The old rat catcher got a good idea making himself a place down here. Better than those ragged tents in the settlements. I get along the bottom of the canal in the shadows under the cold brick walls. Picking through the drifts and dirty snow.
Sometimes I pass under buildings that run either side of the canal. Great dead-looking buildings high up on the path. Must be hundreds of windows in them, black holes in the gray walls. And a couple of dogs trotting along up there—one look down over the edge at me. Look like they know where they been going. Don’t slow their pace.
The sun getting higher. Way down under the snow I can hear water trickling. Don’t reckon that old river dried up yet. In the distance a bridge cut high over the canal.
Then I see the ship.
Past the bridge. Long way off. Leaning, rusted against the wall of the canal. A great ship dumped on the canal bed.
It must be a pretty big ship come right up to the top of the canal walls far as I can see from here. Rusting windows and doors and rails sticking up all around the top and some kind of chimney poking out the middle. Big round chimney, bit of paint still clinging on.
It look like the dead whale I seen by the sea a couple of years
back. That ship look the same way wrong, tilting over to one side, flat on its underbelly, deep in the snow. Like it been forgotten. There’s something about it aint too friendly somehow.
A truck pass over the bridge.
Got to think what to do.
Dug out of the drifts by the side of the path, I come on a hollow. The hollow look just like the camps the little kids dig in the snow when they should be collecting wood or water.
People been in this dugout. Seats beaten down, snow all dirty. Proper good glass bottles just lying on the ground. I pick one up. It’s empty. ERGUOTOU written on the bottle. ERGUOTOU. I smell it. Grog.
I look back where I come. Aint seen no dwellings. Nothing except that old ship in the distance. I got a bad feeling stuck down in the bottom of this canal, like it’s a ravine with no way out.
I get to thinking about Mary. Get to thinking of her cold hand falling on my face. Trusting me in her sleep.
Someone shouting high up from the path for a second. I crouch low. The noise die away. I hope Mary gonna be all right with that old graybeard back under the arches. I wonder what she’s gonna do when she wake up and find I aint there.
Hope that old rat catcher gonna be kind. Mary aint much younger than Alice when Alice got pregnant with Geraint. Aint gonna trust an old graybeard in some things.
But Mary aint stupid. I seen that.
Just a bit further along, there’s an opening under the wall. Pitch-black inside. Another truck rumble over the bridge. I duck into the archway.
The tunnel seem to disappear into the earth. Can’t see nothing cos my eyes aint used to the darkness. Maybe I got to go back for her. Mary I mean. I squat on the cold ground. Take out Patrick’s traveling pouch with the last of the oatcakes in it. Patrick make the pouch real nice and even put a new pattern on the leather. He’s a dreamer really. Instead of talking he’s got to be fiddling with things. I hear my dad tell Magda it’s cos he aint got a woman.
Magda get really interested in that kind of thing. She been planning to get Patrick to go downriver in the summer when we all go for a Meet with the others at Barmuth. I feel sorry for Patrick cos when Magda starts thinking of putting a boy with a girl at the Barmuth Meet, she’s like a fox in cunning. I watch Patrick make that pouch cos I want to see how he do the pattern. That’s number one for learning stuff if you aint got a book.
I got a low feeling thinking of Magda and the others. The city aint so ordered like I think it gonna be. The way my dad always talk about it, I been reckoning that there’s gonna be police everywhere and all the people stuck in cold boxes who got to work in the coal mines or get sent off to Wylfa for no good reason. Like Patrick. But the city don’t feel like that. It feel like a craggy bit of rock rising up out of the mountain that you aint never gonna know roundside about, aint never gonna climb up it the same way twice. Feel like the city don’t care about nothing. Just got people scurrying about scared, trying to get on. Aint got much order to it far as I can see. I feel like a worm, a tiny worm lost in a huge nothing.
Mary pulling me back like a magnet.
I seen a magnet when I been a kid. I don’t know where my dad
got it but he show us all the tricks you can do with a magic thing like that. Make other bits of metal stick to it and stuff. Dad say you can make electricity with a magnet, and it aint magic,
it’s science
. Well, if that aint magic, I don’t know what is cos even the magic tricks they do at the Barmuth Meet sometimes, they just tricks done by one of the dads with mud on his face for the little ones, and you know it. But the magnet been real, pulling everything toward it.
Something make me turn. In the dark at the back of the tunnel.
I strain my eyes, heart beating hard in my chest. I aint expecting it. Aint expecting nothing to be in here scratching in the dark.
Just a whimper.
I stand up now, looking into the blackness.
Another whimper.
I get my tinder out quick and strike a light to that stubby bit of candle in my pouch. I hold it up, shielding the flame with my hand, and step forward into the tunnel.
A glint.
Something at the very back.
Something back there in the dark.
Aint moving.
Something hanging from the ceiling.
Got limbs.
I look down.
Dark patch on the snow.
Blood.
My guts freeze.
A carcass. Flayed. Hanging by its back legs with no skin. Skull a mass of sinews and eyeballs bulging out glassy. Frozen blood trampled into the snow all about. The flesh hacked at.
Everything about it bad.
A dog. A butchered dog. Something daubed on the bricks.
There is no law beyond
Do what thou wilt.
I hear the whimpering again. In the farthest corner, another dog, this one alive, tied to the wall by a rope. This dog only been a puppy. Mangy brown puppy cowering in the corner, tail tucked under it, ears back, shaking.
“Shhh. Little pup. I aint gonna hurt you.”
I crouch down. Feel along the rope. The puppy pulling away from me, whimpering and scrabbling in the dirt.
“Come here, little one. No one gonna get you now.”
I put my hand on its soft head. Run my hand over its shaking back. It been pretty thin. I untie the fraying rope around its neck. The frightened pup back away from me.
“I aint gonna hurt you.”
But the pup scuttle along the wall and scrabble out the tunnel into the snow with its stubby tail between its legs. Just want to be free.
I got a scared feeling in my guts then thinking who tied it up in here. That butchered dog hanging from the ceiling and everything. Reckon I got to get out of this dirty old canal.
But that thought been a thought too late.
“Oy!”
Shadows fall across the entrance.
People, dark against the light outside. Kids. Tall ones and small ones. There’s a rush of noise as they fill the tunnel.
A little girl come dancing in front of me, can’t be more than about eight years old. Skin drawn taut across her face. Red-rimmed eyes. Hands and feet wrapped in rags. She’s got a stick and she start poking it hard under my ribs.
Someone pull me, grab my arms behind me.
“Hang him up with the dog!”
An older girl push the kid with the stick out the way. She got one white eye, all milky like old Roger who been building the boat at Barmuth last summer. It’s the last thing I see. Dead white eye. Unblinking.
“Hood him.”
Someone pull a sack over my head. Rough dirty-smelling sack.
Everything dark.
Something smack against my head.
I hear my head crack like a splitting branch.
The world slip away.
Hands pluck at me.
Dark now.
Sinking down.
Dog.
Help me
.
My hands are cold. So cold I can’t feel them. Gloves gone. And my coat.
I make those gloves from a good big hare I trap up on the Farngod. After I trap him, I say my words and run home to Dad. We aint gonna be hungry that night for sure. And Dad say,
This skin’s not for Geraint
. So I skin the hare and scrape the bloody fur of fat and flesh. Soak the pelt til the fur is as soft as if it been alive. And then Magda show me how to cut the gloves to a pattern from my hands and make the fine cuts in the pieces and restitch them so that the fur falls soft and loose. And then I grease the leather and tool it with a pattern of my own on the gauntlet sleeves that come up your arm and keep the snow out and I brush and pick out the fur from the stitching, so you can’t see the seam, double stitched with gut, that’s gonna swell in the damp and keep your hands dry and warm in the winter storms.
They been a good pair of gloves.
But I aint got them no more.
Worse still is my coat. Feel like I’m gonna freeze to death on this frozen ground.
It been so cold. I need to be sick with the pain in my head, and it comes out of me the vomit, inside the hood, warm against my
face. My feet feel like they been at the end of a cold river—and I’m the river. Blood beating behind my eyes. I been drifting far off, away from the pain in my head, dancing like leaves in the wind.
And I think of Mary.
I got a dream dragging me away. I hear my dad. Calling me. Got to run.
Men aint men sometimes,
he say.
Run!
They gonna catch me and stretch me over their fire, scrape me, scrape my skin, and make a tent with it, boil my bones, but it aint cos of the leveret. The leveret sitting under its still-warm mother, so flat and scared, but I aint killed it.
In this dream I see the dog sitting up on the crest of the hill. I can see him, just bending down and licking his flank like he aint got a care in the world.
I told you, leave the sickly pups, look out for Number One.
Behind him the sky turn blue. Bright blue and the sun shining down on me in the snow. Like in summer but warmer, and I get up and Dad take my hand like I remember from some time long ago. I forgot why, but he’s taking us somewhere special. I done something good I guess, can’t remember what. But Dad take me to some trees. It been a long walk and the sun been so warm. Down in the valley a last stand of oak trees. Leaves all come out fresh like chubby green baby hands.
Dad lift me up into one of the trees. The bark all deep and hard and my fingers fall in and out of the cracks and Magda say,
Climb up, Willo, see how high you can get
. And I climb up the tree cos my dad’s down there watching and I’m gonna show him that I
am
a
Spartan or an Eskimo or one of the things he tells me when I been clever.
Dad and Magda down on the ground collecting acorns. He gonna put one of the acorns in the ground and show me over the years how it grow.
We’ve got to plant trees for the next ones,
he say. Then one year when the snow melts in summer the little tree just dead. Aint survived all the cold and snow.
But these trees, these trees grown big before the snows come. Just think, Magda say, in the old days the forest was green and warm all summer and sometimes snow coming at Christmas but everyone all happy and kids get sledges out and people skating on the lakes. Imagine that. No one making bread from dried acorns then. And Magda start crying in great big sobs and she lean against my dad’s shoulder saying,
I’m sorry, Robin, I’m sorry, it’s just my whole life
—and Dad’s stroking her hair, and I catch him look up to me in the tree and he whisper to Magda and she look up too, trying to smile but her eyes all wet, I can see.
Look at you all clever up there
, she say, wiping her face.
Look at you, Willo, like Robin Hood
.
And I feel like a king.
A bird flit past with grass in its beak, making a warm nest high in the tree, and when I look down my dad aint there no more, nor Magda, just a big black hole all around, and the sky aint blue no more. Far off wolves howling and the wind blowing and the snow coming down. I been so cold. And the branches shaking and I been hanging on and calling, “Dad! Dad!”
In the darkness I see wolves shuffling around under the tree,
and I hear them snarling, snapping at my feet, hear Dad shouting and fighting, and the wind buffer against me but I’m holding on tight. My dad scream out but I can’t see him now. Just got to get higher up in the branches.
Look at you all clever up there.
I scramble up and the branches scratch at my face and catch on my legs, but I get to the top and push through the leaves.
I can smell the sweet air now. Full with the scent of grass. When I push my head through the canopy, the sun blind my eyes, the darkness disappear below me and up above the sky brim full of light and the wind suck me out of the branches, and I’m floating high above it all. Down below the shouting so faint. Fainter and fainter and I can see a dog, my dog, sitting on the top of the mountain, ears pricked in my direction, all around him long grass ripple in the wind. Dog get up lazy then like dogs do and trot back over the ridge, but I don’t need the dog no more, just floating up here in the sky, higher and higher. I can see the earth below me, snowy hilltops covered in hares. The valleys green. I can see the seas blowing and stormy with great whales spouting. I got so high now, I been among the stars. The sky growing dark again, but aint black like before, just deep green like the bottom of a pool, and the stars so bright like specks of dust catching in the light all around.
You can see everything, can’t you
? It’s Mary, she been right beside me, holding my hand, floating up toward the moon. Or maybe it’s the sun. “It’s all right, we can wake up now,” she say.
“But where’s Dad?” I ask.
“We’ve got to wake up now, Willo. Wake up!”
“Wake up!”
I feel a hand on my shoulder, turning me.
Someone pulling the sack across my cheek. On the floor in front of my face is a candle, little candle stuck on a tin plate, flame so bright and orange, fluttering in the cold air.
And my coat bundled up on the floor.
I’m awake. Everything in the dark spinning soft about me.
A hand on my shoulder. A girl’s voice speaking.
“Mary?” I say.
“You’ve got to get up. Quick. They’ll come soon.”
A face comes down by the candle, hidden in a hood. It aint Mary. It’s the girl with the white eye. From the gang of kids.
“How long I been lying here?”
“You’ve got to get up.” She pull me up by my shoulders.
“Where am I?”
“Barton Lock. Come on, can you stand?”
I rub my wrists and push myself off the floor. “Yes, I can.”
“I’ve got your coat. Here. Follow me.”
I pull that good coat smelling of home over my frozen shoulders.
“How long have I been here?” I whisper.
She turn with a finger to her mouth.
“All night. Come on. Shhh.”
I can feel the cold air from outside drafting up the dark icy tunnel. Hear the girl ahead of me.
And then the light brighten, the dim morning grayness reflecting off the white snow.
“Wait,” I call to the girl.
She turn. Looking at me.
“They’ll be out after us soon,” she say. “There’s no time.”
“Who?”
“The gang.”
“Why did you help me?”
She shrug her shoulders. “Maybe you can help me. Aint no good being alone if we get inside the city. And your coat, it’s worth something—” She turn and look away up the canal bed. “It isn’t safe anywhere down here. Why did you come down in the canal? You want to die?”
“I come down with an old man, further up. He live further up under the arches.”
“The old rat catcher?” say the one-eyed girl.
“Yes. Reckon it’s the same.”
“But where do you come from with your gloves and coat made from fur?”
“I come from the hills.” I don’t understand. “Far away from here.”
She stare. “You can’t come down to Barton Lock in the winter. People are gonna kill you for something warm to wear. Or maybe just for fun.”
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“You got caught by our gang—they live in that ship there. That’s all. It was stupid to come down in the canal. No one comes down here. But you’re going to help me. That’s why I got your coat back. It’s worth a lot.”
“I don’t remember what happen much.”
“You got hit pretty bad on your head,” she say.
Far off towers rise up into the sky. Behind us been the empty canal and people like wolves and the smoking tents of the settlement like an illness.
The girl clamber up a great drift blown across the path.
“But I got to go back. Look for my friend,” I say.
“You can’t go back down there. They’ll come along soon. We’re close to the city. If we get past the checkpoints … look, I aint helped you just so you can run off.”
The girl turn toward the hard cold buildings jagged on the distant skyline. “It isn’t far. But we’ve got to move. Now.”
And I wonder if all the things the grown-ups tell me been true. If the old days gonna come back like before. If this just been a time when men forgot to be good.
Cos I don’t know. Maybe my dad and the graybeards just been telling us lies around the fire. Talking about beacons of hope and teaching us lessons. What Patrick call “moralizing.”
That’s all well and good,
Patrick tell me when we been felling the dead rowan, down by the river last spring,
but sometimes you got to follow your guts
. He hit himself in the stomach then. His muscles tense under the scratchy woolen tunic Magda knit him.
Your killer instinct,
he say, lifting the axe above his head,
sometimes that’s the thing to follow
.
The girl turn and look at me proper. Scratch at her head.
“You’ve never seen the city before, have you. You really are from the hills.”
“Well I aint lying, if that’s what you think.”
“I didn’t say you were lying,” she say.
“Look, I got to go back. I aint coming with you. Mary. My friend.”
“If they catch you again they’ll kill you.”
Then off in the distance we hear the shouts. Sticks banging on the brick walls. Echoing up the canal. Screaming and baying like the angry noises I hear in the settlement. The girl start up.
“I told you! Quick!”
In the dimness way back a torch flare up—I see it bobbing in the distance. Aint no dream.
“They’re coming,” she shout. “Run!”
The canal been far behind us now. The girl slip through some tents and crawl under a broken wall. We come up onto a road. Blackened buildings loom up all around. The streets full with people. I just been following, cos I aint got no clue where I am.
“We’re going to need to find us food.” Girl look at me with her milky eye. Rub on the inside of her arm, moving uneasy on her feet. “Come on. Got to get to Saint Ann’s before the queue gets too long. We can beg up the Arndale after.”
I been tired and hurting proper from the run. Hunger stirring like an angry dog in my guts now.
Big truck come honking down the road, everyone pulling over. Soldiers in thick gray felt coats and fur hats staring down at all the people, wet in the slushy dirty snow, holding their guns tight as the truck bump along.
“Why they got guns?”
She don’t answer. Pull me away.
“Why they got guns?”
“I don’t know. They’re soldiers, that’s why.” Across the street, over on the corner, I see a tall brick building, big square windows, ledges high up and thick with snow. Queue of ragged men and women hanging around the door. People come and go like tired horses except it don’t look like they got much to show for all their coming and going. Women dragging little kids and old men shuffling in saggy canvas coats.
The girl push me along, in among the crowd of people. Through the doors. I aint never been in a room so tall. Big long room. Either side dark wooden benches all facing to the front and the ceiling high up like a barn. The shouting and talking echoing up into the roof and all around.
Down each side of the room are tables. Women stand behind piles of rags and boots, handing out clothes to people crowding around.
“One at a time! One at a time!”
A short man, his face hot and sweaty, struggle across the floor with a large bucket of soup. Put it down on a table. The people close around him.
A baby squawk loud in this din, a shrill cry rising above the wall of sounds, rising up into the rafters. Baby shrieking out to someone. Even these starving people understand that sound. The sea of legs part and hands push the mother to the front of the queue, the mass of legs closing tight behind her.