Coram Boy. Jamila Gavin

and nine years old. The children were silent, as though they had been born learning to stifle their fears. They allowed Meshak to herd them into the back of the wagon.

      When the children were in place, tucked round the sides, still mute, still staring, Meshak and Otis began to separate the train of mules from the wagon. The ferryman was impatient now, looking anxiously at the stormy sky and the low sun, and urged them to hurry.

      Otis tugged the reins down over the wagon mule’s ears and roughly cajoled it on to the ferry. The nervous animal resisted, unwilling to step on to the rocking craft, until a sharp stroke of the whip made it leap aboard with a clatter of hooves. Otis pulled a sack over the animal’s head to blinker it from the heaving water. He had just about cajoled a fourth mule on to the ferry when a woman’s voice called out softly, ‘Are you the Coram man?’

      Meshak turned to see. He was surprised that his father reacted instinctively, as if that had always been his name. Meshak had never heard it before. Otis tossed Meshak the reins. ‘The boy will see them on,’ he yelled to the ferryman, and as Meshak took the reins and soothed the frightened mule, his father had already leapt ashore.

      It was no housemaid or potato picker, like so many others who had hailed him, but a gentlewoman who, though trying to look modest and inconspicuous, was unmistakably a lady. Even had her refined voice not given her away, the cut and cloth of her cloak betrayed her. Her head was lowered into a basket, which she hugged tightly to herself, and she hung back in the shadows of the trees on the riverbank, trying not to be seen or identified.

      The transaction was rapid. A heavy purse of money went into Otis’s pouch and he took the basket with a great show of reverence and concern, as if he would protect it with his life. Meshak heard the lady give one short, pitiful shriek of grief, quickly stifled. Otis leapt back on to the wagon and thrust the bundle into Meshak’s arms. ‘Look caring,’ he muttered, ‘till we’re on the other side.’

      The ferry pulled away, but the woman continued to stand stiffly at the water’s edge, watching them. Meshak felt her eyes fixed on them all the way across. She was still standing there when they disembarked.

       Chapter Two The Black Dog

      The rain came down with a vengeance. The wind swished through the trees, making them bend and sway. The road turned to mire, and they still had two or three miles before they reached Gloucester city centre. The mules bowed their heads into the driving rain. The squeaks and mewlings in the sacks ceased. The wooden wheels ground along the deep, water-logged ruts, heavy with wet, sticky, clinging mud which sent out a spray with every turn and coated the dogs outside. Their legs kept running incessantly, also sending out muddy sprays; running, running, because they had no choice but to keep their legs moving, tied as they were to the axle. Jester was lucky; as Meshak’s dog he was allowed in the wagon.

      Meshak pulled the flaps tightly shut to keep out the damp cold. The brats all looked at him with long, doleful glances as he snuggled up to Jester for warmth. He shut his eyes so as not to witness their despair. He felt hungry. They felt hungry. They were starving, probably hadn’t eaten since dawn. He didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to think about it. He had an apple in his pocket. He took it out with his eyes still closed and began to munch. He knew they were staring at him, their eyes huge with longing. He ate it as quickly as he could and fed the core to Jester. There was a shudder of repressed envy from the brats. They would have fallen eagerly on it and eaten every scrap if they could. Jester swallowed the core in a gulp.

      It was dark now. The rain still beat down on the canvas covering and, for a while, they were mesmerised by the rhythmic swish and sway of the wagon and the hollow slurpy plod of the animals’ hooves. There was a stir of surprise and a quiver of anxiety among the children when the creaking of the wheels stopped and they came to a halt. Apart from the sound of the rain and the snorting of mules, blowing away the rain from their nostrils, there was no other sound.

      They were not yet within earshot of the city. Meshak sat up, his arms still clasped round Jester. The brats’ eyes gleamed in the darkness. They seemed not to have moved a muscle since he had climbed inside to get out of the rain half an hour ago. He heard Otis jump down. The light of his lantern swung a yellow shaft across the canvas. Then the flap opened and his dark drenched face looked in. Rain was spangled through his thick, straggly hair, reflecting in the light like so many diamonds. He nodded curtly to Meshak. ‘Get the spade. There’s a good ditch just here. We’ll dig them in,’ he jerked his head in the direction of the panniers strapped to the train of mules. ‘I don’t want to take them into Gloucester.’ Meshak jumped out and had to tie the flap to keep Jester in, so he then set up a continuous barking. Meshak knew from many, many times before that they couldn’t have Jester digging anything up.

      It was a hurried affair in all that wind and rain and darkness and the swinging light from the storm lantern, which Otis hung on a branch directly over the ditch. Otis plunged in his spade. Nothing too deep or careful. There was a lot of water. Just dig a hole deep enough to submerge the bundles. Foxes would do the rest. He wouldn’t have bothered burying them had he not taken money for them and given undertakings. Otis dug and Meshak went from mule to mule, extricating one bundle after another from the panniers to hand to his father, who dropped them like seeds into the ditch. Meshak stared wonderingly as they sank into the mud and vanished even before his father had shovelled a few spadefuls of earth over them. What was it like to be dead? Meshak tried to imagine. What did they see under the mud? Would they find angels there; angels like the ones he saw in church windows?

      They came to the last one – the one the lady had given them on the other side. Meshak hesitated. ‘Come on, lad – drop it in!’ rasped Otis.

      ‘Moving. Still alive,’ stammered Meshak. Usually, if they weren’t dead, they at least tried to sell them off first.

      ‘Not worth it. Drop it in, I say.’

      Meshak let go the feebly moving bundle. He heard it splosh into the ditch. He backed away whimpering. He never did like burying the live ones. He felt the apple he had just eaten rise with the bile up his gullet. He vomited against a tree, leaning his head into the bark so that it left its imprint on his brow.

      ‘Don’t go lily-livered on me,’ snarled Otis, grabbing his coat and herding his son back to the wagon. Jester was still barking. ‘Go on, get in. Mrs Peebles is expecting us tonight at the Black Dog.’ Jester stopped barking.

      Meshak didn’t need eyes to know they had entered Gloucester. Despite the constant thud of rain on to the canvas covering, he heard the swell of sound. It came towards them like a distant wave and then crashed over them; an overwhelming cacophony of babble, all the stuff of humans and their animals and their livelihoods. He had been dozing, lying with his face still partly buried in Jester’s fur, relishing the sounds of the city while not yet ready to face it. He didn’t even open the flap when he heard the wagon and the mules’ hooves clattering over cobblestones; nor when he smelt the stench of open sewers and foraging pigs, and the manure of horses and mules, and wet straw intermingled with women’s perfume and polished leather and charcoal fires and grilled fish. He knew without looking, by the heavy smell of beer and the raucous sounds of fiddling and singing, that they had entered the courtyard of the Black Dog inn.

      No good getting too excited yet. There were jobs to be done: the wagon unhitched, the mules unloaded, water pumped, hay gathered, stable space negotiated . . .

      ‘I want to piss,’ whimpered a child.

      Oh yes, and the brats seen to. He would have to rope them all together so they wouldn’t run away, and lead them out of the far gate to relieve themselves in all that rain and mud, and then go to the kitchen and get them some gruel. It reminded him of how hungry he was.

      It was still raining. Girls in bonnets and shawls slopped across the yard to and from the kitchen, fetching and carrying water for the cook,