Quietly we slipped out of the yard by the far end and started down the path to the river-bank while the hoof-beats on the upper track drew close to the house.
‘Are you away?’ I asked Rosalind, and let her know what was happening with us.
‘I was away ten minutes ago. I had everything ready,’ she told me reprovingly. ‘We’ve all been trying our damnedest to reach you. It was lucky Petra happened to wake up.’
Petra caught her own thought-shape, and broke in excitedly to know what was happening. It was like a fountain of sparks.
‘Gently, darling. Much more gently,’ protested Rosalind. ‘We’ll tell you all about it soon.’ She paused a moment to get over the blinding effect.
‘ Sally – ? Katherine – ?’ she inquired.
They responded together.
‘We’re being taken to the Inspector’s. We’re all innocent and bewildered. Is that best?’
Michael and Rosalind agreed that it was.
‘We think,’ Sally went on, ‘that we ought to shut our minds to you. It will make it easier for us to act as normals if we really don’t know what is happening. So don’t try to reach us, any of you.’
‘Very well – but we shall be open for you,’ Rosalind agreed. She diverted her thoughts to me. ‘Come along, David. There are lights up at the farm now.’
‘ It’s all right. We’re coming,’ I told her. ‘ It’s going to take them some time in the dark to find which way we went, anyhow.’
‘ They’ll know by the stable-warmth that you can’t have got far yet,’ she pointed out.
I looked back. Up by the house I could see a light in a window, and a lantern swinging in someone’s hand. The sound of a man’s voice calling came to us faintly. We had reached the river-bank now, and it was safe to urge Sheba to a trot. We kept that up for half a mile until we came to the ford, and then for another quarter-mile until we were approaching the mill. It seemed prudent to walk her past there in case anyone were awake. Beyond the wall we heard a dog on the chain, but it did not bark. Presently I caught Rosalind’s feeling of relief, coming from somewhere a little ahead.
We trotted again, and a few moments later I noticed a movement under the trees of the track. I turned the mare that way, and found Rosalind waiting for us – and not only Rosalind, but her father’s pair of great-horses. The massive creatures towered above us, both saddled with large pannier baskets. Rosalind was standing in one of the baskets, her bow, strung and ready to hand, laid across it.
I rode up close beneath her while she leaned out to see what I had brought.
‘Hand me the blankets,’ she directed, reaching down. ‘What’s in the sack?’
I told her.
‘Do you mean to say that’s all you’ve brought?’ she said disapprovingly.
‘There was some hurry,’ I pointed out.
She arranged the blankets to pad the saddle-board between the panniers. I hoisted Petra until she could reach Rosalind’s hands. With a heave from both of us she scrambled up and perched herself on the blankets.
‘We’d better keep together,’ Rosalind directed. ‘I’ve left room for you in the other pannier. You can shoot left-handed from there.’ She flipped over a kind of miniature rope-ladder so that it hung down the great-horse’s left shoulder.
I slid off Sheba’s back, turned her head for home, and gave her a smack on the flank to start her off, then I scrambled up awkwardly to the other pannier. The moment my foot was clear of the mounting-rings Rosalind pulled them up and hitched them. She gave the reins a shake, and before I was well settled in the pannier we were off, with the second great-horse following on a lead.
We trotted awhile, and then left the track for a stream. Where that was joined by another we branched off up the lesser. We left that and picked our way across boggy ground to another stream. We held on along the bed of that for perhaps half a mile or more and then turned off on to another stretch of uneven, marshy ground which soon became firmer until presently the hoofs were clinking among stones. We slowed still more while the horses picked a winding way amid rocks. I realized that Rosalind had put in some careful planning to hide our tracks. I must have projected the thought unwittingly, for she came in, somewhat coldly:
‘ It’s a pity you didn’t do a little more thinking and a little less sleeping.’
‘I made a start,’ I protested. ‘I was going to get everything fixed up today. It didn’t seem all that urgent.’
‘And so when I tried to consult you about it, there you were, swinishly asleep. My mother and I spent two solid hours packing up these panniers and getting the saddles slung up ready for an emergency, while all you did was go on sleeping.’
‘Your mother?’ I asked, startled. ‘Does she know?’
‘She’s sort of half-known, guessed something, for some time now. I don’t know how much she’s guessed – she never spoke about it at all. I think she felt that as long as she didn’t have to admit it in words it might be all right. When I told her this evening that I thought it very likely I’d have to go, she cried – but she wasn’t really surprised; she didn’t try to argue, or dissuade me. I had a sort of feeling that she’d already resolved at the back of her mind that she’d have to help me one day, when the time came, and she did.’
I thought that over. I could not imagine my own mother doing such a thing for Petra’s sake. And yet she had cried after my Aunt Harriet had been sent away. And Aunt Harriet had been more than ready to break the Purity Laws. So had Sophie’s mother. It made one wonder how many mothers there might be who were turning a blind eye towards matters that did not actually infringe the Definition of the True Image – and perhaps to things that did infringe it, if the inspector could be dodged. … I wondered, too, whether my mother would, in secret, be glad or sorry that I had taken Petra away….
We went on by the erratic route that Rosalind had picked to hide the trail. There were more stony places and more streams until finally we urged the horses up a steep bank and into the woods. Before long, we encountered a track-way running south-west. We did not care to risk the spoor of the great-horses there, and so kept along parallel with it until the sky began to show grey. Then we turned deeper into the woods until we found a glade which offered grass for the horses. There we hobbled them and let them graze.
After we had made a meal of bread and cheese Rosalind said:
‘Since you slept so well earlier on, you’d better take first watch.’
She and Petra settled themselves comfortably in blankets, and soon dropped off.
I sat with my strung bow across my knees, and half a dozen arrows stuck handy in the ground beside me. There was nothing to be heard but the birds, occasionally a small animal moving, and the steady munchings of the great-horses. The sun rose into the thinner branches and began to give more warmth. Every now and then I got up and prowled silently round the fringe of the glade, with an arrow ready nocked on the string. I found nothing, but it helped to keep me awake. After a couple of hours of it Michael came through:
‘Where are you now?’ he inquired.
I explained as well as I could.
‘Where are you heading?’ he wanted to know.
‘South-west,’ I told him. ‘We thought we’d move by night and lie-up by day.’
He approved of that, but:
‘ The devil of it is that with this Fringes scare there’ll be a lot of patrols about. I don’t know that Rosalind was wise to take those great-horses – if they’re seen at all, word will go round like wildfire, even a hoof-mark will be enough.’
‘ Ordinary horses have the speed of them for short bursts,’ I acknowledged, ‘but they can’t touch them for stamina.’
‘You may need that. Frankly, David, you’re going to need your wits, too. There’s hell to pay over this. They must have found out much more about you than we ever guessed, though they aren’t on to Mark or Rachel or me yet. But it’s got them very worried indeed. They’re going to send posses after you. My idea is to volunteer for one of them right away. I’m going to plant a report of your having been seen making south-east. When that peters out, we’ll have Mark start up another to take them north-west.