Harry squeezes her again and looks over her shoulder as the walls of the solar fold in on themselves, sending sparks high into the sky, poor, gaudy imitators of the stars looking down on them. As he releases her, he says, ‘We need to get everyone to a safer place.’
Annie nods, and sends Katie to the home barn, just beyond the stables, to let the chickens and geese out. They may not come back, but it’s better than them being burned alive if the wind shifts any further round. It’s too late to move the ploughs and scythes and farming implements stored there, or the grain.
Harry raises his voice, calling his displaced people to him. ‘If you have family homes on our lands, go back to them for the night. We’ll meet again here tomorrow to salvage what we can. If you have nowhere to sleep or your homes are too far, follow me to the north barn.’
He ends up leading a little party of eight, including Annie and Katie and Kit, who still clutches the bundle of books Iain had thrown him. The normally short walk to the big old barn seems to take an eternity, as they all keep turning to stare at the glow on the hillside behind them. At the death of their home.
It’s as if each of them hopes they’ll look back and God will say, just kidding, and Dartington will be there as old and solid as it always was. And they could put down their burdens and their fears and just go home.
But the light never goes out.
And there is no longer a home to go back to.
Iain meets them at the entrance to the barn, bow drawn and eyes narrowed. When he recognises Harry, he lowers the weapon. When he recognises Annie, he drops it.
The humans all go through the motions of sleep. They lie down on the straw-strewn floor, huddled together in a group. They pull what cloaks they’ve brought over themselves, and shut their eyes. The horses shift anxiously from foot to foot and snort from where they’re tied not far away, but the humans pretend to rest.
And Iain holds Harry close against the coming dawn, and whispers in his ear, ‘You will survive this.’
When the sun does light the horizon, their little group are soot-smeared, hungry and sore. Yet it all seems unreal, a collective nightmare, until they stumble back down to the smouldering ruins of Dartington Manor. The house, once squat and welcoming if never grand, is now a blackened, smoking skeleton, jagged walls reaching up to scratch at the sky, roof open to the heavens’ pitiless glare.
Harry has no idea what to do. He’s four months shy of his twentieth birthday, lord of a heavily indebted manor, without a penny to rebuild. He can feel his face redden in shame and fear.
The logical thing would be to ask the neighbouring lord to house them until he could beg or borrow the money to construct a new hall.
But the neighbouring lord is Rabbie.
Harry bitterly misses his mother in that moment. She’d know what to do. He thinks how she never flinched, was never scared, even as a horrible thought floats to the surface of his mind, like a corpse in slack water: what if she was? What if his mother was faking it too, as confused and terrified as he was about what would become of them, of how long their small, unprofitable estate could hold together against bad luck and worse harvests before the inevitable end?
Iain puts his hand on Harry’s shoulder and squeezes. ‘Guess we’re going to be living in a barn for a while,’ he says in English, gesturing with his chin at the home barn. It’s untouched, as are the stables, thankfully. The chickens and geese scold them for their doubts from atop manure piles and ploughs.
‘Guess so,’ says Harry. He pinches the bridge of his nose, the small pain of digging his fingers into the corners of his eyes helping to focus him. Then he inhales, long and deep. Everything smells of ash and burned earth. One step at a time, he thinks. Get everyone settled, then figure out how to rebuild.
It takes all day to clear out the farm implements from the home barn, move them to the north barn, and then cart straw back down. Ralf shows up early to help, as do Adam and Jed and a number of the vassals. The horses go back in the stables, and the chicken coop gets moved to the southern end of the building, where it’s best protected from the weather.
The chickens are the only creatures to venture back into the hall. A fat red hen sits on a half-collapsed wall and watches them, her yellow eyes impassive. For everyone else, it’s too much, too soon. The embers of the fire haven’t yet burned down, and nobody has the heart to start looking for anything not destroyed in the fire. Not yet.
Throughout the day, more people from the village and the vassal farms show up, bringing food. It touches Harry’s heart beyond belief. Nobody has extra to give, but they find something, even if it’s just a small loaf of bread.
And everyone is surviving. They’re all moving as if in a daze, but they’re moving. Perhaps, Harry thinks, because if any of them stop and really consider how bad their situation is, they’ll never move again. Harry glances over at Iain, deep in conversation with Annie. He’s worried the man will try for revenge against Rabbie, but for now, it seems, there’s too much to do simply to put their lives back together.
On Annie’s instructions, Iain and the other young men start clearing the debris from the kitchens. The big stone hearth and ovens didn’t take much damage, but the rest of the room is a shell. Harry and Ralf retrieve the timber laid aside for repairing barns, and work on creating a basic roof over
