Authors: Emma Smith
“A-mee! A-mee!”
He was calling to her urgently to follow. For while she stood lost in retrospect, he had already picked up his poles and was forging ahead, jabbing the snow as he went to make sure of planting his foot at each step on solid ground. Amy had to struggle after him as best she could, unaided; but it was not for long. A few yards more and they had passed beyond an outcropping of rock and were screened at last from the view of any possible pursuers. At last! Amy saw Bartolomeo lean forward over the poles with bowed head like someone achieving the winning-post in a race almost too hard.
On they went. They were not climbing now and so it was easier. The track curled round horizontally below the summit of Cader Ddu until, arriving on the further side of the hill, it began to descend the more graduated slope in leisurely bends, its route defined by thorn-bushes and sloe-bushes and by intermittent trees, mountain-ash and oak, which altogether gave the impression of a ragged sort of hedge offering, as well as guidance, a certain amount of protection. On this side the ground as it fell spread out in huge natural terraces, presently portioned into fields, and on one of these terraces about three-quarters of the way down was a big cluster of trees, dark against the snow, with a jumble of grey stone buildings set in amongst them. From somewhere out of the centre of trees and buildings there rose a column of smoke.
“That’s Dintirion!” cried Amy, breaking into a stumbling run to overtake Bartolomeo. She seized hold of his arm. “That’s the Protheroes’ place, Bartolomeo—see!” She had forgotten he spoke a different language, but her triumphantly outflung pointing hand and the gladness in her voice needed no translation.
Dintirion looked wonderfully close. It seemed to be only a step away although, with the windings of the path, there was still a considerable distance to go. Their breath accumulated in a steamy cloud around their heads as they stood staring towards it with the eagerness of pilgrims sighting Mecca, the holy city.
Then Bartolomeo turned his back on their goal and gripped Amy tight by the shoulders. He was speaking to her earnestly, but she was too tired to understand. Like a match struck in a wind her last spark of energy had flared up in the joy of seeing Dintirion, and gone out. If he would only let her sit down she felt she might be able to listen better. But Bartolomeo held her upright on her crumbling legs and shook her gently, insistently, to
make
her listen,
make
her understand. His face was close to hers, the face that had once so terrified her. Now she scarcely noticed the black and filthy bristle covering it, seeing instead how deeply his eyes were sunk in under the overhanging brows, how bloodshot they were and how the skin surrounding them had a discoloured bruised appearance. He was ill, hungry, exhausted. Amy, for his sake, made a great effort.
“Gra-nee?” That was what he was saying. He was questioning her, wanting to know where her grandmother was. “Gra-nee? Gra-nee?”
Why, she was at home of course. Where else would she be? And Amy waved her arm vaguely back in the direction from which they had come. But still Bartolomeo claimed her attention. He held up two of his fingers; he aimed an imaginary gun; he skated his feet on imaginary skis. Amy answered him with the same gesture as before. They were back there too, those men with guns and skis, at home in the cottage with her grandmother. Yes, yes, she nodded, gesticulating: back there. And still it was not enough. There was something else, something more she had to tell him. What was he doing now? She focused her eyes. He was writing on air. Writing what? Of course!
Writing I
Amy pulled off a glove with her teeth and got open the top button of her coat, and delving inside her jersey showed him the letter he had left in her care.
“Ah!”
Then he was satisfied to let her go.
“A-mee!” he said, patting her shoulder. “A-mee!”
He bent himself down to her height, and pointed onwards towards Dintirion, and gave her a little push, so that she tottered forward a dozen or so involuntary steps before halting to wait for Bartolomeo to catch up with her. But where was he? What kept him? She shuffled round in the snow. He was going away from her, back up the path, leaving her. Amy could hardly believe her eyes, or bear what she saw. Leaving her?
“Bartolomeo!”
It was a cry of agony and he turned; but only to wave and motion her on and sign for her to hurry. And when she still stood, stricken, he called out a sentence that ended in the one word she could understand: “Gra-nee!” From the depths of his duffle coat he pulled out their hacker and held it up, laughing. Amy shuddered—not because he was a monstrous figure standing there in the snow, brandishing an axe: she shuddered at the thought of the terrible journey he was about to retrace, and at the danger he must believe her grandmother to be in to undertake it; and she shuddered at her memory of the two men, against whom his only weapon was the little hacker they used for chopping sticks.
She must get help for him. All she had to do was to reach Dintirion and tell Mr Protheroe, and he would tell Mr Pugh, and they would save Bartolomeo, and save her grandmother, and Mick as well. All she had to do was to reach Dintirion. She could see it there, below her, waiting. Only now the trees, the cluster of roofs, the plume of smoke, seemed to Amy not close at all but impossibly far away like a cloud in the sky, or a rainbow that would never get any nearer. And it was so tiring to have to lift one leg and put it in front of the other, and then to lift the leg behind and put it in front again—like this—and like this—and like this. She looked round over her shoulder. Bartolomeo had gone.
If only she were not so dreadfully cold—tired and cold, cold and tired. If only, if only she could sit down for a little while, for five minutes. Where was the sun? She glanced up. The rosy flush of dawn had been false and the sky was dark above her, the colour of lead. How long was it since she had struggled out of her bedroom window? Not merely hours ago—in a different life, surely. Ah! but she was so cold, so cold, and her legs were so tired they would scarcely obey her even though every fumbling step she took was downhill. But she must not stop, she told herself. She must keep going, like a clock ticking, on and on, on and on, towards Dintirion.
Dintirion! Perhaps there at this very moment they were having their breakfast. She could almost smell the porridge. How hungry she was! How cold! She could almost see the fire leaping up in the big kitchen. Dintirion!
It was strange to be able to picture them so clearly—Mrs Protheroe, the boys, their father—while they had no notion that she, Amy Bowen, was out here on the snowy hillside trying to reach them. They would think, if they thought of her at all, that she was far away, sitting comfortably with her grandmother in front of their own fire in their own snug cottage. And in the bitterness of her sudden recollection Amy actually halted and clasped her hands together and raised her face towards the sky and closed her eyes: for had they not themselves assured and persuaded Mr Protheroe that no harm could possibly come to them?
Something lightly touched her cheek, as it might have been the fingers of a friend, to comfort her. She opened her eyes. It was snowing. At the same time she heard the curious groaning sound of wind rising fast, and hearing it she floundered forward, trying with agonizing weakness to make herself run. This was no time to be standing still, for when wind and snow came together in a rush, and the sky was low and very dark, Amy knew what it meant.
It meant a blizzard.
It was Mrs Bowen’s habit to wind her alarm clock and set the alarm every night as soon as she had finished plaiting her hair and before she climbed into bed. But last night she had been worrying about Amy. She was sure the child had something on her mind and was keeping it from her. Distracted by anxiety she forgot to wind the clock and in the morning when she awoke it had stopped. She lay on her back for some minutes wondering what the time could be, and listening. Not a sound came from Amy’s room, nor from below; everyone else, it seemed, was still asleep.
Her room was dark. She had left the curtains drawn across the night before, but even so there would surely be bright chinks of light showing round the edges of the window if it were late; and since there were no chinks of light to be seen, Mrs Bowen came to the conclusion that she must have woken earlier than usual. The day ahead was one that filled her with apprehension and to hurry it on by getting up before she had need to get up was sheer foolishness. Unaware that she had already overslept by more than an hour, Mrs Bowen allowed herself to drop off to sleep again.
She awoke for the second time with a definite sensation of something being wrong. It was too quiet. Then she heard Mick whimpering and snuffling on the other side of the closed door. She expected to hear Amy speak to him, hushing him, but the seconds passed without the murmur of a voice rebuking Mick. Was the child sleeping so soundly then? In the sudden access of a fear she could not have named Mrs Bowen scrambled out of bed and at once was struck by the extreme coldness of a draught, as though a window had been left open somewhere. She put her hand on the latch of the door and hesitated.
“Amy?”
Mick whined. She opened the door. The east window was uncurtained and one thing was clear instantly: Amy was gone.
How could she have gone? Gone where? Gone how?
The little west window gaped wide and a stream of icy air poured through it like water through a sluice. In a state of wonder and fear Mrs Bowen pulled in Amy’s home-made line, marvelling at its composition, and shut the window. She picked up the chair and put it back beside the bed, so bewildered she hardly knew what she was doing.
How long had the room been empty? Where had Amy gone? Where was she now? Mrs Bowen took two wavering steps in one direction, two in another, turning as her mind turned in search of an answer. Only last night Amy had told her plainly that she had no intention of trying to reach the road by way of the stream; she would never have said that unless she meant it. And she had promised her grandmother not to go down to Tyler’s Place again. Might she have broken this promise? It was unlikely, even in the present circumstances. Well then, suppose she had gone only a part of the distance? As far, say, as the site of the haystack, to leave a message—some kind of warning to Bartolomeo to keep away. Yes—that would be it—of course! Eagerly Mrs Bowen’s mind fastened on this explanation because there was a third alternative so appalling she could not bear to consider it. Amy must have gone up to the haystack—she
must
have done; and probably not very long ago either.
Her movements had aroused the men in the front-kitchen. There was the sound of a cough from below, and then the scrape of a chair. Whatever was she to say to them? Should she tell them of Amy’s disappearance? Or not? Suppose Amy were in danger? Which was the worse danger? How could she know? Mrs Bowen stood in the middle of Amy’s deserted bedroom, one hand to her head and one to her heart, quite unable to decide on how she ought to act.
She would dress herself. That at least had to be done, no matter what else. And while she was putting on her clothes she would get it all straightened out in her mind. But when she had dressed, and combed her hair, and wound it into its usual knob, and pushed in the pins with trembling fingers, she was no nearer to knowing what she ought to do than before, except that she must go downstairs; if she delayed any longer they would start to wonder what it was that delayed her. Also, Mick had to be put outside. Mrs Bowen tucked him tightly under one arm and descended into the front-kitchen, which smelt disagreeably of tobacco and whisky fumes.
“I’m afraid you’ve let us oversleep, Mrs Bowen,” said the man they still thought of as Inspector Catcher. He was stretched comfortably out in her basket-chair. His legs reached right across the hearthrug.
“Yes, indeed,” she answered, scuttling past him with her head down. “I missed to wind my clock last night and what with a dark morning on top I’d no idea it had gone so late.”
Mr Nabb, hunched up on the oak chest in the window, was blowing his nose on a dirty handkerchief. She avoided looking at him altogether and hurried into the side-kitchen where she drew the bolts back awkwardly, holding Mick tight against her. His body, she could feel, was braced to get free at the first opportunity and once outside, before she had a chance to set him down, he had wriggled clean out of her grasp and was nosing about to and fro like a creature demented. A sniff here and a sniff there and then he had shot off up the much-trampled left-hand fork. There were no footprints leading off to the right—she strained her eyes: no, there were none. Mrs Bowen told herself this surely did mean Amy had made for the haystack, or at the very worst for Tyler’s Place, and in either case whatever her reason for going she would come to no great harm. As she called Mick back Mrs Bowen repeated this over and over to herself.
“Mick! Mick!” He was slow returning. “Mick!”
She called and called and at last, reluctantly, he came; but only, she could see, in order to fetch her before setting out again.
“No, Mick,” she said, catching him by the collar. “We must stay here. She won’t be long, boy—she’s not gone far.”
It was true, she told herself. Amy was somewhere quite close, would appear at any moment. Why then could she not rid her mind of the dreadful picture haunting it?
“She never would be so mad as that—not in this weather, not with snow on the ground, Mick—never!” whispered Mrs Bowen. And yet however much she stroked and patted Mick she saw it still—that high and winding track over the top to Dintirion and the sharp-edged unfenced cliff of Billy Dodd’s Dingle.
Presently it occurred to her to find out if Amy’s toboggan was gone as well. First she tied Mick to one of the posts with a piece of twine and then she made a thorough search. The toboggan was not in the shed. Well, that was hardly surprising. If Amy had gone down to Tyler’s Place was it likely she would have set off on foot when she had a toboggan to take her? She had promised to keep away from Tyler’s Place. It was wrong of her to break her given word and Mrs Bowen meant to scold her for it later—not too severely, though: right and wrong were sometimes hard to tell apart. If only she knew when Amy had started out she could judge when to expect her home. But there!—it was foolish to fret. She had always said that fretting never did anyone a speck of good. Amy would soon be back; and in the meanwhile the best she could do was to carry on with her accustomed tasks as though there were nothing amiss.