Harry helps the boy up. They walk towards the ocean, the boy shaky as a newborn foal, his thin legs barely holding him. The boy stumbles, and Harry should expect what happens next but he’s still caught by surprise when the stumble becomes a sweep of leg that knocks Harry square on his arse.
The boy runs.
Harry shouts to Johann and Tom, and they give chase. The boy falls, skinning his knees, but pushes himself up rapidly and keeps running, blood coursing down his shins. He’s not fast. He’s too exhausted to be fast, and Harry catches up to him just as he gets to the stream at the top of the beach.
The boy glances back at the thunder of Harry’s footsteps. Harry watches in horror as the boy’s ankle turns on a stone and he starts to go down. With bound arms, there’s no way he can break his fall.
Harry lunges and grabs the boy before he can hit the ground. They both end up in a heap on the marshy edge of the stream, the boy thrashing and keening his anger. But Harry has both height and strength on him, and just wraps his thickly muscled arms around the boy from behind. Harry still has to dodge the boy’s attempts to break his nose with the back of his skull, and his shins get a bruising from the boy’s heels, but they’re both reasonably unscathed.
‘C’mon,’ Harry says, hauling the boy to his feet. ‘Let’s get you into the ocean.’ Harry holds the boy by his upper arms, in front of him, and frog-marches him towards the slow roll of waves. The boy doesn’t fight, and Harry can’t tell if he’s given up for the time being, or if he’s just waiting for his opportunity.
The boy hisses as the cold salt water washes over his many cuts, over the irritated, broken skin at his wrists and ankles. But he obediently ducks under the water when Harry exerts a gentle pressure on his shoulder, letting the sea clean the filth and blood out of his hair. He dunks himself a few times and then stands up and shakes like a dog, managing to get a substantial amount of water on Harry.
Then the boy tips his head back and closes his eyes for a moment, the midday sun hitting his pale, elegant face and turning the drops of water in his raven-dark hair into something like jewels. His long linen shirt is translucent from the water, clinging to his slim body. His lips are rose-red from the abrasions of the gag and the irritation of the salt water.
Harry’s throat goes dry. Who is he?
‘Better?’ Harry chokes out.
One pale eye opens, and a bowed red lip curls in a snarl. ‘You honestly expect me to congratulate you on that being the least shit thing that’s happened to me this week?’ The boy spits, hitting Harry in the cheek. ‘You killed my family. I will kill every one of you.’
Harry uses his free hand – the one that isn’t gripping the boy’s bicep against his next escape attempt – to wipe the saliva from his face. He sighs, and changes tack. ‘I’m Harry. What’s your name?’
The boy laughs, sharp and hollow. ‘You killed them all and you don’t even know my name. Fuck you. Death. That’s my name.’
He turns his back to Harry. ‘If you’re done playing the Good Samaritan, I’d like to go back in my cage.’
They retie the boy’s legs, but looser, so he can shuffle along in a slow walk, but not run. Harry has Johann and Tom hold him down while he cuts the boy’s arms free, winds the wrists in a bit of worsted to protect the skin, then reties the arms in front of him so the boy can use his hands to eat. They don’t gag him. They give him bread and cheese and half a roast hare, and water. He eats all of it.
Straw is acquired for the bottom of the cage in a small village on the forest’s edge, as is a spare bucket for the boy’s waste. That night, Harry unpacks his spare cloak and stuffs it through the bars. The boy glances at the worn woollen rectangle as it thumps onto the cage floor, then looks away. But by morning, Harry notices he’s made himself a little nest in the centre of the cage, with the blanket and the straw.
The Cumbrian coast road is little-travelled enough that Harry can leave the cover off the cage. The few peasants they pass don’t stare outright but Harry sees the corners of eyes sweep across the bars, and then to the men-at-arms, and then to Harry’s knight’s belt, before they inevitably decide the boy in the box is none of their business.
Trouble comes once they say goodbye to their Cumbrian guide at the London road. The first inkling is just south of Kendal: a friar on a donkey who stares a little too long. Johann, driving the cart, catches the man’s eye and says, ‘Scottish prisoner,’ and the man of God rides close enough to the cage to spit at the boy. The boy growls something back, and it almost sounds like Latin, but the friar just points at him and tells him he’s going to Hell. Reluctantly, Harry covers the cage again. He folds the canvas so it doesn’t quite reach the bottom of the cage, leaving about a foot of clear space for air circulation.
Knights and men-at-arms continue to trail southwards from the Scottish campaign, some with bandaged, still-weeping wounds, and Harry feels a pang of concern for his charge as he hears them curse the Scots and brag what they’ll do next time they encounter one. And the further into peaceful England they go, the more obnoxiously curious people become. Hands grab at the cloth, tugging it up; faces peek under it. Harry is pushed into an exhausting hyper-vigilance, keeping himself and Star between the
