The flour had found its way into everything.
It lay in the creases of his mother’s skirt and whitened the knees of William’s trousers. Each time something struck the street above, a little more sifted between the floorboards.
They had gone down into the cellar when the fighting cut across the road ahead. A woman with a bundled baby sat behind the stairs. Beside her, a man held a cloth against his ear. No one had asked anyone’s name.
William had questions. Where would they go when they came out? Had their house burned? Why had the bells stopped?
His mother put a finger to her lips.
Above them, something heavy scraped across the shop floor.
Then a man’s voice came through the broken cellar window.
“Anyone in there?”
William lifted his head.
“Anyone still alive? Come out. We can get you away.”
He drew breath to answer.
His mother’s hand covered his mouth. Her other arm closed around his shoulders, pulling him against her. He tried to turn towards her, angry for an instant. The man had come to help. If they stayed quiet, he would leave.
She was watching the window.
“Please,” the man outside said. “If you can hear me.”
There was something wrong with the pause that followed. William felt his mother stop breathing.
Another voice spoke, low and rough. He did not understand the words.
A blow landed. The first man made a small, swallowed sound.
“Louder,” someone said in broken Common.
The woman behind the stairs bent over her baby.
“Anyone in there?” the man called again.
This time William heard the effort it took. The little catch before the last word. Feet shifted outside, more than one pair, while the man waited for an answer.
From beyond the wall, a woman called back.
“We’re here. There’s someone hurt.”
Boots hurried past the window. Something hit a door. Once, then again. William pressed his face into his mother’s palm as the wood gave way.
He heard the woman begin to explain.
His mother held him through the silence afterwards.
They stayed until the light at the window had changed and the shop above them had begun to smell of smoke. The man with the cloth went first. He returned, nodded, and helped the woman carry her baby up the stairs.
Outside, his mother steered William around an overturned handcart. A man lay beside it with a strip torn from the sleeve of his coat. His mouth was open.
William looked for the people who had made him call.
His mother turned his head against her skirt and kept walking.
Much later, when they could speak above a whisper, William asked why the man had done it.
She rubbed flour from his eyebrow with her thumb.
“I don’t know what they threatened him with.”
“He sounded like he wanted us to come.”
“I know.”
William waited for her to explain how both things could be true. She looked back along the road, and he understood that she had nothing else to give him.
After that, when someone spoke, he listened for what followed.
Sometimes there was another voice.
