As Meat Loves Salt. Maria McCann

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СКАЧАТЬ my tongue: I had chewed my lip, and drawn blood.

      I am watching out for you, came the Voice, so sudden that it frighted me.

      I looked back as we plunged into the wood. There was nothing on the road. A green scent of moss and darkness closed about us and the air at once grew cool. Zeb urged his horse on between the trees until he turned into a narrow track on the right and straightway went crashing down a steep slope, then up a bank on the opposite side. I was hot and cold from feeling the ground drop under me, and I could hear Caro’s sobs. They slackened as the terrain levelled out, and the track widened into a clearing. We continued more slowly. I shifted, trying to ease the pain in my thighs, and spurred my mount until it drew level with Zeb’s. ‘Are you going right through?’

      He shook his head. Caro stared piteously at me. She was still wearing the rose chaplet and it vied for pallor with her brow and cheeks. There were blood smears behind her left ear. I reached across and lifted the cursed thing, tossing it into a bush.

      ‘Here’s as good as anywhere,’ Zeb said, wheeling about. He slipped from the saddle and put up his arm for Caro. Something in me hoped he would not be strong enough to support her, but she got down leaning heavily on his shoulder. I too dismounted, hearing my legs crack as I put foot to ground. We tied our beasts to a thorn bush.

      Caro sat on the ground shuddering, her face cupped in her hands. At last she lowered her fingers, sliding them along her arms for warmth, and I saw the bandage was come off. Staring at the grass she said, ‘We have done a terrible thing.’

      ‘That may well be.’ Zeb looked steadily at me.

      I bent to Caro and laid my hands on her shoulders. She was cold as marble. Taking off my coat, I put it round her, but she continued to shake. I remarked a vomit stain on the lace of her gown.

      Zeb stood a while watching us. ‘If we knew where they were,’ he said. ‘If I could see them, now,’ and he began pushing his way through the scrub. The branches closed over him.

      ‘My thighs are skinned,’ I said.

      Caro made no reply.

      Feeling the lack of my coat, I walked to and fro. My wife laid her head on her knees and snuffled into her blue silk.

      ‘I’ll starve with cold,’ she mumbled. ‘All this is madness.’ She held up the gold chains around her neck. ‘We can return these, Jacob. Say we went in pursuit of thieves.’

      ‘You know that won’t wear.’

      ‘How will we sell them?’ Caro screamed. Some small creature skittered through the bushes at her back, and she collapsed again into silence.

      Zeb’s voice suddenly rang out, anguished. ‘Jacob! Jacob!’

      Caro leapt upright. I plunged through the branches where Zeb was gone before, seeing nothing but scrub and trees, my wife stumbling after me.

      ‘There are footpads in these woods,’ Caro hissed.

      I shook my head. ‘He’s seen something.’

      We stood straining our ears.

      ‘Zeb?’ I called.

      And then I saw him, not far off. My hands flew to my mouth as I took it all in. Zeb had climbed a tall tree as a lookout. Now he dangled from a branch by his arms, legs kicking free. Below him, on the grass, lay a freshly broken bough. A strip of torn bark drooped like a hangnail from the trunk.

      Caro’s eyes had followed mine. ‘Elm,’ she moaned. ‘Hateth and waiteth.’

      I moved forwards, wondering if I could catch him. He had about fifteen feet to fall. A man dropping from that height might well break the bones of one beneath.

      ‘He’s going!’ Caro screamed. I saw Zeb’s hands peel from the branch. There was not time to get beneath the elm. His legs strained upwards in a wild attempt to scissor them round the trunk, but it was much too thick for him. He fell fists clenched, with a howl which exploded in terror as he struck the ground.

      There was silence, broken by Caro’s whining, ‘O Lord, Lord, O Lord, O.’ We clambered over logs and leaves. He was stretched on his back, face white and eyes closed. She wet her finger and held it to his nose and mouth. ‘I can’t feel anything! Jacob, there’s no breath, he’s not – he’s – Jacob—’

      ‘Calm yourself’ I felt under Zeb’s coat and shirt, pressing my palm flat to the skin. Strangled sobs came from Caro. My brother could not be dead. He was warm. Only that morning, looking on his nakedness, I had remarked how strong he was grown.

      ‘He lives, be at rest,’ I said, feeling Zeb’s heart leap under my hand.

      ‘Let me.’ She pushed my fingers aside, pressed her own to him and at once sighed. I saw her shoulders loosen and her head drop forward as if praying. Then she stiffened again.

      ‘He’s not right here.’

      Here was his waist. I unfastened his coat properly, from top to bottom, and pulled up his shirt. Zeb groaned without coming back to us. I saw now that his flesh was darkened and puffed up round the lowest rib, and he was not lying straight.

      ‘There’s something broken,’ Caro wailed. ‘O, look there!’

      I did look and saw that he had landed across a branch lying in the grass. I covered him up again, thinking that we were in the very worst plight for tending him – no surgeon, not even a blanket. He groaned again and opened his eyes.

      ‘Zebedee!’ Caro kneaded his hand. ‘Do you know us?’

      He muttered, ‘Too well.’ But even this feeble joke lost all relish when he tried to sit up and fell back crying.

      ‘Move your foot,’ Caro implored him.

      His right foot flexed.

      ‘Your back’s not broken,’ she whispered, but he had swooned from the pain.

      ‘We have to go on,’ I told her. ‘Here we are like to be surprised.’

      ‘He can’t.’

      ‘Do you want him hanged?’ I urged.

      Caro wrung her hands. ‘Will you carry him?’

      ‘We’ll put him on horseback.’

      We tortured him into the saddle. I walked on one side of him and Caro, trembling, rode on the other horse, at every minute afraid that her animal might bolt. Strung out like this we had great trouble in passing along the narrower paths, and our progress was slow indeed. I was close to tears, having not the slightest idea where we were headed or how we would do now that Zeb was hurt. We walked seemingly for hours, and many were the groans Caro and I heard before we at last stopped near a stream: Zeb had twice been sick, and had once fainted onto my shoulders. I stood ready to catch him as he dismounted. He gasped – ‘Ah!’ – but was able to walk almost to the water, sinking down just before he reached it. Caro knelt by his side, stroking his cheek and pushing his hair out of his eyes.

      ‘Don’t put me back on the horse,’ Zeb begged.

      ‘No, СКАЧАТЬ