22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [63]
Silvana took the knife and cut swiftly. Minutes later, she held up a bloody rabbit skin. ‘Like this?’
Gregor laughed. ‘So what have we here? A peasant? And I thought you said you came from Warsaw? You’re no city girl. But you’re not quite a peasant either. What are you doing alone in the forest with your dark-eyed gypsy child?’
She looked him straight in the eyes, hoping he would look away. He didn’t.
‘My husband is a Polish soldier. While he is away, I am trying to keep our son safe.’ She drew a protective arm around Aurek. ‘The forest is a good place for hiding him. After the war my husband will come and find us and we will live in Warsaw again.’
‘Hmm. That’s your story. I think you’re a forest sprite, perhaps. A lovely maiden who walked through the trees. Gathering herbs, plucking roots. The moon she stole, the sun she ate.’
He picked up the skinned rabbit and shook it free of the flies that were beginning to gather. ‘That’s a Russian incantation. It scares away witches. But you don’t look scared, so maybe you are who you say you are. Whoever you are, it’s good to have somebody who can handle a knife. Come on, we can see if our other traps have caught anything. You might get those rabbit fur gloves if you’re lucky.’
Sometimes, she woke to find Gregor beside her.
‘Are you sleeping? If you’re cold I can lie beside you.’
‘Please go away.’
‘Come on, let me warm you.’
‘Go away.’
‘It’s your loss,’ he whispered as he got up. ‘Not mine.’
Late at night, when the sounds of sleeping people were louder than the noise of the forest, Silvana heard him with first Elsa and then Lottie, his feet cracking twigs as he crept from one woman to the other.
Over the summer months, he took Silvana hunting with him, saying she was quicker and more cunning than the other women. She liked those days, the two of them with Aurek, moving quietly through the trees. They found a wicker basket in a ditch and propped it up with a stick, a long line of string attached to it. They caught squirrels, weasels, even a baby wild boar once. Gregor snatched the hairy, squealing little creature into his arms. Silvana grabbed Aurek and they ran as fast as they could, afraid that the mother would be somewhere nearby and angry.
One day in late summer, Gregor took them looking for mushrooms and they discovered a deer, eyes clouded with death, head stretched out as if it had fallen running. Gregor bent over it.
‘It’s been shot. Help me lift it. Whoever shot it will be coming to look for it. We’ve got to get it away from here. This will feed us all.’
Silvana grabbed the forelegs and helped Gregor lift it onto his shoulders. She walked beside him, carrying Aurek. The boy was light and he clung to her with a strong grip, so she could have her hands free to help steady Gregor’s burden.
He stopped in a clearing and dropped the carcass onto the ground.
‘I can’t carry it any further. It’s too heavy. We have to cut it up here.’
Silvana set Aurek onto his feet.
‘Here?’
He pulled two knives from his coat and handed one to her. Then he bent over the body and slit open the deer’s belly. Its guts spilled, a rush of silken crimsons and blues, and the body seemed to sigh, as if all its air was suddenly lost.
‘We’ll throw the innards away,’ Gregor was saying, as he stuck his hands into the bloody body. ‘And we have to bury the meat now. If we leave it in the open, flies will lay eggs in it. We can’t eat maggoty meat, no matter how hungry we are. Once it’s covered up it will keep. We have to make sure the flies don’t get to it, that’s all.’
Silvana turned away, her stomach contracting at the smell rising off the flesh. Gregor glanced up at her.
‘Can you do this?’
She nodded. This was no time for weakness. They needed meat. Aurek needed to eat.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, of course I can.’
She knelt and he told her what to cut, how to dissect the body. The guts were hot and she could feel