There were sounds coming from the kitchen as she crept down the stairs, and light showed under the door. It was perversely reassuring, like a mouse knowing the cat was elsewhere. As she took each step, she was concentrating so hard on being quiet and avoiding the known creaks, she barely registered that the trip down the stairs was far less difficult than last time.
The door was bolted again. After drawing back the bolt – her heart stuttering with fright in case someone came out of the kitchen – she ducked into the downstairs cloakroom and brought the clothes out from under her gown. Shivering from fright more than cold, she pulled on the dress and found that it was far too big, and an ugly shade of brown. The jumper was hand knitted and also too big, hanging halfway down her thighs. Its bottle green clashed horribly with the brown. But they were clothes. The first clothes she had worn in years. The leather shoes were a tight fit, but she managed to loosen the laces to give her toes a bit more room. And the coat was wool and long enough to keep most of her legs covered. And it was black, which would be helpful if she had to hide.
The nightdress she left hanging on a peg among a rack of staff overalls.
The hallway remained silent and empty when she let herself out of the cloakroom. Nothing stirred as she pulled open the heavy front door and felt the cool night wind try to snatch it from her hand. Clinging on to the handle, horrifyingly aware of how weak she was, she stepped outside and pulled it shut behind her. There was a thud and a snick as it closed and the catch caught. She froze, ear pressed to the door to see if anyone was coming to investigate. Nothing.
Shaking, summoning her courage, she pushed herself away from the door and staggered down the stone steps. In contrast to her last escape attempt, there was a sliver of moon over the treetops, though dark rainclouds were massing to the west, and the cool westerly wind made her glad to have brought a coat. Buttoning it and holding it tight around herself, Primrose set off down the drive. The sound of stones crunching under her feet alarmed roosting rooks and pigeons into noisy flight, but no one came to investigate and she hastened on.
Weak though she was from inactivity, she was able to walk much faster now she wasn’t carrying so much weight. The clothes itched, the shoes were rubbing against her bare feet, but her knees and hips were no longer screaming; if she hadn’t had half an ear out for a car engine revving behind her she might even have found herself enjoying her mad, staggering dash towards the village. Maybe it was the poppy juice that was causing a bubble of exhilaration to form in her chest and turning the night sounds that had terrified her last time into a quiet chorus urging her on, but for a moment she felt invincible, like the heroine in some old book, escaping from the castle.
It took her half as long to reach the spot where Dorcas had found her last time, and she barely noticed its significance as she sped on her way. The final uphill slope to Gibbet Cross slowed her considerably, as did the sight of the gallows, the rotting wooden structure in the centre of a grass bank to the north of the crossroads showing black against the night sky. Excitement cooled and congealed into dread.
The last hanging – that she knew about anyway – had been when she was about six years old. She had been forbidden to attend, a fact for which she was grateful now, but she remembered feeling cheated at the time. The corpse had been left dangling from the gibbet as a warning, rotting until the head parted from its body and the remains were removed, to be thrown into a hole in the ground outside the churchyard wall. Before that happened, she and some friends had sneaked away after school one day and seen the corpse swaying in the wind, face bloated, purple, crow-pecked. Her friend had dared her to touch it. She had refused and been called a coward. Stung, she brushed the dangling trouserleg, and screamed when the wind pushed it and its stink towards her. Shrieking, they had run back to the village and their chores.
Primrose hadn’t known why the man had been hanged. She had asked her dad and he said something about rustling, but making noise seemed such a small crime for such a big punishment.
The gibbet was empty now but still she didn’t look fully at it, hurrying past before turning left and away, feeling its presence at her back and imagining the ghosts of its victims dragging themselves along behind her, her spine crawling with a shiver of horror until she turned a bend and the sensation faded.
From there the going got easier; more effort had been made to keep the approach to the village level underfoot, and the gradient was less steep. As she reached the first, tumbledown cottages, hidden behind hedges to her right, she forced herself to slow down so she would be able to hear anyone else out past curfew and find somewhere to hide. Besides, she was starting to pant from exertion, and her legs were feeling wobbly. A sudden fit of faintness forced her to pause a moment, and skeins of colour danced across her vision. Following them with her gaze, she looked up and became mesmerised by the moon’s lambent glow, its bright sickle shape like a curved door into a better, brighter world.
A light drizzle began to fall and clouds stole across the moon. Primrose shivered as cold wet drops pattered onto her upraised face, remembering where she was and what she was supposed to be doing. Even though it was darker without moonlight, colours danced in her vision. She forced herself to ignore them, and to think about the business of finding somewhere to hide before dawn, preferably under cover, preferably the schoolteacher’s cottage. She started walking again, grateful no one had come across her during her moonstruck moment. With the collar of her coat up she was confident she was now all but hidden in the dark, though her bandaged legs glowed pale below the hem.
The village was laid out like an asymmetric ladder. The road she was on would fork about a hundred yards down, with narrow alleys connecting the two tines. The school and Mrs Prendaghast’s cottage were located on the second of these, in the heart of the small settlement. Forcing down nerves, Primrose walked as slowly as she could stand, choosing the left-hand lane that would take her down past the pub and the church. At this time of night, she thought this would be safer than going past people’s homes, where someone might be wakeful and happen to look out of a window.
A clattering broke the silence and she froze. Eyes glinted at her from shadows by a fallen-down cottage. Before she could summon the wit to flee, something growled at her and slunk further into the dark. A dog. There were several feral packs that kept to the outskirts of villages and foraged at night. Thankfully it had been alone, or it might have taken her on.
Aside from the dog there was no one around, and no lights in any of the windows she passed. The pub was closed up tight, and the church next door loomed over the churchyard and village green. Heart in her mouth, wheezing and shaking now with exhaustion, Primrose crept down the lane that led to the school. Tucked round to the side of that was the cottage Mrs Prendaghast was permitted to live in. It, too, was dark. She didn’t want to knock in case a neighbour heard, so she pushed at the door and tried the old-fashioned latch. The door was unbolted. Bless Mrs Prendaghast and her trusting heart.
Primrose pushed the door wide and slipped in. It was colder inside than out, but at least the wind was no longer whipping at her. Shutting the door quietly, she stood with her back to it while her eyes adjusted. She was in the small kitchen, with a table in front of her, an unlit range against the far wall and two closed doors across the other side of the room, one of which she knew would lead up to the bedroom and bathroom, though she had never been up there on her few visits as a child.
Over to her left was an old armchair and she headed for that, sinking down gratefully, before jumping up with a stifled yelp as she sat on a bag of crochet hooks, knitting needles and wool. Moving the bag onto the floor, she settled herself into the lumpy seat, pulling a throw slung over the back across her knees and slipping off the uncomfortable shoes so she could draw her feet up under her. She would wait here a minute while she warmed up and her breathing steadied, then go upstairs to wake the teacher.
Closing her eyes, the fear and tension of the last few days slowly ebbed. A poppy-induced
