Spring

  Two hundred yards ahead of them was another cliff-face of a brick wall containing an arched steel gate. It was chained up.

  Cutting across to one side, also high above, was a segment of a road bridge where street lights were already on, their distant light reflected in the rails by which she stood. In the other direction, the one the train had taken, a footbridge crossed between the walls of the deep cutting they were in. It was busy with humans going back and forth, many holding umbrellas. There was the sound of trains, the drumming of pedestrians’ feet, and, more distantly, an intermingling of the sound of a busy city. Close-to, the continuous rain poured down about them until they went to stand by one of the walls to gain shelter. From underfoot came the sound of drains filling with rushing water.

  ‘Where are we?’ Katherine asked.

  Feld pointed at the gate and its arch.

  ‘That’s the East Gate into Brum.’

  One of the Fyrd began pushing her towards it.

  Her sense of isolation and danger increased and a feeling of panic overtook her.

  She realized that what they were approaching was one of the basal brick arches rising from the track level to support offices, warehouses and somewhere a roadway along which she could hear but not see the traffic moving. She looked back at the people on the footbridge and felt a nearly overpowering urge to run in their direction, even though they were many tens of feet above her head.

  Feld read her mind.

  He said, ‘They can’t see you and they can’t hear you, because they have lost the habit of looking. We learned that many decades ago. Humans are almost blind to everything but that which directly concerns them.’

  Katherine tried to work out how far away the footbridge was.

  Streik moved forward to stop her but Feld shook his head.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Let her try! The sooner she realizes there’s no escape the better.’

  She thought he was bluffing and ran from them, shouting and waving her arms to attract the attention of the people on the bridge above.

  ‘Down here! I’m here. Here! I’m Katherine Shore! Can’t you see me! Down here!’

  No one above looked down her way, no one even paused in their hurry to get wherever they were going. She continued until she was hoarse and weak with shouting and something in her began to give up.

  Feld watched her with sympathy, the others with impatience. Streik went over, took her arm and led her back to them. She did not resist.

  ‘Trust me,’ said Feld, ‘they can’t hear you and they can’t see you, and even if they began to do so they would not believe their own senses. They would dismiss you as a creature of the night, or a shadow, or some inanimate object. Humans see only what they want to see, expect to see or believe they can see. To all the rest they are blind. So please stop making a fool of yourself and come with us.’

  The gate itself was massive, a good example of late-nineteenth-century ironwork. But it was poorly maintained, its rust having broken through the old paintwork and one of the hinges having loosened sufficiently for that part of the gate to tilt forward dangerously.

  A notice was attached to it which read NO ENTRY TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL. Danger of Deep Water.

  A second sign, in yellow on black, said HIGH VOLTAGE with a lightning-bolt symbol.

  Two shadowy forms peered through the bars from the other side of the gate. They pointed at Katherine, whispered to each other doubtfully, but at Feld’s command opened the gate sufficiently for the party to slip through, one by one.

  ‘Welcome to Brum, brothers, welcome sister,’ they said, their mouths opening into smiles of yellowed, rotting teeth and breath that stank of sewers. ‘Yer all most welc’m.’

  52

  BY THE DEVIL’S QUOITS

  At that same hour of that same day Master Bedwyn Stort, Assistant-in-Ordinary to Brief, Master Scrivener of Brum, was holding forth to an audience of one on the subject of the Devil’s Quoits, a half-forgotten henge in Oxfordshire.

  ‘The records show they tried to destroy this place,’ he said with all the excitement of an academic field researcher passionate about his work, ‘but fortunately, as we can clearly see, they did not quite succeed.’

  ‘Who did?’ asked Barklice, his companion and audience of the moment.

  ‘Who did what?’ asked Stort, his mind rather ahead of his words.

  ‘Who did not succeed? Who tried to destroy the Quoits?’

  They made a strikingly contrasting pair.

  Barklice had bow legs and was thin, his lined and weather-beaten face carrying a restless, watchful look as he glanced about the ruined landscape of what had once been the finest and most powerful henge in all Englalond.

  Stort was much taller and thinner than Barklice. That afternoon he looked even odder than usual. Having decided that the air was too sultry for his usual trews he had discarded them in favour of shorts which he had made to his own eccentric design.

  They were self-made, of Harris tweed, his favourite fabric, and had so many pockets and pouches, hooks and loops, buttons and zips, all utilitarian for the many items he liked to carry about his person – from bin-bags to brot, from string to balloons – that he looked like a plucked chicken moving home.

  The Quoits now consisted of a single standing stone, placed centrally, and a couple more at some distance but thrown on their side. These occupied what remained of a barely visible double-ring henge, dug over, cut in half, partially flooded by nearby gravel working. It looked of no use to anybody. But Stort was not so sure.

  ‘The Romans were the first to desecrate this site,’ he explained, ‘then the Anglo-Saxons and then various different invaders and migrants down the centuries until in modern times they dug through half of it for gravel and caused this nearby lake to flood a good part of it.’

  Barklice studied this ‘evidence’ doubtfully.

  ‘Master Stort, it’s almost impossible to see any sign of a henge at all except for this great stone we’re standing by!’

  Stort reached a hand up and touched the stone with affection. He got nowhere near halfway to the top. Even a full-grown human male would have been dwarfed by it.

  ‘To give ’em such a strange name as the Devil’s Quoits,’ mused Barklice, ‘seems an odd thing to do.’

  ‘Ah! I’m glad you asked . . .’

  ‘I didn’t actually ask, Master Stort, I merely observed and I rather think we have better things to do than . . .’

  But it was too late. Stort was off again.

  ‘. . . because quoits are flat round metal rings used in a game in which they’re thrown onto spikes to score points, which of course you know.’

  ‘Errumm,’ murmured Barklice ambiguously.

  ‘Now according to the records I’ve seen in the Brum archives, there were two henges, one inside the other, which were the “quoits”. There were standing stones too, which were the spikes over which the Devil was meant to throw the quoits, but only one stone remains in place as you can see.’

  Barklice nodded vaguely.

  ‘Of course, early Christians liked to suggest that anything in the landscape they didn’t understand was the Devil’s work, just to warn folk away from their old beliefs and practices, something which started around great Beornamund’s time. But I believe that, however much a site may be destroyed, it still retains something of its original powers.’

  ‘I see,’ said Barklice, now marginally more interested. ‘Such as?’

  ‘Telling the time. Communal gatherings. Executing criminals and in former times, before the art was lost, for humans and hydden to travel between each other’s worlds.’

  Barklice looked yet more interested in that, but after a moment of looking around again was forced to observe, ‘So they say, but not much chance of that here, I think. In any case, Stort, I’m happy with being hydden. What would I do if I suddenly grew to human size? For a start all my clothes would be ripped apart by my sudden growth!’

  Barklice thought this funny b
ut Stort did not.

  ‘I’m working on it,’ said Stort. ‘If people could travel twixtandbetween once they can do it again!’

  He fell silent and Barklice decided it was best to do the same, though not before adding, with a twinkle in his eyes, ‘Master Stort, you’re a veritable walking encyclopedia, I’m surprised Master Brief does not do away with all those dusty tomes and just put you on a shelf, ready to be consulted whenever needed. But to practicalities now. This is where Master Brief wanted us all to meet, and here we are! All we have to do is sit down and wait.’

  ‘Are you sure they’ll find all the markers you left behind for them?’

  Barklice had spent a good deal of time carefully leaving markers which he hoped would lead Brief and his party more easily to this place, it being otherwise hard to find.

  ‘Messrs Pike and Brief know perfectly well how to read my signs,’ replied Barklice, ‘so I shall make us a brew while we wait!’

  Barklice generally made a brew to mark good moments and ill, to settle a troubled mind or to renew his purpose and intent. This particular brew would be in aid of all of those.

  Later, an hour or two before dusk, Stort having poked about and made what sense he could of the jumbled site, they sat together talking about matters of the heart, as bachelors will who have learned to like each other and now unexpectedly find space to air those emotional aches and pains experienced by such as they, two shy solitaries with little experience of the mysteries of love and seemingly small chance of gaining any.

  Mister Barklice was now in his early forties, a verderer of very great renown, and probably the greatest hyddener then living. In fact he looked a good deal older than his years, so wind-hardened was his face, so rangy his hard-used body. He had no wyfkin, no family at all, mainly because from boyhood he had been constantly on the move in and about Brum, and latterly far beyond it, dealing with matters, often legal and disputatious, to do with woodland and forest lands controlled by that hydden city.

  Though his superiors were Fyrd who had charge of all matters of city governance, they had the good sense to leave such a difficult job to a hydden who had spent his entire life learning it.

  Barklice, like Brief, was one of the few honest hydden still working as part of the administration of Brum, which was now under the corrupt governance of the foul Festoon, obese appointee of the Fyrd whose headquarters in Englalond were in London – or, as it was generally known, the City. Festoon only tolerated the free speech and bold independence of both Barklice and Brief because they were by far the most competent in their different fields.

  In his capacity of verderer, Barklice had travelled over more ground between Brum and the City than any other living hydden. He enjoyed free passage wherever he went and carried with him a twin-headed Verderer’s Staff to prove it.

  Lacking a partner or soulmate, he preferred to travel alone unless a particular assignment required the security of force of arms, in which case Pike was his preferred companion. Failing him, one of Pike’s friends would do. Of these there were many, mostly unsavoury, but dependable to death for any they escorted.

  But a lone traveller Barklice generally preferred to be, even when venturing to the more dangerous territories lying to the far west of Brum, which humans apparently called Wales. It was rightly said that no one excelled in the art of hyddening more than he did. If he chose, so the story went, he could travel anywhere in the land without being seen or detected by either hydden or Fyrd, and do it blindfold into the bargain.

  So naturally hydden and Fyrd alike treated Barklice with respect and he could expect a welcome, though sometimes a guarded one, at any humble home in the land. But he never abused this considerable perk, nor often availed himself of it at all, preferring, like any traditional travelling hydden, to camp out under the stars and enjoy nature’s considerable bounty which, to those who know where to look, is available in abundance at any time of year.

  But so it was that sometimes, alone for too long and sleeping under the stars, the verderer felt his natural solitariness a painful thing, and allowed himself a regret or two. Solitude was good, but it could be lonesome and there were occasions, especially around the four great festivals of the year, when he would have liked to share his experiences with another.

  So it was, in that early evening, that Barklice freely admitted to his youthful friend that if he knew a way to find a wyfkin who might become a partner in his travels and a soulmate for his musings, then he would most certainly act upon it.

  ‘Ah!’ cried Stort sadly, having obviously had similar thoughts, ‘It’s indeed a difficult thing to find a mate!’

  ‘You have found that so yourself?’ Barklice wondered, looking at the gawky, red-haired hydden who, many said, had the touch of genius about him.

  ‘Myself?’ Stort replied, pondering this matter of the heart as if for the first time. ‘I am not . . . I do not think . . . in fact I think it is impossible to . . . to . . . to . . .’

  ‘Love?’ prompted Barklice quietly, thinking that uttering this challenging word aloud might help marshal Stort’s unusually jumbled thoughts on the subject.

  Stort nodded vigorously to indicate he understood the thrust of Barklice’s question.

  Then the young scrivener spoke words so evidently straight from his honest but innocent heart that Barklice’s hand stopped still in mid-air, the new brew momentarily untasted.

  ‘Sometimes, Mister Barklice, I have felt so alone, so isolated on this great and wonderful Earth that cares for us, that I have felt it as a pain as sharp as gut-ache, or a stab wound, or the sting of a wasp or the bite of a feral dog. Horrible. Terrible. Painful. When I have imagined a life of never finding love, it seems to me a prospect that is worse than perpetual torture. We were not made to be alone.

  ‘But . . . I have instead been given gifts and ways of thought and habits that I fear might mean I will never, can never, find love. For I am told that those of a female kind require constancy, and thus abhor the inconstant wanderings of such a restless mind as I possess.’

  ‘I think by constancy,’ suggested Barklice, ‘they are referring to the heart, not the mind. They do not like to think a male hydden’s heart is like a butterfly taking nectar from each beautiful flower that comes along.’

  ‘That is a very beautiful turn of phrase!’

  ‘It is not my own. I read it somewhere and merely remember it,’ admitted the verderer.

  ‘Well, if that be true, then it’s good news indeed, for the only bit of me that’s inconstant are my thoughts and the sudden impulses they drive me to. I am almost ashamed to admit that ideas are as exciting to me as people, and the practical pursuit of scientific curiosity more thrilling and real than the impractical imponderables of love. How then could I promise my heart and soul to another while knowing that truth about myself? Even if someone would accept the hand of a hydden as . . . as . . .’

  Here he waved his strange thin hands all about himself, as if trying to indicate the most loathsome and unattractive of beings, and he even stood up and turned about as if making a parade of himself for Barklice’s benefit, to confirm his lack of appeal in general and also in particular. Then Stort abruptly sat down again.

  ‘Even if someone could love a form so odd and elongated as myself, with knobbly knees and thin chest and long fingers and a nose, as I was told when I was young, only fit for sticking a bun-brot on . . .’

  ‘That was cruel,’ cried Barklice, looking at Stort’s long nose, ‘even if, in a manner of speaking, it is true!’

  ‘Well, that’s as may be, but even if someone could love me in spite of what I am, I fear that I could not return their love.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ Barklice rejoined at once, rather alarmed at the direction their conversation was taking them and fearing that Stort had inclinations of an unusual, perhaps unwholesome, kind.

  ‘Because I would know they had made some kind of mistake. That they had misread what they saw and, moments after my undying acceptance of their love, t
hey would regret what they had done. Which would be painful for them and doubly painful for me.’

  ‘And if you met someone who you . . .’

  ‘Who I loved?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Barklice, now more uncomfortable with the idea than Stort, it seemed. ‘Someone you . . . um . . . loved. If that happened, what would you do?’

  ‘I don’t know. I would think about it certainly.’

  ‘Humph!’ said Barklice. ‘It’s not much good just thinking about love. You have to do something about it, too.’

  ‘Yes, but what?’

  They fell silent as dusk began to fall, for the question seemed unanswerable.

  Then Barklice, coming out of his reverie, remembered what time it was.

  ‘Master Brief and friends should have arrived by now and the afternoon’s grown dark. Heavy rain’s on the way judging by those clouds and the heavy feel to the air. We’d better retrace our steps to be sure that the sign I left for them to follow from the main path to get here is still visible.’

  ‘“We”?’ said Bedwyn Stort. ‘I fear I feel weak and weary. You have more stamina than I, though you’re twice my age.’

  ‘I am under strict instructions not to leave you on your own.’

  ‘Oh, really! I wonder why, for I am a full-grown adult. In any case there is not much to explore around here, so how can I possibly go off and get lost?’

  ‘Well,’ said Barklice very doubtfully, ‘if you promise to stay within the henge . . .’

  Stort looked mightily relieved and sat down again. ‘I will not stir myself outside this henge until you are back.’

  ‘You could make us a new brew,’ suggested Barklice.

  ‘I can and I shall,’ replied Stort, still not stirring.

  Barklice, who was an excellent traveller, took tinder and steel from his pack once more and had a new fire going in no time, and then he reassembled the sticks to support the leathern kettle he next threw at Stort’s weary feet.

  ‘The lake water will be good . . . but no moving outside the henge, promise?’

  ‘By all that this standing stone has seen, I do!’ exclaimed Stort earnestly. ‘And a perfect brew will be yours upon your return.’