Harvest Read online

  That maddening sense he had had that he was missing something in the Embroidery, which he had shared with Blut, who had sensed it too, now found resolution inside his racing mind.

  ‘Aaah!’ he shouted at the shelves about him from sheer frustration at not having seen before what he now saw so clearly. ‘Aaaaaargh!’

  Ã Faroün might, in a mild way, have been a fraud for changing his name, but he was also a genius.

  He had left a clue to where ‘Varoun Beacon’ was in a very public place and most hydden in Brum, including himself, had seen it a thousand times. But they had not the advantage Stort had had – access to the Embroidery and the Chamber of Seasons as well. For woven into the marvellous imagery of one, and painted boldly across the seasons of the other, was the same image of cardinal points as used in the square outside for the ‘Centre of the Universe’. He, like Blut, had missed this now obvious fact because they focused on the more detailed seasonal imagery and did not look for this quite different symbol. Stort was pretty certain he might find a clue out there as to where the ‘Varoun Beacon’ might be.

  He sighed, breathed deeply and mopped his brow.

  His work was done. Now, all he had to do was to confirm his findings and make his way to Cornwall. Which, come to think of it as he told himself abstractedly, was exactly the place where Katherine had felt such a strange and seemingly inexplicable urge to go when they first found themselves near Half Steeple in mid-August.

  With that, and clutching his notes and the most relevant scrivenings and drawings made by ã Faroün himself, Stort decided that the time had come to mount the stairs once more and return to the light of day.

  The moment Jack realized the implications of Stort’s disappearance, he knew he had very little time to find Stort, let alone rescue him, and he began issuing commands.

  ‘Katherine, you’re coming with me. Now. Bring your ’sac and stave because I doubt we’ll be coming back here. The Fyrd will be on their way into Brum sometime very soon and Mirror knows how long we’ll take to track down Stort.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Trust me, this must be. Cluckett! You have to leave Brum now.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Cluckett!’

  He loomed over her, rather as she wished Mister Stort would do more often.

  ‘Yes, sir, at once . . .’

  ‘You cannot come with us, I’m afraid . . . But there’s something you can do better than me. There are one or two folk hereabout who were still reluctant to leave. Round ’em up and get them out into safe places in the suburbs and don’t take no for an answer.’

  ‘Is that an order, sir?’

  ‘It’s a command!’

  ‘I will,’ she said breathlessly, her chest heaving. ‘They’ll not disobey Cluckett!’

  ‘He’ll be at the Library,’ said Jack, as he and Katherine ran towards the Main Square. ‘We can’t leave him there . . . Brum is as good as deserted, the last of us are going now and from all I’ve heard of Quatremayne he’ll want to claim the prize earlier than later.’

  But when they reached the Library doors they were locked, with no sign of life or Stort.

  ‘We’ll try the Residence,’ said Jack. ‘Quick . . .’

  They heard a shout to their left and saw Barklice and Arnold Mallarkhi coming up from Fazeley Street. Their task had been to wait for Blut and Arthur at a quay on the River Rea nearby. They should have gone already.

  ‘This whole thing’s unravelling,’ Katherine said.

  ‘And fast,’ added Jack.

  Jack ran over to Barklice.

  ‘We’re still waiting for Blut,’ he said.

  ‘He’s probably still in the Residence with Festoon. Have you seen Stort?’

  Barklice shook his head.

  ‘Nary a sign o’ that gennelman,’ said Arnold.

  ‘Go back to Fazeley Street,’ ordered Jack, ‘and be ready to cast off and get going fast. Stort’s not in the Library as far as we can see, so he’s probably in the Residence.’

  They nodded their understanding and retreated back to Fazeley Street.

  Jack and Katherine ran towards the Residence. As they reached it they heard the tramp, tramp, tramp of marching feet.

  ‘The Fyrd! Get in, out of sight; if they don’t know we’re here they won’t search for us . . .’

  In they went, pulling the doors quietly to as the first of the regrouped Fyrd marched in, the General at their head.

  When Quatremayne had arrived on the east side of Brum two hours before, he had still been fuming. But already his forces were recovering from the shocks of the night. In terms of their overall numbers the death toll was not as bad as feared, though it was the worst beginning to any city invasion he had ever been involved with.

  The situation report he received was astonishing. After the initial setbacks, and a natural fear of further attacks, the city was deserted, utterly.

  ‘Not a soul about, sir. They attacked us and they left.’

  This surprise had been soon confirmed by reconnaissance in the centre and by observers outside it.

  The centre of the city had been evacuated. If, as was likely, there were going to be further attacks, they would be by night and the Fyrd were not going to be taken by surprise two nights running.

  ‘Or ever again in this city!’ declared Quatremayne, whose rage was now giving way to triumph and relief and a desire for revenge.

  Which was why, as he marched at the head of his troops into the Main Square, he was looking and feeling a great deal happier than he had been first thing in the morning.

  Indeed, the old levity had returned and his field officers – his staff officers having been summarily sent off to search the bunker near Coventry – were at his side, laughing and joking. The memory of the deaths in the night, horrible though they were, were fading. At least, they were fading in the hearts and minds of those likely to benefit from pretending they had not really happened.

  For others, the ranks and junior officers, Quatremayne’s image had been tarnished and might never be as bright as it had been before. They would see and he would see. It was now all about image and perception.

  So it was that he mounted the steps of the Residence, sent in some Fyrd to check out the building, and turned to face his troops, much as Blut had done the night before.

  Like Blut, his mouth was dry – and like him too he sought inspiration. A way of lightening things. Of recovering lost ground by making his troops see him in a warmer light. But he never got started. For it was at that very moment Bedwyn Stort heaved open the Library doors opposite where the General stood and stepped out into the Main Square for all to see.

  47

  QUICK EXIT

  Stort was now obsessed with proving that his suspicions about ã Faroün’s true origins would lead him to work out where to look for the gem of Autumn.

  Once out in the open he was very surprised to see that the Main Square was full of uniforms, a multitude of Fyrd, no less, all with their backs to him.

  But what of that!?

  He had bigger and more important things on his mind than a military parade. What he wanted to do, and he could not see that it would inconvenience anyone if he did, was to confirm what the paper in his hand seemed already to suggest incontrovertibly, which was that thing which he and Blut had missed.

  Stort began down the steps, heading across the Square, when the tall fellow standing opposite, who appeared to be about to make an address from the Residence steps, stopped doing so and stared in his direction and fell into an almost stupefied silence. As did everyone else. It was as if they saw something so unimaginable that they were all, at one blow, deprived of words.

  Stort looked over his shoulder to see if there was something else that had had this effect on them, but he saw nothing. So, a little more slowly lest they behave in some way oddly, he began to wend his way through their ranks.

  Indeed it was true; General Quatremayne could not believe his eyes.

  The enemy had
disappeared entirely, the citizens of Brum were gone, and the only individual who remained had appeared through the great doors opposite and began to walk in his direction.

  ‘He is not armed, sir,’ said one of his officers.

  ‘He has no trews, General, which is very strange.’

  ‘Sir, that sleeping hat on his head is very funny, is it not so?’ said another, laughing derisively.

  ‘I can see him with my own eyes,’ said General Quatremayne acidly, ‘and come to my own conclusions.’

  His instinct was to ask one of his Fyrd to put a bolt through this lunatic’s heart and have done with it.

  But then he noticed something. Some of the men were quietly laughing and looking at Quatremayne for a cue. Others could barely contain themselves, beginning to double up with mirth.

  Quatremayne saw a chance to have some fun in the way he liked, at another’s expense.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said with mock grandeur, ‘I give you . . . the enemy!’

  Up on the highest floor of the Residence, in the famous Chamber of Seasons, Festoon and Blut had lost all sense of time and were unaware of what was happening outside. They had been told Quatremayne was still hours from the centre and had not imagined they would arrive so soon. The powerful imagery, the shifting perspectives and the odd way the octagonal room itself did not seem to stay still had taken them to another world. They had examined the imagery of Spring and Summer and looked with interest at the two doors associated with them, the first of which Festoon had been through two years before.

  ‘It took me, I don’t know how, up onto Waseley Hill from where, with the help of Bedwyn Stort, I made my escape from Igor Brunte in the days he was my enemy.’

  ‘Strange,’ said Blut.

  ‘Magical,’ replied Festoon. ‘Mirror knows where you’d end up if you tried to go through one of these other doors.’

  They had reached the section of the Chamber concerned with Autumn and were standing by that door, the word ‘Autumn’ embossed in faded gold paint above it. The door itself was dusty, its brass fittings black with age, its hinges corroded.

  ‘It would be a job opening it, I should think,’ Blut was just saying as their musings were interrupted by the rumble and clatter of an ancient lift.

  It was Jack and Katherine arriving by the only way to get to that highest level of the Residence. The lift clattered to a stop, the doors were pulled open and the two dashed out.

  ‘The Fyrd are here,’ explained Jack urgently, ‘and Stort’s lost!’

  ‘Well, he’s not with us,’ said Festoon matter-of-factly, ‘and that means we’re in an even worse situation. There are ways out of here but we cannot leave without Stort . . .’

  ‘If you mean the basement,’ said Katherine, ‘we just searched it and then started upwards before taking the lift. The Fyrd were on the steps outside and you can’t be sure some of them haven’t started searching the building. We can’t escape that way.’

  Jack looked at Festoon and he at Jack. There was another way, because they had used it before, but it carried risks and might easily not work. They listened and heard no sounds from below.

  Jack ran to the lift and blocked the doors open.

  ‘We need to think,’ he said. ‘Trust Stort! You should have tied him to his bed in his humble, Katherine. Where is he?’

  The only change Festoon had ever made to the Chamber was to have some slit-like windows cut into one side to relieve the claustrophobia he felt in there. These overlooked the Square and they now went to them.

  As they did so they heard the sound of group laughter, deep, loud, male and prolonged. It was guttural and unpleasant.

  They looked out and saw forty or so Fyrd in the Square they had just crossed.

  ‘Er . . . I hate to say it,’ Festoon said calmly, ‘but there’s Stort.’

  The Library doors were open and at the foot of the steps from it, heading towards the centre of the Square, seemingly oblivious of the Fyrd and their General by the Residence, was Bedwyn Stort. Their hearts sank.

  He was in a shirt, with a jacket to keep him warm but no trews, and a nightcap, complete with bobble, on his head. It was evidently so breathtakingly strange that he had half-crossed the square before anyone there had reacted or even said a word.

  It was Jack who spoke.

  ‘I’m not going to argue about this with any of you,’ he said in a low voice, ‘and I am going to demand as Stavemeister of this city that in this circumstance you obey my command.’

  He held his stave of office close.

  It began glowing with an angry, icy fire. He too was changed: in some way looming and large, his eyes intense, his determination clear.

  ‘The only sure way to save Stort is if I go back the way we just came,’ he said grimly. ‘That’s the way I am going to go and I’m going by myself.’

  ‘No, Jack!’ cried Katherine.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘alone.’

  ‘Jack,’ said Katherine warningly, fearing what might happen, as did Festoon. Blut looked puzzled.

  Festoon drew himself to his full height, which was considerably more than Katherine’s, tall though she was, and put a hand on her arm.

  Jack led them, with Katherine protesting, right up to the door marked Autumn.

  ‘It’s the only way, though Mirror knows where you’ll end up,’ he said.

  With that he heaved it open, signalled to Festoon to keep hold of the protesting Katherine’s arm and ushered them through, Blut last of all. There was a rush of air from outside which was so filled with Autumn leaves that they could hardly see beyond.

  ‘Go on!’ Jack said, giving Blut a final shove after the others and closing the door upon them all.

  The leaves had barely fallen at his feet before Jack turned to the lift, his stave very firmly in his hand, freed the doors he had blocked, stepped inside, closed them behind him and turned the heavy brass lever that made the lift descend to ‘B’ for Basement.

  Stort, still in his heightened mood of scientific curiosity, proceeded through the idiotic, laughing Fyrd to that point in the Square where he could test his theory: that ã Faroün, great hydden that he was, was nothing more nor less than a hydden from Cornwall who pined for home.

  He peered at the ground and finally, by a knot of Fyrd who were in his path, he saw again the Centre of the Universe, the star of cobbles laid by the fraudster himself, whose design for it he held in his hand.

  ‘Make way!’ cried Stort, ‘I need to see!’

  Laughing, they let him pass.

  He was right, the design was the same as that so cleverly ‘lost’ in the Embroidery.

  He went down on his knees and crawled amidst the booted Fyrd, picking dirt from the cobbles to make things clearer.

  And there it was, as on the design, a tiny piece of russet-coloured glass, wedged tight between the cobbles, right in the very centre of the star.

  Which was not Brum and Mercia, but Cornwall. Not even Cornwall, but a south-western part of it. A tiny place.

  ‘No more than a village, I daresay,’ said Stort, ‘but it was his home.’

  But already he knew its name was something like ‘Varoun’ and for proof absolute he needed only look at the brass disc set around the cobbles which named the continents and the capital cities and much else that was important.

  Smallest of all, in engraved letters almost too tiny to see amongst other more important names, was the name Veryan. From which he made up ‘Faroün’.

  ‘And he did return there, don’t you see, gentlemen,’ said Stort, speaking to the Fyrd as if lecturing them, ‘he went there at the end of his life, but secretly, for he wanted to feel a child again, not a celebrity! And he went at Samhain and he took with him a gem he had as a gift to the place and people who made him what he became . . . yes, that’s it. That’s where it is . . .’

  Stort might have continued in this vein had not the awfulness of the situation he was in suddenly dawned upon him.

  He had a nightcap on, he had
no trews and he was surrounded by Fyrd who were laughing now but were all armed and might not laugh for long.

  Terror caught him.

  He turned white.

  He stared about in desperate hope that somewhere, someone might offer him a helping hand in that moment of dire need. He knew where the gem was, time was running out and forty Fyrd were about to attack him as one.

  ‘Help!

  ‘Help,’ he said again, and help he suddenly found.

  Jack’s choice of the basement of the High Ealdor’s Residence as his destination was deliberate. He knew its layout and that the access to the basement from ground level was not immediately obvious. If Fyrd were already checking the building while Quatremayne spoke to his officers it was likely they would go up, not down. Jack hoped that by the time he climbed the stairs to the ground level he might have a clear run outside.

  He did, at least as far as the main doors.

  These were ajar and he could see Quatremayne’s back. He was addressing a crowd of Fyrd in the Square. Jack guessed that the one speaking, who was in a well-pressed uniform and lean, tall and silver-haired, was the General himself.

  He was immediately tempted to strike him down and have done with him, but that short gain would inevitably reduce what little time he had to save Stort out in the Square and, perhaps, himself. He decided on surprise and speed.

  He moved silently to the door so that Quatremayne was not more than a few feet away. The foyer was dark, which meant that Jack could not easily be seen.

  He examined the Fyrd and saw they were relaxed, mostly staveless, their crossbows and dirks hanging loose from their belts. Those nearest Stort and laughing at him disbelievingly looked like more senior officers. There were a few guards armed and ready on the outside of the group to right and left.

  From his vantage point Jack could just see Barklice lurking out of sight of the Square itself, waiting, no doubt, for a signal or sound that told him someone was on the way towards him who would need to be got out fast.

  The Fyrd were on the Residence side of the Square; the side between the centre, where Stort was, and Barklice, was now nearly empty because they had moved nearer the General.