Black Feathers

42

In the morning John Palmer was gone.

Gordon checked Brooke’s resting place first. It was undisturbed. He made a circuit of the tiny camp and spread his search in a widening spiral. He checked inside John Palmer’s tent. All his gear was there but there was no sign of the man. The camp fire was cold. No food was missing.

The day lengthened, and John Palmer didn’t return. Gordon set off thinking that perhaps he might have gone to check his snares. He knew this was unlikely. John Palmer had a knife on him at all times, and Gordon didn’t think it was unreasonable to suspect that the man was walking back to the town he’d come from, back to the place where the men who’d escaped still lived. Like those men, John Palmer had nothing left but hate and a desire to put things right with violence.

Gordon stayed in the cover of the trees all the way down to the river, following the path they’d taken the first day he’d accompanied John Palmer to check the snares. For the first time in some days there were heavy-looking clouds in the sky. Through the denuded branches above him, Gordon could see the mass of iron grey thickening and darkening as it proceeded across the sky. The same wind that forced those clouds onwards pushed through the exposed arms and fingers of the beech trees, waking whispers from their bones.

He reached the edge of the wood where it opened onto the wet grassland and the river bank. The water had receded from the flood plain and the level of the river had dropped. Willows grew beside the water, some of them straight and tall, others leaning out over the water. It was in one these far-reaching willows, its trunk close to horizontal, that Gordon found the body. Many of the willow’s leafless branches draped into the water, their sinewy tips depending from thicker boughs like hair. The tree made Gordon think of a woman washing herself by the riverside. It would have been beautiful but for the ugliness of John Palmer.

He hung from a thick bough, his face swollen, his eyes red. His head rested on two fists thrust under his chin, giving him a slight pout and the aspect of a man who’d died of boredom. In his struggles he’d managed to hook the fingers of both hands between the tightening cord and the skin of his neck. The fingers had been trapped there and then broken by the weight of his body and the pulling of the river water at his legs. The rope he’d used was lightweight nylon and thin: useful for outdoor pursuits. It had cut quite deeply into his neck, far enough to disappear but without breaking the skin. The fatness of his face had given him a pumpkin-headed appearance. His body turned first a little to the right and then a little to the left as the current of the river tugged at his calves and waterlogged walking boots. The branch he hung from bounced very slowly, dipping him, extracting him.

Two magpies landed in the willow tree, breaking Gordon’s almost-dreamy exploration of John Palmer’s suicide. They clattered and chattered at each other in great excitement, their tails flicking high, before hopping towards the place where John Palmer’s rope was secured. One of them fluttered down onto the dead man’s head. It looked at Gordon, rattled out one more cry and then pecked into John Palmer’s eye. Soon its partner joined it and their cries ceased as they feasted on the fresh carrion.

Gordon turned away.

He remembered the last time he had seen two magpies. Their message then had seemed to be to enter the tunnel. Circumstance had caused him to do exactly that. He had come close to death in that darkness. Until the man who now gave his flesh to the magpies had found him and his daughter had nursed him back to health. Surely, if it was a message those two magpies had given him, it had been a sound one. They had led him in the right direction. What was their message now?

He looked at John Palmer one last time and watched the magpies tearing at his face so hungrily and with such relish. He approached the river bank some distance away from the tree.

At the water’s edge he took out his father’s lock knife and unclasped it. It was flaky with the dried blood of a dead man. He submerged it in the river and used his fingernails to chip at the encrusted gore. The water soon rehydrated and loosened the blood. Streaks and flakes swirled in the water and were gone. The knife came out clean, the blade gleaming even under the deepening shadows cast by the clouds overhead. He shook it out, blew into its cracks to clear the water, and dried it as best he could on his trousers before folding it away and putting it back in his pocket.

He walked quickly back to the camp. By the time he was there he had an idea of what the magpies might be telling him. The more he thought about it, the more sense it made: in happening upon death, the birds had secured a little more life for themselves through the bounty of John Palmer’s flesh. Gordon knew he could respond positively to the situation too – there was an opportunity here.

In the camp he dragged all the equipment into the open and dumped everything onto a groundsheet. He took his time discarding what was not useful and what was too heavy to carry, calmly measuring the value of every item before keeping or abandoning it. By noon he had dismantled the camp. What he could not use he carried to the tunnel and placed it far enough inside that the rain would not spoil it. With luck, someone who needed the equipment would find it one day. When everything but his new pack was stowed, he brushed the camp with a branch, redistributing leaves where they’d slept or cooked so that the mark of their habitation was minimal.

He hefted John Palmer’s rucksack onto his back. For a long time he stood at Brooke’s graveside, not wanting to leave her. Not wanting to be alone again. When he knew there was no more reason to stay, he whispered some words to her and set out to the edge of the forest. He stepped into the open just as the rain began. In the distance, obscured by cloud, were the hills.

That was where he would begin.