They had been together a week: seven days of despair and seven nights of joy. Every morning Tom woke up feeling happy and optimistic. As the day wore on he would get hungry, the children would tire and Ellen would become morose. Some days they got fed—like the time they met the monk with the cheese—and some days they chewed on strips of sun-dried venison from Ellen’s reserve. It was like eating deer hide but it was better than nothing, just. But when it got dark they would lie down, cold and miserable, and hold one another close for warmth; then after a while they would start stroking and kissing. At first Tom had always wanted to enter her immediately, but she refused him gently: she wanted to play and kiss much longer. He did it her way and was enchanted. He explored her body boldly, caressing her in places where he had never touched Agnes, her armpits and her ears and the cleft of her buttocks. Some nights they giggled together with their heads beneath their cloaks. At other times they felt very tender. One night when they were alone in the guesthouse of a monastery, and the children were in an exhausted sleep, she was dominant and insistent, commanding him to do things to her, showing him how to excite her with his fingers, and he complied, feeling bemused and inflamed by her shamelessness. When it was all over they would fall into a deep, restful sleep, with the day’s fear and anger washed away by love.
It was now midday. Tom judged that William Hamleigh was far away, so he decided to stop for a rest. They had no food other than the dried venison. However, this morning they had begged some bread at a lonely farmhouse, and the woman had given them some ale in a big wooden bottle with no stopper, and told them to keep the bottle. Ellen had saved half the ale for dinner.
Tom sat on the edge of a broad old tree stump and Ellen sat beside him. She took a long draft of the ale and passed it to him. “Do you want some meat as well?” she asked.
He shook his head and drank some ale. He could easily have swallowed it all, but he left some for the children. “Save the meat,” he said to Ellen. “We may get supper at the castle.”
Alfred put the bottle to his mouth and drained it.
Jack looked crestfallen and Martha burst into tears. Alfred gave an odd little grin.
Ellen looked at Tom. After a few moments she said: “You shouldn’t let Alfred get away with that.”
Tom shrugged. “He’s bigger than they are—he needs it more.”
“He always gets a large share anyway. The little ones must havesomething.”
“It’s a waste of time to interfere in children’s quarrels,” Tom said.
Ellen’s voice became harsh. “You’re saying that Alfred can bully the younger children as much as he likes and you will do nothing about it.”
“He doesn’t bully them,” Tom said. “Children always fight.”
She shook her head, seeming bewildered. “I don’t understand you. In every other way you’re a kind man. But where Alfred is concerned, you’re just blind.”
She was exaggerating, Tom felt, but he did not want to displease her, so he said: “Give the little ones some meat, then.”
Ellen opened her bag. She still looked cross. She cut off a strip of dried venison for Martha and another for Jack. Alfred held out his hand for some, but Ellen ignored him. Tom thought she should have given him some. There was nothing wrong with Alfred. Ellen just did not understand him. He was a big boy, Tom thought proudly, and he had a big appetite and a quick temper, and if that was a sin, then half the adolescent boys in the world were damned.
They rested for a while and then walked on. Jack and Martha went ahead, still chewing the leathery meat. The two young ones got on well, despite the difference in their ages—Martha was six and Jack was probably eleven or twelve. But Martha thought Jack was utterly fascinating, and Jack seemed to be enjoying the novel experience of having another child to play with. It was a pity that Alfred did not like Jack. This surprised Tom: he would have expected that Jack, who was not yet becoming a man, would be beneath Alfred’s contempt; but it was not so. Alfred was the stronger, of course, but little Jack was clever.
Tom refused to worry about it. They were just boys. He had too much on his mind to waste time fretting over children’s squabbles. Sometimes he wondered secretly whether he would ever get work again. He might go on tramping the roads day after day until one by one they died off: a child found cold and lifeless one frosty morning, another too weak to fight off a fever, Ellen ravished and killed by a passing thug like William Hamleigh, and Tom himself becoming thinner and thinner until one day he was too weak to stand up in the morning, and lay on the forest floor until he slipped into unconsciousness.
Ellen would leave him before that happened, of course. She would return to her cave, where there was still a barrel of apples and a sack of nuts, enough to keep two people alive until the spring, but not enough for five. Tom would be heartbroken if she did that.
He wondered how the baby was. The monks had called him Jonathan. Tom liked the name. It meant a gift from God, according to the monk with the cheese. Tom pictured little Jonathan, red and wrinkled and bald, the way he was born. He would be different now: a week was a long time for a newborn baby. He would be bigger already, and his eyes would open wider. Now he would no longer be oblivious to the world around him: a loud noise would make him jump and a lullaby would soothe him. When he needed to burp, his mouth would curl up at the corners. The monks probably would not know that it was wind, and would take it for a real smile.
Tom hoped they were caring for him well. The monk with the cheese had given the impression that they were kindly and capable men. Anyway, they were certainly better able to look after the baby than Tom, who was homeless and penniless. If I ever become master of a really big construction project, and earn forty-eight pence a week plus allowances, I’ll give money to that monastery, he thought.
They emerged from the forest and soon afterward they came within sight of the castle.
Tom’s spirits lifted, but he repressed his enthusiasm fiercely: he had suffered months of disappointment, and he had learned that the more hopeful he was at the start, the more painful was the rejection at the end.
They approached the castle on a path through bare fields. Martha and Jack came upon an injured bird, and they all stopped to look. It was a wren, so small that they might easily have missed it. Martha stooped over it, and it hopped away, apparently unable to fly. She caught it and picked it up, cradling the tiny creature in her cupped hands.
“It’s trembling!” she said. “I can feel it. It must be frightened.”
The bird made no further attempt to escape, but sat still in Martha’s hands, its bright eyes gazing at the people all around. Jack said: “I think it’s got a broken wing.”
Alfred said: “Let me see.” He took the bird from her.
“We could take care of it,” Martha said. “Perhaps it will get better.”
“No, it won’t,” Alfred said. With a quick motion of his big hands he wrung the bird’s neck.
Ellen said: “Oh, for God’ssake.”
Martha burst into tears for the second time that day.
