A Different Kingdom(41)

'I love you,' he said on impulse. Simple words, fearful and grand.

She cupped his face in her long hands, unsmiling for once. 'I know.'

She would not speak further, but began stuffing what was left of the piglet into Michael's game bag.

'Put out the fire. Piss on it, if you can. Cover it up. The blood, also. Time to go'

He beat out the low flames and buried them with damp earth.

When he had finished Cat sprinkled the Scar with leaves and twigs until it looked as undisturbed as the rest of the wood floor. In the air the smell of burning remained, and under it was the tang of blood. Cat's nostrils quivered.like a deer's.

'Best to make some haste. The blood will bring things here, even in the daylight.'

'Are you taking me home now?'

'Indeed.'

'So where is this hole, then? This way back?'

'A fair tramp. A day's amble, no more. Pick up your knife.'

The morning had worn on. It was noonish, he guessed. His grandmother would be cooking the lunch.

They set off again, Cat free and unencumbered, swinging her arms, himself weighed down with weapon and bag, boots and coat. Michael Fay, intrepid explorer.

THE AFTERNOON CAME round and the sun slanted through the trees to dapple their way, a shifting leopard-skin carpet. It was warm when they walked, autumn a mere guess of wind and colder air above the canopy overhead. They glimpsed scurryings and movement in the thicker undergrowth, the startled flight of deer, and were eyed once by a massive homed owl from the limb of an oak. They stumbled across other things also: a tree wound round with garlands of dog rose and honeysuckle, the blossoms dead and fallen. And at its foot a pile of bones and broken spears. Michael retrieved a beautifully flaked spearhead from the pile, leaf-shaped and keen as a razor. He looked at Cat but she frowned and gestured that he throw it back. It was a place sacred to one of the tribes, she told him, best left alone.



Later they walked into a small clearing in the wood that was slowly being reclaimed by saplings and thick briars. There, mouldering amid the riotous vegetation, were the remains of wattle and daub walls, thatched roofs, crude stone hearths, discarded skins and a midden high with bones and bluebottles. And here, with its back to a tree, was the leathery skeleton of a man, all smell gone from it now. The seasons had washed him clean and for some reason the beasts had left him alone. Empty sockets looked out on the lost village from a black face, the scraps of hide drawn tight as a drum over his skull.

The clearing was silent and still, and the sun had gone in.

Michael felt there had been something unpleasant here, some disaster. He and Cat hurried on without a word, leaving the corpse to its vigil.

The forest grew thicker, darker, and overhead the clouds gathered. They began to fight their way through thickets, Michael cursing the game bag which snagged on everything, and beating branches aside with the barrel of the shotgun.

Rain. It started as a drift of moisture where the leaves were thin but soon strengthened into a pouring drizzle, flattening Cat's hair to her back and making her shift transparent. She began to shiver and Michael gave her his coat to wear. Then they slogged onwards, Cat correcting their path every so often from the rear.

Evening. It was beginning to gather in the shadows. Michael doubted if they had come a mile in the past hour.

'How much farther?'

'I don't know it in yards,' Cat snapped. She wiped the dripping rain from her eyes. 'Too far to make today.'

Another night in the forest. And Michael was already wet through. He swore, and as he did his voice cracked into a deeper tone, startling them both. Then Cat began to laugh.

'I hope your wonderful matches are dry, my love, or it will be a miserable night.' She hugged him to her, teased his lips like a bee brushing a foxglove. Her face was cold, rain gathering in the hollows of her collarbones and trickling between her breasts. He kissed it away, tongued a pebble-hard nipple through her shift. Then she lifted his head gently.

'Time enough for that later. For now we need shelter, and a fire.'

'We're not sleeping in a tree tonight, then?'

'We'll risk the ground. We need the fire, and it'll help keep the beasts at bay.'

A long, hard time, cold as flint, the woods dark and loud with pouring water. He had his coat laid over the little pyramid of twigs and his shivers would barely allow him to strike the matches. Match after bloody match, damp and dead, until one caught and he nurtured it in the palm-rubbed moss that was their tinder. Smoke stung his eyes and reeked his hair. But it had caught.

Cat had rigged up a shelter, a framework of branches covered with drifts of leaves and caulked with fistfuls of squelching mud. It looked like a great hairy molehill and was so close to the flames that the smoke sailed in, but they huddled inside to eat the cold pork, grey with congealed grease, and soaked up the warmth, building the fire until the flames were a yard high.