The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [82]
On the road again, he found a countryman, chatty and amenable, on his way to catch a coach, who told him the parson lived a long way off, too far to walk. John asked if there was shelter nearby, a barn maybe, with dry straw.The man told him The Ram Inn would do and said to follow him. John didn’t make it far, however, before he had to rest on a pile of flint. His stomach was burningly empty, his legs refusing. The man was kind and lingered, but when he heard the church bells hastened after his coach.
John walked on, but couldn’t find the inn. He lay down to rest in the shade of a row of elms, but the wind blew through them and prevented sleep. He got up in the dusk to find somewhere better. The odd houses spaced along the road were lit up within, snug and separate.
Finally he came to The Ram but, having no money, did not go in. There was a shed that leaned against one end of it, but with people passing he didn’t dare try and sneak in. Instead, he walked. The road was dark and darker still where trees overshadowed, thrashing softly in the wind.
He came to a crossing of two turnpikes and in his exhaustion could not calculate which way was north and which south. He chose by not choosing, by starting to walk, and soon became sure he had made an error and was heading back the way he had come, heading back to it all, to Fairmead House, to Leopard’s Hill Lodge and the dark forest. He heard himself whimpering with the misery, almost too feeble to keep walking, shuffling forward in the dark. He almost felt he was not moving at all, lifting his feet up and down in infinite darkness. Eventually a light hung in the air, dipping and rising with his steps. A tollgate. His eyes cringed at its fierce brightness when he got to the door and knocked. A man emerged with a candle, peering and unfriendly, the candle’s flame streaming sideways. John asked if he was heading north. ‘After that gate you are,’ the man said and shut his door.
New strength flowed into John. As he walked he hummed an old song, ‘Highland Mary’. Singing her name. Getting closer.
His strength guttering out again. When he found a house by the road with a large porch, he crept in and lay down. He found it long enough to lie with his knotted legs straight out. He reminded himself to wake before the inhabitants did. He rested himself against the warmth of the place, like a child against its mother. All the inhabitants were asleep. He could hear their snores, the creak of straw mattresses.
He woke up at dawn feeling strong. The west was white and blue. Overhead, into the east, a cobbled road of bright rose clouds. He blessed his two wives, his daughter Queen Victoria, and set off again.
After some miles, he rested by an estate wall. From its lodge gate emerged a tall gypsy woman. He asked her where he was and she told him. She had an honest, handsome face.They walked together to the next town and she sang under her breath. She told him to put something inside his hat to hold the crown up. ‘You’ll be noticed,’ she said. When she left him to take her separate way she told him of a shortcut via a church, but he didn’t dare take it for fear, in his starvation and fatigue, of getting confused and losing his way.
Around him the world weakened, started vanishing. There was only the beat of pain from his feet, his hunger, his hands heavy and throbbing by his side. A dyke ran along a roadside field. He stumbled in to get some sleep. He woke and found himself wet down one side. He got up and carried on into darkness, into night, into dimensionless dark.
In the morning he had an idea. He got onto his hands and knees and began eating the damp grass. Sweet and plain, it was not unlike bread. There was something else he could eat, he realised, and pulled the tobacco from his pocket and chewed as he walked, drinking