‘Can you see your house from here?’ he asked Will.
‘No…not yet.’
‘But it will come clear, by and by.’
‘Yes,’ Will said, only now getting a sense of how the land lay. He had managed somehow to come halfway around the valley during his blind trek, and was looking down on the village from a wholly unexpected angle. There was a track not more than thirty yards down the ridge from where he stood; it would lead him, he suspected, back to the route he’d followed to get to the Courthouse. A left at that intersection would bring him back into Burnt Yarley, and then it was just a weary trudge home.
‘You should go, my boy,’ Jacob said. ‘Doubtless a fellow as fine as you has loving guardians.’ The gloved hand squeezed his shoulder. ‘I envy you that, having no parents that I can remember.’
‘I’m…sorry,’ Will said, hesitating because he was by no means sure a man as fine as Jacob Steep was ever in need of sympathy. He received it, however, in good part.
Thank you, Will. It’s important that a man be compassionate. It’s a quality that our sex so often neglects, I think.’ Will heard the soft cadence of Steep’s breathing, and tried to fall in rhythm with it. ‘You should go,’ Jacob said. ‘Your parents will be concerned for you.’
‘No they won’t,’ Will replied.
‘Surely—’
‘They won’t. They don’t care.’
‘I can’t believe that.’
‘It’s true.’
Then you must be a loving son in spite of them,’ Steep said. ‘Be grateful that you have their faces in your mind’s eye. And their voices to answer when you call. Better that than emptiness, believe me. Better than silence.’
He lifted his hand from Will’s shoulder, and instead touched the middle of his back, gently pushing him away. ‘Go on,’ he said softly. ‘You’ll be dead of cold if you don’t go soon. Then how would we get to meet again?’
Will’s spirits rose at this. ‘We might do that?’
‘Oh certainly, if you’re hardy enough to come and find me. But Will…understand me…I’m not looking for a dog to perch on my lap. I need a wolf.’
‘I could be a wolf,’ Will said. He wanted to look back over his shoulder at Steep, but that was not, he thought, the most appropriate thing for an aspirant wolf to do.
Then as I say: come find me,’ Steep said. ‘I won’t be far away.’ And with that he gave Will a final nudge, setting him off on his way down the slope.
Will did not look back until he reached the track, and when he did he saw nothing. At least nothing alive. The hill he saw, black against the clearing sky. And the stars, appearing between the clouds. But their splendour was nothing compared to the face of Jacob Steep; a face he had not yet seen, but which his mind had already conjured a hundred different ways by the time he reached home, each finer than the one before. Steep the nobleman, fine-boned and fancy; Steep the soldier, scarred from a dozen wars; Steep the magician, his gaze bearing power. Perhaps he was all of these. Perhaps none. Will didn’t care. What mattered was to be beside him again, soon, and know him better.
Meanwhile, there was a warm light from the window of his home, and a fire in the hearth. Even a wolf might seek the comfort of the hearth now and then, Will reasoned, and knocking on the front door, was let back in.
i
He did not go up the hill the following day to look for Jacob, nor indeed the day following that. He came home to such a firestorm of accusations – his mother in racking tears, certain he was dead, his father, white with fury, just as certain he wasn’t – that he dared not step over the threshold. Hugo wasn’t a violent man. He prided himself on his reasonableness. But he made an exception in this case, and beat his son so hard – with a book, of all things – he reduced them both to tears: Will of pain, his father of anguish, that he’d lost so much control.
He wasn’t interested in Will’s explanations. He simply told his son that while he, Hugo, didn’t care if Will went wandering for the rest of his damn life, Eleanor did, and hadn’t she suffered enough for one lifetime?
So Will stayed at home and nursed his bruises and his rage. After forty-eight hours his mother tried to make some kind of peace, telling him how frightened she’d been that some harm had befallen him.
‘Why?’ he said to her sullenly.
‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘I mean why should you worry if something happens to me? You never cared before…’
‘Oh, William…’ she said softly. There was only a trace of accusation in her voice. It was mostly sorrow.
‘You don’t,’ he said flatly. ‘You know you don’t. All you ever think about is him.’ He didn’t need to name the missing member of this equation. ‘I’m not important to you. You said so.’ This was not strictly the case. She’d never used those precise words. But the lie sounded true enough.
‘I’m sure I didn’t mean it,’ she said. ‘It’s just been so hard for me since Nathaniel died—’ Her fingers went to his face as she spoke, and gently stroked his cheek. ‘He was so…so…’
He was barely listening to her. He was thinking of Rosa McGee, and how she had touched his face and spoken to him softly. Only she’d not been talking about how fine some other boy was while she did so. She’d been telling him what a treasure he was, how nimble, how useful. This woman who had barely known his name had found in him qualities his own mother could not see. It made him sad and angry at the same time.
‘Why do you keep talking about him?’ Will said. ‘He’s dead.’
Eleanor’s fingers fell from Will’s face, and she looked at him with tear-filled eyes. ‘No,’ she said, ‘he’ll never be dead. Not to me. I don’t expect you to understand. How could you? But your brother was very special to me. Very precious. So he’ll never be dead as far as I’m concerned.’
Something happened in Will at that moment. A scrap of hope that had stayed green in the months since the accident withered and went to dust. He didn’t say anything. He just got up and left her to her tears.
ii
After two days of home-bound penance he went to school. It was a smaller place than St Margaret’s, which he liked, its buildings older, its playground lined with trees instead of railings. He kept to himself for the first week, barely speaking to anyone. At the beginning of the second week, however, minding his own business at lunchtime, a familiar face appeared in front of him. It was Frannie.
‘Here you are,’ she said, as though she’d been looking for him.
‘Hello,’ he said, glancing around to see if Sherwood the Brat was also in evidence. He wasn’t.
‘I thought you’d be gone on your trip by now.’
‘I will,’ he said. ‘I’ll go.’
‘I know,’ Frannie said, quite sincerely. ‘After we met I kept thinking maybe I’d go too. Not with you—’ she hastened to add ‘—but one day I’d just leave.’
‘Go as far away as possible,’ Will said.
‘As far away as possible,’ Frannie replied, her echoing of his words a kind of pact. There’s not much worth seeing around here,’ she went on, ‘unless you go into…you know…’
‘You