“Or what, my dear?” asked Susan’s mother Rose in a sarcastic tone. “It should place the late Miss Wolf into jeopardy?”
Susan coloured. Then Susan said in a sad and regretful voice, “Perhaps if she had had it with her, she would not be dead. It is a most effective weapon.”
“Mayhap she thought it better that Timberry should have it. And now, alas, it is in the hands of the sheriff, no doubt,” said Harry, scouring the ruined room for any place that the ransackers had not delved.
Rose considered this statement with a light drumming of her fingers upon her temples. “Not necessarily. For I know of a place that perhaps wasn’t searched by those who came hither to destroy my house — and mark me, they will pay for this damage, after they have made restitution to my poor husband for arresting him under a spurious charge.”
“Where is the hiding place?” asked Harry with great interest.
“Pull back that chair there,” replied Rose, pointing. “Remove the four floor boards beneath it. You may have to tug a bit, for they are wedged tightly amongst the others to produce the illusion of close adherence to the other boards. Timberry knew of this hiding place, for I shewed it to him myself.”
Harry did as he was instructed and quickly discerned which of the boards could be removed with a bit of applied prying.
Having removed all four, he reached down into the dark space below the floor and drew up the medical bag with a smile.
“Take the bag, Mr. Scadger,” said Rose. “It is no longer safe to leave it here. Perhaps you should give me the Taser gun so that I can go to the Inn-of-Justice and electrify all of those constabulary miscreants who are holding my husband without due process of law. That should do the trick to win his release!”
“You will do nothing of the kind, Mama!” proclaimed Susan. To Harry: “Let us keep the bag between us, since there are other patients of whom I am aware who could benefit from the medicine within. Mama, Mr. Scadger and I are going to tend to his sick daughter. You should stay behind and put this cyclone house to rights, and think no more of storming the Bastille with an electric gun.”
“It was said in dark jest, my daughter. But now is not the time for levity, is it? Your father mouldering away in gaol. Half this valley under commensurate lock and key or chained to beds at Bedlam. It depresses me to no end.”
But by now Rose Fagin was addressing only herself, for her daughter and Harry Scadger had fled.
Susan Fagin and Harry Scadger could smell the smoke, but could not glean its source. As they continued on their way to Milltown, they began to notice a growing darkness in the eastern sky — a darkness that quickly materialised into thick rising puffs of black cloud coming from the direction of the Scadger apricot grove.
“My brothers and their families are in peril,” said Harry. “I must help them.”
Yet there was nothing that could be done. When Susan and Harry reached the orchard, it was fully aflame, and Harry’s half-brothers and their wives and children were huddled together and watching with moist and horrified eyes as their arbour hamlet turned itself into charcoal and ash. Harry pinched at his nose; the smell of baking and burning fruit assaulted it with sweet acridity, as would a fruit pie left too long in the oven.
“Who did it?” asked Harry of his oldest half-brother Sol.
“Uniformed men what came from the wood. Zeph was sentry for the day and saw them first. We had expected an evening assault but nothin’ in the broad daylight, brother. The men, they gathered us together in a group and we were afeared that we should be executed upon that spot. Mel had hardly time to draw his bow and arrow to give fight when it was shot from his hand. We were defeated before the battle could even begin, brother— outnumbered and outweaponed.”
“And left with no more home,” said Harry in sad commiseration with his brothers’ plight.“And where are the men now — the Beyonders who did this?”
“Scuttled back into the wood like the Outland rats they are. Ephraim, now, he wants to go after them.”
“A fool’s mission,” said Harry, shaking his head vigorously. “We cannot fight the Outlanders. Not this way. Come with me to Milltown.”
“We’ll not live beneath a bridge!” proclaimed Sol on behalf of his clan. “Nor will we go to the workhouse. Mel wants to leave the valley altogether — to try to make a home for ourselves in the Terra Incotta.”
“And that should be the deadliest course of all, brother. Are not the woods and ridges growing thick with Outlander agents — the same who came to burn down this orchard? Perhaps you have not heard it, but Sir Dabber and his son and a nurse were slashed and stabbed to death only two nights ago to prevent their own passage. You need not go to the bridge or the workhouse. My other two half-brothers now sit in the Dingley Gaol along with Mrs. Lumbey and her apprentice. Their lodgings are presently empty. I will take all of you there and I will take full responsibility should anyone return with objections. But I think that they should not, given present circumstances. Come. Gather your things together and let us vacate this place, lest the Outlanders return to finish the task for which this fire was only prologue. Miss Fagin, please assist the women in gathering up their things, and I will assist the men. Look sharp, my brothers. We should tarry no longer in this dangerous cinder-grove.”
And so Harry’s half-brothers and their families began to ready themselves to leave their orchard home forever. And there was a great flow of tears and angry murmurs and shakings of fists in the direction of the eastern wood. And Melchisedech Scadger looked upon his ruined bow and his quiver and his stilled arrows, which he had fashioned and carved with his own hands, and he repined his inability to do battle on behalf of his clan as Harry placed a consoling hand upon his shoulder and left it there for a brief tearful interval.
Chapter the Forty-fourth. Wednesday, July 9, 2003
ear the end of the Scadgers’ journey to Mrs. Lumbey’s lodgings in Milltown, the light of day began to wane, to be replaced by crepuscular half-light and shadow. The band of brothers and their wives and their
large litters of barefoot children tread slower than was their wont, their heads bowed in disconsolation, for though little had they ever had, now even less did they possess — not much more, in fact, than the clothes upon their backs and a few rescued tools and personal baubles. Susan Fagin walked along with the women, holding a young infant in her caring nurse’s arms, and Harry walked ahead with his older brother Solomon, his four younger brothers marching only a few steps behind.
It was the two brothers in the lead who first saw what sort of reception Milltown would give them, for no sooner had they crossed into the West End by the northern road did they begin to receive suspicious glares from many of those out and about this early evening. There were also whispers interchanged between frowning and contemptuous mouths— clear signs that the clan was to move along and stop nowhere along the way.
One man went even farther in his own show of distaste for the Scadger clan. The man was the apothecary William Skettles, brother-in-law of Montague Pupker. He stood upon the front step of his shop, having just locked up his establishment for the night. “The Westminster Bridge to the East End is that way,” he called to Solomon Scadger and his brother Harry, who remembered the ignominious occasion of his ejection from that same apothecary’s shop only a few days before. “You are all going in the wrong direction.”