The Islands of Chaldea

  Actually, my aunt is a good shopper. She managed to assemble some quite decent provisions and sent Finn off to the bread stall while she bargained for what she had chosen.

  “Why are you sending him?” Ivar wanted to know.

  “He’s a monk. He’ll get half of it free,” my aunt snapped and turned back to the bargaining.

  This did not go well. Whatever price Aunt Beck suggested, the woman behind the stall named a higher one. And, when Aunt Beck protested, all the woman would say was, “You must remember there’s a war on.”

  “What war is this?” my aunt demanded.

  “The war against the Finens of course,” the woman said.

  “What are the Finens?” said Aunt Beck.

  “Cheating monsters from Ballyhoyle way,” was the answer. “You must know that the Finens never paid us for our cloth in my grandmother’s time. And were forever cheating and lying ever since. So last month our men went and took their sheep for payment. Last week the Finens came asking for the sheep back. But naturally we had eaten them by then, so the Finens took all our cattle and the food out of the fields, and when we asked for it back they threw stones. So yesterday our men took up their weapons and went out to teach the Finens a lesson or two. There was a great battle then.”

  “Who won?” Ivar asked with interest.

  The woman shrugged. “Who knows? For all we can tell the fighting still goes on.”

  “But I am sure,” Finn said, arriving back with a great basket of bread rolls, “that the might of the men of Coolochie will prevail.”

  The woman looked pleased at this, but she did not let Aunt Beck have the food any cheaper. Aunt Beck sighed and graciously paid over most of the money King Colm had given her. “And now let’s get out of here,” she said to the rest of us.

  We had lunch a couple of miles on into the plains beyond Coolochie. “Do you think Coolochie’s in the right in this war?” Ogo asked, thinking about it as he munched.

  “Of course not,” Aunt Beck said irritably. “Both sides are complete blackguards. From the sound of it, they’ve been stealing each other’s property for centuries. Are you finished? Let’s be on our way. I want to be out of this miserable country as soon as I can be.”

  We had none of us really finished, but no one liked to argue with Aunt Beck in this mood so we walked along still eating. Finn said soothingly, “You’ll find Bernica’s not so bad, Wisdom, when you’re used to our ways.”

  Aunt Beck shuddered.

  We came over a couple of gentle rises to find the war blocking our road.

  The road here divided into several flat green tracks. Spread out over most of them was a bright-coloured, struggling mass of people. We could see red, yellow and orange crests of feathers, shining swords lifting and hacking, and long shields painted with lurid designs. There were yells, hoots and groans. Every so often a pair of fighters would come loose from the rest and rush across the nearby fields, plunging into ditches and through ponds, and screaming insults as they whacked at one another’s shields. Meanwhile, the battle heaved and walloped away across all the tracks but the one on the extreme left.

  Aunt Beck pulled Moe up in disgust. Ivar, rather nervously, half drew his sword. Ogo made as if to pull his dirk out and then thought better of it. There were a lot of people there. Finn made religious signs.

  “Do we wait?” I asked Aunt Beck. “They must have been going for a day and a night by now.”

  “I suppose so,” my aunt replied sourly. “They have to stop soon.”

  “No, no!” squawked Green Greet.

  “Oh no, Wisdom,” Finn said. “You see, they will have prayed each man to his chosen god for strength to fight for a week. And poured whisky out to seal the bargain.”

  “What a waste of good liquor,” said my aunt. “But I see that they have.”

  So did I see, now I thought. There was an invisible cloud hanging over the tussling men which was strong enough to feel. “So what do we do?” I asked.

  “We take the only free road,” Aunt Beck said, sighing, “and hope that it leads us to a king sometime soon.” She clucked to Moe and we set off again, slowly and cautiously, along the left-hand track. I felt nervous sweat break out all over me as we came closer and closer to the war. I was ready to scream as we came level with it. The red faces, the grunts and the banging were simply appalling. Once the battle was a little way behind us, it was almost worse. We all went with our heads turned over our right shoulders, in case someone broke away and came after us, and none of us spoke until we had put a low hill between us and the fighting.

  Then Finn took off his frayed green cap and mopped his face with it. “Praise the Goddess!” he said. Then he laughed. “You spoke of a king, Wisdom,” he said, “but in this part of the country we are quite as likely to find a queen. Queens are very frequent here. Does this worry you, Wisdom?”

  “Not at all,” said my aunt. “Women have far more sense than men.”

  Ivar snorted at this, but at least he had the sense not to say anything.

  We went along the track for some way until, about the time the noise from the fighting died out of hearing, the path suddenly divided into three. Aunt Beck pulled Moe up again.

  “Now this is very annoying,” she said. “Finn, have you any idea which is our way to go?”

  Finn looked absolutely nonplussed. “No, Wisdom. Can you not divine?”

  “Oh!” cried my aunt, quite exasperated. “I thought you were our native guide! Very well. Aileen, unpack my divining bowl from the green bag, will you?”

  We moved the cart over beside a convenient flat stone, while I dug in the bag – which still smelt strongly of seawater – and disentangled the bowl from Aunt Beck’s underclothes. Everyone gathered around to watch except Ivar, who sat loftily facing the other way, trying not to yawn. Ogo leant over my shoulder. Green Greet sat on the edge of the cart, bending over to look, with Finn beside him in exactly the same attitude. I felt Plug-Ugly’s soft coat brushing my legs as he came to watch too.

  “Now—” said my aunt.

  She was interrupted by a little red-haired man who had evidently been dozing with his back against the stone. “What’s all this?” he said. “Clattering bowls about. Can’t a man sleep?”

  “I beg your pardon,” my aunt said icily. “I was merely trying to divine the right way to go.”

  “Oh, I can tell you that,” the man retorted. “No need at all to clatter. Take the middle way. That will bring you to your queen.” And he settled down to sleep again with his pointed chin on his chest.

  “Thank you,” said Aunt Beck. “I think,” she added when the fellow just snored. Nevertheless, she got back into the cart. I put the bowl away again and we went on down the central road of the three.

  Finn and Green Greet seemed mightily disappointed. Finn said, “And here was I hoping to see a Wisdom at work!”

  Ivar muttered that he couldn’t see what difference it made which road we took. “It’s all the same in this beastly flat country,” he told Ogo.

  Ogo said, “Funny, I feel the same way about Skarr.”

  “What do you mean?” Ivar demanded. “Skarr’s not flat.”

  “No, but there’s always just another mountain,” Ogo said.

  “Oh, you’re such a fool!” Ivar said and went stalking angrily ahead along the turfy track.

  “Do you mean that?” I asked Ogo. “Can’t you really tell one mountain from another?”

  “Well, they have different shapes,” Ogo conceded, “but they’re all high and steep and rocky and – well – the same colours.”

  I supposed he had a point.

  After that, we trudged along for miles, through several more showers of rain and rainbows as the sun came out again, until I for one was both tired and hungry.

  “Hold up,” Finn said to me kindly. “Here we come into the town.”

  “What town?” Ivar said. There was nothing around us except green humps. They were the sort of humps you get when people have been mining
years ago and then gone away and let grass grow over the spoil heaps. These heaps grew taller and taller as we went along.

  Aunt Beck gave Finn an irritable, puzzled look. “This doesn’t look like any town I know.”

  Finn beamed. He almost glowed, he was so happy. On his shoulder, Green Greet stretched his neck and gave out a most unparrot-like warbling sound. But I had been thinking for some time now that Green Greet was not exactly a parrot. He was more something along the lines of Plug-Ugly really. Finn lifted his beaming face up to my aunt and said, “No more should you know, Wisdom. This is my Lady’s town.”

  I saw what he meant. If I screwed my eyes up, and sort of peered at the green humps, I saw them as house-shaped, with green thatched roofs and high arched doorways. At length, Aunt Beck was driving Moe down a wide turf avenue with mansion-sized green houses on either side and ahead a tall, tall hill that managed to be both rounded and castle-shaped at once. She looked down at Finn, trotting beside the cart. “Would you say,” she asked, “that the person beside that stone happened to be a leprechaun?”

  “Oh certainly, Wisdom,” he said joyfully. “No doubt of it.”

  “Then are we to be wary of tricks?” asked my aunt.

  “Only if you invite them, Wisdom,” Finn said.

  “Hm,” she said.

  We reached the castle-mound then and we were suddenly surrounded by little red-haired men, who flooded in from nowhere and took hold of Moe and unhitched her from the cart, chattering all the time.

  “Sure, the queen will be glad of this!” I heard, and, “This is royal visiting! Has no one yet sounded a fanfare?” and “Can you smell the sea on them? They come from distant islands, all but one,” and all sorts of other things. “See the bird!”

  In no time at all Moe had been led off one way, and the cart hauled away in another, and we ourselves ushered into the castle-mound. There were different people in there, though they were very hard to see. It was as if there was a veil over everything inside. But, if I screwed my eyes up and peered hard, I could tell they were very tall and dressed most magnificently. Almost equally hard to see was the table they led us up to, all laid out with steaming dishes of food, piles of fruit and golden candlesticks.

  “Be pleased to sit and eat,” they told us.

  Ivar and Ogo made a dive for the tall chairs at the table. Aunt Beck stopped me and looked at Finn with her head on one side, questioningly. “Ought we?”

  “You come in friendship. Yes,” he said.

  So we sat down to eat. It was all delicious, and I saw that there was even a cup of nuts and diced fruit for Green Greet. Dimly, on the floor, I could see that there were dishes of food for Plug-Ugly. They knew he was there, even if he was invisible. We all had the best meal I’d seen since we left Skarr.

  When we had finished, the tall people led us off again, to a place that I knew at once was the throne room. Ogo had eaten so much that he was quietly letting his belt out as we were led in and he had to stop in embarrassment. The place was one where you had to behave reverently. The air of it was warm and fresh and cool at the same time, and it was scented like a garden. There were nets in there, though I couldn’t see them clearly, with birds in them flitting. Green Greet took off from Finn’s shoulder in a whirring of wings and went to perch on one of the half-seen branches.

  Then the queen came forward to greet us. I gasped: she was so beautiful. And merrily and eagerly friendly with it. She wore a green dress that hugged her shape and flared at her feet, with a gold girdle hanging on her hips. I remember thinking, This is how a queen should be! as she came towards us.

  “Welcome,” she said, and she smiled, meaning the welcome. “It’s not often that we see people from Skarr. What brings you to Bernica?”

  My aunt stepped forward, very straight and precise. I could see she was still struggling with her bad mood, but she bowed politely and said, “We have been sent on a mission to rescue the High King’s son from Haranded, Your Majesty.”

  “Oh yes, the prophecy,” the Queen said, “to raise the barrier too, is it not?” She looked at us all one by one. “That means you must bring one man from each of the islands. You,” she looked at Ivar, “must be the man from Skarr.”

  Ivar nodded. “Yes, I’m the son of King Kenig …” he agreed and tipped his head back proudly.

  “A prince, no less,” said the Queen, and there was just a trace of mockery in the way she said it. It made me want to jump forward and explain that Ivar had been brought up to be proud of his birth, but I said nothing, because the Queen had turned to Finn by then. Finn, to my surprise, was on both knees and seemed almost terrified. “And you are the man from Bernica?” the Queen said.

  Finn clasped both plump hands in front of him as if he were saying his prayers. “Oh yes, Lady,” he more or less whispered, “unless you think me unworthy.”

  The Queen laughed. “How could I think you unworthy, keeper of Green Greet?” she said.

  “Well, sure, he does me great honour accepting my care,” Finn said.

  The Queen glanced up at Green Greet where he sat among the hard-to-see leaves above us. “What do you say to that, Green Greet?” she asked the bird.

  Green Greet put his head to one side and nibbled with his beak. “Honest man,” he said. “Man of peace.”

  “There you have it!” the Queen said, laughing again. She added to Aunt Beck, “You’ll have to leave any fighting to these lads, you know!” She looked at Ogo then. “And you, young man?”

  Ogo had been staring at her as if she were the most marvellous thing he had ever seen – and I don’t blame him: she was truly lovely. When she spoke to him, he blushed bright brick colour and went down on one knee. “I – I’m from H-Haranded really,” he stammered. “I was brought along as Ivar’s servant.”

  “But rightly brought along,” the Queen said. “The prophecy asks for a man from each island, doesn’t it? And we are four islands. I’m sure you’ll prove your worth.” She turned to Aunt Beck again. “You’ll need your man from Gallis too of course. I’ll give you money to see you there—”

  Here, while Aunt Beck was graciously bowing her head in thanks and Ogo was struggling to his feet, looking stunned, the Queen was interrupted by a solid, invisible presence that pushed itself up against her skirts. I could clearly see the shape of him in the bellying and rippling of the green fabric.

  “Oh, Plug-Ugly!” I said. “Honestly!”

  The Queen stooped to put her hand where Plug-Ugly’s head seemed to be. “Is that what you call him?” she said. “How did he find you?”

  “He was on an island that seemed to be part of Lone, Majesty,” I said. “He – er – sort of followed us.”

  “Or followed you,” the Queen said. She turned to Aunt Beck again. “You are very lucky to have such a gifted assistant,” she said.

  I knew I was blushing redder than Ogo. Aunt Beck shot me a scathing look and answered in her driest way, “If gifted means secretly adopting a stray cat, then I suppose I am lucky, yes.”

  This did not please the Queen at all. Her beautiful eyes narrowed and she said, quite fiercely, “I know this cat. He would only follow someone of great abilities.”

  Aunt Beck shrugged. “I’ve no idea what Aileen’s abilities might be.”

  “My good woman!” the Queen exclaimed. “Why not?”

  If there is one thing my aunt hates, it is being called a good woman. She drew herself in like a poker. “Why?” she said. “What a stupid question. Because Aileen failed her initiation of course.”

  I think I went even redder. My face was so hot that when I put up my hands to hide it my fingers were wet with sweat. I know Aunt Beck was in a bad mood, but did she have to tell the Queen that? I could hear Ivar trying not to laugh.

  The Queen made me feel no better by saying angrily, “She can have done no such thing! You must be very unobservant. I can see she is as well qualified as you are. And I do not like your manner, woman. I have said I will grant you money and so I will, but I shall d
o nothing more to further your mission. And you, particularly, may leave my presence unblessed! Go!” She flung out an arm, pointing.

  And that is the last I remember of her. Ogo says he thinks he remembers that people took us and hustled us out of the place. But I only remember being outside, among the green mounds, with Moe already harnessed to the cart beside us. My aunt was clutching a chinking leather bag and looking surprised and angry about it.

  Finn was crying, with big tears rolling into his strange beard. “Oh, Wisdom!” he sobbed. “How could you so insult the Lady?”

  Green Greet added to this by swirling down from somewhere, crying out, “Unwise Wisdom, unwise Wisdom!”

  “Huh!” said Aunt Beck and stomped her way up into the driving seat, red heels flashing annoyance at us all.

  Strange to say, our journey after that did not go well. For one thing, it rained all the rest of the time we were on Bernica. Ivar did not help matters by saying morosely, several times a day, that my aunt should know better than to go around insulting queens. This kept Aunt Beck’s bad mood simmering, so that Ogo and Finn hardly dared go near her.

  I had to be near her though, because we shared a damp bed in every damp inn we came to. That first night, Aunt Beck took me severely to task about my wretched initiation. “You told me nothing happened that night, Aileen. Why did you lie to me?”

  “I didn’t lie,” I wailed. “Nothing happened. I just didn’t have any visions, that’s all.”

  “Something must have happened,” Aunt Beck insisted. “What are you hiding?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I told you!”

  “Nonsense. Tell me about every minute of the time you were in there,” my aunt commanded. “Every tiny thing. Out with it.”

  “You mean,” I said, “I have to keep saying I sat there, Aunt Beck, and I shivered, and the floor was cold and hard, Aunt Beck, and it was too dark to see anything, Aunt Beck, over and over for however many hours I was in there? Because that was what it was like.”