[51] Weeps one moment and as quickly laughs

I don’t carry a watch. There’s usually a church close enough that I can count the bell. So that first sleep ends around twenty minutes before eight. I hear the hunting dogs coming, but let her sleep another ten minutes. When I hear the hooves on the path, I tap her shoulder and tell her to dress quickly and not to fear the next. She stares at the dried blood on her thighs, strums it with her palms, then wraps herself in her dress and her dress in the blanket.

He comes bursting in. I’ve never seen this ogre before, though there’s a lot of them in this valley, I’m well aware. This one has coarse blond hair, bowl-cut, and tweed skin, and is wearing a grey serge jacket with a matching raven-feathered hat, and he smells like dogs. When he starts to yell at us it sounds as if he’s chewing a mouthful of rocks. Hungarians. Then he bellows over his shoulder and I hear boots in the front room. Just from the sound, you know they’re black and shiny, rare leather with steel straps, and that the nearest poacher is about to be kicked.

But it won’t be me, or us, because he always knows better. This second one steps inside the hut and stands at the inside door beside his gamekeeper and gives me a long scowl – he’s never addressed me for any reason. Then he slashes the door jamb with his riding crop and stomps out while the gamekeeper cocks his shotgun at us.

‘It’s okay,’ I tell Emma. But she’s taking it well, putting on a public face of universal stubbornness.

Now here’s yet another. She elbows up to the door in a black riding cape and mcintosh hood glistening with the morning mist, above a plain black shirtwaist over loose-fitting trousers – no side saddle for her. She tosses back her hood and shakes out her wavy coal-black hair, and lets out a short, hollow explosion of a laugh. Never more than one.

‘Great, Paul, how old’s this one?’

‘Find out when I’m done.’

‘Ha.’ She gives Emma a long deep stare. ‘You’d be sweeter next month, but an animal got you. Paul, breakfast’s in the lodge in an hour. Don’t you ever knock?’

‘That would give you too much pleasure,’ I tell her.

‘As if I’ll ever know your pleasure. What’s this one’s name?’

‘Emma.’

‘Did he wear you out, Emma? Of course he did. Here …’ And she tosses her cloak to her. ‘Wrap up, have a wash before breakfast. Paul should take care of you better than this. You picked a rotten one, that’s a promise.’