Unknown - Heartsease

“I hope that was worth it,” he called.

“Oh, Jo, we’re done for! Come and see! Can you turn the engine off without making smoke?”

He fiddled with the lever and the wheel, so that a quick spasm of power sucked Heartsease backwards to lie against the bank. Margaret caught the rope he threw and tied it to a thornbush; he scuttled down the engine room hatch, and almost at once the puff-puff-puff from the funnel died away. Lucy came up behind him, her face all mottled with oil and dirt, but stayed on the deck while he leaped ashore. Caesar fidgeted with his tether in the stern.

Margaret led Jonathan along under the embankment. The children peered again round the hissing nettle stems, down the mile-long line of water which rippled grayly in the sharp wind, to where Splatt Bridge sat across the dismal surface like a black barricade.

There were people on the bridge, about a dozen of

them, tiny with distance but clearly visible in the wide light of the estuary. Above them rose a spindly framework with a hunched blob in the middle.

“What on earth have they got there?” said Jonathan. “Mr. Gordon’s litter.”

VIII

THERE was no mistaking it. The freshening northwester had cleared every trace of haze from the fawn and silver landscape.

“Bother,” said Jonathan. “It’s strange how you never expect other people to be as clever as you are yourself.” He spoke in an ordinary voice, but looking at him Margaret could see the hope and excitement fading in his eyes as the colors fade from a drying seashell.

“Oh, Jo,” she cried. “What are we going to do?”

“If we can’t think of anything else we’ll turn round, go back and hide again. Where’s that bull you told me about?”

“Bull?” whispered Margaret.

“Yes. You said you were chased by a tethered bull at Splatt Bridge.”

“We can’t see him from here, if he’s still where he was then. We might if we go further along the wood.”

“Wait a moment. Let’s watch them a little longer. It all depends whether they’ve seen us.”

Margaret’s heart was beginning to bounce with a new dread, the terror of her remembered nightmares. The palms of her hands were icy patches. To stop herself from thinking about the bull she screwed up her eyes and peered along the narrowing streak of water until the bridge seemed to dance and flicker. But between the flickerings, the tiny people appeared lounging and unexcited. There was a small flurry, and the litter tilted, but it was only a change of bearers.

“All right,” said Jonathan. “Let’s find your bull.”

The children crept along the edge of the leafless wood, away from the canal; it was difficult not to walk on tiptoe.

“There he is,” said Margaret.

Even at this distance the bull looked dangerous, tilted forward by the weight of his huge shoulders and bony head. The cruel horns were invisible, but Margaret knew their exact curve.

“No cows with him,” said Jonathan. “He’ll be in a real temper.”

“What are you going to do?” whispered Margaret.

“I don’t want to turn round and go back if we can help it,” said Jonathan. “Some people must have seen us pass, even if they couldn’t get out in time to try and stop us, so they’ll probably be hunting down the canal after us. And even if we do get through, they’ll probably stir up enough people to hunt us down in Gloucester. But if I can cut the bull’s tether and bait him towards the bridge, he’ll clear the men off for long enough for me to

open the locking-pieces, and then you could simply barge the bridge open. They haven’t brought horses. They won’t catch us after that.”

“You’ll have to borrow Scrub. Caesar would be hopeless at that sort of thing.”

“So would I. I’ll do it on foot.”

Margaret felt cold all over, a cold not from the bitter wind but spreading out from inside her. She knew Jonathan hadn’t a chance of beating the bull on foot, any more than she had a chance of managing Heartsease. The plan was the wrong way round.

“I’d rather do the bull,” she said. “I can ride Scrub. We'd both be better at our jobs that way. How do I cut the tether?”

Jonathan tilted his head sideways and looked at her until she turned away.

“It’s the only hope,” she said.

“Yes. It’s better odds. And if it goes wrong at least you’ve a chance to get away. We’ll try it like that. I found a carving knife in the ironmonger’s in Gloucester — I liked it because it was so sharp — and if you can slash at the rope when the bull has pulled it taut you should be able to cut it in one go. Heartsease will make a tremendous cloud of smoke when she starts again, and they’ll all be watching the canal after that. Then it will be six or seven minutes before I reach the bridge if I come down flat out. You’ll have to time it from that, because you don’t want to clear the bridge too early, or they’ll simply'dodge the bull and come back.”

“What about Lucy and Tim?”

“I’ll need Lucy to control the engine.”

“Couldn’t we cut a pole for Otto to do that with? Then Lucy and Tim and Caesar could come down after me, and get away if things go wrong. I’m going to ride down behind that long bank over there — it’s called the Tumps on the map — so that I can’t be seen from the bridge. If it all works, the men will be on the wrong side after the bridge is open, so we could wait for Lucy and Tim beyond it. If it doesn’t, they might be able to escape.”

“Um,” said Jonathan. “I’ll go and talk to them. And Otto. But I’ll need Lucy to help me start the engines, so she won’t be able to leave until you’re almost in position — they’ll be a long way behind you.”

“Never mind,” said Margaret. “At least it means Tim won’t try to stop me teasing the bull.”

Jonathan laughed.

“He doesn’t look as if he needed much teasing,” he said. “You move off while I show Lucy where to go. I’ll give you twenty minutes before I start up.”

“The knife,” said Margaret.

“Yes, of course.”

They went back to the boat. Lucy was sitting on the bulwark with her head in her hands; Tim was tickling Davey’s stomach on the foredeck. Jonathan scampered aboard while Margaret looked over Scrub’s harness and tightened the girth a notch. He came back with a knife which was almost like a scimitar, with a knobby bone handle made from the antler of a deer; she tried it with her thumb and found that it had the almost feathery touch of properly sharpened steel. Too scared to speak,

she nodded to her cousin, raised her hand to Lucy and led Scrub away under the trees.

After a hundred yards they worked through a broken fence into an overgrown lane, with another small wood on their left; beyond that she turned south, still screened by trees, parallel with the canal but four hundred yards nearer the great river. At the far corner of the wood she found she could see neither Splatt Bridge nor the bull, so, hoping that meant that none of her enemies could see her either, she mounted and cantered on over the plashy turf. Scrub was still moving easily, his hoofs squirting water sideways at every pace as he picked the firmest going between the dark green clumps of quill grass that grew where the ground was at its most spongy. Two furlongs, and their path was barred by a wide drainage ditch, steep-banked, the water in it flowing sluggishly towards the Severn. Scrub stretched his pace, gathered himself for the leap and swept across. Now they were riding along the far side of the Tumps.

This was a long, winding embankment, old and grassy, built (presumably) to stop the Severn from flooding in across Frampton long before the canal was dug. The map showed that it dipped sharply in towards Splatt Bridge. They reached the place far sooner than she wanted, but she dismounted at once and whispered to Scrub to stay where he was and taste the local grass. Then she wriggled to the top of the bank.