‘Where are you, Prof?’
He had not yet turned on the light and so could see Krill’s torch, dancing here and there as his feet sloshed nearer.
Arthur could see his own hands shaking, caught in the dim sidelight from the grille down the tunnel.
He backed away into darkness.
‘Hey Prof, I want a word.’
Arthur saw Krill then, his light, his teeth caught in the flash of the torch, getting nearer and nearer as Arthur backed away, his mouth dry, his heart thumping painfully.
Then Krill turned off his torch and, but for the faint glimmer of the grille tunnel out into the corridor, there was nothing but pitch dark.
‘I’ll play it your way,’ said Krill, his voice happy and cruel. ‘I’ll smell you out in this murk!’
Arthur knew that if he moved he would be heard. If he stayed still he would be killed.
His options had run out.
His mind stilled, his heart slowed and his hand reached for the knife in his belt and he knew what he must do.
As Krill came nearer, almost into the glimmer of light from the tunnel but not quite, Arthur stepped sideways and he reached up to turn the lights on, closing his own eyes tight as he did so.
One, two, three.
‘What the . . . ?’ shouted Krill, momentarily blinded.
It was that moment of brightness in Krill’s eyes Arthur needed.
He turned the lights back off, waited a moment, opened his eyes, watched as Krill floundered into the dim light, struggling to get his lost vision back and turn on his torch.
It was time.
Arthur Foale moved forward fast and aimed at the one place he knew a Fyrd was vulnerable when in uniform: his throat. He thrust the knife hard into it, and pulled it straight out, then as Krill let out a gurgling scream, he thrust forward again, Krill’s rising arm pushing the thrust up.
Arthur let it go, stepped back to be clear of Krill’s flailing arms and turned on the lights again, closing his eyes as he did so. He took a step back and turned off the lights once more. Then he opened his eyes.
Arthur was shocked by what the need for survival had forced him to do and he continued now almost as an automaton, distancing himself from what was happening.
Blinded for real in one eye, temporarily in the good one, blood spouting from his neck, Krill fell to one side, hit the wall and fell to the flooded floor with a splash. Then, lit by dim light, not dead but immobile, the knife a rusty alien thing he had to pull from his eye but could not, he whimpered like a child and began to die.
Time to leave.
This time Arthur did run, past the terrible turning, reaching, filthy water-bubbling thing Krill had become, into the tunnel with the grille, down to the crate, grabbing his ’sac, onto the crate, and reaching up to heave himself up, to listen, listen . . .
Be sensible, listen!
God and the Mirror only knew what was out there in the woods.
No going back.
So, breathing heavily, every instinct telling him to get out and run, Arthur listened.
Wind in trees, gurgles out of the tunnel below, the sloshing softer now, dying, and somewhere, high, high above, a human sound: an aeroplane, white light flashing through the tree tops.
Normality.
Leave . . . !
It was then, even as he began to heave himself up, that he heard it, clear and urgent, coming from the tunnel below him: clickety-click . . .
It was the ticker tape!
Click, clickety-click . . .
A message was coming through. Someone, somewhere out there had received his message.
Arthur’s entire being screamed to get away but someone might be offering immediate help. Trying to escape might mean immediate death.
. . . click, click, clickety
Going back might save Blut’s life.
Oh dear God, Arthur whispered, his hands and arms shaking, his whole being afraid. But . . . I . . . must . . .
He pulled back the grille, lowered himself down onto the crate and back into the bunker of death. Then he turned into the darkness of the tunnel, back past Krill’s, through bloody water, sloshing his way into the communications room to see what message he had received.
27
VISITATION
The days were shortening, the nights drawing in and in the last days of September the weather suddenly worsened into grey clouds and rain storms. Brum grew depressing and folk went down with coughs and flu.
The staff in the Hospice noticed it soon enough for old ones weakened, some died and the dark impassive faces of the morticians and undertakers pulling the death cart became a regular sight in the back alleys on the north side of the Square.
The Kapellmeister had rallied when he first arrived in Brum but he too was affected by the cold, grim days and began to decline once more.
Stort found lodgings for Terce next to his own humble but the chorister spent most days and many nights at Meister Laud’s bedside. He held his Meister’s hand and when Laud was well enough he gave instruction. Once in a while Terce would sing, but for the Meister that part of his life was over. His once beautiful voice was a cracked vessel, no use now for anything much at all.
Katherine and Cluckett took their turn to give Terce respite, but there was little they could do.
‘If an old body like him don’t want to talk, Mistress Katherine, and he don’t, there’s not a lot we can offer. Just stay by, meet his needs, and hope he suffers no pain.’
‘I wish he’d tell us something about himself,’ said Katherine, ‘his proper name even. Terce says he had a twin sister but she’s dead and there’s no other family.’
It was a familiar story among the older patients. No family, few friends, a forgotten history.
One night Terce knocked on Stort’s door in distress.
‘He’s been fretful, crying out in his sleep, saying things.’
‘What things?’
‘That he needs his sister. That if he can’t teach me, she can. But she’s dead.’
Cluckett shook her head sadly.
‘They talk like that and feel real distress. It’s the past catching up with them. Things unspoken for years, things never said. He’s beginning his journey back to the Mirror and for him – and mayhap for us too, things being as they are in Brum – that’ll be the best place.’
‘But I’m not ready,’ said Terce simply, ‘I have not learnt all the music.’
There was desperation in his eyes.
Katherine went to the Hospice with him to see if she could help the Meister settle. But he was as restless and unhappy as Terce said and insisted his sister wasn’t bothering to see him and Terce needed her.
‘But she’s dead, isn’t she, Meister?’
‘She dead to me, but she could sing . . .’
His eyes lit up at this memory, his face relaxed and he fell into a deeper sleep than before, his breathing now slower, ever slower. The window was open despite the night chill because his austere life had made him used to cold and fresh air. The candles flickered, mist drifted in and out of the window, the night grew quiet.
Goodwife Cluckett, more used to the passage of old age perhaps and sensing a crisis, came to keep Katherine company.
She took his pulse, listened to his rough irregular breathing and looked at his pale, waxy skin. She shook her head but said nothing. She had no need to. The Meister was dying.
Stort called by, his progress down the hushed street slow because the mist had thickened and a strange wind got up, swirling it around, making shapes against the street gas lights and the candles in people’s windows.
‘It’s more than mist is making Brum seem silent this night,’ he observed, ‘there’s a feeling of moment in the air.’
‘Moment?’ queried Katherine.
‘Historic moment, I would say. Like a whole city holding its breath.’
‘That’s nerves,’ opined Cluckett, ‘folk worrying about the Fyrd coming. Waiting saps confidence and breeds
tension.’
There was a companionship in sitting around the Meister’s bed: Stort, Katherine, Terce and Cluckett, holding his hand, murmuring words, closing their eyes for a little and once in a while Terce singing a song of the night all low and gentle, singing an old soul home.
The mist was another presence, mostly held off at the open window by the warmer air within, but spiralling up sometimes in the candle flames and reaching in towards the bed.
They heard a rumble outside.
‘What was that?’ said Stort suddenly, starting up as if woken by a sudden sound. ‘Thunder on a night like this!?’
If it was thunder it was distant and fragmented, a thin thudding across the sky.
Then whoosh! Bang! Bang! Bang! And like a raptor swooping, now almost unnoticed and unheard, then right there with claws outstretched, beak open and eyes aflame bang! It was on them, more than thunderous, demanding and imposing, stilling the strongest heart with fear.
They stood up in alarm and peered at the window as if expecting thunder personified to start climbing in.
Bang! Bang!
Plaster and dust fell from the ceiling and Cluckett reached up to get the stuff from her hair, when they heard the mighty clatter of hoofs in the courtyard outside and then it was there, a horse’s leg rising into mist, the whisk of a vast slow tail which guttered a candle, and the slow, heavy clip-clop as it settled to restive rest.
It was the White Horse, right there, at the window. Or its hoof and leg.
Then a curse, a command, someone furious, and from the front of the building the sounds of noisy arrival.
They opened the door, heard the noise, saw the Horse, but no one else in the Hospice did.
Then she came like a cloud’s shadow racing across an open field, maybe even faster, and pushed them aside and loomed into the room.
‘Where is he?’ the Shield Maiden demanded. ‘Take me to him.’
She spoke as if he was miles away.
All of them gaped but could not move. She seemed bigger than the room, bigger than Brum, fiercer than a thousand Fyrd, and she did not look amused.
Her hair was greying and she was already so much more aged than Katherine remembered that she did not at first recognize her own daughter.
Only Stort stood up to her, staring into her dark, angry eyes. He was astonished to see her and astounded at his reaction. Back in the Summer he had dreamed about her like a youthful lover, whispering words of love to the sky, but now he faced Judith as the Shield Maiden, instinct took over and an unaccustomed masterfulness. Her strength and purpose made him the same. They mirrored each other.
He guessed her coming had to do with Meister Laud, or Terce. Or, more simply, the Quinterne. If so, it affirmed he was on the right track in his search for the gem.
‘You’re looking for the Kapellmeister, aren’t you?’
‘Of course I damn well am,’ she said.
He pointed to the bed.
‘If he’s dead I’ll kill you,’ she snarled, her robes like whips as they slashed past their legs and caught at their hands as she went to the Meister’s bedside.
‘And who are you?’ she demanded of Cluckett, who was on the far side of the bed.
‘C . . . Cl . . . luckett,’ the goodwife stammered, backing away at the apparition before her.
The Horse shifted outside, its flank an exquisite sheen in the gaslight.
‘Don’t hurt the old gennelman,’ Cluckett whispered.
‘Hurt him? Are you insane? He has not done what his wyrd demands he do and now he is dying and all you all do is sit and hold his hand and wait on his end without doing what he has asked you to do. Isn’t it obvious to any of you what he needs?’
The Meister’s eyes had opened and he too looked astonished.
‘But . . .’ began Katherine, who could scarcely believe the terrifying presence her daughter had become, or even that she was ‘Judith’ at all.
‘You!’ snarled Judith, cutting her short. ‘You’re the only one round here can do it, so go and do it.’
‘What?!’ asked Katherine faintly.
‘Get to his sister, of course. She’s the only one who knows what to say and how to say it.’
‘She’s dead,’ whispered the Meister, speaking for the first time in hours.
‘Dead, my arse,’ said Judith, ‘she’s pathetic, not dead. And so have you been. I should knock your heads together.’
‘She . . .’ Laud muttered, angry now, still smarting from some old hurt.
‘Not interested,’ said the Shield Maiden brutally.
Katherine could not help noticing that the Meister looked better already. There was a point of colour in his cheeks. Maybe it was anger but it looked good.
Judith turned back to Katherine and said, ‘The White Horse will show you where she is.’
‘But . . .’
‘It’s there. The window’s the quickest way out. Go on!’
Katherine went to the window and before she knew it Judith had grabbed her arm and heaved her outside.
‘Go on!’
She looked up at the towering, living thing that stood there, rising into the mist and out of sight, its hoofs big enough to crush her.
‘It doesn’t bite,’ said Judith coldly, ‘and meanwhile I’ll try to keep Meister Laud alive.’
She turned, swearing, back to the bed.
‘All of you,’ she said, ‘out, now. Except for Mister Stort.’
They filed out; Stort moved to the other side of the bed and looked at her. There was no fear in his eyes. They were as open, as innocent, as accepting and as honest as only real love can be. But they were firm.
Her breathing slowed, her dark robes subsided into nothing very much, her fierce eyes and strong mouth softened to a sudden smile. She looked young again.
‘Am I terrible?’ she said.
‘Terri-fying,’ he replied.
‘I have to be. It’s what I have to do, it’s . . .’
‘You look tired.’
‘I look old.’
‘I said tired.’
He wanted to reach across the bed and touch her but he knew he could not, not then, not ever.
Firmness fled him. He wanted to tell her he loved her.
He could not do that either except through thought and action and the way he was with her.
‘Why is the Meister so important?’ he asked.
‘He’ll tell you better than I can when he’s healed a little. Should have done already. It’s his job to do so, not mine. You can drag a horse to water but you can’t make it drink, and that includes the White Horse, incidentally. I can do nothing for mortal kind but show the way.’
‘By kicking them?’
‘Yes, if need be. But I can tell you this. The more gems you find the more the musica is needed to control them. The Quinterne’s history stretches back centuries, Stort, and its song may hold the secret of all harmony.’
‘May hold,’ queried Stort, ‘not does hold?’
‘Just so. Laud here holds the secret; he must live long enough for Terce to learn it.’
Stort watched as she reached to the Meister and held his hand, as soft now as the evening sun. Yes, she did look old, or at least older. Her face was beginning to line, her hair turn grey. Of the rest – her hips, her breasts, her shape – Stort hardly dared look, or acknowledge that he wanted to. She was the Shield Maiden, that was all. Beyond that he could not think.
You are Judith who I loved from the first and will love to the last. Judith who needs one person in the world to know who you are, deep down, where no one else dares go. That’s where my love for you takes me.
These words were stumbling things in his mind, uttered uncertainly because he had never thought them before. Perhaps she heard the words he thought, perhaps she felt the stirrings too. They were reflections of each other in different form. She bent close to the Meister and said, ‘Your sister is coming and she’ll know what to say.’
‘No one ever spoke my name as she did,�
�� he said suddenly and unexpectedly, ‘and I . . . I . . .’
‘Tell us,’ said the Shield Maiden.
He spoke of love lost and the hope of love found again. It seemed he had so missed his sister since the day of their parting decades before he found it easier to pretend she was dead than believe she was alive. Now hope had returned.
Katherine found the flank of the White Horse was smooth and welcoming and when it knelt down and let her use its mane to mount it, it felt like she had come home.
It rose up, the humbles falling away beneath her out of sight, and she was riding the waves of the mist, the night sky clear above her. Riding the great creature she had loved all her life in imagination, from her home opposite White Horse Hill. Letting it take her where it must.
Later, the lights of Brum and the human city of Birmingham far behind, it came down to Earth again. No mist, just a wind over wet grass and a hydden village whose name she did not know. It clip-clopped to a humble at whose window a candle burnt.
She dismounted and knocked at the little door, which opened as if she was expected.
Katherine gasped in surprise. She found herself staring into the eyes of someone she herself had briefly known and who had frightened her. Someone once proud but fine-looking. Who, when she knew her, appeared so forbidding that it would have seemed almost insolent to think she had another life than that which her position gave her, something real of flesh and bone.
But there she stood, a shadow of her former self.
‘Has he passed on to the Mirror?’ she asked. ‘Is my brother dead?’
Katherine was looking at the one who had once been Sister Supreme, the most important of the Sisters of Charity who, before all the recent changes in Brum, had been maidens in the service of Lord Festoon, High Ealdor of Brum. Briefly, Katherine had been a Sister herself and remembered the chill command of Supreme with displeasure.
It had never occurred to Katherine to think what might have happened to the Sisters after their Order was closed by Festoon and Igor Brunte following the latter’s successful ousting of the Fyrd. Nor had she for a moment thought of Sister Supreme as ordinary flesh and blood, whose forbidding exterior was a consequence of inner grief caused by some cruel and terrible event in her secret past.
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