Extract from "The Silver Horse"

Up on the Downs

EPSOM DOWNS, SURREY, ENGLAND
13th August 1658

As dusk fell over the high, rolling Downs, Luka and Emilia crept out of a stand of trees and jumped over a ditch full of thistles onto a potholed road. At their heels lumbered a big brown bear, led by a long chain, and a slender dapple-grey pony, free of any rein. A big shaggy dog bounded on ahead, while Zizi the monkey clung to Luka's shoulder as usual.

'Come on, the coast's clear,' Luka hissed, looking from side to side. 'Let's get away from the road while we can.'

'I'm dying of thirst,' Emilia groaned. 'And so is Rollo. Look how far his tongue's hanging out. Couldn't we have found somewhere to hide that had a stream or a spring or something?'

She gestured to the shaggy dog by her side, who was panting heavily as he looked up at her with sad brown eyes.

'Rollo's tongue is always hanging out,' Luka said. 'Besides, it's not my fault we didn't have anything to drink. I got us food, didn't I?'

'Well, yes, but you left the bag open, remember, so Rollo got the ham and Sweetheart ate all the apples.'

At the sound of her name, the bear looked around, her chain clanking, and Luka gave it a gentle tug so she would follow him again.

'Stop whining and come on,' he said. 'Someone could come past at any moment.'

'I'm not whining,' Emilia said indignantly. 'I'm just letting you know I'm hungry again.'

She gave a little cluck with her tongue so Alida, her mare, stopped still beside a way-stone. Bunching her grubby skirts up about her knees, Emilia swung herself up onto the mare's back and grabbed hold of the old bit of rope she used as reins.

'You're always hungry,' Luka replied. 'You must have hollow legs. No wonder Baba always complains about how much you eat.'

'As if she never complains about you,' Emilia retorted, urging Alida forward with a gentle tap of her bare heels. Behind her, the dog stood, one paw raised, looking about him rather forlornly.

'Rollo!'Emilia called. 'It's all right, boy. Come on!'

As the dog followed her obediently, she said unhappily, 'He misses Noah. He can't understand where he's gone.'

Luka nodded grimly.

He and Emilia had spent the afternoon hiding in the copse of trees, hot, bored and tortured by thirst. To the west lay the town of Epsom. To the north ran the road to London, and many carts and carriages had rattled one way or another all afternoon. There was a well beyond the town, the children knew, which was said to have miraculous healing properties so that people came from miles around to drink it. The children had no desire to drink the bitter water, or to go anywhere near the town, but the road had been so busy all afternoon they had not dared travel along it. A party of two children, a bear, a horse, a dog and a monkey was peculiar enough to be talked about for miles, and they knew that Coldham would not have given up searching for them, no matter how cleverly their gypsy kin had led him astray. Felipe, the Big Man of the Hearne tribe, had pointed Coldham in quite the wrong direction, but it would not take long for the thief-taker to realise he had been tricked, and he would be even angrier and more determined to catch them than before.

It had been awful to lie still when their every instinct was to hurry on and find help for their families. Emilia had found it particularly hard, for she had nothing to do but think about the strange things she had seen when she had looked in her grandmother's old crystal ball at Nonsuch Palace.

Her words had caused Colonel Pride, the owner of the palace, to choke and fall into some kind of fit, and she and Luka had been able to escape. Luka thought she had been very clever, but what he did not realise was that Emilia had not chosen to tell the colonel that he was to die soon and that his decomposing body would be dug up from his grave and hung as a traitor's on Tyburn Hill.

Although the words had been spoken by her mouth, it was not Emilia's brain that had framed them, and she found this very frightening. She was 9 glad to be up, and moving again, to leave the memory of the prophecy behind her.

On the northern side of the road stretched a patchwork of rolling fields, brown and green and tawny yellow, edged with stone walls and hedgerows, and studded with quaint timber and stone cottages, each in a little embroidered garden. As the light failed, smoke began to rise from the chimneys.

To the west were many roofs, all clustered close about a village pond, with a little flint church raising its narrow spire to the heavens. The bell was tolling out now, marking the curfew, and lights were glimmering from numerous windows.

On the far side of the road rose the great Downs. All afternoon Emilia had lain on her stomach, her chin propped in her hands, staring at them. They rolled up into the sky like the humped shape of a giant sleeping under a green counterpane. The shadow of clouds drifted over them and, as the sun had begun to set, they had slowly turned a strange, eerie purple. Now they were black against the translucent sky, and looked very lonely and mysterious.

They hurried along the road, Emilia looking all around them for any sign of pursuit, and Luka keeping his eyes on the road. After a while he gave a joyful exclamation. There, near a bridlepath up to the Downs, was a loose circle of leaves arranged around a reddish-coloured rock, with an arrow formed of sticks pointing away from the road. The leaves were held down with little twigs.

To anyone else, the muddle of old leaves and sticks would have looked like something blown together by the wind, but to the two gypsy children it was a signpost. The Hearne family had gone this way.

Felipe Hearne - the father of the boy Beatrice was to marry - had promised he would leave a patrin for them, to show which way to go. The gypsies often left such secret messages behind for their kith and kin, to signpost a new direction, to warn of danger, or to pass on news of a friendly farmhouse where a hungry gypsy family might be able to barter for a bit of bacon or some potatoes.

Although Emilia and Luka had not travelled the roads since they were little more than babies, they still knew the secret code of the patrins.

'There's no cover,' Luka said anxiously. 'Let's just hope no one comes riding by.'

Emilia touched her gold coin for luck.

They left the road and followed the bridlepath, which soon began to climb steeply. Emilia dismounted and walked, to save Alida from having to carry her weight up the hill. Luka saw some deep ruts left by wheels in the grassy verge, and pointed them out to Emilia, who nodded eagerly.

They quickened their pace, keen to catch up with the caravans before it grew too dark to see. It was scary being out in the dark by themselves, and both were eager to huddle by a fire, and eat some hot stew, and tell someone their troubles.

The two children paused on the top of the Downs, the wind blowing back their hair. It felt as though they were on the top of the world. East to west, the Downs ran, with the land falling away sharply before and behind them. The sun was almost set, marking the horizon with carmine and gold, but all else was just shadowy dips and undulations, with the sharp spires of the churches and the tall poplar trees stabbing up into the darkening sky. Then Emilia turned to look back the way they had come, and gasped aloud, for there to the north was a false sunrise, a distant glare of orange light.

'That must be London,' Luka said beside her.