Straw Into Gold

  "Da," I said.

  "The queen."

  "But she looks..."

  "Like someone who has lost something," he finished.

  Then the queen rode out of the edge of the procession into a blurred mist and was gone.

  And suddenly I was quiet. I felt something stirring deep down that had never stirred before. It was as mysterious as a dream where I was all alone, searching for something I could not name, could not even imagine, but would know once I found. "Bring her back," I asked, "just for a moment."

  "Is Lord Tousle commanding?"

  "Tousle is asking."

  "Well, majesty is never diminished by grace. But he will see her soon enough. Now Lord Da commands that Tousle come off the bench and eat his breakfast. The oatmeal has cooled, and here is the brown bread asking to go back to the brick oven already."

  "Have I seen her before? It seems that I have seen her before."

  "Does he remember ever having left the clearing?"

  "No."

  "Then he may remember that visions may or may not be true."

  "But it is true that today we'll be in Wolverham. And it is true that today I will see the king."

  "So Lord Tousle should have something fitting to wear." Da took from his pocket a square-linked golden chain and held it in a shaft of morning sun, gleaming dully. I jumped from the bench and helped him clamber up, and standing behind me, he fastened it around my neck."He shall wear it until he knows when to give it away," he said, his voice quiet, a little saddened.

  "I could never give away something you have given me."

  "He will give it away when there is need," Da answered.

  He had never before given me anything like it. A new jerkin, a knife, a plow, yes. The tethered ball we struck together, the bright paper frame we lofted to the wind like a rainbow in the sky, certainly. But never something like this chain. The weight of it surprised me. It lay cold and sharp against my chest, and somehow its giving turned the morning solemn.

  "So," Da said, and leapt down. "Shall Tousle and Da go or stay? There is still the splitting to do, and then there's the spinning all to begin." He pulled up his beard and fingered the tip of it. "And there's the noontime blizzard to mind."

  "Da, we're to Wolverham."

  He considered. "Yes, I suppose. The splitting will keep. As for the spinning..." He snapped the fingers of his left hand, and the wheel sprung around, hesitated once, then whirled into a smooth circle."Four skeins, maybe five before the snow begins," he instructed.

  "There will be no snow!"

  I hurried Da through breakfast, and while the bowls doused and dried themselves, I fetched the horses. By the time I led them saddled and eager from the barn, Da had finished with the hamper we were to take. I hustled him out of the house and hefted him onto the Gray, adjusting the girth beneath him and loosening it again when the buckle snagged his beard.

  "Tousle and Da will be there"—I led his left foot into the stirrup—"when they will be there," he fussed. I ignored him, guided the right foot into the other stirrup, tied the hamper behind his saddle, then leapt up onto the Dapple.

  "Da, which way?" I called, the Dapple pulling at the bit and tossing his head back and forth. He could never forget that he had once been a colt.

  "A moment, a moment. He's in such a blessed hurry. Wolverham will wait through the day."

  "Da, the procession..."

  "No doubt the king himself will wait for Tousle's arrival." And turning around, he blinked his eyes at the house. The door closed and fastened itself, and the shutters banged together across the windows. "Now," he said, "to Wolverham."

  Da glided his hand across the clearing and toward the dark woods. I held my breath—and held it, and held it. And then the trees shoved themselves aside, wallowing with their deep roots in earth, their boughs waving gracefully to scent the air. A pine-needle path stretched slowly like a yawning cat between the trees, stretching and stretching until it fell down a small hill and was lost to sight. Neither the Dapple nor the Gray needed any urging.

  The clearing was unbound.

  It was cold and soft under the trees, the last of winter's snow as powdery as flour. It blew off the pine needles as we approached, so that we moved without a sound except for the steamy snorting of the Dapple, who was glad to be out and eager to show it. I let him have his head, and we trotted, the trees just ahead of us backing away as we approached, then clasping their boughs together and closing behind us.

  Suddenly the trunks shoved back more quickly, and with a rush the Gray galloped by, Da leaning close to his neck and laughing for all the world. "And Tousle so anxious to get to Wolverham," he hollered over his shoulder. I spurred the Dapple, but the trees rushed in close and narrow behind Da, and there was no room to pass.

  "Hardly fair," I yelled, but Da pretended he had not heard.

  We rollicked down the hillsides, the air so fiercely cold I could hardly breathe. It seared my lungs, but still I hollered and laughed and hollered again, all the while hearing Da's hooting and hooting, and the Gray's hooves flinging snow and dirt in my face so I was always spitting it out and pulling back. I pressed the Dapple, but the trees never opened enough for me to pass until we reached the lowland, and the woods threaded themselves out to fields and meadows. Da waited for me to catch up with him, his face red and glowing, his beard flung back over his shoulder. "There's a balance, he should know, between letting a horse have his way and guiding him. It takes experience to find such a balance. He'll never win a race unless he finds it." Da grinned.

  "When you set the trees to keep me from a pass..."

  "Well, if he must find an excuse, there is that." He laughed.

  "And you've been this way before. You must have, since you know the path."

  "To Wolverham and back."

  "I suppose you've been to the castle itself, Da."

  "On occasion."

  "Perhaps you've seen the king and queen. The doors opened before you and the guards bowed you into their august presence. You knelt to them, and they promised you great rewards if you would perform a great service."

  "Something close to that."

  I laughed a cloud into the cold air. "Da, you've never been to the castle, much less seen the king and queen. Never in your life."

  Da winked over at me. "Tousle might try to imagine for a moment—I know that this is difficult, but he might try to imagine anyway—that there is something in this wide, wide world that he does not know."

  "The Gray will sprout wings before I believe you've been to the castle."

  "Then he will be plucking horsehair from the clouds before long."

  The Gray and the Dapple ambled along companionably. It was warmer down in the lowland, and though spring was still a time away, the fields were turning their dark selves to soak up the sunlight. Some of the fields were already furrowed, and we passed a cart laden with the winter's manure moving up and down the rows, drawn by thick horses. I pulled back on the Dapple to watch: I had never seen such fields, and the work of them, the sheer hard work of them, thrilled me.

  "Come fall, the gold wheat of these fields will be brighter than a winter sun," Da whispered. "Tousle will see." The farmer seemed to hear us and waved cheerfully.

  The first building we passed that morning was a low mossy inn, where coachmen waited patiently for travelers sleeping late. They too waved to us, and I waved back, awkward, realizing with a start that I had never before waved to anyone other than Da. "The fresh morning of the world," they called, and I smiled and waved again, not sure how to answer them.

  Now farmhouses started to scatter themselves in the fields, blue smoke rising straight and quick in the cold, still air, their stuccoed sides covered with vines that would soon leaf out. As we rode on, they settled themselves closer and closer together, until I could have called from the window of one and been heard over at the other. In one yard ducks and geese waddled and cackled in the bright light, gathering around a farm girl spreading feed from out her apro
n—a real farm girl, not just one of Da's pictures in the air. I waved to her, but she did not see me.

  "The fresh morning of the world," I hollered.

  She turned to look, smiled shyly, and then went back to her sowing.

  I watched her until the road bent us away.

  We passed a low cottage whose walls leaned in to hold each other up. No waddling and cackling here. It was a yard full of puddles and yellow mud. The stone walls of the mill beside it were still covered with white ice, and the mill wheel groaned at its turning as if it could barely make its way through the river water. It looked to be a frozen, hard world that these people lived in, and when a woman stooped out from the cottage, carting a yoke with buckets over her shoulders, she did not look up as I called to her.

  "Da," I said,"must she carry those herself?"

  "She must."

  "And us sitting here watching her."

  Da said nothing, and I slipped off the Dapple and ran through stained puddles to her."Mother, let me carry those for you on this fresh morning of the world."

  She turned her face up to me from underneath the yoke, and I was startled by the washed-out gray of her eyes, and by the sharpness of the cheekbones that looked ready to knife through the skin. I reached over and took the buckets from her, wondering how long it had been since someone had done a kindness for this old woman. She pointed to the open water, and I took the buckets, one in each hand, and knelt down to the river. Here the turning of the wheel was so loud I could not speak to her, the spray of it freezing on my face as I dragged the black water up.

  Together we walked back to the cottage. She turned at the doorway and reached out for the water. "I've nothing to—"

  She stopped and held out her hand as if to touch my cheek.

  "What is it, Mother?"

  Her outstretched finger, gnarled and bunched, pulled back. Then she shook her head. "An old woman's fancy. That's all that is left. An old woman's fancy." She took the buckets from me, and with a look of such longing that all the wealth of the East could not fill it, she turned and went inside.

  Slowly I climbed back up the Dapple. "Hers is a lonely, hard life."

  "There's the miller to keep it with her."

  "But there's a coldness about that place. It looks like it lost something a long time ago."

  "It does," Da said quietly."Like the queen."

  On to Wolverham. Soon others joined us on the road, walking with slung packs, or riding in carts or on jaunty horses. It seemed as if all the kingdom were draining into Wolverham to see the procession of the king. The Gray and the Dapple caught the excitement, and we had to hold their heads tightly.

  "Once we're in town, what shall we do, Da?"

  "Tousle should go to the castle to see if their majesties are ready to receive him."

  "Da."

  "If not, then they'll find a spot to see the king's procession, and after that, the day will unfold itself as it will." A vision of the procession came over me. It would be grander than anything I had ever seen. Horses and banners, trumpets and armored knights, pageant wagons and cavalry—I imagined them all marching to echoing cheers, cheers that would join with the blaring trumpets, neighing horses, and thundering hooves to deafen me.

  "He is grinning," said Da.

  "I suppose."

  "He looks like a lunatic, grinning at nothing."

  "You look like a madman, scowling at everything."

  "Then there's a fair pair," he called, and swatted at me.

  The first sight of the gates of Wolverham did not disappoint. Long yellow streamers flowed in the breeze, lofting and sinking with the air. The arches were larger than our whole house, taller than most trees I had seen, and as we drew near and felt the press of the crowd, they loomed round and open and grand. Once beneath them, I hunched down under the terrible press of weight held up by the arch's invisible hand. I reined the Dapple in and looked up to where the stones rounded into a perfect curve, marveling that they should not fall.

  Ahead of me, Da turned around."If he stops there long enough, that fellow behind him—the one with the manure cart—will dump his load in a place neither had expected."

  I pressed the Dapple out from the shadow of the gates and came to the edge of the town square of Wolverham. I suppose my mouth gaped. Da shook his head at me and whispered,"Like a lunatic," but I could not care. It was bigger and noisier and smellier and grander than I had ever imagined. I slipped off the Dapple and balanced on the solid roundness of cobblestones. The clatter of carts and the ringing of horseshoes filled the air. Merchants cried out, hawking ducks, butchered pigs, last fall's turnips and apples, embroidered clothes "from faraway Cathay." The spiced scents of roasted sweetmeats wafted from small fires and mingled with other smells that had more to do with barns.

  "He should close his mouth," Da said."First, to livery the horses. Across the square there. And then, to eat." I took the reins of the two horses and led them to a stable that charged a fee so high that even the stableman grimaced with the saying of it.

  "So much, then?"

  "So much on the day of a procession."

  Da scooped up some dirt, clenched his hand, shook it once, and dropped two silver coins into the hand of the startled stableman. "There will be two, perhaps three more come evening."

  "When you'll find the horses curried and fed, sir," the stableman answered,"better than if you and the boy were to do it yourselves."

  We left the Dapple and the Gray nuzzling an unexpected portion of oats—and the stableman digging frantically at the dirt where Da had stood—and soon Da was juggling hot sweetmeats in his hands and I was following with the hamper. We sat at the edge of the square, Da squeezing honey from the comb onto his brown bread and pouring hot cider from a jug, me burning the tip of my tongue on the sweetmeats, but mostly just watching as we ate. Day after day these smells, these sounds, these people filled the square. And they filled it without me. Day after day.

  When he finished his brown bread, Da pulled up his beard and checked it for crumbs. Then he plucked his pipe from his vest pocket.

  "Da, the procession!"

  "The king will not wait for a smoke?"

  I stood. Da sighed, and started to fuss with the hamper. "Da, we'll be late."

  "Then Tousle should take this to the livery, and by the time he is back, he'll..."

  But I did not wait to hear. I pushed through the square with the hamper, left it with the stableman—he was still digging for coins—pushed back through the square, grabbed Da's hand—"But the pipe is just lit!"—and soon we were jostling for a place on the broad way that stretched from the square to the castle. The crowd was so thick that I walked in front to keep Da from being trampled. I had not imagined what it would be like to have so many bodies pressed against me. And all the while, far ahead down the way, the massive stones of the castle rose like a mountain, tier after tier into the sky.

  We found a place on the rise of an arched bridge spanning a small rivulet and stood with our elbows out to fend off the crowds. At the sound of trumpets, we craned our necks down the way, and I leaned out to be the first to see.

  It was all as I had hoped—and much more. Banners sprang high, and I could hear the battering of the iron-shod horses. The crowd throated its cheers, so loud that the very stones of the bridge rang to them.

  Da took me by the elbow. "He must remember what the procession is for."

  "Of course, Da. For the king." I shouted so that he might hear me. More trumpets sounded, with notes high and clear and so piercing that it seemed as if they must crack the glassy blue of the sky. I leaned out even farther, but I still could not see anything but crowds and the high banners.

  "Tousle is not quite right."

  "For the king's victory over the rebels." But I could hardly listen to Da, for suddenly the feathered helmets of the first horsemen waved over the crowd.

  "For the king's victory over those who rebelled against Lord Beryn," Da corrected. "He must listen to me now. No, to me. Li
sten. The rebellion was against Lord Beryn."

  "Yes, Lord Beryn, the first of the Great Lords. I know. There, Da, the cavalry. Can you see?" The sun mirrored their silver armor, and reflections from it danced merrily against the houses that fronted the avenue.

  But Da was not listening. He reached up with both hands and pulled my face down toward him. "Nothing is ever quite by chance. What spins out now took its place on the wheel long ago. Does he understand? Does Tousle understand?"

  "Da," I said,"the procession."

  I think he sighed. It was hard to tell, with the sounding trumpets. But he held on to me and spoke once more. "Our home on the hillside: let it come back to him now and again."

  And then the procession was upon us, louder than glory, brighter than song. While the glittering cavalry passed, trumpets silvered the sunlight. After the trumpets, foot soldiers strutted past, gleaming lances held to the sky, blue coverlets fringed with gold slapping from the tips. Then the king's stable: white horses groomed to the ideal, their manes and tails ribboned with golden thread, their hooves polished to shiny horn, their eyes red and nostrils flared.

  And on the largest of these horses the king himself, in bright golden armor crested with feathers whiter than nature had ever conceived. He held his arms out to his people, and I cheered and hollered and pressed forward to touch the sunlit, golden king. He seemed to carry the light of the day on his shoulders.

  Just behind him came the twelve Great Lords, robed in ermine, riding on twelve piebald steeds. Lord Beryn rode first, the crowd calling out his name when they saw him. He moved through the cheering air like a proud statue, oblivious to those around him. So too the other eleven lords, so proud, so powerful that they would not look beneath them. Their horses strained at the reins, but the stone hands of the Great Lords held them in check, so even the jeweled rings that fell from their lordly ears hung perfectly straight and still.

  They pulled after them Lord Beryn's own Guard, knights mounted on stern, high-stepping horses. With swords unsheathed and held upright, they seemed a small forest of glittering steel, and the crowd drew back from them as they would from a loosely chained wild animal. The tunics that covered their armor were bright white, with no ensign.