As Meat Loves Salt. Maria McCann

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СКАЧАТЬ cupped her hands in the stream and I supported him so that he could drink. Most of the water dropped onto his chest and he shivered. The wood was beginning to grow dark.

      I took Caro by the sleeve and led her away. ‘Sit down,’ I urged in a whisper. ‘What think you? Is there more than a rib broken?’

      ‘What do I know!’ Her voice came cold and dispirited. ‘Why should there be?’

      ‘He faints. I didn’t faint when mine was broken,’ I reminded her.

      ‘O, you…!’ She got up and went back to Zeb, soothing him with soft pitying noises as one might a child.

      He lay staring at the branches above. I heard him say, ‘Sister, I’ll die.’

      ‘Pain talking,’ I said, going over to him. ‘You’ll not die. Now act the man.’

      ‘I’m starting a fever.’ Zeb reached for Caro’s hand and pressed it to his forehead.

      ‘He’s very hot.’ Caro looked at me helplessly.

      ‘Broken bones do get hot.’

      ‘Feel, here,’ Zeb pleaded with Caro. He indicated his chest.

      ‘Let me.’ I fingered his shirt front. It was soaked with sweat.

      ‘I can cool him,’ said Caro, loosening the collar. ‘Put my handkerchief in the stream.’

      ‘No,’ I said, laying my hand on hers as she began easing the shirt up over his chest. ‘Best he sweat it out.’

      ‘I’m burning,’ moaned Zeb.

      ‘He shouldn’t be half naked like that. Cover him up.’ I straightened Zeb’s shirt and pulled his coat close over his breast. The wind, growing stronger, stirred the tops of the trees so that they hissed like a poker in ale. ‘Come away and rest,’ I told Caro.

      We lay down together a few yards from Zeb, barely able to see one another. I took my coat from her and arranged it over both of us. It was not much of a blanket, for cold air crept in on every side. Faintly from under the stench of horse and vomit came the scent of her pomaded hair.

      ‘How will you get him a surgeon?’ whispered Caro.

      I pulled her on top of me. ‘We have gold.’

      ‘But—’ She checked herself. I felt her shake as she went on, ‘We could go home with him. Take back the jewels, say you feared a false accusation – you were in drink. What is whipping, what is gaol, even, when Zeb may die?’

      ‘I can never go back, and nor can you. It means hanging.’

      ‘What, for a few pamphlets?’ She twined her arms round me. ‘Let me go to the Mistress. Let me beg mercy. Peter burnt all the papers – it is their word against ours—’

      ‘Take it from me, wife, we are tarred with the same stick.’

      ‘I can face it out!’

      There was no light left in the wood. I knew what I had to do, and it was like sliding down ice in pitch darkness. I had stood on the brink of this slide for so long now I was come to desire it, was dangling the first foot over the edge. Better push off boldly, I thought, than crouch there forever.

      ‘Caro,’ I breathed into her neck. ‘It isn’t what you think.’

      One foot on the ice.

      ‘Patience fled for fear of me. She’s out for blood, and Cornish too.’

      Both feet.

      Caro lifted her head. ‘You? You and Patience?’ Her voice was thick, stupid with baffled suspicion. ‘The child! You – you—’

      ‘No!’ I shouted, so hard that I hurt my throat. ‘Don’t you see it? Caro!’

      ‘Jacob, don’t—’

      ‘Caro, it was I killed Christopher Walshe.’

      I had pushed off. The polished blackness of the slide dropped away to a place I could not see; I was falling out of life. Caro’s breath heaved and choked. Her body lay against mine rigid as a plank.

      ‘I heard noises and went down in the night. Cornish and Patience were in the garden by the maze, only I did not know who they were, then. I was listening. The boy jumped me.’

      ‘Why would he!’

      ‘I had not time to ask him,’ I retorted.

      Caro’s breathing slowed a little. After a while she asked, ‘And Patience? Doing what?’

      ‘I told you, I did not see.’

      ‘You did not see,’ she repeated as if she had been there. ‘But you saw it was Patience.’

      ‘I saw a woman, and next day Patience was gone.’

      ‘Not true,’ Caro kept saying. ‘No.’

      But it was true, and not the worst of the truth neither.

      

      When first the boy leapt out to bar my way he took me unawares. I thought him a man, but then the moon coming out showed me the little fool standing about a yard off, waving his dagger. Though furious at his insolence, I laughed aloud. He was so easy; I had the knife off him and his arm twisted up his back before he could make one good pass with the blade.

      ‘Be quiet,’ I said, ‘and come along with me, or I’ll slit your throat.’ He came along like a lamb, and I marched him away from his friends, over to the large trees near the pond.

      Not daring to call out, Walshe fell to whining for pardon. ‘O Jacob,’ says he, ‘you see it is only me, pray let me go,’ and all the time he was looking out for his father, but I had taken care to get the trees between us and any help that might come to him. At last he fell silent, gaping at me much as he had gaped from the protection of my brother’s arm.

      ‘What of dear Zeb?’ I mocked. ‘Not here, is he?’

      The moonlight showed me tears on Walshe’s cheeks. He was panting with fear, breast rising and falling beneath his white shirt. Show him, said the Voice, what becomes of a boy who insults a man.

      ‘Well, little warrior.’ I pushed him up against the tree and pressed my left hand hard over his mouth, and just tickled his belly with the point of the knife before driving it in. He tried to push away my arm with both of his but could not, and his struggles were so feeble that the savage fit in me was still not worked off. I pulled the knife down and out, and feeling my fingers warm and wet from the blood, I said to him, ‘Let us see what Jacob will do now.’

      Twisting his arm again to keep him in front of me, lest he bleed on my coat, I wrestled him over to the pond. On seeing where we were headed he turned his face to look up into my eyes, and I tightened my grip on his mouth, and smiled and nodded. By the time we got there he was very weak, and too confused to call out СКАЧАТЬ