Handy struggled to his feet. His elder son started towards him anxiously but he waved him away. ‘I told you to shut up!’ he hissed. ‘This isn’t the time or the place.’
‘To share a secret the whole parish has known for a dozen years?’ the older man spat contemptuously. ‘Why not?’
I looked at Spotted Eagle, who was standing between his father and grandfather. The young man’s head was darting from side to side as he looked at each in turn, and he shook with agitation. Suddenly he took a step towards the old man. He raised a hand and I was afraid he was about to strike him; but at that moment Star’s mother intervened.
We had barely noticed her as she stepped swiftly and silently across the courtyard. She pushed her way into the space between Jaguar and Spotted Eagle. She glared silently at her grandson before spinning on her heel to face her husband. ‘That will do!’ she hissed. ‘Remember who’s here!’
‘I don’t care! And don’t tell me what to do, woman. It’s time there was one less secret here! We all know what we’re talking about...’
‘There are some who don’t!’ the old woman snapped. ‘Just remember who’s going to be hurt.’
‘Hurt?’ Jaguar screamed into her face. ‘I’ve just lost my daughter, have you forgotten about that? And you talk about hurt!’
He was silenced with a sound like a stick breaking in two as the woman struck him, swinging her open hand against his cheek so hard he staggered sideways. He gasped and stared at her.
For a moment everyone was still. Then Handy said slowly: ‘Get out of my house.’ The old man rubbed his cheek. He looked at his wife, his son-in-law, the sky and the floor; then, gradually, he turned towards the gateway, dragging his heels as he went.
His son-in-law slumped back against the wall, letting out a long, shuddering breath.
A low wail sounded from the far side of the courtyard. Goose had rolled over onto her back and was staring up into the air, crying aloud for the first time since I had come to the house.
‘Come on, both of you,’ the old man called from the pathway outside. ‘We’re going!’
His wife ignored him. She darted to her daughter’s side, cooing anxiously as she crouched over her.
Jaguar’s parting words puzzled me at first.
‘Handy!’ he yelled, in a voice that must have carried the length of the parish, ‘how do your turkey chicks go on these days?’
It was a strange question and all the more so since, for so long as I had known him, Handy had never kept turkeys.
12
Night was falling, a clear, starry night that promised to be bitterly cold.
Goose and her mother had gone to bed, at her mother’s insistence. They had taken the younger children with them, and then the old woman had come back to summon Spotted Eagle and Snake indoors. She ushered them through the doorway, insisting against their protests that they warm themselves by the hearth.
Handy showed no inclination to move, barely acknowledging the others as they left.
I paced the courtyard for a while, unable to make up my mind what to do. I was tempted to leave, to abandon Handy’s family to their grief and recriminations, and head straight for Lily’s house, where I knew I would be welcome and relatively safe. What stopped me was partly fear of the thing I had encountered the night before. I knew that the streets were not safe at night. However, there was something else. I had the feeling that I had been left alone with the commoner for a reason. Judging by the way Spotted Eagle had glowered at me as he was all but pushed inside by his grandmother, he expected me to fulfil some role. It was not necessarily one he approved of, but his grandmother would not have it any other way.
Eventually I squatted beside Handy, noting as I did so that, hunched over miserably as he was and with his face made haggard by hunger and lack of sleep, he looked smaller than usual.
I shivered, but it was not from the cold. I was afraid. I felt exposed and vulnerable here. I wondered how much safety there was behind a courtyard wall. Was my enemy waiting, just beyond that frail barrier, ready to break through at any time he chose?
If so, I thought, I could not face the danger alone. It was all the more reason why I had to try to stir the man next to me out of his apathy.
‘Handy…’ I began. I looked down at the hard earth floor between us while I gathered my thoughts. When I met his eyes again I began speaking in a tone that I hoped was both firm and gentle: ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘I don’t know. Sit here for a little longer, I guess, till it gets cold. Go indoors then. What about you?’
There was a dangerous quality in his voice, a lightness that betrayed how far detached his words were from what was going on inside his head.
‘And after that?’
‘Go to sleep, I expect. What’s it to you?’ He turned away, not just his face but his whole body, shuffling around so that he was looking into the opposite corner of the courtyard. Well, I had achieved something, I reflected wryly. It was probably the most he had moved since we had come back to the house.
‘You reckon on going to sleep, then? When was the last time you did that?’ There was a long pause. I thought the only answer I was going to get was silence, but what the man did in the end was to heave a long, shuddering sigh.
‘You know,’ he said softly. He tried to look at me then, but he could not hold my gaze for more than
