The Limping Man (12 page)

After a while she slept, dreaming in fragments that chipped and dug in her mind before sliding away: the Limping Man, the drowned men in People’s Square, Queenie with yellow teeth that wanted to bite, and Hawk at last, Hawk circling in the blue, with Mam on a hillside watching him.

When she woke Ben was sitting beside her.

‘You’ve been crying,’ he said. He flicked a tear off her cheek.

‘It’s none of your business,’ she said. She wiped her face.

‘You better put your clothes on or I’ll think you’re one of those Bawdhouse doxies.’

She had never heard the word but understood what it meant.

‘I washed myself and you stink, so why don’t you do it too?’ She jumped up and grabbed her clothes and pulled them on while he watched, grinning.

‘I set my snares.’

‘You can keep your pigeons.’ She went back to the camp, where she ate strips of dried fish and drank water. A baked pigeon, she thought. It was what she wanted more than anything in the world.

That night before sleeping they talked about Queenie and her secret, but neither could work out what it might be, and neither was sure it would defeat the Limping Man.

‘It might be something we can tell Blossom and Hubert,’ Hana said.

‘If we can find them. But I’ll tell you what,’ Ben said, ‘if I meet the Limping Man I’ll call him Vosper.’

Hana shook her head. To her that hissing name did not make the Limping Man smaller, it made him worse.

They passed the night uneasily, waking at every noise. Ben checked his snares at dawn and came back with three pigeons. He cleaned them while Hana lit a small fire. He packed one of the pigeons with mud and they left it in the embers while they scouted the edge of the swamp. The same soldier was guarding the entrance to the causeway. As they watched, smoke rose from Queenie’s chimney.

‘She’s warming up her soup,’ Ben said.

Back at their camp, they peeled off the mud and ate the pigeon. It tasted of berries. They put out the fire, hid their packs in the trees, and went back to the swamp. Smoke still came from Queenie’s chimney. It slumped in the heavy air, making a brown cap on the island. The guard was at his post and crossbowmen were shooting at wooden targets on the plain. The thud of their bolts carried across the swamp.

‘Something’s wrong,’ Ben said.

‘What?’

‘I can’t hear any frogs.’

They listened. Only the faint hiss of gas escaping in the swamp.

‘Why’s the guard standing like that?’ Yesterday he had lounged. Today he stood wide-legged, half at ease, half at attention, with his spear held across his chest.

‘Someone’s watching him.’

‘Who?’

‘Hidden somewhere. I’m going to see.’

‘No, Ben. They’ll be on the island.’

‘They won’t see me, I’ll see them first. If I can get in I can talk to her. Give me the pigeons.’

He tied a flax thread through their gullets and hung the birds on his chest.

‘Get out of here, Hana. Get the packs and head down to the coast. Keep away from the swamp. I’ll meet you where it drains into the sea.’

She remembered a brown stream trickling from the sandhills. It seemed to flow in another time.

‘They’ll catch you,’ she said.

‘Not me. Hana, we’ve got to find out what she knows.’

He chose an arm of the swamp hidden from the island, slipped into the water, eased his way to a wider reach and sank. Hana lay watching in the trees. She would go when she knew he was safe. From time to time he surfaced behind a clump of rushes. He was like a swamp creature, rising and sinking without a ripple or sound.

Half the morning was gone. There was no sign of Queenie. The frogs were silent but a toad boomed here and there. She searched the piece of sky she could see. No dot against the blue. Hawk too was in another time.

Ben’s head rose, black and sleek. He faced the long stretch at the back of the island. She felt him take a deep easy breath and submerge . . .

Everything was done by touch – fingers reading the slope of the mud and the deep knots of fibrous root. His stump felt things out as well as his hand. Memory and his sense of distance were a tool. Queenie’s island while his breath lasted. Another clawed grip in the mud, another slow frog-kick – he was there. He eased to the surface. Nothing but rushes, a wall of them that would hiss and bend and give him away if he tried to pass. He crept sideways under water and rose again. The way was clear along a tongue of mud and through the bushes to the canvas door at the back of Queenie’s shack.

He half rose, peered about, gripped his knife – and heard Hana’s scream from across the water. A man stepped from the bushes and loosed a crossbow bolt but Ben had already thrown himself to one side. Others were bursting from the scrub. Without a pause he threw himself again. Bolts pocked the water. One scorched a groove along his thigh; but he was under and heading deep as the men plunged in. Where would they expect him to go? Away from the island, aiming for the forest over the swamp. Some would be re-arming for a second shot.

his time. Then he released a breath of air – a signal to his hunters that he was heading where they expected. They would watch for him where the bottom shelved into drowned reeds a quarter way across. Ben turned and headed back for the island, angling to avoid men surging out chest deep. Spearmen, he guessed. They would probe for him. The water stirred along his side as one went past. Ben kept swimming softly – his good arm, his stump, his legs in unison. He reached a patch of reeds beyond the mud-hump where he had landed and lay on his back, with only his face showing. He breathed deep and quiet, then sank again. For the next hour he worked his way round the island. Once, shielded by reeds on every side, he watched soldiers struggling through the water. A bowman lost his footing and went under. He came up, went under again and no one tried to save him. His last cry was, ‘Praise the Man.’ The next time Ben looked boats were rowing in the deep parts of the swamp and men stabbed the water with spears. Others had landed in the forest but Ben was confident Hana was away. They would not catch her in the trees.

A small man dressed in black and thin as a stick shrilled orders from the largest boat. Ben could not make out his words but saw him point: he wanted the reeds round the island searched. There was no hope now of slipping through the bushes to Queenie’s shack. Ben cut the pigeons free from his neck and wedged them in roots under the surface. He worked his way further round the island until he felt the gritty rise of the causeway. Nowhere to go. He changed direction, heading deeper into the fringe of reeds. An eel writhed away under his chest. He scraped along the bottom until his breath gave out. Something – a log? – stopped him from surfacing. He felt a hand clamp his head, and fought his terror – not a hand, a piece of heavy cloth. He tore it away, raised his face in the water, and looked into Queenie’s dead eyes.

Blood had drawn eels like perfume. They twisted round the body, wrapping Queenie in their arms. Ben drew deep breaths, calming himself. He felt for a wound and found three crossbow bolts embedded in her chest. It meant she had not been killed trying to run. They had made her talk and she had told about a boy and girl and their questions . . .

The sound of oars closed in. There was no hiding place. Ben held his knife tight. What would Hari do? What would his father? It was Lo’s voice he seemed to hear: Use what is there. But there was nothing: reeds, mud, water. There was only his knife.
Use what is there.
Eels, a body. His mind made a kick. It was as though he had become Lo.

Ben slid under Queenie’s body, pushing eels out of the way. He surfaced in the gap between her and the reeds. The shouting of men, the sound of oars, came closer. He chose a reed, cut it below the water and snapped off its top. He blew through the hollow stem, making sure it was clear. Then he slid under Queenie, his head beneath hers where it butted into the reeds. He thrust the reed upwards through her hair, blew it free of water and started to breathe. It was hard. For a moment he thought he would not get enough air. He changed to shallow breaths, using the top of his lungs. He could last that way if the boats were quick. He felt one bump Queenie’s body. Her hair drifted, circling his throat. Eels thrashed away. Ben imagined he heard shouts and wondered if he was blacking out. He held on. There
was
enough air. Lo, he thought, I believe in you.

An oar scraped his side as the boat backed out of the reeds. Ben waited. One minute. Two. They were still close. He felt water shift as spearmen trod in the rushes by the shore. Then the movements stopped. Only the eels moved. He felt them nibbling the wound in his thigh.

Slowly he let his face rise through Queenie’s hair. Blue sky, a reed wall, half her face, one eye. He drew a proper breath and sank again. The next time he lifted his head high enough to listen. The shouts and the treading had moved towards the back of the island. One boat was still close. He heard the swish of a spear plunged into water. They were not giving up. He heard the little man shriek orders – a voice like a girl’s, a voice like Hana’s, who had saved him.

Ben sank again. He stabbed at the nibbling eels with his knife – and all afternoon he kept it up, rising, breathing, sinking, repulsing the eels. Queenie’s body wanted to float away. He took a handful of her hair and pulled it back each time. The sun edged down the western sky – taking its time. When night came he would move, swim silently down the length of the swamp to the place where it drained into the sea. Until then he must lie alongside his companion.

‘What’s the secret, Queenie?’ he whispered.

He wondered if the Limping Man had ordered his mother’s death.

Feet tramped on the causeway and died away. After a while frogs began to croak. Toads boomed. The sun sank slowly. Lazy bloody sun, Ben thought. He waited an hour after it was dark. There was no sound on the island – no twig snapping, no shuffle or step round Queenie’s shack.

Ben whispered goodbye to the old woman. Quietly he made his way out into the swamp.

EIGHT

A trickle of water ran through beds of yellow grass. Hana waited where it broke out on the beach, hugging the packs to stay warm. After screaming her warning she had run. Ben was alive, she was sure of it. He was so quick, so confident, so easily a part of every place he found himself in that she believed he would simply sink into the swamp and vanish like a frog.

She waited while the sun went down, hearing waves rustle on the sand. Stars came out and she named them, as Danatok had taught her. But always she was listening, listening for Ben. She kept her mind open for him the way she had for Hawk. Speaking, she thought. Maybe we should speak. Several times in the last few days she had caught whispers from him. Perhaps he heard her too. Perhaps it was natural between them. If she said his name now alongside her own, made a link between them, he might find his way to her as if she were a light for him to see. But she hesitated. She did not like people in her mind and nor did he. He spoke with Lo, and she, in some strange way, had spoken with Hawk. It was enough. Speaking with Ben would be like letting him put his hand on her. She was not ready for that.

She wrapped herself in her blanket. She counted stars
– and opened her mind for him when she remembered, without speaking his name. She would be a place for him to find but not a voice calling.

The wind rose and waves beat louder on the beach. Where was he? It must be midnight. She began to imagine him pierced with crossbow bolts, floating dead in the rushes with eels like black banners hanging from his chest and belly.

Ben, she said at last, where are you?

Another hour passed. She counted time by the movement of the earth, the way Danatok had taught her. The swamp was moving too, with night creatures, bubbling gas, and its own stillness, which was like an explosion clamped down by a lid of mud and water.

‘Ben,’ she whispered. The waves answered. The wind answered. A night bird, on the wing, answered with a distant cry.

Ben, she thought.

He replied. It was like a hand touching and falling away. Hana, he said, and nothing more. She held on to the sound. She imagined a thread running through the dark and she slid her hand along it, followed it. The way led up the creek trickling in the sand, then into the swamp grass and towards the forest.

Ben, she said again, and he replied, stronger now: Hana.

She followed the shred of warmth that came from him, and found him where the reeds began. He was no more than a shine of eyes in the starlight; then a shine of teeth – he was trying to grin.

‘Wondered when you’d get here,’ he said in a voice she scarcely heard.

‘Ben, are you hurt?’

‘In my leg. Flies, mosquitoes, bloody eels. Bloody toads.

Everything’s biting me. I’m the best dinner they’ve ever had.’

She felt his exhaustion. ‘Don’t talk.’

Stumbling, sinking, she helped him along the swamp-edge, through the rank grass, down to the beach. She wrapped his blanket round him but would not let him lie down.

‘We’ve got to move, Ben. They’ll be hunting us in the morning.’

‘Send them the wrong way,’ he whispered.

She had already thought of it. She left him by the stream and walked along the beach, leaving footprints where the high tide would not wash them away. Then she angled down to the sea, still heading north, went into the water up to her knees and turned back to the stream. She walked up until she found Ben. He was sleeping. She woke him, helped him stand and shuffle to the stream; left him swaying there while she scuffed out his marks in the sand, hoping she had them all. She meant the searchers to think Ben had died in the swamp.

Together, Hana supporting Ben, they waded down the stream into the sea.

‘Where are we going?’ he mumbled.

‘I know a place.’

The sea water seemed to revive him. He took his pack from her and stuffed his blanket in, then drank water from his bottle. ‘I’m full of mud,’ he said; and was at once sick into the sea. He drank again.

‘Come on, Ben. We’ve only got a couple of hours,’ she said.

‘One good thing, the salt water gets rid of the leeches.’