1. Midwinter''s Eve MIDWINTER''S EVE TOO MANY!" JAMES SHOUTED, AND slammed the door behind him. "What?" said Will. "Too many kids in this family, that''s what. Just too many." James stood fuming on the landing like a small angry locomotive, then stumped across to the window-seat and stared out at the garden. Will put aside his book and pulled up his legs to make room. "I could hear all the yelling," he said, chin on knees.
"Wasn''t anything," James said. "Just stupid Barbara again. Bossing. Pick up this, don''t touch that. And Mary joining in, twitter twitter twitter. You''d think this house was big enough, but there''s always people." They both looked out of the window. The snow lay thin and apologetic over the world.
That wide grey sweep was the lawn, with the straggling trees of the orchard still dark beyond; the white squares were the roofs of the garage, the old barn, the rabbit hutches, the chicken coops. Further back there were only the flat fields of Dawsons'' Farm, dimly white-striped. All the broad sky was grey, full of more snow that refused to fall. There was no colour anywhere. "Four days to Christmas," Will said. "I wish it would snow properly." "And your birthday tomorrow." "Mmm.
" He had been going to say that too, but it would have been too much like a reminder. And the gift he most wished for on his birthday was something nobody could give him: it was snow, beautiful, deep, blanketing snow, and it never came. At least this year there was the grey sprinkle, better than nothing. He said, remembering a duty: "I haven''t fed the rabbits yet. Want to come?" Booted and muffled, they clumped out through the sprawling kitchen. A full symphony orchestra was swelling out of the radio; their eldest sister Gwen was slicing onions and singing; their mother was bent broad-beamed and redfaced over an oven. "Rabbits!" she shouted, when she caught sight of them. "And some more hay from the farm!" "We''re going!" Will shouted back.
The radio let out a sudden hideous crackle of static as he passed the table. He jumped. Mrs. Stanton shrieked, "Turn that thing down." Outdoors, it was suddenly very quiet. Will dipped out a pail of pellets from the bin in the farm-smelling barn, which was not really a barn at all, but a long, low building with a tiled roof, once a stable. They tramped through the thin snow to the row of heavy wooden hutches, leaving dark footmarks on the hard frozen ground. Opening doors to fill the feed-boxes, Will paused, frowning.
Normally the rabbits would be huddled sleepily in corners, only the greedy ones coming twitch-nosed forward to eat. Today they seemed restless and uneasy, rustling to and fro, banging against their wooden walls; one or two even leapt back in alarm when he opened their doors. He came to his favourite rabbit, named Chelsea, and reached in as usual to rub him affectionately behind the ears, but the animal scuffled back away from him and cringed into a corner, the pink-rimmed eyes staring up blank and terrified. "Hey!" Will said, disturbed. "Hey James, look at that. What''s the matter with him? And all of them?" "They seem all right to me." "Well, they don''t to me. They''re all jumpy.
Even Chelsea. Hey, come on, boy--" But it was no good. "Funny," James said with mild interest, watching. "I dare say your hands smell wrong. You must have touched something they don''t like. Same as dogs and aniseed, but the other way round." "I haven''t touched anything. Matter of fact, I''d just washed my hands when I saw you.
" "There you are then," James said promptly. "That''s the trouble. They''ve never smelt you clean before. Probably all die of shock." "Ha very ha." Will attacked him, and they scuffled together, grinning, while the empty pail toppled, rattling on the hard ground. But when he glanced back as they left, the animals were still moving distractedly, not eating yet, staring after him with those strange frightened wide eyes. "There might be a fox about again, I suppose," James said.
"Remind me to tell Mum." No fox could get at the rabbits, in their sturdy row, but the chickens were more vulnerable; a family of foxes had broken into one of the henhouses the previous winter and carried off six nicely fattened birds just before marketing time. Mrs. Stanton, who relied on the chicken-money each year to help pay for eleven Christmas presents, had been so furious she had kept watch afterwards in the cold barn two nights running, but the villains had not come back. Will thought that if he were a fox he would have kept clear too; his mother might be married to a jeweller, but with generations of Buckinghamshire farmers behind her, she was no joke when the old instincts were roused. Tugging the handcart, a home-made contraption with a bar joining its shafts, he and James made their way down the curve of the overgrown drive and out along the road to Dawsons'' Farm. Quickly past the churchyard, its great dark yew trees leaning out over the crumbling wall; more slowly by Rooks'' Wood, on the corner of Church Lane. The tall spinney of horse-chestnut trees, raucous with the calling of the rooks and rubbish-roofed with the clutter of their sprawling nests, was one of their familiar places.
"Hark at the rooks! Something''s disturbed them." The harsh irregular chorus was deafening, and when Will looked up at the treetops he saw the sky dark with wheeling birds. They flapped and drifted to and fro; there were no flurries of sudden movement, only this clamorous interweaving throng of rooks. "An owl?" "They''re not chasing anything. Come on, Will, it''ll be getting dark soon." "That''s why it''s so odd for the rooks to be in a fuss. They all ought to be roosting by now." Will turned his head reluctantly down again, but then jumped and clutched his brother''s arm, his eye caught by a movement in the darkening lane that led away from the road where they stood.
Church Lane: it ran between Rooks'' Wood and the churchyard to the tiny local church, and then on to the River Thames. "Hey!" "What''s up?" "There''s someone over there. Or there was. Looking at us." James sighed. "So what? Just someone out for a walk." "No, he wasn''t." Will screwed up his eyes nervously, peering down the little side road.
"It was a weird-looking man all hunched over, and when he saw me looking he ran off behind a tree. Scuttled, like a beetle." James heaved at the handcart and set off up the road, making Will run to keep up. "It''s just a tramp, then. I dunno, everyone seems to be going batty today--Barb and the rabbits and the rooks and now you all yak-twitchetty-yakking. Come on, let''s get that hay. I want my tea." The handcart bumped through the frozen ruts into Dawsons'' yard, the great earthen square enclosed by buildings on three sides, and they smelt the familiar farm-smell.
The cowshed must have been mucked out that day; Old George, the toothless cattleman, was piling dung across the yard. He raised a hand to them. Nothing missed Old George; he could see a hawk drop from a mile away. Mr. Dawson came out of a barn. "Ah," he said. "Hay for Stantons'' Farm?" It was his joke with their mother, because of the rabbits and the hens. James said, "Yes, please.
" "It''s coming," Mr. Dawson said. Old George had disappeared into the barn. "Keeping well, then? Tell your mum I''ll have ten birds off her tomorrow. And four rabbits. Don''t look like that, young Will. If it''s not their happy Christmas, it''s one for the folks as''ll have them." He glanced up at the sky, and Will thought a strange look came over his lined brown face.
Up against the lowering grey clouds, two black rooks were flapping slowly over the farm in a wide circle. "The rooks are making an awful din today," James said. "Will saw a tramp up by the wood." Mr. Dawson looked at Will sharply. "What was he like?" "Just a little old man. He dodged away." "So the Walker is abroad," the farmer said softly to himself.
"Ah. He would be." "Nasty weather for walking," James said cheerfully. He nodded at the northern sky over the farmhouse roof; the clouds there seemed to be growing darker, massing in ominous grey mounds with a yellowish tinge. The wind was rising too; it stirred their hair, and they could hear a distant rustling from the tops of the trees. "More snow coming," said Mr. Dawson. "It''s a horrible day," said Will suddenly, surprised by his own violence; after all, he had wanted snow.
But somehow uneasiness was growing in him. "It''s--creepy, somehow." "It will be a bad night," said Mr. Dawson. "There''s Old George with the hay," said James. "Come on, Will." "You go," the farmer said. "I want Will to pick up something for your mother from the house.
" But he did not move, as James pushed the handcart off towards the barn; he stood with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his old tweed jacket, looking at the darkening sky. "The Walker is abroad," he said again. "And this night will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond imagining." He looked at Will, and Will looked back in growing alarm into the weathered face, the bright dark eyes creased narrow by decades of peering into sun and rain and wind. He had never noticed before how dark Farmer Dawson''s eyes were: strange, in their blue-eyed county. "You have a birthday coming," the farmer said. "Mmm," said Will. "I have something.