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Chapter Six - We man the barricade

It started to rain about an hour before dusk - not much at first, just the tail end of the summer showers. We'd loaded the cart with enough wood and stones so that not even Peter and I and Henry and Robbie could move it, even if we all pushed at once. We'd taken the longer tree limbs and blocked the sides of the bridge with those and piled everything high in the middle so the squire's son's horse couldn't leap it. It was a really good barricade, even if it was our first one.

Henry and Peter crossed a lot of the branches on the pile, so where they stuck out in back we used grass as thatching and made a shelter from the rain. We took trips with the bucket down to the orchard and by now had a pretty big pile of half-rotten apples, and some good ones, which we ate when we started to get hungry. But we soon got tired of apples and the two slices of toasted bread I'd brought from our cottage were gone in a couple of bites.

Em got sleepy and settled in my lap - we kept each other warm. Cherry Louise was making a neat pile out of the rotten apples. Henry and Robbie and Peter kept having apple-throwing contests until I told them I'd make them go back to the orchard in the rain and get more if we ran out.

Waiting was very hard, especially in the rain and as it got darker. The stones soon lost the warmth of the day and were cold beneath me. I spread the thatching down to keep us off the chilled stone and stop us from slipping and that helped some. The wind wuthered at and around us - most of the barricade stopped the blast, but bits of the cold came through. I sat with my back to it to shield Em and Cherry Louise huddled closer.

Then the sky rumbled. Papa, who came from Devonshire, told me that no place in England had storms the likes of Shillingworth Magna, sometimes with dry lightning, sometimes with rain so hard and heavy a man would like to have his skin cut by the drops. This one started light but soon grew heavy. We'd not thought to have a lantern with us and Em didn't like the dark much, but she even less liked the sky-brightening flashes of light and the ear-splitting cracks, followed by the thunderous rumble. She cried and I cuddled her, singing one of mama's bedtime songs.

"Hush!" cried Henry. He grabbed a bucket of apples and stood out in the rain, stock-still, head tilted as if he heard something.

I quieted Em by sticking a good bit of apple in her mouth and listened, as did the others.

A peal of thunder deafened us, but in the brief after-rumble, we heard rhythmic slap of hooves along the muddy road. It was a horse - no, two horses, at a steady pace. Not fast enough to outrun the storm. No, one would be leading the other. One rider and two horses.

"It's him," whispered Peter. "It's the squire's son."

We all looked at one another. My throat went dry and I found not only couldn't I say anything, I had nothing to say. Cherry Louise leaped to her feet and pointed at Henry. "You mustn't!" she cried, rain plastering her curls against her head and dripping down her face. "You mustn't. I'm telling! I'm telling Jules!"

She started running down the road, toward the cottage. I put down Em and struggled to my feet, but Peter was already after Cherry Louise.

"No, Peter, come back!" called Henry, who had scrambled atop the slick pile of branches we'd used to create the barricade. "Leave her. He's here!"

"Take care," I warned Henry, even as Peter came sliding back, his feet covered with mud. "Don't fall into the rill." I stood up and peered over the barricade, getting drenched in the process.

Another streak of light in the distant sky showed me the rider; a man was sitting upright on the horse's back, leading a second horse behind him. He had a long, dark coat, with a collar drawn up to his neck and was bare-headed. His hair was black, with sliver threads shining in it at the temples. His expression was grim, determined.

I was very suddenly unsure that this plan was going to work.

The lightning must have shown us to him as well, because I heard him cry out, "What the devil!" as he spurred his horse closer. As he reached us, he wheeled the horse to the right and to the left, but there was no way around - the rill had risen over its banks to form a swift-running stream. The only way across was the bridge.

And we were manning the barricade.

Henry stood aside the pile of wood, feet planted firmly, with Peter slightly behind him. Robbie tried to scramble up but was too small and had to content himself with handing up another bucket of apples to Peter.

"Halt!" cried Henry. "You can't pass! Go back!"

"What are you children up to?" cried the squire's son. "Get down from there, you'll hurt yourselves." He wheeled the horses around again, drawing closer. "What in God's name is this?"

"It's a barricade!" cried Peter, before Henry could hush him. "We've built it."

"That's - ah - very commendable. Shows remarkable sense of industry. Now, take it down."

"We won't," announced Henry. "You'll have to go back."

The squire's son seemed puzzled by that answer - although he would be, because I doubted anyone ever told him he couldn't do something, being a squire's son and all. "Now, see here--"

"No. You go back. You're not turning Jules out from his cottage. Not tonight. Not ever. We're manning the barricade. Aren't we?"

Robbie, Peter, and I echoed Henry's yell, but we were drowned out by a rumble of thunder overhead. The squire's son looked vaguely amused and annoyed by our defiance, as he asked, "What's this to do with Verne?"

"You're not taking Jules away," I hollered. "We won't let you."

It might very well have been the wrong thing to do - yell like that -- because he seemed surprised I was a girl. I suppose wet and dirty, we all looked the same. The storm made the horses uneasy and he rode up to a post at the end of the bridge, tying the spare horse there. The horse he was riding seemed to obey him, but was skittish, particular as it started up the slope of wet stone, toward our barricade at the center of the bridge.

"Don't come any closer," said Henry, reaching down to grab a rotten apple. "I'm warning you!"

The squire's son no longer looked amused. In the rain and the dark, his eyes seemed hard and cold as his horse danced before the stack of wood and stone with which we'd blocked the bridge. "This is your last chance," he called. "Take down that damn thing and let me pass. Or I'll make certain the lot of you are caned, even if I have to do it myself!"

I'm not sure whether Henry or Peter cried, "Apples!" Nor am I entirely certain which one of us threw first. At the moment, it was all I could do to keep myself perched on the slick pile of wood, while throwing the rotten fruit as far and as hard as I could.

Peter and Henry had improved from their practice - apples rained down around the squire's son like hailstones. They dissolved into waves of slush as they struck the hard stone of the bridge walls or floor, turned into a current of applesauce by the rain. The sound of impact seemed to frighten the horse, which danced from side to side again. The squire's son seemed torn between controlling the horse and raising an arm to protect himself from the onslaught. After the barrage of rotten fruit, he wheeled his horse away and headed off the bridge, back along the dirt road.

I hadn't seen whether any of the apples had hit him, but wasn't too breathless to cheer at his retreat. Robbie had climbed up onto the barricade beside me and we waited, apples in hand, watching as the squire's son paused some distance away. His face had grown pale and he sat straighter in his seat, looking this way and that as if studying the situation. I swear that he met my eyes at least once . . . and my heart stopped in my chest.

"Henry," I said softly, "we have to stop now."

The squire's son had the same look in his eyes that my papa had the day when the cows had gone dry, the horse threw a shoe, the fields were too-wet or too-dry, and I had just done something that he'd told me not to do. It was a dark look, the same look Peter had told me about one time, when his 'da had been drinking and hit him over and over for not cleaning the horse's stall well enough. It was a look that promised trouble. Bad trouble.

It frightened me.

But Henry didn't see that look, or didn't want to see it. He was laughing, throwing the occasional apple shorter than he could, as if he were trying to tempt the squire's son back into range. Peter and Robbie were the same way, laughing, like we'd won.

We'd lost - the look in the squire's son's eyes told me that much. We'd get caned, yes. Jules would be turned out and leave. And maybe not all of us would get turned out of our cottages, but one for sure. Just for a warning. Because this was a man who only gave one warning. And we hadn't listened.

There was a flash of light across the sky and another crack of thunder, so loud it sounded like the backbone of heaven had broken, my name echoing in the midst of it. I looked up wondering if what we'd done had been heresy. Would the parson would condemn us in front of the congregation? Did this mean God was taking sides?

I heard my name again and half-turned to see Jules, wearing neither greatcoat nor hat and drenched to the skin, running along the muddy path to the bridge. He was calling to me and waving frantically and I waved back with a glad heart at seeing him. As he drew closer, I saw that he didn't seem glad to see us - he was shouting something against the wind.

I put a hand to my ear and tried to listen harder. I sounded like "M."

Em.

I'd forgotten about her - she'd fallen asleep under the shelter of the thatch. I looked down over the edge and saw the place she'd been was vacant, just an indentation in the thatch and some half-chewed apples. Then I saw the flash of her smock directly below me as she wove her way through the tangle of bricks and stone, through the heart of the barricade. She was moving toward the other side, trying to reach the half-squished apples that we'd thrown.

I looked up at what I thought was the sound of thunder - they were hoof beats. The squire's son had backed off the bridge and a distance away. Now he was galloping down the muddy road, heading for the bridge and the barricade. Surely he couldn't mean to jump it?

But then, it wasn't so high, really . . . not as high as we'd thought to make it. Looking at the size of the horse that he rode, I realized that. Just as I realized that Em would be through the barricade and onto the bridge at any second.

My sister would be trampled.

There was a scream - it might have been me. Henry grabbed my arm, dragging me sideways as Jules half-vaulted and half-scrambled over the slippery sticks of the barricade from behind me. He landed on the far side and slid on the wet, apple-covered paving. As Em emerged from the barricade, he caught her in his arms and rolled to the right of the bridge even as the horse approached.

I was sure he'd be trampled! My hands moved to my eyes to cover them but I had to look. I saw the squire's son pull back the horse's reins at the last minute, calling, "Verne!" The horse stepped to the right, but then back to the left, rearing high and neighing against a sky lit with fire, its cry followed by another thunderous boom.

Jules grabbed hold of the barricade with one hand and lifted himself and Em from the stone floor of the bridge. He tried to push Em up towards me with his free hand. I reached down to grab her, but she screamed and held tightly to Jules' shirt and collar. The horse was above us, pawing the air with hard hooves as the squire's son shouted in an attempt to control it.

Henry was beside me. He grabbed one of Em's hands and I grabbed the other, freeing Jules from her grasp. We pulled so hard at her that I would have fallen backward off the barricade had Peter not grabbed hold of my smock, but we were out of danger.

All except for Jules. He was trapped between the barricade and the horse, which plunged and reared. Its hooves slipped on the wet and apple-strewn stone and it wouldn't turn, no matter how hard the squire's son yelled. At each subsequent peal of thunder, it screamed in terror and rose on its back legs again, hooves rising and falling dangerously near Jules.

I thought, at first, that he was trying to climb the barricade. Too late I realized that Jules was going over the side of the bridge and into the rill. I pulled my smock out of Peter's hold, yelled at him to grab my legs, then leaned as far as I could across the barricade, down to the edge of the stone wall, which was made of thick stone, but slick with rain. Jules had swung himself over the side and his fingers were slipping. I reached down and held out my hands. One of his chilled hands grasped mine, hard enough that I thought he'd broken my fingers, while his other hand continued to slip and slide on the stone as he tried to find a solid grip.

I gritted my teeth and held back a cry. Neither Henry nor Peter could get past me to reach Jules and the branches on which I was lying were already were starting to slide out from under me. If they came over the barricade to help, it would fall, Jules would drop into the swollen stream, and I'd probably be broken in two. Feeling Henry's hands grabbing one of my legs and Peter grabbing the other, I tried to tell them not to move. They stopped instantly when Henry shifted his weight and the barricade creaked and cracked beneath us. I heard Em crying and turned my head to see her held tightly by Robbie, behind the barricade. He was watching us with wide eyes, his hair plastered down on his forehead.

Jules' grip tightened on my hand, his right hand continuing to slap on the stone, catching hold and then slowly sliding off. I met his eyes and saw that he understood - I couldn't hold him. Even with both of my hands clasping his, I wasn't strong enough to pull him up. The boys couldn't help. I would hold Jules as long as they held me, but something would break soon - my hands, the boys' hold on me, or the barricade.

Even now, he was dragging me forward, inch by inch, until the cold stone of the bridge was under my neck and my head was over the edge of the bridge. The water was not too far below, dark and swirling. If he fell into it, he'd probably break his legs - if not his neck - when he hit the shallow bottom, then be swept away to drown.

If Jules didn't release his hold on me, I'd fall with him.

I saw that, too, in his eyes. His grasp on my hands lessened even as I screamed at him not to let go.

There was suddenly a shadow beside me - black, tall, dripping. A glove slapped down onto the stone, grabbing hold of Jules' flailing right hand, holding him aloft and dangling over the side of the stone bridge as Jules released my hands. I reached for Jules' left hand again and caught it, ignoring the sudden burning in my numb fingers. A glove was grabbing at the back of my neck, bunched up in my smock, keeping me from slipping forward even as the barricade groaned again. We pulled until Jules' chest was lying on the edge of the bridge, then he toppled over into the arms of the squire's son. A second later, I was lifted from the barricade and into the air, only to find myself sitting beside Jules, slick bridge stone beneath me.

Cold, shivering too hard to speak, I had no feeling in my arms, my hands, my legs. I was sprawled on the stone like one of Cherry Louise's dolls, boneless and uncaring. Above me, far above, was the face of the squire's son, with too-dark eyes and a grim look. He reached down a hand as if to help me to my feet. I raised my arm, but as soon as his fingers closed over my left hand, a wave of fire shot down my arm and into my body. A sound came out of my throat, half-a-gurgle, as the burn throbbed in my fingers and my hand and my head and the world went white and red.

And then black.

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End of Chapter Six

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