‘ I’m not sure,’ I said, considering how to play our hand to the best advantage.
‘From what I’ve heard, you should have ways of finding out,’ he said.
I wondered how much he did know about us, and whether he knew about Michael, too – but that seemed unlikely. With his eyes a little narrowed, he went on:
‘It’ll be better not to fool with us, boy. It’s you they’re after, and you’ve brought trouble this way with you. Why should we care what happens to you? Quite easy to put one of you where they’d find you.’
Petra caught the implication of that, and panicked.
‘More than a hundred men,’ she said.
He turned a thoughtful eye on her for a moment.
‘ So there is one of you with them – I rather thought there might be,’ he observed, and nodded again. ‘A hundred men is a great many to send after just you three. Too many … I see …’ He turned back to me.’ There will have been rumours lately about trouble working up in the Fringes?’
‘Yes,’ I admitted.
He grinned.
‘So it comes in handy. For the first time they decide that they will take the initiative, and invade us – and pick you up, too, of course. They’ll be following your trail, naturally. How far have they got?’
I consulted Michael, and learnt that the main body had still some miles to go before they would join the party that had fired on us and bolted the great-horses. The difficulty then was to find a way of conveying the position intelligibly to the man in front of me. He appreciated that, and did not seem greatly perturbed.
‘ Is your father with them?’ he asked.
That was a question which I had been careful not to put to Michael before. I did not put it now. I simply paused for a moment, and then told him ‘ No.’ Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Petra about to speak and felt Rosalind pounce on her.
‘A pity,’ said the spidery man. ‘It’s quite a time now I’ve been hoping that one day I’d meet your father on equal terms. From what I’ve heard I should have thought he’d be there. Maybe he’s not such a valiant champion of the true image as they say.’ He went on looking at me with a steady, penetrating gaze. I could feel Rosalind’s sympathy and understanding why I had not put the question to Michael, like a hand-clasp.
Then, quite suddenly, the man dismissed me from his attention and turned to consider Rosalind. She looked back at him. She stood with her straight, confident air, eyeing him levelly and coldly for long seconds. Then, suddenly, to my astonishment, she broke. Her eyes dropped. She flushed. He smiled slightly….
But he was wrong. It was not surrender to the stronger character, the conqueror. It was loathing, a horror which broke her defences from within. I had a glimpse of him from her mind, hideously exaggerated. The fears she hid so well burst up and she was terrified; not as a woman weakened by a man, but as a child in terror of a monstrosity. Petra, too, caught the involuntary shape, and it shocked her into a scream.
I jumped full at the man, overturning the stool and sending him sprawling. The two men behind us leapt after me, but I got in at least one good blow before they could drag me off.
The spider-man sat up, and rubbed his jaw. He grinned at me, but not with any amusement.
‘Does you credit,’ he conceded, ‘but not much more.’ He got up on his gangling legs. ‘Not seen much of the women around here, have you, boy? Take a look at ’em as you go. Maybe you’ll understand a bit more. Besides, this one can have children. I’ve had a fancy for some children a long time now – even if they do happen to take after their father a bit.’ He grinned briefly again, and then frowned at me. ‘ Better take it the way it is, boy. Be a sensible fellow. I don’t give second chances.’
He looked from me to the men who were holding me.
‘ Chuck him out,’ he told them. ‘And if he doesn’t seem to understand that that means stay out, shoot him.’
The two of them jerked me round and marched me off. At the edge of the clearing one of them helped me along a path with his boot.
‘ Keep on going,’ he said.
I got up and turned round, but one of them had an arrow trained on me. He gave a shake of his head to urge me on. So I did what I was told, kept on going – for a few yards, until the trees hid me; then I doubled back under cover.
Just what they were expecting. But they didn’t shoot me; they just beat me up and slung me back among the undergrowth. I remember flying through the air, but I don’t remember landing. …
15
I was being dragged along. There were hands under my shoulders. Small branches were whipping back and slapping me in the face.
‘ Sh – !’ whispered a voice behind me.
‘Give me a minute. I’ll be all right,’ I whispered back.
The dragging stopped. I lay pulling myself together for a moment, and then rolled over. A woman, a young woman, was sitting back on her heels, looking at me.
The sun was low now, and it was dim under the trees. I could not see her well. There was dark hair hanging down on each side of a sunburnt face, and the glint of dark eyes regarding me earnestly. The bodice of her dress was ragged, a nondescript tawny colour, with stains on it. There were no sleeves, but what struck me most was that it bore no cross. I had never before been face to face with a woman who wore no protective cross stitched to her dress. It looked queer, almost indecent. We faced one another for some seconds.
‘You don’t know me, David,’ she said sadly.
Until then I had not. It was the way she said ‘ David’ that suddenly told me.
‘Sophie!’ I said, ‘Oh, Sophie . .. !’
She smiled.
‘Dear David,’ she said. ‘Have they hurt you badly, David?’
I tried moving my arms and legs. They were stiff and they ached in several places, so did my body and my head. I felt some blood caked on my left cheek, but there seemed to be nothing broken. I started to get up, but she stretched out a hand and put it on my arm.
‘No, not yet. Wait a little, till it’s dark.’ She went on looking at me. ‘ I saw them bring you in. You and the little girl, and the other girl – who is she, David?’
That brought me fully round, with a jolt. Frantically I sought for Rosalind and Petra, and could not reach them. Michael felt my panic and came in steadyingly. Relieved, too.
‘Thank goodness for that. We’ve been worried stiff about you. Take it easy. They’re all right, both of them tired out and exhausted; they’re asleep.’
‘Is Rosalind-?’
‘ She’s all right, I tell you. What’s been happening to you?’
I told him. The whole exchange only took a few seconds, but long enough for Sophie to be regarding me curiously.
‘Who is she, David?’ she repeated.
I explained that Rosalind was my cousin. She watched me as I spoke, and then nodded slowly.
‘ He wants her, doesn’t he?’ she asked.
‘That’s what he said,’ I admitted, grimly.
‘ She could give him babies?’ she persisted.
‘ What are you trying to do to me?’ I asked her.
‘ So you’re in love with her?’ she went on.
A word again.. . . When the minds have learnt to mingle, when no thought is wholly one’s own, and each has taken too much of the other ever to be entirely himself alone; when one has reached the beginning of seeing with a single eye, loving with a single heart, enjoying with a single joy; when there can be moments of identity and nothing is separate save bodies that long for one another. . . . When there is that, where is the word? There is only the inadequacy of the word that exists.
‘We love one another,’ I said.
Sophie nodded. She picked up a few twigs, and watched her brown fingers break them. She said:
‘ He’s gone away – where the fighting is. She’s safe just now.’
‘She’s asleep,’ I told her. ‘They’re both asleep.’
Her eyes came back to mine, puzzled.
‘How do you know?’
I told her briefly, as simply as I could. She went on breaking twigs as she listened. Then she nodded.
‘ I remember. My mother said there was something . .. something about the way you sometimes seemed to understand her before she spoke. Was that it?’