Winter Page 15

  ‘Too far,’ said Katherine decisively. ‘Let’s go nearer . . . while Mister Barklice leads the others to the safety of that copse above, which edges the top of this field.’

  They set off downslope, Katherine unbuckling her crossbow as they went so she could give additional cover while Barklice and the others headed upslope to the trees.

  Only one of them objected to this course of action and that was Arnold Mallarkhi. He said not a word and had barely moved a muscle since the fleeing figure below had appeared. But his eyes were narrowed, his turbaned head thrust forward, and he was staring at her intensely as if trying to make his own decision.

  ‘Lordy Sinistral,’ he cried suddenly, ‘can this ’ere boatyboy be a-borrowing your stave, it being the tallest and whippiest amongst those we have?’

  Sinistral handed it to him, perhaps having a glimmering of Arnold’s intent.

  ‘Thank ’ee Lord of All as was! Now, I may not have a boat hereabout, but some skills cross water onto land. Off’n ’n upp’n we go!’

  With that, he turned back after Katherine and the other two and, using the stave as he might the pole of a boat, he swung it forward, leaned his weight onto it, and proceed to vault downslope at astonishing speed.

  He arrived just in time to stop Katherine’s command to Terce to fire, bravely placing himself right in danger’s way with the words: ‘Nary you do’n that, my lad, for I seen another way!’

  Katherine got Terce to lay down his weapon and, in a spectacular series of leaps, jumps and vaults, Arnold continued on down the hill and landed next to the fleeing hydden.

  It was too far off for either group watching to hear their words, but they were having an argument and it was as brief as its end was resolute.

  Arnold, who was taller than the other, simply heaved her bodily onto his shoulder, ignoring her protests. Then, with amazing strength and skill, he proceeded to contour the slope by leaps and vaults to get out of the line of fire up towards where Barklice had led the others.

  Katherine and Terce followed upslope themselves and in almost no time at all they were out of sight and too far up for the humans to even consider following them over such exposed ground. A couple of shots whizzed through the trees above their heads. A short while later, with angry, impotent shouts, the humans were gone.

  It was only then, when he had recovered his breath from his impulsive act of heroism that Arnold himself fully understood the nature of the female whose life they had saved. He was the first to do so.

  His eyes widened, his breathing grew rapid and he said in a low, wary voice, ‘Nary, nary, friends o’ mine, ask not her name, nor her trade, nor anything more about her! She be a Bilgesnipe true and a dreamygirl who talks to fishes and flies with fowl! She’m knows the windy way of things and sniffles the air like a stoat in heat and’ll freeze your toes as soon as look at you!’

  This tirade astonished them all but seemed to have the opposite effect on the newcomer than that intended.

  She reached a muddy hand towards Arnold and, grasping the strings of his jerkin between her fingers, pulled the cord through them caressingly, grinning as she did so, before laughing in evident delight.

  ‘Dang me but it’s a bilgyboy and one o’ ’em that hails from Brum, if my nadders hear right!’ she cried, her voice mellifluous. ‘You’m mine now, Brummielad, by ancient right o’ Level-lore. Wilst thou plight thy troth to me?’

  ‘No,’ said Arnold, without hesitation. ‘I may be follerkins for wot I done but this boy bain’t bannerkins as well!’

  She laughed aloud, even more delighted than before.

  ‘Which in Level-lore is the brighty, best-well-made response could be done to a proposal, for it means “yes”!’

  ‘Oh no it don’t!’ cried Arnold, eyes widening in horror at what, it seemed, he’d unwittingly done. ‘I may want a lass but not so fast!’

  But she ignored him.

  ‘My dreams is made true this day as witnessed by you all!’ she cried, launching herself at him before anyone, least of all Arnold himself, could stop her.

  The two fell into a desperate tangle of arms and legs, ribbons and turbans enriched by the myriad shine of the tiny mirrors sewn into the rich embroideries of fey though muddied attire from which, briefly, she emerged to declare, her ample bosom heaving, her lithe thighs commanding, ‘sealed one folk ’n all with the bestest, grandest, most shimmering kiss a dreamygirl could ever ask for!’

  She disappeared again into the melee that was them both and very soon Arnold gave up the struggle and lay still.

  19

  PREMONITION

  The floods along the coast to the north and south of Maldon and far inland up the rivers and creeks to the edges of higher ground drained away only slowly.

  It was two days before Riff, Jack and the others could even contemplate escape from their sanctuary. Even then they saw that the process might be a tricky one, for as the water level dropped the full extent of the damage to the ancient structure beneath them began to be revealed. The original flintwork and later brick repairs had been stripped away in many places, leaving no more than rubble to support the building that had given them sanctuary. The tower continued to suffer tremors along with a disquieting sloping of the roof, which gradually increased.

  The option of immediate escape by going down the spiral stairs to a point where the windows were at the level of the water remained too dangerous. The water itself was turbulent, and though its retreat was steady overall, the incoming tides forced sporadic rises and strange flows up and down the flooded streets.

  But to call them ‘streets’ was now a misnomer. Almost all the buildings of Maldon were gone, damaged by the initial rush of the incoming waves and subsequently undermined by the flood and put in such a state of ruin that in the hours and days afterwards they collapsed. This caused mini tidal waves, themselves destructive of the little that remained.

  In these circumstances, and since the old tower had remained in place when so much else was destroyed, they took their chances and stayed right where they were, readying themselves for a hasty exit, if necessary straight over the battlements into the water below. Meanwhile they hoped that the retreat of the water would reach a point where escape down the stairs through the door became the better option.

  This moment came on the third morning, by when the water had dropped back to the steps at the bottom of the tower and the way down the stairs, though cluttered with debris, was just about passable. When the tower shuddered again, this time with a deep, guttural groan, it was time to leave.

  Jack went first, and Riff last, as a captain does from a sinking ship. The tower shifted again when Jack was halfway down, wet plaster falling on his head, and by the time he reached the steps outside, the surface of the water swilling there was roughening with the shaking of the ground beneath. When he saw cracks appearing in the façade he hurried the others out as fast as he could.

  ‘Over here!’ he cried, leading the first of them across what had been Market Street to a patch of ground that was a little higher and seemed clear of any obvious danger.

  They saw the cracks in the tower begin to widen.

  ‘Over here!’ he shouted again.

  ‘Riff!’ screamed Leetha.

  The tower began to roar, as if in despair that its usefulness to mortal kind was finally over. With parts of the battlements above crashing down into the water about him, Borkum Riff finally emerged and began wading towards the others. He lost his footing twice but managed to rise again and flounder on. As the tower began collapsing down into itself the debris drove a wave towards him but Jack was able to grab his arm and heave him onto their slightly higher ground.

  The water swirled about them and spray carrying grit and stones drove into them, stinging and bruising their heads and shoulders.

  Then it was over and the last building in Maldon, and one of its oldest, was down.

  In their time in the tower they had reluctantly agreed what they were going to do if they got out saf
ely.

  Riff’s loyalties were to the families of his other children and dependants in the hydden port of Den Helder on the Dutch seaboard, where they lived together amidst the dunes. Few humans went that way and their humbles and hovels formed an interlocking community close by the shore.

  Since the storm and what had followed he said little about them, but a frown of worry now rarely left his face and they all knew he wanted to sail home across the North Sea in the hope of finding them safe and sound.

  ‘They be hardy enough and can read wind and tide as well as any hydden on this Earth but, by my soul, I dread to think what has happened to them these days past, for no one could have foretold such a storm! Will’t come with us, Jack, and meet your other kin?’

  He might have before but now he shook his head. Their original plan had been that he, Slew and one other would make their way to Brum, Riff staying at Maldon in case he was needed as transport after Sinistral and Blut had taken stock in Brum. All that had changed and Slew’s injury, though largely healed by Leetha, still meant he could yet be a liability to Jack and it was better he returned to Holland with Riff, his friends with him. When his leg was healed he might then accompany their mother Leetha, as he had before, to her home in Thuringia.

  ‘It sounds a long way,’ said Jack worriedly.

  ‘It is and it isn’t,’ replied Leetha, ‘and anyway it is too long since I saw the Modor and I need to.’

  The Modor was the wise female who was said to live in the Harz Mountains with the Wita or Wise One. Leetha counted the Modor as her friend.

  ‘And the Wita?’ wondered Jack, who had a dim memory of the Modor helping him onto the back of the White Horse when he was six and spirited away to safety and a human life in Englalond.

  Leetha shrugged.

  ‘He comes and goes, mainly goes, and she misses him, which is why she likes to see me. Wisdom is not always accompanied by happiness, Jack. She misses the Wita as Katherine misses you.’

  ‘And I her,’ Jack said firmly.

  ‘That too,’ said Leetha, glancing briefly at Riff, who had always understood that Leetha was too free a spirit to stay with him for long.

  ‘Aye, she comes and goes, which can be hard on others,’ growled Riff, eyes crinkling to a rare and loving smile.

  ‘You and Leetha, Katherine and I, the Modor and the Wita . . . and, come to think of it, Stort and Judith my . . . my . . .’ muttered Jack.

  ‘Our granddaughter,’ murmured Leetha, finishing his sentence a different way than he intended and adding: ‘There are many ways to look at things. Come with us, Jack!’

  He was tempted but still he shook his head. As Stavemeister of Brum his first duty was to get back to that city and give its remaining citizens what assistance and leadership he could.

  But Katherine’s fate was also greatly on his mind and until he had found out what had happened to her there was no prospect of him leaving Englalond. Meanwhile, as soon as he was satisfied that Riff and the others had found a serviceable craft from the hundreds that were washed up everywhere about them he would head home to Brum . . .

  It did not take long for the waters to recede after the tower collapsed and with Jack’s help they found a vintage clinker-built craft of the kind Riff preferred to sail. It had been slightly holed, had mud below-decks, and the sails needed drying. But, working together, they had her back on the water and ready to sail within a day, provisioned with supplies scavenged from some human houses inland which had escaped the flooding.

  Jack’s goodbyes with Riff and his siblings were rough and ready but they were warm: an embrace, a handshake, words of pleasure to have met, assurances that they would try to meet again soon enough and the hope that what they found at their different destinations was joy not tragedy.

  Leetha held Jack close, so tight it was as if she feared she would never see him again.

  His goodbyes over, he left them awaiting a favourable wind and headed back up past the fallen tower, its footings now exposed, and on along the westward road to make his trek to Brum. By what route or means he would reach the city, and against what obstacles, he had no idea, but reach it he intended to.

  He turned round and they waved back.

  The second time he turned they were out of sight. All he could see was the wide stretch of the still-flooded creeks and estuaries and from there the far horizon of the North Sea.

  It was mid-afternoon before he got fully into his stride, his ’sac not too heavy, his carved stave good in his hand and, surprisingly, soon giving him a blister where he held it.

  ‘I have been on a boat too long,’ he told himself, ‘far too long . . .’

  A feeling of relief and spaciousness had come over him after living at such close quarters with so many people. Now he needed time to make sense of what had happened and come to terms with the warm familial feelings that had been aroused: a sense of belonging, a sense of need and all the confusions of attachment to one thing and desire for another.

  Katherine had made the decision for him to go with them and she had been right. He had got to know, even to love, his father and mother and his siblings – Deap certainly, Slew not yet. It was hard to forgive the person who had killed Master Brief.

  With this thought resurfaced the dread he felt after the explosion they had seen inland near Pendower, when he was sure he had lost Katherine forever. Even if she and Barklice and the others were all together in the vicinity of the explosion, as he had instinctively felt they were, surely one or other of them had survived? Their joint wyrd could not be so cruel for them all to have been killed.

  If one and perhaps another had survived – and maybe even Katherine herself, with the Mirror’s grace – then news about such a celebrated and important group of hydden as they were would have travelled ahead of them and to all points of the compass. That was the hydden way.

  So now he walked steadily along the high road, not a mortal in sight, with evidence of the great flood having reached the vales to north and south, and the birds wheeling and screeching in the skies or huddling in the wet abandoned fields.

  He didn’t know it but he looked good. Thinner than before but healthy and with that confidence and shine that comes to one who has known a healing deep inside. He knew who he was at last and that made it easier for him to know where he wanted to go. Free to dwell less on himself any longer and more on the world about him. So his eyes were restless as he went, as restless as his thoughts, searching to right and left for signs of life, any life, but most especially hydden.

  Where had they and the humans gone, and why?

  What did poor Baggywrinkle’s report of fleeing Fyrd signify?

  And why, the further he travelled with night drawing in, did he feel such a desperate need to continue, to press on, to not stop until . . .

  ‘What?’ he muttered, the wind cold and spitting flecks of rain, clouds roiling on the far horizon. ‘What?’

  Bedwyn Stort had once tried to describe to Jack a talent he had which others held in awe but which Stort himself said was unwelcome and generally troubling.

  ‘When it descends upon me it is like an itch so low on the back of the calf it slows a walker down, or a splinter in a finger which suddenly gets in the way of everything,’ he had explained.

  ‘If my insights help others including yourself, Jack, you may have very good reason to be grateful for this so-called talent of mine. But for myself I have generally seen it as an affliction. I do not recommend that you encourage it in yourself! It is often wrong, or leads you astray! Be warned. Suppress it! Mention it not, even to yourself. Sing, hum, eat, drink, do anything to make you forget such thoughts when they hustle their irritating way into your mind!’

  The talent or affliction Stort had been talking about was his powerful gift of premonition.

  That day, for the first time in his life, Jack now understood exactly what Stort had meant and why it so disturbed him. Because, with the dusk, came a premonition he found hard to ignore.

  Stort ha
d talked about itches and splinters, Jack likened the unpleasant feeling he now had to a stinging insect buzzing about his head which would not go away however hard he tried to make it do so.

  It came first as an image. He saw, or seemed to see, Woolstone House in Berkshire, the rambling old pile where Katherine had been brought up by Arthur and Margaret Foale, her adoptive parents.

  Jack had been invited there for a visit when he was sixteen and ended up living there and, in time, falling in love with Katherine and journeying to the Hyddenworld with her. It was a voyage of discovery that Arthur had made long before, aided by the henge of living trees he created in their great garden within sight of the ancient White Horse, carved into the steep chalk slope of Uffington Hill that stood guardian over Woolstone.

  It was no special surprise to Jack that these memories and this image should come into his mind that day. But with it came an inexplicable and urgent need to divert from his course to Brum and go to Woolstone then and there.

  He knew he could not do so. His task now was to get to where his duty lay, which, in any case, was surely the best place to find Katherine, or from which to go and help her if that was what she needed. But, as Stort said of his premonitions, Jack could not rid himself of the feeling that it was Woolstone where he should be. The sense of it became so strong and disquieting that when he finally made camp, dog-tired though he was, he could not sleep.

  He tossed and turned, wrestling with a thousand disconnected thoughts, images, memories, all in some way imbued with the feeling that something was wrong at Woolstone and that he must attend to it.

  Stort, Katherine, Barklice . . . their names came to him again and again, all jumbled up, as did that of Judith.

  Judith . . .

  His feelings about her were confused, for she had grown so fast, been so angry, felt so alien. Even now, when he might have got used to the fact and so much else that was extraordinary had happened, the idea that Judith was the Shield Maiden and so the agent of Mother Earth Herself was almost beyond him.