The Lantern Moon by Maeve Friel

valley, he heard a church bell toll six o’clock and, squinting hard, fancied he saw the distant lights of a small village. It was impossible to know whether it was safe or not but, at the very least, they might find shelter for the night again in some old barn. He called to his sister and Sam to catch up.
    â€˜Listen,’ he said when they arrived, panting and wheezing, beside him. ‘We’ll take shelter down there for the night.’
    They came down the side of the hill, following the path of a little brook. Soon they could see the road into the village and the bobbing lantern of a carter trotting along on his wagon. A woman’s sing-song voice cried out ‘chooky, chooky, chooky,’ as she called her chickens home for the night. At the narrow wooden bridge over the stream and into the main street, there was a milestone.
    â€˜Hay-on-Wye, fourteen miles,’ William read out slowly.
    â€˜But where are we now? What’s the name of this place?’ whispered Sam to Annie. ‘Are we even going in the right direction?’
    Annie lifted her shoulders and let them drop. She was too cold to speak. They all looked down the long straight road,dark except for the yellow pools of light thrown out by the candles in the cottage windows. They cautiously crossed the bridge and tip-toed down the village street, careful to keep in to the shadows. The entire village seemed to consist of no more than a string of old thatched and timbered cottages along a dirt road, a church with a graveyard full of leaning tombstones and, at the very end, an inn with a sign showing a cow with a crumpled horn. It creaked on its hinges. A lantern was hanging outside the door but they could not hear any sign of life inside.
    â€˜Come on,’ whispered William. He crept around to the back of the inn. There was a rough yard at the back, and a stable block at right angles to the inn itself. The doors were closed and bolted – if there were horses inside, they had already been bedded down for the night. He slipped the bolt back as quietly as any burglar and beckoned to the others to follow quietly behind him.
    The stable was long and narrow with stalls on either side. It smelt foul, of wet straw and manure and rising damp that almost made the three children gag when they entered. There were two old chestnut horses lying together in one of the stalls. Sam heard their breathing and clambered up to peer over the half-door; the poor bony beasts did not even move. They had been driven too long and too hard that day and were too worn out to object to sharing their stable. In the tack-room at the far end, there was a broken cart-wheel leaning up against the wall, some saddles hanging on nailsand a few bales of straw, not as clean as they might have been, but dry enough to use as makeshift bedding.
    â€˜We can stay here,’ said William, ‘but we must leave long before dawn.’
    â€˜What if someone comes?’ asked Annie.
    â€˜Annie!’ William snapped. ‘No one will come. Try to sleep.’
    But sleep did not come easily to either Annie or William. The horses wheezed and snorted and banged their hooves against the fragile wooden partitions as they shifted in their sleep. The roof-beams creaked and groaned. The fear of capture and a return to Ludlow’s jail – or worse – was harder to put aside than the pangs of hunger or the discomfort of the damp straw. The smell of the leather saddles reminded them of the tanned hides drying in the tanneries in Corve Street and the burnt-out shell of their home. They tossed and turned but did not speak to one another even though each knew the other was awake. Between them Sam lay stretched out. His hands were raised above his head with the fingers curled towards the centre of his palms like a baby without a care in the world. All Annie could think of was how soon they could get far away and back up to the safety of the dyke.
    Some time later Annie must