Cloud Walker, All Fools' Day, Far Sunset (3 page)

Kristen fled into her kitchen, sobbing. Gerard raised a great hairy arm to his forehead, as he often did in his workshop, and wiped away sweat that did not exist.

‘Ludd be with you, my son. Go now to Master Hobart. As I am the best joiner in fifty kilometres marching, so you will become the best painter within a thousand kilometres.’

‘Father, I want to—’ Kieron stopped. It had been on the tip of his tongue to say: I do not want to be a painter. I want to learn how to fly.

‘Yes, Kieron?’

‘I – I want to be worthy of you and to make you proud.’

Gerard laughed and slapped his shoulder playfully. ‘Be off with you, changeling. From now on, you will eat better food than we have been able to give you.’

‘I doubt that it will taste as good.’ There was more he wanted to say. Much more. But the words stuck in his throat. Kieron went out of the cottage and began to walk along the track that led down to Arundel. He did not look back, but he knew that Gerard was standing at the door watching him. He did not look back because there was a disturbing impulse to run to his father and tell him what he really wanted to do.

It was a fine October morning. The sky was blue; but a thick carpet of mist lay over the low land stretching away to the sea. Arundel lay beneath the mist; but the castle, its grey stone wet with dew and shining in the morning light, sat on the hillside clear above the mist. A faerie castle, bright, mysterious, full of unseen power.

There was a saying: those who live in the shadow of the castle shall prosper or burn. Master Hobart had a house under the very battlements. He had prospered. Kieron hoped that he, too, would prosper. Only a fool would risk burning. Only a fool would want to build a flying machine.

High in the sky a buzzard circled gracefully. Kieron put down his bag and watched it. Such effortless movements, such freedom. He envied the bird. He envied its freedom, its effortless mastery of the air.

‘Some day, buzzard,’ said Kieron, ‘I shall be up there with you. I shall be higher. I shall look down on you. You will know that a man has invaded your world. You will know that men have reconquered the sky.’

Still, this was no time to make speeches that no one would hear, and particularly speeches that no one should hear. Master Hobart, doubtless, would be waiting and impatient. Kieron bent down to pick up his bag.

He saw a dandelion, a dandelion clock. A stem with a head full of seeds. He plucked the stem, lifted the head and blew. Seeds drifted away in the still, morning air. Seeds supported by the gossamer threads that resisted their fall to earth.

Kieron watched, fascinated. A few of the seeds, caught by an undetectable current of warm air, rose high and were lost against the morning sunlight. Even dandelion seeds could dance in the air. It was humiliating that man should be earthbound.

Kieron remembered that, on this day of days, Hobart would be waiting to welcome him with some ceremony.

He sighed, picked up the deerhide bag and marched resolutely towards Arundel. Ahead of him there would be months and years wherein he would have to master all the secrets of Hobart’s craft. But when he was a man, when the apprenticeship had been served with honour, that would be the time to learn to fly.

Meanwhile, there was always the time to dream.

Winter came, turning the land bleak, capping the downs with freezing mist, weaving a delicate tracery of frost over trees, grass, hedgerows and the walls of houses, bringing ice patches on the placid Arun river, making the air sharp as an English apple wine.

Hobart coughed much and painted little in the winter. The rawness ate into his bones, brought pains to his chest. He spent much time sitting by a log fire with a shawl or sheepskin round his shoulders, brooding upon projects that he would undertake in the spring. There was the mural for the great hall to consider; and Seigneur Fitzalan had commissioned a symbolic work, depicting the fall of the First Men, to the greater glory of Ludd, and for the Church of the Sacred Hammer.

Widow Thatcher, who cleaned house for Master Hobart and cooked for him, made many nourishing stews of rabbit or pheasant or lamb or venison with parsnips, mushrooms, carrots, potatoes, and the good black pepper for which Seigneur Fitzalan paid exorbitant sums to the skippers of windjammers that sailed as far as the Spice Islands.

Master Hobart would take but a few spoonfuls of the lovingly made stews. Then he would cough somewhat and draw shivering to the fire. Kieron, waiting properly until his master had finished eating, would gorge himself until his belly swelled and he felt the need to walk off his excess of eating in the frosty downs.

Though Hobart himself was idle during the dark months, he did not allow his young apprentice to remain idle. He instructed Kieron in the art of making fine charcoal sticks from straight twigs of willow, in the mysteries of fabric printing, in the newly fashionable art of collage, and in the ancient disciplines of colour binding and the preparation of a true canvas. He was even prepared to expend precious whale oil in the lamps so that on a dull afternoon Kieron would have enough light to sketch chairs, tables, bowls of fruit, hanging pheasants, and even the protesting Widow Thatcher.

Master Hobart was a white-haired old man, nearing his three score. The pains in his chest warned him that the summers left to him would not reach double figures. But he was stubbornly determined to live at least the eight years Kieron needed to complete his apprenticeship. Ludd permitting, he would see the boy established before he was lowered into the flinty earth of Sussex.

He permitted himself a small heresy – only a very small one, which surely Ludd would excuse. He permitted himself the secret delusion that Kieron was his natural son. Hobart had never lain with a woman. His art had been enough. But now he felt the need of a son; and Kieron, a boy with bright eyes and a quick mind, was all that a man could desire.

So Kieron escaped many of the usual rigours of apprenticeship. He was well fed, he had much freedom; and Hobart slipped many a silver penny into his purse.

Kieron understood the relationship very clearly. He loved the old man and did not object to the presumptions of a second father. Besides, Hobart was a great source of knowledge, and knowledge was what Kieron desired above everything.

In the evenings, before Hobart retired to an early bed, he and Kieron would sit, staring into the log fire, discerning images and fantasies, talking of many things. Hobart drank somewhat – to alleviate the pains and the coughing – of usquebaugh, or akvavit, or eau de vie, depending on which brigantines had recently traded with the seigneurie. In his cups at night, he was prepared to discuss that which he would shun sober in the morning. He was prepared to talk about the First Men and the Second Men. He was even prepared to talk about machines.

‘Master Hobart, the dominie says that the First Men choked on their own cleverness. What does he mean by that?’

‘Pah!’ Hobart sipped his usquebaugh and felt the warmth tingle pleasantly through his limbs. ‘Dominie Scrivener should teach you more of letters and the mysteries of nature and the casting of numbers than of the First Men.’

‘Yesterday, when I was making a picture of this house as it stands below the castle, and represented the roughness of the flint walls, you said I was clever. Is cleverness a bad thing? Shall I, too, choke on it?’

‘Peace, boy. Let me think. It seems I must not only instruct you in matters of art, but in matters of the world, and in proper thinking.’ More usquebaugh. More warmth. More coughing. ‘What the dominie says is true. The First Men did choke on their own cleverness. They made the air of their cities unfit to breathe, they made the waters of their rivers and lakes unfit to drink, they covered good farming land with stone and metal causeways, at times they even made the sea turn black. All this they did with the machines they worshipped insanely. And, as if that were not enough, they devised terrible machines whose sole purpose was to destroy people by the hundred, by the thousand, even by the ten thousand. Missiles, they were called: machines that leapt through the sky with their cargoes of death. Ay, the dominie was right. They choked on their own cleverness … But your cleverness, Kieron is something different. You are clever in an honest art, not in the love of mechanisms that destroy the hand that creates them.’

‘Must all machines be bad?’ asked Kieron.

‘Yes, Kieron, all machines are evil. The Divine Boy understood that a thousand years ago, when machines first began to corrupt this fair land. That is why he attacked them with his hammer. But the people would not listen; and so he was taken and crucified.’

There was silence for a while; silence punctuated by the crackling of logs on the hearth, and by Master Hobart noisily sipping his usquebaugh.

At length, Kieron grew bold. ‘It is said that Seigneur Fitzalan has a clock in the castle. A clock that goes tick-tock and tells the hours, minutes and very seconds of the day. A clock is a machine, isn’t it, Master Hobart? Is a clock evil?’

The usquebaugh made Master Hobart splutter somewhat. It was a while before he could make his reply. ‘I see that neither the dominie nor the neddy have shed as much light on this matter as they ought. It is true, Kieron, that a clock is a machine; but for the great ones of our world, who have many matters to attend to and little enough time to deal with their affairs, a clock is a
necessary
machine. Holy Church makes much distinction between necessary machines, which are proper, and unnecessary machines which are improper. So Seigneur Fitzalan’s clock, which I have seen many times and which is a most marvellous thing – executed, so they say, by the best horologist in Paris – is a proper machine. There is no record that the Divine Boy ever attacked clocks.’

Kieron noted how much usquebaugh had been taken, and asked the question he would not have dared to ask in the light of a sober morning.

‘Master Hobart, did the Divine Boy ever attack flying machines?’

‘Flying machines?’ Master Hobart was puzzled. ‘There are no flying machines.’

‘No, sir. But once there were.’ Kieron was sweating. The fire, certainly, was warm; but his backside was cold. Nevertheless, Kieron was sweating. ‘You, yourself, have told me of the missiles; and I have heard that once there were winged machines that transported people through the air, across the seas, from land to land, at great speed. That is why I ask if the Divine Boy ever attacked flying machines.’

‘Ludd save us all!’ Master Hobart scratched his head. ‘Flying machines! My history serves me ill. But, Kieron, boy, I think they came long after Ned Ludd. I think they came when the First Men had utterly abandoned the ways of righteousness. I think they came but a hundred years, perhaps two hundred years, before the great destruction.’

Kieron gazed at the level of usquebaugh in the flask of green glass, and decided to press his luck. ‘They say that even the Second Men had flying machines. Surely, if such machines were used not to destroy people but to take them wherever they wished to go, they could not be evil?’

Master Hobart rolled his eyes, tried to focus, took another drink and again failed to focus. He scratched his head. ‘They were evil, Kieron. What is to prevent men walking or riding across the land? What is to prevent them from sailing across the oceans? Men do not need to take to the air.
Quod erat demonstrandum
. Therefore machines which lift men into the sky are evil.’

Kieron took a deep breath. ‘Some day, I shall construct a flying machine. It will not be used for evil purposes, only for good.’

Master Hobart stood up, swayed a little, gazed down at his apprentice hazily. ‘You will paint, Kieron. You will paint well. Ludd protect you from fantastic dreams. Help me to my chamber.’

At fifteen Kieron was a boy worth looking at. Master Hobart’s spoiling and Widow Thatcher’s prodigious cooking had given him height and broad shoulders and self-confidence. He looked more like a young farmer or hunter than a painter’s apprentice. At Midsummer’s Night Fair, he could run, jump, wrestle or hurl the javelin with the best of the young men in the seigneurie; though Master Hobart winced greatly and comforted himself with preach spirit when he saw Kieron leap seven metres along the sand pit and come down like a rolling ball, or when the boy’s hand was held in a wrestler’s lock and the joints could be heard to crack noisily under pressure. He was not afraid for Kieron’s neck, only for his fingers. What kind of an artist would the boy become with broken fingers?

But Kieron was a golden boy and seemed to bear a charmed life. More than ever, Master Hobart thought of him as a blood son. Indeed, in a fit of stupidity, he had even gone to see Gerard the joiner and his wife Kristen, offering them one thousand schilling if they would surrender their blood claim for all time.

Gerard grew red in the face, and spoke more loudly and less courteously than he ought to one who had entry to the castle and the ear of the seigneur. Kristen, as was the way with women, wept somewhat, shrieked somewhat and uttered strange accusations for which Gerard promptly commanded her to apologise. Hobart was greatly embarrassed by the whole venture. He found himself apologising also, profusely and at some length. In the end, he managed to enjoin Gerard and Kristen good, honest people for whom he professed the greatest esteem et cetera – to say nothing of the matter to Kieron.

The next day, he sent Gerard a dagger of Spanish steel, and Kristen ten metres of Irish linen. He also sent them an imaginative picture of Ned Ludd raising his immortal hammer against the weaving machines. It was the first truly satisfactory composition in oils that Kieron had executed. It was signed Kieron app Hobart; and it was one of the most precious things that Hobart possessed.

Kieron’s skill in art was now all that Hobart could desire in a boy of his age. His strength still lay in line – the master was amazed at the boldness and confidence of his strokes – but he had begun to develop the true, authentic feeling for colour and texture that is the hallmark of a great painter. Also, his mastery of the mechanics of his art was phenomenal. He could mix pigment and oil to
achieve a true and beautiful primary. Also, without any help from Hobart, he had devised two methods of obtaining a purer flax seed oil. The first was elegantly simple: it consisted only of waiting. The oil was stored in jars until its impurities settled in a layer at the bottom. Then, not content with the purity achieved in this manner, Kieron would add caustic soda, which settled out any suspended matter still remaining. The result was a completely pure flax seed oil, clear, warm, golden. Perfect for the use of an artist.