Black Feathers

17

Gordon hid for hours in the cover of the laurel bush. He couldn’t erase the image of Judith’s face as she shut the garden door on him, that change from fear and fierce love to a mask of nonchalance, the blinking and brushing away of sudden tears just before she was grabbed. Compared to that, his actions were those of a coward. They’d taken his family and all he’d done was hide in a bush.

I could have done something, he thought. I should have tried to stop them.

Gordon wanted to go into the house more than anything in the world, but wasn’t it possible that they’d left a man or two inside to wait for him? If they thought he was still out here somewhere, didn’t it make perfect sense that he would return? Gradually, an idea formed and, tired of hiding, tired of hating himself, but mostly very hungry, Gordon moved from his hiding place.

Beneath the laurel there was good clearance between the soil and the lowest branches and he made use of this by crawling on his stomach. The laurel brought him to within a few feet of the tarpaulin-covered wood pile which, if he stayed low, would shield him from anyone looking out of a window, even upstairs.

His pulse rising, he peered out from under the foliage. The house had an air of stillness about it. He scanned every window visible from his leafy hide and saw no movement, no watchful eyes. He checked what he could see of the corners of the back terrace. If there was anyone out there they were hidden and still.

He slipped out from under the laurel and slithered to the wood pile. There he gathered himself into a crouch and waited. No sounds came from the house. No one came out. He peeped around the edge of the tarpaulin. He was a few steps from the back terrace now. He looked up and checked the windows again.

Nothing.

A sprint of a few seconds took Gordon to the back wall of the house. Pain and stiffness around the cut in his right thigh slowed him down. Even pressed flat against the bricks he was exposed. He couldn’t stay there. He was suddenly convinced there’d been a Wardsman patrolling all day.

Before he could progress, he had to put his mind at rest on one issue. Wincing as he dropped to a crouch again, Gordon crawled on hands and knees over the stone walkway which hugged the walls of Hamblaen House. He passed under the first living room window. Fear pressing down on him, he continued his crawl under the second living room window. When he had passed beneath it without event, he proceeded to the front corner of the house and stood up, once again laying his back to the wall and palming the bricks as though on a ledge. He gave his heart and breathing a few seconds to settle and then, as slowly as he could, and ready to pull back at any moment, he peered around the corner. More and more of the tiny driveway in front of their house came into view and the more he saw, the more his hopes rose. Finally, he was looking along the front edge of the house to the porch and it was clear.

He rested his head back against the wall and relaxed for a moment. It was no guarantee there wasn’t someone waiting for him inside, but the absence of vehicles gave him a tiny reserve of confidence.

The windows at the front of the house were longer and lower, and getting past them unseen would be very difficult. Not only that, the entire area outside the front door was gravelled, making silent progress impossible. Gordon retraced his route, returning under the living room windows and placing himself once more against the back wall of the house. He wanted to peep over the sills of the windows, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d known all along that returning to the house was a risk but, now that he had to make the play, he was seizing up again, stiffening with fear.

That’s not going to happen. Not this time.

Crawling again, he crossed the back terrace under the windows until he reached the recessed area which led to the back door. He glanced around the corner, terrified by the recklessness of the move. There was no one there. The door was closed.

He crept towards it. There was a single, small pane of glass in it – like water frozen the moment after a pebble has been dropped into it. He peeped through into the hallway but the view was distorted. He thought he could see something at the bottom of the stairs. Whatever it was, it didn’t move. He looked for a long time, trying to work out what it might be. The shoe of a man sitting out of sight on the third step? A man smoking, waiting? Gordon took a deep breath and put his fingers to the iron curl of the door handle. He pushed it down. Inside the mechanism, tiny springs creaked.

Then he was pushing the door open a millimetre at a time. Pushing it open and stepping inside.

The house did smell of smoke and this was enough to stop Gordon on the threshold, with the door still open. With each lengthening of the moment, his resolve leaked away. He had to close the door and either stay or leave. The wind wasn’t helping his cause; the noise of its whooshing passage through the trees had entered with him. If anyone was here, they’d have heard it already. But leaving would only put him back where he’d started.

He wanted an escape route but he couldn’t leave the door open.

What if the wind slams it? he thought.

A cold draught felt somewhere else in the house might be enough to give him away. He pushed the door closed behind him, gently shouldered it tight to the jamb and cringed when it loudly clicked shut.

He edged along the hall, pulse thudding.

The thing at the bottom of the stairs was Judith’s coat, lying where it had been dropped or thrown. They hadn’t even let her take something warm. Surges of anger accompanied his pangs of fear.

Ahead and to his left was the living room door, open as always. It was level with the bottom of the stairs and Gordon was able to peep up through the banisters and see that there was no Wardsman lying in wait. Reaching the doorway he forced his breathing to slow and craned his neck around the corner. The living room was empty. One of the wooden chairs beside the baize card table had been knocked over and the glass panel of the drinks cabinet had been smashed.

Gordon remembered his father’s promise to protect them all and his hand went to his mouth. A noble oath Louis Black had been unable to fulfil. Gordon shared his father’s shame.

By the fireplace was a set of wrought-iron hearth tools and Gordon crossed quickly to retrieve the poker. It was the first weapon he’d thought of – until he could get to a shotgun. With the poker in his hand, another small objective was achieved. Emboldened, he searched the rest of the house.

It took Gordon almost half an hour to establish the house was empty of agents but the Ward had not trod lightly through it. Every room showed signs of disturbance: drawers open, their contents rifled; mattresses still partially off the beds; clothes torn from wardrobes and left on the floor. The more he discovered, the angrier he became. Part of him wanted to find a Wardsman, perhaps napping on the job, and take him by surprise. He wanted to beat one of them – any of them, all of them – to the floor and keep bludgeoning until they weren’t able to stand.

How can they do this? he wondered. We’re not criminals.

Gordon had never witnessed real violence. He’d seen occasional scuffles and flares of temper at school but never serious harm. Footage of civil unrest was on the news most nights. Police raids were an increasingly common part of the bulletins and, now that he thought about it, Gordon remembered seeing grey-coated “bystanders” in many of those news items. He’d seen them attendant at demonstrations too – some of them mounted on horses in full riot armour of the same nondescript grey – but rarely involving themselves directly. Now, all Gordon could see was his father’s bowed and bloodied face. He could only imagine what the Wardsmen had done, what more they would do. They looked coldly civilised in their neat, belted raincoats and brimmed hats. All of them moved with calm assurance, not a wrinkle in their uniforms, not a hair out of place. And yet they were capable of all this.

Even when he was sure the house was safe, Gordon still tiptoed. In his room he grabbed his camping rucksack and in it he placed the diary he kept under the carpet in his closet. The Wardsmen hadn’t looked there but they had discovered and taken his collection of black feathers. What bearing would a box of feathers have on their “investigation”? He gathered some spare clothes and placed them on top of the books. In the study, he took the lock knife from the pocket of his father’s tweed jacket. The shotguns and all the ammo were gone.

In the bathroom he took off his jeans and cleaned the wound in his thigh. It began as a scratch near his hip and deepened into a gouge. Some of the skin and tissue around the edge of it looked ruined and lifeless already. He took scissors from the cabinet and with a trembling hand tried to clip away some of the torn flesh. He realised at the first touch of steel that it wasn’t dead tissue. Using a flannel moistened with hot water, he wiped away the dried blood and swabbed into the cut to try to clear away the dirt. When he’d finished, his whole leg was trembling and the flannel was filthy. He placed a disinfectant-soaked pad over the cut and wrapped a bandage around his leg. Down in the kitchen he hid the flannel at the bottom of the rubbish bin under the sink.

He made himself a large Ziploc bag of cheese sandwiches and stashed it in the pack. He took a leftover pot of chicken casserole from the fridge and heated some of it in the microwave. He ate it quickly, washed the bowl and cutlery and put it away. Everywhere he went in the house, he left it as he’d found it. He even opened the kitchen window for a few minutes to let the wind carry away the smell of cooked food.

He collected more supplies from the pantry, enough for a few days, just in case. He attached his waterproof sleeping bag to the bottom of the rucksack and strapped his tent onto the back of it. His father had ensured the whole family could survive outdoors in an emergency. Gordon would camp nearby while he waited for Skelton and Pike to bring his family home.

Before leaving, Gordon took the white feather Judith had given him earlier that day and placed it under her pillow. He doubted the Ward would search the place a second time. He wanted her to know he was OK.