Children of the May (Children of the May Book 1)

Chapter Two: An Escape

We crested the hill that marked the southern boundary of my mother’s lands an hour later. From my place in the cage, looking back down the road, I could see the Lake and its forest lightly shrouded in mist. The castle stood proudly at the near end of the water, the cloud-topped mountain at the other, with the nunnery at its foot. As the wagon rocked and creaked down the hill, we entered an unfamiliar country of muddy fields and farmyard smells.

Sir Dinadan ordered a halt for the evening at the first roadside inn we came to.  He and his men left me in the cage while they went inside to eat. Eventually one of them came out with a plate of scraps for me.

I waited until the sounds from the inn began to die down before I took Martha’s chisel from my cloak and tried it on the lock of the cage. It was a new moon, and the barn in which they’d left me was dark. I was able to feel where the mechanism joined the wood. The point of the chisel slid easily into the gap, and I began whittling away at the weak spot that held the bolt in place. The wood slowly splintered as I worked it, and after a good deal of prising and pushing the door swung open.

My hands dripped with fear as I crept out of the barn and made for the road. Every crunch of gravel under my feet left me terrified that someone would hear and raise the alarm, but the windows of the inn remained dark.

I walked up the road as fast as I could. I knew that I would have to be off the main way before daybreak or I’d be quickly caught. But it was a cloudy night, lacking even stars to light my way. If I had been able to find a river then I could have used the fishes’ senses to guide me along, but I had seen neither river nor lake to hide in since we’d left my mother’s country. I had to stay on the relatively flat road until there was enough light to see by. Even doing this I tripped over more than one pothole.

I managed a mile or two before a strange green dawn began to break over the brown land. The hill at the edge of the Lands of the Lake was another two or three miles away.

When it was light enough to make out the rutted surface of the muddy fields I veered off the road. I had always dreamed of finding a lake for myself; somewhere I could be alone with my cold-blooded friends. Perhaps Martha would be able to help me find one, up in the mountains above the Lake.

The ground was cold and soft. My boots became buckets of water, filled by the puddles into which they plunged. My belly rumbled with hunger and my heart thumped with fear.

‘Hunchback!’ I heard a man scream at the top of his voice. ‘We’re coming for you, hunchback!’

I threw myself into the dirt. Sir Dinadan and one of his men were riding along the road. I saw their heads bobbing along above the hedgerows. I hid my face, and listened as the hoofbeats carried on up the way, back towards my mother’s lands. I crawled on.

After an hour of crawling I was wet through, and my hands and knees were raw from scraping over stones lodged in the mud. The hollow tree that marked my meeting with Martha seemed as far away as ever. 

As I crossed the fence into the next field, which was pasture for an underfed herd of cattle, I heard the sound of hooves once more.

‘Got you, you little creep!’ It was the voice of one of Sir Dinadan’s men, heavily accented with the sounds of London.

At first I couldn’t see where the voice was coming from. I could hear his cry, and the pounding of his horse, but the dull land robbed the sounds of direction. Then the herd of cows began to move, and I saw the man’s horse leap the fence at the far side of the field. The cows mooed, distressed, and became even more agitated when Sir Dinadan’s weasely man put a hunting horn to his lips and blew a call of triumph.