The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [36]
As the night wore on, it seemed to him more and more dreadful that he had abandoned the baby. It was a common enough thing, he knew: peasants with large families and small farms often exposed babies to die, and sometimes the priest turned a blind eye; but Tom did not belong to that kind of people. He should have carried it in his arms until it died, and then buried it. There was no purpose to that, of course, but all the same it would have been the right thing to do.
He realized that it was daylight.
He stopped suddenly.
The children stood still and stared at him, waiting. They were ready for anything; nothing was normal anymore.
“I shouldn’t have left the baby,” Tom said.
Alfred said: “But we can’t feed him. He’s bound to die.”
“Still I shouldn’t have left him,” Tom said.
Martha said: “Let’s go back.”
Still Tom hesitated. To go back now would be to admit he had done wrong to abandon the baby.
But it was true. He had done wrong.
He turned around. “All right,” he said. “We’ll go back.”
Now all the dangers which he had earlier tried to discount suddenly seemed more probable. For sure a fox had smelled the baby by now, and dragged him off to its lair. Or even a wolf. The wild boars were dangerous, even though they did not eat meat. And what about owls? An owl could not carry off a baby, but it might peck out its eyes—
He walked faster, feeling light-headed with exhaustion and starvation. Martha had to run to keep up with him, but she did not complain.
He dreaded what he might see when he returned to the grave. Predators were merciless, and they could tell when a living creature was helpless.
He was not sure how far they had walked: he had lost his sense of time. The forest on either side looked unfamiliar, even though he had just passed through it. He looked anxiously for the place where the grave was. Surely the fire could not have gone out yet—they had built it so high.... He scrutinized the trees, looking for the distinctive leaves of the horse chestnut. They passed a side turning which he did not remember, and he began to wonder crazily whether he could possibly have passed the grave already and not seen it; then he thought he saw a faint orange glow ahead.
His heart seemed to falter. He quickened his step and narrowed his eyes. Yes, it was a fire. He broke into a run. He heard Martha cry out, as if she thought he was leaving her, and he called over his shoulder: “We’re there!” and heard the two children running after him.
He drew level with the horse-chestnut tree, his heart pounding in his chest. The fire was burning merrily. There was the pile of firewood. There was the bloodstained patch of ground where Agnes had bled to death. There was the grave, a mound of freshly dug earth, under which she now lay. And on the grave was—nothing.
Tom looked around frantically, his mind in a turmoil. There was no sign of the baby. Tears of frustration came to Tom’s eyes. Even the half a cloak the baby had been wrapped in had disappeared. Yet the grave was undisturbed—there were no animal tracks in the soft earth, no blood, no marks to indicate that the baby had been dragged away....
Tom began to feel as if he could not see very clearly. It became difficult to think straight. He knew now that he had done a dreadful thing in leaving the baby while it was still alive. When he knew it was dead he would be able to rest. But it might still be alive somewhere—somewhere nearby. He decided to circle around and look.
Alfred said: “Where are you going?”
“We must search for the baby,” he said, without looking back. He walked around the edge of the little clearing, looking under the bushes, still feeling slightly dizzy and faint. He saw nothing, not even a clue to the direction in which the wolf might have taken the baby. He was now sure it was a wolf. The creature’s lair might be nearby.
“We must circle wider,” he said to the children.
He