Thimblewinter, page 13
“Snow,” Cal said to Rachel, “it means they are not going to be able to move easily.”
She was so exhausted she didn’t seem to grasp what he said.
“The Sergeant thought that we might have done enough to dissuade them, to move them on. But now they can’t move, so it’s a question of survival; them or us.”
“But it may just be a snowfall,” Rachel said, “nothing much.”
Cal stared at the fire, as if looking for an answer there.
“The Constable thinks it’s the big snow and he’s usually right.”
They didn’t say anymore and, as I sat there and dozed, I let it all slip away and I started to dream that all that had happened was some sort of nightmare and that, really, we were all here in our house safe from everything outside, guarded by the garden wall and beyond that the street and our neighbours, and then the perimeter wall and the ditch, but every so often I would awake and the realisation of the truth of things would chill me.
Over the course of the night the snow had come like the Constable had said and the village was covered with a layer of white, which tidied up the streets and made the barricades and emplacements look like benign white mounds. My grandmother had told me of the joy that she and her school friends would take from the snow, but we could not share in that anymore, for to us snow meant cold and hunger and the long, dark nights that made you forget spring and summer, or almost so.
I did not want to move from my bed that morning, I could see by the clear, sharp quality of the light that forced its way through the gap in my curtains that the snow had come and, by my breath misting in the air as I raised my head, I knew how cold it was. But Rachel would not let me lie at peace, she made me leave my pile of blankets and get out about my tasks.
There was little to do in our makeshift hospital, there having been no fighting in the night, so she sent me to help at the kitchen, which had been set up behind the chapel to feed the men and the women manning the wall. I tried to stay by the kitchen fires as long as I could, but I was spotted soon enough and sent down to the gate carrying the usual pail of soup, with a sack of what passed for bread on my shoulder.
After I had made the rounds of people, not so many now as most of the gate guards were at rest in their houses, I sought out Nes, at her usual post in the lower storey of one of the gate towers.
“I can never get used to this,” she said and I knew she meant; the cold.
“I’m a child of the Equator, I’m just not equipped for this.”
I knew it was a good sign, that she was no longer so exhausted, if she could again take up her usual complaining ways.
Just as we were there, exchanging our woes about the morning and its burden of cold, we heard a hailing call coming from across the market place in front of the gates. I looked out through the loophole of the tower, at Nes’ shoulder as she levelled her rifle in the general direction of the noise.
“It’s a white flag!” Someone shouted from the storey above us.
“So they want to talk again,” Nes said, under her breath, almost to herself.
A strange procession came on, when bidden, across the open space in front of us. Great Coat had come, swathed in two coats this morning, escorted by two guards, one bearing aloft the stained and dirty sheet which passed for their white flag. He also had with him a white-haired man in the remnants of a suit; a once-fat man, who now looked deflated, as if he had been starved of the excess flesh, but the skin couldn’t keep up. He looked reluctant, but eager to please. Once he stumbled and one of the guards yanked him to his feet by his arm, hurting him in the process. He looked like he wanted to cry, but daren’t.
Great Coat looked nervously at the walls as he approached and stopped well short of the gate, waiting for the Constable to motion him forward. However, when he felt more secure and at ease, he adopted his familiar tone:
“You’ve fought well and earned our respect, but it’s time now that we came to an agreement.”
His words met no response, so he went on:
“As you can see,” he raised his arms in a theatrical gesture and looked around him,
“we’re not going anywhere. So it’s in your interest that we work something out.”
Still no response, which seemed to somewhat disquiet him. Though he quickly recovered himself and, at a nod from him, one of his escorts pushed the once-fat man forward.
“Just to reassure you,” Great Coat went on. “I’ve brought with me an associate, or rather I should say a friend.”
The white-haired man, standing before him, was shaking so much that he could hardly stand. It could have been the cold, I suppose, but most likely it was fear.
“Let me introduce,” Great Coat went on, indicating the man with a sweep of his hand, “Mayor Davies from Pont-y-Brenin, who has recently become part of our brotherhood; embracing us, and in turn, safe in our embrace.”
“He runs off at the mouth, that one,” Nes said, muttering to herself rather than to me.
The ex-mayor was pushed further forward, more gently this time, and started his speech.
“Friends, comrades,” he said, "you have nothing to fear...”
His voice was thin and broken, his shaking getting worse. Great Coat’s men looked disgusted, glancing at their leader for a word, a command, but the man shook his head at them and the mayor went on.
He was telling us how things had been so bad, all down the valley, and in Pont-y-Brenin they had been starving and dying. He got all biblical and described the wailing of infants, the tears of mothers and the sobbing of the elderly.
“I think he’s working to a script,” Nes said, thinking aloud. I didn’t quite understand what she meant.
I lost most of the rest of what he said, but I caught the gist. The man’s obvious terror betrayed the meaning of the words he was saying, giving an opposite effect, an alternative message. At the end he bowed his head, probably guessing that his body had betrayed him and ultimately done for him. But by this time I was distracted.
At some point Rowena had come up on us, cat-like as always, moving so silently that it seemed that she just appeared. She gave Great Coat an appraising look, wet her thumb and raised it to the air, then nocked an arrow to her bow and drew it. But then May came up the ladder and hissed at her, trying to keep her voice quiet:
“Stop it now, for fuck’s sake. They are under a flag of truce. We’ve got enough to contend with, without you ballsing it up further.”
There was little love lost between the two women; I think there was some gap of understanding between them, such were their differences.
Rowena glanced at her sullenly and my first thought was that she was minded to ignore her, but May was near her now and had hardened her look and tightened the grip on her weapon. There was a moment of stillness, of anticipation of what would occur, but then Rowena lowered the bow and laughed.
“Okay for now,” she said, as she moved off past May and down the ladder, “but I’ll get him in the end.”
When I looked back over the corrugated iron of the parapet, I could see that Great Coat was speaking again.
“So as my friend here said,” he indicated the once-fat man, “you have nothing to fear by joining us. You’ve fought well, we admire your courage, and you’ve proved yourself worthy. The brotherhood waits to welcome you.”
A silence fell on us then, all along the walls. The morning mist had not lifted yet and the people all seemed to be shut into their own thoughts.
“But this is a time-limited offer,” Great Coat went on again. “You have until dusk to decide. Choose wisely!”
At last he stopped speaking. I thought then that the Constable would reply, but instead I heard the Sergeant’s voice breaking the spell of our silence:
“You have two minutes to get back to your lines,” he said and as if to emphasise his words, Dai started counting the seconds off.
There was little dignity left to Great Coat and his men after that, as they stumbled and cursed their way over the icy ground back to their camp. But no cheer went up from our walls this time. The man’s words had made all of us ponder the future. I did not think anyone would believe him, place any trust in an enemy who had already showed us such a cruel nature.
Time, as is often the case, proved me wrong.
Chapter 18
That night I dreamed again; a fever dream of faces, voices calling. I could not distinguish one from the other, Richards or Joshua, the pitiless boys and girls of the gang that Nes had saved me from, all of them whirled around inside my head like ashes floating up from a fire; there one moment then gone on the breeze. But then another more insistent voice sounded and someone was shaking me, followed by a hand clamped over my mouth. I struggled against it, as it stifled me, but I then caught that scent on it, that forest smell of leaf-mould and wild garlic and knew who it was.
The bright, but somehow feral, eyes of Rowena looked down at me. I had fallen asleep on the sofa in front of the fire in the living room again and there was no sign of Cal or Rachel. The door had been latched, but somehow Rowena had got in. At first I was unsure what she intended, as she fixed me with a look so blank I could read nothing in it.
“You’re hard to wake,” she said. “Come with me, I need your help.”
She wasn’t asking, more stating a fact.
“Wrap up warm,” she said, “and take that.” She nodded down at the automatic that Nes had left me. I did what she said, though I was of a mind to shout out or scream even, so that someone would come running. But truth be told, I was somewhat flattered and pleased to be called on by her in such a way.
When I got out into the atrocious weather, I felt more sober and my spirit nearly failed me, but she pushed me on, insistent and none too gentle with it.
“I need your help,” she repeated, “so I’m relying on you to be a big girl and shut up and come with me.”
I was somewhat taken aback by being referred to as a big girl, but I did as she asked, for though she fascinated me, she also scared me.
We passed by one of the watch fires, where a small group of men were talking in low voices, huddled together around a fire against the snow, which fell heavily now, the flakes hissing as they met the flame. One of them was Dai.
“Corporal,” Rowena said, the soldier giving her a quizzical look, which had an edge of contempt in it, “there’s a gap in the wall guard.”
It took him a moment to understand what she was saying, but then he acted.
“Two of you with me,” he said, “the rest of you back to your posts.”
“Lead on,” he said to Rowena and she took us down an alley to a quieter section of the wall on the south side away from the main gate and most of the fighting.
“What happened to the guards?” Dai asked.
“They went over the wall,” Rowena answered, not really explaining herself.
Then she turned to me.
“Come on,” she said motioning me towards the ditch, where I could see that someone had laid some planking over the sharpened stakes that had been placed there.
“Out there?” I said, my voice sounding weak and small as it came out.
“There’s been something going on, some strange stuff that the Constable doesn’t know about and I mean to find out. I need you for that.”
She was behind me and insistent, so I climbed the fence, though my legs shook and every flurry of snow seemed to contain its own little terror.
“I’ll be back,” she said to Dai. “I’ll be coming back this way, so don’t shoot me.”
The Corporal smiled: “What’s the password?”
“Just watch for me,” the woman answered.
It was the old railway line she was looking for and she needed me to guide her to it. The railway had run from the pit head and down the valley, paralleling the road in a deep cutting that had originally been made by hollowing out an existing stream bed. The railway cutting was so overgrown now, that it was hard for even an experienced scout like her to find, without spending time she didn’t have. So that’s why she had come for me.
For some reason she was fixed on getting to the old mine heading and the railway line was a direct and covered way, reasonably safe unless the blood tribe had put sentries down there somewhere. She told me this in snatches of conversation, pausing often to listen and look around. It was dark though, and so much snow was swirling that there was nothing to be seen and every noise was deadened. I struck out south west in a circuitous route to cut the line, mindful of the fact that we were more likely to run into their pickets if we took a direct route.
It didn’t take me long, knowing the land as I did. I fixed on the old, blasted oak tree, that had once been lightning struck, on the ridge ahead of us and led us past it down a slope into the cutting. The ground was so slippery that we did the last few yards on our rear ends.
“You can stay here until I come back,” Rowena said, but I declined the offer. I would not take the chance that she wouldn’t return and I was fearful of staying alone in the dark.
The cutting was like a tunnel, so hedged in by trees that even in broad daylight it was dark, and on a night like this, with the snow falling that heavily, there was no residue of light. I could feel the panic welling up in me, as we stood at the bottom of the cut, dark as the depths of the ocean. And Rowena must have felt it too, as she took a hold on one of my arms and shook me, whispering at me to calm myself. This sobered me, as I knew that Rowena was capable of sterner measures and was probably inclined towards slapping me calmer. So I quieted myself, as best as I could, and tried to ignore the fact that I was shaking with fear.
She seemed like a cat in the darkness, unperturbed by it. I thought she had keener eyes than me, but soon realised that she was feeling her way along, using her ears more than her eyes to get by. We took what seemed like an age. The track that had been laid here, was either long overgrown or had been torn up, but there was still a way of sorts. Water coursed through the place in the winter and spring, turning the cutting back into the stream it once was, though it was dry tonight, excepting of course the dampness of the snow underfoot. The flow of water had scoured out a track that we followed.
Ordinarily, the cutting held some fascination for me; it was like a secret way that no-one, except the children, used. It did not really lead anywhere and was a relic of time gone by and, for all the effort that people had taken to build it, had no use or relevance to anyone anymore. The banks had become undermined in places and the skeletal remains of walls and other brickwork could be seen, shoring up the earth and leading up the slopes, their original purpose a mystery.
The enemy had set a guard, where the cutting widened out as it approached the mine head and the old loading yard. There was a derelict brick building here, just to our left side, and above this, where the side of the cut rose up to a small hill, the brotherhood had built a sentry post, where a fire was burning to keep the guards warm.
Rowena paid it no heed, just giving a low sigh of contempt. There was no way they would have seen us, even if they had been looking in our direction, but, as it was, they were too intent on their fire to keep a good watch.
The loading yard itself was a mass of obstacles and a maze of paths and alleys. The carcasses of rotting wagons were all around and piles of brick and other debris. Anything really that hadn’t or couldn’t be salvaged, had been left here. There was more light now though, as a large bonfire had been built over by the pithead buildings and we could hear voices from that direction, that sort of crowd murmur you get when people are assembled in any number.
At this, I hung back, but Rowena was on her way forward, so I followed. My clothes were sodden now from the snow and I was beginning to feel very chilled; a bad sign I knew. The automatic in my pocket seemed too heavy, as if it was an anchor pulling me down.
As she moved forward Rowena seemed reckless to me; I followed her by inches, keeping myself as hidden as I could. But I could then see why the woman was being so rash; there were many other figures standing around the yard, clinging to what shelter they could, and nobody took much notice of two extra shadows.
All eyes were fixed on the old mine-head, where once the shaft had been capped by the wheel and the other gear that raised and lowered the cage the miners went down in and the coal came out. There were still old people in our village who remembered those times, so it was no mystery to me, though I wondered what they did in those days with such a vast amount of coal that was carried down from all these valleys.
The mine-shaft was open now; the cage had gone, its parts having been borne away, or fallen into the pit itself. The space around the shaft was still partially roofed in, though open to us on this side, so we could see the crowd that had gathered around the dark mouth of the hole and I recognised Great Coat standing a little apart from the rest. Rowena had spotted him too and, at that, she finally stopped and we crouched down in the shadows of a ruined building to watch the scene before us.
Great Coat was standing between the bonfire and the shaft and, with the flicker of both shadow and flame playing over the people gathered there, it was hard to see what was going on. At first it brought to my mind some sort of religious gathering, him as the preacher with his congregation; literally a captive audience, for I could see that some of them were under guard.
This little group stood huddled together in the open, like a flock of errant sheep, guarded by some of the blood tribe’s soldiers and watched from the shadows of the mine buildings by an audience of people, many of them men, but also some women and children. Great Coat was speaking again, his voice rising up with the cinders and embers which rose from the fire before him.
Rowena was shaking her head and I knew what she was thinking, that the man had an inordinate affection for his own voice. His congregation, though, seemed curiously disengaged; all, that is, except the captives who, like the sheep they resembled, seemed restless and unsure, but loath to break out of the circle of their fellows.
I was scanning this little group, watching the vagrant light playing on the upturned faces, when I suddenly realised the truth of the matter. I let out a gasp, which seemed loud to me - loud enough anyway to draw Rowena’s attention - but not loud enough to betray us. As the woman glared at me, my heart raced as I recognised the prisoners for who they were. They were our people. I could see Edgar among them and Cyril and some of the other men. And with them standing a little off to the side were the two brothers, the sailors.
