Authors: Tony Shillitoe
Fisher didn’t take long to die. Meg crept closer when she guessed the struggle was over and found to her disappointment that he’d opened his eyes at the end. She hesitated, remembering that according to some people in Summerbrook it was traditional to let the dead lie with their eyes open so they could see Jarudha coming to embrace them. She remembered her father had once cynically said that the dead were left with their eyes open so they could see who robbed them after death. ‘I have to take some of your things,’ she said, leaning forward to close his eyes, ‘and it’d be better if you didn’t see me taking them.’
She searched for an easy way to bury the body, but had to settle on using a thick stick to dig a shallow grave, which she covered with dirt, stones and broken boughs. Fisher had few possessions. She assumed that
he’d lost his sword falling from his horse in the foiled escape. She took his belt, his knife and a small flint case. On the horse’s saddle, after she’d removed the arrows, she found a water canteen, a rolled blanket and a stash of beef jerky. For the second time the invisible war had given her a horse to care for. ‘I have no idea what he called you,’ she said, as she secured the bridle and saddle straps, ‘but I’ll call you Fisher for now.’
She led the bay horse up a slope. At the crest she tried to determine where she was, but the landscape was unfamiliar. She thought the range to the west was the same she knew from the first days of her journey, but she was uncertain. What she did know was that the road she had been following crossed a river. There was a good chance that if she followed the creek it would reach the river, or at least another stream that eventually flowed into the river. She decided to try that plan. Besides, the creek gave her fresh water. If it didn’t lead her anywhere significant by the following day, she’d strike out across country.
Q
uick Crossing was a rambling merchant and farming town squatting beside a narrow stretch of river. Meg reached it by chance two days after her ordeal at the hands of the Rebels. Her chafing wounds and bruises had healed rapidly, leaving no scabs or scars, and her muscle pain eased far quicker than she expected, and when she walked into the town late in the afternoon, dirty and unkempt, leading her horse, she learned from locals that the Queen’s army had completed their long crossing of the river two days earlier. She asked for an inn and was directed to the Lazy Wombat near the ferry. At the inn, she tied up the horse and entered, finding the place empty except for a short blonde girl who was mopping the wooden floor. ‘Is anyone here?’ Meg asked hopefully.
The cleaner stopped and looked Meg up and down. ‘Dad!’ she yelled. ‘There’s a customer!’
‘Thanks,’ Meg said. The girl eyed Meg insolently before continuing her mopping.
The inn was a rough establishment, but the charred stone mantle over the fireplace and the rudimentary bar lined with whiskey jars indicated that it was a thriving business. A stuffed wombat, mounted on all fours at
one end of the bar, stared at the room with vacant glassy eyes. There were six round tables with four chairs at each. Lanterns hung from the dark overhead beams, but the light in the room came from the front windows, which were open. The girl cleaning the floor looked to be about ten or eleven. The man who emerged from the backroom was slim, although he had to be middle-aged because of his grey hair and moustache. ‘Yes?’ he asked.
‘I’m hungry, and I want somewhere to sleep overnight,’ said Meg. ‘I don’t have any money, just a horse out the front to sell.’
The innkeeper shook his head. ‘Don’t take anyone’s goods for charity,’ he said. ‘If you’re selling your horse, take it down to the stables. Ironshod Trainer might buy it from you.’
‘And if he doesn’t?’ she asked.
‘Then you have a problem,’ the innkeeper replied.
‘Can I work for some food?’
The innkeeper scratched his beardless chin and scrutinised her closely. Then he harrumphed and said to the girl with the mop, without turning around, ‘Go get another mop and bucket.’
The girl glared at the man’s back and poked her tongue out at Meg, but she said in a syrupy tone, ‘Yes, Daddy dearest,’ and dropped her mop and left the room.
‘What’s your name?’ the innkeeper asked.
Meg told him her name, answered his second question with ‘Summerbrook’, and answered the third question with a lie. ‘I’m looking for my brother. He’s in the army.’
‘If you do a good job of the floor in here and in the hall, you’ll have earned a meal.’
‘What about some supplies?’ she persisted.
‘How old are you?’
‘Why?’
The innkeeper cast her a look that reminded her of the expressions on the faces of the Rebels in the gully. ‘You can earn some extra coins for a favour or two,’ he said.
She didn’t respond to his innuendo, but she decided that selling the horse was the only option she really had. The girl returned carrying a second mop and a bucket brimming with suds, which she placed at Meg’s feet. ‘You’d better get started if you’re hungry,’ said the innkeeper. ‘And you’ll need some energy if you want those supplies,’ he added, and he laughed as he exited the room.
Meg picked up her mop and pushed her bucket towards the wall. ‘I’ve done that bit,’ the girl bluntly informed her.
‘Where should I start?’ Meg asked.
The girl motioned towards a doorway. ‘In the hall.’
‘What’s your name?’ Meg asked as she picked up her bucket.
‘None of your business,’ the girl retorted.
Rebuffed, Meg set down her bucket in the dark hall with the door shut and mopped the wooden boards. When she’d finished, she returned to the inn’s common room to discover the blonde girl was gone. The girl had only mopped half of the floor, so Meg started mopping the dry area driven by the thought of cooked food. Two days in the bush eating dry, chewy strips of beef jerky had left her aching for a wholesome meal of the kind her mother and she cooked on the farm. Though she doubted the wisdom of her journey, whenever she slept the haunting dreams of Treasure’s death plagued her. She wondered if her mother and her brothers had any idea where she was. Emma had promised to keep an eye on her family, but would the old crone tell Dawn what her daughter was really doing.
The inn door opened and three men strode in, led by the innkeeper’s blonde daughter. ‘That’s her,’ the girl chimed, pointing at Meg.
The men approached, and the central one, a dark-haired man Meg’s height, asked, ‘Is that your bay horse outside?’
Meg hesitated, before she said, ‘It’s mine now. I found it in the hills.’
‘Where exactly did you find it?’ the man asked, his tone threatening.
‘I don’t know what the actual place is called,’ she explained. ‘I’d just been in Woodman’s Springs, passing through.’ She noticed that the men accompanying the speaker had taken positions close to her, and she was acutely aware of their swords.
‘You’re under arrest,’ the speaker announced.
‘Arrest?’ she asked, wondering what the phrase ‘under arrest’ actually meant.
The men beside her grabbed her arms, twisting them violently so that she screamed with shock and pain, and they dragged her towards the door.
‘What’s going on?’ she cried. ‘Let me go! Let
me
go!’
She struggled, as the men dragged her through the door and into the street. ‘Don’t waste your breath fighting us, girl,’ the leading man told her.
‘Let me go!’ she yelled, as they carried her, her feet alternating between kicking and dragging in the dirt.
The iron gate clanged shut and the bailiff rattled the keys in the lock. ‘So I’ve got company,’ the fat-faced, bearded individual growled. Meg shrank from him against the chipped stone wall, looking for a weapon to defend herself from the man. His brown hair and beard were long and knotted, and his overweight body seemed to ooze over the edge of the bench on which he squatted. ‘I see you don’t like my looks, then,’ he said,
and he chuckled slowly into his beard. ‘Bet a pretty little thing like you has never been locked in a place like this with something quite like me then, eh?’ he asked, and shook his head, amused by his observation. ‘What’s your name, then?’
Meg looked around the cell. It contained a long bench on one wall, a tiny barred window in another, a bucket in one corner, which steamed and gave off a terrible stench, and the obese creature. And the obese creature was addressing her. ‘Eh? What is your name, pretty little bird?’
‘Meg,’ she muttered reluctantly. ‘And I’m not a little bird.’
‘Burrows,’ he said, ‘although most folk just like to call me Wombat, so you’d best just call me that too, eh?’
‘What?’
‘It’s polite to ask a stranger their name after they’ve asked for yours,’ he said. ‘Where you from, Meg?’
‘Summerbrook,’ she replied. She stared at Wombat, remembering what he’d just said, and added, ‘What about you?’
‘Local boy,’ he replied. ‘Why are you in here?’
‘They said I stole the Queen’s property.’
‘They always say someone steals the Queen’s property,’ Wombat said, scratching his balls. When he noticed her studying the cell for flaws, he said, ‘No other way out of this place, little bird. What sort of Queen’s property did you steal?’
‘I didn’t steal anything. I was on a horse they said was stolen because it has the Royal brand on it. But I didn’t steal it.’
‘Oh. Found it wandering along, all lost and lonely, and you decided to take it in, eh?’
Meg glared and said, icily, ‘Something like that.’
‘No, I believe you,’ he said, grinning through his scruffy wall of beard.
‘Then why are you in here?’ she retorted, finding her cellmate increasingly unbearable.
‘Ah,’ Wombat said, taking a breath and scratching his barrel of a chest, where the buttons on his dull yellow tunic were threatening to pop and expose his hairy chest. ‘Well, they say I like to drink too much, and fight too much.’
‘And?’ Meg asked.
‘Well they’d be right,’ he confirmed, chuckling to himself again. ‘I’d fuck too much if I could manage it, too.’
Ignoring his last comment and wink, she asked, ‘How long have you been in here?’ She wrinkled her nose at catching another whiff of the offending bucket.
‘Six days,’ he told her. ‘But don’t worry. They empty the bucket every afternoon and every morning. Good service in this place. Even the inn doesn’t cart your shit away for you.’ He laughed at his wit and slapped his leg. ‘I’m a regular in here. They wouldn’t get me in here, except that when I drink too much I can’t stop them from throwing me in. It’s like my second home, eh.’ He gathered his composure, and said, ‘Of course, they’ll hang you for stealing a horse.’
Meg’s eyes widened. ‘But
I
didn’t steal it,’ she insisted.
‘Won’t matter to people round here, little bird. Everyone enjoys a good hanging or public execution. Breaks up the monotony. Farmers come into town to watch when the news gets around. You’ll be quite a celebrity.’
‘No!’ Meg cried, clenching her fists. ‘This is not how it happens!’
Wombat rose from his bench, scratching his backside. He was not only large with weight, but he was also a head taller than any man Meg had ever known. ‘How what happens?’ he asked.
‘I don’t die here. I can’t die here,’ she replied defiantly.
Wombat’s brow wrinkled. ‘They told you something?’ he asked, gesturing with his grubby thumb at the iron bars and the bailiff’s office beyond.
She shook her head, sighing with despair. ‘No. Not them.’ She dropped her hands and unclenched her fists.
‘Well, you can tell me after I’ve had a piss,’ Wombat informed her, as he waddled towards the bucket, untying his fly.
She turned away and leaned against the cool bars, the rattling sound of Wombat’s pissing echoing in the cell. She screwed up her nose at the rich scent of male urine and winced when she heard the man fart luxuriantly. ‘Aahhh,’ he declared. ‘That’s better.’ He shuffled up behind her. ‘So how do you know you’re not going to die here?’
Meg stepped back, repulsed by his overwhelming body odour. ‘I just know,’ she mumbled, unwilling to tell him what she’d seen in her dreams.
Wombat squinted. ‘Tell me how you got here, little bird,’ he said. ‘Tell me why, too.’ He took up his seat again on the bench.
When she finished relating her tale, modifying her reasons for searching for Treasure to a need to simply talk him out of fighting, Wombat scratched his chest and said, ‘Well, it seems the young roosters who bagged you in Woodman’s Springs were some of the Rebels. You’re lucky you got off so lightly. But it’s bad luck about the horse, because no one here will want to believe your story anyway—not if it means missing out on a hanging.’
‘But what do I do?’ she pleaded.
‘Well, it doesn’t seem right for a little bird who’s done nothing wrong to get hanged for it, so you probably have to escape, eh?’
‘You said there was no way out of here.’
‘No
other
way out,’ he corrected. ‘The only way out is the way you came in.’
‘Oh, so I just walk out?’
Wombat nodded. ‘That’s about the size of it.’
Meg pulled on the bars of the gate, rattling them vigorously, and, mocking Wombat’s tone, she said, ‘Except for this small problem, oh, and I guess the bailiff who’ll probably try to stop me, yes, I can see how easy it is to walk out.’
Wombat laughed. ‘A little bird with spirit,’ he remarked, and he stood again. ‘Good. Well then, you need to listen to old Wombat a bit, and then you’ll need to be very brave and clever. Oh, and you’ll need to be very, very trusting.’
The bailiff looked up at his youthful, curly-haired assistant. ‘Did you hear that?’
The assistant raised his attention from the small wooden figurine he was carving, and listened. From beyond the door in the gaol he heard Wombat’s voice. ‘Hey, fellas! Come get some of this!’ He looked at the bailiff.
‘I’ll check it out,’ the bailiff announced, getting out of his chair. He opened the door and peered into the cell room. The red-haired girl was bent over, clutching the bars, hair hanging loose over her face, trousers around her ankles, and Wombat was vigorously taking her from behind. The fat man grinned at the astonished expression on the bailiff’s face. ‘Best cellmate you’ve ever given me, Lockup! Come get some of this!’
The bailiff hesitated, transfixed by the sight, but he quickly fished the keys off his belt and unlocked the gate. ‘You owe me, you drunken old bastard,’ he told Wombat as he swung the gate open and entered the cell, eagerly undoing his belt. But his enthusiasm faltered
when Wombat turned from the girl, and he realised Wombat’s trousers were still done up. Too late. Wombat’s massive fist smashed into the bailiff’s face, throwing him back against the wall.
‘I owe you nothing,’ Wombat growled, bending to scoop up the keys. He turned to Meg who was wrenching up her trousers, urging, ‘Hurry up, little bird. I’ll just quieten down young Hearth Turner’s curiosity. Meet you in the front room,’ and he marched through the open door.
Meg secured her belt and followed in Wombat’s wake, glancing down at the unconscious bailiff sprawled against the wall with his nose broken and bleeding. She heard a grunt and a thud as she stepped through the door. Wombat’s massive bulk was leaning over a prone youth.
‘Silly little bugger,’ Wombat muttered. ‘He should’ve used his sense and just stood aside. Well, can’t do much about it now.’ He bent and picked up a cudgel that was on the floor beside Hearth, and headed for a tall cupboard. ‘Look in the desk drawer for any coins. That’s where Lockup usually leaves his change.’
Meg rummaged through the drawer, finding several shillings and pennies. She scooped them into a drawstring purse that was lying on the desktop. She heard Wombat close the cupboard, and saw that he was wearing two swords through his belt and carried a heavy poleaxe. ‘Grab that hunk of bread and the jar of scrumpy over there,’ he ordered, pointing at the food and drink on a little table. ‘We can barter for food on a farm later.’ Meg obediently gathered the items, stepping over Hearth’s prostrate body. ‘Come on, little bird. Time to fly.’ Wombat opened the door, letting in the late-afternoon sunlight, and stepped onto the porch. Meg followed, and was surprised to see a family across the street, staring at them. ‘Afternoon, Joist, Ladle,’
Wombat said to the startled-looking man and woman. ‘No need to be worried. Just leaving a little earlier than expected. You might want to pop in and help young Hearth and Lockup after we’ve gone. Tell them we won’t be coming back, though. Got an important errand. All right?’