Jim Crace - The Pesthouse

Andrew counted to a hundred before he dared to stand a little and look over the wall toward the house. There was a dog, its head between its paws, safely leashed at the side wall, but no one was looking out across the land to discover why his guard had been making such a din. The only movement Andrew could spot was from the back of the house, where there were at least three cows in a deeply slurried pasture. For a moment he was tempted just to stand up and call out Margaret’s name. If he shouted loud enough and then ducked behind his wall, he would be able to hear any reply but no one would be able to see who’d done the shouting or where from. But they might untie the dog. And, as he had seen, the dog was a large one. Even if they did not release the dog (and a clear sense of they had already formed in his imagination: they were the same group who had already taken Acton), if they decided to chase after him, what chance would an old, tired man like him stand? No, he would stick to his current policy and stay both quiet and hidden. He skirted the front of the house, still pressing close to fences, walls, and hedges, until he reached the boundary of the cow paddock, on the opposite side of the house from the dog. There he could hope that his odor might be masked by stronger ones.

He waited for another count of a hundred, watching for any movement. There was nothing. He felt reasonably satisfied that unless the rooms were occupied by drunks or men without legs or hostages tied up, the only living creatures within the grounds of this house were the cattle and the dog. So, thinking not only of the heroic tale he would be able to tell Melody later that day but also of how he would never forgive himself if this first chance of finding his granddaughter was refused, he walked across the pasture, using the cows as shields as much as possible, and pressed himself up against the rear of the cottage. Again he waited and listened. Nothing, other than the sounds that empty houses make. So, with his heart racing and his mouth dry, he peered between the shutter boards in the larger of the two windows into the long, single room, half expecting to find Franklin, Acton, and Margaret trussed in ropes, with little Bella crawling in the dust. But all he could see was a table with a pair of leather boots on it and two bed boards covered in a tangle of blankets. Otherwise the house was unfurnished and certainly not permanently inhabited.

Now he was confident, though disappointed. He walked around to the front of the house by way of a side gate, and — this surely was courageous for an aging net maker — went inside. Other than a damaged harness and a leather strap that somebody had dropped on the doorstep, there was nothing more to see than he had noticed from the rear window. Just leather boots and bedding. But fresh hoofmarks in the earth outside suggested that horsemen — only two or three, so far as he could tell — had recently departed, probably only that afternoon. There was nothing to suggest that Bella and Margaret had even reached the house or that there was anything there to be feared, other than a tethered dog that now, for reasons of its own, began to bark again. Andrew thought he heard shuffling and a voice, a baby’s cry, perhaps. A bird? It was time for him to flee.

It was dark by the time Andrew found his wife again. She was shaking and hardly able to breathe. Her period of mild amusement on her husband’s departure had been short-lived. As soon as he was out of sight, she could no longer admire herself as tough and steely or ready for greater tests. Without her husband’s timidity to measure herself against, she soon felt unprotected and exposed. Even though there had been no strangers to offer any “inconvenience,” every bird and every cracking branch terrified her. Every shifting shadow made her jump. She’d never known such fear and anxiety before. What if neither her husband nor her granddaughter came back to her? That would be worse than losing Bella’s mother. That would be worse than losing Acton. It was not that she loved Andrew better than her son (indeed, she did not) or was so deeply attached to her granddaughter that the thought of life without her was impossible. It was rather that she was alone.

Melody was relieved to see her husband fit and well, despite the dreadful fates that she had imagined for him, and to know that she herself would not be left entirely on her own in the middle of a hostile land, a widow and a destitute, with not a hope in the world. But she was still distraught when he returned and she saw that he was unaccompanied. She listened to his account of finding only an empty house and no sign of their granddaughter or Margaret. She kissed him and embraced him, glad of his warmth, but she was annoyed with him again. “Did you call for her? Did you shout her name?”

“I did everything. There’s not a sound. There’s no one there.”

“A woman and a baby just don’t disappear without a trace. Something bad’s happened, I’m sure of it now…”

“There were horsemen there.”

“There were horsemen? Andrew, you never mentioned horsemen. Did you speak to them?”

“I didn’t see them. Just fresh marks.”

“They’re lost. I know it in my heart. They’re lost.” We all of us are lost, she thought, unless we make it to the boats.

Margaret hadn’t had to run like this for years, not since she’d been a girl and dodging boys in games of free ’n’ freeze or taking part in races to and from the lake. She’d never had to run with a baby in her arms, taking care not to let the child’s head bang against branches or walls but still not slowing down to pay attention to her distress. But she was younger than the two giving chase and marginally more desperate.

Before the first man at the front of the building had managed to grab hold of her arm, she had instinctively run forward and to the side of him. If she had turned and run away, he would have caught her at the gate and hauled her back onto his land. Then what? But he was not expecting her to rush toward him and then take off just out of reach. Now he had to waste a few moments of advantage to turn himself around and take stock.

Margaret headed for the cottage door. The second man, a little younger than the first and simpleminded to all appearances, or maybe half asleep, just stood and watched. He hadn’t any idea who she was or why his elder was now calling out, “Bring her down!”

Margaret veered again and took the path that led around the east side of the house and into a horse paddock. A dog, which had been sleeping, shot out at her on its leash and missed her calf with its teeth by the thickness of a reed. She felt its breath. A moment later the first man cleared the corner, too, but snagged his ankles in the leash and hit the earth. The simpleton followed after, just sauntering, in time to see his buddy rolling on the ground, the dog beside itself with fury, and the fur-haired woman climbing the back fence, already too far gone to hear him say, “Blue devils, Charlie, what’s goin’ on?”

Charlie soon explained. “You’d better wake up, boy. We missed our chances there. We’ll get her, though. She owes us now.”

“She’s got a kid.”

“So it won’t be nothing new for her.” Any woman was a rare commodity for squatters like them. A beauty was too good to lose. They wanted her.

It did not take them long to saddle up their horses, equip themselves with cattle prods and rope, and ride around behind the house in search of Margaret. The men spread out, riding fifty paces or so apart, close enough to shout out to each other and to control a wide stretch of the land. Margaret, with Bella wailing, more frightened by the dog than by anything else, had scrambled through a choke of rocks and ended up above the house, looking down on the roof timbers. She was breathless, and angry, mostly with the men but partly with herself for having been so dangerously and laughably ambiguous. “Anything at all.” Not the wisest of remarks. She’d cracked her knee during the climb and caught the back of her hand on a thorn. She sucked the blood away, quieted Bella with a little finger in her mouth, and tried to think what she should do.