‘Yum, yum,’ said Judith popping a tiny tomato in her mouth, ‘yum!’
She gave one to Katherine and then to Jack.
‘Arthur . . .’
He shook his head.
‘Dentures,’ he growled. ‘Tricky.’
‘Mister Boots?’
She held it out to him and he stared at it, frowning, as if puzzled by the tiny, shiny red tomato in her hand. Remembering.
‘Yummy,’ she said and he smiled and opened his mouth and she popped it in.
Then he bit and the tomato exploded in his mouth and as it did so, so did memory explode in his mind, a whole universe of it.
And across the Universe it flew, the shard and its golden thread that Mister Barklice had thrown towards the stars in the distant hope, fearful indeed, that it might one day guide Stort back to where he needed to go. Flying across the face of the Mirror-of-All, reflecting, turning, a star itself, on and on through time, thin as light, sharp as the Scythe, beginning its sound, seeking its place and its eternal moment of time until it knew where it must go to be just where and when it had to be.
The Shield Maiden saw it and reached for it as it rushed on by, and called his name in joy, whom she had lost and still waited for though her task was now surely done.
Isn’t it? she whispered to herself.
The Modor didn’t think such things, trying to salvage something from the darkness of her long winter by murmuring names of hydden who in better days had made her smile: Leetha, Borkum Riff and Sinistral. Stort?
Always doing things, you are, she grumbled, even to the last . . .
As Mister Boots, tasting the fruit of the Earth, feeling the explosion of the tomato in his mouth, astonished by the suffusion of taste within him and the memories it triggered, saw as they all did, as the Chimes fell silent, another one come out of the sky, like a star descending until it landed there, above his head among the verdant branches, near where he sat, catching the light of the sun, reflecting the Fires of the Universe.
Mister Boots stood up and reached his hand to the Chime that had once been his and had come back home, touched it and let it touch him. The silence ended, the Chimes sounded loud and louder as he arched his back in pain, his mouth opening wide to express the agony he cried out to the Universe itself.
‘Mister Boots . . . Mister Boots?’
He reached to them as they to him, his grief so overwhelming that it felt as though his body was being racked and torn apart, broken, stretched, in pain beyond pain as he wept and shouted, ‘I know who I am, I remember what I have lost, I am my memory again. I am Bedwyn Stort.’
In rediscovering this he discovered all he had known and all he had lost and his grief was an entire universe. He cried then inconsolably and they held him and held him until, his grief abating, he dared cry again, ‘I am my memory, I am Bedwyn Stort.’
Never, ever, had any of them been witness to loneliness like his then.
Yet finally one there found for him a consolation.
As again and again he spoke his name, Judith, reaching her hand to his, and shaking her head because she could not understand, whispered unhappily, ‘No, you’re Mister Boots.’
‘That too,’ he whispered in return, his eyes gentling, ‘that too, my dear.’
52
MEMORIES
But Stort was Stort and he was remembering.
He was Stort, and he was old.
He was Stort and all his friends, every last one, had gone and he had nothing now and was in a world where even Jack and Katherine did not know who he really was because they did not know who they had been.
Before he left the Hyddenworld, Judith had warned that forgetting was best because remembering would be pain inconsolable.
‘I am my memory,’ he had said, and it had been true and now it was breaking him.
Bedwyn Stort saw no one that autumn when he fell into a troubled silence.
How could Jack know that he wasn’t the Jack Stort knew?
Or Katherine?
How could he talk with Arthur and not share the Hyddenworld?
He responded only to Judith, who, calling him Mister Boots still, asked him once in a while who Mister Stort was.
‘Is he a friend?’
‘He was.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘I think he is.’
‘Where does he live?’
‘A long way off.’
Samhain, as he now thought of it again, came and it was the start of his winter. Stort doubted he could make it through to another spring. He was now as old as Judith had been when he saw her for the last time, but he was human and hydden no more and she . . . she was gone from his world, lost to him forever and he had failed in the quest and so failed her too.
Sometimes he would mutter his thoughts to her, sitting alone as he thought, the Chimes no consolation now.
‘Are you talking to him?’ asked Judith.
‘I’m talking to her.’
‘His wife?’
‘The Shield Maiden.’
‘Tell me about her.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Please, Mister Boots . . .’
‘Leave him be, Judith, he’s sleeping.’
Judith shook her head and said, ‘No, he’s sad, aren’t you, Mister Boots?’
I’m drifting now, my love, drifting back to the cold that took me before, just drifting . . .
That winter was wet, not cold.
Floods in December, floods at the Solstice, which they made into a kind of Christmas, and a miserable one too, floods in January.
No chance of Arthur and Mister Boots going up the hill again. It was treacherous even for Jack and Katherine, yet when they made it the view was astonishing. The Vale was flooded and, the day those two went, which was in mid-January, the temperature dropped and the flooded fields were grey-white with ice, reflecting the grey sky.
‘Excuse me . . .’
A voice from the ramparts of the Iron Age fort.
Jack looked up: a man, a woman, wrapped up tight.
‘Are you here for the same reason we are?’
Jack climbed up to them.
‘And that is?’ he asked.
‘Mister Boots. We heard he was dying. We came to pay our respects. You knew he lived here, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Jack.
‘It’s that house down there.’
‘Is it?’
‘A great man, did great things.’
‘Who told you he was dying?’
‘Just knew. Pity, he might have had an answer.’
‘To what?’
‘These dangerous times.’
‘You mean the threat of countries in the East . . .’
‘That’s exactly what I mean. Times are hard enough economically as they squeeze and squeeze us but it won’t be long before the military threats become real.’
Jack did not doubt it. They had it easy and simple in England and lived in a bubble, protected by isolation and independence, but times were changing. Before Judith came, Katherine and he had been able to ignore such things, staying out of the mainstream. But a child brought new responsibilities, new fears.
The passer-by had a point and Jack stared at him wondering what to say.
‘The thing is,’ said the stranger, ‘Mister Boots would have known what to do like he did before but now . . . well . . . if he’s passing others will have to take up where he left off.’
‘They will,’ Jack found himself agreeing, ‘and they must.’
‘That’s right, they must.’
Those four words from a stranger were Jack’s wake-up call, reaching into that giant-born part of him which he had buried deep inside.
Maybe when . . . if . . . Jack was astonished to find himself thinking, I might myself take a lead.
Jack glimpsed the future, though he had no idea how he was going to get there.
They all stared at each other and maybe thoughts crystallized in their minds as they now did forcefully in Jack’s.
/> Me, a leader? he asked himself. No sooner was the question formulated than he knew its answer. He had always known it and that somehow or other Mister Boots, now Bedwyn Stort, was a part of it. A stage on the journey. A starting point.
‘Thank you,’ said Jack.
‘For what?’
‘Showing me . . . um . . . the house.’
The cold deepened. As it got into the third week of January the numbers on the hill increased, trekking up there daily until some began to camp and in the final days of the month, more and more people came. So many that the light of the lanterns and fires lit up the hill at night.
He was dying and they wanted to show their respects.
He was dying and they wanted to light his way to the stars.
Mister Boots was passing on and the world would have been a far worse place had he not walked its way.
Jack and Katherine knew that it was so, the grief he had cried out had hollowed him, leached him, scoured him out.
Leaving nothing much at all where he lay in bed, staring out of the open window at the hill from which even the horse had gone. Even that had gone! He stirred and frowned and listened.
Outside, the grey day gave way to sunshine and he heard Jack call, ‘Katherine?’
‘Mum’s working.’
He heard Arthur laugh.
He heard the rooks in the great coniferous trees.
‘Are you awake?’ whispered Katherine, leaning close, her hand on his frail shoulder, startling him, ‘I have some soup.’
He heard her voice and, surprising himself, he grinned.
He had heard the world again, heard it anew.
‘Katherine?’
She sat back, surprised.
‘When I came I had a backpack.’
His voice was good.
‘Er . . . yes . . .’
‘In one of the pockets . . . I think the bottom one. Bring it here if you can find it.’
He might as well have said ‘at once!’ for the tone he used.
Wondering, she went and got the pack.
By the time she got back he was propped up and waiting impatiently.
‘Ah . . . yes. Mister Boots’s pack,’ he pronounced, dismissively. ‘No good! I wanted Stort’s. Fool that I am. Getting my worlds mixed up.’
‘What did you want, from your pack?’ she asked, quietly suppressing her irritation. Up and down was a long way.
He had a touch of colour in his cheeks, a brightness to his eye, an impatience to his look.
‘Soup is all very well but what I need is a brew, rather stronger than the one Dorji brought. As a matter of fact, I invented one once, a sort of pick-me-up. Mister Barklice used to drink it rather too liberally but it did the trick.’
‘Who was Mister Barklice?’
‘A good friend. But . . . help me up . . . I’ll have to make a brew myself.’
‘Mister Boots . . .’ she said warningly, for it did not seem wise for him to get up.
‘Bedwyn Stort is my name, Katherine. Boots was a good companion along the way but now I have no need of him any more.’
He laughed a raspy, coughy laugh.
‘Help me up . . .’
‘Later,’ she said firmly.
‘Later is usually too late in my experience,’ he said more firmly still, getting himself out of bed.
Later that evening Stort sat scowling in the kitchen. He was in disgrace and felt that nobody liked him much.
He had found it difficult to find the ingredients needed for a brew, in fact nigh impossible. The coffee and tea they offered was quite disgusting, though Mirror knew he had been imbibing it for the past few years. Now he knew it was poison.
They had herbs of a sort, but dried-up, desiccated things in bags and little boxes, shadows of herbs as it seemed to him. Still, peppermint was useful and thank goodness that Katherine had agrimony and lovage, garnered from the garden.
‘But, Mister B . . .’
‘Stort, if you please.’
‘Stort then. For the last few years you have drunk tea perfectly happily.’
‘For the last several years I have been asleep. I cannot begin to imagine who I was. Now I am awake and it is not a very nice world I have woken into. I am a hydden, not human. I cannot seem to make you understand.’
‘Mister Stort is a hydden,’ repeated Judith. ‘Mister Boots has gone away.’
‘Where has he gone?’ asked Katherine tightly, her kitchen a mess, the concoction he had made a disgusting thing in a pan, smelling of . . . brew.
‘He has gone to the human world,’ said Stort, keeping hold as best he could of the new remembrance of himself as he once was.
Jack came in, cold, wet and blustered up by wind, his hair all over the place.
‘Kitchen’s a mess,’ he said cheerfully.
He smelt the brew.
‘What’s that? Yuk!’
‘Yuk!’ repeated Judith. ‘Mum’s cross.’
‘My dear fellow!’ cried Arthur, entering, ‘you’re up and about and . . . and er . . . making . . . something.’
‘Brew.’ Judith nearly spat out the word.
The pyjamas that Stort wore were very ancient, bought for Arthur decades before from a shop called Marks and Spencer. They were pink-striped and had a cord to hold them together and, for some reason, a slit down the front that revealed all.
‘Mister B . . .’ began Katherine.
‘Stort,’ he said, unaware.
‘Mister . . .’
‘Stort,’ said Judith . . .
Katherine lost her temper as Jack laughed and indicated the problem with a meaningful glance, which Arthur caught and understood at once.
‘Bloody things!’ he said, ‘never could stand ’em.’
‘Then why, for goodness sake, keep them?’ snapped Katherine.
A moment’s silence as Stort, struggling, managed to tie his thumb to the cord until, peering more closely, he stood up to get a better view, skewed sideways, began to fall, and the handle hit his pan which shot his brew onto the floor.
Katherine and Jack caught him at the same time. At which Judith began to laugh, really laugh, and one by one, they all did too.
‘What Margaret used to say,’ said Arthur affectionately a little later, ‘is that at moments like this there is nothing better than a cup of tea.’
‘Or,’ said Jack, delving into a cupboard and producing a bottle, ‘for those who don’t like tea, a good brew as Mister Stort calls it.’
‘Ah,’ said Stort forgetting himself, ‘a hydden after my own heart!’
That evening, with the wind howling around the old house as if to keep them safely in, they gathered by the fire in the drawing room. They had warm stews and pottages and all kinds of things they had all made together, Stort included. They ate and stared at the fire and they talked as they had never done before since his coming.
They talked about the feelings of déjà vu they had and Stort listened, nodded and understood. They did remember the world he thought he had lost; it was just that they glimpsed it through a filter of their different human world, the world to which he now knew he had journeyed on a quest.
‘That was my wyrd, you see,’ he said.
‘Explain,’ said Katherine.
‘Well to do that I need to explain about the Arthur that I knew before I met this one and how he did something very extraordinary for a human, very extraordinary indeed. But then he was always going to, I suppose. I would have to explain about green roads and all kinds of things I have nearly forgotten. Like Waseley Hill and Brum . . .’
‘Which you mentioned once before, I believe,’ said Arthur.
‘Did I? Perhaps I did, struggling as I was then to find my world again.’
‘What was Brum?’ asked Jack.
‘Why, Jack, how strange that you should ask that! You were the city’s Stavemeister and of course you took over from Master Brief . . . you remember . . . ah no, of course you do not.’
‘Tell us,’ said Katherine gently, ‘
tell us all of it. And, too . . .’
‘I’ll tell you about her as well,’ he said.
‘Who?’ asked Judith.
‘The Shield Maiden,’ replied Stort, ruffling her hair.
They stoked the fire and made him comfortable on the big sofa, which they moved nearer to them all. They let him sleep when talking made him tired and they brought him food and Dorji’s Brew. They came and went and listened; they prompted where they had to, they asked for explanation where things made no sense and gradually they began to see who it really was had come into their midst, what he was and how much he had loved the world and all his friends. How great, therefore, his grief.
The gale outside blew on for several days, rain and sleet pelting around the house as the last days of January slipped by and Bedwyn Stort, fading now, remembering his life, told them at last about the Hyddenworld.
‘But then,’ he said as the last day of the month dawned and the storm outside died away to leave clear air and dripping trees, ‘I never did fulfil the quest and find that final gem. Yet, as Mister Barklice once said to me, “My word, Mister Stort, you do cut it fine!” There it is, there it was, and now, well . . .’
They let him sleep, his tale well told.
Sun shone into the conservatory, the sky was blue, the drips and puddles drying up. Winter finishing early for once.
Jack built up the great fire and kept the curtains half closed, shafts of winter sunlight angling across the carpet and touching for a little Stort’s thin, white hair and his gentle, closed eyes.
At dusk there was a knock on the front door.
A man and woman were there, some others at the gate.
‘We were wondering . . . we have been waiting . . . on the hill . . .’
‘We’ve noticed,’ said Jack. ‘We’ve seen the lights.’
‘We’re wondering. Is he . . . ?’
‘He’s fading,’ conceded Jack.
‘We wanted to say that we couldn’t light candles these three nights past. Such rain and wind! But we wanted him to know, perhaps for him to see that we are there still.’
‘Are there many of you?’ asked Katherine.
The man smiled.
‘Hundreds,’ he said. ‘You should come and see. More come every day, every hour. All sorts. It’s peaceful up there, even in the wind. Now it’s died down and, tonight being the end of the month and for the pagans among us the start of spring, we just wanted you to know. There’s not a person up there will not light a candle for him tonight.’