The Book of the Crowman (17 page)

Denise was where Gordon had left her but she was sitting down now and staring across the canal.

He stopped running when he saw her, approaching at a fast walk. If he hadn’t argued with her, if he’d just found her sitting like this, he’d have said she looked half-amused and half-bored. When he reached her he knelt but he didn’t have the strength to take her hand.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s been brewing for a long time. It wasn’t fair to aim it at you.”

Her eyes drilled some distant point.

“I’m glad you could trust me with it.”

“What do you mean?”

She turned to him.

“People who never fight aren’t being honest with each other. My mum and dad used to argue a lot. But they were happy. Comfortable with each other. Know what I mean?”

Gordon nodded but he didn’t. Not at all. The only person he’d ever been able to talk to honestly was Jude and there were some things he hadn’t even told her. His parents had always seemed happy together but they’d argued only occasionally. Here was Denise using his outburst as a way of building even more into their relationship.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

He had to look away.

“It does beg the question, though,” she said.

His neck prickled.

“What question?”

“Why are you being like this?”

There were many inconsequential but fascinating things to see on the other side of the canal. The way empty beer cans had rusted. The way the rushes had died. The way–

“Gordon, look at me, will you.”

Heat rising into his face, he forced himself to meet her gaze.

“You seem more than content to fuck me into exhaustion for half of every night. You do it with more passion than I’ve ever known. Like you love me. And then, when daylight comes, you barely speak a word to me. Why?”

He found he hadn’t breathed for almost a minute. He let his breath go in a stagnant sigh.

“It feels wrong,” he said.

“What does?”

“Us being together. I wouldn’t have… chosen it.”

“Neither would I.”

“Really?”

She nodded without a trace of doubt.

“Really. You’re not my type. You’re too…
good
. Well, most of the time you are – when you’ve taken what you want you’re like all the rest of them.”

“No. Don’t say that. I’m not like other men.”

“Oh, you’re depressingly similar, Gordon Black, no matter what you might think.”

Stung, Gordon looked away again.

“I know what your problem is,” she was saying. “You’re an idealist. You want perfection in an imperfect world. You want things to be clear cut and simple. That’s not how life is.”

He nodded, unable to disagree even though he wanted to.

“I know.”

“Me, I can live with imperfection. I’ve done it all my life. I’ve made the best of a bad family, a bad home, bad relationships, bad times.” She took his hand. Her fingers were cold and desperate. “The world’s so screwed, so damaged. There’s so little left that feels good in it. I know what you’re feeling. I really do. But, you and me, we’re not as bad as you think. We’re alright. And I’m going to make the best of this, Gordon. I’m going to make the best of you. Of
us
.” She squeezed his fingers. “Do you think you can do the same?”

He even managed to smile, though it was weak and fleeting. He looked into Denise’s eyes and knew they had stepped closer to one another in spite of everything. There was nothing in those eyes for him to fear.

What scared him was himself.

“Yes,” he said. “Of course I can.”

He stood up and held a hand out to her.

“Are you ready to move on?” he asked.

“Are you?”

He nodded, almost smiling again.

“Come on. Let’s get going.”

For a while they walked hand in hand, Gordon negotiating the crumbling edge of the canal towpath and Denise dodging the brambles and thorns of the overhanging hedge. It made more sense to walk single file and soon their fingers slipped apart. Denise took up her customary position on Gordon’s six and tried to keep up as his pace increased. From time to time he glanced back and smiled and Denise smiled back.

She didn’t ask him what he was thinking about.

As the day began to wane, Gordon kept his eyes open for somewhere they could stop for the night. While it was a great way to make progress north, the towpath afforded no place to pitch camp. Denise fell further and further back and, though she didn’t complain, Gordon could tell her feet were sore again. Their cooked meat was gone and they were down to a couple of cans of tomatoes and one small can of sweet corn; it was hardly worth opening them just to eat them cold. The lack of food made Gordon clear-headed and light of foot but he knew that wouldn’t continue indefinitely. They needed rest and he needed time to hunt.

In the late afternoon he spotted a thickly wooded area on the opposite side of the canal; so dense were the trees that they formed an almost black wall of wood. If they could find a small clearing among them, it would make great place to shelter. At the next bridge they came to he squeezed up through the gap between the hedge and the brickwork. A couple of minutes later, Denise limped up after him.

“You OK?” he asked.

“Fine.”

He knew she was lying but he appreciated her perseverance. Travelling, living outside, was making her tougher. They crossed over and walked back a few hundred yards to the edge of the woodland. It was only as they came amongst the tightly crowded trees that Gordon smelled smoke and the unmistakable aroma of flame-roasted meat. His stomach rumbled. The fire must have been well-established and carefully tended – he hadn’t seen any smoke from the towpath. He turned back to Denise.

“Someone’s beaten us to it,” he whispered.

“What do we do?”

Gordon weighed it up.

“We can either introduce ourselves and ask to share their space and their fire or we leave. Walking into someone else’s camp is never easy, though. No one likes intruders.”

He looked out through the trees. The light was already failing. Their chances of finding another place before dark were slim. Though he wasn’t averse to sleeping under the overhang of the trees lining the canal towpath, he didn’t think Denise was quite that wild yet.

“There’s one other thing we could do,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“I could take a peek. See if the natives look friendly or not. We could decide what to do then.”

Denise’s eyes were wide.

“I’m coming with you.”

Gordon shrugged off his pack and left it at her feet.

“There’s nothing to be worried about, Denise. It’ll be quieter if I go alone. I’m used to this and I won’t make a sound. Worse than walking into someone else’s camp is getting caught sneaking around outside it. Sit here and rest your feet. If you don’t make a sound, no one will see you.”

He squeezed her hand and turned to go. She tugged the feathers at his sleeve and he looked back.

“Be quick,” she said. “I don’t want to be alone out here.”

“Ten minutes. No more. OK?”

“OK.”

Gordon let the trees and the earth fill him with the spirit of the hunter.

He drew stealth and strength from the air. His breathing slowed, his heart rate dropped; he became still. He knew which way to go and he could sense presences at about ten o’clock from his starting point. Half a dozen people, he guessed.

Silent and swift, he flowed between the trees more like a shadow than a man. He heard the hiss of red-hot embers, the spit of grease falling into flame. The waft of cooking intensified. It could only have come from a large fire and a sizeable catch. For a moment he lost concentration. The aroma made his stomach grind against itself. Saliva burst beneath his tongue. In the next instant, discipline overrode his hunger.

He advanced.

The wall of trees between him and the camp thinned until he began to see figures ranged around a broad fire pit. It looked as though the clearing had been forced by the cutting down of trees – there were low stumps everywhere. A couple of them formed seats for the clearing’s dwellers. Judging by the way things were laid out, this crew – at least eight strong that he could now see – had been living here for some time. The fire pit was well looked after and much used. Several longbows leaned against a tree. The shelters were good-sized ex-military tents with a few patches but the way they sagged in places was a sign they’d been up for more than just a few days. The camp had a permanent feel about it but Gordon still couldn’t decide whether it was a safe place to ask for shelter. If things got unfriendly for some reason, they were certainly outnumbered.

He tried to get a better sense of the individuals.

They could easily have been Green Men. They seemed to understand outdoor life and they all wore the drab browns and greens that made hiding and hunting in the countryside easier. Of course, much of that drabness came from dirt and constant usage. Spare clothes were harder to come by with each passing month. Secondhand often amounted to peeling garments from a corpse approximately your own size.

Many of them seemed to have learned about sewing skins together to make hats and jerkins. A few wore fingerless gloves, some of leather, others knitted from untreated wool. They must have been living outside for a good while because, although they weren’t outwardly dirty, Gordon could smell their bodies even from this remove.

What they all had in common, man or woman, was their shaved heads. This suggested not that they held some common ideal, but that they were suffering with lice. The spread of lice happened easily in closeknit communities – not necessarily through unhygienic practices but through people sharing beds and being in close physical contact with each other. It meant this could be a loose family group; the beginnings of a tribe.

He would have acknowledged this with a smile if it hadn’t been for one detail. There were no children. He’d come across several groups like this in his travels – Brooke and her father had been the first of many he’d spent time with. There had been plenty of others too wild or too strange to keep company with, but children had featured in every family setting. Perhaps this group had been childless before the Black Dawn and that was the common ground that had kept them together. Whatever the case, there was nothing about them that frightened him. They could walk into this camp and announce themselves as harmless passers-through.

He stepped back, ready to turn and retrace his steps. At the same instant, two of the group standing around the fire pit moved away, giving him a better view of the blackened spit and what lay beyond. Hunks of meat rotated and smoked over the scorching coals as a man turned the handle of the spit. The meat was ragged and pale but the portions dangling nearest the fire were charred black. Blue-grey smoke rose from the huge skewer.

Forming the backdrop to this and rippled by rising heat was the place where they butchered and prepared their meat. Two carcasses hung from grimy ropes slung over an A-frame of newly cut logs. One was whole. The other, partial, was divided into cuts. The skin was ash pale and had been hanging for some time. Now that he could see the raw meat, he could smell it too. Fatty and a little high, the scent of it reminded him of meat left too long on the butcher’s counter on a hot day. At every cleaving and division, at every exposed joint, the flesh was grey. Of the partial carcass, all that remained was one handless arm, hooked at the wrist, half a ribcage and a footless calf snagged through the ankle. They swung and turned gently to a breeze Gordon couldn’t feel. Perhaps it was the heat from the fire that pushed them back and forth, spun them lazily first this way and then that.

The complete carcass had undergone only the preliminaries of the process. The skin was pale but very hairy. Its genitalia were missing and its abdomen had been opened neatly from pubis to sternum. This cavity was empty. The cheeks and eyes were also gone; delicacies were always the first cuts. He’d been a big man and a fit one too by the look of him. Whether these were his friends who had turned against him in hunger or whether he and his, likely female, counterpart had been hunted he couldn’t guess. None of the people in the camp looked undernourished so perhaps it was not necessity that drove them to this. Perhaps it was simply choice. Itinerant humans were far easier to hunt than wild animals and their meat yield was greater. Not only that, their bodies were made up of the exact nutrients other humans required.

Gordon’s anger was tempered only by his responsibility. He moved away, as much the shadow as he’d been before. Only when he was out of sight did he turn his back on the clearing and make faster progress back to Denise. As he crept, he unclasped his knife.

Denise had not moved. She was still crouching beside a tree, hugging it for support though it looked like she took comfort from the contact too. Her eyes were wide and unblinking. As soon as she saw him she began to beckon with quick flicks of her hand. She looked from side to side as he approached, close to panic.

When he reached her she lunged upwards to meet him, almost knocking him over.

“Thank God,” she said. “Thank fucking God you’re back.”

“What happened?”

“A group of men came past. They had a… girl. She was tied up with rope and they were carrying her between them on a pole like an animal. She was bucking and trying to scream but they’d gagged her too. Gordon, she couldn’t have been more than ten years old. She was terrified.”

Gordon closed his eye for a moment.

“We have to leave,” he said. “Now. As fast as you can run.”

“I can’t run. I’m exhausted and my feet are in agony. And what about the little girl?”

“She’s got no chance and neither will we if we don’t move. There’s too many of them.”

“You have to do
something
. I can’t even think about what they’re going to do to her.”

Gordon wasn’t about to reveal the full inventory. He took hold of her hand.

“Listen, Denise. This has happened to me more times than I can count. It’s already too late for the girl you saw. If it had been just me and I’d seen her, I’d be doing something about it. But if I see to her, I’m going to lose you. If you want to stay alive, we must go.” She didn’t move. “Right now, Denise.”

She shook her head, scattering her tears.

“I’m not going to lose another child.”

“She isn’t…”

What? He asked himself. What exactly wasn’t she? Wasn’t every child their responsibility in a world like this? Now that he had left childhood behind, wasn’t it his place to protect it for others?

He saw the anguish in Denise’s eyes. She hadn’t stopped being a mother just because her own child was dead.

“Alright,” he said. “Which direction did they come from?”

“Across the fields.”

“You’re certain? Not from the canal?”

“From the fields. I saw them.”

“OK. Take the pack and get back to the towpath. Go as far along as you can and hide – somewhere you can still see this wood.” He pointed back the way they’d come. “A little bit farther than the bridge should do it.”

“I’ll come with you. I can help.”

“No, Denise. You can’t see this and you need to stay safe. Wait for me and I’ll find you. I promise. If I don’t, it’s because I’m not coming. OK?”

“Shit.”

“Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“Yes.”

Denise couldn’t fathom him. In some ways he was still a little boy. In others he was more a man than any she’d known. She thought, perhaps, she really might be able to love him if they were together long enough, but she doubted they had much time left.

The boy who was a man turned and moved away, his black coat melding with the trunks of the trees.

“Gordon.”

He didn’t look back but Denise thought she heard him whisper:

“What?”

“Kiss me.” she said.

Perhaps he hadn’t heard. He kept moving, silent and fluid, until the wood claimed him. Despite the pain in her feet Denise found she was able to run very fast.