Spring (41 page)

‘It’s a city liable to flooding,’ he told Jack before he went, ‘and what with all that’s afoot there in the coming hours and days, we need to consider carefully how best to find Mistress Katherine and get her away to a place of safety.’

They did not stop until they reached the outskirts of Eynsham, and there picked up the green route presented by the track of the long-abandoned Witney and East Gloucestershire Railway.

There, fortified by an excellent ginger and blackcurrant cordial of Brief’s making, and dried flesh of red perch that was Pike’s speciality, they shared convivial reminiscences of Master Stort, his death now accepted, his memory already a source of pleasure and instruction.

‘Of course, Stort was the master of old transport systems,’ declared Barklice, his companions nodding their heads vigorously, for their late companion’s expertise in that arcane field was well known. ‘It is an incredible fact that he had committed to memory every main and branch line in Englalond, and their associated stations and halts, along with their current timetables – and, of course, that of 1908.’

‘Are you serious?’ asked Jack.

‘Oh indeed it is true,’ explained Brief. ‘Memory was Stort’s curse, as he himself put it. The poor fellow had only to glance at a page of print to know it for all time, however much he might try to dispel it from his mind. Due to an unfortunate accident three years ago, when he got stuck in a forgotten lift shaft in Brum, beneath New Street Station, he was able to tell you the times of any train from one station to another, and all the changes in-between, for the year 1908.’

‘Why that year in particular?’

‘Apparently the only object of any use in that lift shaft, apart from himself, was a Bradshaw Railway Gazette for that same year, which had somehow tumbled down it decades before he did. He memorized each and every page before he ate it.’

‘He ate a timetable?’ said Jack faintly.

‘A very sensible thing,’ said Brief, ‘for it was his only form of sustenance. I believe he was rescued just before reaching the pages for North-West Scotland, an area far beyond the ken of any hydden I know, so that remains a regrettable gap in his knowledge.’

It was soon after they resumed their trek along the old railway track, and things were going easier, when Jack had his first sense that they were being followed. The rain had not eased at all and visibility was poor, the looming presence of Wytham Hill, beyond the Thames to their right, being shrouded in mist.

He told Pike what he suspected but his companion seemed unworried by this possibility.

‘Probably the Fyrd,’ Pike replied, ‘just watching us. They want to be sure we’re well on the way, and we want them to know as much, so they’ll think we are taking you straight into the trap they have already set.’

This seemed reasonable enough, but Jack felt rather exposed at the rear and therefore apprehensive, remembering as he did those cold shadows in the henge at Woolstone, to which he had so nearly succumbed.

He decided therefore to try to spot them if he could. He lingered, he turned suddenly, he speeded up, or hid by a tree, but to no avail. They were certainly nearby, but too well camouflaged and quick for him to see.

Tired of this game, he began speeding his pace again to catch up the others. As he did so, he was astonished to hear someone call out his name from some scrubby bushes on his left-hand side.

‘Jack!’

He peered into them, gripped his stave tightly and approached.

‘Jack, my dear fellow, it’s me, Stort. Over here!’

To Jack’s amazement and delight, it was indeed their lost companion hiding there in shadows, his Harris tweed suit the perfect camouflage.

‘But how did you . . . ?’

Stort ignored the question utterly, stayed where he was and, glancing nervously after the others, whispered, ‘A drink, Jack, that’s what I need.’

Jack handed him his water bottle.

Stort gulped its contents down.

‘There’s plenty of water around,’ remarked Jack, ‘I can’t see why you’re so thirsty.’

‘I have made a close study of the lipper fly,’ said Stort, ‘whose hatchlings invade flood waters in conditions such as these. They are not pleasant parasites to have in one’s gut. Now, got any brot?’

Jack produced some, which Stort stuffed rapidly into his mouth.

‘I am tired and wan,’ he said, offering no explanation as to what he was doing there, or how he’d got there, ‘but excited all the same. Last night I had a miraculous epiphany, and I saw myself as part of the Universe. Today, as you might expect after such a vast experience, I feel a mite anticlimactic.’

‘But they all think you’re dead, Stort. You’d better now go and tell them you’re alive.’

Stort retreated further into the bushes.

‘No, no, they’ll be cross with me, and I cannot bear it when Master Brief is angry with me. As for Mister Pike, I have let him down and his displeasure will become my misery.’

But it was too late.

The culprit had been spotted and the party came to a grinding halt, and then retraced its steps to where he hid.

‘Is this wretched object really Stort?’ growled Brief, his face turning a strange puce colour as of someone struggling with conflicting emotions of relief and irritation so extreme that words failed them.

‘Master Brief,’ cried out his protégé, hoping to mollify his mentor’s mood, ‘I have had a very interesting and enlightening experience which I may say . . .’

‘
Stort, come here at once!
’ thundered Pike, his eyes bulging, his mouth opening and shutting, his emotions so topsy-turvy that he seemed almost unable to move.

Stort emerged fully into the light of day.

‘Yes, indeed, gentlemen,’ he continued with false merriment, ‘it was an experience worth the telling . . . I have discovered what it is to be human.’

But this near-revelation of his accidental discovery about how to use henges to travel between the hydden and human world and back again passed Brief and Pike by, so great was their anger at him. Seeing which, Barklice quickly intervened.

‘Tell them later, Master Stort,’ he advised in a whisper, winking at Jack, and stepping quickly between Stort and the other two, ‘while I make a brew. Jack, give more of the cordial to Pike. It will soothe him.’

Stort could not at all understand the impact his disappearance had caused, and the raging emotions his reappearance invoked.

Ignoring the advice of Barklice, he persisted, ‘My latest discoveries will indeed interest you all and . . .’

‘You’ll discover what it is to be really dead in a moment,’ warned Barklice again. ‘Right now, Master Stort, silence is golden.’

But he did not stop, for nervousness made him garrulous. He talked on, oblivious of the trouble and heartache he had caused them.

Yet, watching it all, Jack could not help noticing that not one of them held on to his anger for long. The most that was said was said by Brief, and that offered with all the conciseness of simple truth: ‘Master Stort, you are one of the most irritating people I have ever met, and yet nothing could have made me happier this day than to have you among us once again!’

While Pike, his anger overwhelmed by his relief, and along with that a realization that something in him would have died had he never seen Stort again, went and stood by himself for a little, his back turned to them all, while he surreptitiously wiped a tear of relief from his eyes.

But it was Jack alone who understood that behind Stort’s words lay an experience as yet unspoken.

‘Master Stort,’ he said, when they got on their way again, ‘something important happened out there, didn’t it? Something that you’re not really mentioning?’

Stort fell silent for a while

‘Something did happen,’ he said eventually, gripping Jack’s arm. ‘I have inadvertently rediscovered the forgotten art and science of how our hydden and human forebears used the henges to travel between each other’s worlds.’

Stort had wonder and excitement in his eyes, and Jack recognized the importance of this discovery, to himself especially, at once.

‘How did you do it?’

‘By going in the right direction with an open mind,’ said Stort. ‘That’s the beginning and the end of it.’

‘Which direction?’

‘North-east one way, and back-to-front the other, that’s half the trick you see! It’s all illusion and reflection, but you know what the secret really is?’

Jack waited.

‘It’s never to try to go back to the past, or strive to get into the future before you’re ready to. The henge is about the here and now, and about the passage from one form of it to another. Is that not most beautiful?’

‘I think it might be,’ said Jack, ‘though I don’t understand it exactly.’

‘Understand?
Understand!?
’ exclaimed Stort. ‘My dear Jack, you don’t have to
understand
to do it. Understanding doesn’t help at all. It merely gets in the way.’

‘But how can I do it if I don’t understand?’

Stort came close. ‘Have you ever been in love with a . . . you know, like . . . a
female
? That sort of thing?’

‘I . . . I’m not sure. I think maybe I have. Well . . .’

Jack thought of Katherine and something unaccountable happened. His heart begun thumping, his mind whirling, his breathing became erratic and his brow felt clammy.

‘In love?’ he said vaguely.

‘Well, have you?’

‘I think maybe . . . maybe I have. I mean I
am
in love, I think.’

‘You think but you don’t know?’

‘Yes. I mean no. No, I mean yes. I am . . . in love.’

‘And do you
understand
how it happened?’

‘No,’ admitted Jack, coming to his senses again but feeling utterly different than he had before as, despite the rain, the mud, the tiredness and the weirdness of the new world he was in, everything seemed suddenly wonderful.

‘I
am
in love,’ he said, ‘and I think she’s in love with me.’

‘Putting that to one side,’ said Stort, who had no comprehension of the drama that had just taken place in Jack’s heart, or mind, body and spirit, ‘my point is that you do not need to understand the ineffable nature of love in order to experience it.’

‘You don’t have to understand it?’ said Jack.

‘Exactly. By the same token you do not need to understand how to use the henge to travel between the worlds. We just do it.’

‘But how?’

‘By stopping
trying
and by keeping an open heart and mind to the possibility.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of what we can become and who we really are,’ Stort said simply.

Soon after this exchange, over which Jack continued to puzzle, they skirted around Worton, ducked under a fence and climbed down into the nearby railway cutting, where they readied themselves for what Barklice described as the most difficult part of the journey.

They retrieved some oily planks rather longer than themselves from a hidey-hole behind a small signal box, and then settled down very near the railway track.

‘It is already dusk and, if my memory serves, this particular train arrives just after half past the hour. Correct, Stort?’

‘Correct. Being a goods train, it is more likely to be on time.’

‘But there’s no station or halt here,’ said Jack,

Barklice tapped his nose and winked.

‘It’s what we in the Hyddenworld with an interest in human transport systems call a Pausing Point. Other trains, unseen from here, must pass by on other lines, so this train pauses until the signal ahead, which will soon go red, goes green again. Upon such opportunities, and many others of different kinds, rests the vast edifice that is the network of hydden travel upon human rail tracks.’

‘What’s with the planks?’ asked Jacks.

‘Easier to show than tell,’ said Pike. ‘Eh, Master Brief?’

‘But remember to be quick about it, for pausing trains are not patient trains and they’ll cut your legs off if they can.’

The train was pretty much on time, the signal turning red before it appeared from the south and heaved to a halt right where they stood.

‘How do we get aboard?’ asked Jack, as they all got up and walked over the track towards the train whose wheels towered above them.

‘We don’t,’ said Barklice. ‘We travel underneath.’

‘Underneath?’ Jack eyed the narrow gap between the bottom of the train and railway track itself. ‘Are you joking?’

‘No, he’s not,’ said Pike, already crawling under the train. ‘Show him how, Barklice.’

Jack followed the verderer beneath the train, crawling with some difficulty and discomfort over the stones, for in addition to his portersac and stave he was now encumbered by the board. The train itself vibrated ominously above their heads.

‘About here,’ said Barklice, stopping. ‘Now, roll on to your back . . . for the train’s creaking means it’s about to move. Put your plank up . . . so . . .’

He put one end over a metal bar by his head and then, raising the other end of the plank, slid it back so that end was resting on yet another rod. There was a narrow gap between the plank and the wagon floor above.