to me that one day we should find ourselves faced by the real thing — the alarm which wasn’t simply going to work up and blow over, leaving us much as before. Michael, I knew, had been increasingly anxious during the last year or so, as if he had a feeling that time was running out, and now I caught some of that sensation, too. I even went as far as making some preparations before I went to bed that night — at least, I put a bow and a couple of dozen arrows handy, and found a sack into which I put several loaves and a cheese. And I decided that next day I would make up a pack of spare clothes and boots and other things that would be useful, and hide it in some dry, convenient place outside. Then we should need some clothing for Petra, and a bundle of blankets, and something to hold drinking water, and it would not do to forget a tinder-box….
I was still listing the desirable equipment in my mind when I fell asleep….
No more than three hours or so can have passed before I was wakened by the click of my latch. There was no moon, but there was starlight enough to show a small, white night-gowned figure by the door.
‘David,’ she said. ‘Rosalind—’
But she did not need to tell me. Rosalind had already broken in, urgently.
‘David,’ she was telling me, ‘we must get away at once — just as soon as you can. They’ve taken Sally and Katherine—’
Michael crowded in on her.
‘Hurry up, both of you, while there’s time. It was a deliberate surprise. If they do know much about us, they’ll have tried to time it to send a party for you, too — before you could I be warned. They were at Sally’s and Katherine’s almost simultaneously just over ten minutes ago. Get moving, quick!’
‘Meet you below the mill. Hurry,’ Rosalind added.
I told Petra in words:
‘Get dressed as fast as you can. Overalls. And be very quiet.’
Very likely she had not understood the thought-shapes in detail, but she had caught their urgency. She simply nodded, and slipped back into the dark passage.
I pulled on my clothes, and rolled the bed blankets into a bundle. I groped about in the shadows till I found the bow and arrows and the bag of food, and made for the door.
Petra was almost dressed already. I grabbed some clothes from her cupboard and rolled them in the blankets.
‘Don’t put on your shoes yet,’ I whispered. ‘Carry them, and come tiptoe, like a cat.’
Outside in the yard I put down the bundle and the sack while we both got our shoes on. Petra started to speak, but I put my finger to my lips, and gave her the thought-shape of Sheba, the black mare. She nodded, and we tiptoed across the yard. I just had the stable door open when I caught a distant sound, and paused to listen.
‘Horses,’ whispered Petra.
Horses it was. Several sets of hoofs and, faintly, the tinkle of bits.
There was no time to find the saddle and bridle for Sheba. We brought her out on the halter, and mounted from the block. With all I was carrying there was no room for Petra in front of me. She got up behind, and hung on round my waist.
Quietly we slipped out of the yard by the far end and started down the path to the river-bank while the hoof- beats on the upper track drew close to the house.
‘Are you away?’ I asked Rosalind, and let her know what was happening with us.
‘I was away ten minutes ago. I had everything ready,’ she told me reprovingly. ‘We’ve all been trying our damnedest to reach you. It was lucky Petra happened to wake up.’
Petra caught her own thought-shape, and broke in excitedly to know what was happening. It was like a fountain of sparks.
‘Gently, darling. Much more gently,’ protested Rosalind. ‘We’ll tell you all about it soon.’ She paused a moment to get over the blinding effect.
‘Sally—? Katherine—?’ she inquired.
They responded together.
‘We’re being taken to the Inspector’s. We’re all innocent and bewildered. Is that best?’
Michael and Rosalind agreed that it was.
‘We think,’ Sally went on, ‘that we ought to shut our minds to you. It will make it easier for us to act as normals if we really don’t know what is happening. So don’t try to reach us, any of you.’
‘Very well — but we shall be open for you,’ Rosalind agreed. She diverted her thoughts to me. ‘Come along, David. There are lights up at the farm now.’
‘It’s all right. We’re coming,’ I told her. ‘It’s going to take them some time in the dark to find which way we went, anyhow.’
‘They’ll know by the stable-warmth that you can’t have got far yet,’ she pointed out.
I looked back. Up by the house I could see a light in a window, and a lantern swinging in someone’s hand. The sound of a man’s voice calling came to us faintly. We had reached the river-bank now, and it was safe to urge Sheba to a trot. We kept that up for half a mile until we came to the ford, and then for another quarter-mile until we were approaching the mill. It seemed prudent to walk her past there in case anyone were awake. Beyond the wall we heard a dog on the chain, but it did not bark. Presently I caught Rosalind’s feeling of relief, coming from somewhere a little ahead.
We trotted again, and a few moments later I noticed a movement under the trees of the track. I turned the mare that way, and found Rosalind waiting for us — and not only Rosalind, but her father’s pair of great-horses. The massive creatures towered above us, both saddled with large pannier baskets. Rosalind was standing in one of the baskets, her bow, strung and ready to hand, laid across it.
I rode up close beneath her while she leaned out to see what I had brought.
‘Hand me the blankets,’ she directed, reaching down. ‘What’s in the sack?’
I told her.
‘Do you mean to say that’s all you’ve brought?’ she said disapprovingly.
‘There was some hurry,’ I pointed out.
She arranged the blankets to pad the saddle-board between the panniers. I hoisted Petra until she could reach Rosalind’s hands. With a heave from both of us she scrambled up and perched herself on the blankets.
‘We’d better keep together,’ Rosalind directed. ‘I’ve left room for you in the other pannier. You can shoot left-handed from there.’ She flipped over a kind of miniature rope-ladder so that it hung down the great-horse’s left shoulder.
I slid off Sheba’s back, turned her head for home, and gave her a smack on the flank to start her off, then I scrambled up awkwardly to the other pannier. The moment my foot was clear of the mounting-rings Rosalind pulled them up and hitched them. She gave the reins a shake, and before I was well settled in the pannier we were off, with the second great-horse following on a lead.
We trotted awhile, and then left the track for a stream. Where that was joined by another we branched off up the lesser. We left that and picked our way across boggy ground to another stream. We held on along the bed of that for perhaps half a mile or more and then turned off on to another stretch of uneven, marshy ground which soon became firmer until presently the hoofs were clinking among stones. We slowed still more while the horses picked a winding way amid rocks. I realized that Rosalind had put in some careful planning to hide our tracks. I must have projected the thought unwittingly, for she came in, somewhat coldly:
‘It’s a pity
‘I made a start,’ I protested. ‘I was going to get everything fixed up today. It didn’t seem all that urgent.’
‘And so when I tried to consult you about it, there you were, swinishly asleep. My mother and I spent two solid hours packing up these panniers and getting the saddles slung up ready for an emergency, while all you did was go on sleeping.’
‘Your mother?’ I asked, startled. ‘Does she
‘She’s sort of half-known, guessed something, for some time now. I don’t know how much she’s guessed — she never spoke about it at all. I think she felt that as long as she didn’t have to admit it in words it might be all right. When I told her this evening that I thought it very likely I’d have to go, she cried — but she wasn’t really surprised; she didn’t try to argue, or dissuade me. I had a sort of feeling that she’d already resolved at the back of
