Free The Ballroom by Anna Hope Page A

just a foot long, and when he saw what it was, John’s stomach clenched.
    The vicar held his Bible, said a few words, bent for a handful of earth, which he threw on the coffin, then looked over to where the three men stood. ‘Fill this in,’ he said, before he turned and led the small procession back across the lane.
    John took a spadeful of earth from the side of the new grave to the other and tipped it in.
    ‘You know why they do that, don’t you?’ Brandt had come up behind him. His tongue rested between his missing teeth. ‘Put little’uns in’t bottom.’ He reached down with his stick and rapped it on the wood of the smaller box. ‘So as they won’t be lonely.’ He snorted. His mouth was a black pit when he laughed.
    John moved away quickly, back to the other grave, digging a fresh load of earth.
    ‘What about you?’ Brandt called after him. ‘You ever had a little’un?’
    John’s load rattled like sharp rain on the lid of the small wooden box. If he covered it fast enough, Brandt couldn’t touch it again.
    But Brandt was crouched before the grave now, rocking on his haunches. ‘I always heard babbies were born in here, but I never seen one myself.’
    He struck his stick, harder now, on the wood of the tiny coffin. It gave off a small dull sound. Then, tongue between his teeth, Brandt edged the end of his stick between the wood, beginning to ease it open.
    John roared, launching himself towards Brandt. He grabbed him by the collar and twisted, wresting him around, bringing his face up to his. Brandt coughed, gasping for breath, hands flailing before him, face reddening from the lack of air.
    ‘No!’ Sutcliffe was behind him. Thin fists rained on his back. John let go and Brandt fell, gasping, to the earth.
    John shook Sutcliffe off and knelt beside Brandt, a knee on his chest, shovel still in his hand. ‘Leave the dead alone. You leave the dead alone or I’ll send you to join them, I swear.’
    He stood, shook himself right. Below him, Brandt curled around, gathering his breath, coming to a slow stand, hands on his knees. He spat on the coffin, and blood mingled with phlegm on the wood. He gave a low, black laugh. ‘You stupid Irish cunt,’ he said. ‘You’ll pay for that.’
    That night, in the ward, Dan told a story.
    It was a habit of his, when the lights were turned out. He would begin low, almost in a whisper, and everyone would fall still and listen.
    Tonight it was one John had not heard before, the story of a giant who kept a woman prisoner in his castle on the top of a hill.
    ‘A hill, my friends, which was white with the bones of the champions who had tried in vain to rescue the fair captive.’
    ‘At last’ – Dan had a knack: he could make his voice grow, while keeping it quiet, make it travel to the four corners of the room, without waking the sleeping attendant – ‘at last the hero, after hewing and slashing at the giant, but all to no purpose, discovered the only way to kill him.’
    Dan paused, and in it John heard the soft breathing of the listening men around him.
    ‘And this was to rub a scar on the giant’s left breast with a certain egg, which was in a pigeon, which was in a hare, which was in the belly of a wolf, which dwelt in the wild lands many thousand leagues from here … And so what do you think the hero did? He found that egg, and slew the giant, merely by striking it against the scar on his breast.’
    The men breathed out, and Dan chuckled softly to himself.
    After a while, John heard the sounds of the men sliding into sleep. Soon Dan was snoring too. But John lay on his back, staring up at the dark above him.
    He did not want to sleep. Knew what was waiting for him there: a woman and a child. Dan’s stories did not frighten him, neither did Brandt and his threats; it was what was inside him that did.
    If he closed his eyes, she was there, just as he had seen her first. A shawl held up to a mouth, covering a smile: Annie.
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