CHAPTER FORTY SIX

The decision between trusting Trinket or trusting the captain wasn’t something Jane felt she could make. She hardly knew Trinket and she didn’t know the captain at all. Tom shouldn’t ask her opinion, because she didn’t have the experience to form an opinion. But Tom was staring at her with a sort of innocence that could break your heart, with his two buck teeth sitting on top of his bottom lip.

‘I would suggest Trinket, but really, there isn’t any good reason for that suggestion.’

The captain cleared his throat, as though trying to clear the airways of some distasteful idea that got stuck down there.

‘What a sad day for Paris, when a respectable merchant ship captain is treated with disrespect by a prejudiced thrip and her ignorant sidekick.’

’You have your answer,’ Trinket shouted. She pointed off toward the south, her finger waggling in the air. ‘Be gone.’

‘I need to hear the answer from Elion.’

Tom answered immediately, ’I’m going to go with Trinket.’

The Captain stared at Tom for a long moment before grunting, turning, and walking off through the wet grass. After a moment his wide shoulders and huge head disappeared into the mist.

Trinket slackened the arrow and put it back into the quiver.

’Are we actually going into the catacombs?’

Trinket ignored Jane. She walked to where the horses were tied to a fallen log and untied some complicated knot that she had tied earlier. Jane followed and took the reins of the beautiful little mare that had shouldered its way past two tornados with Jane clinging to its back. She put her hand up to the mare’s cheek.

Tom watched, with his hand in his pockets, and his blazer bunched up around his hands. He shuffled from one foot to the other.

Handling horses wasn’t natural to Trinket. She had no real affinity for the beasts. She treated them as though they were useful tools devoid of souls; as though they were just hide, hair, and strong legs. She walked ahead of her horse, hauling it with the lead rope. She strode along the riverbank with her thrip coat billowing behind, to where the wooden stairs lead up to the swing bridge.

Tom followed. His ears were red with cold.

Jane put her head against the side of her little mare’s head, and whispered into its ear. She crooned non words, and the mare stood still with its head bent toward Jane. After a moment she began walking, holding the halter with her hand against the side of the mare’s face.

’Will the bridge hold a horse?’ Tom asked.

The bridge was narrow, and the ropes that held it seemed as thin as spider web. The boards looked fragile.

’Yes,’ said Trinket, with supreme confidence; the kind of confidence that Jane had begun to distrust.

Trinket went up the five wooden steps onto the suspension bridge and turned and swore at her horse. It was pulling back on the lead rope, one hoof braced against the bottom stair. Trinket bunched her green arms and gave a violent tug that jerked at the horse’s mouth. A moment later the horse surged forward and clattered up the stairs. Tom followed.

The river thundered beneath the bridge. The water pounded at the pylons. The ropes that knotted everything together were humming, as though alive.

Trinket moved quickly, dragging her horse which pulled back on the lead rope, its eyes like moons. The earlier courage that had driven this horse through the tornado had fled. With the river roaring beneath the slender bridge, the horse was terrified.

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Tom stepped onto the bridge, then stopped. He clung to the guide ropes. His skinny legs shook. The bridge swung like a hammock. Brown water roiled beneath and dirty foam swilled against the river bank.

Through the mist, Jane watched how quickly Trinket got to the other side of the bridge. She was a pencil thin stick of green, with the horse a bulk of matter behind. She turned and beckoned to Tom, her green hand making swift and sharp movements in the air.

Tom wasn’t going so well. He pressed himself against the safety rope, and for a moment it appeared as though he had frozen and was not capable of moving. Eventually, though, he pushed one foot forward, then shifted his weight and pushed his other foot forward. With a slow doggedness he shuffled his feet. He moved along, past the centre of the bridge, then after an eternity he reached the far side.

Standing at the entrance to the bridge, Jane shivered, unsure if she was shivering from the cold, or from the tension of watching Tom. It was her turn. She guided her little mare up five wooden steps. At the threshold of the bridge the little mare stopped and gave one whinny, distress jumping from its mouth. Jane clicked her tongue and ran her hand up the side of the horse’s face, and almost miraculously the horse nosed out onto the suspension bridge, keeping its head up and its eyes on Jane. Despite the roar and the flooding savagery, the eyes that rested on Jane were large and trusting.

Because Jane was so focused on the gradual movement of the mare along the narrow boards, she barely registered the river that leapt ten feet beneath. The river was still rising from the rain dumped upstream into the feeder streams. The bridge trembled and the walkway moved in a slow pendulum. The mare made small snicker sounds of stress, but continued to step forward, following Jane.

At the far end of the bridge, wooden stairs dropped down onto a rock shelf that traversed a canyon of sheer cliffs that ran into White mountain. The canyon had filled with a raging torrent of water. Through the mist Jane could make out a waterfall coming down the side of the mountain.

The white of the stone and the river and the mist were like ghosts hiding behind ghosts.

Tom was halfway along the rock shelf with the canyon of water beneath his feet. He leaned his skinny body against the cliff, and gripped the moss and dirty plants that grew from pockets of soil. His feet kept slipping, and his legs were trembling from fear. He crabbed along while water roared inches away. A log thumped past, making a drumming sound on the rocks. Further along the shelf there was an entrance into a cave, where Trinket waited with a hip out and her arms crossed.

Tom only needed to creep a little further forward. He put a foot sideways and it slipped and gripped on wet algae and moss. He transferred his weight, then shuffled his other foot sideways.

‘Come on,’ said Trinket, impatiently.

With only three feet to go, Tom lunged, and landed on his knees in the wide and accepting mouth of a cave. Trinket leaned over him and said something that Jane couldn’t possibly hear.

After whispering encouraging sounds to the little mare, Jane stepped down the stairs to the ledge. The ledge was awfully slippery, and Jane’s foot skated then caught. How had Trinket done the traverse with a horse?

Only, there was no need to worry about the horse. The mare was sure footed and obedient and trusting. While Jane crept forward with her feet carefully feeling for slipperiness and slope, the little mare followed with calm surety.

Unhelpfully, Trinket called, ‘The water is still rising.’

Edging along the canyon Jane realised that if the water rose another three feet there would be nowhere for her to go - other than into the stream, into the river, then beneath the river. Drowning was inevitable.

A wave of water surged up and grabbed at her legs. She pressed herself against the cliff and shut her eyes. The little mare let out a nervous sound. She opened her eyes and saw that there was only a few feet to go. She took in a breath, let it out, and walked quickly. A shrill sound of fear rang in her throat.

A second later she entered the cave. The little mare stepped around her, the clatter of its hooves falling dead against the irregular stone of the cave walls.

‘Look,’ said Trinket.

The water in the canyon had risen in a thunderous ascension, up over the shelf Jane had just stepped off, swills of it coming into the cave’s entrance.

‘We must go now,’ said Trinket.

‘Where?’ asked Tom.

‘Into the catacombs.’

Trinket turned to her horse and fixed the halter and adjusted the bit in her horse’s mouth and tightened the saddle strap. The horse whinnied and flicked its head up and down. In the sallow light of the cave Trinket was green and solid and shiny, like a cut and polished emerald. Her hair slung in wet braids down her back.

Jane looked out of the cave's entrance to the water roaring down through the canyon. She shivered.

Trinket turned to Tom and lowered her eyebrows. She had something to say and she suddenly seemed nervous. She opened her mouth, then shut it, and pressed her lips together.

Tom said, ‘What is it?’

Putting a finger up to Tom, Trinket turned to Jane, and spoke quickly with a harshness in her tone.

‘I only want Elion to accompany me to Coronet. You must stay behind.’