The Islands of Chaldea

by Diana Wynne Jones

  The cook stopped in the doorway. “Why do you ask?”

  “I meant – seeing he has to economise with the food,” said Aunt Beck.

  The cook swung around, looking very sincere and earnest. “Ah no,” he said. “That was my miscalculation, you’ll understand. His temper’s up already over that. He likes to eat well, the Captain. And seeing as the High King has promised him a bag of gold for landing you safe in Holytown, and King Kenig has promised him another when we return to Skarr without you, the Captain told me to lay in lavishly – which I thought I had.”

  “Indeed?” said Aunt Beck. “Since that is the way of it, we must all accept the situation. Thank you.”

  As soon as the cook had gone, Ivar burst out, “The thieving, money-grabbing skinflints! They’re promised two bags of gold and they feed us this!” He pointed at the herrings and I swear his eyes popped with rage.

  “It will fill you up,” said Aunt Beck, sharing round the food. “Although,” she added pensively, “I would like to see what the good Captain is eating at this moment.”

  “Venison,” Ogo said glumly. “I smelt it cooking.”

  “And why are they going to drop us in Holytown and not Dunberin?” Ivar demanded. “It’s miles further down the coast.”

  “It seems King Farlane ordered it,” Aunt Beck said. “And I expect it has something to do with whisky as well. We should be thankful, Ivar. Holytown is not a large place, like Dunberin, and should be less expensive. Remember we have next to no money.”

  But, when the meal was over, she took me into our cabin on the pretext of putting the bags in there. “Aileen,” she said, turning very serious, “I didn’t wish to say this in front of those two boys, but I am very much afraid that your cousin King Kenig did not intend us to survive this journey.”

  I had been nervously searching the tiny space for Plug-Ugly. There was no sign of him or the rat either. I was beginning to wonder if I had dreamt him, when Aunt Beck spoke. It jerked my attention back to her. “But what shall we do?” I said. “Do you think that this prophecy about Prince Alasdair is false then?” And a shameful thing it was, I thought, that someone was playing with King Farlane’s hopes.

  “It could be,” said my aunt. “Prophecies are sly, chancy things and easy enough to invent. I’ll keep an open mind there. But it may just be someone – Donal or Mevenne, for instance – seizing a chance when it is offered. As to what we do, well, child, first we keep Ivar safe, and second we try to get to Logra the way they want us to and, being forewarned, then we’ll see.”

  Holytown was a little low grey town with an irregular jetty. From the moment we reached it, it was all confusion. The Captain couldn’t wait to get rid of us. Our bags were thrown out on the jetty almost before the ship was tied up and we found ourselves following them into a frenzy of fish and shouting. We seemed to have arrived just as the fishing fleet came in. All around us silver streams of fish were being poured into barrels, or laid out in boxes, or being bought and sold out of deep, smelly holds. Bernica people are not very tall. It added to my confusion that Aunt Beck and Ogo towered out of the crowd and even I found I was nearly as tall as most people around me.

  “I’m starving,” said Ivar. “Can we buy some?”

  “Not at these prices,” Aunt Beck said. She was staring keenly around, evidently looking for something.

  Ogo nudged me and pointed. Just for an instant I had a sight of Plug-Ugly rubbing himself against the legs of a little person in green robes. He was gone again as I looked.

  At the same moment, Aunt Beck said, “Ah!” and strode towards the green robes.

  There was a whole group of them ambling cheerfully among the fish, pausing to bargain and then moving on with a fish or two in their baskets. They did not look very well-to-do. All the green robes were frayed and grubby. The men mostly went barefoot; the women had home-made-looking sandals. But the oddest thing about them was that each of them had an animal or a bird. I saw a squirrel on one man’s shoulder and one woman had a rabbit nestled in her basket alongside the fish. Somebody else was leading a sheep and another seemed to have a fox.

  “Who are they, Aunt?” I asked as Aunt Beck surged purposefully towards them.

  “Monks and nuns,” she replied. “They worship the Lady.”

  This left me very little wiser. Nothing could have been more unlike the Priest of Kilcannon and his novices. As we came up with the group, I found myself surrounded by cheerful faces and strange beasts. I assumed the nun nearest me had an odd black-feathered headdress, until the headdress turned a round yellow eye on me and went, “Craark!” And I realised she had a raven sitting on her green hat.

  “His name’s Roy,” she said. “He’ll not hurt you. And what will you folks be wanting?”

  “Your help, brothers and sisters,” Aunt Beck said. “We need to be directed to the king.”

  “The king!” said several of them, rather astonished.

  And one little fat man asked, “And why would you be wanting the king?” He was perhaps the oddest of all the monks because he had a beard that grew in two long wisps, one wisp from each cheek, that were long enough to be tucked into the rope he wore as a belt. On his shoulder sat a truly magnificent green bird – shiny green with an arched beak and round yellow eyes even more knowing than the raven’s. Each eye was surrounded in wise pinkish wrinkles that made it look very clever indeed. The long, long green tail swept down the little monk’s back like a waterfall even longer than the monk’s wispy beards.

  And it spoke. Ogo, Ivar and I all jumped when it said, in a loud, squawking voice, “It’s Thursday! It’s Thursday!”

  “Oh, and so it is!” said the nun with the raven. “Green Greet is quite right.”

  “No, no,” said another monk. “It’s Wednesday, I swear.”

  “It is indeed,” someone else declared. “The foxes always bark on a Wednesday.”

  “They bark when they like,” another monk said. “Thursday it is, when the sun is on the tower.”

  “Oh no,” disagreed a nun in the distance. “Wednesday is today, and the Lady’s birthday only a week away now.”

  “Thursday,” someone else insisted. “The Birthday is only six days away.”

  The argument went on and on, with our own heads turning from one to another. By this time, there were people insisting it was only Tuesday and others who seemed equally sure it was a Friday today.

  At length Aunt Beck said, highly exasperated, “What does it matter what day it is? I only asked to be directed to the king.”

  “But that is just the point, Wise Woman,” said the monk with the green bird. “The king is under geas, poor man. He is forbidden to see strangers on a Thursday.”

  “Oh,” said Aunt Beck. “I’ve heard tell of this kind of thing in Bernica. What will happen to the king if he does see a stranger on a Thursday?”

  “No one knows, except that it’s bad to anger the gods,” said the little monk. “And—”

  “And how do you know I’m a Wise Woman?” Aunt Beck demanded.

  “It sticks out a mile,” said the monk. “Green Greet saw it at once.” He reached up and patted the bird on its head. The bird promptly seized one of his plump little fingers in its beak. I suppose it was meant to be affectionate, but it looked painful. The monk took his hand away and shook it. “Why are you wanting to see the king?” he said. “Are you in need of justice?” He looked from Aunt Beck to me and on to Ogo and Ivar as if the idea puzzled him greatly.

  “Not exactly,” said Aunt Beck. By this time, everyone had stopped arguing and was staring at her with interest. She drew herself up tall. “We are on a mission, for the High King of Chaldea,” she said.

  All the green-robed people seemed impressed by this. Their green hats and little round caps turned and nodded as they looked at one another. “Well then,” said the one with the bird, “it seems best that we take you to our House so that we can divine what day it is. Would you care to take breakfast with us there?”

  “Oh ye
s!” Ivar said, heartfelt. Ogo’s stomach gave a sharp rumble.

  “We shall be delighted,” said my aunt, stately as ever.

  So the group went on choosing fish. I noticed that they did not pay much for it. Most fishermen seemed quite ready to give them fish for nothing. “For luck,” said each man, pouring handfuls of tiny silver fish into the baskets.

  Beyond the wharf was a market. Here the party acquired armloads of bread, several crocks of butter, a lot of early apples and a great many cherries. Again, they did not have to pay much for it.

  “It’s almost worth being holy,” Ogo said to me, as we went out from the market and among the grey houses of the town. There he nudged me again and pointed. I was just in time to see Plug-Ugly crouched in a patch of sun with a large fish in his mouth. He was gone when we came level with the place. “Do you think that beast is magical?” Ogo whispered.

  “Yes,” I said. “He must be.”

  The monks and nuns, chatting cheerfully, led us on to the edge of the town. Their House, when we came to it, was more like a barn than a religious establishment. It was lofty and dark and warm inside, with a fire in the middle of the floor in a most smoky, old-fashioned way. That fire puzzled Ivar because it was low and glowing and made of dark chunks of stuff. Ivar had only seen log fires before. “What are they burning?” he said, peering at it.

  “Peat,” said Aunt Beck. “This island is made of peat, they say.”

  Peat seemed to be lumps of marsh, but it served perfectly well to cook fish on. Fishes were sizzling in iron pans in no time. We were each given a heaped wooden plateful of them and nothing but a chunk of bread to eat them with. Everyone sat on the floor to eat. Ogo and Ivar kept getting their long legs in the way. I was as unused as they were to eating on the floor and I kept having to shift about, trying to get comfortable. Aunt Beck of course sat elegantly cross-legged and daintily picked up fish with bread and her fingers as though she had been doing this all her life.

  “I call this dreadful!” Ivar grumbled. “It’s not civilised!” Luckily, he had the sense to grumble in a whisper, but even so, Aunt Beck shot him one of her nastiest looks. Ivar turned very red and sat with his back to her after that.

  The fish was delicious. We all ate a great deal, being very hungry by then. When we were finished, a grubby rag – which Aunt Beck looked at rather primly – was passed around so we could wipe our fingers. Then the monks and nuns fetched out all manner of strange implements, and an abacus and some sheets of parchment and sticks of charcoal, and began to calculate which day of the week it actually was.

  “I make it Friday,” Ogo whispered to me. “We set out on Monday, didn’t we?”

  Just then the great green bird flew up into the rafters on a huge spread of green feathers, shouting, “It’s Thursday! It’s Thursday!”

  Ivar and Ogo and I went off into giggles. Aunt Beck said, “I’ve heard of parrots. It would probably say that if it were Sunday. Quiet now.”

  But, do you know, the monks and nuns still couldn’t decide what day it was. At last, Aunt Beck lost patience and stood up. “We shall go to the king now,” she said, “and take a risk on what day it is. Can someone set us on our way, please?”

  The monk who owned the parrot stood up too. We had gathered by then that his name was Finn. “I’ll take them,” he said, “and bring them back if need be. Does anyone know what became of my sandals?”

  There was much hunting around the edges of the barn and a nun eventually produced a pair of thick leather sandals. Finn stamped his chubby feet into them and beckoned the green bird down to his shoulder. “Off we go,” he said, cheerfully picking up Aunt Beck’s bag. Ogo picked up his and Ivar’s, I picked up mine, and we thanked the others and left. As we went, they were busy feeding the animals, almost as if they had forgotten us.

  “Is it far to the king?” I asked as we left the houses behind.

  “A mile or so,” Finn said.

  I was glad. My bag was heavy. I envied Ivar striding ahead with Aunt Beck. We were taking a track that led gently upwards among dozens of small green fields, most with sheep in them, but some growing crops I couldn’t recognise. There was honeysuckle in the hedges. The air smelt moist and sweet. Every so often it rained a little – fine rain that made my eyebrows itch and Finn’s parrot shake its feathers irritably.

  “Bernica is the most western of our islands,” Finn explained to me. “And we get all the rain from the ocean beyond.”

  “Is that what makes everything so green?” I asked.

  Finn nodded, pleased. He seemed pleased about most things. “Bernica is the green place,” he said, “loved of the Lady.”

  “And this king we’re going to see rules it all?” Ogo panted. He was finding things heavy too.

  “Oh, bless you, no!” Finn told him. “Colm rules only as far as the mountains.”

  We all looked around for these mountains. Nothing. I was supposing they must be very far away and Colm’s kingdom very big, when Aunt Beck said, “Do you mean those little hills over there?” She pointed to a line of low green bulges a few miles off.

  “I do. I was forgetting you come from the jagged island of Skarr,” Finn said. “Bernica is a gentle place.”

  Ogo began to look contemptuous. Ivar laughed. “Those would hardly count as foothills on Skarr,” he said. “Have you had your parrot long?”

  “I have had Green Greet for twenty years now, ever since old Bryan died,” Finn said. “Before that he was bird to Alun and before that to Sythe – but I never knew Sythe, who died before I was born.”

  “Then he must be ever so old!” I said.

  “He is. He has lost count of how old,” Finn told me.

  About then we came out from among the fields and joined a level grassy road much cut up with wheel and hoof marks. This led across a wide marshy heath full of rattling rushes. I saw herds of donkeys, cows and pigs and even some horses in the distance. I wondered how anyone knew which belonged to whom, but I didn’t wonder too hard because my bag seemed to get heavier and heavier. Just as I was thinking I couldn’t carry it a step further, we arrived at the king’s house.

  Ivar was not the only one of us who stared at it scornfully. Even Aunt Beck raised her fine eyebrows at the sight of messy walls of mixed mud and stone sheltered by a few miserable trees. The only thing to be said of the place was that it seemed to cover quite a lot of ground. Otherwise, I have seen more impressive farmhouses.

  There was a rough wooden door in the messy wall with a fellow standing guard in front of it. He was a fine, tall young man with wavy fairish hair and an extremely handsome face. He wore leather armour on his chest and legs with a helmet on his head and he was armed to the teeth. He had a spear with a wicked sharp point, a sword and a dagger on his great studded belt and a bow in his hand. A quiver of arrows – also wickedly sharp – hung off his shoulder. I thankfully put down my bag and rubbed my sore hands together while I admired him. He was truly beautiful, except that he was scowling at us.

  “What do you want?” he said. “You should know better than to come here on a Thursday.”

  “So Green Greet was right,” Finn murmured. He said to the young man, “These people are a delegation from Skarr, young sir, sent to meet with the king.”

  “Then they must come back tomorrow,” the young man said. “The king’s geas forbids him to see strangers on a Thursday.”

  Finn turned away, looking resigned. “We’ll go back to town,” he said.

  “No, we shall not!” Aunt Beck said. “I have not come all this way to be turned back like a nobody. I am Beck, the Wise Woman of Skarr, and I insist on being allowed to enter!” She drew herself up and looked really formidable.

  The sentry drew himself up too. “And I am Shawn, third son of King Colm,” he said. “And I refuse to let you enter here.”

  “I’m a king’s son too,” said Ivar.

  “Shut up,” said my aunt. “How severe is the geas? How are you so sure it’s Thursday? And how do I know your king doesn
’t just use this excuse to be lazy?”

  “It is a strong, strong geas,” Shawn retorted. “And kings have a right to be lazy.”

  “Not when I’m at their gate, they’ve not!” said my aunt. “Stand aside and let us through this instant!”

  “No,” said the sentry.

  “Very well,” said Aunt Beck. She put one hand out to the young man’s armoured chest and moved him aside. He didn’t seem to be able to stop her. He simply stood where Aunt Beck had put him, gaping rather.

  I thought and wondered and thought how Aunt Beck did this and I still can’t see it. I tried to do it myself, experimenting on Ogo and Ivar. Ogo just said, “Why are you pushing me?” and Ivar said, “Who do you think you’re shoving?” and neither of them moved. Aunt Beck must have been using some art of the Wise Woman that you only get when you’re initiated. And of course I wasn’t.

  Anyway, the rough wooden door seemed not to have a lock of any kind. Aunt Beck opened it with one bony knee and beckoned us impatiently through. We picked up our bags and trudged through into a small muddy yard full of ale barrels and on into the king’s house itself. The door there was standing open – probably for light, because the hall inside was very dim. There were quite a lot of people inside, all sitting about and yawning. They all jumped and stared at us as Aunt Beck led us in. The green bird on Finn’s shoulder squawked out, “It’s Thursday, King Colm. It’s Thursday.”

  King Colm was sitting in a big chair at the far end. I think he was asleep until the green bird spoke. He was rather fat and his belly quivered as he sprang awake and roared out, “What are you doing in here, woman?”

  Shawn the sentry came rushing in past us. “Forgive me, Father!” he said. “She would come in, whatever I said. I think she’s a witch!”

  “No I am not, young man,” Aunt Beck retorted. “I am the Wise Woman of Skarr, I’ll have you know!”

  “I don’t care who you are,” said the king. “Didn’t anyone tell you I am under a geas not to see strangers on a Thursday?”