the window. Thirty seconds later the front door slammed open, feet drummed on the stairs, more doors crashed and banged upstairs, and the hard voice shouted “Just come to tuck you up, gaffer. See that you are in bed, eh? Sweet dreams.”

Feet on the stairs again, and the door walloping shut, and the crunched glass. Then the dreary business of starting once more at one, two, three . . .

She was so stiff when she edged the window open that she had to clamber through like an old woman. Halfway up the garden Gopal floated beside her from behind the runner beans; he touched her cheek with his hand in gentle welcome, then led the way back across the school playground to where the faint whiteness of their rag in the hedge marked the cut wires.

They took the journey home as carefully as they’d come, but nothing stopped or even scared them until their own sentry hissed at them out of his hiding and made their tired hearts bounce. Though it was well past midnight, every adult Sikh was awake and waiting in the dark farmyard. Nicky told her story in English, breaking it into short lengths so that Uncle Jagindar could turn it into Punjabi for the old lady. The pauses while he spoke enabled her to think, so that she left nothing out. When she had finished, five of the men crept out to relieve the sentries; for them she told the whole story all over again. Now every Sikh knew, and Nicky could sleep.

They held a council as soon as breakfast and the morning prayers were over. Daylight meant that Gopal and Harpit and the other children could stand sentry; from the upstairs windows of the farmhouse, from the hayrick in the big barn, from the upper branches of the wych elm, every scrap of country could be seen. The sheep were driven out to a new pen, close to the farmyard, but the hens were left to cluck and scrattle while the council talked. Nicky was there, with Ajeet to tell her what was said. Otherwise there was nobody younger than Kewal.

“Uncle Jagindar is asking if there is anyone who thinks we must move from here . . . they all say no . . . Mr. Kirpal Singh says we can either wait and defend ourselves if they attack us, or attack them before they are ready . . . Aunt Neena says they may not attack us . . . several people say they will . . . my grandmother is calling for quiet . . .”

“Nicky,” said Uncle Jagindar, “you heard the men say they would not leave us alone, I think.”

“Yes,” said Nicky. “They told Mr. Tom that they were going to come and, er, ‘sort you out’ as soon as they were settled in the village. And they want you to make more armor for them. They were going to take the children as hostages.”

The murmur of voices broke into fresh clamor. Ajeet sorted out what mattered.

“Mr. Wazir Singh says we could defend ourselves here forever. My father says no, not against thirty-five men with the only water on the other side of the road. My grandmother says the place would be a trap — a week, safe; a month, death. Mr. Wazir Singh says how can fifteen men attack thirty-five. And they have hostages, my mother says. Take them at dawn before they are ready, says Uncle Jagindar. Take the barn where the children are first, says the risaldar. Kill as many as we can in their beds, says my grandmother. My father says first we must watch them, to find out where the sentries are and what they do, especially at night. Scouts must go and watch, says Uncle Jagindar, but they must be careful not to be seen lest they put the robbers on their guard. Watch for two nights, strike on the third, says my grandmother. Mr. Surbans Singh says that meanwhile we must seem to be farming exactly as usual, but keep a secret watch out everywhere round the farm. They will send scouts up soon. Aunt Neena says that the children must stay near the farmyard. My grandmother tells me to tell you that the order includes you, Nicky . . .”

Nicky nodded, to show she had understood.

. . now the risaldar says we must pretend to be felling wood for the winter, and cut the nearest trees in the row beyond the cottage so that they cannot creep up on us that way. And set fire to the barley, says my grandmother . .

“Nicky,” said Uncle Jagindar, “is there anything more? You know the village and we do not.”

“I think White House must be that very big one out on the far side, but I haven’t seen it since we first came through. The other thing is the hostages. We’ve got to think of a plan to keep them safe. It’s not just because they’re children. If we attack the robbers and the robbers kill the children in revenge, then the village will come and massacre all of us. There’s over a hundred men in Felpham, and once they really get angry . . .”

“You are right,” said Uncle Chacha. “We must be quick and careful when the time comes. And we must be ready to run away if we fail.”

The council shambled on, going over the same points several times, but slowly reaching the practical business of sentry duty and scout duty. At last they all dispersed to the tense charade of pretending to be innocent farmers while watching every hedge and hollow in case it should hide an ambush, and at the same time planning a murderous onslaught on an army more than twice their size. There was one false alarm that day: the enemy spy, sneaking up the line of trees in the dusk, turned out to be Mrs. Sallow, bedraggled and terrified but determined to know whether her son was safe. She sat in silence by Mike’s straw, but after supper Nicky wheedled out of her some useful news of the robbers’ arrangements.

Next day tempers were short with lack of sleep. The men took turns to rest, but some had to be on show for the benefit of the robber spies who lurked along the hillside; they thought they spotted three of these, but had to act as if they hadn’t.

In the dark hour after the third midnight a whisper went round the farmyard. The women turned out with swords and spears to stand sentry, while the raiding party stole up the hill; fifteen grown men, and four lads. And Nicky. If the first phase of the attack succeeded, somebody would have to keep the rescued children from squealing panic, or the sleeping robbers would be woken and the second phase ruined. And that would have to be Nicky.

She thought she was the youngest of the long line creeping through the dark, until a hand took hers. It was Ajeet. None of the men noticed the extra child.

The wide loop round the village, taken at a stalker’s pace, with many pauses, lasted hours, but they were still too early.

In that first faint grayness when the birds begin to whistle in the copses, they struck.