Margery placed the last of Sophia’s items on the pile, pulling the tarpaulin over them, and wondering whether she could move any of it further up the hill. Something fluttered deep inside and she was startled until she realized what it was. She stopped and placed her hand upon her belly, feeling it again, flooded with an emotion she couldn’t identify.
‘Margery!’
She spun round to see Sophia clutching at William’s sleeve. There appeared to have been some kind of surge and she was now up to her waist. The water, Margery saw, had turned black. ‘Oh, Lord,’ she murmured. ‘Stay there!’
Sophia and William had stepped down gingerly onto the underwater steps, one hand each gripping the rope, Sophia’s free arm tight around her brother’s waist. The inky water rushed past them, its force sending a strange energy into the air. William’s eyes were down, his knuckles taut as he tried to steer his crutch forward through the swollen river.
Margery half ran, half stumbled down the hill, her eyes on them as they made their way towards her.
‘Keep coming! You can make it!’ she yelled, skidding to a stop at the edge. And then – snap! – the rope gave way, sending both Sophia and William off their feet and flinging them downstream. Sophia shrieked. She was thrown forward, her arms out, disappeared for a moment and then, emerging, managed to grab hold of a bush, her hands closing tight around its branches. Margery ran alongside her, her heart in her throat. She threw herself down on her belly and grabbed hold of Sophia’s wet wrist. Sophia switched her grip to Margery’s other wrist and, after a second, Margery had hauled her up the bank, where she collapsed backwards and Sophia crouched on her muddied hands and knees, her clothes black and sodden, panting with the effort.
‘William!’
Margery turned at Sophia’s voice to see William half submerged, his face screwed up with effort as he tried to haul himself back along the rope. His crutch had disappeared and the water was around his waist.
‘I can’t get through!’ he yelled.
‘Can he swim?’
‘No!’ wailed Sophia.
Margery ran for Charley, her wet clothes dragging at every step. Somewhere she had lost her hat and the water sent her hair cascading over her face, so that she had to keep pushing it back to see.
‘Okay, boy,’ she murmured, unhooking Charley’s reins from the pole. ‘I need you to help me now.’
She pulled him down the bank and to the water where she waded in, her free hand out to the side to steady her, her boots testing the ground for obstacles. He stalled at first, his ears flat back and his eyes white, but at her urging he took a tentative step and then another and, huge ears flicking forward and back at the sound of her voice, he was splashing his way through, beside Margery, pushing against the torrent. William was gasping by the time they reached him, both hands on the rope as he scrabbled for purchase. He grabbed blindly at Margery, his face a mask of panic, and she yelled to be heard above the sound of the water. ‘Just hold him round his neck, William, okay? Wrap your arms around his neck.’
William held on to the mule, his great body pressed against Charley’s, and, groaning with the effort, Margery turned the two of them in the depths of the floodwater, back towards the bank, the mule protesting mutely at every step. The black water was up to her chest now and Charley, frightened, lifted his muzzle and tried to half leap forward. Another surge of water hit them, and as everything rushed around her she felt his legs lift and was filled with sudden terror, as if the ground would surely slip away from them all for good, but just as she thought they, too, would be carried away, she felt her feet touch the ground again, knew Charley’s had done the same, and she felt him take another tentative step forward.
‘You okay, William?’
‘I’m here.’
‘Good boy, Charley. Come on, boy.’
Time slowed. They seemed to move forward in inches. She had no idea what was underneath. A solitary wooden drawer of neatly folded clothing floated by in front of them, followed by another, and then a small dead dog. She noted them only with some distant part of her brain. The black water had become a living, breathing thing. It snatched and pulled at her coat, blocking progress, demanding submission. It was relentless, deafening, and made fear rise, like iron, in her throat. Margery was now blue with cold, her skin pressed against Charley’s chestnut neck, her head bumping against William’s great arms, all consciousness reduced to one thing.
Just get me home, boy, please.
One step.
Two.
‘You okay there, Margery?’
She felt William’s great hand on her arm, gripping her, and was unsure whether it was for his security or her own. The world had receded until it was just her and William and the mule, the roar in her ears, William’s voice murmuring a prayer she couldn’t make out, Charley straining valiantly against the water, his body buffeted by a force he didn’t understand, the ground slipping and sliding away from him every few steps, then again. A log whooshed past them, too big, too fast. Her eyes stung, filled with grit and water. She was dimly aware of Sophia reaching forward from the bank, her hand outstretched, as if she could haul the three of them up by force. Voices joined hers from the bank. A man. More men. She could no longer see through the water in her eyes. She could think about nothing, her fingers, now numb, wound into Charley’s short mane, her other hand on his bridle. Six more steps. Four more steps. A yard.
Please.
Please.
Please.
And then the mule lurched forward and upwards and she could feel strong hands reaching for her, pulling at her shoulders, her sleeves, her body a landed fish, William’s shaking voice, ‘Thank you, Lord! Thank you!’ Margery, feeling the river reluctantly relinquish its grip, uttered the same words silently through frozen lips. Her clenched fist, Charley’s hair still woven through her fingers, moved unthinkingly to her belly.
And then everything went black.
17
Beth heard the girls before she saw them, their voices high above the roar of the water, childish and shrill. They clung to the front of a ramshackle cabin, their feet ankle deep in water, and yelling at her, ‘Miss! Miss!’ She tried to recall the family name – McCarthy? McCallister? – and urged her horse across the water, but Scooter, already spooked by the strange electric atmosphere of the air and the dense, punishing rain, had made it partway across the swollen creek, then half reared and spun away so that she almost fell off. She righted herself but he would not be moved, snorting and running backwards until his brain was so addled she feared he would do himself an injury.
Cursing, Beth had dismounted, thrown his reins over a pole and waded across the water towards them. They were young, the youngest maybe two at most, and clad in thin cotton dresses that clung to their pale skin. As she approached, they clamoured for her, six little anemone arms, reaching, waving. She got to them just before the surge. A rush of black water, so fast and hard that she had to grab the baby around her middle to stop her being carried away. And then there she was, three small children huddled around her, gripping her coat, her voice making reassuring noises even as her brain raced to work out how in hell she was going to make her way out of this one.