Awakening (5 page)

Splash!

A new and more permanent darkness descended upon him as his heavy portersac dragged him beneath the surface and cold, muddy water filled his lungs. His hands and fingers scrabbled uselessly at the bottom and the sides of the dyke.

His feet drifted away from him one way and then his body in another. As for his mind, it drifted in a different direction altogether. An already strange and terrifying night had brought him to something worse. As the cold intensified and his mouth filled with water and the pain in his chest increased still more, Stort knew that he was drowning.

I must not . . . the gem . . . the Shield Maiden . . .

He reached about until he caught hold of what felt like the root of a tree or bush. He pulled himself towards it, found the bottom of the dyke with his feet and pushed himself upward as hard and fast as he could.

He broke the surface of the water, was wheeled round by its flow, and had he not been holding the root might easily have been swept into the river he could hear but not yet see.

He scrambled up the side of the dyke, water pouring from his clothes and portersac. He lay on the muddy ground and caught his breath, spitting out mud and leaves.

When he opened his eyes again the night had lightened and dawn was finally on the way. He saw the post into which he had bumped on the far side of the dyke, the bridge he had missed and his stave that lay on the ground.

He got up shakily, retrieved his stave, crossed the bridge once more and set off along the river bank. He checked for the thousandth time that the gem was safe, he paused again to take a look at it, knowing even as he did so it might be a mistake. He did so anyway.

Suddenly the pendant turned and twisted in his hand, the chain slithered about like a snake and a bright and blinding light shone forth, suffusing everything it touched with the bright green of Spring, even him. Stort felt suddenly that he wanted to sing and dance and fancied he heard lovebirds in the branches of the trees overhead and the happy plash of fishes leaping for joy in the river nearby.

He felt a surge of energy, of delightful madness, and stirrings of a Springlike kind. However, his natural instinct for survival overcame any desire he felt to run, jump, dance and sing.

With a commendable effort of will he stood where he was, stowed the troublesome gem and its pendant away again and set off once more.

‘That was a close thing,’ he told himself, ‘because I nearly . . . I mean I might have . . . I . . .’

The events of the night, the gruelling experience he had had, and the curious and disconcerting influence of the gem itself, finally got to him.

He stopped, he started, he seemed to see the sun rise faster than usual, and the river’s waves appeared to reach up towards him like watery hands.

‘It wants to steal the gem!’ he told himself.

The stalks of bulrushes poked at his shins.

‘They want to steal it too!’ he cried.

A deep puddle appeared before him, across the path.

‘It wants me to fall in and the Earth Herself will take the gem.’

He began to run, to creep along, to look behind him, to wave his stave about aggressively, to fear everything.

‘I shall not yield to any who try to steal it from me!’ he cried out aloud.

He saw a hawthorn tree ahead and the West Gate of Brum some way beyond it.

‘Nearly home,’ he muttered, ‘but who can I now trust? And yet . . . this tree . . . a hawthorn . . . a benign, friendly sort of tree . . . perhaps I could, just for the briefest of moments . . . just lay my stave down, and my portersac and sit . . . yes, rest my back . . . so I can think what to do . . . just for a second or two . . .’

Bedwyn Stort sat down, closed his eyes and knew no more.

6

R
EALITY

W
hatever hopes and dreams Katherine and Jack had about their coming baby, they were shattered by the reality of what they faced as the sun began to rise in the first hours of Judith’s life.

Her crying was like no other sound either had ever known. It cut through their ears, their heads, their hearts and their bodies. It was like the threat of a red-hot knife: utterly demanding of immediate attention.

It seemed to be worse for Katherine than for Jack, weak as she still was.

She held Judith, she tried the breast, she petted her, she whispered to her, but still the crying came, wave after wave, never stopping, and an absolute demand for attention and help.
Wah wah wah wah wah wah . . .

‘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

R
ETURN

T
he 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 fetch 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.’