of Joe.
‘Pray for us, Rita, would you?’ Margot asked.
Rita prayed, and when she had finished, Margot loosened her hand from Joe’s. She joined his hands together, then placed her own hands in her lap. She allowed two tears to escape, one from each eye.
‘Never mind me,’ she said to Rita. ‘You get on.’
On the other side of the wall, there were minutes that might have been hours, then a contraction at last delivered a baby. In a slick rush it dropped into Rita’s hands.
‘Ah!’ whispered the Little Margots in shocked delight. ‘What is it?’
Rita blinked in surprise.
‘I’ve heard of this. I’ve never seen it. The sac usually bursts before the baby emerges. That’s the water breaking. This one didn’t break.’
The perfect infant was in an underwater world. Eyes fast shut, with liquid movements, little fists dreamily opening and closing, it was sleep-swimming inside a transparent, water-filled membrane.
Rita touched the pearly sac with the tip of a knife, and a great split ran around it.
Water splashed.
The baby boy, opening his eyes and mouth at the same time, discovered to his great astonishment air and the world.
Fathers and Sons
FLEET’S HOOVES SPLASHED through the water. In the dimness of the night, there was a flat sheen like pewter all around, disturbed only by their own movements. Armstrong thought of all the small land creatures, mice and voles and weasels, and hoped that they had found safety. He thought of the birds, the night hunters, thrown from their normal feeding ground. He thought of the fish that strayed without knowing it from the main current and now found themselves swimming through grass a few inches above the ground, sharing territory with him and with his horse. He hoped Fleet would not tread on any creature lost in this landscape that no longer belonged clearly to earth or water. He hoped they would all be well.
They came to the oak, near Brandy Island.
He heard a sound. As he turned, a silhouette separated itself from the darkness of the tree trunk.
‘Robin!’
‘You took your time!’
Armstrong dismounted. In the semi-darkness his son hunched against the cold and shivered in his thin jacket. His words had been spoken abruptly with a man’s swagger, but a quiver cut into his voice and left the boldness in tatters.
Compassion flared instinctively in Armstrong, but he remembered the curved line of red on his daughter’s neck. ‘Your own sister,’ he said in a dark voice, and shook his head. ‘It is beyond belief …’
‘It’s Mother’s fault,’ Robin said. ‘If she’d only done what I said, it need never have happened.’
‘You blame your mother?’
‘I blame her for many things, and yes, that is one.’
‘How can you try to make this her fault? Your mother is the best woman in the world. Whose hand held the knife to Susan’s throat? Whose hand has the knife still?’
There was silence. Then:
‘Have you brought the money?’
‘There will be time to talk of money later. There are other things we must speak of first.’
‘There is no time. Give me the money now and let me go. There is not a minute to lose.’
‘Why the rush, Robin? Who is after you? What have you done?’
‘Debts.’
‘Work your way out of debt. Come home to the farm and work like your brothers.’
‘The farm? It’s one thing for you to get up at five every morning to feed the pigs in the cold and the dark. I am made for a better life.’
‘You’ll have to come to some arrangement with whoever made you the loan. I can’t pay it all. It’s too much.’
‘This isn’t some gentlemanly loan I’m talking about. This is not a banker, ready to renegotiate terms.’ There came a sound that was a sob or a laugh. ‘Give me the money – or you send me to the gallows. Hush!’
Their ears strained in the darkness. Nothing.
‘The money! If I do not get away tonight—’
‘To go where?’
‘Away. Anywhere. Where nobody knows me.’
‘And leave so many questions behind you?’
‘There’s no time!’
‘Tell me the truth about your wife, Robin. Tell me the truth about Alice.’
‘What does it matter? They’re dead! Finished. Gone.’
‘Not one word of sorrow? Remorse?’
‘I thought she was bringing money with her! She said her parents would come round. Set us up in life. Instead she was a millstone round my neck. She’s dead, and she drowned the child, and good riddance to the pair of them.’
‘How can you speak so?’
The slim, shaking silhouette stiffened suddenly.
‘Did you hear something?’ Robin asked in a low murmur.
‘Nothing.’
His son listened intently for a few