Spring

  Imbolc smiled, for a Peace-Weaver’s work is never done even when she is living on borrowed time.

  ‘To work!’ she murmured.

  9

  ASSIGNMENT

  Arthur Foale had been hoping for weeks that his old-fashioned telephone would ring a second time, with further news of the boy. But when it finally did ring, the call was not quite what he expected.

  It came from Roger Lynas, a senior child-welfare officer with the North Yorkshire Health Authority. He was circumspect, very. There was an unidentified boy, who was in trouble. Arthur’s number was found written on his backpack and—

  Arthur broke in to ask some questions.

  The replies were evasive. It was their primary job to protect the child, so they wanted information, though were not prepared to give any. Arthur, never good in such situations, felt his hackles rising.

  His voice began to rise, he began to bluster, but just as he was beginning to shout, Margaret came into the room.

  She arched a questioning eyebrow and he calmed down at once.

  ‘Just a moment,’ he said. His hand covered the receiver.

  ‘Who is it, Arthur?’

  ‘It’s a Mister Lynas of the North Yorkshire Health Authority, and he . . .’

  Arthur then explained as best he could. As he did, the feeling began to grow in him that he was in the process of making a mess of what might be the most important telephone call he would ever receive.

  He took up the phone again.

  ‘I think,’ he said as mildly as he could, ‘that you should be talking to my wife. Could you hold on, please?’

  Margaret took the receiver and started the conversation over.

  ‘Hello, I’m Margaret Foale. Could you . . . ?’

  By the time Margaret was finished she had established a friendly rapport with Roger Lynas, found out that the boy’s name was Jack and extracted a promise that they were now to be kept in the loop. She had succeeded in conveying the impression, without telling any actual lies, that they knew a good deal more about this boy than they did, and managed to establish the idea that she and her husband should now be involved further. However, a meeting would be necessary before they could help.

  She was given a number to call, received effusive thanks, and, most important of all, got information that Jack was being sent that same day to London for further assessment.

  ‘Tomorrow, then, you’ll call us,’ she finally agreed.

  But as she put down the phone she looked pale. She began breathing rapidly so she had to sit down.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Arthur.

  They had not been able to have children, though both had much wanted them. They had always known that this huge and ramshackle country house, which was Margaret’s inheritance, needed children. It was that kind of home, full of space for children to play and a garden with trees to climb, and places to build dens and to hide in, which needed young life.

  The phone-call had stirred something in Margaret’s emotions deeply, and pushed her to a place she had never thought she would have the opportunity to go to.

  Arthur went over to her. ‘What is it?’ he asked gently.

  ‘That conversation,’ she said. ‘It is the first I have ever had about any child as if . . . as if . . .’

  She bowed her head and reached blindly for him.

  ‘. . . as if it were my own.’

  ‘But, darling—’

  ‘I know, I know but . . . this boy has no one. Absolutely no one. Can you imagine that?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Something’s happening, Arthur, and it’s something important. It’s a beginning of something, and that boy is its beginning. I’ve never been a mother so I supposed I’d never have a mother’s instinct, but there’s something about the boy – they’re calling him Jack – which has changed something in me.’

  She fell silent.

  ‘Tomorrow; we’ll know more tomorrow,’ was all he could say.

  Sudden rain lashed against the window. They heard the conservatory door crash shut.

  ‘It’s started already,’ she said suddenly. ‘It’s happening now . . .’

  Arthur looked baffled.

  ‘. . . and do you know something?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘There’s another thing I feel, which I have never felt before. I think it’s what every parent feels about their child – or fears, anyway. I feel something awful’s going to happen to Jack, and it’s a kind of torture because there’s nothing I can do, nothing . . .’

  Arthur held her tight as the storm hit the house hard, and Margaret wept the pent-up grief of years. Inside the house and outside, it felt to Arthur as if the world was coming to an end and they were suddenly caught up in it.

  10

  MASTER BRIEF AND FRIENDS

  Imbolc watched the slow advance of Brief, Pike and some others across the field towards her. They were being led by Master Stort, whose hesitant progress seemed to irritate them, used as they were to more decisive leadership than an eleven-year-old could offer.

  She gave the White Horse its instructions, which were to linger thereabouts in the form of a wraith of mist across the vale, and to be ready when her present task was completed during the coming hours. Then, with her steed safely out of both hydden and human sight, she pondered which of her many disguises to adopt.

  Imbolc very rarely manifested before other folk as her true self. She decided to adopt her favourite guise. She muttered a simple spell, waved her arthritic hands about, and was suddenly transformed into a middle-aged hydden pedlar from Ireland, for whom her Celtic name seemed well suited.

  She wore a large portersac on her back and in front of her carried a tray of combs, laces and charms for travellers, which was supported by a strap that went around her neck. Her stoop instantly disappeared, her step grew more sprightly. Even though it now began raining quite heavily she was humming a catchy tune.

  She knew no better than Stort where he was meant to be going, for a Peace-Weaver cannot see all that is to be, just its general direction. About even that she was often wrong, since wyrd might be wonderful but it was subject to mortal whim.

  Stort looked even more odd than she remembered him. He was clad in an old-fashioned jacket and kept stopping and starting and then stopping again, staring here and there, peering at the ground and then up at the sky, before appearing to sniff at the air for inspiration before finally waving a hand to signal the group forward once more. No wonder the rest of the group looked so dispirited.

  But even as she watched, their young leader suddenly regained his sense of direction and purpose. She heard a cry, as of one who has just had a revelation, and Stort made a sudden turn left and dived almost headlong through the thorny hedge without apparent discomfort before climbing the railway embankment that rose on the far side of it, soon to be followed by the rest of his grumbling party.

  Most of them were dressed in the garb of stavermen, out doing their civic duty: leather trews, a tunic made of good-cloth and sturdy boots, and each with a stave ironclad at top and bottom in his hand.

  She studied their faces hoping to find one that was familiar, and was glad to see Master Brief was among them. In all of Englalond there was not a hydden she respected more than this one, even if now getting close enough to talk to him involved negotiating the thorny hedge.

  As it was thick and damp, she wished the White Horse, being thoughtful in so much else, had had the foresight to arrange her arrival to take place on the other side of this obstacle. But once on the ground she had to suffer as mortals do. So she pushed and heaved her way through the hedge, holding her tray of goods close against her chest, hampered by the weight of her pedlar’s pack, until she too was able to climb the embankment.

  By the time she reached the top, the group she was pursuing had moved on along the path of the railway line and disappeared. The line itself had long since been abandoned and the rails and sleepers salvaged for scrap. There were however the remnants
of a platform where a country station must have once stood, though its buildings, too, were all gone.

  Imbolc pressed on along the empty track and not long after saw that a quiet country road ran under the line, and realized that the hydden had done the sensible thing and clambered back down the embankment to shelter from the rain under the bridge that had once carried the line above it. She found them variously huddled on the ground. They merely nodded their heads on hearing her greeting, and continued to scowl at the rain.

  Except, of course, for Brief, who knew her true identity and was delighted to see her.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ he began, with obvious pleasure, ‘and what brings you here this miserable day, Imbolc?’

  His grey beard had droplets of rain in it, his cloak was wet, but he carried himself as he usually did, with authority and good humour.

  She smiled and reached out a hand to his by way of greeting.

  ‘The same thing that has brought you here, Master Brief, I dare say. That you should stray so far from your beloved library in Brum is rare indeed, but to find you in such a desolate spot, with such a ragbag of companions, confirms my suspicion that something very strange is afoot. Am I right?’

  She knew already that it was Stort who had brought them here, but she wanted Brief’s version of this most unusual young hydden.

  He did not reply to her question, growling instead at the weather, which was getting worse by the moment. This storm was set to develop into something very bad indeed, as the wind grew wilder and the air about them was filled with flying rain. Soon the sky filled with lightning and their ears with the deafening thunder that followed.

  ‘It is worse than you know,’ she confided, for his ears only. ‘I have travelled a great distance across the entire continent of Europe to get here, and I can safely say that this is the worst weather in living memory – and my memory goes back to the Dark Ages. I can tell you that this particular storm is about to get a lot worse.’

  ‘Is that a guess or a prophecy?’ he asked, finally.

  ‘It’s a prediction based on long experience.’

  ‘Like your prediction about our world coming to an end when the Earth starts to fight back?’ he jibed lightly. Brief had never for one moment believed that her frequent warnings would come to pass.

  ‘That’s already started and will get a lot worse unless you do something about it,’ she replied tartly. ‘But I have come to the conclusion that until you all realize that the Earth is not merely a larder to raid, or a well to drain dry before finding another one, but your equal partner in life, then you will continue to proceed on the road to disaster. Meanwhile, Master Brief, your beard needs a comb.’

  She gave him one from the stock she was carrying, more out of gratitude that he had made it easy for her to join his group than from any real desire to improve his appearance.

  Had he not welcomed her personally, the others of his group would probably have told her to find some other place to shelter, because seven is a number of good fortune, eight much less so.

  Hydden were superstitious about numbers and, when venturing out, much preferred odds to evens, and if they must travel in an even-number group, then it had better be one of the luckier numbers.

  Eight happened to be one of the unluckiest.

  So Brief had to appeal to the others’ good nature to persuade them to let this grubby-looking female pedlar share their arch. Now the others squatted a little way off, scowling at her suspiciously.

  But Brief knew that Imbolc never made an appearance without reason and, when she did, some good generally came of it.

  ‘So, why are you here?’

  ‘I’m looking for my successor,’ she replied briefly.

  ‘I didn’t know you were retiring,’ he rejoined.

  She smiled thinly. ‘I’m not retiring, I’m fading. Have you genuinely forgotten how old I am?’

  ‘No, I have not.’ Then he added hastily, ‘And I don’t want any visual reminders of your great age.’

  She had once made the mistake of appearing before him as she really looked, and the sight had quite upset him. Her present transformation into a down-at-heel female pedlar of middle age was much easier to live with.

  ‘Well, anyway,’ she continued, ‘my final years have come, and someone else must take on this job because fifteen hundred years is more than enough for anyone.’

  ‘When do you expect to, er . . . fade away?’ he asked.

  ‘In about ten years’ time I should think,’ she said calmly, ‘so right now I’m already living on borrowed time. We Peace-Weavers don’t exactly disappear, you know – we pass on to other, hopefully better, things. It depends what the Mirror-of-All has in store for us. Even so, that only gives me a decade to find my successor, and train her in readiness.’

  ‘How long have you already been searching?’

  ‘She’s been on my mind for about three hundred years,’ said Imbolc matter-of-factly.

  ‘Doesn’t the Mirror-of-All sort those kind of things out?’ Brief lowered his voice respectfully as he said that, with a glance directed out from under the bridge towards the dark, wild sky beyond, as if expecting the power that ruled all their lives to suddenly show itself. He knew of course it never did, or maybe could not, appear in any obvious way.

  ‘No,’ responded Imbolc, ‘the Mirror does not sort it out. With respect to my successor, that’s my task – maybe my last and most important one. Especially as my successor may have to cope with the end of the Earth as we know it . . .’

  ‘There you go again!’ said Brief, resignedly.

  She turned from him and stared at the others, noticing for the first time that Stort had produced a black plastic bin-bag, scavenged from humans, and put it over his head, puncturing a hole in it through which he had thrust his long thin nose so he could breathe. It was one of the oddest things she had ever seen.

  ‘Is that the youngster who was leading you?’ Imbolc asked, not revealing she already knew his name.

  ‘Please don’t ask about him,’ groaned Brief. ‘It’s . . . complicated. He’s not a staverman like the others. He’s . . . no, I don’t want to go there right now. I’ll explain about him later. It’s enough to say he’s the reason we’re hanging about in this horrible place in the middle of a storm.’

  Imbolc stared at the boy with renewed interest.

  ‘In that case maybe he’s why I’m here,’ she said softly. ‘So tell me something about him.’

  ‘Later,’ repeated Brief frowning.

  ‘Hmm,’ she murmured softly, suddenly lost in thought, her attention again on Stort in the black plastic bag.

  ‘You were saying,’ Brief murmured, bringing her back to the present, ‘that you were currently looking for the next Peace-Weaver.’

  ‘I said I was looking for my successor. That doesn’t mean she will be a Peace-Weaver. Has it never occurred to you that it’s not a Peace-Weaver we need most in the troubled years ahead?’

  ‘But I assumed your successor would fulfil the same role?’ said Brief, now rather puzzled.

  He stared at her, his heart thumping, overcome by a horrible premonition of what she would say next. If she did, and if she was right, it meant that the years ahead would be hard for all of them, and demand much sacrifice and courage. He knew the myths and legends as well as anyone alive, and therefore understood there was only one alternative to a Peace-Weaver – and it was not a pleasant thought.

  ‘I hope you don’t mean . . . ?’ he whispered, his voice shaking, not daring speak his thought aloud.

  ‘I mean,’ said Imbolc very firmly, ‘that my successor will be a Shield Maiden!’

  Even she herself uttered the two words with a certain awe.

  Master Brief gulped and glanced nervously around at the others to see if they had overheard. Fortunately it seemed not.

  Shield Maidens were reputedly not benign and reasonable entities like Peace-Weavers. They were fierce and warlike and took no nonsense from anyone, either hydden or human, fem
ale or male, old or young. When a Shield Maiden was on the prowl, the Earth supposedly became a very dark and unpredictable kind of place indeed. Not that Brief, or anyone else living, had personal experience of such an occurrence, but he knew of it through his lifelong study of myth and legend. The last Shield Maiden to fly across the Earth had done so over two millennia before.

  ‘And you think she will make an appearance here today?’ he enquired in a trembling voice.

  ‘She might do. And if she does, my days will be shorter on this Earth than I thought.’

  ‘But surely no sensible hydden, especially a Shield Maiden, would be out on a day like this.’

  There was a rumble of thunder, a flash of lightning.

  ‘Who said she had to be hydden? The Mirror-of-All does not make those kind of distinctions.’

  Brief looked dumbstruck. ‘You mean she might be a human?’

  Imbolc eased her back to rest more comfortably against the wet brick wall of the arch, as the gloom of the strange day deepened and their huddled forms were caught again in the flash of lightning and shaken by a crash of thunder.

  ‘I think she might be,’ she admitted, feeling the kind of relief that comes with knowing a problem of long standing might be on its way to being solved. ‘Yes, indeed, I think she very well might be human. And I have a feeling she’s going to show up on or near this very spot before the night is done.’

  He looked utterly appalled.

  ‘While we’re waiting for my successor to make her appearance, Master Brief,’ she continued good-humouredly, and nodded towards the plastic bin-bag, ‘why not tell me about him? Who is it exactly that has had the strength of personality to drag experienced hydden like yourselves so many miles away from home, and shows the common sense and inventiveness not to care what others think of him, and takes shelter under that plastic bag to keep himself dry?’

  Brief glowered at the black bag and the long, thin nose that protruded from it.

  ‘I was given to understand,’ said Brief, ‘that it was you yourself who instructed him to lead us here.’