6.

THE ONLY THING he feared was sleep-talking. If he spoke in his sleep he might reveal his secrets: might let those soul-locked demons of the subconscious out and incriminate himself. That’s why The Priest knew he would never lie long in the company of another living person.

The Priest had talked in his sleep since childhood.

And now in adulthood spaces could be shared and appetites sated but sleep beside another was out of the question. There were things that had gone on that no-one needed to know about and intimacy was the key to unlock those secure secrets.

It was society. It was cut through with misunderstanding. He knew his appetites were selective. He knew he enjoyed niche flavours. He was ahead of his time that was all. Hadn’t the dignitaries and ruling overlords of the Roman empire exercised and appeased such similar interests two thousand ago? Yes they had. Because it was their right. Their privilege.

And privileges were the church’s way of rewarding those chosen to do God’s work. Small rewards for a great task: shepherding the sheep into His fold. One day his tastes would be commonplace but until then he would utter no nocturnal revelations if he could help it.

Was it his fault he was superior to these ingrates illiterates and inbreds? No it most certainly was not. To be a physically mentally sexually racially and philosophically advanced human was why he was chosen to do God’s work. That was plain to see. And this was all part of the test – to be sent to these harsh northern lands and to not only survive amongst the uncivilised but to thrive. To thrive and reign; to control his adopted kingdom in order to spread the word. To tame the flat-tongued heretics. Yes. To tame the lost wild beasts of his flock. Yes. Everything he did he did for the church. Yes. For Him. Yes. He was making the best of it. Yes. And his faith was as strong as it had ever been. Stronger even.

His interests in the esoteric and the marginal were one of the reasons the seminary had first appealed all those years ago. Because when you are a Priest they elevate you above the commonplace. They lift you up and set you apart and they leave you be. The community respects your silence. They know you’re doing God’s business and that comes with a certain cachet. It brings insight and insight brings burdens and burdens need an outlet. Being one of His envoys takes its toll.

He had few outlets for these secret compulsions he carried around inside of him but sleep-talking was one of them. Many a night his own words had awoken himself; garbled confessions of things that could never be spoken in daylight. Could never be shared. Heard out loud such descriptions of these desirous impulses had shocked even him and it made them somehow tangible and real and confirmed that they not only existed within the darkest corners of his imagination but had sometimes been acted upon too. And yet still he was not sated. And still wanted more. It was a hunger of sorts.

The Priest vowed never to let himself become so publicly vulnerable. The conscious would take control and the subconscious of the somnambulist world would be kept in the solitude of his bedroom.

So he sat in darkness and he sniffed and felt the air in his lungs. He watched the Poacher crumple and curl in the bracken no better than the beasts of the fells and woodlands that filled his pantry.

He felt his lower jaw circulate and his teeth quietly grinding. And he watched the Poacher’s form melt into the night until he was nothing more than a moonlit shape in the dirt and was glad that his travelling companion had finally stopped talking.

THE GIRL DIDN’T feel like walking. She didn’t know what to make of the strange thin man in his hand-made clothes and his stories and his funny way of talking either; she didn’t know how she felt about him. But for once it wasn’t fear.

If he could find her up on the hill under the log in the dead of night then he could surely find her most anywhere. He could hunt her and follow her any time he wanted. He could be hiking into town right now to tell everyone that he had found her to tell them that he had located the imbecile girl with the bairn and hurry hurry because she’s up on the lower slopes eating tinned pears. Just look for the wood smoke you can’t miss her.

But she doubted that. She didn’t know why but for once she just had to take the risk that perhaps not every human wanted to use or destroy her.

So she would rest and she would eat and then she would be strong and she would leave.

The baby was making a smacking suckling sound.

She wondered if that man that smelled bad and gave her the food really lived in a cave like he said and if he did what it was like in there.

If she had a cave she would fix it up nice. She’d make a bed from bracken and there’d be blankets for her and the bairn and she would have a fire burning all the time. She would see that it never went out and she’d hunt and they’d never grow hungry and then when the baby was a bit older and could walk it could hunt too. There would be a waterfall running down that they could wash under and maybe they’d have a chicken or two running loose in the woods and each morning they would go on an egg hunt for breakfast. She would teach the bairn about life by showing it life.

And they would be happy.

After she packed away her things the girl went to the toilet and then smelled that the baby had done the same so she walked back to the tarn’s edge. She moved slowly this time. She took small steps and the baby felt heavy and the smell of its scat was strong. It cried all the way.

She walked slowly because every bit of energy would be needed for whatever lay around the corner.

Anxiety ate at her. It’s what stopped her being starving all the time.

She worried about dogs and the police and the Sisters at St Mary’s and she worried about the Hinckleys and the farmer who had tried to have her in the night and the funny smelly man who said he lived in a cave. She worried about food and sleep and warmth. She worried for the bairn. And she worried about the Father.

You’re the lucky one the Sisters had said. Being tapped the way you are. That was the way God wanted and don’t you dare to doubt that. Father chose you because you were the quiet one. No other reason but that. He said you’d never be guilty in the language of gossip or hearsay; said the silent can always be trusted because God took their tongues and made them blessed. Said they were gifted in discretion. Receptacles for The Truth. You should consider yourself lucky; your debt to Father is great.

She felt that debt about her now like the ox feels the yoke.

SHE GOT TO the tarn and took off her boots and then her socks and she undressed the baby. She walked out into the shallow nearside end and she bent down and washed the bairn. She scraped the excrement from its scut with her fingers then used dry moss to pat it. She wrapped the baby in the new blanket and then washed its sheet in the tarn.

The water was cold the water was bracing the water set her flesh to tighten. It felt worse somehow being in it up to the knees than fully submerged as she had been the night before. Her feet were sensitive to the water’s bite. Again she thought of nails being driven into them; she thought of Jesus on the cross in the chapel in town. She thought of bleeding stigmata. She thought of eternal martyrdom.

She scrubbed the sheet with rocks until the stains were gone then twisted and wrung it. She squeezed every drop she could out of it. She cupped some water into her mouth then sat on a rock and put her socks and boots back on.

She picked more bilberries. She picked for a long time and collected them in the empty pear tin and when it was nearly full she left and walked through the bracken and up the crag and across the clearing and into the scrub and back to her fallen trunk.

The baby was sleeping so she went back to pick more bracken. She stacked as many fronds as she could. It was warm now and she was sweating but the sky was restless and the air felt tight. She could feel it like a steel band around her head. The sky looked like it could snap at any time. For a few minutes everything was still.

The fronds were piled so high in her arms the girl could barely see where she was walking but the route felt familiar now so she carefully picked her way back to the fallen tree where the baby lay. For now she would not flee. The sky had spoken and the sky had said stay.

She took the longest of the bracken branches and wove them into those that protruded from one side of the tree to strengthen the natural canopy that had already formed. It was easy to do and she had soon made a thick green thatch that ran from the backside of the fallen trunk down to the ground. The other side opened out onto the clearing.

She hurried back to the bracken patch and snapped off more. The stalks scratched at her hands and she wished she had a knife then she remembered the lid from the tin of pears so she ran back to get that. She folded it over and then she had a sharp edge with which to cut the stems at the base. She worked quickly and with purpose. The girl stopped once or twice to look at the sky again then she carried the second load back and laid them down in her den.

The baby had its eyes open now.

The girl rolled out from beneath the trunk and walked across the clearing to where there were more rotten branches and she dragged them across to her tree. A breeze was lifting and the sky was tight like the skin of a drum. Somewhere in the far distance she could hear a rumble. Then the valley behind her growled and she stood and saw a breeze ripple across the lake as if a great shoal of fish had risen at once.

Moving quickly now she stripped the old boulders of the thick green moss that covered them and she put that down into her nest too. Then she broke down branches and stacked them under the tree. She gathered more and she stamped them and smashed them and found twigs for kindling then rolled one or two larger logs across the clearing and then found some stones which she also rolled over.

Then she was tired. Then she needed to sit down. The sky growled again – a hungry yawping sound. She crawled beneath the tree and inspected the canopy she had made and there were only a few small gaps where she could see through it. She picked the baby up and petted it for a while then put it down and decided to do an inventory of her possessions. She unwound the damp blanket in which she was storing everything and lined up her items in front of her.

There were the two tins. She also had the potato and the matches and the tin opener; the empty pear tin now contained the freshly-picked bilberries. She also had the bent tin lid and the blanket that the man had given her that the baby was coddled in. It was a lot more than she had yesterday.

The air became charged. It was almost crackling and everything took on a strange sepia hue. Even the birds stopped singing. Only in their absence did she notice them.

The valley boomed.

She pulled the baby tight. It put its arms around her neck and its chin on her shoulder. The girl ran her palm over its smooth head and combed its fine covering of hair with her fingers. She looked at its features: its small flat shiny nose and wet pursed mouth and the long curve of the protruding forehead. It seemed to have changed since the last time she had looked. It was growing. Forming and transforming. Changing shape. Day upon day it was becoming something else right before her.

Overhead the clouds rolled and moiled and they looked like great crashing white waves in a storm though the girl had never seen the sea. Only in pictures. All she knew was land-locked rock and stone and slate and scree; sky and grass and streams and fire. A remote farm. A stone dormitory. Blankets on the floorboards of a loveless house.

The sky. She felt it pressing down.

There was a flash – a violent blink of purple – then a crack of thunder that bounced between the mountains to create an almighty applause.

The rain came again first as slowly elongated drops and then it fell harder and faster.

The baby’s eyes widened.

It came straight down driving into the ground with force and violence. The girl thought of the forge in town where the men welded and braced and hammered to drive hot metal into shape through brute force. She thought of the clanging and the banging and the hissing as she had passed it and the narrow eyes of the silent men that stared out at her from the darkness. Streaks of dirt on their taut bare chests and their black faces. White teeth flashing between wet leering lips.

The girl gathered the bracken and pulled the fronds over the two of them then she laid down on her back to let the baby take her teat which had become wet and charged like the sky.

THE PRIEST SPOKE.

Your leg.

Yes.

You limp.

What about it.

How did that occur?

How did I get my limp?

Yes.

I didn’t think you cared Father said the Poacher.

I don’t.

So why ask.

Because you’re slowing us down by at least one mile an hour. One mile an hour over a day – that could be twelve miles we’re losing because of it. Because of you. Suppose we begin travelling at the same speed as the girl. By nightfall she’ll be twelve miles ahead of us. And that’s assuming we’re even going in the right direction. So I’m curious.

It was morning and sleep still fogged their eyes. Warm parts chafed under damp clothing as they walked and the Priest carried himself with an even more determined sense of purpose – as if the hills were there to be assaulted and conquered and owned. Availed of all mystery. They were God’s obstacles. Nothing more. The Poacher was unhurried in his movements and the panting dog looked at him sideways for instruction.

Curious is it Father said the Poacher.

Yes.

About my limp.

That’s what I said didn’t I.

My limp.

Why do you have to turn every conversation into a long drawn out charade?

I think it’s the first real question you’ve asked me Father. I’m just surprised.

The girl has taken a child said the Priest. A baby. A living breathing creature created by God. A baby that belongs to someone. To people. To people who are in my parish; who are in my congregation. The girl is my responsibility and the child is my responsibility. Now I know the greatest responsibility you’ve ever known is to fill your stomach with meat and beer but this matters. If we do not find the girl soon the child may die. The child may already be dead. And then it is on our heads.

It’s not on my head shrugged the Poacher.

Yes said the Priest. Yes it is. We will have the community to answer to.

I’m just here to guide you that’s all. That’s what you said. I’m just here for my knowledge. The bairn’s life has nowt to do with me. It’s not me what took her.

And if you don’t help me find them you might as well have taken that baby and stabbed it through the heart yourself with that pocketknife of yours and fed it to your dog because soon that helpless child will be nothing but useless dead meat if you don’t get a move on and do what it is I had paid you to do.

The Priest said this without drawing breath.

The Poacher listened for a moment then he said I’ll tell you then Father.

Tell me what?

About my leg.

I’m really not that interested now.

Well I’ll tell you anyway and then you can decide if you’re interested.

This is what I mean. A long drawn out charade of wasted words. Wasted words equal wasted energy. Wasted energy slows us down. You’re making yourself into a murderer of children.

I’m no murderer of children Father and your God can strike me down here and now if that’s what he thinks. He’s already punished me the once.

If I had known –

Known what Father? said the Poacher.

That I was travelling with a bloody cripple.

That’s not very Christian of you Father. What does the Bible say about the sick and the needy?

You don’t look sick and needy to me. Just impeded.

That’s as maybe Father. But I am injured. Struck down I was. It must have been a quarter century ago now. I was not yet a teenager. It was winter.

Let me guess: you tripped over during Bible study.

Sarcasm Father. It suits you no more than a bonnet and rouge would.

I’m being sarcastic because I know what you are going to say.

How can you know Father? Do you read minds as well as judge us ordinary everyday folk?

I have spent entire months – maybe even years – of my life listening to the confessions of your kind –

My kind?

Yes said the Priest. Uncivilised idiots. Earthy folk. The stricken. You’re much the same. My ear has long been trained to your banal stories of self-inflicted woe and hardship. Adultery poverty incest skullduggery inter-breeding. Your tawdry animalistic existences in your pigsty hovels. I have a good idea what your lot are going to say before you even say it. You’re not exactly deep and erudite thinkers around these parts are you.

I thought you cared about your congregation?

All I care about is serving Him snapped the Priest. Everything I do is for Him. If I had it my way I wouldn’t have to listen to another mangled word of English from your ugly rotting mouths. If I had it my way I’d whip your stupid eyes. But such is the way of this calling. And as you yourself said you’re not a believer so why should I care about you or your gammy leg or any of your other misfortunes. You are a sinner and you are going the way of all sinners: to hell.

If the Poacher was insulted he did not show it.

What about this girl then? he countered. The imbecile. Is she going to hell too for her physical afflictions and humble beginnings?

My point is I know fine well you lost your foot in a man trap while out thieving or contracted gangrene due to neglect or a lack of vitamins or a wall fell on you while you were sodomising your sister or maybe debridement by maggots went awry or your father held your foot in the fire because you spilled his hallowed nightly libation –

You’re not from Cumberland are you Father?

No.

Or Westmorland.

No.

Or the countryside of the northlands.

No.

Where then?

It doesn’t matter.

I’d like to know said the Poacher. I really would.

Well you’ll have a long wait.

Why are you so full of hatred Father?

I wasn’t aware I was.

Oh I would definitely say you are.

You don’t know anything about me.

I’ve seen and heard enough.

You’ve seen and heard nothing.

I’ve heard plenty smirked the Poacher. You cut quite the figure around town in your cape. A different nun with you every time. People talk.

People are stupid.

Tongues do wag Father.

The words of the wicked lie in wait for blood but the speech of the upright rescues them.

All I’m saying is –

Where is the girl? said the Priest.

What?

Where is the girl? he said again. Do your job and answer the question.

I believe she’ll have headed for the lake Father but the lake is busy on these summer days and I reckon the crowds will have put the fear in her. So she’ll have carried on and be headed for the next town over Father. She’ll go where the food is. You’ll not need telling that’s some thirty odd hard miles over crag and boulder yet. Likely she’ll take a back way though. Away from prying eyes. She’ll surface sooner or later – if she makes it. The hills can be cruel if you’ve got nowt about you. We just need to keep our eyes open. We’ll find her and the bairn though dead or alive I couldn’t say.

THE RAIN FELL for a long time. It pecked at the soil and flattened the leaves on the trees and drenched the carpet of needles and the clumps of moss in the clearing but the girl was dry and the baby was dry and their things were dry.

Yet despite the noise and the violence of the rainfall it wasn’t cold. And between the elongated wet bolts there was a stillness. A sense of the day beginning anew; a refreshment of the fells.

The girl watched the rain. She tried to train her eyes to follow individual drops but they fell too fast and she felt dizzy if she looked at them too long. Then she watched the impact that the drops had on the ground and the trees and the scrub all around her. As she watched the rain rake the land she felt like a creature in a hole.

And she spoke to the baby. She held it up close and bounced it on her chest then she rolled onto her side. She didn’t use words – only her thoughts. She shared them with the child and it tried to grab her nose and put its fingers in her mouth. The girl pulled faces and puffed her cheeks and stuck her tongue out and the rain fell. And she spoke to it from inside her head.

They ate berries from the tin can and their lips turned the darkest purple once again.

After a few hours the rain slowed. The drops shrunk and then they stopped altogether and the sky was clear. The tension had gone and when the girl breathed in deep the air smelled sweet.

She took the baby down to the tarn to drink water. The storm had stirred up the silt so it was cloudy and swollen and at the far end there was a new run-off that carved a watery path down the hillside into the next valley. The mountains beyond formed the rim of a giant basin that was jagged against the clear sky. She thought she could see movements up there. Tiny dots walking along the crest; two or three of them so small they might not exist at all.

Anxiety pierced her core and she knew that she would have to move again soon.

They washed and drank and by the time they had walked back to the clearing the sun was setting and soon the day would be over. The girl was wet up to the waist from the grass and bracken.

The baby began to cry so she took a breast out to let it suckle a while. Soon she was dry and sore but the baby had stopped crying so she set it down and gave it her dolly rag to play with.

She pulled the kindling out from underneath the tree and she took the matches the man had given her and lit it. When it was burning she piled bigger sticks on there and then let the fire settle in. She worried about someone seeing the smoke so she let the fire become small and then rolled her potato into the embers with a stick and sat and watched it then she turned to tickle the baby.

She left the potato in the fire for a long time. She put a big stone in there too. She stared into the embers and when she looked up the sky was darker.

When it was fully dark she first rolled the stone out then the potato and set one of the tins on the stone to warm it.

The potato was black. She set it aside to cool a little then she rolled the tin off the stone and set that aside too then when she could wait no longer and her stomach was growling in frustration she opened it. It was broth. It smelled delicious.

She mashed the potato with the spoon and ate some. It was soft and fluffy. She put some on a bracken leaf to cool. The broth wasn’t warm near the top so she fed it to the baby who took it hungrily and grabbed for more. She gave it more. A spoon of broth for the baby then potato for herself.

Broth for the baby. Potato for herself.

Then she swapped it and gave some of the cooled potato to the baby and took some soup for herself.

Potato for the baby broth for herself.

Potato then broth. The fire crackling.

Potato then broth. Blowing on the embers.

When the potato was done she folded the skin and put it away for later. They finished the broth. The girl scraped the tin. Contorted her tongue. Lapped at it.

The girl threw bracken onto the fire to kill the glow but not the heat. It started smoking then but she liked the smell it made so left it a while even though it was making her eyes water.

The baby belched.

So did she.

The baby slept.

So did she.

THE DOG PICKED up the scent strong and hauled them up a tree-covered hill near to the end of the lake. The going was steep. The two men conserved their breath.

The dog was panting and salivating. Its wet nose swept the ground and it pulled at its rope until the Poacher untied it and it sprinted on through the trees kicking dirt and dead needles behind it.

They heard it barking up ahead and they quickened their pace. The Poacher withdrew his skinning knife.

When they reached it the dog was crouched low and growling at a man who had pressed himself up against a trunk. Its teeth were showing. Its nostrils flared. Drool suspended. Pendulous.

The Poacher called the dog off but it still kept its eyes on the man and emitted a low curdling growl.

Have you seen a lass? said the Poacher.

The man kept his eyes on the dog.

Well now gentlemen.

Carrying a baby said the Poacher.

The man looked from the Poacher to the Priest. Saw the knife. Saw the Priest’s eyes. His strange small teeth. The dog bayed. A low noise. Like rusted metal cogs turning.

The Priest looked beyond him and through the trees to the gaping aperture of a cave.

You’re Solomon said the Priest. Aren’t you.

The man straightened and sniffed. Shrugged with forced nonchalance.

The Cave Man said the Priest.

I’ve heard of him said the Poacher. I’ve heard of you. Didn’t think you existed.

I sometimes wonder myself.

Have you seen her? said the Priest. A girl carrying a baby.

Tom Solomon shrugged.

I see many people.

The Poacher spoke. His voice raised into a tone of incredulity.

What – up here in the middle of nowhere? I doubt it.

The child’s not hers said the Priest. She stole it.

I’m sure she had her reasons.

So you have seen her said the Poacher.

I never said that my good men. Besides. I’m not someone to pry in another’s business. Similarly if you two want to skulk around up here in the woods then skulk away. That’s your prerogative. You can be assured I’ll say nothing about it to anyone. Discretion is valour.

Don’t get smart.

Aye said the Poacher. Smart-arse.

He stepped forward.

How about we have a look around this cave of his Father?

Father? You’re a man of the cloth are you asked Solomon. Well now. I’d love to engage you in a debate about the merits of atheism – try and coax you over to my side if you like. Futile I’m sure but a lively theological discussion is always welcome.

Not you as well said the Priest.

As well? I just wondered where you stood on the whole God-is-dead strand of thought.

The Priest moved forwards and spoke.

There’ll be no debating.

We’re turning over your hovel said the Poacher.

Solomon raised his hands. The dog growled again. A threatening baritone gurgle from deep within its straining gullet.

Gentlemen. I’m afraid entrance is by invite only. If you’d like to schedule a dinner date with my secretary I would be more than happy –

Fucken smart arse tramp said the Poacher as he strode forward and swung the knife in front of Solomon’s face. It caught his cheek and opened it up in an instant. He stumbled backwards. The dog growled. Nothing happened for a moment. Then a sheet of blood ran down Tom Solomon’s gaping cheek and he gasped. He put his hand to it then looked at the smear across his palm. A flap of skin hung from below his cheek bone. He felt his hanging flesh again then again looked at his hand in disbelief. Through it the men could see a top row of teeth set deep in the jawbone.

The Priest unscrewed the vial from his necklace. He inhaled deeply and he sniffed and then he exhaled and then he spoke

I will leave your flesh on the mountains and fill the valleys with your carcass he said.

Yeah said the Poacher.

I will water the land with what flows from you and the river beds shall be filled with your blood.

The Poacher nodded.

He will and all.

When I snuff you out I will cover the heavens and all the stars will darken said the Priest.

And that’ll learn you.