Awakening Read online

  ‘I don’t know what she wants . . .’

  Worse, she was so clearly in distress, her cries so filled with pain, that even had Katherine been suffering the hot knife herself, she would have preferred to find out what was wrong and deal with it.

  For Jack it was only slightly less painful to hear. He had to attend to sorting things out, getting help, keeping them warm, and those demands softened a little the need to see to Judith.

  Wah wah wah wah wah wah . . .

  ‘Jack . . . I don’t know what’s wrong . . .’

  Worse still, as Judith cried in her arms she curled up, she grew red and hot, her mouth, so beautiful at birth, grew ugly with pain.

  ‘Can’t you . . .’ began Jack, as filled with horror and panic as she was.

  Can’t you what!?

  He had no idea.

  A window opened up in the house, then the conservatory doors.

  Astonishingly Judith stopped crying, turned her mouth to Katherine’s breast and, for the first time, began suckling.

  Katherine gazed down at her, all panic gone, and whispered, ‘Ooohh’ and smiled.

  Tears came to Jack’s eyes.

  ‘You’re a softie after all,’ said Katherine, reaching a hand to him, her mood switching from utter despair to total elation.

  ‘I think they’ve heard us up at the house . . . they’re about to have the shock of their lives . . .’

  Moments later Katherine’s adoptive grandparents, Margaret and Arthur Foale, appeared. They looked the part: in their late seventies, grey-haired, a little stiff, dishevelled with sleep.

  Margaret came first, drawn by the baby’s cry.

  Arthur was close behind, holding a hockey stick because whatever was going on might be dangerous. Travellers maybe, trespassers certainly, these days one never knew . . .

  They peered timidly across the henge, which Arthur had formed by clever felling of existing trees and some planting of others decades before.

  As Jack turned towards them their eyes widened in alarm and Arthur’s grip on the stick tightened.

  They had last seen Jack two years before and did not recognize him. He was bigger now and powerful-looking in a hulky, looming way.

  His sudden broad smile was their only clue, but it was the best.

  ‘J . . . Jack!?’ whispered Margaret.

  ‘Katherine!?’ said Arthur.

  ‘Hello,’ said Jack, moving to Katherine’s side where she sat on the ground, the baby still suckling.

  ‘Katherine!’ cried Margaret, rushing forward and kneeling in front of her.

  ‘It happened last night . . . we . . .’

  ‘There wasn’t time,’ said Jack.

  ‘But . . .’ began Margaret, panic in her voice.

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Katherine. ‘I just . . . we just . . .’

  ‘Oh Katherine,’ whispered Margaret putting her wrinkled arms around her and the baby.

  Arthur, true to his upbringing and the moment, reached out a hand and shook Jack’s rather formally.

  ‘Well done!’ he said.

  Jack laughed and hugged him.

  ‘Oooph!’ exclaimed Arthur, ‘but you’re strong now . . .’

  Margaret was crying, Katherine too, and the baby beginning to disengage.

  ‘Welcome home my dears,’ she said, ‘oh welcome home . . . Come on now and we’ll sort you out.’

  It was a brief moment of sweetness and light, a moment in time to cherish.

  They got Katherine up, Jack supporting her.

  ‘Leave all that stuff,’ said Jack, ‘let’s get them both inside.’

  They walked slowly from the henge, arms around Katherine, she holding the baby, out between the two conifers.

  Jack looked back.

  His backpack lay on its side, Judith’s ’sac as well.

  The leather bottle, a blanket, a bloody jacket, a towel.

  In more than a year of travelling it was the first time they had ever left a mess behind them, because in the Hyddenworld, from which they had returned, it is a cardinal rule of travellers that the Earth is left as She is found.

  The sun caught the trees all around, their early Summer leaves shimmering with its morning light.

  Beyond, up on the chalk escarpment, the White Horse galloped still.

  Jack turned from that world to the reality of his new one.

  ‘Let’s get you sorted,’ he said.

  Judith, awake now, began her crying again, more desperate than before despite having fed, and the moment of quiet was gone and a different darkness beginning.

  ‘Why! She does make a noise!’ said Margaret brightly. ‘When we’re settled I think I’ll . . .’

  . . . make a pot of tea, Jack mouthed at Arthur, who smiled.

  ‘Some things haven’t changed,’ he said.

  While others had changed for ever.

  7

  RETURN

  The sun was well risen and the damp fields and paths around Brum steaming with its warmth before the West Gate of the old city was finally opened for May Day morning.

  Eight or nine hydden came cautiously out. They were armed with staves and wore thick boots to protect them from puddles and mud. Their strong arms and stolid builds showed them to be a working party of stavermen or civic guards sent to check things out and give the all-clear.

  Already crowds of pilgrims were impatiently standing by the gate, eager to make the trek to Waseley Hill to pay homage to Beornamund and visit the source of the River Rea.

  The tradition was centuries old but had declined forty years before when the Empire’s army, the Fyrd, took control of the city in Slaeke Sinistral’s name.

  But a year ago, Marshal Igor Brunte, a disaffected Fyrd, had led an insurrection and declared Brum independent of the Empire. His timing was clever: he knew the Emperor had been ‘resting’ for many years and guessed that in his continuing absence no one else in Bochum would dare take so great a step as attacking Brum.

  Brunte had reinstated Lord Festoon, the city’s popular High Ealdor, and together the two had both military and popular support. No one expected this state of things to last for ever, and since the Emperor had gone into his sleeping retreat eighteen years before there were constant rumours that he had woken.

  Meanwhile pilgrims had taken the opportunity to visit Brum and Waseley Hill while they could, even coming from as far as the Continent. The green roads to Brum from the hydden ports of the Channel and North Sea were busy with travellers once more and the coffers of the city were brimming with the gifts and offerings, as well as the trade that such pilgrims bring.

  All of them knew and loved the legend of the lost gem, which they had heard at their mothers’ knees in many different versions from storytellers and wise folk.

  But after the strange weather and frightening tremors of the night before, Lord Festoon had commanded his stavermen to set forth and check the path, clearing debris as they went and marking out diversions from the river bank where it showed signs of damage or imminent collapse.

  It was this small group of responsible citizens who came upon the first obvious casualty of the events of the previous night. They did so soon after setting out from Brum.

  They saw a sorry and bedraggled figure slumped against a hawthorn tree near the bank of the River Rea and covered head to foot in mud.

  His face was battered and bruised beyond recognition, his hair mucky, his hands lacerated, and his nails torn.

  It was a pity that the chief staverman of Brum, Mister Pike, was not among them, for despite Stort’s state he would most certainly have recognized his good friend. As it was, the stavermen thought the casualty was a lone traveller, perhaps of dubious origin and intent, who had been caught out in the night by the extreme conditions and had fallen in the river and been lucky to get back out again.

  ‘He looks more of a rascal and vagabond than an honest pilgrim!’ said one of them.

  ‘Aye, he does,’ said another. ‘Still, ’tis May Day after all and we’d best fe
tch him to the pilgrims’ infirmary where a goodwife can be found to tend to him and Mister Pike can question him.’

  One of them went closer.

  ‘Do you know your name? Can you remember it?’

  The stranger opened his eyes again, shook his head, looked puzzled but finally spoke.

  ‘Unhand me!’ he cried. ‘Take me at once to Master Brief, with whom I have urgent business.’

  Stort might have had trouble remembering who he was, but the name of his beloved mentor came readily enough.

  ‘What business?’

  ‘Business that is not your concern, you villains! Tell him . . . tell him that . . . I need to see him . . .’

  They looked at each other doubtfully. Brief was the Master Scrivener of Brum and one of its most respected citizens. His door was generally open to all who came in a spirit of genuine scholarship and spiritual guidance, but it seemed unlikely that he would want a visit from a common traveller on a day like this, especially one so unpresentable.

  The stranger tried to speak once more but he seemed lost in a world of his own, one of confusion and worry, one of despair. Only mutterings came out, and vague protests, as he clenched his fists and tried to fend off imaginary enemies. His pallor increased and his breathing grew shallow and desperate.

  Any attempt on their part to examine his person or portersac for clues to his identity, or what he was about, provoked him into a violence that bordered on madness.

  Despite his protests they used their staves for a makeshift stretcher to carry him into Brum at once.

  May Day morning was not the best of times to be portering a litter burdened with a reluctant patient through the narrow medieval streets and lanes of Brum. The luckless stavermen found themselves jostled by shoppers, cursed by traders and objects of the idle curiosity of pilgrims. Though at times he seemed so poorly he was near death, at others their patient roused himself angrily and tried to rid himself of the straps that bound him to the litter, cursing his helpers as he did so and generally making himself a nuisance.

  ‘Soon be there!’ said one of the bearers heavily.

  ‘He’ll be given an opiate and he can sleep it off,’ said another.

  ‘But I don’t want to “sleep it off ”!’ cried the hydden angrily. ‘It’s Master Brief I need to see, not a goodwife wielding a sleeping potion.’

  The crowds got thicker, the difficulties greater, until the bearers could hardly move together, those on the right side being stuck fast, those on the left dragged suddenly forward.

  It was then that the litter tilted dangerously. As they struggled to right it someone in the crowd thought it would be a laugh to give it a shove and suddenly it tipped right over. The straps broke and its occupant tumbled to the ground at their feet.

  ‘Get ’im up or he’ll run off,’ cried one of the stavermen.

  But it was too late.

  The fall put new life into the traveller. Unable to rise up into the pressing throng and unwilling to put himself back under the control of those who were trying to help him, he scrabbled off among the legs and feet of the crowd, dragging his portersac behind him. Moments later they glimpsed him on the far side of the street, staggering down an alley, through a doorway out of sight.

  They only caught up with him some time later as he stumbled up the steps of the Great Library to an annexe in which Master Brief lived. ‘You’re under arrest!’ cried one of them.

  ‘Anything you say, any protest you make and any further attempt to fight the officials of the law will go hard against you, so be still!’ roared another.

  They hauled him to his feet. But as they began dragging him off to the infirmary the doors of the Library crashed open.

  Master Brief himself stood there, dishevelled but impressive, for though getting on in years he was well built and stood tall.

  He was still clad in his nightshirt, with a large tome in one hand and a pair of spectacles in the other. His white hair was untidy, his beard tousled and he looked ill-pleased indeed.

  ‘What is this?’ he roared. ‘It’s bad enough that I have been kept awake all night by those rumblings in the city’s foundations, but to have one of my few rest days of the year disturbed by ruffians is going too far!’

  The stavermen explained what had happened.

  Brief’s glance fell upon the portersac and stave they had found with the prisoner, which one of them was now carrying.

  ‘Where did you find those?’ he demanded at once, his fury replaced by astonishment.

  ‘With this ruffian.’

  ‘Humph!’ said Brief very ominously.

  Despite his state of dishabille he came down the steps, put on his spectacles and examined the portersac and looked dumbfounded. There was only one hydden who packed his ’sac so badly.

  He went at once to the hydden and peered closely at him.

  ‘But . . . but . . . but . . .’ he spluttered, ‘do you not know who this is? The whole of Brum has been awaiting his return and you . . . you . . .’

  A crowd had gathered. It now pressed closer.

  ‘This hydden who you have harried hither and yon,’ cried Brief, ‘who has tried to run to me seeking sanctuary from your rough hands and violent staves, who was dragged down the steps of the Library bumpety-bump even as he tried to summon my aid . . . this excellent hydden . . . why he is . . .’

  ‘Who am I?’ said Stort sitting up and peering round, as bemused now as before and staring at Brief in puzzlement, ‘and who are you? Another villain from this most villainous of cities! Let me be free. Lead me to Master Brief!’

  ‘I am Brief, Master Scrivener of Brum, and you, sir, who seem quite literally to have forgotten yourself, are, if I am not mistaken . . . my one-time best and ablest student, Bedwyn Stort.’

  ‘Am I?’ said Stort.

  ‘You are,’ said Brief.

  ‘And you claim to be Brief?’

  ‘I do, and dammit I am.’

  Then turning to the stavermen he said, ‘Take him to my quarters in the Library, lie him down and hold him still, fetch a goodwife worthy of the name, and let us get to the bottom of all this . . . and another thing, fetch Master Pike as well as the High Ealdor, Lord Festoon. And Marshal Brunte too! Fetch ’em all at once to the Library!’

  ‘But, sir!’ said the stavermen, for Brief’s instruction to summon the most important people in Brum there and then went beyond their competence and perhaps even his own.

  ‘Do it!’ thundered Master Brief, climbing back up the steps to prepare himself for what promised to be a very trying first day of Summer.

  The news that Bedwyn Stort had returned to Brum in an injured and demented state spread through the city like wildfire and brought his friends and acquaintances hurrying to the Library, the crowd outside increasing. It barely dispersed overnight and grew larger still the following day.

  He had to be restrained all night and any attempt to clean him up, to feed him, even to loosen his clothes, met with a crazed and violent resistance so ferocious that anyone trying to minister to him soon stopped.

  There were one or two attempts to place efficacious drugs in his mouth, but he spat them out. Others tried soothing words, but these too were of no avail.

  Marshal Brunte, de facto commander of Brum, and a tough, thickset hydden used to getting his own way, failed utterly to get any sense from Stort who, as the second day wore on, grew wilder and weaker at the same time. ‘Inform me if death threatens him,’ said Brunte, ‘or if he recovers his sanity. Meanwhile we must fear the worst and set in motion plans for a military funeral or a ceremony and will present him with posthumous honours . . .’

  Stort might not look much of a military hero, but only his quick thinking at the time of Brunte’s insurrection against the Fyrd had saved the life of Lord Festoon. Without him it was unlikely that the irascible citizens of Brum would have ever given the Marshal the support they had.

  Lord Festoon, High Ealdor of the city, was still wearing his chain of office from a function he cut s
hort when he heard a new rumour that Stort was dying. He was an admirer and friend of Stort, at once authoritative and kindly. His prematurely grey hair gave him a magisterial air.

  ‘If only he would let us examine and tend him properly,’ he said sadly. ‘He once saved my life at considerable risk to his own and I cannot understand why he will not let us help him now.’

  Brief could not but agree.

  ‘It is odd, is it not, that he seems to gain strength without our help but will not let us so much as wash or feed him? If it did not defy all reason I would suggest that something apart from ourselves is affecting him.’

  Finally, it was Ma’Shuqa, daughter of Old Mallarkhi, wizened owner-proprietor of the Muggy Duck, the finest and most historic hostelry in Old Brum, who broke the deadlock.

  Her affection for Stort, who had lodged with her in his youth, ran deep. She asked for a goodwife she knew well to be sent to his house and told Brief that he should be taken home at once.

  ‘Goodwife Cluckett is strict but fair,’ she said. ‘She’ll sort him out.’

  These words, spoken as if Stort was not in the room, appeared to have a sobering effect on him.

  He opened his eyes, sat up and said, ‘I do not like goodwives. They frighten me and in any case I am rapidly getting better.’

  Ma’Shuqa said, ‘That’s as maybe. But I bain’t stopping her now. We’m taking you home and Cluckett will have you spright as a sparrow in no time!’

  Half an hour later, by the light of a dozen lanterns, Stort was carried through the narrow lanes of Digbeth to his home. By the time they arrived he had so perked up that he was able to stand, with a little support, and dig about in his pockets for his key.

  He opened the door himself, his strength returning even more. Someone lit a fire, someone else fetched water, a third some sweetmeats and provender of the kind that tempts jaded palates. Candles were lit and all made as comfortable as was possible in his dusty, untidy, cluttered home. Then everyone was sent packing but for his closest friends, Brief and Mister Pike and Barklice, the city’s Verderer and in the past a frequent travelling companion of Stort’s.