Spring

  Festoon, who seemed to notice everything, observed her surprise with pleasure.

  ‘Unlike the other ascenseur,’ he said, affecting the French for the more mundane ‘lift’, ‘which has a good deal of the clackety-clack about it, this one has need to be utterly silent, so that its coming and going does not vex me and shatter my sleep. It offers a direct connection to the kitchen.’

  ‘Where does the other one come up?’ asked Katherine. ‘I couldn’t work it out.’

  Festoon was delighted to be asked.

  ‘It is all done by hydraulics which work as well as the day they were installed so many decades ago. It emerges through the floor over there . . .’

  He nodded vaguely in a direction which lay between the doors to Winter and Spring.

  ‘The floor opens, the lift emerges noisily, its occupants get out, and there you are! Simple but intrusive, but such is the nature of life – it should be simple but the world intrudes, n’est-ce pas? But forgive me, you are hungry as am I. Parlance, serve us if you please.’

  They ate in pleasant silence until, supper nearly done, Katherine said, ‘Lord Festoon?’

  ‘My dear? You have a question? I always did appreciate an enquiring mind,’ he said. ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘Is Jack coming here? Will you help us escape from the Fyrd?’

  ‘He is, my dear, and we will.’

  ‘Shall we escape through one of the doors?’

  ‘No doubt you will,’ said Lord Festoon.

  ‘But what lies beyond the four doors of the seasons?’

  ‘Dreams,’ he replied.

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘Our own,’ he whispered, turning from her sadly, the question evidently too hard for him to think about for long.

  78

  DOORS

  But Katherine refused to let him avoid the subject so easily. She sensed she was near a truth that had to do with her dreams as well as his.

  ‘What’s your dream?’ she dared to ask.

  He didn’t have to think for long.

  ‘To go to a place which . . . or rather, where . . . a place . . .’

  He shook his head. The memory was too painful, the dream too hard to face.

  His eyes were filled with real sadness.

  ‘To which what?’ persisted Katherine.

  ‘You’re very direct, just as the Shield Maiden should be.’

  ‘I’m not the Shield Maiden or whatever, I’m Katherine.’

  ‘Well you’re direct, that’s certain.’

  ‘So . . . what’s the answer? Have you been to the places beyond the doors?’

  ‘Only one of them, which was Spring. The rest I have visited in imagination only, with the rather special help of Parlance.’

  ‘When did you go through the door into Spring?’

  ‘Ah!’ he said very softly. ‘You have asked the question I feared you would. I cannot actually go there again of course. Indeed, in my condition I cannot now go through any of the doors, not ever. But I suppose if I tell you about Spring I can briefly relive that time again and you will understand better why I am in the pitiful and helpless position that I am.’

  ‘Speak of it, my lord,’ murmured Parlance dreamily.

  The chef had an odd ability to make himself scarce most of the time but to reappear when needed. In fact Katherine had forgotten all about him. Now here he was, bold as brass, wiping a nostalgic tear from his eye.

  ‘It is the madeleines we have just eaten that make me weep,’ he said, ‘as much as my lord’s sad words and the memory of a Spring gone by.’

  It was Lord Festoon who told her the outline of the story and Parlance who filled in the details.

  When Festoon was ten he had wandered away from the servant who looked after him and found himself outside and alone. He reached the banks of the River Rea, attracted by the noise of stones splashing in the water. It was a kitchen boy, Parlance, playing ducks and drakes with flat stones they found.

  ‘It was that most magical of days,’ recalled Festoon, ‘the first day of Spring, when the sun shines lightly on the first new life and the air, so long made harsh by Winter cold, turns warm again.’

  The two boys lost themselves in the wonder of the day, roamed up the river and found themselves finally on Waseley Hill, that verdant rise of ground from which the river issues forth as a tiny spring.

  ‘We were out all day and half into the evening before my mother’s servants – my father being dead – found me. My siblings had all died young and I too was a weak child and so she was more fearful for my health and safety than she should have been. I was chastised severely, but that was not the worse punishment. I was also confined within, and from that day on I was never allowed to go out more, nor to meet again the boy whose companionship was the first true friendship I had ever known.

  ‘From that time on I knew him only from the food he secretly sent me from the kitchens, made for me by his hand as evocations of the sights and sounds of that single day of Spring we saw, or thought we saw. His food was a celebration of our friendship and my gift in return was to enjoy it and suggest new things.’

  ‘But did you not go outside at all?’ asked Katherine, astonished.

  ‘That I did not do . . . and of course, as I grew, and grew large, and then fat and . . .’

  ‘If only I had known what I was doing to my lord,’ cried Parlance, ‘but I did not and no one told me what he was until he was obese. Too late, too late. From that time on I cooked to comfort him and he ate to comfort me.’

  Festoon waved his hands over his vast body and tree-trunk legs and simply said, ‘It was just so, too late and I could no longer do what I had so wanted to.

  ‘But there were compensations. Parlance’s skills increased, his genius emerged, as did mine in matters of taste and ideas. Having conquered Spring in a culinary sense, we spread our clipped wings and explored the other seasons too. My weight increased still more.

  ‘When my mother died, and I took over as High Ealdor, the first thing I did was to summon Parlance. He wept to see what I had become.’

  Katherine stood up impatiently.

  ‘But . . . but you could . . . surely between you both it would be possible to . . .’

  ‘Pray don’t tell me to stop eating as so many have before. If I do that I lose the one pleasure that remains to me. Do that and I die. And who then would Parlance, a true genius at what he does, cook for?’

  ‘But you would still like to experience Spring for real?’

  Festoon hesitated. Parlance likewise.

  ‘More than anything but one thing, and of that I’m not even sure.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘To hold the lost gem of Spring, of fabled Beornamund’s creation, in the palm of my hand. Then I could die and return to the Mirror-of-All content that my life has been fulfilled.’

  ‘But failing that?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I would like to see again the places we so briefly saw when young.’

  ‘Would that not happen if you went through the door marked Spring, Lord Festoon?’ asked Katherine. ‘You said our dreams lie beyond it.’

  ‘I suppose it might. But for me that is but a dream, and better left that way. I cannot even rise from my throne without help, let alone cross the vast empty space that lies between it and that door . . .’

  They looked over at the door, and seen from Festoon’s perspective it did indeed look far.

  ‘For you, Katherine, it is a different matter, and when Jack gets here I suggest that you take your courage in your hands and open the door into Spring. Try it. Nobody else has, though it is perfectly true that after ã Faroün, he of blessed memory, made this room, which was his last work, and had the tapestries hung, he asked to be left alone. He sat in this very throne. When his servants called for him, and finally dared enter the Chamber, he was nowhere to be found.

  ‘It is thought that he passed through one of the doors, and since he was very old and his hair, such as was left, all white, he
was in the Winter of his years, and I believe that was the door that he took.

  ‘What stops me now? What really stops me? For it would be possible I suppose to rig up some sort of wheeled contraption to get me to the door of Spring . . . What stops me? The same thing that stops most people doing things. Fear. Just that, Katherine, and no more. So simple. So very hard to conquer.’

  Katherine looked across the Chamber to the door marked Spring and paced all the way to it and back again.

  ‘It’s no distance at all, my lord. Why not try?’

  Festoon laughed.

  ‘Really,’ said Katherine, ‘just try to reach it. You don’t have to open it or anything, just see if you can get to it. We’ll help you. Arthur! Parlance!’

  She was suddenly animated and determined.

  It wasn’t far and it wasn’t impossible.

  ‘Try to, my Lord Festoon,’ said Arthur. ‘Why not? We have nothing better to do while we wait for Jack and the others.’

  Festoon laughed.

  ‘You lighten my spirit, Katherine, and terrify it too. There is a great deal of the Shield Maiden about you, whatever you may say. Therefore, help me!’

  He half rose from his throne, Katherine went to one side and Arthur the other, with Parlance pushing him along from behind, having thoughtfully taken off his belt lest the sharp knives he carried there damage his master.

  Nor was it as difficult as he had imagined.

  Not easy, not without a stumble, nor without a pause for breath, but absolutely not impossible.

  Three feet from it he said suddenly, ‘I had forgotten I will have to get all the way back, perhaps I should . . .’

  ‘You’re nearly there,’ said Katherine firmly. ‘Don’t give up now! You just have to touch it . . .’

  ‘Now that is a bad idea,’ said Festoon, pulling up short. ‘Touching dreams has a habit of turning them to dull reality. But . . .’

  Even so, with their combined help he heaved himself forward one more step and reached forward as if to touch the door of Spring. It seemed to Katherine that the golden letters above it began to glow brighter, and the green shadowing around them to shine.

  He stood for the briefest of moment with a look that combined the deep hope of one who has almost reached his goal in life with the despair of feeling he can never reach it.

  But there was no further chance to find out. Suddenly there was a rumbling sound a little way off and, to the sound of ancient machinery and rattling parts, several of the sections of the wooden floor slid back. Then the lift in which Katherine and Arthur had earlier arrived rose up before them.

  Behind its metal grille, doors slipped open, a heavy hand pulled the grilled doors open too, and out stepped Brunte, followed by Feld, Streik and another Fyrd.

  ‘Ah! Lord Festoon, up and vertical,’ said Brunte, evidently very surprised to see what was happening.

  Lord Festoon sighed as if for ever defeated and said, ‘I have been expecting you, Sub-Quentor Brunte . . .’

  Brunte eyed him with the unwanted good humour of a new first among equals.

  ‘Pray, say nothing more until I have returned to my throne, or I will collapse,’ he gasped.

  Brunte shrugged, Feld smiled coldly, Streik sneered, his right hand fingering one of the knives on his belt.

  The other Fyrd walked over to the dais and took up his post by the throne as if to stand guard by it. The movement was unspoken but it said volumes. The reign of Festoon was clearly over.

  ‘I think it better that you stand where you are for a moment, Festoon, so we can talk as equals,’ said Brunte, coming closer before looking first at Foale dismissively and then at Katherine. ‘Your lackey I know, and the girl is the one who some say has connections with the Shield Maiden? May even be her. Looking at her I rather doubt it. But if the giant-born believes it that’s good enough for me.’

  For the second time that day Katherine found herself looking into the eyes of someone she might reasonablely have expected to dislike but who, on the surface, seemed quite amiable. Brunte’s face was warm, his smile broad, his personality obviously gregarious.

  ‘I’m Katherine,’ she said, ‘and I know nothing about Shield Maidens and I think you should let Lord Festoon go and sit down because standing is hard for him. I’m sure Meyor Feld agrees.’

  Feld did as it happened, because there was something disturbing about Lord Festoon’s legs beginning to shake and his face to perspire with the effort of merely standing.

  ‘Help him get back to his throne,’ said Brunte, his smile fading. Feld and Streik moved towards him.

  It was as they did so, and as Brunte opened his mouth to ask a question, that something very extraordinary happened on the dais, which since only Katherine was facing that direction, only she could actually see.

  The Fyrd who had been standing there appeared suddenly to fall slowly backward, someone else’s hand over his mouth and his eyes opening wide in shock as he was dragged to the floor. Katherine couldn’t see his assailant and her mouth opened in surprise, but she had the sense to look down at the floor so that Brunte did not see where she was looking. But it was too late, the instinct that had kept him alive and moving forward through life kicked in and his right hand moved to the bigger of the two knives that he habitually kept on his belt.

  He turned, as did Festoon, to look in the direction in which Katherine had been looking.

  So it was that all three of them simultaneously saw the hapless Fyrd upended and thrown into the lift that Parlance normally used, which immediately began to descend with its reluctant but now unconscious cargo.

  As it did so, his elimination of that danger complete, the assailant turned to face them and Katherine’s heart leapt. It was Jack, looking dishevelled and bloodied as if he had been in a fight he had barely won, but with an expression on his face of such purpose and determination that it left no doubt he expected now to engage in another one.

  ‘Streik . . . ’ begun Brunte in a guttural warning voice. ‘Feld!’ It had not been his intention to cause anybody harm. But faced by this direct assault on one of his officers and what looked like Jack’s imminent attack, his natural aggressiveness kicked in.

  Jack might well have looked the worse for wear.

  His journey from Deritend to the Chamber of Seasons had been as dramatic as it was speedy.

  Barklice led him, Pike helped him, and Brief came along to lend what support he could and gain passage through places and past Fyrd guards where only his authority held sway.

  Their objective had been to find the Sub-Quentor, and it was a shrewdly chosen one. They reasoned that wherever he might be when they set off, his most likely purpose that day would be to locate Festoon and formally take power from him.

  That much seemed certain.

  As for Katherine, they had no certain idea of her whereabouts, but what Brief was privy to was the plan for her to be chosen as Bride and so spirited away to Festoon’s most inaccessible Chamber.

  Inaccessible but not unknown.

  Brief and latterly Stort had not studied the works of ä Faroün in vain. The drawings and plans of that ineffable architect and mechanical genius had lain untouched for many years in Brief’s archive. Their measurements were encoded, their lines mysteriously misdrawn, their perspectives so odd that they rendered any who looked at them quite dizzy. As for the captions and explanations of the drawings, most particularly those for the Chamber of Seasons, Brief had got so far but no further. It had taken Stort’s genius with numbers and languages to decode and make sense of them, and it was his work over the years that had given Brief his understanding of where the Chamber was, how it worked and, most important, how to gain access to it.

  Not, until that day, that he had ever tried.

  Needs must, however. But when the trail led, as it finally did, to the Chamber, Brief’s authority failed before the authority of the Fyrd guards Feld had earlier put in place by the main lift up to the Chamber, awaiting Marshall Brunte’s arrival.

&nb
sp; A struggle had ensued from which Jack and the others had only just managed to escape, all of them injured, Barklice more than the others.

  Hurriedly putting their friend in the care of one of the kinder Sisters of Charity who was known to Brief, Brief had led them to the kitchens of the royal residence, where they had great difficulty finding the lift Parlance habitually used.

  Too late they discovered they had been followed, so that once again they had to fight the Fyrd who tried to obstruct their passage to the smaller lift to the Chamber.

  It was in the midst of this that Brief thrust Jack into the lift and sent him upward in the dark, with the command to do what he could. No matter how slim his chances, the message would go forth to the good folk of Brum that although the giant-born might be inexperienced, he did not lack courage.

  As the door of the lift closed Brief took Jack’s plain stave and thrust his own stave into Jack’s hand.

  ‘You used it successfully in the henge; do so again now. Trust it and it will do for you what it must. Fight it and it will fight you!’

  Jack heard him and was gone, the stave in his hand. He felt it in the darkness as he ascended in the lift and it felt unnaturally cool, like a creature that needs the sun and warmth to awake. No light came from it as it had in Brief’s strong hands.

  The lift finally emerged into light once more, and to his surprise Jack found himself within inches of the back of a Fyrd on guard. There was no time to think, only act. Jack put his hand over his mouth, pulled him violently backward and shoved him into the lift, which by some volition of its own, or because he had unwittingly pressed its control, sank back at once towards the kitchens far below.

  Even as this happened Jack realized he had let go of Brief’s stave, which, to his astonishment, began falling one way, twisted another and then, waking up as if something animated it, shot straight back into his right hand.

  It was then that he saw across the polished floor of the Chamber as strange a sight as he himself had presented seconds earlier to Katherine.

  There was a sturdy and powerful-looking hydden, with a wide peasant face but sharp intelligent eyes, who Jack guessed must be Brunte.