Spring

  ‘It is true I have prepared a little something,’ admitted Parlance, who looked as happy as ever he had, ‘and to whet your appetites – and with the help of my new kitchen companion . . .’

  Even Festoon looked surprised, for Parlance had kept his proposal to Charmaine secret until then.

  ‘. . . I have prepared, by way of an appetizer, bonbons of the savoury sort.’

  ‘What companion?’ wondered Festoon.

  Parlance did not answer the question. The feast was imminent and there was work to do.

  ‘What companion?’ repeated Festoon, the suspense killing him.

  ‘Later my lord, when the feast is done.’

  But though Lord Festoon might have controlled for ever his addiction to food, to curiosity he was for ever wed.

  He took time out from the feasting and crept to the kitchen to look inside.

  Parlance, chef and healer, was not alone.

  A wyf was helping him who, it seemed to Festoon, might be rather more than a wyf. She was small, a little lame, but from her every movement emanated love for her work and love for Parlance. Festoon knew at once exactly who she was.

  ‘My lord!’ cried out Parlance, seeing he was observed.

  Festoon eyed his companion.

  ‘The maker of brot superlative, brot supreme, I presume?’ he said, bending low, which he most certainly would not have been able to do but weeks before, and kissing her on each of her floury cheeks.

  ‘A wyf who makes Parlance happy,’ he said, ‘makes his friend Festoon Avon happy. Welcome!’

  And welcome she was made by all of them, especially Katherine, who had met her soon after Parlance had proposed to her.

  Such and many more good things were in the nature of the midsummer festival in Wardine-on-Severn that year.

  Another was Jack signalling to the ferryman to come on over with his boy, for the first time ever, and join the fun.

  A third was Brief, Pike and Barklice taking Jack aside.

  ‘You’ll come back to Brum when you’re ready, Jack?’

  He didn’t doubt it.

  ‘The giant-born who saved the High Ealdor is a hero indeed. Which is just what we were hoping you would be!’

  ‘We all saved him,’ said Jack, which was indeed nearer the truth.

  ‘That’s not how the good hydden of Brum will see it,’ said Master Brief. ‘They have their hero and will expect him to return when the time is right.’

  The feast continued into the early hours until one by one the villagers returned home and only Festoon and his friends remained by the bonfire, their faces made red by its last embers but their eyes alight with the many pleasures of companionship.

  In addition to Festoon and Master Brief, Pike was there and Barklice. The feasting done and their first work together complete and declared a triumph, Parlance and his Charmaine had joined the company. Jack sat with Katherine, their love and ease together plain for all to see.

  Stort, overheated by the fire, was down on the river bank watching the river’s dark flow. So it was he who saw the swirl of a horse’s mane in the darkness on the fair bank; and he who saw the ferryman’s light and the advance of his craft across the water.

  ‘We have a visitor,’ he said, rising to go and help Imbolc ashore.

  ‘Tell them to stay their distance,’ she whispered, ‘for it is too much effort for me now to adopt my guise and I need not linger long. Tell them that and . . .’

  But such folk were not going to remark on the Peace-Weaver’s appearance.

  They brought her to the fire, sat her down, and if the fire glowed more brightly and made her seem beautiful, and the stars and moon shone in her hair and made it seem as fair as when she was young, no one was surprised.

  If too a slight wind stirred through the village she loved best of all, waking its inhabitants and drawing them back into the night to pause and stare but not come too near, no one minded or said a thing.

  For they were believers all, each and every one, and saw no reason why Imbolc the Peace-Weaver might not visit them once in a while.

  Imbolc, who sat nearest Stort as if she knew him best of all, said, ‘It is time now, Jack and Katherine, time to cross the water together and find my sister the Shield Maiden. Despite that general belief that you’re the Shield Maiden, I am no longer quite sure.’

  Jack looked surprised but Katherine just shrugged. She’d never understood why the hydden had connected her with some legend of theirs anyway. Jack was another matter – with his hydden/human heritage, she just knew he was destined for great things.

  Imbolc smiled gently at them: ‘I still think you have your part to play, Katherine and I’m sure it’s you who will find my sister, but I think you know where she is better than I do myself! Which is as it should be. Take Bedwyn Stort with you, for when the time comes for you to return to the human world he will show you what to do. Until then you shall be his teachers for the one thing no book, even in the great library of Brum, nor any teacher, be he as great as your Master Brief, can reveal, which is the nature of love. He needs to learn that, if he is to help see through the great task that lies ahead of him, as we all do if we are to play our part. So . . . ready yourselves and let the ferryman see us safely to the other side!’

  Strangely, out of earshot of Imbolc, Stort tried to protest.

  But Jack shook his head.

  ‘You’re coming too,’ he said, ‘and not just to help us get home but because we want you with us along the way.’

  ‘Me especially?’ said Stort, delighted.

  ‘Yes, you,’ said Jack.

  They didn’t linger long because the ferryman was tired and he wanted to get home. They said their farewells quietly to old friends and new, but if they hoped to slip away unnoticed they were mistaken.

  This was Wardine, not Brum.

  By the time they were ready dawn was near and the bank was lined with villagers.

  The bonfire was poked to set sparks flying, and folk said goodbye the proper way, with blessing and tears, hopes and a sense of loss, and with sombre excitement for what the coming months and the New Year would bring.

  ‘It’ll bring us the Shield Maiden,’ said Katherine, who was beginning to think she knew exactly where that young lady was to be found, even if no one including Jack had got the point, excepting maybe Brief, who was wise in many things.

  While for once that inquirer after knowledge, that creator of theories and that most practical and daring of scientists, that linguist and bibliophile, Bedwyn Stort, could not work it out at all.

  ‘My dear friend,’ observed the Master Scrivener to Stort as he said a private farewell to his assistant, ‘it happens in the Spring, or so I have been told.’

  Which left Stort none the wiser for the moment, but with something to think about in the months ahead.

  Meanwhile with the festival of Lammas over, the biggest festival of all was on the way: Samhain, or Winter.

  A time of old tales and shadows, of fires and dark decay, of transformation and rebirth; and the deep, deep music of great change.

  Time to journey.

  Time for Jack and Katherine, their last moments come, their portersacs ready and their farewells done, to board the ferry and cross the river to the further shore, and finally to leave Wardine, in the company of their good and much loved friend Bedwyn Stort.

  Time for others to watch them go with hopeful heart and wave goodbye as the fire burned and sparks sped into the dawning sky.

  Time for a new beginning to things.

  Time for the ferryman to turn against the river’s current and reach for the mooring and help his mortal cargo on to a land that was old but to them seemed new.

  Which done, they turned and looked back a final time and waved. Then they were gone, just like that.

  Not that folk could hope to see much against the glorious dazzle of the rising sun – and anyway, Wardiners had their own business to attend to and their own journeys to make.

  86

 
RETURN

  Nine months later, as the last days of April approached and Spring began to turn to Summer, Jack and Katherine neared Woolstone once more. They had thought that Stort would travel with them all the way, but he decided to stop short at the lake on the far side of which were the Devil’s Quoits. He had no wish to cross those waters again.

  Of the time since Wardine, when they all journeyed together across Englalond, seeing many wonders, sleeping under the stars, discovering the nature of love, passion and friendship . . . of that time more may be guessed than is actually known. None of those concerned ever spoke much of it to others.

  But let this be said now.

  It was several months into their journey before it dawned on Jack, and on Stort more slowly still, who the Shield Maiden might be and from where she might come. Katherine knew the truth long before either of them did, her days growing slower as they went, her loving passion for Jack deepening with each day, as did her friendship for Stort. Oh yes, Katherine knew, but she kept her knowledge as a silent smile, and perhaps as licence to feel sick and be irritable for a few weeks.

  Until one day along the way Jack and Stort got it.

  ‘Er . . . um!’ said Jack rather desperately.

  ‘Aah!’ declared Stort in a strangled kind of way.

  Then, as if seeing the blinding light of the rising for the first time ever, they understood that Katherine was with child.

  They wanted to fuss her after that but she soon reacted to what she felt were their unnecessary attentions.

  ‘I’m not ill Jack, just . . . just . . .’

  She wanted to return to the human world and get back home before their child was born.

  She wanted that more than anything.

  ‘So what do we do to get back?’ asked Jack, gazing across the lake towards the Devil’s Quoits.

  Stort scratched his head and hummed a bit.

  Then he said, ‘The key thing is to well . . . sort of . . . I mean, when you reach the henge . . . which you won’t be able to see easily – the first bit is submerged . . . to . . . well you kind of . . . um . . . dance in the water . . . but avoid turning sinister, that’s certainly important.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Jack ironically, ‘that’s as clear as mud. I don’t think Katherine’s in any condition to swim across a gravel pit.’

  ‘We’ll construct a raft then,’ said Stort enthusiastically, ‘and hope it doesn’t sink too soon.’

  ‘I don’t want it to sink at all,’ Jack said. ‘She’s pregnant!’

  ‘Yes, well, sinking is problematic but possibly not in the way you think,’ replied Stort. He was already eyeing the water and sizing up the flotsam and jetsam along the shore for items that might make a raft.

  ‘Leave it to me, Jack! I see a way.’

  ‘We could walk around the lake,’ said Jack, not sure he liked the sound of Stort’s ‘way’.

  ‘Not the same,’ said Stort. ‘If you want to change back to human size you’ll have to go via the lost entrance to the henge and even then . . . well now . . . let’s see . . .’

  He set to and built a raft out of the materials along the shore which included some polystyrene that had a familiar look about it and bubble wrap, worn by time and weather. But finally, when Stort was finished, Jack eyed the ramshackle craft he had made with alarm.

  Not so Katherine.

  Her time was near.

  ‘Let’s go!’ she said.

  ‘If we sink . . .’ muttered Jack.

  ‘You won’t,’ said Stort.

  They had a final night, a final fire, reminiscing about all that had happened, glad at what they had heard about Brum and their friends from folk along the way.

  Lord Festoon was back and reinstated, Brunte now an uneasy ally; the Fyrd were biding their time and letting Brum and Englalond be, as if the Sinistral knew there was something there of which to be afraid.

  ‘There is,’ said Jack, hand on Katherine’s stomach. ‘Or there soon will be. The Shield Maiden!’

  ‘Will you go back to Brum now?’ asked Jack of Stort.

  He nodded vaguely.

  ‘I’ll certainly be thereabout by the time you get to Woolstone,’ he said. ‘There’s the lost gem still to find and I have an idea about that . . .’

  But, for the time being, Jack and Katherine weren’t interested in lost gems and new ideas. They had more immediate concerns and only half-listened to his talk.

  The gem of Spring was Stort’s concern now.

  ‘Imbolc’s got a last journey to make and the pendant to give up and then . . . she’ll be free at last to go to Beornamund. That’s the thing, that’s how it will be. But I need to get back before the last day of Spring to lend her a hand . . .’

  The night was over, their journey almost so, and they all wanted to get home.

  Katherine heaved herself onto the cumbersome raft with Jack’s help. He and Stort pushed it out into the water with a following wind and then Jack climbed aboard.

  ‘Don’t linger and watch us, Stort,’ he called back, ‘because if we fall in I don’t want you coming to save us. It’ll confuse the issue.’

  Stort did something else, and something surprising.

  He waded after them until he was alongside, a tender, diffident look on his face.

  ‘I . . . I wanted . . .’

  Katherine understood.

  She took his hand and held it to her belly.

  ‘Wait,’ she said softly.

  Stort did not have to wait long. He felt the baby’s movement as if it was a call of love from across the far distance of time and space. As the craft sailed on he was left standing with a look of wonder on his face.

  Then they turned from him towards the far side of the lake and their future, Jack at the helm of the strange craft, with a freshening wind filling its bubble-wrap sail and speeding them towards the far shore.

  As they neared it the wind grew stronger still and wild and fickle, turning them about and then about again.

  ‘Jack!’

  ‘Katherine!’

  And so it was that yards from the shore and somewhere over the submerged entrance to the henge they capsized and fell together into the water, shocked by the cold but laughing at their predicament. By then they were near enough to the Devil’s Quoits to swim and paddle and finally wade ashore, having somehow turned and twisted the dance to which Stort had referred until they were human again, their clothes in tatters, their lives and laughter intact.

  They waited till dark, made themselves decent as best they could from material they found along the shore, and tramped the last miles by hydden ways they had learnt to find.

  They had a final night under the stars, keeping each other warm, thinking of Stort, sharing their memories, feeling the Shield Maiden moving: a hand, a foot, the slow turning bulge of a head across Katherine’s belly.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘I think . . . Jack . . . Jack!’

  He sat up quickly.

  ‘I think it’s almost time.’

  ‘Then I’d better get you home.’

  It was the last day of April – and so the last day of Spring – when they arrived under cover of darkness of Woolstone. They came up to the garden across the fields and into the henge on the same side as when Jack had left it so long before in pursuit of Katherine. Hydden then, they were human now, Katherine needing to be supported the last few yards in among the trees.

  But they couldn’t see much beyond them . . .

  Someone had built a new bonfire by the two conifers, to celebrate the coming of Beltane or Summer, on the morrow. It was so large that it obscured all view of the house.

  ‘I think Arthur’s come home before us,’ said Jack softly. ‘Now, can you make it up to the house?’

  Katherine shook her head and sat on the grass by one of the trees. She could not go further and did not want to.

  ‘Here,’ she whispered between the pains, ‘here is where she must be born, betwixt and between our two worlds,
yours and mine. Here in the protective circle of the henge.’

  87

  DISCOVERY

  That same night, Bedwyn Stort stood in the driving rain in the dark of night on Waseley Hill. He was on the very threshold of Brum and looking forward to getting back after his long trek from Wardine in the company of his friends until the past few days when he had been alone.

  It was true that matters of the heart were unverifiable, but there were always new theories to put to the test.

  His theory now was that if ever there was a night when the Shield Maiden was going to be born it was this night, the last of Spring, when one season becomes another.

  Which being so, if ever there was a moment to bear out the truth of Beornamund’s prophecy that the lost gem of Spring would show itself at the right time, it was this; as for the place, it had surely to be where that fragment of the mythic Sphere was originally lost, which was there on the hill where the CraftLord’s workshop had once been.

  So Stort stood alone in the dark, waiting and rather afraid. For the rain had been heavier than heavy and the little River Rea, which flowed out on the slopes above him, was already a raging torrent at his side, its banks near bursting, its waters seeming to want to reach up and drag him down.

  But he was not going to move an inch.

  The hydden who had survived the monsters of the deep of the lake by the Devil’s Quoits and the horrors of dangling beneath a hot air balloon was pretty sure he could survive some rain on Waseley Hill in the pursuit of scientific inquiry.

  Which might have been true had there not been rain freakish and strange across Brum for weeks past. Rain heavy and rain persistent; rain such as fell nowhere else in Englalond through that time.

  So that as Stort stood by the torrent of the river which should have been no more than a safe and easy stream, it was backing up behind him all unknown. Backing in a way that was far beyond any Bilges-nipe’s control.

  Stort could not hope to see the great wave of water that was racing up the hill through the dark, roiling and boiling so powerfully that it ripped away the very surface of the night-bound earth before it. But he heard it as a dull and dangerous roar, and it put into him a fear like no other he had ever felt, born of the certainty of his own imminent destruction.