Daughter of Dark River Farm (42 page)

It was the last thing I wanted. Archie was right; it would only serve to panic Nathan. ‘Please, can you help me?’ I said, in as calm a voice as I could. ‘I’m telling the truth; I’ve lost the little girl I was caring for. I think she might have been taken in here.’ I gestured at the shed. ‘Could you shine a light for me?’

He eyed me narrowly for a moment, then went back to his office, returning with a rather small flashlight. It wouldn’t light the whole shed at once, but it would soon show me if Nathan and Amy were hiding in there…and all I could hope was that it didn’t also show me the same picture my imagination had taunted me with. The light briefly played across me as he turned it towards the shed, then it swung back. I looked down; my shirt was covered in what could only be blood. There was no point in pretending otherwise.

‘Difficult calving,’ I stammered, seeing the stationmaster’s mouth draw down sharply, and his brow furrow. ‘That’s why Amy was able to run off. I wasn’t paying attention.’ I could see my hesitation was giving him cause to doubt me, and tried to use it. ‘It…it was my fault,’ I said in a small voice. ‘She wanted to go out in the cart, and I think she climbed in when this man wasn’t looking. He’s probably scared to bring her back. He…took some of our tools when he went.’

The stationmaster bit the inside of his lip for a moment, then nodded. ‘Well no wonder he’d be hidin’ then. Lots of that goin’ on lately, there is.’ Decision made, he pulled open the door and shone his torch inside, sweeping it from side to side. ‘No-one in there, miss,’ he said, less brusquely now. ‘
Do
you want me to call the constable?’

I shook my head, finding yet another lie. ‘I think Mrs Adams has done that already. Is there anywhere else they might be…sheltering? Waiting for tomorrow’s first train, perhaps?’

‘All the other sheds is locked. But I’ll keep a good watch out; don’t you fret.’

I found a smile and tried not to sound too worried. ‘Thank you, sir.’

At the cart Pippin turned to nuzzle my shoulder, and bit gently at my coat, and I absent-mindedly rubbed his nose, trying to think of a place that would afford shelter for Nathan that wasn’t too far from the station. Jealous of the attention, Pirate snorted and tossed his head, and that’s when the answer hit me: the sawmill. Sheds and stables, and hay and sawdust that would make for a comfortable night. He must have left the trap here to make anyone who might come after him think he’d already left…which he might well have done by the time we caught him up, if it hadn’t been for Jessie coming back. I felt my breath shorten, and my fingers shook as I began to gather up the long rein ready to climb into the trap. Then I stopped. I couldn’t let him know I was coming. I had to find him first if I didn’t want him to slip away and find another hiding place.

Regretfully I dropped the rein and turned to the stationmaster. ‘Please can I leave this here a little while? It’ll be gone by morning, when the passengers start arriving.’

He huffed a moment, then shook his head and threw a hand up in defeat. ‘Just see it is.’

‘Thank you.’ I refastened the rein to the rail and turned to go, and he put that same hand on my arm. When I looked back his face was solemn.

‘I ’ope you find the little maid,’ he said. ‘B’aint right for a little one to be out at night. Not with that lot—’ he nodded towards the prison ‘—allowed out and about, free as you like.’

‘I think I know where she might be,’ I said, and was trying to think of a believable reason why I’d prefer to walk, when I remembered Pirate. If we approached from the back field, where Woody had taken me, no-one would hear us. ‘I’ll take Mr Pearce’s horse.’

‘Ah, well, as you like.’ He turned back towards the warmth of his office, but I called to him, a little embarrassed. ‘Would you possibly be able to give me a leg up? He’s not saddled, you see.’

‘Go on then.’ And he chuckled, surprising me. If nothing else I had provided some light relief during his night’s work.

Once up on Pirate’s back again, I turned him towards the moorland path that led parallel to the road. I would have to trust his sure-footedness, but he moved carefully and steadily towards the sawmill, and in less than half the time it would have taken me on foot, we arrived at the top of the back field. I slid down and hugged him, thanking him silently for bringing me safely here, then unlatched the gate and led him through. I let him graze, while I climbed the wall and dropped down into the field where Belinda had taken her tumble. My foot twisted as I landed, but I was able to clamp down on the exclamation and turn it into a sort of hissing gasp instead.

After a few steps the ache faded, and I blew out a sigh of relief, feeling it lifting my fringe away from my sweating face. I crossed the field more carefully from then on, reluctant to risk even the slightest injury that might slow me down, peering through the darkness at the sheds in the yard, rising black and imposing against the night, and utterly silent. Which one might he have chosen?

My intention was to go to the house, and look in all the windows to find whichever room Seth was in, so I could attract his attention without making any noise and alerting Nathan before I was ready. It only took a moment for that idea to be driven flat; the house was in darkness. There was no sound other than the wind rustling the trees overhead, and my own hammering heart, as I passed through the yard. The two workers had long since gone home for the night, and Seth must have gone out. I fought back a groan of frustration, accompanied by a little thrill of renewed fear; I would have to do this alone after all.

Whichever shed I chose at random would leave the way clear for him if I was wrong, and no-one to block his escape. So I stayed in the middle of the yard, and called out, as I had at the railway station, but this time with a calm voice. ‘Nathan, you can’t take the diamond. You’ll be killed for it. I can help. I have money. Just come out and let me talk to you.’

No movement, no sound. I tried again, my certainty that he was there never wavering. ‘I’ll give you all of it, if you’ll come back to the farm with me!’ The silence bounced back at me, and frustration started to build. ‘Don’t you trust me?’ But of course he didn’t; where would I get money from, when I’d just told him how desperately we needed those few tools?

‘Nathan, the money was a gift for Amy, from those two girls who came today. You can have it all if you let her go!’

Still nothing. Well then, I’d simply wait until he came out. I moved across to the wide, open gateway, and sat down, my back against the post so I faced into the yard. If he came out of one of the sheds or stables I’d be sure to see him.

I don’t know how long I sat there, staring into the night, but I felt my eyes growing heavy; the fears and tensions, and the hard work of the past few days were starting to tug at the last of my strength, leaving me light-headed, and floating dangerously into slumber. I blinked hard, and renewed my attention on the dark, silent sheds, one by one, listening out for the slightest movement from within, but there was none; Nathan and Amy must be asleep. It couldn’t hurt, then, for me to… My eyes drifted shut and I snapped them open. I mustn’t. He knew I was here now, and would be extremely cautious; if he crept by me while I slept I might not wake up. The night walked on, touching me with chilly fingers as it passed, and brushing my skin with its soothing quiet. I heard Pirate’s hooves in the grass over in the field; sound carried more clearly than I’d realised. I heard the grass protest and finally tear free as he pulled up mouthfuls and chewed them, and I heard him whicker softly in the darkness, a lazy, contented sound.

How wonderful it had been for Archie to have had the chance to ride him, and not just to hack him gently along the lane, but to let him have his head, to remember the glorious combination of a powerful horse and the open moors after so long. I could feel a little smile on my face at the memory of Archie’s breathless laughter, and my mind’s eye drifted over his tall, strong form as he sat upright in the saddle, his graceful hands light on the reins, his thighs gripping Pirate’s flanks and urging him on, and on, and on…

I jerked upright. How long had I slept? Maybe less than a minute, maybe much longer. My head had fallen to the side—that’s what had awoken me, and I raised it now to find the tiny crescent moon. Not as much as an hour, but probably a good deal more than a minute. I scrambled to my feet, reluctantly letting go of the idea of waiting Nathan out; the risk was too great. My thoughts turned, once again, to how to get him to reveal himself so I could block his escape.

I looked around, as best I could in the weak moonlight. There were four large sheds. They would be thickly laid with sawdust in places. A row of stables, from before the war when there had been horses to fill them. Amy might be in any one of them, asleep, I hoped, but maybe wide awake and terrified to make a sound. I was still sure Nathan wouldn’t hurt her, but she didn’t know that. She had only her past experiences to go by, and a noisy child in the same place as a street-girl trying to make a wage would soon be silenced by any means to hand. All her life she’d have been threatened if she made a sound, and ignored if she didn’t. Lucky to find a meal, no home comforts, no toys to play with. No wonder she…

The idea bloomed. I caught my breath, and thought it through quickly. Was it too dangerous for Amy? I didn’t think so; in fact I was counting on the opposite to be true, and Nathan’s reaction to this would prove it one way or the other. If he wouldn’t answer, then I had to break Amy’s silence instead, and there was only one way to do it.

I moved into the middle of the yard, and tried to keep my attention on all four sheds, and the stables, at once. ‘Nathan,’ I called, putting a new urgency in my tone, my fingernails cutting into my palms as fear and readiness took hold together. ‘This is important. I know you don’t want to hurt Amy, so I need you to listen. If she has a ribbon pinned to her dress, with a silver spoon on it. You have to take it off her. It’s…’ I thought frantically, but could think of nothing convincing. ‘It’s dangerous,’ I finished lamely. There was a silence. I waited a moment, then was about to throw some fantastical but desperate explanation that it had been used to spread rat poison in the barn, but, thankfully I didn’t need to; a moment later an outraged wail cut through the night air. My feet launched me across the yard, and before Amy’s cry had died away, my sore and blistered hands were pulling at the end stable door.

Inside I blinked rapidly, and, as the thin moonlight shone into the stable I saw movement, and heard Nathan’s tired, defeated voice. ‘Go to her, Amy. Go on. It’s all right.’

Small feet rustled the hay, and a moment later Amy was standing beside me and I dropped to my knees. I could hear Nathan still talking, but ignored him, and folded Amy into my arms, dropping kisses on her head and listening instead to her quiet, calm breathing, as if it were the most glorious symphony ever heard. After a moment I felt her hands drop away from the spoon and slowly, sweetly, wrap themselves around me in return.

When I could bear to ease away from her, I sat down and gathered her into my lap, blocking the door, although Nathan could easily have knocked me aside. I didn’t think he would, and I was right. His babbled words started to make sense, and I gave half of my attention to them while the other half was on the solid, comforting weight of the child in my lap, and the small sounds of concentration she was making as she pushed stray bits of hay into the lace-holes in her shoes.

‘I don’t know why I did it,’ Nathan was saying. ‘I wasn’t thinking. Is he… Will he be…’ It sounded as though the words had been dragged from his throat with barbed wire, and he was terrified of hearing the answer.

My anger flared again, hot and tight in my stomach. ‘I don’t know,’ I said with complete honesty. Archie had rallied so often, each time falling into an increasingly weaker state immediately afterwards… Fear wormed its way through me again, and I could hear it reflected in Nathan’s voice.

‘Kitty, if I’ve hurt him—’

‘Of course you’ve hurt him!’ Amy stiffened slightly, and I dropped my voice, but sounded no less furious. ‘If that thing had been two inches higher you’d have stuck it in his neck!’ He gave a sob, and I fought the natural urge to try and ease his terror; how could I, when I shared it?

His voice cracked. ‘What can I do?’

‘You can come back to the farm. Show some remorse, put things right.’

‘No! I can’t. They’ll find me, and when they do, they’ll kill me.’

‘They still will, even if you give them that diamond. Especially if you do.’ I told him what Archie had said. ‘I didn’t care what they did to you,’ I finished. ‘All I cared about was getting Amy back. But Archie seemed to think you deserved our help too. I thought he was wrong.’

‘And now?’

I studied his outline, faint moonlight touching only on the shoulder of his jacket and the side of his head, but his slight stature made him look like a child. He sound like one, too, and I couldn’t reply to his question because I didn’t know the answer. ‘Why did you take Amy?’ I said instead.

I saw that one shoulder lift in a helpless shrug. ‘I wasn’t thinking,’ he repeated. ‘I had to make you stay there long enough for me to get away. I meant it when I said I’d let her go. I thought you’d believe me.’

Believe
him? ‘So why didn’t you?’ The ache to get back to the farm, to Archie, was still pulsing in me, but I needed to play Nathan’s line very carefully or he’d wriggle off my hook and be gone.

‘I got to the top of the lane, and tried to make her get down off the cart, but she wouldn’t. So I lifted her down, and told her to run back home.’

‘You used those words? “Run home?” ’

‘Well, yes—’

‘Nathan, if you’d spent any time around her at all, instead of locking yourself away in your room, you’d know she has no idea what a home is.’ Amy must have heard the sadness in my voice, and I felt the solid movement of her head, twisting against my chest to look up at me.

‘Kitty cryin’?’

‘No, darling, it’s all right.’ I bent and kissed her forehead, and she went back to her work, satisfied. ‘So, she wouldn’t run back down the lane,’ I prompted Nathan.