All this time and it never got any easier. The girl was still furious. If only she would stay a little bit longer so that Lily could talk to her. Tell her she was sorry. Tell her she would pay any price demanded, give up anything, do anything … But by the time Lily got the use of her tongue, the girl had gone.
Lily leant forward, still in fear, to stare at the floorboards where the river child had hovered. There were dark marks there, she could just make them out in the fading light. She heaved herself from the chair and shuffled reluctantly across the floor. She extended her hand, placed outstretched fingers against the darkness.
The floor was wet.
Lily brought her hands together in prayer. ‘Take me out of the mire, that I sink not: O let me be delivered out of the deep waters. Let not the flood drown me, neither let the deep swallow me up.’ Rapidly she repeated the words until her breathing was regular, and then she got painfully to her feet and said, ‘Amen.’
She felt troubled and it wasn’t just the aftermath of the visitation. Was the river on the rise? She went to the window. Its dark gleam was no nearer the cottage than before.
Him, then. Was he coming? She looked for movement outdoors, strained her ears for the sound of his approach. Nothing.
It was neither of these things.
What, then?
The answer when it came was spoken in a voice so like her mother’s it took her aback, till she realized it was her own: ‘Something is going to happen.’
Mr Armstrong at Bampton
SOMETHING IS GOING to happen, they all thought. And soon after, at the Swan at Radcot, it did.
Now what?
On the first morning following the longest night, the clatter of hooves on cobbles announced a visitor to the village of Bampton. The few who happened to be outside at this early hour frowned and looked up. What fool was this, riding at full tilt into their narrow street? When horse and rider came into view, they grew curious. Instead of it being one of their own immature lads, the rider was an outsider, and more than that: he was a black man. His face was grave and the clouds of vapour he exhaled this cold morning lent him an air of fury. When he slowed, they took one look at him and hopped promptly into doorways, shutting their doors firmly behind them.
Robert Armstrong was used to the effect he had on strangers. His fellow humans had always been wary of him at first sight. The blackness of his skin made him the outsider, and his height and strength, which would have been an advantage to any white man, only made people more wary. In fact, as other living creatures understood very well, he was the gentlest of souls. Take Fleet, for instance. She had been called too wild to tame, and that was why he got her for a song, yet once he was in the saddle, the two of them were the best of friends within half an hour. And the cat. A skinny thing with an ear missing, which appeared in his barn one winter’s morning, spitting curses and darting evil glances at all and sundry – why, now she came running up to him in the yard, tail up, mewing to be scratched under her chin. Even the ladybirds that alighted on a man’s hair in summer and crawled over his face knew that Armstrong would do no more than wrinkle his nose to dislodge them if they tickled excessively. No animal of field or farmyard feared him, no; but people – ah! That was another matter entirely.
A fellow had written a book lately – Armstrong had heard tell of it – in which he proposed that man was a kind of clever monkey. A lot of laughter and indignation that had produced, but Armstrong was inclined to believe it. He had found the line that separated humans from the animal kingdom to be a porous one, and all the things that people thought unique to them – intelligence, kindness, communication – he had seen in his pigs, his horse, even the rooks that hopped and strutted amongst his cows. And then there was this: the methods he used on animals generally bore fruit when applied to people too. He could usually win them round in the end.
The sudden disappearance of the people he had glimpsed only a moment or two ago made things difficult though. He did not know Bampton. Armstrong walked along for a few yards and, coming to a crossroads, saw a boy sprawled in the grassy centre by the signpost, nose almost to the ground. He was so engrossed in studying the lie of a number of marbles that he seemed not to notice the cold – nor Armstrong’s approach.
Two expressions passed across the boy’s face. The first – alarm – was fleeting. It disappeared when he saw the marble that appeared as if by magic from Armstong’s pocket. (Armstrong had his clothes made with large and reinforced pockets to store the items he kept habitually upon him for the taming and reassuring of creatures. As a rule he kept acorns for pigs, apples for horses, marbles for small boys and a flask of alcohol for older ones. For females of the human species he depended on good manners, the right words and immaculately polished shoes and buttons.) The marble that he showed to the boy was no ordinary one but contained flares of orange and yellow so like the flames of a fire that you would think you could warm yourself by it. The boy now looked interested.
The game that ensued was carried out with professional concentration by both parties. The boy had the advantage of knowing the terrain – which tufts of grass will bend as a marble passes and which have congested roots and will divert its path – and the game ended, as Armstrong had always intended, with the marble in the pocket of the boy.
‘Fair and square,’ he admitted. ‘Victory to the better man.’
The boy looked discomfited. ‘Was it your best marble?’
‘I have others at home. Now, I ought really to introduce myself. My name is Mr Armstrong and I have a farm at Kelmscott. I wonder whether you can help me with some information? I want to know the way to a house where a little girl called Alice lives.’
‘That is Mrs Eavis’s house, her mother lodges there.’
‘And her mother’s name is …?’
‘Mrs Armstrong, Sir – oh! – that is just like your name, Sir!’
Armstrong was rather relieved. If the woman was Mrs Armstrong, then Robin had married her. Things were perhaps not quite so bad as he had feared.
‘And where is Mrs Eavis’s house? Can you direct me there?’
‘I will show you, that will be best, for I know the shortcuts, it being me who delivers the meat.’
They set off on foot, Armstrong leading Fleet.
‘I have told you my name, and I will tell you that this horse is called Fleet. Now you know who we are, who are you?’
‘I am Ben and I am the son of the butcher.’
Armstrong noticed that Ben had a habit of taking a deep breath at the start of every answer and delivering his words in a single stream.
‘Ben. I suppose you are the youngest son, for that is what Benjamin means.’
‘It means the littlest and the last, and it was my father who named me, but my mother says it takes more than naming a thing to make it so, and there are three more after me and another one on the way, and that is on top of the five that came before, though all my father needs is one to help in the shop and that is my eldest brother, and all the rest of us is surplus to requirements since we do nothing but eat the profits.’
‘And what does your mother say about that?’
‘Mostly nothing, but when she do say something it is generally along the lines that eating the profits is better than drinking them, and then he gives her a bash and she don’t say nothing at all for a few days.’
While the boy was speaking, Armstrong eyed him sideways. There were ghosts of bruises on the lad’s forehead and wrists.