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  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Now go with Katherine, lead your life as I have taught you, the musica is now almost yours, Terce.’

  Such was their simple farewell and he, like Katherine, said little on the way back. But he relaxed as the journey through the Autumn landscape took them on, breathing deeper, letting go at last the responsibility for Laud and the others he had always felt. He now was the Quinterne, he himself.

  ‘Travel on with us for a time,’ Katherine said, ‘for the one thing that’s certain for us all is that we’re going to have to journey on soon to find the gem, before Samhain and after that into the dark dark days of Winter, before light comes again. Your presence will be welcome and much needed.’

  When her knocking on Stort’s door got no reply, she and Terce hurried on into the centre of Brum, where they soon learnt Stort had not been seen for days and was nowhere to be found.

  When Bratfire, Barklice’s son, appeared to tell her Jack had returned in safety with Arthur Foale her joy was overlain with this new concern for Stort. She sent Bratfire to summon Jack to Stort’s humble as she and Terce set off back there themselves.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ she said. ‘I should have knocked harder, waited longer or beaten the door down!’

  In his dying moments as the twine strangled him Bedwyn Stort found himself in the peculiar position of being in two places at once.

  In the first he was on the floor of his humble, his head near the front door, his feet reaching towards his parlour, his mind now in a state of deepening unconsciousness as his body let go of his spirit. His eyes were half closed so that just the whites showed, very horribly. His face was a dreadful blue-grey, his freckles now mauve, his breathing difficult and his arms and legs were angled and bent in all directions, as if he was falling through space and time uncontrollably and at speed.

  In the second place in which he simultaneously existed, his mind was clear as crystal but quite free of those many doubts and questionings with which his essentially enquiring nature (he now saw) had plagued his mortal life, moment by moment. Latterly on the subject of the gem of Autumn.

  Rather, he found himself floating very pleasantly in a bright, white light some feet above his prone other self; a comfortable, ruminative, warm kind of place above which, through the ceiling, the roof space and beyond that, the Earth’s atmosphere and then the whole Universe itself, was a tempting destination where all questions would be answered, not because they had answers so much as there was no need for the questions in the first place.

  Floating thus in his own humble he looked down upon himself in full knowledge that he was near death, without regret, but with enormous compassion.

  So much so that he wanted to reach down and touch his own cheek in a loving kind of way and say, ‘It’s all right, Bedwyn, old fellow . . . really, it’s all right . . .’

  Yet he did not do so.

  Why?

  Because he knew that way down there on the floor, inside his body – not his head, or heart, but in his very being – it was not quite all right. There was something he had not finished.

  Something he now saw in all its terrible clarity that he had not done.

  Something that whatever else he had achieved would remain a kind of niggle, a little weenie worm of doubt, as he journeyed on into the hereafter where all things were meant to be resolved, all doubts assuaged, all things settled for all time.

  That thing still undone was – and now the deep pool of his white-light calm was finally disturbed by uncomfortable ripples – something his good friends had done without seeming difficulty, as if it was the most natural thing in the mortal world.

  His beloved mentor, the late Master Brief, had done it.

  Their much-respected mutual friend Mister Pike had done it.

  His great friend and travel companion Barklice had done it, though it took him some years to realize that he had.

  And, of course, Jack and Katherine had done it, and done it well.

  Even Lord Festoon, once one of the most self-centred of hydden, as it had seemed, had done it and done it better than well – why, he had shown his mastery of it by his treatment of the citizens of Brum as he had in all his dealings with those who knew him personally, not least his chef Parlance.

  Why! the floating Stort upbraided himself, Parlance has done it and no one could be more narcissistic than he!

  What had they done that he had not?

  ‘They have known how to love truly and deeply,’ Stort uttered into the ethereal light around him, ‘and I never did! How then can I leave my mortal self until I have learnt that? How can I let myself die if I have never let myself truly live?’

  Irritation had moved to self-anger; that had now moved on to existential discomfort, as if he might soon be in what some called heaven but with a painful splinter in his thumb.

  The breathing of his other self grew weaker, more shallow, as the ethereal Stort told himself that it was not so much that he had not loved but more that he had not known how to do it well. ‘Therefore I must stay alive until I’ve done it better!’ His weak, wretched fingers tried to free himself a final time.

  As he strove to do so it seemed to him that a figure appeared out of the Embroidery and advanced upon him.

  ‘Judith!?’ the two Storts said simultaneously.

  She shook her old, worn head, smiling slightly, coming to him where he lay.

  ‘No, my dear, but you know who I am,’ she said as the door behind them both reverberated with renewed knocking.

  You are the Modor, the Wise Woman, said Stort triumphantly in the silence of his dying mortal mind.

  She reached her withered hand to the tight tangle about his neck and said, ‘The knot is not as cunning as it seems but I cannot help you, you must help yourself or your friends must. Still, I can put your hand where it should be.’

  She took his flaccid hand and curled its fingers round the impossible knot.

  ‘Judith?’ he said again, for she touched him with the same love he imagined she would, were she ever to touch him.

  ‘No, my dear, not yet. I am the Modor and I cannot let you go, there is so much for you to do . . . Hold on, your friends are nearly here, they are knocking at your door.’

  ‘My love?’ he whispered, still confused.

  ‘I am not her, Bedwyn Stort, but you summoned me because I too am in the Embroidery and I have come. Now your hand is in place and I must leave . . .’

  The knocking on the door grew louder.

  ‘Undo the cunning knot and you will breathe again,’ she said, retreating into the Embroidery.

  As she did so the door fell down on top of him, smashed into his face, forcing it sideways and a melee of feet thundered over it, accompanied by voices, all of which he knew very well indeed.

  ‘Stort!’ cried Jack, ‘Stort!’

  ‘What the . . .’ shouted Pike, floundering into tangles of string and falling forward onto Jack, who himself began falling.

  ‘Jack, I think he’s . . .’ exclaimed Katherine, ‘he’s . . .’

  But she was knocked over by Barklice and then Bratfire, all tumbling in across the broken threshold and the fallen door.

  Death, which had stalked so close not much earlier, now returned in more palpable form to Bedwyn Stort, whose thin and weakened frame found itself spreadeagled beneath his own front door.

  ‘Help!’ he cried.

  ‘Where are you, Stort?’ cried Jack, upright once more.

  ‘Dammit,’ cried Stort in a crushed and muffled way, thinking it was as well his door was solid enough to spread their combined weight so evenly or else he would have been pulverized in parts, ‘I’m here!’

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Katherine. ‘I can hear him.’

  ‘Underneath!’ he called out weakly.

  ‘He’s here somewhere,’ said Barklice.

  ‘Look!’ gasped Stort, doing the one thing that might attract their attention.

  It was Bratfire, who was still standing on the door,
who worked it out.

  ‘There, Dad!’ he said, pointing. ‘Those feet are wiggling!’

  Which indeed Stort’s were, poking out from under the door and moving back and forth in mute semaphore to signal his distress.

  ‘He’s under the door!’ cried Jack. ‘Careful! Don’t stand on it! Bratfire, what are you doing!’

  Bratfire backed out of the house, a staverman who had had the sense to stay outside picked up one end of the door, Jack picked up the other and eased his end past Stort’s gasping form as they took the door out of harm’s way into the street outside.

  ‘It’s all right,’ whispered the Modor gently, as she too moved past him, caressing his cheek, nearly unseen by the others, the twine falling from her in the light of day and the street outside.

  Stort reached after her, not wanting her to go, if she had been there at all, which he was not quite sure, as Katherine knelt by him on one side and Jack squeezed down on the other.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  No I am not. I’m choking to death.

  ‘He’s choking,’ said Jack, trying to pull Stort’s hand away and undo the tangle of twine that was tight around his neck.

  Neither hand nor twine budged.

  ‘He’s nearly strangled himself with string.’

  ‘If we hadn’t got here when we did . . .’

  Do something!

  ‘Wait, he’s trying to speak.’

  Blessed silence fell as Stort tried in vain to hold on to the Modor’s visit and what went before, as to a dream which on waking flies away to the corners of mind and memory.

  ‘She . . .’ he said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Modor, I think . . .’

  ‘There was someone, did anybody see that person? Where . . . ?’

  ‘She was the Modor. She . . . she . . . said . . . musica.’

  It was his last gasp and the hand that Jack had tried to wrest free now began to loosen its desperate hold as Stort began to give up.

  ‘Musica.’

  It was Katherine who understood and she raised a hand slowly and with such authority that all fell utterly silent.

  ‘Terce? Where’s Terce?’

  He came near and knelt down.

  She took his hand and placed it on Stort’s.

  ‘He needs help. He needs to hear the musica. He needs it now if he is to come back to us.’

  Terce looked afraid and shook his head.

  ‘I cannot; no one can. I have not learnt everything, I cannot.’

  ‘You can because Meister Laud taught you to. The last thing needed he could not teach. Have confidence in the gift you have . . .’

  ‘But Meister Laud . . .’

  ‘Is dead,’ she said, the twine about her thrumming on her legs, showing what truly was, letting her hear a little of what Stort knew.

  ‘Now you sing for his memory, sing down the centuries of the song you learnt, sing from the beginning of time.’

  She took his other hand and placed it on Stort’s chest, which fluttered with no more strength than a dying moth.

  ‘Sing! That is what he taught you, for now, for later, for the musica.’

  And then Terce could.

  His voice trembling at first, the sound of the beginning of all things; then stronger, the sound of life born; then soaring, as life takes wing and is stronger still, a sound ethereal. It filled Stort’s humble, it stilled their restless minds, it brought bright light to all their shadows and was so beautiful it seemed their eyes closed before it and they sailed into the sky.

  Stort’s fingers moved, they bent, they clutched the twine, they tried to pull and then they caressed it and it slipped away, insubstantial, a ligature no more.

  Still Terce sang and still they heard but did not look, lost in the beauty of his song.

  Katherine opened her eyes and saw that as the twine fell away Stort’s chest heaved. Air rushed into his mouth, his lungs, and his body came back to life.

  He reached for her, confused, thinking Katherine was Judith, or maybe the Modor.

  But the Modor was gone, already gone, except for her touch and her words and what he had seen before she came. They lingered still.

  Terce’s voice faded and Stort spoke.

  ‘I . . . I know . . . I have discovered . . .’ he said feebly.

  ‘What’s this string for?’ said Jack.

  Stort tried to sit up, normal colour returning to his face.

  ‘It’s twine not string,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘All in the nature of research and discovery.’

  ‘Which nearly killed you,’ said Katherine.

  It was as if none of them wanted to acknowledge what they had heard. Or perhaps it was too much for mortal hearts to long remember and be at peace thereafter.

  Even Stort, whose life Terce’s singing had surely saved, seemed concerned with simpler things.

  ‘I have found . . . or discovered . . . or worked out . . .’

  ‘What?’ said Katherine softly, shushing the others, including Jack, pushing them back. ‘What have you discovered?’

  ‘I know where the gem of Autumn is,’ he said, finally able to sit up unaided, ‘Yes, and I know . . . or I think I know . . .’

  A look of alarm came to his face as Katherine pulled the rest of the twine off him and set him finally free.

  ‘I am sure . . .’

  The memory of what he had discovered was fading too and he did not want it to.

  ‘I know where the gem is but . . . but . . .’

  ‘Where?’ said Jack urgently. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Well, I know more or less.’

  ‘Yes?’ demanded Katherine, unaccountably fierce.

  ‘If you know, tell us!’ cried Barklice, annoyed.

  ‘I . . . it . . . er . . . um . . . I can’t remember exactly,’ said Stort. ‘It’s kind of slipped away, as a dream does. But that’s all right.’

  ‘All right?’ said Jack frowning. ‘It is definitely not all right.’

  ‘But, you see, she came . . .’ Stort tried to explain, ‘she came and I saw and understood. I know how to find it now.’

  ‘How?’ they asked.

  ‘I’m tired,’ replied Stort. ‘She came and touched me and I . . . am most definitely in need of sleep. I’m sure it was her!’

  ‘Don’t talk any more,’ said Katherine finally, heaving him to his feet with the help of Jack and guiding him towards his bedroom.

  ‘In fact, do you know what she helped me understand?’

  ‘Try to calm down, Stort . . .’

  ‘She let me see that even I can love with my whole heart!’

  It was as joyous a moment of discovery for Stort as any in all his life.

  ‘Yes, but what about the gem?’ said Jack, ever practical. ‘Did you discover where it is?’

  Stort looked at him very seriously, shook his head and sighed.

  ‘You’re missing the point,’ he replied. ‘She showed me how to get there, not where it is. It’s the “how” that’s important.’

  ‘You saw Judith?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Stort happily, ‘and maybe not. I thought it was her. But at least now I know . . . I know . . .’

  He was falling asleep.

  They tucked him in.

  Katherine bent down and kissed him.

  ‘Judith? Modor?’ whispered Stort.

  ‘And me,’ said Katherine softly, ‘all three.’

  ‘I know how to love,’ he said.

  37

  PANIC ATTACK

  Jack finally returned to Brum with Blut and Arthur nearly a week after they had left. They entered Brum even more discreetly than they first left it. They knew that there were real dangers in revealing that they had the new Emperor of the Hyddenworld with them and decided to lie low in Deritend for a few days.

  It was as well that Blut did not look the part, or adopt regal graces, because that would have attracted attention in the Muggy Duck, their first ‘official’ port of call. They knew that the moment they s
howed their faces, word of their arrival would get out. They introduced Blut as someone who had been a fellow prisoner with Arthur, which was true. More they did not say.

  If Ma’Shuqa guessed something she kept quiet about it. Jack noticed she treated Blut with great respect and gave him a better room, along with Arthur, than he himself normally had, with ‘some extra vittels thrown in for the gentleman in case he gets peckish in the night’.

  In the short time he had known him, Jack, like Arthur, had become rapidly impressed by Niklas Blut. He liked his seriousness, his occasional flashes of self-deprecating humour, his obvious compassion for those hurt by the Fyrd and the rapid, dispassionate but effective way he dealt with any issue that arose.

  There was also no doubt that he had courage and a strong nerve. Brunte and Feld liked to talk of military assets. In Jack’s view, Blut was an ‘asset’ beyond value. He delayed alerting Festoon that the mission had been successful until he was sure he could keep Blut safe. Certainly he intended to say nothing via missive or messenger except to say they were back in Brum.

  When it came, the response surprised and disappointed him. It came in the form of a hastily scrivened note which said no more than that Festoon was pleased at the result and ‘maybe’ in a day or two there might be time to see Jack and Arthur.

  ‘There’s a real panic on at the High Ealdor’s Residence about the Fyrd coming,’ the messenger explained, ‘and you won’t get much more from that quarter for a while, if ever until the invasion is over. Then it’ll be too late! Me? I may get out of Brum sooner than later. The place is falling apart and folk are ignoring the procedures laid down for orderly departure.’

  Blut heard this too and was appalled.

  The likely truth of it was supported by the dour mood in the Muggy Duck. Numbers were down, the talk was edgy and folks’ nerves were shot to pieces.

  ‘Ere, we haven’t seen you in these parts before. Where are you from?’

  It came out of the blue, a challenge to Blut as he sat harmlessly supping ale.

  ‘I am just . . .’

  ‘And yer accent, and yer business?’

  Another burly client rose, and more surrounded Blut threateningly.

  ‘Get up and face us yer little . . .’