They all looked at him.
‘It has been a long night and for Mrs White a very exhausting one, but if I could ask just one question before we go?’
The parson nodded.
‘Lily, how did my pig Maud come to be at Basketman’s Cottage?’
Having confessed her one great crime, Lily’s other secrets were no longer anchored down. ‘Victor brought her.’
‘Victor?’
‘My stepbrother.’
‘What is his surname, your stepbrother?’
‘His name is Victor Nash.’
At that name, Armstrong started as though he had sliced through his own finger with his slaughtering knife.
The Other Side of the River
‘HE CAN’T BE in the factory,’ Vaughan said. ‘I’ve been selling off the contents and people have been coming and going for months. If anyone was hiding out in there, he’d have been spotted. And the vitriol works have high windows – the light would be visible for miles. No, the only place big enough for a distillery and hideout that’s concealed and undisturbed is the old store house.’
His forefinger jabbed at the place on the plan of Brandy Island.
‘Where’s the landing spot?’ asked Daunt.
‘Here’s where he’ll be expecting anyone to come in. If he keeps an eye out, this is where he’ll be watching. But it’s possible to land on the island from the far side. Away from the factory and the other buildings. Take him by surprise.’
‘How many men will we be?’ Armstrong asked.
‘I can provide eight men from the household and farms. I could raise more, but we’d need more row boats and that might rouse suspicion.’
‘I could take a greater number on Collodion, but it would be noisy and too visible. Fewer of us in row boats is the only way.’
‘Eight men, plus we three …’ They looked at each other and nodded. Eleven. It would be enough.
‘When?’ said Vaughan.
At dead of night, a small flotilla of row boats left the jetty at Buscot Lodge. Nobody spoke. Blades barely disturbed the ink-blank water as they dipped in and out of it. Oars creaked and water lapped against the sides of the vessels, but these sounds were lost in the low grumble of the river. Invisibly the rowers slipped from land over water to land again.
At the far side of Brandy Island, they hauled their boats out of the river and up the steep slope to conceal them under the hanging branches of the willow. They knew each other by silhouette, nods were all that were needed for communication, for every man had his instructions.
They separated into pairs and spread out along the bank, to make diverse routes through the vegetation towards the factory. Daunt and Armstrong were the only ones unfamiliar with the island. Daunt was with Vaughan, Armstrong with Newman, one of Vaughan’s men. They pushed branches out of their way, stumbled over roots, moved blind in the darkness. When the vegetation thinned and gave way to paths, they knew they were nearing the factory. They skirted walls, hastened across open areas with barely a sound.
Daunt and Vaughan came to the store house. Hemmed in by the factory on one side and dense trees on the other, the glow from its windows would have been invisible from both banks. In the darkness, the two men exchanged a look. Daunt pointed to the other side. A hint of movement stirred in the trees, illuminated by the faint light from the building. Others had arrived.
Armstrong made the first move. He rushed at the door, and kicked at it with his full bodyweight. It left the door swinging, half off its hinges. Vaughan pushed it fully open, and Daunt was right behind him as they surveyed the room. Vats and bottles and barrels. Air thick with yeast and sugar. A small brazier, recently tended. A chair, empty. Daunt pressed his hand to the cushion. It was warm.
He had been there, but he was gone.
Vaughan allowed a curse to escape his lips.
A sound. Outside. From the trees.
‘That way!’ came a cry. Daunt, Vaughan and Armstrong joined the others. There was a great scramble through the undergrowth as men rushed to give chase, following the direction of the sound. They crashed through branches, broke twigs underfoot, exclaimed when they stumbled, until they did not know whether the sounds they were following were those of the quarry or the hunters themselves.
They regrouped. Though they were dispirited, they had not given up. They quartered the terrain, covered every yard of the island. They delved into every bush, peered up into the branches of every tree, searched every room and every corridor of every building. Two of Vaughans’ men approached a tangle of thorny branches and began to beat it methodically with heavy sticks. On the far side, movement: a figure, bent low, suddenly leapt and with a splash disappeared.
‘Hoy!’ they shouted to alert the others. ‘He’s gone in!’
Before long the others had joined them.
‘He’s out there somewhere. We flushed him out of hiding and heard the splash.’
The hunters peered out across the dark river. The water shimmered and glinted, but there was no sign of their quarry.
When he first entered the water he thought the cold would kill him outright. But when he surfaced and found himself not dead, nowhere near, he discovered it wasn’t so deadly after all. He’d emerged from his great dive in a place that had advantages. The river, it seemed, was his ally. Where a great branch bent low over the river, he could cling on, half out of the water, while he worked out what to do. Returning to the island was out of the question. He’d have to get across. Once in the central flow, the river would carry him downstream, and if he edged towards the bank all the time, he was bound to find a place to haul himself out. After that …
After that he’d work things out as best he could.
He unlocked his arms from the branch, let himself fully into the water and kicked away.
There came a shout from the island – he’d been spotted – and he ducked under the surface. There, he was distracted by a festival of movement and light above his head. A fleet of stars went sailing by. A thousand tiny moons shimmered past him, elongated like baby fish in a shoal. He was a giant among fairies.
It occurred to him suddenly that there was no great urgency. I’m not even shivering, he thought. It’s almost warm.
His arms were heavy. He wasn’t sure whether he was kicking or not.
When the cold river doesn’t feel cold, that’s when you know you’re in trouble. He’d overheard that somewhere. When? Long ago. It troubled him and a sense of foreboding pressed down on him. In a panic he scrabbled, but his limbs would not obey him.
He had woken the river now; its current took hold of him. Water in his mouth. Moonfish in his head. Knowledge: a mistake. He groped for the surface; his hands met trailing, floating plants. He grasped to haul himself up, but his fingers closed on gravel and mud. Flailing – twisting – the surface! – gone again. He took in more water than air, and when he cried for help – though who had ever helped him, was he not the most betrayed of men? – when he cried for help, there were only the lips of the river pressed to his, and her fingers pinched his nostrils shut.
All this for ever …
Until, when there was no resistance left in him, he felt himself grasped, lifted up and out of the water as if he weighed no more than a willow leaf, and lain down, down to rest, in the bottom of a punt.
Quietly? He knew the stories. The ferryman who took those whose time had come to the other side, and who took those whose time had not come to safety. He’d never believed the tale, but here he was.