The Changes Trilogy Page 8

  “Thank you, Ajeet and Gopal and Harpit,” he went on. “Ask your Aunt Mohindar to give you each an apple.”

  The apples in the artist’s cottage garden weren’t ready for eating yet, but the village had paid for some of the last lot of work with a sack of James Grieves. The children sat on the wall around the well and bit into the white flesh, so juicy that there was no way of stopping the sweet liquid flowing down the outside of their chins in wasteful dribbles. Nicky looked over the wide gold landscape, where the swifts hurtled and wheeled above wheat that would never be harvested, and felt the wanderlust on her. Suddenly the close community, busy with its ceaseless effort for survival, seemed stifling.

  Usually she would have gone for rest and calm to sit by the old lady’s cart under the wych elm and watch the babies playing. Even when Ajeet came to translate, she and the old lady did not speak much, though sometimes the old lady would tell her of extraordinary things she had seen and done in that other life before she came to England—not really as though she was trying to entertain Nicky, more to teach her, to instruct, to pass on precious knowledge. And when they didn’t speak, it still was soothing to be near her, in a way that Nicky couldn’t explain; she guessed that the old lady felt the same, but there was no way of asking.

  But today the old lady had one of her little illnesses and had stayed in bed, not wanting to see anybody except her daughters, and then only to complain to them about something. So now Nicky longed to be out of earshot of the clang of the forge and the thud of the flails, away from the pricking and clotting dust which all this hard work stirred into the air, somewhere else.

  “I’m going for a walk,” she said as she threw her core away.

  Harpit groaned. Gopal sighed.

  “So I shall have to come with you,” he said, “to slaughter your enemies.”

  He patted the three-quarter-size sword that swung against his hip. He was very proud of it because Uncle Jagindar said it was the best blade he’d made. One corner of the forge held a pile of snapped blades which hadn’t stood up to the cruel testing the smiths gave them. (“What use is a sword,” Uncle Chacha had asked, “if you strike with it once and then there is nothing left in your hand but the hilt?”) Gopal joined the adults for fencing practice these days.

  Now he patted his sword like a warrior and stood up.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t got any enemies for you,” said Nicky as she stood too.

  “Not even the bad baron?” said Harpit. That was what the children called the giant down in the village. It was funny to think that Nicky was the only one who’d ever seen him.

  “No, he’s not my enemy,” said Nicky. “He’s all right—in fact he’s a hero, sort of.”

  “I must tell my mother where we’re going,” whispered Ajeet.

  “I’ll tell her,” said Harpit, “and that means I needn’t come on this idiot expedition. Where are you going, Nicky?”

  “Up to the common.”

  Despite Gopal’s sword, Nicky was the one who led the way down the curving line of elms and oaks that had been allowed to stay on the boundary between one farm and the next; the ripe barley brushed against their left shoulders; they dipped into the place where the line of trees became a farm track, whose slope took them down to join a magical and haunted lane, untarred, running nearly fifteen feet below the level of the surrounding fields. The hedge trees at the top of the banks on either side met far above their heads, so that the children walked in a cool green silence and looked up into the caverns where the earth had been washed away from between blanched tree roots. In that convenient dark the animals of the night laired. It was a street of foxes.

  Then, too soon, they were out into the broad evening sun and turning left up the grassy track to the common. Swayne’s farm, deserted now, stood silent on the corner—mainly a long wall of windowless brick, with gates opening into yards where cattle had once mooched and scuffled. Gopal, driven by some impulse to assert himself against the brooding stillness, drew the gray curved blade from his belt and lunged at imaginary foes; with each lunge he gave a grunting cry. The echo bounced off the brick wall on the far side of the farmyard, and died into stillness.

  “Please stop it,” said Ajeet. Gopal sheathed his sword, grinning.

  The echo continued. It said “Help!”

  Nicky climbed the gate into the farmyard. The dry litter rustled under her feet.

  “Where are you?” she called.

  “Here,” said the faint voice. “Help! I’m stuck!”

  They found him in the loft over a hay barn. A ladder lay on the floor of the barn, and in the square black hole in the ceiling a wan face floated. Nicky and Gopal lifted the fallen ladder back into place.

  “I can’t climb down,” said the face. “I’ve hurt my foot.” It began to sob.

  “I’ll come up and help you,” said Gopal. “Don’t worry. It’s all right.”

  “Not you!” wailed the face. “I’ve got a brick. I’ll hit you!”

  Gopal took his hand off the rung and shrugged.

  Nicky climbed slowly up the ladder. The face shifted in the square, and in the dimness behind she saw an arm move upward. She stopped climbing.

  “It’s quite all right,” she said. “I won’t hurt you. My name’s Nicky Gore. What’s yours?”

  “Shan’t tell you.”

  The arm with the brick wavered uncertainly. Nicky flinched.

  “Look,” she said, “if I’d got magic, your brick wouldn’t hurt me, but if I haven’t got magic, then you’d be hurting somebody just like yourself, somebody who’s trying to help you.”

  “What about him?” said the boy, still panting with sobs.

  “He wants to help you too. His name’s Gopal. He’s my friend. And the other one’s Ajeet—she tells wonderful stories.”

  “Tell ’em to go away.”

  Nicky looked over her shoulder. Ajeet was already floating out like a shadow. Gopal shrugged again, tested the bottom of the ladder, and went to the door.

  “Be careful,” he said. “I think it’s steady, but not if you start fighting on it.”

  Nicky managed a sort of laugh as she climbed into the darkness.

  “How long have you been here?” she said.

  “I been here all day. I was looking for treasure. There’s a heap of treasure buried up on the common, folk say, but when I come to the farm I thought the farm folk might have found some, so I started looking here, and then I knocked the ladder down, and then I trod on a bit o’ glass and it come clean through my foot.…”

  He was about eight, very dirty, the dirt on his face all streaked with blubbering.

  “Wriggle it around over the hole,” said Nicky, “and I’ll have a look.”

  He did so, with slow care; his groans sounded like acting, but the foot really did look horrid; the worn sneaker was covered with dried blood and the foot seemed to bulge unnaturally inside the canvas. The laces were taut and too knotted to undo, so Nicky drew her hunting knife (which Uncle Chacha had honed for her to a desperate sharpness) and sliced them delicately through. The boy cried aloud as the pressure altered, then sat sobbing. Nicky realized that she’d probably done the wrong thing. They must get him to an adult as soon as possible.

  “Look,” she said, “if I go down the ladder the wrong way around, then you can get yourself further over the hole, and I’ll come back up until you’re sitting on my shoulders. Then I can give you a piggyback down.”

  The boy nodded dully. Nicky stepped onto the ladder and went down until her head was below floor level. There she turned so that her heels were on the rungs.

  “Now,” she said, “see if you can wriggle your bottom along until your good leg is right over this side. A bit further. Now I’m coming up a rung. I’ll hold your bad leg so that it doesn’t bang anything.”

  “It hurts frightful when I drop it,” groaned the boy.

  “All right, I’ll hold it up. Now you take hold of the ladder, lean forward against my head, and see if you can lift yo
ur bottom across so that you’re sitting on the rung. Well done! Now let yourself slide down onto my shoulders; hold on to my forehead. Higher, you’re covering my eyes. Hold tight. Down we go!”

  The ladder creaked beneath the double weight. Nicky moved one heel carefully to the next rung, bending her knee out steadily so as to lower the two of them without a jolt. The wounded foot came through the opening with an inch to spare. Each rung seemed to take ages, as the thigh muscles above her bending knee were stretched to aching iron. She’d done five and was resting for the next when the grip on her forehead suddenly gave way.

  “Hold tight!” she cried, and flung up her hand from the ladder to catch the slipping arm.

  “Are you all right?” she said.

  There was no answer. The boy’s weight was now quite limp. Fresh blood was seeping, bright scarlet, through the crackled dark rind of the blood which had dried on his shoe before. Gopal, who must have been watching through the doorway, ran in and held the bottom of the ladder. She came down the last few rungs in one rush, trying to hold the boy from falling by forcing the back of her head into his stomach to slide him down the rungs. The top of the ladder bounced and rattled in the trapdoor, but stayed put.

  “I’ve got his shoulders,” said Gopal. “We’ve found something to carry him on outside. Can you manage?”

  Nicky staggered out into the sunlight and saw Ajeet spreading hay onto a hurdle.

  “This end,” said Gopal. “Turn your back to it. Now get down as low as you can and I’ll lift him off.”

  Nicky crouched, then sat; she twisted to ease the wounded leg onto the hay, and at last stood, shuddering with the long effort and feeling such sudden lightness that a breeze could have blown her away.

  “Well done, Nicky,” said Gopal. “Lift his leg, Ajeet, while I put more hay under it. If we get it higher than the body it might bleed a bit less. And then we’ll need to lash it into place, so that it doesn’t flop about while we are carrying him. A rope or a strap.”

  “No,” said Ajeet, “something softer. What about your puggri?”

  “It’s such a bind to do up again,” said Gopal, but he began to unwind the long folds of his turban. His black hair fell over his shoulders, like a girl’s, but he twisted it up with a few practiced flicks and pinned it into place with the square wooden comb. The cloth was long enough to go three times around the hurdle, lashing the leg comfortably firm. The child muttered and stirred, but did not wake. His face looked a nasty yellowy gray beneath the tear-streaked dirt.

  “Where shall we take him?” said Nicky.

  “Up to the farm,” said Gopal.

  “He won’t like that,” said Nicky. “Nor will the villagers. They’ll think we’ve stolen his soul away, or something.”

  “Never mind,” said Gopal. “First, we don’t know which house he belongs at, or even which village. Second, he must have proper medical attention, and he won’t get that in the village.”

  “All right,” said Nicky.

  Gopal took the front of the hurdle, Nicky and Ajeet the two back corners. The first stretch along the deep lane was manageable, but after that it became harder even than plowing, and they had to rest every fifty yards. They were battling up through the barley field when a voice hissed at them from the trees. They all stopped and looked into the shadow, too tired to be frightened.

  It was the risaldar, statuesque with his long bow, waiting for a rabbit or a pheasant. Obviously he was cross that they had spoilt his hunting, but after a question or two in Punjabi, answered by Gopal, he stepped out from his cover, handed the bow to Nicky, and took the girls’ end of the hurdle. For the rest of the journey the children worked shift and shift on the front corners.

  The communal supper was being carried out of the artist’s cottage when they at last settled the hurdle wearily across the wellhead. The usual cackle of argument rose as the women gathered around the wounded boy, while the steam from the big bowls of curry rose pungent through the evening air. But Cousin Punam shushed the cooks away and had the hurdle carried into one of the sheds beside the farmyard.

  “We will take the sock and shoe off while he’s still fainted,” she said, snipping busily with a pair of nail scissors. “Then he will never know how much it hurts, eh? I did not think, when I was doing my training, that so soon I would have to be a qualified doctor. A little boiled water, a little disinfectant, cotton wool … Ai, but that’s a nasty cut! Pull very gently at this bit of sock, Nicky, while I cut here. Ah, how dirty! That’s it, good—throw it straight on the fire. And don’t come back for five minutes, Nicky, because now I must do something you will not like.”

  It was still more than an hour till nightfall. The last gold of sunset lay slant across the fields and in it the swifts still wheeled, hundreds of feet up, too high for her to hear their bloodless screaming. It was going to be another blazing day tomorrow, just right for the dreary toil of reaping and threshing. She leaned against the cottage wall and looked down at the square brick tower of the church, warm in that warm light. What next? The boy would be in trouble in the village if they learned he had crossed the bad wires; if the Sikhs simply put him on the hurdle and carried him down to the Borough, they could expect more suspicion than gratitude—and Cousin Punam had been going to do something “wrong” to him.… Nicky would have to remind her to tie the wound up with a clean rag, and not anything out of her bag.…

  Cousin Punam had finished, but was talking to someone. Nicky heard the words “… tetanus injection …” before she called out to ask whether she could come in. Neena was sponging the grime off the sleeping face.

  “When will he wake up?” said Nicky.

  “Quite soon, perhaps,” said Cousin Punam.

  “It sounds awful,” said Nicky, “but he’ll be terrified if he sees you. Let me wait, and I’ll find out where he lives. Then we can take him back.”

  Cousin Punam sighed and shrugged, just as Gopal had done down at Swayne’s.

  “Have you had your supper, Nicky?” said Neena.

  “Not yet.”

  “I’ll send you some.”

  “Thank you,” said Nicky. “And thank you, Punam, for … for everything.”

  She stumbled over the words, half conscious that she was speaking for the boy and his mother and the whole village words that they would never learn to say. The women left. Ajeet came back with a chapati—the heavy, sconelike bread which the Sikhs made—and mutton curry. Nicky was just learning to like the taste now that the Sikhs were beginning to run out of curry powder.

  Perhaps it was the smell of food which woke the boy, because he tried to sit up when Ajeet was hardly out of the stall. Nicky rose from the floor, her mouth crammed with bread and curry.

  “Don’t try to move,” she mumbled. “How does your leg feel?”

  He looked at it as though he’d forgotten how it hurt, then at her, then, wide-eyed, around the dim unfamiliar stall.

  “Where’s the rest of them?” he whispered.

  “Having their supper. You’re all right. We’ll look after you.”

  “I’m not telling you my name,” he whispered fiercely. “My mum says don’t you tell ’em your name if they catch you, and they’ve got no power on you, ’cause they don’t know what to call you in their spells.”

  “If you’ll tell me where you live, we’ll carry you home as soon as it’s dark.”

  “Oh,” he said with a note of surprise.

  “I thought we could say you’d been looking for birds’ nests in that hedge below the bad wires, and one of us heard you calling and found you’d hurt your foot and brought you up here. Then nobody’d know you’d crossed the wires.”

  “Much too late for birds’ nests,” he said. “Where you come from, if you don’t know that?”

  “London,” said Nicky. “Well, you think of something you might have been looking for at this time of year.”

  “Too early for crab apples or nuts,” said the boy. “Tell you what: I could have been looking for a rabbit run to
put a snare in.”

  “That’ll do,” said Nicky, thinking that she ought to tell the risaldar about rabbit snares. “Do you live in the village, or outside it?”

  “Right agin the edge,” he said. “You can cut across to our back garden through Mr. Banstead’s paddock.”

  “Good,” said Nicky. “We won’t go till it’s nearly dark. I’m afraid your mother will be worrying for you.”

  “That she will,” said the boy.

  “Are you hungry?”

  Suspicion tightened the lines of his face again.

  “I’m not eating the Queer Folk’s food,” he muttered.

  “I could bring you water from the well,” Nicky suggested. “That was here before us. And there’s a bag of apples which came up from the village only yesterday morning.”

  He thought for a few seconds, hunger and terror fighting.

  “All right,” he said at last.

  After supper they lifted him gently back onto his hurdle and four of the uncles carried him down the lane. He stared at his bearers in mute fear until, between step and step, he fell deep asleep. Nicky had to shake him awake at the edge of the village so that he could tell them their way through the dusk.

  It was the last cottage in the lane to Hailing Down. The uncles lowered the hurdle onto the dewy grass and stole off into the darkness by the paddock hedge. A dog yelped in the cottage next door as Nicky pushed the sagging gate open. A man’s voice shouted at the dog. The door at the end of the path opened, sending faint gold across a cabbage patch. A woman stood in the rectangle of light. Nicky walked up the path.

  “That you, Mike?” called the woman.

  The boy cried faintly to her from his hurdle.

  “I found him hurt,” said Nicky, “so we bandaged him up and brought him home.”

  The woman picked up her long skirt and rushed down the path. It was the same Mrs. Sallow who’d been complaining in court about her neighbor’s dog. When Nicky got back to the paddock she was kneeling by the stretcher with her arm under the boy’s shoulders.