“Try to stay dry,” she repeated. “Shall I say that before or after telling him about the man who stole our pig?”
It did not matter, of course. “After,” Tom said, as she wanted a definite answer. He smiled at her. “You’re a clever girl. Off you go.”
“I like this game,” she said. She waved and left, her girlish legs twinkling as she jumped the ditch daintily and ran back toward the town. Tom watched her with love and anger in his heart. He and Agnes had worked hard to get money to feed their children, and he was ready to kill to get back what had been stolen from them.
Perhaps the outlaw would be ready to kill, too. Outlaws were outside the law, as the name implied: they lived in unconstrained violence. This might not be the first time Faramond Openmouth had come up against one of his victims. He was nothing if not dangerous.
The daylight began to fade surprisingly early, as it sometimes did on wet autumn afternoons. Tom started to worry whether he would recognize the thief in the rain. As evening closed in, the traffic to and from the town thinned out, for most visitors had left in time to reach their home villages by nightfall. The lights of candles and lanterns began to flicker in the higher houses of the town and in the suburban hovels. Tom wondered pessimistically if the thief might stay overnight after all. Perhaps he had dishonest friends in the town who would put him up even though they knew he was an outlaw. Perhaps—
Then Tom saw a man with a scarf across his mouth.
He was walking across the wooden bridge close to two other men. It suddenly occurred to Tom that the thief’s two accomplices, the bald one and the man in the green hat, might have come to Salisbury with him. Tom had not seen either of them in the town but the three might have separated for a while and then joined up again for the return journey. Tom cursed under his breath: he did not think he could fight three men. But as they came closer the group separated, and Tom realized with relief that they were not together after all.
The first two were father and son, two peasants with dark, close-set eyes and hooked noses. They took the Portway, and the man with the scarf followed.
He studied the thief’s gait as he came closer. He appeared sober. That was a pity.
Glancing back to the town he saw a woman and a girl emerge onto the bridge: Agnes and Martha. He was dismayed. He had not envisaged their being present when he confronted the thief. However, he realized that he had given no instructions to the contrary.
He tensed as they all came up the road toward him. Tom was so big that most people gave in to him in a confrontation; but outlaws were desperate, and there was no telling what might happen in a fight.
The two peasants went by, mildly merry, talking about horses. Tom took his iron-headed hammer from his belt and hefted it in his right hand. He hated thieves, who did no work but took the bread from good people. He would have no qualms about hitting this one with a hammer.
The thief seemed to slow down as he came near, almost as if he sensed danger. Tom waited until he was four or five yards away—too near to run back, too far to run past. Then Tom rolled over the bank, sprang across the ditch, and stood in his way.
The man stopped dead and stared at him. “What’s this?” he said nervously.
He doesn’t recognize me, Tom thought. He said: “You stole my pig yesterday and sold it to a butcher today.”
“I never—”
“Don’t deny it,” Tom said. “Just give me the money you got for it, and I won’t hurt you.”
For a moment he thought the thief was going to do just that. He felt a sense of anticlimax as the man hesitated. Then the thief turned on his heel and ran—straight into Agnes.
He was not traveling fast enough to knock her over—and she was a woman who took a lot of knocking over—and the two of them staggered from side to side for a moment in a clumsy dance. Then he realized she was deliberately obstructing him, and he pushed her aside. She stuck out her leg as he went past her. Her foot got between his knees and both of them fell down.
Tom’s heart was in his mouth as he raced to her side. The thief was getting up with one knee on her back. Tom grabbed his collar and yanked him off her. He hauled him to the side of the road before he could regain his balance, then threw him into the ditch.
Agnes stood up. Martha ran to her. Tom said rapidly: “All right?”
“Yes,” Agnes answered.
The two peasants had stopped and turned around, and they were staring at the scene, wondering what was going on. The thief was on his knees in the ditch. “He’s an outlaw,” Agnes called out to them, to discourage them from interfering. “He stole our pig.” The peasants made no reply, but waited to see what would happen next.
Tom spoke to the thief again. “Give me my money and I’ll let you go.”
The man came up out of the ditch with a knife in his hand, fast as a rat, and went for Tom’s throat. Agnes screamed. Tom dodged. The knife flashed across his face and he felt a burning pain along his jaw.
He stepped back and swung his hammer as the knife flashed again. The thief jumped back, and both knife and hammer swished through the damp evening air without connecting.
For an instant the two men stood still, facing one another, breathing hard. Tom’s cheek hurt. He realized they were evenly matched, for although Tom was bigger, the thief had a knife, which was a deadlier weapon than a mason’s hammer. He felt the cold grasp of fear as he realized he might be about to die. He suddenly felt he could not breathe.
From the corner of his eye he saw a sudden movement. The thief saw it too, and darted a glance at Agnes, then ducked his head as a stone came flying at him from her hand.
Tom reacted with the speed of a man in fear of his life, and swung his hammer at the thief’s bent head.
It connected just as the man was looking up again. The iron hammer struck his forehead at the hairline. It was a hasty blow, and did not have all of Tom’s considerable strength behind it. The thief staggered but did not fall.
