He was indeed an extraordinary sight, with his wild hair and beanpole legs and arms. He said nothing but looked about for a moment and then went straight to the far end of the railway arch, looked out at the violent sky and began to hum loudly.
A tuneless, disturbing, thinking kind of hum.
A hum to get right to the heart of things.
He raised one foot to scratch the calf of his other leg and all the while his humming intensified.
Then suddenly it stopped and he put his foot back on the ground, whereupon he turned round to face them.
Imbolc stared at him curiously, recollecting their previous close encounter in the mist of Waseley Hill.
Most eleven-year-olds would wear ordinary clothes: a pair of short trews, perhaps, a light tunic of some kind, and an ordinary style of boots. Their most distinctive feature, usually, was the stave they all carried, on which they stuck various emblems and marks denoting which town or village they came from, what gang they belonged to, and even their size of fortune.
Stort looked nothing like this.
He wore a suit of such ancient design that Imbolc had to cast her memory back to the late nineteenth century to remember when she had last seen anyone wearing such, and that was a human, on a walking vacation in the Alps. The suit comprised a jacket, trousers and waistcoat – the buttons mostly missing – whose green tweedy material looked so rough that it seemed more fitting to scour pots with than wear close to the skin. It was obviously home-made, the stitches sewn so crooked and loose, while the arms of the jacket were of slightly different lengths.
I do believe he’s made it himself! Imbolc thought in surprise.
The innumerable pockets were all bulging with contents: a thin strip of coiled car tyre was trying to escape from one, and some plasticized wire from another. A computer part kept company with a piece of vaguely medical-looking red rubber hose, and the black bin-bag was now thrust in alongside them.
The slate Pike had recently mentioned protruded from the breast pocket of Stort’s waistcoat along with some pieces of chalk and several sharpened pencils of human manufacture; while, secured through a buttonhole on his lapel, a chunky silver chain disappeared into a waistcoat pocket, where it was doubtless attached to a chronometer.
But that was as far as Imbolc’s observations proceeded, because suddenly the boy spoke up and his voice was urgent.
‘Got to get out of here,’ he urged. ‘Er, very soon.’
Mister Pike went over to him and they conversed in low voices, Stort gesticulating in an oddly disjointed way, while Pike nodded and looked even grimmer.
Then the staverman turned to them. ‘When Master Stort says “soon” he means “now!” That means we have to move straight away.’
‘Where to?’ said one of the stavermen.
‘Up above,’ said Pike tersely. ‘On top of the bridge.’
‘But we’ll get cold and wet,’ protested another of them.
‘And down here you’ll get even colder, because you’ll be dead,’ said Pike.
With that, they all moved.
Fast.
Except, strangely enough, for Bedwyn Stort, who stayed right where he was, staring at Imbolc.
‘Have we met before?’ he asked, frowning.
‘Yes,’ said Imbolc, ‘but I looked a little different.’
He came closer, peered into her eyes and then at the pendant that hung from her neck. Normally she kept it covered, but it had somehow worked loose and was now plain to see on her jerkin.
‘The old woman on Waseley Hill,’ he said eventually. It had been given to very few mortals to make the connection.
‘The same,’ she admitted.
‘You’re the Peace-Weaver!’ he said, with all the excitement of discovery.
‘Am I?’
‘Looks like it,’ said Stort. ‘Same eyes and same pendant. This arch is no longer a good place to be.’
‘Thank you for the advice, Master Stort,’ she said.
They followed the others out into the rain, up the embankment to the rail track above.
13
DECISION
Two hundred miles to the north, Clare Shore pulled into the car park of the health centre in Thirsk where her husband Richard worked as a doctor.
It was a Friday and the plan was for Richard to get off early to avoid the weekend traffic, so they could head south and stay overnight in London for a wedding they were attending the following day. With luck their journey should take just three hours, so they would get to the house of the friends they were staying with by early evening.
But as Clare climbed out of the car, the sky, which had been dark and threatening all day, grew darker still and the expected downpour began in earnest.
‘We’ll make a run for it,’ she decided, grabbing the hand of Katherine, her five-year-old daughter. They got inside, breathless and laughing, the rain now torrential.
Clare was medium-height, dark-haired, cheerful-looking. Katherine was fair, unlike her mother, but tall for her age, and thin, which she got from Richard. She wore corrective glasses which made her look too studious for such a young age.
‘He’ll be a few more minutes,’ one of the receptionists told Clare. ‘You’d better wait for him here in the dry. You’re only going to get wetter if you go back to the car.’
The reception was now nearly empty of patients, except the stalwarts undaunted by the weather. Once they had sat down, Katherine stared through the plate-glass window at the rain outside and then up at the strange black-purple sky.
Sitting opposite there was a boy about her age doing the same thing.
The two children looked at each other appraisingly. Katherine gave the boy a half-smile, and he smiled back at once as if recognizing her. She looked away, not yet ready to make friends. He was dark, stolidly built, with a confident but wary air about him. There was a small neat backpack made of dark leather on the floor by his chair.
Their brief exchange of glances became more frequent, as if he was somehow watching over her.
Clare watched this interaction with interest. Katherine did not make friends easily and for her to smile at another child, and especially a complete stranger, was unusual.
But there was something else.
Clare happened to know that the same boy had been there for at least two and a half hours already, because he had been sitting in the same chair earlier that morning when she popped in to have a word with Richard about their journey.
Feeling the natural concern any mother feels for a child left alone for so long, she got up to ask a woman at reception about him.
‘He’s waiting to be picked up and taken down south,’ she explained. ‘We’re keeping an eye on him until his new case worker gets here. She’s coming all the way from London, but there’s thunderstorms on the M1, and the traffic is chaos, and maybe that’s the cause of the mix-up.’
‘What mix-up?’
‘The lady who brought him had to go, but said she would come back to see the pick-up had been made, but she’s not checked back in yet, and some mobiles are down, so . . . Anyway the boy, he seems fine. Been good as gold.’
‘Which part of London is he meant to be going to?
‘His case worker’s from Wembley, I think . . . but she’s still not responding.’
‘Wembley’s near . . . where we’re going,’ Clare blurted before she could stop herself.
She looked back at the boy and studied him more carefully. She had already noted a certain wariness of the world about him, but there was also a strength of character that bordered on defiance. From her own experience in voluntary work, she had seen that combination before in children like this, who had been let down so many times by the system that they found it hard to trust anyone or any circumstance. But there was something more about him, something quite arresting. She smiled at him and he gave a shy smile in return.
By the time Richard finally emerged from his clinic, Clare had made up her mind what she wanted to do. She suggest
ed that they should take the boy south themselves.
‘I’m not the practice manager,’ he replied reasonably. ‘This is for her to work out.’
Clare explained what had happened so far.
Richard discreetly studied the boy, and soon came to the same conclusion about him as Clare had – that what he didn’t need now was yet another let-down by the system, but people who cared. Richard needed no further persuading. If the person coming to pick him up was showing no sign of arriving, he couldn’t just leave the child sitting here all day with no alternative plan.
‘Okay, let’s see what we can do, but it’s going to delay us a bit. Do we even know his name?’
‘Jack,’ said the same receptionist, who had been listening to this exchange.
‘Come on,’ said Clare to Katherine. ‘Let’s try and make friends with him while Daddy sorts something out.’
Richard Shore started making phone-calls, first inside the building and then outside it, having been given a number written on the card that the woman who had originally dropped the boy off had left at reception. He didn’t manage to reach her in person, but instead got Roger Lynas of the North Yorkshire child-welfare agency. Yes, he knew of the case. No, he was unable to pass on the details. Yes, severe weather was causing chaos everywhere, so that the case worker coming from London to pick him up had finally been obliged to abandon her journey; and yes, it might well be very convenient if the boy could travel with them, so long as they would deliver him to where he was going in West London.
But, no, not until someone more senior had confirmed this new arrangement.
‘Strange,’ Richard told Clare. ‘We shouldn’t have to pick up someone else’s mess and take on the troubles of the world, but—’
‘But we can’t just leave him sitting here, can we?’
‘Well, we could, as a matter of fact,’ said Richard, still hesitating.
They moved away a little, so they could talk further without being overheard. The boy stayed right where he was, his eyes occasionally flicking back to Katherine. They had exchanged a couple of words, and several more glances, but now she had begun playing separately. She got up and wandered over to the pile of toys, which another child was sifting through. There was something she wanted and she knew the score: you gave one or you took one, it didn’t matter which. But being the daughter of one of the partners in the practice, Katherine had always given rather than taken.
It was the white horse which had attracted her. It looked as if it was galloping proudly across all the other toys, as if they formed the world below and it was now heading for the stars.
‘I want this one,’ she said to herself, a shade timid now. Not touching it yet and wondering if anyone was watching.
The boy was.
So were Clare and Richard.
The boy got up off his chair, went to the pile of toys, picked up the horse and offered it to Katherine.
‘You can have it,’ he said, and returned to his seat.
Katherine took it and then held it up for her mother to see. Clare smiled and nodded.
‘It’s a white horse,’ the girl said, clasping it to her face despite its raggedy age and grinning.
Richard smiled, looking resigned as, for some reason, he let this simple statement clinch things in his mind.
‘Decision made,’ he said.
When Clare broke the news to Jack that he was to go with them, he gave a brief smile of relief, but there was still a wariness about him.
Natural enough in the circumstances thought Clare, adding aloud, and she hoped reassuringly, ‘You can sit in the back with . . . well, this is Katherine.’
The boy looked serious again. ‘I’m Jack,’ he said, finally breaking the ice.
‘Hello, Jack,’ said Katherine with an easy smile.
That’s a first, Clare told herself. ‘This is my husband Richard, who’s a doctor here,’ she explained. ‘He’ll be driving us.’
Richard squatted down and reached out a hand to touch Jack’s shoulder. ‘Okay with you?’
Jack nodded.
‘Shall I take your bag?’
Jack shook his head firmly. He leant down off the chair and picked it up.
‘I will,’ he said, holding it close, as if it was all he had in the world – which maybe it was. That was when Clare saw that it wasn’t the usual cheap nylon style branded with sports logos.
It was dark leather, beautifully stitched, like an Edwardian valise, except it was so worn and shiny with use that it looked infinitely older than that.
Clare noticed something else. Jack’s accent was rich, warm, rolling. She couldn’t place it exactly but he sounded like a country boy.
‘Come on, everybody,’ urged Richard.
They rushed out through the rain, the two children laughing as they got wet. Richard slipped behind the wheel, Clare into the passenger seat beside him, Katherine sitting behind her in the back, Jack behind Richard.
They turned out of the Health Centre car park into heavy Friday traffic, any advantage of an early start now completely lost.
‘This rain’s forecast to get even worse,’ said Richard. ‘I think I’ll get on the motorway by the longer, country route, which might avoid the worst of the home-bound traffic.’
Their long journey began.
14
HAIL
Ten minutes later the Shore family and Jack had left the last of Thirsk’s street lights behind and were driving on a country road. The sky was now a lurid grey, but occasionally filled with sheet lightning.
‘Don’t be frightened!’ Richard called out to his passengers.
Clare turned to look behind her. ‘They’re not frightened, they’re fascinated,’ she told him in a low voice, turning forward again.
A short while later there was a bright flash and a crackling roll of thunder so loud that it shook the car.
Katherine stared open-mouthed, Jack wide-eyed.
A few minutes later they ran straight into a hailstorm. It sounded as if a truckload of pebbles was suddenly being poured on to the roof of the car. Richard just had time to pull over into a lay-by before the wipers failed, seizing up under the onslaught of the golfball-sized hailstones.
They were coming down so hard the noise was deafening, and Clare was worried whether the windscreen would come out the other side of the storm in one piece. Already nuggets of grey-white frozen water were piled on top of each other, obscuring the lower half of the screen. The tops of the posts of the wooden fence alongside which they had stopped were piled with hail.
For a few moments they felt transported to another world, one hemmed in by ice. Then a light slanted across the windscreen, signalling the approach of another car, and lit up the posts as well.
Richard turned on the wipers again and, as the windscreen cleared, began to pull out into the road. He braked too hard, the approaching car being on the wrong side of the road, and they all crashed forward into their seat belts. The headlights of the other vehicle came straight at them through the rain. The car missed them by inches before disappearing into the night.
‘That was close,’ murmured Richard uneasily.
‘Go carefully,’ said Clare, who was not normally a back-seat driver but was now feeling apprehensive – just as Jack had been. ‘Please.’
As Richard eased the car slowly back on to the road, they snatched a final glance at the fence posts where the hail had collected. All that was left now was dripping water which, catching the tail-lights of the receding car, turned the colour of blood.
‘Weird,’ said Richard as they finally continued their journey.
15
STANDING GUARD
Master Brief, Imbolc and the others had all moved to the top of the bridge, on Stort’s warning. He felt nervous staying under it, even if standing on top meant getting very wet.
‘Why stay at all?’ muttered one of the stavermen. ‘Nothing’s happening here.’
‘Because Master Stort wishes it,’ said Pike who, alone of
them, was not hunkering down against the rain. Ever alert and restless, he was watchful of everything in the dark. He sensed a general danger and a specific threat, and he remained standing up so he could look one way more easily, then another, and then a third.
His fear?
That they had been seen and followed by a patrol of Fyrd and even now were being watched, though even the Fyrd might remain under shelter in weather like this.
Englalond had long since suffered under the rule of this army of occupation sent to run the country by the Sinistral, ruling dynasty of the Hyddenworld, whose headquarters were across the Channel in the Rhineland.
Fyrd! Many were the hydden’s dark songs that rhymed Fyrd with wyrd, all of them bad; and, as the songsters put it, many were the good and decent folk the Fyrd had cast into grave-grip.
Pike knew very well that an expedition such as their present one was, strictly speaking, illegal. They had crept out of Brum under cover of night, so that the hydden city’s guardians, as, ironically, they called themselves, would not notice them leave. No easy feat for a hydden of Brief’s importance, and he must already have been missed.
So Pike stood guard in the rain, alert and menacing.
He glanced over at Bedwyn Stort, back now in his bin-bag, then at the other stavermen, dripping with rain; at Brief, who also stood as solid as a rock against the storm; and finally ‘the pedlar’ who he had long since guessed was a lot more than she seemed to be.
He leant on the parapet of the bridge, eyes screwed up against wind and rain, his face shiny wet when caught by lightning.
Finally he looked down along the nearly invisible road below.
Something wasn’t right.
He went coolly to the other stavermen and spoke to them quietly. ‘There’s a something in the air, a Fyrd kind of something. So you all keep alert, every one of you. You keep your stave to hand and your knives ready on your belts, understood?’
They nodded grimly. Pike had a nose for danger and they knew it.
‘Whatever it is, what it’s going to be, I don’t know. But it’s not good, not good at all. Most of all I want no harm falling on Master Stort.’