silence the ripple of the stream sounded as loud as a torrent.
The back door was of black oak banded with iron. It stood ajar. He pushed it wider and the mellow autumnal sunlight splashed gold over the stone slabs of a passage leading to the front of the house. Again he stood for a second and listened. He heard nothing, not even the ticking of a clock. To his left was an oak door leading, he presumed, into the kitchen. It was unlatched and gently he pushed it open. After the brightness of the day the room was dim and for a moment he could see little until his eyes accustomed themselves to a gloom made more oppressive by the dark oak beams, the small dirt-covered windows. He was aware of a damp coldness, of the hardness of the stone floor and of a tincture on the air, at once horrible and human, like the lingering smell of fear. He felt along the wall for a light switch, hardly expecting, as his hand found it, that there would still be electricity. But the light came on, and then he saw her.
She had been garrotted and the body dumped into a large wicker chair to the right of the fireplace. She lay there sprawled, legs askew, arms flung over the ends of the chair, the head thrown back with the cord bitten so deep into the skin that it was hardly visible. Such was his horror that after the first glance he staggered over to the stone sink under the window and vomited violently but ineffectively. He wanted to go to her, to close her eyes, to touch her hand, to make some gesture. He owed her more than to turn away from the appalling horror of her death and vomit his disgust. But he knew he couldn’t touch her and couldn’t even look again. With his forehead hard against the cold stone, he reached up to the tap and a gush of cold water flowed over his head. He let it flow as if it could wipe away the terror, the pity and the shame. He wanted to throw back his head and howl out his anger. For a few seconds he was helpless, in the thrall of emotions which left him powerless to move. Then he turned off the tap, shook the water from his eyes and took hold of reality. He had to get back to Julian as quickly as possible. He saw on the table the meagre gleanings of Miriam’s search. She had found a large wicker basket and had filled it with three tins, a tin-opener and a bottle of water.
But he couldn’t leave Miriam as she was. This mustn’t be the last vision he had of her. However great the need to get back to Julian and the child, there was a small ceremony he owed to her. Fighting terror and revulsion, he got up and made himself look at her. Then, bending, he loosened the cord from her neck, smoothed the lines of her face and closed her eyes. He felt the need to take her out of this awful place. He lifted her in his arms, carried her out of the house and into the sunlight, then laid her carefully down under a rowan tree. Its leaves, like tongues of flame, cast a glow on the pale brown of her skin as if her veins still pulsed with life. Her face now looked almost peaceful. He crossed her arms on her breast and it seemed to him that the unresponsive flesh could still communicate, was telling him that death was not the worst thing that could happen to a human being, that she had kept faith with her brother, that she had done what she set out to do. She had died but new life had been born. Thinking of the horror and cruelty of her death, he told himself that Julian would no doubt say that there must be forgiveness even for this barbarity. But that was not his creed. Standing for a moment very still and looking down at the body, he swore to himself that Miriam would be avenged. Then he retrieved the wicker basket and, without a backward look, ran from the garden across the bridge and plunged into the forest.
They were close, of course. They were watching him. He knew that. But now, as if the horror had galvanized his brain, he was thinking clearly. What were they waiting for? Why had they let him go? They hardly needed to follow him. It must be obvious that they were very close now to the end of their search. And he had no doubt of two things. The party would be small and Xan would be among them. Miriam’s murderers hadn’t been part of an isolated forward search party with instructions to find the fugitives, leave them unharmed and send back word to the main party. Xan would never risk having a pregnant woman discovered except by himself or by someone he trusted absolutely. There would be no general search for this valuable quarry. And Xan would have learned nothing from Miriam, he was sure of that. What he was expecting to find was not a mother and child but a heavily pregnant woman still with some weeks to go. He wouldn’t want to frighten her, wouldn’t want to precipitate a premature labour. Was that why Miriam had been garrotted, not shot? Even at that distance he didn’t want to risk the sound of gunfire.
But that reasoning was absurd. If Xan wanted to protect Julian, to ensure that she kept calm for the birth which he believed was close, why kill the midwife she trusted and kill her so horribly? He must have known that one of them, perhaps both, would go to seek her. It was only by chance that he, Theo, not Julian, had been faced by that swollen, protruding tongue, those bulging, dead eyes, the full horror of that awful kitchen. Had Xan convinced himself that with the child ready to be born nothing, however shocking, could really hurt it now? Or had he needed to get rid of Miriam urgently, whatever the risk? Why take her prisoner with all the consequent complications when one quick twist of cord could settle the problem forever? And perhaps even the horror was deliberate. Was he proclaiming: “This is what I can do, what I have done. There are now only two of you left who are part of the conspiracy of the Five Fishes, only two who know the truth about the child’s parentage. You are in my power absolutely and forever”?
Or was his plan even more audacious? Once the child was born he had only to kill Theo and Julian and it would be possible to claim the baby as his own. Had he really in his overweening egotism convinced himself that even this was possible? And then Theo remembered Xan’s words: “Whatever it is necessary to do, I shall do.”
In the shed Julian lay so still that at first he thought she was sleeping. But her eyes were open and she still had them fixed on her child. The air was rich with the pungent sweetness of wood smoke, but the fire had gone out. Theo put down the basket and, taking the bottle of water, unscrewed the top. He knelt down beside her.
She looked into his eyes and said: “Miriam’s dead, isn’t she?” When Theo made no reply, she said: “She died getting this for me.”
He held the bottle to her lips. “Then drink it and be thankful.”
But she turned her head away, releasing her hold on the child so that if he hadn’t caught the baby he would have rolled from her body. She lay still as if too exhausted for paroxysms of grief, but the tears gushed in a stream over her face and he could hear a low, almost musical moaning, like the keening of a universal grief. She was mourning for Miriam as she had never yet mourned the father of her child.
He bent and held her in his arms, clumsily because of the baby between them, trying to enfold them both. He said: “Remember the baby. The baby needs you. Remember what Miriam would have wanted.”
She didn’t speak but she nodded and again took the child from him. He put the bottle of water to her lips.
He took out the three tins from the basket. From one the label had fallen off; the tin felt heavy but there was no knowing what was inside. The second was labelled PEACHES IN SYRUP. The third was a tin of baked beans in tomato sauce. For these and a bottle of water Miriam had died. But he knew that was too simple. Miriam had died because she was one of the small band who knew the truth about the child.
The tin-opener was an old type, partly rusted, the cutting edge blunted. But it was adequate. He rasped open the tin, then wrenched back the lid and, cradling Julian’s head in his right arm, began feeding her the beans on the middle finger of his left hand. She sucked at it avidly. The process of feeding her was an act of love. Neither spoke.
After five minutes, when the can was half empty, she said: “Now it’s your turn.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Of course you’re hungry.”
His knuckles were too large for his fingers to reach the bottom of the tin, so it was her turn to feed him. Sitting up with the cradled child resting in her lap, she inserted her small right hand and fed him.
He said: “They taste wonderful.”
When the tin was empty she gave a little sigh, then lay back, gathering the child to her breast. He stretched himself beside her.
She said: “How did Miriam die?”
It was a question he knew that she would ask. He couldn’t lie to her.
