by Jd Field
Chapter 10: Night Rider
My friend in Bath existed. I had only invented our meeting that weekend. As soon as I got home I checked with Mum that it would be okay, then called her. Amina had lived in the flat upstairs from Mum and me in Hackney. Though she was two years older, we had walked to school together and hung out sometimes. Now she was in her first year at Bath University. Though my trip to see her had popped into my mind like an escape hatch from the Logres party, the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was a great idea. I sighed with anticipation at the idea of talking to somebody who didn’t go to Levels, who didn’t know Eddy Moon or the Four Horsemen. Somebody, however, who did know I came from a family of beekeepers and lived in a house itself barely bigger than a bee hive. Who knew, and couldn’t care less.
In history the next day Eddy came in late, as usual, but this time he flicked his head up as he came through the doorway and gave me a blast of his golden beauty. I stopped breathing. He half raised a hand in recognition. I gulped.
Pippa nudged me. “Did he just wave at you?”
“No.” I shook my head.
“He did. So when are you going to invite me to lunch with him?”
I bit my lip. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know where he has his lunch. Actually, I don’t know if he has lunch at all.”
Pippa turned her head close to mine. “Maddie, he must have lunch, you can’t be that big without eating lunch. I swear he’s actually got bigger since the start of term.”
I narrowed my eyes. She was probably right. Eddy seemed to have even more mass to his shoulders and chest than when I had first seen him.
After class I caught Eddy at the door. This time he didn’t run away, and we walked along the flag-stoned path together.
I smiled up at him. “What are you doing for lunch?”
“I bring sandwiches.”
“Really? How do you keep yourself going on sandwiches?”
He shrugged. “I make a lot, like half a loaf.”
“Half a loaf! And you make them yourself. That must be hard work.”
“I haven’t got time for the cafeteria, I train every lunchtime.”
I resisted the urge to reach up and brush his hair away from his face, so I could see him properly. “Training for what?”
“Fencing. Sword fighting. I’m competing in the modern pentathlon.”
“The modern what?”
“In the house cup next month. Nobody else in Camelot will do it, so I’m going to learn, and compete myself.” He slowed. “I’m sorry Maddie, I really haven’t got time.” For a moment his face looked a lot older, as if was struggling with weighty, adult problems.
“Ok.” I shrugged as he wheeled away. What didn’t he have time for?
I headed to lunch by myself. At least he was still speaking to me.
For the rest of the week I took what I could get of Eddy Moon. Three minute conversations going to and from history, and ten minutes Friday morning, sitting in the saddle room at the barn, when he told me his plan to ignore the resistance of his Camelot house mates and represent them in virtually all the sports himself.
“I don’t know Eddy,” I said. “I’m sure it’s possible, but you’ll exhaust yourself.”
“I won’t.” Again the golden mask of certainty stared down at me. “Do you have a better idea?”
“No, I...”
He scowled, an unusual expression for him. “Anyway Maddie, I’m really grateful for your help with Facebook and all that, but I don’t think it’s right you should be using all your free time trailing round school after me.” His face stayed hard and masklike.
“What?” My hands began to shake. Why had I told him I doubted him? I knew he hated people questioning his belief in himself.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to be close.”
I struggled to breathe. “I don’t understand. Why?”
“Because I’m not supposed to be.”
“What do you mean, not supposed to?” I fought to inject fizz into the conversation, to counteract the clogging weight of his seriousness. “Are you saying you’re supposed to have an arranged marriage or something? Oh God, we’re not cousins are we?”
“I’m not joking Maddie.”
“So what’s the problem? I helped you with the Facebook thing. We chat.”
“And you flirted with Tiago and Kieran. Do you believe in fate?”
I leaned back from him. I felt my insides shrink a little with disappointment. How could somebody who looked so extraordinary, who from time to time reminded me of Superman, say something so banal? “Seriously Eddy, come on.”
“I don’t mean it like that. Not you and me.”
I bit my lip. “Oh.”
“So you don’t believe in fate?”
“Nope.” I clamped my lips together. “You’ve got your will, and your talents, and luck. That’s it.”
He shook his head. “You’re wrong.”
I squinted at him, trying to make sense of what he was saying. “So you’re saying we shouldn’t spend time together because of fate?”
He nodded. “I’m really sorry.”
Suddenly I was annoyed. His stubbornness infuriated me, in part because it seemed so nonsensical, but also because deep down, I still didn’t believe him. We would see each other. Maybe not next week, but his silly mood wouldn’t, couldn’t last forever. I stood up. “Okay. Have it your way. Bye.” I stalked out of the saddle room.
“Maddie, I didn”t mean...”
I kept going, already thinking how I would describe this conversation to Amina. By Saturday I had run my lines through my head so many times I practically knew them by heart. I caught a train from Weston station and managed to snag a seat at a table, next to a window. I pulled my latest biography from my bag, Suleiman the Magnificent, and plugged my phone into my ears, letting “Death or Glory” batter at my ear drums. After three pages I put my book aside and stared out the window at the brown autumn countryside, playing my personal highlights reel of times and places I’d seen Eddy.
I rummaged in my bag, found a notepad and pen and began my favourite doodle, including the weird middle name, Doforni. I wondered why the mysterious Mr. Neil had given it to Eddy. Where did he get it from?
I decorated the name with scrolls and ivy leaves. Maybe Eddy’s guardian had made the name up himself. In which case, why make up a name like Doforni? Did anybody ever choose children’s names at random? I doubted it.
Eddy’s guardian was a crossword master, which meant he was an expert at anagrams
I wrote ‘Doforni’ in the notepad, then again, but broke it up into syllables. ‘Do for ni.’ Do and for were really words, but who or what was ni? Maybe it stood for something? N. I. was Northern Ireland but I doubted it meant that.
Maybe both short words were acronyms? D.O. for N.I.?
I stared at the page a little longer, rocking my head slightly to the heavy metal ringing in my ears. The train pulled into Temple Meads, the big Bristol station, and I read three more pages about the irresistible rise of Suleiman. I looked out the window again. Eddy should have a name like “the Magnificent.” With his big frame, his lion-like beauty, his intelligence, his will-power and good nature, he really was magnificent. I couldn’t wait to tell Amina about him.
I flicked back to the notepad with his name on. Eddy Moon, D.O. for N.I. Decorating the words with flowers and flying swallows I substituted the letters in Eddy’s name. D and O for N and I. ‘Endy Mion’. I narrowed my eyes. Had I seen the name before? Did it mean something?
The conductor appeared and distracted me. Almost half the people in my carriage didn’t have tickets and when he challenged them they started to yell at him about expensive they were. One young woman started to cry and I gritted my teeth. I was sure she didn’t want me to intervene, and besides there was nothing I could do, so I stared out the window. The train sped across the fields between Bristol and Bath, crossing the river Avon then pulling into Bath Spa station at the fo
ot of the beautiful, cream coloured city.
Amina ran along the platform and wrapped me in a hug. “Oh my God it’s so good to see you!”
I pressed my face into the familiar silky texture of her head-scarf. “You too Mina. Oh I’ve missed you. I’ve just realised, there’s nobody at my new school as nice as you. Nobody.”
She pulled away and looked into my eyes. “Well that’s very sweet, but I don’t believe you. What about the boy? Eddy?”
“Well...” I grinned. “That’s different.”
She took my arm and led me down the platform. “And now you’re going to tell me all about it.”
We spent the afternoon wandering from shoe store to cafe, with stops at bookshops and perfume counters. I had only been to Bath once before, and I loved it. Every one of the graceful streets and crescents had been built from the same, butter coloured stone. The Georgian terraced houses stood tall and elegant in their simplicity.
This time, though, an edge of tension marred the city’s beauty. Beggars leaned against ancient walls and yelled for help. Passing a big theme pub we saw two police cars pull up, and the policemen jump on a scrum of brawling youths.
I winced and looked at Mina.
“I know.” She sighed. “Lots of people have lost their jobs, there’s more trouble. We’re not supposed to walk around the town centre late at night.”
In the evening we went to a pizza restaurant and gossiped about the girls Amina shared her student residence with. Conversation trailed off, and Eddy Moon drifted into my mind.
“Hey! Hello, where did you go?” Amina raised her hands over the pizzas, newly arrived. “You were staring into space.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Mina. It’s just, it’s been such a lovely week. After we made up, we saw each other every day.”
“You miss him.”
I nodded. “It’s crazy. I know. I shouldn’t, especially as he just decided we shouldn’t see each other, but honestly, I don’t believe it. Next week, we’ll see each other just as much.”
Mina nodded. “He’ll change his mind.” That afternoon she had heard my replay of every conversation we ever had, and my description of everything he ever did. She was an expert. “Just like he did after the Facebook thing.”
“I hope so Mina, he’s so, so...”
She cut a wedge of pizza. “I know. You said, he’s magnificent.”
I giggled, took a bite of my meat feast, then dug my notepad from my bag.
“Hey Mina, you’re smart. Does the word...” I chewed. “Endy, mean anything to you?”
She shook her head.
I tilted the notepad toward her. “Endy, or Mion?”
“Well not, Endy, or Mion, no. But if you say Endymion, then yes.”
“Really? What is it?”
Mina told me all about Endymion and I listened in a daze. It took me twice as long as usual to eat a medium pizza, then twice as long again to eat a fudge brownie. My mind whirred and I lost all sense of time, until Mina clinked her spoon into her sundae dish and looked at her watch.
“When’s your train?”
“It’s at...” I dug through my pockets for the timetable. “It’s at... Oh no! It’s gone!” I stared at her with my mouth open. “What shall I do?”
“Don’t worry. There might be a bus somewhere. Maybe to Bristol, then you can get the local train from there.”
We paid the bill, then trotted through the cobbled lanes to the bus station. Amina kept us to the centre of the pedestrian sections, giving groups of revellers a wide berth, still I heard a shouted insult aimed at the colour of her skin. She flinched, but didn’t look back. We arrived three minutes before the departure of a bus to Wells, twenty minutes from Glastonbury.
“I’ll call Mum to pick me up from Wells bus station.” I hugged Amina. “Thanks so much, I’ve had an amazing day. Just what I needed.”
She hugged me back. “Good. It was great to see you. Take care, yeah?”
“You too.” I thought of the streets we had just walked down. “You get a bus from here to where you live, right?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
As the bus was the last one it wound through a hundred, tiny villages between Bath and Wells. I called Mum and told her that as the bus would be so late I’d get a taxi from Wells, rather than make her drive around the country lanes in the middle of the night.
“Ok, sweetheart,” she said. “But just to be sure I’ll call the cab. Buzz me when you’re ten minutes from Wells.”
The bus rattled and bumped and the passengers slowly dwindled, until there were only three of us left on the final run in to the city. A taxi waited at the bus station, I skipped down the bus steps towards the large, dark car and opened the back door. “My Mum called you, right?”
“That’s right, Miss,” the driver said in a guttural accent.
I sighed as I flopped onto the back seat. At last I was nearly home.
The driver’s huge, humped shoulders rose over the back of his seat and his flat cap brushed the ceiling. He swung the big old car carefully between the high hedges of the country lanes. Its powerful headlights turned the bare branches of trees into neon lace. Passing a field gate the car jolted over a pothole and suddenly started to rattle. The driver slowed, but the rattling worsened.
“Sorry miss,” he rumbled. “I just gotta check see.”
My stomach twitched with unease. “Um, okay.”
He stopped the car, opened his door, and made the whole car creak with relief as he got out. In front of the car he shielded his eyes against the headlights with a square hand. Coarse black hair grew on its back and on the backs of his fingers. I shuddered.
He popped the hood and I heard bangs and clangs from the engine. He got back into the driver’s seat, turned the key, and a loud bang issued from the front of the car. He shouted loud, foreign words which I guessed were not polite.
“Miss, you gotta get out.”
Panic flamed in my stomach and my skin prickled. I dialed Mum’s number.
“Who you callin?”
I didn’t answer.
“You make complain on me?”
No signal. It figured. We were in the middle of nowhere. Tears pricked at the back of my eyes.
“Get outta the car miss!”
“No.” My voice sounded high and weak. Then absurdly I squeaked “Eddy, help.”
“What for you want help?” The driver opened a rear door and grabbed at me with a massive paw. His hand grazed my hair as I scooted across the back seat and out the opposite door. I looked at him across the roof of his car. He had an enormous, square head, with a heavy, stubbled jaw and a misshapen nose. Not much else was visible. The stretch of lane in front of the car shone in the powerful headlights, but around the sides and back of the car deep shadows and the velvety country night made everything very scary indeed.
“What for you run away?” The driver jabbed a stubby finger at me. “You want something for you need the help, I give you. You want?”
He took a stride towards the back of the car, so I stepped towards the front. I couldn’t go much further and he knew it. In the headlights I would be dazzled, lit up like a Christmas tree, but unable to see him.
He took another heavy stride. I stepped away, then broke into a run. I didn’t look back, until I heard the car start and roar after me. The car had never broken down at all. I tried to focus on how fit I was, how easily I swam and cycled, but fear clouded my thoughts like ink dropped into water. My legs laboured, and slowed, each stride rubbery and stilted. The car was a second away when I reached a gate on my left hand side. I grabbed the top bar and jumped, but my legs gave way and I crumpled onto the road. The car stopped. I pulled at the gate, trying to haul myself upright. My bladder pulsed and for a moment I felt as if I had no control over it.
A car door slammed and footsteps sounded on the road.
“What you doin’ there?” the driver barked. “Get off the road.”
My heart pounded so fast that the b
eats were indistinguishable; they became a single continuous noise, like a creak. I tried to get a foot underneath myself, to lever myself upright, but my shoes just scraped at the loose road surface.
The driver stepped forward, both stubby fingered hands outstretched. Was he going to grab me by the hair? And then what was he going to do?
I sobbed. Tears poured down my face and my legs felt as if they were paralysed. Silhouetted by the car headlights, the driver was a bearlike shape of menace and fear.
He took another step forward.
My heart screamed in my chest, and then, over it, I heard another, slower beat.
The driver hesitated. His head turned from side to side. The beat sounded definite now. A dull pulse, getting louder.
Instinct made me shuffle out of the gateway, small stones on the road cut into my hands. I fell into the ditch beside it, smelling of stale water and dirt.
Twisting my head to one side I watched the driver step backwards, away from the gate as the drumming became insistent, throbbing. When he realised what was happening, he managed one stride towards his car before the gate exploded from its posts. Boxer’s gigantic hooves rang against its metal bars like swords on a shield and it crashed onto the road surface. The car headlights lit the horse up like a bronze statue as he reared over the fallen gate. Staggering away from him, the taxi driver fell against the hedge on the opposite side of the road.
High atop Boxer, Eddy Moon sat half in shadow. “Maddie!” His hair whirled as his head snapped from side to side.
I struggled to gather enough breath to speak. “I’m here.” My voice sounded frail. I raised a hand and Boxer saw me, wheeling and lowering his head.
“Oh Maddie!” Eddy tumbled down his horse’s side and bent over me in the ditch. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Can I move you?”
“I’m fine.”
He crouched and slid one hand under my back, lifting me slightly. Pushing another hand into the space he created, he lifted me into his arms and stood. Off the ground, out of the damp, away from the base scents of dirt and broken grass, I pressed my face against Eddy’s chest and gasped at the now familiar scents of hay and leather.
Boxer’s hooves clattered and I looked up. The driver sidled against the hedge while Boxer menaced him with a heavy swinging head.
“I don’t want to put you down,” Eddy murmured. “But I ought to break him in half.”
“Don’t put me down.”
“Okay.” Eddy straightened his head. “Boxer, let him go.”
Boxer backed away and the driver trotted to the open door of his car, got in and slammed it. Boxer kicked it once, almost folding the door in two, before the taxi screeched into reverse.
“He’ll have Boxer’s calling card as a souvenir, at least.”
The car sped away into the night, until all I could hear was the slow, strong beat of Eddy Moon’s heart.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
I pushed my face into the hollow at the base of his throat. “Don’t be sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry. I’m really going to have put you down for a moment. I forgot about the gate. Will you be okay on Boxer?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll give you a leg up. Put your left foot into my hand, straighten your left leg, and swing your right one over his back.”
I didn’t stop to consider how this was going to be possible. Eddy manoeuvred me so I was sitting in his right hand with my feet in his left. Then, simply, he pushed me upwards. It was smooth and quick as riding a lift, but just before I settled into the saddle he held my entire weight in one hand, above his head.
I looked down at him. “You’re not normal are you?” Not normal! How could I say something so stupid?
He smiled and gave me a wry look, then his face disappeared behind his hair as he bent to the steel gate. Taking a wide grip he straightened, holding its ten foot span in front of him, and walked back towards the field entrance. He leaned the gate against the post, then jolted. Something caught his eye in the ditch where I had been. He bent over and picked up my cell-phone.
“Thanks Eddy,” I breathed.
Using both hands, he straightened the pegs the gate swung from. “Boxer did a good job on these.” He hung the gate on its post then turned to his horse. “Come on old son, time to take the lady home.”
Swaying from side to side, Boxer carried me into the field. Eddy closed the gate behind us, then put his hand on Boxer’s neck. “Can you shuffle back onto his rump? Sorry, I need to sit in front of you. We’ll go across the fields. It’s quicker and there’s less chance of running into any more trouble.”
I did as Eddy asked. He bent his knees and dived over Boxer’s back. Taking hold of the reins he folded one leg under him, then straightened it on the other side of the horse. Comfortably astride Boxer, he reached one hand behind him. I took it and held my breath as he pulled me against his back. “Hold on tight.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. I pressed my cheek against his shoulder blades and wrapped my arms around his stomach. Under my hands his abdominals were as hard and defined as if they had been carved from oak.
Boxer set off at a steady trot and Eddy pressed my phone into my hand. “Call your Mum. Say you ran into a school friend who’s bringing you home.”
I did as he said.
“Are you okay?” Mum asked.
“Actually...” I smiled. “Yes, I’m fantastic.” I squeezed my phone into a pocket. All the information I had about Eddy and about the Seven Sleepers seemed stacked up into a stairway of proof. My euphoria gave me the confidence to test it. If Eddy needed a push to give me some real answers, then push I would. I took a deep breath. “So, are you going to give me any explanation?”
“Of what?” I heard the smile in Eddy’s voice.
“Of how you came to be riding bareback through the fields exactly when and where I needed you.”
“Funny that, eh?”
“It’s part of a pattern I’m starting to notice.”
Boxer cantered smoothly along a hedge line and through a gap into the next field. Leafless trees framed the glossy night sky. The air washed cold against my cheek, but Eddy’s back felt as warm as a radiator.
I changed tack. “Are you a heavy sleeper?”
“Oh yeah.”
“How heavy?”
“The heaviest.”
“What’s the latest you’ve slept in?”
“You’ve got no idea.”
I smiled to myself. I thought I did. “Hey, so I’ve got some exciting news for you. I’ve worked out what your middle name means, in fact, what your whole name means.”
He shifted in front of me. “Really, what?”
I explained that ‘Doforni’ could be read as an instruction for the rearrangement of the letters in his first and last names. If he exchanged the D and the O in his name for an N and an I, then he got “Endymion.” I told him Endymion was a shepherd in Greek mythology who was enchanted into eternal sleep. “So why would your mysterious guardian give you a name like that?”
Eddy leaned forward over Boxer’s neck. The lights of Glastonbury shimmered in front of us.
I didn’t have long. “And how did you know there was a foreign knight in the tomb? And why do you call cormorants, ‘sea ravens’?” I took a deep breath. “Maybe it’s got something to do with the gong that was found under Windmill Hill, and banged fourteen years ago. Fourteen years ago, when you were two years old, and Mr. Neil asked the Hechters to foster you.”
Eddy slapped Boxer on the neck, and the gigantic horse shifted from a canter into a gallop. “Hold tight!”
Boxer shortened his stride, bouncing me on his rump, then gathered himself and leapt. For a moment we soared, Eddy and I, high above the starlit hill. Then Boxer cleared the fence and with a quadruple clash his massive metal shoes hit the road. There was no more talk until we slowed at the entrance to Chalice Drive.
“How do you know where I live?”
“The same way I know whe
n you’re in trouble.” Eddy swung a leg over Boxer’s neck and slid to the ground. “I won’t take Boxer down to your house. He’ll only attract attention.”
I held my breath.
Eddy raised his arms to me. “The same way I know I’ll stop growing at six-foot-six. The same way I can lift a five bar gate by myself.”
I placed my hands in his and gasped at the reawakened memory of the strength and security of his grip.
“As you said, I’m not normal.”
I swung one leg over Boxer’s rump and Eddy lowered me to the ground.
“I’ll wait here.” He held onto my hands. “Turn your bedroom light on and off three times when you get in. That way I’ll know you’re safe.”
I didn’t move. “So it’s true. The story of the Seven Sleepers is true and you’re it.”
Eddy said nothing. He straightened his head and let go of my hands. A streetlamp cast a slanting light across his beautiful, noble features. He nodded once. “I slept. For hundreds of years I slept. And when I woke I was a baby, and all my life before like the half-remembered dream of children.”
I bit my lip. I believed him. I knew it was nonsensical, against all reason and scientifically impossible, but his story seemed to fit like a key, into a lock in my mind that I didn’t even know was there.
“Nobody else knows. Who can understand?” In a now familiar gesture Eddy dipped his head, and his golden hair slid over his magnificent face. “It’s the hardest and strangest way to live your life.”
My hands twitched to touch him. My arms ached to wrap themselves around him. I knew. I would understand.
He looked at me again. “Now go. Your mother will be waiting.”
