Maggie Prince - Raider’s Tide

“Hugh… I’m not ready to consider them yet…” I clear my throat and try again. “Of course, I love you as a cousin…” I feel desperately disturbed by his closeness. Never, even in our most frightening games as children, has Hugh seemed threatening, but he seems threatening now. “It’s too soon,” I falter. “I hadn’t thought it would come so soon.”

“Your father and mine have indicated their wishes, Beatie, but it doesn’t have to be soon.” He lets go of my hand. “I should have liked it to be soon… it’s not just our fathers’ wish… but you’re two years younger. I can wait. Could we… perhaps… try to see each other differently? I have to confess that your friendly, jesting attitude towards me makes you rather unapproachable on these matters.”

There is a pause. The light is fading. Hugh seems like a stranger. We walk in the direction of the old hermit’s cottage, no longer holding hands, no longer speaking. Green light filters through the leaves, down to the forest floor. When we reach a corner of the crumbling boundary wall we sit down on it, side by side in the moss-coloured dimness. I turn to Hugh. “We know each other too well, Hugh. I cannot think of you in the way you wish.”

He puts his arm round my shoulders briefly, then releases me. “I won’t ask you again until the winter, Cousin.” After a moment he adds, “I would do anything for you, Beatrice. I would walk through the quicksands across the bay for you.”

I stand up. “Now you’re getting carried away, Hugh.” I feel uneasy and uncomfortable, and I think at first that Hugh’s words are the cause. Then I realise that there was a noise. I turn slowly. Surely the hermit’s cottage is still uninhabited? The noise is repeated, a crackling, shifting sound.

“Hugh, I heard something. Did you hear it?”

He stands up and looks around. “What did you hear?”

“I don’t know. A twig. A movement.”

The awareness of someone, a presence, is suddenly very powerful. It was the feeling I had on the Pike, and on Beacon Hill, but now a hundred, a thousand times stronger.

“The old man’s dead, isn’t he?” Hugh asks.

“Yes. Perhaps someone else has taken over the cottage,” I suggest, before we can start talking about ghosts and goblins. Hugh begins to creep round the low wattle hut. A branch snaps under his foot. I lift my skirts and step over the broken wall, then move cautiously along the front of the dwelling. A narrow window slot gives on to a dark interior, from which a foul, ancient odour seeps. The hermit was not known for his cleanliness. I move to the door and push it open and peer in. From what I can see of them, the matted rushes on the floor look as if they have been there since Queen Mary’s day. It is impossible to see anything else.

Suddenly, a buffeting wind shakes the woods. The patchy cloud cover overhead shifts, and tightly woven tree branches rattle apart. A bright hem of light swirls through the forest, and briefly illuminates the inside of the cottage. I can see more clearly the rushes on the floor, rank and mouldy, a battered iron skillet lying upended, a heap of droppings left by the hermit’s goat. There is something else too, a bundle of brown and green cloth lying in a corner where broken reeds hang down from the roof. The bundle moves. It is a man. I can see his face, bruised and swollen. It is a face I recognise.

Hugh looks pleased when I take his hand and lead him back through the woods to the point where the paths diverge. My throat is dry and my head pounding. It amounts to treason, to conceal the presence of a Scot, and the penalty is to be burnt at the stake. The virtual certainty that it is the young man whose face I pushed from the tower window is the only excuse I can give myself. I can still feel his soft skin where my fingers pressed, and the horrific ease of pushing him away into unsupporting air.

“I’ll walk with you back to the tower,” Hugh says, but I tell him I want to be alone for a while, and I watch his vanishing back as he takes the path towards Mere Point. When I reach the meadow in front of the tower, I can see that Verity is already home, standing on the battlements watching the sun go down beyond the bay. Owls are hooting close by, and in the far distance a faint howl comes from the woods across the water. I know it is only foxes, though in a bad winter the wolves of the Scottish borders have been known to round the bay as far as Milnthorpe.

I sit on a tree stump and think about the extraordinary course of action which I have taken. The Scot is obviously injured, possibly badly injured, otherwise he would have fled with his fellow raiders. He must have crawled away from the battle scene after I pushed him from the window, and been unable to rejoin his comrades in time when they fled. He is my enemy, but it is my fault he is injured. On the other hand, he attacked us first. I should have told Hugh, and now it is my duty to tell my father, who will send at once to Milnthorpe for a magistrate, and the Scot will be hanged. Instead, I am going home to collect food and water for him.

I stand up and walk quickly towards the tower. The sheep stop their soft chomping as I hurry by, and scatter as if my urgency threatened them. I let myself in quietly. The kitchen is empty, the fire sunk low in the hearth. I move round as silently as I can, collecting bread, cheese and milk. I put them in a basket, then creep down to the root cellar and stand a leather bottle under the spigot of the copper water cistern to fill. While I wait, I look round the shifting, candlelit gloom. No animals were allowed in the root cellar, but the passage to it became heavily soiled with their waste, and even in here it still stinks. The remains of the winter carrots and turnips seem contaminated.

When the flagon is full I hammer in a wooden bung with my fist, and creep back up the passage to the kitchen. It is still empty. Outside, shadows have stretched across the clearing in my absence. Over the bay a line of purple light still shows, but around me it is almost dark. I walk towards the trees, the basket and flagon concealed under my cloak.

Among the trees it is very dark indeed. I stumble several times over tree roots, even though I know the path so well. I dare not look behind me, nor to the sides. The stillness of twilight is gone, and there are sounds in the undergrowth. When I branch off from the main path I can scarcely see at all. I try to force my mind to more mundane matters than wolves and witches.

Suddenly I have reached the boundary of the hovel. I almost fall over it in the dark. In places the wall is completely covered with brambles. They fill the clearing and even climb up the wattle and daub of the cottage walls. Stones have fallen from the boundary wall into the gateway, and I have to pick my way carefully over them. One stone rocks beneath my feet and almost pitches me head-first into the thorns. It also, with its clatter, announces my arrival.

What if I was mistaken and he is not injured? What if, even at this moment, he is waiting behind a tree? I put down the basket and flagon by the worm-eaten doorway, and flee. Only two candles are burning in the kitchen. Verity has coaxed the fire back to life and is sitting with her feet up on Kate’s oak settle, watching the pot over the fire start to steam. She points to the bark box where she keeps dried camomile flowers.

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