The first wagon did not look like an instrument of treason. It was a battered dray from the Lower Mills, its sideboards patched with grey crate-pine and its iron tires bound in double thicknesses of oiled hemp sacking to deaden the grind of stone against metal.
Tobin walked at the near mule’s head, his left hand gripping the cheek-strap and his right arm hooked over the animal’s steaming neck to keep its muzzle low. The mule was a dun gelding with docked ears and a nervous, twitching stride, but Tobin spoke to it in a steady, guttural murmur—drovers’ talk, soft and rhythmically repetitive, half-words that promised warm bran and dry hay once the cold river was behind them.
Behind the wagon, slipping through the riverbank sedge like shadows cast by a low moon, came the first seven families.
They made less sound than the river. The mothers had wrapped their infants in heavy wool shawls, binding strips of clean linen over the babies’ mouths to stifle sudden whimpers. The older children walked in pairs, clutching each other’s coat hems, their feet wrapped in sheepskin strips tied off with tarred twine. There were no torches. There were no lanterns. The only light was the faint, milky sheen of the low fog reflecting the starlight that occasionally broke through the racing cloud cover.
