On the Edge of Darkness. Barbara Erskine
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peered round the cross-slab to see if her brother was there she wagged her finger. ‘No, A-dam. No go there.’
‘Why not? Where have you been? Why couldn’t I find you?’ He was growing increasingly frustrated at this inability to communicate with her properly.
She sat down beside him and began to pull the lid off the shortbread tin. She seemed uninterested in further conversation, leaning back on her elbows, sucking at the soft buttery biscuit, licking her lips. The sun came out from behind a cloud, throwing a bright beam across her face and she closed her eyes. He studied her for a moment. She had dark hair and strong regular features. When the bright, grey eyes, slightly slanted, were closed, as now, her face was tranquil yet still full of character, but when those eyes were open her whole expression came alive, vivacious and enquiring. Silver lights danced in her eyes and her firm, quirky mouth twitched with humour. She was peeping at him beneath her long dark lashes, conscious of his scrutiny, reacting with an instinctive coquetry that had not been there before. Abruptly she sat up.
‘A-dam.’ She was saying his name more fluently now, more softly, but with the same intonation which he found so beguiling.
He ceased his scrutiny abruptly, feeling himself blush. ‘It’s time we learned each other’s language,’ he said firmly. ‘Then we can all talk together.’
She moved, with a graceful wiggle of her hips, onto her knees and pointed down the valley the way he had come. ‘A-dam, big shortbread?’ she said coaxingly.
He burst out laughing. ‘All right. More shortbread. Next time I come.’
He hadn’t planned to follow her. He just couldn’t stop himself. He had spent the afternoon teaching her words, astonished by the phenomenal memory which retained faultlessly everything he told her. He taught her more trees and flowers and birds; he taught her the names of their clothes; he taught her arms and legs and heads and eyes and hair and all the items in his knapsack; he taught her walk and sit and run. He taught her the sky and the sun, the wind and the words for laugh and cry, and they had ‘talked’ and giggled and finished all the shortbread, and then at last she had glanced up at the sun. She frowned, obviously realising how late it was, and scrambled to her feet. ‘Bye bye, A-dam.’
He was taken by surprise. ‘But it’s hours until dark. Do you have to go?’
It was no use. She shrugged and turning, with a little wave, she dodged behind the stone slab and out of his sight.
He leaped to his feet. ‘Brid, wait. When shall I see you? When shall I come again?’
There was no answer. He ran a few steps after her and stopped in confusion. There was no sign of her. He retraced his steps to the spot where he had been standing and then turning, followed in her exact tracks. The afternoon seemed to have grown misty again. He stood, his hand on the stone, and peered ahead and suddenly there she was, running down the hillside in the thin sunshine. He set off after her, not shouting this time, deliberately following her at a distance and consciously noticing the way they were going.
She was following a clear track which he did not remember seeing before. He frowned, looking at the wood below him on his right. That was where the Scots pine should be. There were Scots pine, but too many – many many more than he remembered, unless they had already slipped unnoticed into a different valley. That was perfectly possible. One often did not see ridges and glens in the hills until one was upon them. He realised she was fast disappearing from sight and he plunged after her, aware of the strong smell of the heather and the baking earth and rock. Overhead a buzzard was calling, the wild yelping miaou growing fainter as it spiralled higher and higher until it was nothing but a speck in the blue.
The first he noticed of the village was the thin spiral of white smoke, almost invisible against the sky. He slowed down, trying to get his breath back, more cautious now. Brid was skipping unselfconsciously about a hundred yards ahead of him as he ducked behind some low whin bushes. She stopped and seemed to be gathering some flowers, then she moved on, holding them in her hand, more decorous now. He saw her surreptitiously rub some dust from her skirt and run her fingers through her hair.
He hesitated for a moment, then he ducked out of his hiding place and ran a few paces further on, to throw himself full length behind a small outcrop of rock. From there he peered at her again. Two figures had appeared on the dusty track and he could now see the village more clearly. It consisted of little more than a cluster of small round houses situated around a larger, central one. He squinted to see the figures better and recognised the taller of the two as Gartnait. The young man stopped when he saw Brid and waited for her. From the way he stood, the flailing of his arms and Brid’s sudden, obvious dejection, it was clear that Gartnait was angry.
Adam, who had been about to leap to his feet and admit to his presence, changed his mind abruptly. He lay where he was, his chin propped on his hands, watching. His vantage point allowed him to see the three figures – the third unknown to him – walk slowly back towards the village. Once there they stood and talked again animatedly for several minutes before at last ducking into a low doorway in one of the houses and disappearing from sight.
He stayed there for a long time, hoping someone would reappear. When it was clear they weren’t going to, he began to crawl slowly forward, taking advantage of the clumps of long dried grasses as the only reasonable cover to hide him. Once he heard a dog bark. He dropped flat, pressing his nose into the dry earth, smelling its hot peppery sweetness. After a few moments the barking stopped, abruptly silenced by a curt command, in what language he could not tell.
He waited, holding his breath. There was no further sound and he raised his head again to find himself looking at a pair of soft leather sandals. Leaping to his feet in fright he found himself half suspended by the collar, face to face with a tall, white-haired man with fierce dark eyes, a fine aquiline face and a narrow mouth set in a tight-lipped scowl. The man barked a question at him and Adam wriggled desperately, half angry and half afraid.
‘Let me go! I’m not doing any harm! Let me go! I’m a friend of Brid’s.’ He flailed out uselessly with his fists and the man put him down, transferring his iron grip to Adam’s wrist. Turning he strode towards the village, pulling Adam with him. The boy wriggled harder, his initial alarm turning to real fear. The look in the man’s eyes had been uncompromising and Adam knew that look well.
As they walked down the dirt track which served for a village street Adam saw faces at the doors. One by one the inhabitants appeared. Dark, shaggy-haired, dressed in strange bright-coloured woollen or leather breeches, the men were staring at him aggressively. Behind them he could see the women, most of them swathed in shawls, half hidden in the dark depths of the cottages, and suddenly he knew who they were. This must be a camp of tinkers – or real Romanies perhaps – from far away. He had seen tinkers, of course, in the village at home. Two or three times a year some of them would come, camping on the riverbank; they would mend the pots and pans of the housewives, and sharpen their knives, and then when the factor decided too many salmon had disappeared from the river they would move on overnight with their colourful vans and their ponies. He had heard that they had settlements somewhere over the hills where they went in the wintertime and this must be one of them. The realisation comforted him. Somewhere at the back of his mind had lurked a niggling fear about where Brid came from – a shiver, no more – something he couldn’t put a name to. To find out that she was a gypsy was a reassurance. The tinkers were always friendly. They got on well with the village children at home and the folk all got on well with them. Except for the factor of course, and the ghillies.
He stared round, trying to see Brid and Gartnait, and finally spotted them at the back of the crowd. He felt a surge of relief. ‘Brid!’ he cried. ‘Make him let me go!’ He wriggled, tried to bite the hand holding him and received a cuff on the ear for his pains. The tall man had followed his gaze and was also staring at Brid. He pointed at her and shouted a command. The men and women around her fell back. Brid looked terrified. Slowly she moved forward through the silent, staring crowd and came to stand in front of them.
‘Brid, tell him! Tell him I’m your friend,’ Adam begged. The man’s grip on his arm had not slackened. His head, Adam had noticed for the first time, was half shaven