for an eternity, it would drip until the river ran dry. The hovering child turned a malevolent gaze on the sleeper in the chair and slowly – slowly – raised a hazy hand to point at her.
Lily woke with a sudden start—
The river child evaporated.
For a few moments, Lily stared in alarm at the spot in the air where the girl had been.
‘Oh!’ she gasped. ‘Oh! Oh!’ She brought her hands to her face as if to hide the image, but also peeped between her fingers to reassure herself that the girl was gone.
All this time and it never got any easier. The girl was still furious. If only she would stay a little bit longer so that Lily could talk to her. Tell her she was sorry. Tell her she would pay any price demanded, give up anything, do anything … But by the time Lily got the use of her tongue, the girl had gone.
Lily leant forward, still in fear, to stare at the floorboards where the river child had hovered. There were dark marks there, she could just make them out in the fading light. She heaved herself from the chair and shuffled reluctantly across the floor. She extended her hand, placed outstretched fingers against the darkness.
The floor was wet.
Lily brought her hands together in prayer. ‘Take me out of the mire, that I sink not: O let me be delivered out of the deep waters. Let not the flood drown me, neither let the deep swallow me up.’ Rapidly she repeated the words until her breathing was regular, and then she got painfully to her feet and said, ‘Amen.’
She felt troubled and it wasn’t just the aftermath of the visitation. Was the river on the rise? She went to the window. Its dark gleam was no nearer the cottage than before.
Him, then. Was he coming? She looked for movement outdoors, strained her ears for the sound of his approach. Nothing.
It was neither of these things.
What, then?
The answer when it came was spoken in a voice so like her mother’s it took her aback, till she realized it was her own: ‘Something is going to happen.’
Mr Armstrong at Bampton
SOMETHING IS GOING to happen, they all thought. And soon after, at the Swan at Radcot, it did.
Now what?
On the first morning following the longest night, the clatter of hooves on cobbles announced a visitor to the village of Bampton. The few who happened to be outside at this early hour frowned and looked up. What fool was this, riding at full tilt into their narrow street? When horse and rider came into view, they grew curious. Instead of it being one of their own immature lads, the rider was an outsider, and more than that: he was a black man. His face was grave and the clouds of vapour he exhaled this cold morning lent him an air of fury. When he slowed, they took one look at him and hopped promptly into doorways, shutting their doors firmly behind them.
Robert Armstrong was used to the effect he had on strangers. His fellow humans had always been wary of him at first sight. The blackness of his skin made him the outsider, and his height and strength, which would have been an advantage to any white man, only made people more wary. In fact, as other living creatures understood very well, he was the gentlest of souls. Take Fleet, for instance. She had been called too wild to tame, and that was why he got her for a song, yet once he was in the saddle, the two of them were the best of friends within half an hour. And the cat. A skinny thing with an ear missing, which appeared in his barn one winter’s morning, spitting curses and darting evil glances at all and sundry – why, now she came running up to him in the yard, tail up, mewing to be scratched under her chin. Even the ladybirds that alighted on a man’s hair in summer and crawled over his face knew that Armstrong would do no more than wrinkle his nose to dislodge them if they tickled excessively. No animal of field or farmyard feared him, no; but people – ah! That was another matter entirely.
A fellow had written a book lately – Armstrong had heard tell of it – in which he proposed that man was a kind of clever monkey. A lot of laughter and indignation that had produced, but Armstrong was inclined