Awakening (30 page)

Then there were the stews, steaming in great cast-iron cauldrons and fish chops of the pike and the mullion.

They feasted as they went, unwilling to stop folk offering them food, quite unable to decline.

Having feasted, they sat on cushions beneath awnings flickering with fire fore and aft.

Having sat they rose, tottered about, lost their way, joined the dance and began to forget why they had come.

‘I am sure,’ said Stort, ‘there was a good reason, but I confess my mind tonight seems a little awry.’

‘Yes,’ replied Barklice, ‘we did come for a purpose, an important one which . . . if only you would try, I might remember!’

Until, the moon beginning to wane, the crowds to thin, it dawned on them that the night was drawing to a close and whatever it was they had come for was slipping away.

‘Good to see you here, Mister Barklice, goodly and grand!’

The voice was male, deep, bilgesnipe, warm.

‘Who . . . where . . . ?’

They turned and saw a great bilgesnipe disappearing over a footbridge.

‘Sir! Please don’t go!’

The bilgesnipe turned, fire on his cheerful face, smiling and raising a hand in acknowledgement.

‘Please . . .’ said Barklice, suddenly sober, suddenly scared, suddenly remembering why he had come . . . ‘
please . . .
’

‘You’m ready now then, Master Verderer, you’m ready to reap what you did sow?’

It was another voice, a female, closer-to, ancient, a voice from out of time.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ said Barklice, ‘and I’m sorry I ever . . . I didn’t know . . . I don’t know . . . but, yes, I’m ready.’

‘You are and you’ll be and you’ll
learn
,’ she said gently. ‘Now, on you go, Mister Barklice, take up what you’re due . . .’

He turned, wild-eyed.

‘Stort . . . come with me . . . I . . .’

But the crone took Stort’s arm and he shook his head.

‘I got you here,’ said Stort, ‘and now I think it’s you must do the rest . . . but I’ll not be far behind.’

Barklice took a path into darkness, which led towards the river and the craft clinking at their moorings there.

As for Stort he went straight on, across the grass, among the people, towards one of the larger fires, one of the last to still be roaring and young.

But such were the flickering shadows of the night, and the state of his befuddled mind, that though he looked at the one who held his arm, needing his support perhaps, walking slow with head bent saying no more nor who she was, he knew only that she was old, very old.

‘I must help Barklice,’ he said, trying to break away.

‘Let Mister Barklice make his own discoveries and mistakes, but watch and learn, Bedwyn Stort, for what you’ll see here this night is what Paley’s Creek was always meant to be, which some might call magic, others . . . well . . . you’re the one with words, not me.’

Her voice, like her eyes, was distantly familiar, as if he had met her briefly a very long time before. Her hand tightened on his arm and she looked ahead, though with difficulty, for her body was troubled with stiffness.

‘Watch,’ she whispered, ‘watch your friend, my dear.’

They had passed the great fire on their left-hand side and were walking out of its light towards a long landing stage they had seen twice before. First it had been crowded with craft arriving and letting people off but taking few away. Later more folk, mainly young ones as he recalled, had been standing there, boats coming for them one by one.

Now only one remained, a boy, standing alone at the end of the staging, staring across the water, on which the orange lights floated. There were a few people on the landward side of the stage, huddled together as a family might be, old and young, male and female, quiet, subdued, whispering.

They were discreetly watching the boy from a distance, their mood sombre. They were watching the water too, for signs of a boat.

‘He’ll not move until the sun rises,’ Stort heard one of them say, ‘though middenacht be the witching hour.’

‘He’ll never believe and he never did but that his pa would come for him for certain this night, but . . .’tis hard, there’s always one left at Paley’s Creek, one to wish for what never was . . .’

Stort turned to the crone and whispered, ‘Who are they talking about?’

‘The boy.’

‘What’s he waiting for?’

‘You’ll see and you’ll know.’

‘But I do know,’ said Stort, ‘of course I know because once I stood on a stage like that and waited like he is now. Right through a night and then another and then another until he—’

Her hand grew tighter on his arm. ‘You did,’ she said.

‘But he . . .’

Stort could not bear to tell that truth, as he could not bear to watch the waiting boy, alone on the stage watching the rise of the mist, hoping that out of it, against all odds, despite all fears, out of it . . .

‘He never came for me,’ said Stort.

Her hand was tighter still.

‘And that’s why you’re Barklice’s true friend,’ she said, ‘and brought him here because you know what’s right and what’s wrong and what blights a little life . . . now . . . now . . .’

Stort dared look again.

Still nobody came.

Still the lurid mist drifted by, the boy sturdy and solid against it, refusing to give up, his new-packed portersac on the stage at his feet, ready to embark on a craft that hadn’t arrived, with a father who had never come back, leaving him to be the last and the left. There he stood, refusing to believe a truth that would break his heart.

The talking among the gathered group ceased; it seemed they
had
given up. Stort noticed one in particular, no longer quite young, rather plain, but graceful, gentle in the way she stood, the firelight catching the back of her head as she stared at the boy, her hair touched with grey, the fire turning it red. She turned to one of the others, taking her eyes off the boy for a moment, and Stort saw her face. Even she, it seemed, now had her doubts, and there was a measure of sadness in her eyes.

Well,
she seemed to say,
well then
. . .
I suppose . . .

An older woman went to her, and a man, bilgesnipe both, large, warm, hands ready to reach out to any who needed comforting.

So they didn’t see that out on the landing stage the boy had suddenly stiffened and taken a step forward.

Stort, his old hurt memory gone, stiffened too.

Then he saw a light wavering in the mist, a lantern held aloft, and a voice very familiar to Bedwyn Stort which called out, ‘You be a warnin’ me where that blessed stage may be, my chumly Mister Barklice, for Arnold cannot see a thing! Not even his own nose!’

It was Arnold Mallarkhi, grandson of Old Mallarkhi of the Muggy Duck, bringing a craft out of the mist, across the current.

‘What do you see, Mister Barklice?’

The light showed first and then an arm and then, as the arm came through the mist, the prow of the craft on which stood, precariously, his hand shaking, holding the lantern with one hand and a lanyard with another for support, the Master Verderer of Brum.

‘I see a . . . I think . . . it is . . .’

‘Call it plain, Mister Barklice, call it good,’ cried Arnold, ‘be it near or be it far?’

‘Near.’

‘What’s near, chumly, a river bank, a rocky obstruction, a landing stage?’

The boy stepped forward eagerly, Barklice let go the lanyard and stood up straight.

‘It’s my boy,’ he said simply.

The boy turned suddenly landward, for the briefest of moments, and never in his life had Stort ever seen such joy and pride on a face.

‘It’s my pa!’ he called out and then, very simply, ‘Ma allers said he’d come for me, down all those years she said he’d come and here he be!’

Of the next few moments Stort never remembered much.

Barklice forgot to tell Arnold how close they were.

For once that bilgeyboy missed a trick and hit a landing stage.

The boat smacked hard, Barklice staggered off, the boy held him fast, his ma came running, her ma and pa came running too, and then the whole lot were clattering down the landing stage . . .

‘Hold fast, lubbers!’ yelled Arnold with a laugh, ‘else the stage and its planks and all you folk’ll collapse in the water.’

Together, all as one, as a family they held fast to the boy and his pa and led them safe to shore, clacketing down the planks back to shore with happiness.

‘This be him,’ said the boy, and Stort watched as Barklice shook so many hands he lost count, ‘this be my pa!’

‘Be it true you’m the Master Verderer of Brum?’ cried out one.

‘Well, I suppose, if you put it that way, I do bear that title but—’

‘And you know all sorts of folk, low and high, high and low?’

‘Quite a few, yes, but I don’t know . . .’

‘Like Lord Festive?’

‘Festoon,’ said Barklice, ‘yes, I certainly know him in more than a passing way but . . . I would like . . . I mean . . . I ought . . .’

The boy had hold of Barklice’s hand and pulled him towards the woman Stort had noticed before.

‘Be it true, Mister Barklice sir, that Brum is as big as a city ought to be?’ called another.

‘That’s true but really . . . I can answer your questions later . . . but you see I’d very much like to know . . . my . . . my son’s name.’

The boy reached the woman and pulled Barklice towards her.

‘Pa, meet Ma,’ he said.

And the woman, bilgylike, warm as toast, good as a plate of stewed tomatoes on a misty morn, laughing, put her arms around Barklice and whispered, ‘Ask him yourself !’

So Barklice looked at the boy and knelt down so they were one and the same and said, ‘Tell me your name.’

‘Bratfire,’ said the boy, ‘and I’ve learnt hyddening better than most but they say you’ll teach me a trick or two.’

‘I will.’

‘And is it true, Ma says it is but no one else thinks it so, that . . . that . . .’

‘What?’

‘That you know the most famous hydden of them all?’

‘Well, I’m not sure who—’

‘That you’ve talked to him, like we are now . . .’

‘I may well have done but . . . who . . . ah! You mean Master Brief. Well, of course . . .’

Bratfire shook his head rather impatiently.

‘Pa,’ he asked rather severely, ‘tell us one and all, here and now, if it be true or not that my pa actually knows and has talked to, maybe even shaken the hand of, the famous Mister Stort?’

Barklice looked astonished. Then a slow smile came over his face, the firelight dancing in his eyes.

‘You mean the famous Mister
Bedwyn
Stort?’

‘Yes.’

‘The one who rescued Lord Festoon?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘The one who speaks so many languages that sometimes he forgets to speak his own clearly?’

‘He’m the one we’ve heard of.’

‘The inventor of . . . of all sorts of things?’

‘Well, do you or no?’

Barklice laughed, really laughed, for the first time in days, perhaps in a certain way for the first time in years, if ever.

‘If your mother says I do then of course I do, because she’s always right and never tells a lie!’ he said, tempted suddenly to tell a slight one himself.

But not a bad one.

In such circumstances a certain massaging of the truth seemed permissible.

‘I am a little late,’ he said, ‘because it took a great deal of persuading to get Master Scrivener Stort to agree to come to Paley’s Creek tonight to—’

‘He’s
here!?
’ said Bratfire in delighted astonishment. ‘Like . . .
here?
’

Bratfire looked round to see if his mother had heard, which she had. Indeed, she was looking as amazed – and as impressed – as their son.

Barklice stood up and looked around indifferently, as if it was the most natural thing in the world that one of Englalond’s greatest scholars should be wandering about Paley’s Creek with him for no good reason other than to be there.

For Bratfire the night was turning magical.

‘Yes, he’s certainly here somewhere or other . . . now let me see if I can spot him . . . Ah, there he is!’

Bratfire looked in the same direction but all he spotted was someone he had noticed before and dismissed – a tall, rather distracted-looking hydden, whose arms and legs seemed too long for his body.

‘That’s him,’ said Barklice, ‘that’s Mister Stort of Brum, the best friend a hydden ever had.’

‘
Him!?
And who be that standing akin to him? Stocky feller, fierce eyes?’

‘He,’ said Barklice sternly, ‘is not to be dismissed as a mere “him” in that tone of voice. And that other gentleman is not a mere “that”.