The Book of Fires. Jane Borodale

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       Four

      THE CARRIER PULLS JERKILY AWAY and up the lane. It is a low waggon smelling of sacking and poultry, and I am sat at the back, on a bench furnished with a bolster of woven horsehair cloth, shiny with use. Besides the five other passengers, the carrier is heaped with bales of raw wool, three crates of pullets and some closed baskets into which I cannot see. The oily smell of fleeces makes it hard not to think of home, it is so strong.

      I am a thief, a disgrace, and a deserter. I have a pain high up in my lungs that I deserve, it rises till the misery is a choke in my throat. A fat woman sitting to my right is staring sideways at me. I hate her for this. I have to look down at my lap and swallow over and over, not letting a tear fall. It is as though I were moving along in a swaying kind of sleep led by the horses, knowing nothing of what I am at, nor where I am going. I fold my arms tightly over the fear in my stomach, look about and breathe the air.

      I had pulled my cap low over my brow as I passed through Steyning to the inn. I do not know so many people here, but there are those know my family well enough, and I prayed to God I would not see a soul who knows my father.

      Yet sure enough, as we passed out of the village I saw Mr Benter ahead with a pack on his shoulder, going out to the sawpits. I froze. I scarcely breathed. Dear God, may he not catch sight of me, I thought. As the cart swayed past him, he stepped into the bank and greeted the coachman. His breath was white about him in the chill. Richard Benter has been my father’s drink-mate since better times were had between them. He was so near I could make out the pock-marks on his cheek and smell the tobacco smoke leaking from the clay bowl of the pipe he sucked upon. It was nothing but a wonder that he did not see me, but I could not drag my gaze away. Then at the moment that we rounded the corner he seemed to return my look directly even as he disappeared from view behind the shop. My heart thumped.

      The picture of his puzzled squint and half-raised hand comes to me over and over. Did Mr Benter see me perched upon the carrier to London? How could I know? And if he did, what will he do?

      ‘Was it one of yours I saw this forenoon?’ I could hear him say. ‘On the up-cart for town?’

      My father, who could never bear to give away what he has no knowledge of, would keep his mouth buttoned up at that suggestion.

      ‘May have been,’ he might shrug.

      Only later would he mutter that, if it was so, then it was without a by-your-leave. My father would not ask to borrow Mr Fitton’s mare to ride behind and bring me back.

      It makes no difference if they know where I have gone. At least, if nobody knows about my thieving. And of course they do not. How could they know? No one would have thought that Mrs Mellin had a quantity of money. For we did not, and were we not her nearest neighbour? I have a flicker of doubt. Surely it was just her mean little secret that she hoarded away–and for what? She had nobody left.

      The woman beside me makes me jump. ‘Sawpit does well from the need for fencing these days, don’t it,’ she comments. Of course, she must know Mr Benter. Perhaps it was her face that had caught his eye.

      I cough, as if I did not hear her properly.

      And the terror ebbs away, but some miles on a trickle of disquiet goes on chuckling and babbling inside my head, willing the horses’ progress to be faster, faster. Pressing at my stays I make sure that the coins do not clink or rattle up against each other. I eye the road behind. When I get to the city I will be swallowed up, I reassure myself; all traces vanished.

      We go through Ashurst, past Blake’s Farm and Sweethill Farm.

      A way after Godmark’s Farm we have to wait in the road to cross the river. I make myself eat dry bread from my pocket, my fingers stiff with cold. I make myself take notice of the way the road goes on, opening a distance up between some portion of my troubles and my circumstance. I see a man drinking from a wooden flask, his head strained back to take the liquid in. I see a hawk. I smell the tang of horses, and the straw of the fat woman’s bonnet. I see a team of oxen opening earth behind the blade of a plough. I see three new, pale wheels in a wheelwright’s yard, and hear the hiss of a spoke-shave peeling at wood. I see the orange carcass of a fox.

      And over time the motion of the carrier steadies me and makes me sensible. Taking the chill air deeply keeps the sickness at bay. In truth there is nothing to do but observe the world unfolding behind me and to the sides of the road as we progress. I see how the mud in the road behind us changes from a pale clay to a darker brown of silt, and then to clay again.

      The mud is shallow and white with chalk as the waggon heaves uphill to a gibbet on the crossroads. The man beside the driver cries, ‘Burnt Oak Gate!’ but no one gathers up their bags in СКАЧАТЬ