Folk Read online

  Clotha has relished these snippets of storm news, jinking about the house like a restless dog, pressing her ear to walls, holding out her hand as if hoping for drips through the roof. Madden stays curled in a chair. She cannot even hear the sea beyond the roar and smash of wind and rain, but she wants to crawl into the cave at the far shore end, and find what new passageways have opened and shut now. Her father showed her this cave, a hiding place that is never the same twice. He used to take her there, while her ma was still nursing Clotha, and send her in while he kept an eye on the tide.

  ‘What did you find?’ he would ask when she came out, blinking, and he would make her draw the cave’s shape in the sand, showing how it had changed since the last time. Then one day, after a wild spring tide, when the shape she drew in the sand showed a cavern that had never been there before, he sent her back in. ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘until you can see in the dark.’

  She had crouched in the nook of rock, hearing her breath echo, until there on the cavern wall, she saw. It was the shape of a horse, and a boy leading it. Small, but not a trick of the rock: carved in. Then her father was there, at her shoulder.

  ‘Shift,’ he whispered, pulling a chisel from his pocket. She watched him chip around the boy’s head, the stone ringing with each hammer knock. ‘Come and look.’

  Now it was a girl who led the horse across the cavern wall, with long curling hair like her own.

  ‘Soon as you’re old enough,’ her father said, ‘we’ll get you as skilled with the horses as any boy. And if time comes I’m gone, you’ll have my work, and take care of your ma and Clotha.’

  Now, Madden pictures the sea churning sand through the cave, washing it away, so that the cavern is opened up again, the horse and girl showing on the wall. Then she watches the fierce water scrubbing them out.

  ‘Stay awake,’ Clotha hisses in her ear, pinching her arm. Madden rubs her eyes, hearing again the storm roar that had faded for a moment. She must not sleep. Clotha is hunting for drips again, but it is not the roof that worries Madden.

  Her belly had turned to ice that day in the cave, for horses terrified her even then. Now, at sixteen years old, she’s been apprenticed four years at the High Farm, where her father makes workers of the wild horses and knocks the farm-born ones into shape. Not the son he wanted, but his eldest child, and he has no inkling how hard she has to try not to run away from those beasts, to be still when she looks at their rolling eyes, their twitching shoulders. She cannot harness their might, the way her father does.

  Instead, she dreams of horses every night, the thunder of hooves rolling towards her, and she thrashes awake just as she will be trampled. But worse than the terrors: ever since the gorse-burning when Crab was lost, she has begun to wander in her sleep again. She has not done this since she was a child.

  Only last week, Robin Prowd, the lanky, straggle-haired man who gives her father work at the High Farm, was waiting at the gate one morning.

  ‘A word, in the house, Pike,’ he said. When her father came back out his cheeks were as red as embers.

  ‘See this?’ Pike pointed to where the heavy iron bar, the one for keeping the barn door shut and the horses in, lay on the ground. ‘Seeing as you took it down, you put it back up now.’

  Madden stared. The bar was as long as she was. ‘I can’t,’ she said.

  ‘You did, so you will. The colt’s out and the mare too.’

  After she’d struggled with the weight of it long enough to sweat, burning with a disgrace that didn’t seem to belong to her, he had taken one end and dragged it away. ‘If those horses don’t come back, if we can’t find them ourselves, we’ll bear the cost. Robin saw you do it himself, middle of last night.’

  She didn’t believe him, but climbing into bed that night, she found the mud on her sheets. Then the shame she had not felt for years came sidling back.

  When she was young, her ma would coddle her. ‘He’s worried for you, that’s all,’ she used to say, while Pike shook his head. Her father’s silence, his stony eyes, told her something else.

  She must not sleep.

  Thunder breaks again, a long cracking sound as though a piece of cloud has broken off, and somewhere nearby wood splits and creaks. The cave at the far shore end is roaring.

  I said I wouldn’t tell. Not this time. It bothered me bad enough that I told Pike Lightfoot his daughter had been up to the farm in the night and let out the horses. I only meant it were odd, and he should keep an eye on her. But there he stood and yelled at her with all the farmhands to hear. There’d been something strange about her that night, walking so slow but strong enough to take down the iron bar, looking at me but not looking.

  Still, I’d almost forgot it when this storm came in. I’d the horses to think of, bolted after the fence gave in the night, and Trick in a rage, blaming all but himself for the loss. I’ve seen plenty of storms blow in, blow havoc and blow out again. It can be a fine thing, in its way, takes off a skin of earth, washes out the grumblings and stinks that have been growing, and leaves us fresh as peeled apples. But there’s storms and there’s storms, and this one, it were ruthless, never-ending. Enough to put thunder in anyone’s head.

  It were right up high on the hill I saw her, while I trudged out looking for the horses. Scrap of washing, I thought, flapping up there against a rock in the middle of Murnon’s sheep field. Meant to pick it up and keep it for its owner. But when I got closer I saw it were a nightdress and, inside it, Madden Lightfoot. She lay still as if she were warming herself on a sunny spring day.

  I called out, loud as I could in the wind and the sideways rain. She stirred from the rock where she’d been lying and looked up, and then she walked right off, in the opposite way from me. I shouted some more, but on she went, like she didn’t hear at all. Put me in mind of how she’d been when I caught her by the barn the other night. Something not right. And I remembered that poor girl Plum, then, who went out in a rainstorm that night a while past. What trouble that led to, though Trick never admitted his hand in it. My brother was out here, somewhere. The least I should do was to see this girl safe, so I followed.

  The oddest path Madden took across Murnon’s field, seeming to feel with her feet in all that mud. Then she climbed right over the field wall, even though there’s a stile but a few yards away, and dropped down to go on walking on the other side. I went by the stile but I kept my eye on her. She didn’t go fast, but steady in spite of that jostling wet wind. Two more fields she crossed in that way, straight over walls like she hardly noticed them.

  I were wet to my guts by then, and she’d not as much as turned to look at me. I were wondering what to do, if I should make a grab for her and get her home by sheer force. But she turned into the wood, pushed her way fearless through the holly thickets and there in the gully, up to her knees in a mire of leaf and black mud, she found my mare.

  It seemed a blessing that – as if she were paying me back for letting the same creature out before. I had some trouble to get my hand knotted firm in the mare’s mane, get her soothed.

  ‘Is that what you’re out for, helping find my bolted horses?’ I asked. She stared at me but she didn’t answer. Her look seemed to go through me. ‘Might be time to get home now, get dry,’ I tried. I were starting to feel a dunnock, talking with no answers. But then the thunder cracked, and the poor mare whinnied, and the girl gave a shudder, and all in a rush so sudden after her standing there so quiet, she ran at me and grabbed my hand. She were yelling something all jumbled. She caught me by surprise, pulled my hand so hard I lost my grip on the mane, and dragged me away from the mare. I had a struggle, then, running after the horse in all that mulch, and Madden Lightfoot went marching off, and I couldn’t catch up with her until we were halfway back over the field.

  She turned and saw me. Both of us were as draggled as trolls, but that odd, empty look in her face had gone. She seemed to know me again.

  ‘You did me a good deed,’ I said. ‘Let me see you home safe.’

&n
bsp; But she looked at the mare and shook her head. ‘Please don’t tell my father you saw me out,’ she said, and with that, she ran off, down towards her house.

  Clotha’s squeal is what makes Madden look down and see the muddy prints she has left. Her ankles are thick with stuck-on leaves, and her dress as brown as if it were made from a sack. But it is too late to clean up, there are voices at the door and her ma sweeps in fast behind her, head down in a whisk of water and wind. She is in a wretched state herself, her hair twizzled into a soggy nest and her bluish face scratched all over, and everything soaked.

  ‘Where d’you get to, and get like that?’ she asks, and shakes her head at Madden. ‘Your father saw you coming down from the field. He’ll want an answer. Now see if you can get that fire up. I’d give my fingers and toes for hot water, if I could feel them.’

  Madden shoves her feet into her boots to hide the mud, just as her father follows through the door, and hurls his sopping cap on to the floor. Her mind is full of that horse, and Robin there too with her, all of a sudden in the field. She wonders what she has done this time. There’s not a moment to puzzle out which would be least bad, to say she’s gone wandering in her sleep, or that she’d purposely disobeyed, for already her father has his shoulder against the great oak table and is groaning with the effort as he pushes it towards the door. When he has it wedged there, he stops, and leans. ‘We’ll have no more of it,’ is all he says.

  Madden stays quiet. At least this way she cannot do it again.

  ‘But the roof, Pike,’ calls her ma, from where she is digging out dry clothes from the cupboard. ‘If it slides we’ll be stuck under a heap of wet thatch.’

  ‘It can’t go on much longer, this storm,’ Pike replies. ‘Safer in here than out there.’ He doesn’t even look at Madden.

  ‘Well, I’ll keep awake, even if you can’t stay up another night.’

  ‘Me too,’ Madden says. She cannot shake the horse out of her head and is afraid of it becoming a whole sky full of horses, thundering into her dreams, giving her terrors. If she stays awake, she cannot dream. She cannot wander in her sleep.

  Pike is the only one who climbs up to the sleeping loft, still in his wet clothes. Her ma sits Clotha between her knees by the hearth while they dig for sparks.

  ‘What shall we sing, to keep wide awake?’ Ma starts humming a rambling tune.

  Behind it Madden can hear the tick, tick of the dripping thatch, drifting in and out of patterns, now like a clock, now like a patter of running feet. The room is foggy with smoke from the fire where water flicks down the chimney. She thinks of Crab, trapped in the burning, smoking gorse. Then she tries to shift her mind from that, and thinks instead of the cave at the far shore end, all the deep, dark rooms it might have now, how the girl leading the horse might have been smashed right away by the sea.

  Ma’s singing has turned to a burble, and now it has become only whistling snores. Clotha’s head is resting on her knee, mouth open. The wind growls at the walls. Madden’s eyelids are heavy, heavy as the oak table she’d never be able to shift, too heavy to hold back a cloud of horses. Around the house, thunder cracks.

  Back at the stable, and the mare safe, I remember I thought on Madden Lightfoot. Couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Don’t tell my father, she’d said. But I didn’t like the idea of keeping it from Pike, if she were to go wandering about again, and something were to befall her out in that storm. It was still raging then, and I’d seen on my way back up to the farm how everything were shifted about. Trees down or standing where there were none before. Lanes gone and hedges washed away and all the landmarks made so they muddled the eye, if they were there at all. It gnawed at me, the thought of her out alone with that uncanny look about her, like it were another creature behind her eyes. Trick hadn’t found the colt, and he’d left for the ale room. To see our sister kept well there, he said, but I knew the reason were her liquor and not her good health. So, with another horse to find, I made up my mind it would be a good deed, to pass by the Lightfoots’ and have a word with Pike.

  Night had fallen by then, with scant moonlight behind the running clouds, but I made it back down to the house. I were waiting, thinking out what I’d say, when a boom of thunder shook the whole place, and then I saw the door open a crack, the glow from their fire showing. It shifted a bit more, then out she slid, Madden Lightfoot, and came walking right out into the night.

  ‘Weather for staying indoors,’ I said, or some such, as she passed near me. It were like before: she didn’t seem to hear. The girl were looking at me odd again, with no meaning in her face, and then went walking right past. I didn’t like to shout, I remembered the way she’d shuddered at the mare’s whinny in the wood, and grabbed at me so hard I lost my footing. I weren’t afraid, quite; wary perhaps. I set out after her.

  The rain were easing, but the wind still whipped at us. She didn’t seem to mind it. The moon when it showed between the clouds lit her way a little, though this time she didn’t make for the wood but wandered towards the village. She trotted across the river bridge without a moment’s pause, though the water had torn whole trees from its banks. The village was but a mire, and the shut-up houses looked ready to sink right into it. On she went, not another soul out and about, until we’d reached the shore.

  Bitter the air was there, and stinking of the fish that the sea had smashed on the rocks. All the foam on the high waves showed pale, and the sound of it enough to make a man quake, but on she went, walking where the shore-edge path used to be but were now just a mess of rocks and mangled turf. Partway along, I saw a fluttering shape crouched on the beach. It stood as we went by, and I saw that it were Guller the fowlmonger, dangling a dead cormorant from each fist. He shouted something about fine pickings, and I shuddered, but Madden did not even turn.

  At the end of the shore path she began climbing up the outcrop that hangs over the cave there. I struggled on the wet rock, all covered with seaweed flung up and mud flung down, but she got up nimble as a goat and when I heaved up beside her, the sight were a wild one. I’ll never forget.

  The middle of the rocky ledge had crumbled right away and a spray from the cave below came puffing up out of it like smoke. Waves smashed and boomed down there, and I shouted out for her to be careful, but she paid no heed. I ran to where she was bending to look down, and above the rushing of the water I heard a panicked whinny. I could hardly make it out, but down in the cave were one of my horses, thrashing in the water. There were nothing I could do for the poor beast. I held on to the girl to keep her from falling and together we stared down.

  It was then I heard a yelling behind us and there was a man, clambering up the rocks. It were Pike Lightfoot.

  ‘Madden!’ he shouted.

  He were slipping on those black rocks. A mercy it would have been if he’d never got on to the outcrop.

  ‘Watch how you step,’ I called, but that only made him gather strength, and then he were standing before us. The girl didn’t say a word.

  ‘Madden!’ he shouted again, but it were me he looked at. ‘Give her to me.’

  I wanted to tell him not to shout, not to fright her. ‘I only followed her,’ I said, ‘to keep her safe.’ I couldn’t say, right there beside her, that something seemed not right. That she’d thunder in her head.

  Pike were right up close, then, and nowhere to go with the hole right behind us. The wind were like a hand swiping at us. He grabbed hold of me, and the wave that must have come in below made a boom like it would blow us into the sky. The air split with it, and Madden gave a scream, and she pushed us away from her, me and Pike, with such a might that we both fell. I smacked the rock, but Pike, one quick tumble and he were gone.

  I looked down into the cave but I could see nothing, only the swirl of that treacherous water.

  Some while I crouched there, between that staring girl, with her strange, quiet face, and the roaring from the cave. Whichever horse of mine had been down there had gone, and so had Pike Lightfoot. I were
looking down again, when I felt her hand on my shoulder. She gazed about at the rock and the shore below, all those big, churning waves, and I saw her eyes had changed to knowing again. They had fear in them now. She said to me, ‘Please, Robin, don’t tell my father that I went walking in the night, will you? I’ll make up for the horses I let out. Please don’t tell.’

  She trembled like a struck bell.

  ‘I won’t tell,’ I said.

  And I haven’t told. For what good could come of it?

  Her ma is still snoring, and Clotha twitching in her sleep alongside, when Madden creeps into the house. The great oak table is shifted back from the door, and she wedges a stool against the door to keep it shut. She will say the wind must have done it, that she woke to hear it banging in the dark. Her father will be fast asleep still up in the loft. Nobody need know that she has wandered in the night at all.

  The dripping from the thatch and in the chimney has stopped. Even the wind has given up its howling and makes only weary whispers about the house.

  Madden crouches beside the dwindled fire and pokes in new kindling, to make it warm for when the three sleepers awake.

  Crouched between the grey bean plants, Iska watches her mammy drop pinches of earth into her mouth like breadcrumbs. She sits on the ground with her legs stuck out, the soles of her dirty feet showing, and as she drops and chews, she rubs her belly.

  Iska has washed the cabbages for her mammy enough times to know that earth is not for eating. The sight sluices the grumble right out of her belly.

  Only this morning she brought her sleeping mammy a breakfast, the last egg coddled just soft how she taught her, carried quick to the box bed so it was still warm. When Iska drew the curtain back, the wholesome scent of the egg under her mammy’s nose woke her. She took one look and batted Iska away, her cheeks pulsing and her hand clapped over her mouth as she dashed for the piss-pot. Iska watched Skipper lap up the orange yolk with one slap of his long doggy tongue.