‘How things change, Stort,’ said his friend. ‘Less than two years ago General Meyor Feld, as he now is, abducted Katherine from Woolstone on Brunte’s behalf and tried to kill Jack in the process, and now here we are as envoys to parley with them and persuade Jack to return to Brum and leave Katherine behind. A tall order I think!’
‘It’s a topsy-turvy world,’ said Stort. ‘You were better off not being involved in that incident, though I confess it was a fine sight watching Jack wield Brief’s stave of office so formidably. I was glad not to get in his way . . . How far off that incident now seems! How much has happened since!’
They ducked under the wire fence that formed the only boundary to the garden and, in a few steps more, found themselves in the henge Stort remembered so well.
‘Well, I’ve got you here in one piece, Stort. What now? Making contact with humans is your domain I think. For myself I think it dangerous work and will leave it to you to find the best approach.’
While Barklice set up camp nearby and made a brew Stort explored the far side of the henge, from where he had a view of the main part of the garden and the house.
He saw that the conservatory doors were open but no sign of people. He lingered longer than he should, enjoying the afternoon and, like the last time he was here, the chimes. The like of them he had seen nowhere else in the Hyddenworld, nor in the literature. Their purpose seemed something more than to make pleasant music, and when he had examined them before they seemed, though frail, quite old.
Jack’s explanation had been unsatisfactory, telling him merely that no one in the house remembered a time when they were not there, which made them older than half a century. Also that Katherine’s mother believed they offered protection of some kind and had to do with little people . . .
‘Which is to say ourselves,’ Stort said to himself as, cautiously wandering over to where they hung, he watched them turn and swing in the breeze, never still, always making a sound of one kind and another.
‘Tomatoes!’ he said suddenly, for there was a haphazard row of them nearby which he did not recall before.
He liked the scent of their leaves and, had they been ripe, might have been tempted to take a few for breakfast.
He heard a call from Barklice from the edge of the henge to say their brew was ready and waiting and time moving on; supper was served.
He turned back at once and the two went back to the camp and sat talking like the friends they truly were.
Darkness fell, the stars showed, and as with the previous evening they heard the alluring sound of bilgesnipe music carried on the breeze.
‘Paley’s Creek,’ murmured Stort, and this time Barklice did not object, for it is given to true friends to say the right things in the right way at the right time. So Stort then.
Barklice said nothing, but Stort heard his friend blowing his nose and wiping his eyes and he guessed that the deep emotions provoked the day before and expressed as anger had surfaced again and turned into quiet tears. For what, Stort had no idea and he did not feel it his business to ask.
While Barklice pondered his thoughts, Stort pondered his own. On the morrow, he hoped, he would see the Shield Maiden for the first time. She would be young and small no doubt . . . but he didn’t really know.
‘Have you ever looked into the eyes of a child, Barklice?’
Stort knew the moment he asked it that he had inadvertently reached into his friend’s heart’s core.
Barklice was a long time replying.
When he did he simply said, rather softly, ‘Yes.’
‘And may I ask, what did you feel?’
‘Love,’ said Barklice, more quietly still, ‘I felt love I think. Yes, love.’
‘Oh!’ murmured Stort at this very unexpected reply. ‘Love? That is a strong emotion. Whose child were you looking at?’
Barklice’s head sank a little and his brew almost spilled, so forgetful of holding it did he become.
‘I would rather you had not asked that question, Stort.’
‘Then I un-ask it at once! Think of it no more!’
Barklice shook his head.
‘That cannot be, my dear friend. Such a question as that, once asked, cannot be denied. To do so is to turn my back on a truth I have run from too long. Certain things of late have forcibly reminded me of my cowardice, which explains my rudeness last evening, for which I apologize.’
‘What truth?’ asked Stort.
‘The truth is that I am a fraud, Stort,’ said Barklice brokenly, ‘and have been for many years. All my talk of not having loved, of not having known the joys of which we have so often spoken, was . . . a lie.’
‘But Barklice,’ began Stort, dumbfounded, ‘you—’
‘I lied. I have known love, both carnal and spiritual, and I cannot deny it more. You asked who the child was into whose eyes I looked with love.’
‘Yes, I did,’ said Stort.
‘He was my own, Stort, he was my own and I turned my back on him!’
‘Oh Barklice,’ said Stort very quietly, ‘oh my dear friend!’
And there by the henge, with the tinkle of the chimes to one side of them, and the mysterious music of Paley’s Creek to the other, Barklice wept and whispered, ‘He was mine, Stort, but I denied him and gave up the most precious thing I ever had! Yes, I looked once into the eyes of a child but knew not the wonder of what I saw!’
22
WANDERING SCHOLAR
By the time Slew arrived in Brum, the group into whose trust and affections he had murderously insinuated himself treated him like a brother, and also as the Brother he affected to be.
They fell in different ways under his spell. Their leader Gerolt, who had been wounded in the attack from which Slew saved him, felt physically and mentally undermined. Ansel was sick in body and heart from the attack and was happy to let Slew take the lead. Bente, Gerolt’s brother, gave way to him; Diederick, their uncle, could make no objection to him, though Slew was too smooth, too sophisticated, to be likeable to him.
Of the females, Evelien, who was Diederick’s daughter, had yielded quickest to Slew’s demands. She did so for two reasons, each as potent as the other. One was lust, which came the moment she saw him killing their assailants and in command, powerful, bloodied on their behalf. She felt raw, visceral, naked desire.
She lay sleepless in the night for him, and was his long before his first, demanding, expectant touch; yielding before his first kiss; his for ever and a day before their first, strong, silent, almost brutal moment of union.
The second reason was more base, more common.
She knew her cousin felt the same and wished to make her jealous. In taking Slew to herself she took him from her uncle’s daughter, Machtild. The younger woman, though only by a few years, triumphing over the older.
But not the weaker, not the less passionate, not the less powerful.
When Slew, in the night, in secret from the males who slept and snored in their heavy way, grew bored with Evelien, he slipped away to Machtild’s bed.
Of the two, that is Slew and Machtild, who toyed with whom would be hard to say, but, probably, she with him. She let him go only so far before she said in his ear, ‘You are Evelien’s, Mirror help you, not mine. Go back to her.’
Which Slew liked.
It roused him to be rejected by one who wanted him.
It amused him, so he laughed.
‘I will,’ he said, removing his hands but not quite his body and turning on his back, ‘I will go back to her. But tell me something, sweet Machtild.’
She was in fact, anything but sweet. Beautiful, yes; intelligent, yes; amusing, certainly; courageous, definitely. But sweet? As salt.
‘Yes?’
They talked then into the night, not touching like lovers but flank to flank, familiar, comfortable, like horses in a field. Touching in a way he had never touched a female before, her body good, her full breasts sometimes brushing his chest; her hands sometimes caressing him in passing b
y, but nothing more.
His body was the same with her.
So they talked until the dawn and the time came to return briefly to Evelien’s bed for courtesy’s sake.
The males were routine-bound and as they slept so they woke, almost by rote, always at the same time. Slew might have been making love with Evelien until five minutes before their due time to wake arrived and still he could continue a minute or two more, knowing they would stir but not quite wake. It pleased him to make fools of them.
Machtild sensed that in Slew she had found her destiny.
Whatever he was, she knew he was no ordinary hydden, nor ordinary Fyrd. His body was a god’s. His touch divine. His intelligence an excitement and incitement to her own. His humour, dark and treacherous, was like her own.
‘You are not so bad yourself,’ he said, parrying her compliments. ‘Not what I would have expected from loins as doltish as this family’s!’
‘You are acute, Slew,’ she said, ‘very. He is not, I think, my father.’
‘Then . . . ?’
‘Go back to Evelien. Dawn approaches, she will have need of you, and that done you will have need of sleep. Her opportunities to enjoy you get less and less.’
‘Why, am I leaving?’
‘I think you may be, sooner than you say.’
‘It’s you, not I, who’s acute, Machtild!’
Brum was awash with rumours of the gem of Spring when they arrived. The one thing that was agreed was that the well-known scholar Bedwyn Stort had found it up on Waseley Hill, as had been so long predicted.
The second thing that seemed certain was that the City Elders could not long resist the growing public demand for it to be put on display, however briefly.
One thing that was clear, to Slew at least, as he listened to the talk, was that Stort was not just then in residence. He had gone off on some mission or other to do with the gem.
The question then was had he taken the gem with him or not? It seemed unlikely and that pleased Slew.
The city was so full of pilgrims that Summer that there were not enough lodgings to go round.
Pilgrims, even elderly ones, were forced to camp out in the city squares, or in the open spaces by its walls, taking their chances on rain and flood and the rats.
This was not Slew’s style, and while the others were willing to accept the situation, he was not. In any case, his purpose in coming to Brum was not served by being austere and uncomfortable, nor were his different needs with respect to Evelien and Machtild.
‘Leave it to me,’ he said.
He had established early on that the hostelry where Stort, when in town, liked to eat was the Muggy Duck in Digbeth. It was run by one Ma’Shuqa, a bilgesnipe. She, it soon emerged, was a good friend of the scholar and occasionally his protector. Slew did not ask questions directly, not wishing to give his game away. He preferred to come and go unnoticed, though someone of his obvious strength and confidence, and striking, saturnine good looks, was not easily missed.
Slew did not normally drink but he did not wish to draw attention to himself, so he drank modestly and not so little as to seem mean; he ate well and he tipped generously.
He made friends among the locals, all of whom claimed close acquaintance with the famous Stort, but none of whom, it seemed, actually had it. Finally it was a staverman who told Slew what it was he wanted to hear: where Stort lived.
That much achieved, and careful to leave it to another day, meaning a second day of discomfort on the edge of the town ditch, sleeping on rough ground with his new friends, within reach but no longer touch of the two females, who lay in the dark as frustrated as he, Slew paid a visit to the narrow street where Stort lived.
His ruse was to knock on doors asking for lodgings, saying a friend of his had been injured en route to Brum and needed something more in the way of a bed than cobbles and earth.
The humbles were small, the chance of accommodation slight and, anyway, others had tried the same thing before him.
But he was Slew and he was not Master of Shadows for nothing. Men and women found their minds confused under the power of his gaze; they might want to say ‘No’ but they found themselves saying ‘Yes’.
But information was his real intent; rooms would be a bonus.
Only when he had learned what he could from Stort’s neighbours further down the street did he approach his humble, well aware by then who would answer the door.
‘Yes?’
‘Goodwife Cluckett, I believe.’
He smiled and something even in her large and formidable bosom yielded.
‘If it’s Mister Stort you want . . . ?’
He shook his head.
‘No, I . . . we . . . would not disturb your great master’s peace, not at all.’
Flattered by association, a little more of Cluckett became Slew’s.
‘We are but pilgrims visiting Brum to make the trek—’
‘We?’ said Cluckett. ‘I see no “we”, just you.’
‘Injured,’ he explained, ‘nearly killed, my fellow brothers were cruelly ambushed on the way to Brum. No, we were looking for bed and board and I can think of no other way than to knock on doors and hope against hope that some gentle heart will take pity on us and . . .’
Cluckett eyed him and liked him.
Dark, strong, modest, possibly masterful.
‘Do you know someone here who might help?’ he said, looming closer, bold with his gaze upon her.
‘Well I . . . not here of course . . .’
He looked past her into Stort’s humble. Neat as two pins, even the books far down the corridor ranged like a platoon of Fyrd on parade.
‘I am sorry, I could not help being impressed . . .’
That was a step too far yet not a mistake.
She narrowed the door only slightly, intrigued by what he said.
‘Impressed by what?’
‘The books, their order. I like order, many do not.’
‘Ah,’ said Cluckett softly, not quite knowing why, ‘well I am thinking, sir . . .’
‘Brother,’ he purred. ‘What were you thinking, Goodwife?’
‘Cluckett will do nicely, sir, no need for the Goodwife. I was thinking that my neighbour next door, who lives alone and is elderly, might be willing . . . perhaps . . . if . . . how many of you are there?’
‘Too many I fear. Six in all. Four males, including myself and two females.’
‘Willing to share?’
‘Of course.’
‘I could, I suppose, talk with her . . . her home used to be a workshop and it is bigger than it seems from the outside. She has taken groups of pilgrims before and could do with the money.’
‘We shall be generous, and no trouble,’ he said, large and solid before her.
Her bosom heaved.
‘Come back later,’ she said.
‘I will, Goodwife Cluckett, and thank you.’
So it was that Slew inveigled his way into the humble next to Stort’s, the group of which he was now de facto leader, moving in with all the courtesy and tact they could, money in advance. Stort’s neighbour was both flustered and thrilled and Cluckett inclined to pop in and out to see how things were progressing and if there was anything she could do.
Only two evenings later, by way of thanks, the women in the group, at Slew’s prompting, laid on a celebration feast at their own expense and to say thanks for their safe journey, more or less, to Brum; to Cluckett and the hostess; to Slew and to life in general. They had made the trek, seen where Beornamund’s forge had been from beneath which Mister Stort was said to have extracted the gem. All was well and the mead flowed.
Slew sat next to Cluckett, serving her food, pouring her drink, impressed by her discretion where Stort was concerned. Even so, Slew found out enough for his dark purpose.
He learned that after Stort got back to Brum he had made but one visit before an important meeting with the High Ealdor and others and after that single visit ‘his mind seemed e
asier’.
‘And where was that visit to?’
‘The Library,’ she answered, ‘just as you would expect. Then soon after that he was gone again on his travels.’
‘Where to this time?’ said Slew jocularly.
‘He didn’t say,’ she replied, but Slew didn’t care.
He now had, he believed, what he needed most of all, a clue to the whereabouts of the gem. Not a good one, but a possibility. Stort would not arrive in Brum with the gem, cause a great deal of fuss and bother, have it nearly taken off him by the city hierarchy (as the rumours probably correctly had it) and then leave again carrying it in his pocket.
No, Stort might be an innocent, as by all accounts he was, but he was no fool. He would have hidden the gem somewhere in the city while he went away, and all Slew needed to do was work out where in Brum a scholar would hide a gem.
Not difficult.
That much sorted out, Slew enjoyed the rest of the celebration, and having as usual avoided all intoxicating liquor because of his supposed vows but in fact because he needed no such stimulus, retired to bed, alone.
In the morning he abluted and dressed carefully, donning the robe he had stolen from the monk he murdered, now cleaned and ironed to his satisfaction, and touching up his dyed hair.
Machtild had commented on the fact.
Evelien had not dared.
‘What are you trying to hide?’ Machtild had asked.
She was indeed the clever one.
Neat, tidy, cleansed, and without his stave, looking intelligent and scholarly and suitably modest and in awe of the establishment, he presented himself at Brum’s Great Library.
A lie is all the better for being very near the truth, and the question that had preoccupied Slew was which truth would make it easiest for him to get past Master Brief without suspicion.
Brief was, perhaps, the greatest scholar in the Hyddenworld, certainly the most famous. It was well known that in recent years he had travelled only reluctantly, his journeying now being done, he said, inside his mind with the help of his books. But – and for Slew it was a dangerous ‘but’ – his range of scholarly contacts was vast and unknowable to any but himself.