Our field was a fourteen-acre spot that ran uphill as far as the churchyard wall. By the time we reached it, our feet and skirt hems were soaked again. We were out of breath too. In the cold air, the mud on Crockers Lane had turned thicker, making the walk slow and tiring. On the smaller puddles, ice had already begun to form. And the sky had that strange, swollen look that signalled snow was on its way.
Once inside the gate, Mam cupped her hands to her mouth. Her holler brought twelve hungry longhorn cattle lumbering down the hill towards us. They were expecting hay and turnips so the sight of us, empty-handed, brought them to a slithering halt about thirty yards away.
Mam called again. They watched us warily. One beast took a step forward, then stopped and blew steam through his nose. The rest simply stood, staring.
‘I’ll go round the back of them,’ said Mam. ‘You stay by the gate.’
It wasn’t that simple.
One step towards them and the cattle took off in a whirl of hooves and mud. When they reached the far wall they stopped again, their great freckled heads bent low. It was then I noticed how the light had changed. The grass, the hedge, the cattle all looked leached of colour. A blast of wind blew my wet skirts tight against my legs, and I felt the first snowflakes tickle my face.
‘The weather’s turned.’ I glanced worriedly at the sky.
‘All the more reason to bring them in today,’ said Mam. She’d brought with her a pitchfork for nudging the cattle’s rumps; she pointed it now at us. ‘Don’t move. Either of you.’
As Mam strode off across the field, Peg began to grizzle. ‘I’m cold, Lizzie. Can’t we go home?’
‘Soon, I promise.’
Narrowing my eyes, I watched as Mam walked a wide arc around the cattle, her arms held open. The beasts stayed very still, allowing her to get close. Then, in a finger snap, they leapt away. Some went left, some went right, the ground thudding with their hoofbeats. When finally they did stop, they stood wide-eyed and nervous, scattered across the field.
Peg frowned. ‘They aren’t behaving, are they?’
They weren’t. Nor was the weather. The sky had gone a sickly shade – a sort of grey tinged with yellow. Snow fell faster now. Little hard grains of it whipped and spun before my eyes. At our feet, the grass was turning white.
Mam came striding back across the field, red-cheeked and irritable. ‘Right, girls, listen to me: this isn’t working. We need to try another way.’
The wind blew so hard it was a job to even hear her. Then came another noise, so unexpected I didn’t think it real. It rumbled above our heads like an animal growling, or something heavy dragged across a flagstone floor.
Peg’s mouth turned down at the corners. ‘I don’t like it, Lizzie,’ she wailed.
‘Don’t fret, ’tis only thunder,’ I said.
But I didn’t like it either, not after what folks in the village had been saying about this freakish weather being the comet’s work. I’d certainly never heard thunder with snow before.
Mam, I hoped, would see sense and say we’d try again tomorrow. Or at least go home and wait for Da.
But no.
Instead, we had to walk behind the cattle from opposite sides of the field. Peg, being smaller, was in charge of the gate.
‘As soon as you see us coming straight towards you, Peg, you must open it wide,’ Mam said. ‘And don’t pull that face. You’ve to concentrate.’ Then to me, ‘Right, Lizzie, let’s get shifting.’
We started at the top of the field, Mam on the left, me on the right. Wind blew the snow almost horizontally. It had got darker too and as the grass grew steadily whiter, it was hard to see more than a few feet ahead. Bit by bit we moved down the hill, following the lie of the hedge. There was a knack to it. Keeping yourself quiet and low meant the cattle grew calmer, except I could barely see them any more.
As I stopped to push the hair from my eyes, I realised I’d gone way off course. Just to my left stood Mam.
‘Get back by the hedge,’ she said, waving me off.
‘Can’t we stop until the snowstorm passes?’
Above us, flickers of lightning lit the clouds from underneath. It made the whole sky look strange, like milk trembling on a stove. Mam, though, didn’t even notice: her gaze was fixed on me. ‘Remember the deal, Lizzie – the one what we shook on at breakfast?’
‘Good. I’m not scared of a bit of snow, nor should you be. Now move yourself.’
So we kept going, first along the shortest side of the field, then slowly up the other, longer side. Soon we had four cattle walking before us.
Then the thunder cracked.
It was louder this time, making the cattle break into a nervous trot. All the while, it grew colder still. My fingers burned red and my chest ached from breathing the icy air. If Mam suffered the same, she didn’t show it. Head down, arms out at her sides, she walked like a machine. It was the devil’s job to keep pace. Mercy’s Midwinter’s Eve prediction seemed such silliness now. Mam had more chance of becoming queen of England than she did of dropping down dead.
Yet I still felt a growing unease. Tall trees flanked the top of our field. The rest of it was wide, wide open, and I knew a bit about storms – how trees got lightning-struck, and sometimes cattle too. Now that Mercy’s vision had loomed into my head again, I couldn’t ignore it.
‘Mam!’ I yelled. ‘We won’t manage this when it’s thundering.’
‘Stop fussing,’ she yelled back. ‘The quicker we round them all up, the quicker we’ll go home.’
We’d reached the bottom of the field by now. Our four cattle had stopped, legs splayed, eyes bulging, in front of Peg.
‘Shall I do the gate?’ she cried.
Poor Peg looked so stiff with cold she could hardly lift her arms to heave the bolt.
‘No!’ Mam shouted back. ‘Not until we’ve got all twelve of them.’
‘But Mam—’
The lightning cut me short. A bright gold line streaked through the sky. Seconds later, a great thunderclap followed, so loud I felt the ground shake beneath me.
‘We really should stop,’ I said, hearing fear in my voice.
‘I don’t like it, Lizzie,’ Peg whined.
Mam still didn’t glance at the sky.
‘You’re fussing again,’ she said. ‘Keep your mind on what you’re doing.’
Turning on her heel, she marched off across the field. Within seconds she’d disappeared. All I could see now was whiteness. Spinning, sighing, tickling white. Within seconds, my frock and boots were plastered. Flakes got into my eyes and my mouth. How we’d find the other eight cattle in this, I’d no idea.
It wasn’t about the cattle any more. Mam was proving herself – to Da and to us. She wouldn’t back down, not even when it was dangerous to keep going.
I went after her. Her footprints were all I had to follow; they led me to two steers standing nose to tail in the middle of the field. Behind them, arms wide, was Mam.
My heart sank in despair.
It was madness. Mam even looked mad. Her hair, worked loose from its pins, was plastered against her cheeks. She didn’t stop to push it back. In one hand she still held her pitchfork. As she inched towards the cattle, they flicked their ears anxiously but didn’t move.
‘Mam! Leave them be!’ I cried.
She took no notice. Her gaze was fixed on those two snow-covered rumps. ‘Forward!’ she cried at the cattle. ‘Ho! Ho!’
She raised her pitchfork. The cattle bellowed and sprang away across the field.
Then came an almighty flash. Thunder roared directly above us. I cowered in terror. My first thought was for Peg. Turning to rush back to her, I saw Mam. She hadn’t moved. Her pitchfork still reached for where the cattle had been. The prongs were blackened, smoke curling off their ends.
‘Mam?’
I went to her. Put my hand on her shoulder to shake her. Then came another flash, this time bright blue. There was a crackling sound. The smell of burning. My ears began to sing. A terrible heat poured down my left cheek, my left arm, my leg. My chest seized up. I couldn’t breathe. The whole world started lifting and whirling before me. And then a great force threw me clean off my feet.