The Binding

‘Robert, don’t—’

‘You’ll go. If I have to truss you up and leave you on her doorstep, you’ll go. Be ready tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Alta spun round so fast her plait swung out like a rope. ‘He can’t go tomorrow, he’ll need time to pack – and there’s the harvest, the harvest supper … Please, Pa.’

‘Shut up!’

Silence.

‘Tomorrow?’ The blotches on Ma’s cheeks had spread into a flush of scarlet. ‘We never said …’ Her voice trailed off. My father finished his gin, swallowing with a grimace as if his mouth was full of stones.

I opened my mouth to tell her it was all right, I’d go, they wouldn’t have to worry about me any more; but my throat was too dry from the reaping.

‘A few more days. Robert, the other apprentices don’t go until after the harvest – and he’s still not well, a couple of days …’

‘They’re younger than he is. And he’s well enough to travel, if he did a day in the fields.’

‘Yes, but …’ She moved towards him and caught his arm so that he couldn’t turn away. ‘A little more time.’

‘For pity’s sake, Hilda!’ He made a choking sound and tried to wrench himself away. ‘Don’t make this any harder. You think I want to let him go? You think that after we tried so hard – fought to keep a pure house – you think I’m proud of it, when my own father lost an eye marching in the Crusade?’

Ma glanced at Alta and me. ‘Not in front of—’

‘What does it matter now?’ He wiped his forearm across his face; then with a helpless gesture he flung the mug to the floor. It didn’t break. Alta watched it roll towards her and stop. Pa turned his back on us and bent over the dresser as if he was trying to catch his breath. There was a silence.

‘I’ll go,’ I said, ‘I’ll go tomorrow.’ I couldn’t look at any of them. I got up, hitting my knee against the corner of the table as I pushed back my chair. I struggled to the door. The latch seemed smaller and stiffer than it usually was, and the clunk as it opened echoed off the walls.

Outside, the moon divided the world into deep blue and silver. The air was warm and as soft as cream, scented with hay and summer dust. An owl chuckled in the near field.

I reeled across to the far side of the yard and leant against the wall. It was hard to breathe. Ma’s voice hung in my ears: That bloody witch will put a curse on us. And Pa, answering: She already has.

They were right; I was good for nothing. Misery rose inside me, as strong as the stabbing pains in my legs. Before this, I’d never been ill in my life. I never knew that my body could betray me, that my mind could go out like a lamp and leave nothing but darkness. I couldn’t remember getting sick; if I tried, all I saw was a mess of nightmare-scorched fragments. Even my memories of my life before that – last spring, last winter – were tinged with the same gangrenous shadow, as if nothing was healthy any more. I knew that I’d collapsed after midsummer, because Ma had told me so, and that I’d been on the way home from Castleford; but no one had explained where I’d been, or what had happened. I must have been driving the cart – without a hat, under a hot sun, probably – but when I tried to think back there was nothing but a rippling mirage, a last vertiginous glimpse of sunlight before the blackness swallowed me. For weeks afterwards, I’d only surfaced to scream and struggle and beg them to untie me. No wonder they wanted to get rid of me.

I closed my eyes. I could still see the three of them, their arms round one another. Something whispered behind me, scratching in the wall like dry claws. It wasn’t real, but it drowned out the owl and the rustle of trees. I rested my head on my arms and pretended I couldn’t hear it.

I must have drawn back instinctively into the deepest corner of darkness, because when I opened my eyes Alta was in the middle of the yard, calling my name without looking in my direction. The moon had moved; now it was over the gable of the farmhouse and all the shadows were short and squat.

‘Emmett?’

‘Yes,’ I said. Alta jumped and took a step forward to peer at me.

‘What are you doing there? Were you asleep?’

‘No.’

She hesitated. Behind her the light from a lamp crossed the upper window as someone went to bed. I started to pull myself to my feet and paused, wincing, as pain stabbed into my joints.

She watched me get up, without offering to help. ‘Did you mean it? That you’d go? Tomorrow?’

‘Pa meant it when he said I didn’t have any choice.’

I waited for her to disagree. Alta was clever like that, finding new paths or different ways of doing things, picking locks. But she only tilted her face upward as if she wanted the moonlight to bleach her skin. I swallowed. The stupid dizziness had come back – suddenly, dragging me one way and then another – and I swayed against the wall and tried to catch my breath.

‘Emmett? Are you all right?’ She bit her lip. ‘No, of course not. Sit down.’

I didn’t want to obey her but my knees folded of their own accord. I closed my eyes and inhaled the night smells of hay and cooling earth, the overripe sweetness of crushed weeds and a rank hint of manure. Alta’s skirts billowed and rustled as she sank down beside me.

‘I wish you didn’t have to go.’

I raised one shoulder without looking at her and let it drop again.

‘But … maybe it’s the best thing …’

‘How can it be?’ I swallowed, trying to fill the crack in my voice. ‘All right, I understand. I’m no use here. You’ll all be better off when I’m – wherever she is, this binder.’

‘Out on the marshes, on the Castleford road.’

‘Right.’ What would the marshes smell of? Stagnant water, rotting reeds. Mud. Mud that swallowed you alive if you went too far from the road, and never spat you back … ‘How do you know so much about it?’

‘Ma and Pa are only thinking about you. After everything that’s happened … You’ll be safe there.’

‘That’s what Ma said.’

A pause. She began to gnaw at her thumbnail. In the orchard below the stables a nightingale gurgled and then gave up.

‘You don’t know what it’s been like for them, Emmett. Always afraid. You owe them some peace.’

‘It’s not my fault I was ill!’

‘It’s your fault you—’ She huffed out her breath. ‘No, I know, I didn’t mean … just that we all need … please don’t be angry. It’s a good thing. You’ll learn a trade.’

‘Yes. Making books.’

She flinched. ‘She chose you. That must mean—’

‘What does it mean? How can she have chosen me, when she’s never even seen me?’ I thought Alta started to speak, but when I turned my head she was staring up at the moon, her face expressionless. Her cheeks were thinner than they had been before I got ill, and the skin under her eyes looked as if it had been smudged with ash. She was a stranger, out of reach.

She said, as if it was an answer, ‘I’ll come and see you whenever I can …’

I let my head roll back until I felt the stone wall against my skull. ‘They talked you round, didn’t they?’

‘I’ve never seen Pa like that,’ she said. ‘So angry.’

‘I have,’ I said. ‘He hit me, once.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘well, I suppose you—’ She stopped.

‘When I was small,’ I said. ‘You weren’t old enough to remember. It was the day of Wakening Fair.’