The Giants' Dance (24 page)

Will looked away from the wild cheering as they passed under the jutting upper floors of neat lime-washed merchants' houses. Here were many prosperous dwellings that sported carved timbers and faced the streets leading into the market square. Will said, ‘Anyone would think we'd just saved them from a great disaster.'

‘My guess is that Richard has told them a far-fetched tale. What use is truth to a lord when a war is in the offing?'

Now they rounded a corner and Will's eyes were drawn to the spire of the Sightless Ones with its great iron vane and mysterious letters – A, A, E, F – and the device of the white heart, ghostly in the night. He caught again the curiously scented foulness which he had smelled at Verlamion. And he heard the voices of forlorn men hidden behind their walls of stone and tall windows of black glass. They were adding their discord to the din. As Will passed through the cloth market he noted the morbid stone monument that stood outside the chapter house. As always, it was decked
with red-shaded candles, and Will's flesh crept to see the hooded Fellow who watched blindly from his niche, standing motionless in the shadows beyond.

In the excitement of their entry into Ludford, Will had forgotten about the chapter house, and the freedom Duke Richard gave to the Sightless Ones to come and go, not only in the town, but also inside his castle. Will wondered if the Fellows had yet heard the rumours about the ‘wondrous stone', and the wizards young and old who had helped bring the earl victory.

Ahead, two familiar white castle towers soared, their stone rippling in the glare of the torches. Will felt his heart beating faster. His skin tingled, and an unusual sensation gripped him. He pushed it away, denying it as no more than his own tiredness and the enthusiasm of their reception. Outside the castle, the procession split into two parts. The bulk of the army peeled away, marching out of the town again by the Durnhelm Gate. They were going down towards the river where a part-prepared camp waited. But the earl and his party continued on up, into the open mouth of the castle.

Will and Gwydion went with them, past the four lions that he remembered. When last he had seen them they had lain slothfully in their cages; now they were roused, pacing back and forth and making growling sounds deep enough to send a tremor through a man's ribs. The animals had been made anxious, and not just because of the activity. He felt the need to open his mind and try to make some sense of the tangle of earth streams that ran under the cobbles of the market square, but he did not dare to do it.

He said suddenly, ‘What are we going to do about the Blow Stone? Have you been able to catch sight of it?'

The wizard smiled. ‘I have. And a most remarkable change has come over it.'

‘What change?'

‘It has continued to shrink. It is now no more than half its original size. And it has taken upon its surface a pattern. It appears, so to say,
carved.
'

‘You mean with the verse?' Will said, alarmed. ‘In plain words?'

‘Nothing so straightforward as that. In the words of the archer who told me, “It is impressed by the very mark of the Lord of Ebor's signet.”'

Will's eyes opened wide, and he marvelled. ‘Do you mean the device on Duke Richard's ring? The one he wears all the time on the little finger of his left hand?'

‘You may have seen its impress on the letters he sends. It shows a four-leaf clover, and below three pike flowers on long stems.'

Will felt an eerie chill pass through him. ‘What do you think that means?'

‘I only repeat what I have been told. As to its meaning, that I cannot yet speak about. Ah, but look who is here to greet us!'

Will followed Gwydion's staff and saw a shambling figure with a mass of unruly hair and a beard all striped like a badger.

‘Wortmaster Gort!'

Gwydion seized his friend by his shoulders and hugged him. Words of the true tongue passed between them and Gort offered a respectful gesture, not of the kind offered by a servant to a lord, but rather like one that might pass between brothers.

‘Master Gwydion! Tsk! tsk!' Gort said, beaming and laughing. ‘Well met! And look who walks by your side! Willand! Hey-ho, my dear friend! Welcome! Welcome to poor old Ludford again!'

What little could be seen of Gort's face among his heap of unkempt hair was red cheeks and smiles. He was the Duke of Ebor's herbalist and healer and gardener and much
more besides. He had not changed a whit since Will had last clapped eyes on him. He still wore his robe of oaken green and the same shapeless grey hat was perched on the top of his head. Will moved forward to embrace him. ‘It's good to see you, Wortmaster!'

‘Not scared of castle gateways any more, I see!' he said suddenly, tugging on Will's arm.

Will only realized now that he was standing under Ludford Castle's great suspended portcullis. He looked up and a stab of fear passed through his heart. The last time he had been at Ludford he had been unable to shake off the vision of himself being impaled by the great black spikes that hung so precariously. There was a yell and the hairs on his neck stood up stiff as bristles.

‘Hoy! Look out there!'

As he stepped aside a large ox-cart rumbled through the gate. But the beasts that hauled it were struggling, hooves slipping and sliding on the muddied granite of the threshold. The panicked driver shouted for Will to get out of the way, then something snapped on the cart and it lurched sideways.

Will flattened himself against the stone of the guardhouse wall just as the cart tipped. One of the great iron-shod wheels leaned towards him and threatened to give. He pressed his nose flat to the wall and sank down as the rim gouged a crescent-shaped groove in the guardhouse arch beside his head.

‘Get out of the road!' the red-faced driver shouted. ‘You want to get yourself killed?'

Bare inches further and the wheel would have caught his head and burst it against the stone like a ripe berry.

‘Are you hurt?' Gwydion asked, lifting him up.

‘It missed me.' Will blinked at the cart, unsure if it was the one that carried the spent Blow Stone. He wondered suddenly if the accident, or perhaps his escape from injury, had been the stone's doing.

‘My flapping mouth! Speaking too soon!' Gort fussed and brushed Will down with his hand, tearing a cloak that was already burned into holes. ‘Oh, dear!'

‘Never mind!' Gwydion thrust out a warning finger. ‘Keep your eyes and ears open, Willand And all your wits about you! Remember where you are come to.'

He nodded tightly, cold inside. The vision of the portcullis had been more than just an idle fancy. It was a long-standing fear connected with the prophecy that said ‘one would be made two'. Will had often thought that it must mean that one day he would be cut in two. And even Gwydion had said that it was likely to be a premonition that foretold his death. He looked back at the deadly portal and reproved himself for having put it out of his mind. At the same time he acknowledged that his joy at seeing Gort again might just have come at a most crucial moment.

Once they had moved away from the gatehouse, the cold feelings went away. He hugged the Wortmaster once more. ‘Oh, Gort, it's very good to see you again!'

‘And you, my lad! But look at you, you're a lad no longer!'

‘Married now, and with a fine daughter.'

‘You don't say!'

‘I do say. And proudly too. Bethe, we named her.'

‘Good choice! Oh, for a certainty!'

‘She's halfway through her second year and already looking as beautiful as her mother.'

‘Ah, young Willow! Now there's a willing spirit and as handsome a girl as ever I saw. Where is she?' He craned his neck, looking back past the lines of the earl's baggage carts.

‘She isn't with us,' Will said, his spirits guttering. ‘Gort, didn't you hear about the battle?'

‘Ah. That. A little bird told me. And after that Earl Sarum's men came here about noon today, all with the same news. Come along and you can tell me what I've missed. Are you hungry?'

‘Are we hungry?' Will repeated, looking at Gwydion.

The wizard inclined his head. ‘As weevils.'

‘But who is this?' Gort asked, pointing at the cage that carried Lord Dudlea as it swayed and creaked in through the gate.

‘That is John Sefton, called Lord Dudlea,' Gwydion said. ‘He was caught upon the Heath commanding the enemy after Lord Ordlea was slain.'

‘Oh, I would not wish to be in his shoes!' Gort said.

‘He has none,' said Will bleakly. ‘All but his shirt has been stolen. What do you think they'll do with him?

‘It's no supper and a hard bed tonight, I'll be bound,' Gort said. But Will knew the Wortmaster's levity covered a serious possibility.

‘Will they execute him?'

Gwydion steered Will away. ‘Duke Richard would not slay a fellow noble in cold blood, for that would set a dangerous precedent.'

‘But will they not torture him to learn what he knows?'

‘Unnecessary. The nobles of this Realm are not such fools that they would not willingly shout out a hundred secrets at the sight of a hot iron. The problem is not too few words, but too many. Already, in his solitary misery, Lord Dudlea has been squirming like a maggot. He will speak eloquently enough in order to gain his release.'

‘What has he said so far?' Will asked.

‘He has spoken with Earl Sarum about a certain secret weapon that the queen now possesses.'

Will's eyes widened. ‘Secret weapon?'

‘So he calls it.'

‘He's just trying to save his neck!'

‘Maybe,' Gwydion said. ‘Though there is a safe haven which I shall show Friend Dudlea in time should negotiations fail.'

‘What safe haven?'

‘I have learned there is a sorrow underlying Lord Sarum's triumph. A soldier told me that while the battle was being fought upon Blow Heath a second army raised by the queen lay not three leagues distant. It seems that two of Sarum's sons, Thomas and John, were captured while pursuing a band of the enemy in the rout. They have been borne off to await the queen's pleasure at the city of Caster in the north. Dudlea does not yet know this, nor will he learn it from me until he has coughed up enough morsels to satisfy his captors. Yet he will eventually have Sarum's voice to plead for his release even if things should go badly for him with Friend Richard.'

Will smiled, seeing how skilfully the wizard planned to manage things, but then Gort drew them both aside and steered them through the commotion of the outer ward, before showing them across the inner moat. They went by the inner gatehouse and threaded their way among the cluster of buildings that crowded the inner ward. Lodgings had long been prepared for them. Servants met them and took their burned and ragged cloaks away to have their scorches and holes patched.

When they were settled in Gort's parlour bread and stew were brought, and afterwards a pot of Gort's medlar cheese appeared and a platter of sweetcakes to spread it on.

‘Hunger is surely the best relish!' Will told him, munching with a full mouth.

‘“An empty belly maketh even hard beans taste sweet!” as the rede tells it,' Gort agreed.

The Wortmaster's rooms were intricately decorated, the walls pained with vines and meadow plants of many kinds. It was work with great depths to be discovered in it, Will decided, work painstakingly done by a man who knew about his materials and the effects that a lifetime of honest practice could achieve. But there was magic there also. In daytime, walls and ceiling showed blue sky and clouds,
while at night there were stars in a black sky. And the whimsical figures that peeped from the twists and turns of the vines gambolled and grinned. In the firelight they danced and made rude faces at one another, and one put his tongue out at Will and winked at him.

Gort sang a tuneless verse as his nose savoured the odd, musty aroma of the medlar cheese:

‘Just as the pedlar,

Who taketh the stripe,

The medlar turns rotten,

Before he turns ripe!'

‘And do you have an equally bad verse about the quince?' Gwydion asked. He turned to Will: ‘Gort makes the best jelly of quince that I have ever tasted, but his poetry has always been woeful.'

‘Well, I like it!' Will said, springing to the Wortmaster's defence.

Gort swept off his hat and bowed low at the compliment. ‘Ha ha! Well said, my friend!'

Gwydion grunted. ‘Alas! Our young friend has little discrimination when it comes to the poesy!'

‘I know what I like, Gwydion! And that's good enough.'

Gort waved his hands. ‘Well, I have plenty of silly songs, but no quince jelly. Sorry to disappoint the Phantarch, but all my sealed jars remain at Foderingham.'

They made do with a bowl of hazelnuts and a jug of cider, sitting comfortably at Gort's untidy elmwood table. Then they moved closer round the fireplace. The mood changed as Gwydion let Will tell their host what had taken place upon Blow Heath.

‘Oh, that's not good,' Gort said, frowning back at them when Will had done. ‘No, no, not good at all. Oh, my. What does it all mean?'

‘It means there's danger coming this way.'

‘Oh…danger! That's not nice.'

‘And more fighting if we don't do something.'

‘Armies trampling down the land…oh, my!'

Gwydion raised an eyebrow significantly. ‘You see, Wortmaster, Willand here says there is a battlestone buried here at Ludford.'

‘A battlestone? Here? Oh. Are you sure?'

Will took a deep breath. ‘I've always known it. Don't you remember the last time I was here? It nearly drove my wits clear out of my skull. Back then, I didn't know what I was up against. The feelings were so strong I began to think that Duke Richard had fetched the Dragon Stone here out of some kind of lordly mischief. I wanted to kill him, and then to die myself. I was in a mess, until Gwydion came and flushed the foolishness out of me.'