Winter Read online

  ‘When we get to shore, Borkum,’ said Leetha very impatiently when they were three weeks out of Maldon and still not home, ‘I’m not hanging round. I’m going home to Thuringia and on my way there, or shortly afterward, I’ll climb up among the pines, stumble over the rocks, and take food for her who eats nearly nothing, so I can tell her my news.’

  Borkum Riff scowled.

  ‘I mean the Modor.’

  Riff spat tobacco. He did not believe in such things. If that old hag was really wise she would not live up a mountain in the cold eating nothing.

  The journey back to Den Helder from Maldon was not normally difficult but the recent hurricane had disturbed the currents and displaced the shingle and sandbanks all along the west European shore, from Skagerrak to Biscay. It had been a hard, long voyage since they left and still they had not landed.

  Riff was thinking that too much of Lady Leetha at close quarters on a sailing craft might drive a hydden mad.

  Leetha liked to dance, she liked to sing, she liked to laugh and she hated all that stopped her doing those things, which was confinement. Like Jack, a long spell in a boat was far too long and it made her cranky.

  ‘Where’s the shore, Riff? Where’s landfall? I’m tired of ropes and sails and being damp and eating fish. I can’t dance far on a boat, on your boat . . .’

  ‘It’s a craft, a cutter, not a boat.’

  ‘I can’t dance far on your boat without stubbing my toe and my toe is not what it was. These days it hurts and it aches. Like the Modor my toe is getting old. I miss the Modor and she misses me.’

  Riff growled and said, ‘We got blown off course. Deap’ll tell you. Tell her again, Deap, for Mirror’s sake.’

  They were hove to off the shore and able to talk well enough against the wind, screwing eyes up against the cold, hands cupped to blowing mouth to keep them warm.

  ‘Tell ’er, lad.’

  ‘Got blown off course, Ma,’ said Deap, eyes twinkling at his parents’ mutual impatience. She hated the repetition, she loathed being called ‘Ma’, but he knew she loved the smile in his eyes and voice.

  ‘“Blown off course”, for Mirror’s sake, and you two meant to be the best mariners in all the North Sea,’ she said. Then she screamed, enough to make the sails shiver, and added, ‘That’s why you both drive me mad. I need the Modor.’

  ‘And she needs you,’ said Slew grudgingly. The old jealousy was still there but since his time aboard with Jack he had lightened up, the old anger diluted by the respect his half-brother had gained among them.

  Leetha stretched her still-lithe body, her greying hair streaked and shiny with spray and foam, her skin magnificent, and said, ‘So then, all that being so, since no one here will say when we get back to shore, I’ll cook.’

  It was a threat and they groaned.

  ‘Jack cooked and used seaweed as a herb, which I can do. What have we to put with it?’

  ‘Cod, skate, a pollock, a few mackerel and pouting.’

  ‘Tope, conger and some ling,’ added Deap.

  ‘In other words, fish,’ said Leetha acidly.

  Riff growled defensively and said, ‘Cows don’t graze on North Sea waves. Sheep don’t nibble straiths. Pigs prefer swill, not swell. So yes, Leetha, it be fish.’

  Leetha laughed as only she could and, going below, called out again, ‘I miss the Modor.’

  After a while Riff called after her gently, in a rough voice filled with abiding love, ‘We’ll get you to shore just as soon as we can.’

  And Deap added, ‘Ma . . . we’ll get you home.’

  In the dark privacy of the galley, Leetha wrapped her arms around her breasts and smiled.

  Above them, the wind finally shifted, they heaved in the anchor and the craft made points to north and was able at last to tack and begin the long run through the surfy shallows towards Den Helder, sending up two rockets made for the purpose by humans, to say they were safe and were finally coming home.

  The Modor, stuck alone in the fastness of her retreat high up in the crystalline Harz, might have been wise, but that morning she had woken up lonely. She needed touch, if not of the Wita, who wasn’t around and hadn’t been in many a year, then of a mortal.

  I miss Leetha, she said, smiling with pleasure at the memory of the one she loved almost more than any other, the kind of love, she was aware, she was lucky to know.

  I miss . . .

  She had no sooner said it the second time than thunder clattered across the snowy peaks so loud it shook the snow off the pines and conifers all around her home.

  Oh, but she loved that, the powdery snow forced to fall a second time, swirling down amidst the green pine needles, turning around the thick-set trunks, settling on paths untouched for weeks by the feet of humans or hydden.

  ‘I miss you, Leetha,’ she whispered at her open door.

  The thunder grew louder and the Modor went outside and waited.

  The Horse’s hoofs were bigger than her, and its head high in the clouds, its nostrils all flaring and steamy.

  ‘Where is he?’ she cried out. ‘Where’s he gone? Why’s he taking so long? I miss him.’

  For a moment the Modor truly looked her age. A dried-up, lost, withered thing, untouched for too long, unloved for decades, missing her Wita so much.

  ‘He’s taken a lifetime,’ she whispered, her voice cracked and old, her eyes so sad, her crooked fingers intertwined as if it was only with each other they could find the comfort they missed in the holding of his hand.

  I miss him, and her voice was the shrill of the wind in among the bitter trees, the dark of the wind on the lake below, the rasp of the wind among the cones, I miss my love.

  The White Horse, whether indifferent or not, ignored her words: it always did. Instead it dropped down to its knees to let her grasp its mane and mount its broad back.

  As it galloped away she bent forward to its strength, holding her old, thin thighs to its flanks so tight that they became strong again, as when she was young. She laid her gaunt cheek on its neck and her face grew plump again and roseate with health.

  ‘If you won’t tell me where he is,’ she whispered happily to its ear, the bleak moment over, ‘tell me where Leetha is.’

  The White Horse flew through the wintry clouds, its hoofs galloping on thin air yet making so much sound that mortals below watching the clouds above wondered what went by.

  Leetha, mollified to be on land, pleased with the attention she was getting from Riff’s happy kin, was content to take the credit for their safe return.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘without me they would all be deep down in their nightmare watery graves.’

  ‘You’m told’m where and why and what to do, Lady Leetha? You’m done that?’

  ‘Oh!’ she sighed mock-wearily, ‘how slow these mariners were, how much in need of all I knew! On top of which I had to cook for them, loathsome fish, day after day, night after night. They would eat nothing else. Would you like me to cook for you?’

  They stared at each other, eyes widening, not sure if she was serious. Not sure, come to think of it, if any of them were really there. Not sure of anything, they were so happy to have Riff and Deap safe home. They liked Leetha’s loving game, but cook? That was serious and Leetha’s reputation preceded her.

  ‘Cook? For us?’ they whispered uneasily.

  They glanced at Riff and he at them, shaking his head almost imperceptibly.

  Pretending to mistake their politeness for possibility, she asked, ‘What have you got that I can cook?’

  ‘Fish, my lady, only fish but . . .’

  Leetha laughed and put a hand to ruffle Riff’s hair and beard.

  ‘I’m a terrible cook and that’s the truth,’ she said good-humouredly, ‘so it’s better that you do it. Oh, but I’m glad to be here again. Borkum and Herde and Witold and Jack saved my life a hundred times each! I saved no one’s.’

  ‘Tell us ’bout Jack,’ they said while they prepared the feast, ‘tell us about Dea
p’s other half, tell us how he made it good with Slew, for we’m sure he did. Slew’s got colour in his pallid cheeks and that’ll be the other’s doin’. Tell us.’

  So while they cooked and readied their homes along Den Helder’s wildest shore for a feast that would begin in one humble, continue in another, and travel wherever the festive candles flamed, so that all Borkum’s kin would share in familial fare, she told them about the weeks past with dance and song and her many Leetha ways, which had lit the paths of others all her life.

  ‘But wait!’ she cried, interrupting herself, ‘this looks like a feast beyond feasts! Is this how you always welcome Riff home?’

  ‘It b’aint,’ they said. ‘But you’m forgetting what night it w’or four nights past when you were on the high seas and we’m stuck here worried sick ’n thinking he’m and our’n’ll not be home no more ’cos they’m drownded deep like you described before. Deep down in the watery grave.’

  ‘What night was that?’ wondered Leetha.

  ‘T’was Solstice night, the longest there is, when we folk have a special feast. Nobbut we couldn’t, could us, while we thought they’m dead? We ate brot and water and prayed. This night be the twenty-fourth, which some folks celebrate wi’ tinsel and bells and song, so we’ve borrowed that celebration for this night o’ your return.’

  ‘Its name?’ asked Leetha.

  ‘Yuletide,’ they said.

  ‘Yuletide,’ repeated Leetha, considering the strange word. ‘What do you think of that, then, Riff?’

  He considered it.

  ‘You’m here, they’m here, we’m all here together and at one,’ he said eventually, ‘and that’s just how it should be, whate’er name you give it.’

  Leetha was asked to inspect each of the humbles before Riff saw them, the decorations being wyfkin and kinder work.

  ‘They’ve made a special place for you in every humble along the shore,’ Leetha reported, ‘all garlanded and candle-lit.’

  ‘That bain’t for me,’ he said, ‘that be for she!’

  ‘You mean me?’ said Leetha misunderstanding and utterly delighted.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Not for thee, Leetha! But for she who never comes.’

  ‘But on the day it matters then she will,’ they said with certainty.

  Leetha liked this mystery, which those shore dwellers acted out at Solstice time but had delayed this year until the night of the twenty-fourth. The truth was that no one knew who ‘she’ was at all but they set a place of honour for her every time in the hope they’d find out in the end.

  ‘How long have you been waiting for her to come?’ she asked them, when the feast was set, the candles lit and the festivities in the first humble just begun.

  ‘Since afore anyone remembers,’ they replied, ‘even Old Riff, Borkum’s pa, never saw her come, or if he did he wasn’t telling.’

  Nor did the mystery guest come to that first humble, or the second, or the third, and each time the empty place stayed empty, though its platter was full, its decorations undisturbed. Each time they moved on, the night deeper, folk madder or happier or more inclined towards dance and singing and merriment. The kinder asked seriously, their eyes wider, ‘Why bain’t she here who’m a’coming and now can we eat her sweetmeats and her caggletoff?’

  They didn’t know the adults took these things to each humble as they went and laid that food in the empty place anew, not in expectation she would come at all but to mark a beginning in that home and to say to all present, and the kinder especially, that if there’s a knock on a door at whatever time of night, however things might be, if you’re a Riff you open right up and you smile and you say, ‘Welcome, stranger! You’m honouring us! Come on in, your place is laid!’

  Which words the kinder practised, just in case, and if a sweetmeat or ’toff slipped their way when they got it right, who’d be worried just by one? Not them!

  Oh, but it got hot as the night went on! The candles, the driftwood fires, the fierce and heady brews, the feasty food and the chattery laugh all made it so.

  Until, by the time they reached the last of those humbles, made of ships’ timbers all holed and copper-nailed and tarred, over and across the dunes, where Riff-kin lived, who had near nothing at all but the warmth of their good hearts and the few scraps they’d put together with the help of the other wyfkin earlier on . . . by then no one cared for food much at all. As for the platter for she who never came, why, the kinder eyed its cheery contents with relish, having worked out that this time, before the end of the night, it would be theirs.

  Outside, the surf roared far off and the wind blew near and candles guttered until the door was closed and everybody warm within.

  ‘You’m welcome all, as you’m always be,’ their poorest kin said loud, ‘and what we bain’t got in food we make up in good cheer and the fire’s the brightest you’ll e’er see!’

  Which it was, for the tar flared well and the copper nails shone copper-blue and the brew was good and by then they were bursting stomach-wise and a teaspoonful of this and that was all they needed.

  ‘Ma?’

  ‘Pa?’

  Kinders’ voices don’t count for much against adult hubbub of that kind.

  ‘Ma!’

  ‘Pa!’

  They counted for nothing at all, hardly audible above the noise the Riffs can make at the end of things.

  ‘MAAAA!’

  And those two kinder, peering out, shouting at the top of their voices, stopped the whole lot of ’em short.

  ‘Pa, there’s someone at the door.’

  A hush fell, deep as time.

  ‘Then open it, my love,’ their ma said, her voice trembling.

  It crashed open with the wind and there they saw, white and wild, the Horse’s mane.

  The adults stared like they were terrified.

  So did most of the kinder.

  But those two by the door, who’d been waiting all night long because they were the last to believe she who never came finally would, knew what to do, scared and awed though they were. They held each other’s hand for courage and went outside into the windy night, while candles and fire blew all over the place inside, and they looked up and then up and then up some more to where she rode among the Yuletide stars.

  The White Horse, seeing them, knelt down and its Rider dismounted as best she could, which wasn’t much, and she turned and looked at the two waiting for her, who shivered to see one so old.

  But the moment she smiled it seemed to them, as to all who saw her then, or ever saw her past, that the light within was without age.

  ‘W . . . w . . . welcome . . . st . . . stranger! You’m . . . you’m . . . you’m honouring us! Come on in, your place is laid.’

  The Modor took their hands and entered in and she declared that never had a place been better laid.

  Riff grinned, which he did not often do, to see his Leetha’s face.

  Leetha laughed to see the Modor’s.

  ‘Welcome,’ Leetha said holding old Modor tight, very tight indeed, ‘welcome! I’ve missed you.’

  ‘And I you, my dear.’

  ‘Have you seen him?’ whispered the Modor, much later, when dawn approached and the White Horse was snorting and it was time to go.

  ‘Who?’ asked Leetha.

  ‘That consort of mine, of course. I’ve been missing him this terrible winter.’

  ‘No!’ said Leetha, ‘I haven’t. Have a sweetmeat, but don’t eat them all . . . and did I say I’ve missed you? ’

  ‘Come and see me.’

  ‘I am already on my way, Modor. I have things to ask, things to know, things to learn.’

  ‘Come soon,’ said the Modor, giving the kinder the sweets and caggletoff, her eyes filled with the same light as theirs, ‘come soon. For the Earth is weak now and this winter long.’

  ‘I will,’ said Leetha.’

  ‘Dance for us, my love!’

  Leetha did, and while they watched, the Modor slipped away, nea
rly unseen. Back outside she went, as beautiful again as when she was young, grasping the Horse’s mane and mounting up, her thighs to its flanks, her cheek to its neck, as she whispered, ‘Tell him to come soon,’ in the Horse’s ear that the one she loved might soon return and she too could say, ‘Welcome, stranger, welcome!’

  Welcome home.

  26

  RESCUE

  Jack woke to Colonel Reece’s kicking in a state of confusion and discomfort, with something shining so close to his eyes that at first he could not focus on it. It was moving, it was bright, and it was . . . the blade of a serrated hunting knife.

  Adrenalin cleared his mind fast and his senses moved to overdrive. Since his range of vision was so restricted he had to still himself and listen hard to get a picture of what was going on around him.

  One and two . . . two people very nearby. Three further off. Five in all. They were quiet and disciplined, so probably military.

  The knife retreated and something round but not too hard pushed under his shoulder and heaved him onto his back. A boot, that’s what it was.

  Light from the sky temporarily blinded him.

  When he could see again, through screwed-up eyes, he was looking at two foreshortened, uniformed legs, then at a flat, khaki-shirted stomach, and beyond that to a face looking down at him. The sky was so bright and the angle so acute that it was almost a silhouette and he could not make its features out. Jack swivelled his eyes, rolled slightly and was able to see two more legs, these ones in the dark material of a suit. Both humans obviously.

  Where’s my stave?

  He sensed where it was but did not look in the direction in which he had thrown it before being caught by the net. He had been stupid once, he was not going to be again. The stave was capable of looking after itself and he was not going to risk revealing that it mattered to him by staring at it. Hopefully, if they saw it and were able to get hold of it, which he very much doubted, since the stave had a mind of its own and was loyal only to him, they would have no idea what it was.