And then hush.
Into the room, into our kitchen, walked Mr Price. Like it was his own. His parlour. His workshop. His counting house. Like we were spiders climbing on his walls. Slugs suckered to his window, peering in.
His face showed wear. He was gaunt. But there was something human. A man whose son had been strangled to death in the woods, not a couple of nights before.
Tom Price, the elder of the two lads, walked behind him. He looked in horror and choler at my sister and I as our bodies were bent by the fists of others.
Father and son arranged themselves in a corner of the room. Mr Price did not direct his gaze at us. Not once. He stared above our heads and above the heads of the men he had hired. His jaw was locked, and it held the rest of his face in stiff composure.
The space was almost full with men at each side, sitting up on the work surfaces, tucked into corners and squeezed against the sides. Only the wall nearest the door was vacant, deliberately so, as men pushed and shoved into all the other spaces.
The silence remained. It was held by Mr Price. His presence settled others with a quiet trepidation. He surveyed.
A moan was heard outside. And it was as if the silence deepened. Everyone heard it. Then a sickening bellow. And something heavy dragging. And the voices of other men struggling to move an object.
‘Push. Push. I’ll guide him in.’ The words were muffled, heard through two shut doors and a whirling wind.
‘The corner’s got stuck on this clump of turf.’
The other man’s response did not make it into the room but was carried away by a sudden gust. They continued to drag whatever they were dragging. Step by step. Push and pull. It scraped and thudded. All eyes were on the door. Another moan was heard. A distinctive moan from distinctive vocal chords.
I couldn’t help it. I called out. ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ I shouted.
‘Somebody shut that boy up,’ snapped Mr Price from the corner. He did not look over. He hardly moved his lips as he issued the command.
The man holding me removed one of his fists from my arms and smacked my lower jaw. I tasted blood and with my tongue felt something loose. He shook me for good measure, bound my arms up in his own and pushed down so I had to lean forward and bend my knees.
I panted with the pain. I fiddled with the loose molar. I tasted blood. I fiddled some more with the tooth. I paid attention to this object in my mouth, to the feeling of its rough top as my tongue rubbed against it, and the feeling of the soft, tenderised gum beneath.
The door was opening. The man who had been doing the dragging could just about be seen, his back turned as he attended to his burden.
I concentrated on finding with my tongue the place in my mouth from where the blood was coming in. I fiddled around with the tooth. I enjoyed the distraction of the sharpness.
The man had now backed fully into the room. He was assisted by three others in his task. They held a board of wood. It was the top of our oak table. I saw where the legs had been and how roughly and carelessly they had been hacked off. The men carrying the table top now held it by these stubs.
I fiddled with my tooth. My back was bent in such a way that I had to strain my neck to see any of this. I thought about the pain in my spine, and the ache in my jaw and in my head, and about how I needed a drink of water, badly.
Daddy was strapped to the oak board with leather belts and cable ties. They dragged him into the room and propped him up against the wall that had been left vacant. His hands and wrists were coated in blood and his arms were spattered with it. Blood covered his face too and there were great clots of it on his forehead. On his left side, his white cotton vest was drenched crimson. His feet were bare and bound and they were rubbed and bleeding also. Everywhere the blood was mixed with dirt and mud and leaves and grasses and tar and soil from the land about, and red moved to black-brown.
When he was brought in his eyes were closed. Slowly he opened them and fixed them on mine. He looked over at Cathy, whose attention was as captured. The men who had brought him were busy ensuring his bonds were tight. Others looked at his hands and arms and legs or about them or at each other. None but my sister and I looked at Daddy’s eyes, a stark white, bright like two stars in a bloody firmament.
He groaned. He gurgled with each breath, liquid in his lungs.
Mr Price was the first to speak. ‘It’s a dark day, John. It’s a dark day. And believe me, this brings me no pleasure.’ He spoke quietly. ‘But you know that I require justice. Our kind of justice. Make your confession and it will be quick. Relatively quick.’
Daddy said nothing. Perhaps he could not. His eyes moved from Mr Price, to me, to my sister, to Mr Price.
‘You see that I brought your children here. I will be hard on them and you will see it,’ said Price.
Still Daddy said nothing.
Mr Price nodded to the big man holding Cathy. She struggled as he pushed her down, pinned her to the floor and took a knife to her clothing. The garments shrieked and whined as he ripped them apart. His aim was not to pierce her skin but he nicked it as he made the incisions, and as she struggled, and as he cut and ripped. There was blood on her too now.
Yet she did not scream. Her mouth remained shut firm. Her eyes wide open.
A naked body is just a naked body. Shame is only in beholding. And if I looked at her without shame, she could stand before me naked without shame and there would be no power in it. For why should she care for the way these men, these inconsequential men, looked at her?
Her clothes were cut and her body was revealed. I looked at her with all the intensity I could muster. I looked into her eyes and caught them with mine and I tried with all my might to let her know. Know what? Something. That she was not alone. That these things were only as bad as you imagined them to be and that only she could steady her imagination. But when I looked I saw that she was there already. There, or perhaps elsewhere. A thin, durable film of miraculous unconcern had settled upon her. She was impervious.
She stood naked. The man was still holding her tight but he could hardly be seen behind her radiance. The cuts and spotting that had appeared on her near-translucent skin hardly held attention.
Daddy coughed. Some blood dribbled onto his thick black beard. It would need washing, I told myself. When this was done, Cathy and I would need to wash our father’s clotted beard and matted hair. ‘Please stop,’ he whispered to Price.
Price stared back. ‘Confess,’ he said to Daddy.
Daddy opened his mouth to speak again. There was breath but none which had strength to catch his voice. He sighed, tried again, but again the air fell damp in his lungs.