Children of Clun

by Robert Nicholls

  He looked at her a long moment, longer than ever before, then saluted, turned and marched away. Less than an hour later, Sir Roland’s train rode off into the teeth of a rising wind. She waved them away – Lady Margaret, Sir Perceval, Marie and Lady Joan, with the whole rank of knights and also with Eustace.

  “Well,” she asked under her breath, “what if ye wring it an’ it’s already dry?”

  Chapter 41 – Answers

  For a time, Madeleine sat alone in the courtyard, huddling out of the wind. She thought of Elizabeth Douglas, perhaps also huddling out of the wind, at the saint’s well. Or, more likely, moved on by now – to Much Wenlock – to the mysterious north, where Scotland was. Does even a person who’s going home really know what they’ll find when they get there?

  In a while, Davey came by, closely followed by his adoring and grateful Beatrice. He offered warm, cream-laden milk which Maddie accepted. She would also, for a change, have accepted his company but he had a shelter to build for Beatrice and quickly moved on. Not long after, Silent Richard, Jeremy and Jenny Talbot passed by without seeing her. They hugged three-ways at the gate and the men, leaning just a little on one another, lumbered away toward the forest. Everyone seemed to have somewhere to be going.

  On her way back into the castle, Jenny spied her and wandered over.

  “Ay!” she sighed, parking herself beside Madeleine on the edge of the trough. “En’t had a week like that in many a day, I’ll tell you!”

  “No. It’s been somethin’, alright!”

  “Sad to think how ‘e’ll be remembered, doncha think? Mister Rowe? If anyone remembers ‘im at all, that is!”

  “I’m plannin’ to forget ‘im quick smart, Missus Talbot! Sooner the better!”

  “Yes. Funny ol’ life though, wun’t it? This castle were all ‘e ‘ad, ye know! An’ it weren’t even his! He were like a lonely ol’ dog, lyin’ on a grave. Wi’ never an idea!”

  To Madeleine’s astonishment, a wobbly tear squeezed itself out of Jenny Talbot’s eye and began feeling its way through the downy hairs on her cheek. She took a long pensive look around the bailey. When she spoke again, it was as though she’d forgotten Madeleine was there.

  “Might as well tie yourself to a tree and try to protect it from winter.” A moment later, though, she turned a stern motherly look on Madeleine.

  “There’s a lesson ‘ere, ye know! For all of us! To lift our ‘eads up now an’ again! See if where we are an’ what we’re doin’ makes good sense! See if there might be somethin’ better we’re overlookin’! Not like a change o’ direction means the end o’ the world, is it!”

  She wiped away the tear and sighed deeply. “But there ye go! Half the people are blind an’ t’other half are invisible. So who are we to judge, eh? Sittin’ ‘ere on our arses, goin’ nowhere! Who are we?”

  And she too wandered off.

  Small groups of villagers began drifiting out of the castle – three, five, ten at a time – heading out and home. None seemed to notice her until her parents and Annie appeared. Gwilym came straight to her and, with uncharacteristic gentleness, lifted her in his arms. But instead of heading for the gate, he turned back into the castle. Over his shoulder she glimpsed Gwenith and Anwen, walking away arm in arm.

  “She’s asked for ye,” Gwilym said, anticipating her question. “An’ Maudie says it’s alright. That’s all I know.”

  The Great Hall had emptied out, leaving only Jack Sorespot, Maude, the Cunning Woman and her two semi-conscious patients. And the deep silence that stone makes on its journey into dust. Without a word, Gwilym lowered Madeleine onto a bench beside the Cunning Woman, turned and wandered away to a distant table – out of hearing, but not out of sight. The moment he was settled, Myfanwy began speaking, as though the conversation was already half over.

  “This one,” she said, indicating the still form of Roger Ringworm, “was deeply cut. Ye know what to use if the wound opens again?”

  Madeleine frowned, looked closely at the boy. “Soldier’s woundwort?”

  Myfanwy nodded. “Good. You watch. See that he lives. And that one!” She indicated the twitching form of Brenton. “That one is made of oak and iron. He’ll live no matter what. But the lungs might give ‘im some worry. Use fenugreek. Boil it with the roots of hollyhock and lily. Crush in some snails. You’ll remember?”

  And to Madeleine’s nod she said, “Of course you will. And this one,” she indicated Jack who sat beside Roger with his back to them, “you don’t have to worry about. This one is a free man. And free men make their own choices. What will you do, Free Man?” she asked of Jack. He looked over his shoulder at her, thought to speak, then shook his head. “He knows,” Myfanwy said. “He knows but won’t tell. Free men can keep their own counsel.”

  She fell silent. They were all silent. Some silences are comfortable. This one seemed to Madeleine to be reaching into her throat, tugging at her vocal cords. When she could stand it no longer, she said, “My da’ said you wanted to see me.”

  Myfanwy shook her head lightly. “I’ve always been able to see you, Madeleine! Through her eyes.” She gestured to Maude who had leaned to whisper to Jack. “I don’t need ye here for that. Ye’re here so that you can see.” Again she fell silent and again the silence stretched, taut as the skin around a goose bump.

  “What?” Madeleine asked, with growing exasperation. “What am I s’posed to see?”

  Myfanwy turned slightly on the bench and looked closely into Madeleine’s eyes, as though looking for a hidden joke. “Your task, girl! Your purpose! What else?”

  Madeleine shook her head and felt anger rising up in her gorge. She gestured toward Brenton and Roger.

  “That’s my task?”

  Myfanwy’s bemused gaze became that of a person who expects to see a light of understanding flicker on – the solution to a riddle suddenly dawning. There was no dawn in Madeleine’s mind.

  “An’ when they’re up an’ goin’, then what? I settle into a lifetime o’ boilin’ ‘erbs an’ settin’ bones here in Clun?”

  Myfanwy’s gaze was impassive. “Would it be the end of the world?”

  Madeleine immediately heard the echo of Jenny Talbot’s words. ‘See if what you’re doing makes good sense. Not like a change of direction would be the end of the world.’ A nice enough sentiment, she supposed. But Jenny had also said something else – something that struck closer to Madeleine’s being.

  “En’t gonna know if it’s the end o’ the world am I? Not ‘til it’s too late! Mrs Talbot says half the world is blind, an’ t’other half’s invisible! An’ I don’ even know which half I’m in!”

  Although, she supposed, in the end it hardly mattered. The fear and the anger might wash out of her but the hollow, confused sense of incompleteness would probably always be there. She looked up to find Myfanwy smiling warmly.

  “The blind half,” the old woman said, her eyes sparkling with secrets. “Yer in the blind ‘alf, Maddy. An’ much much more’n ‘alf’s invisible! Wi’ ye let me show ye?”

  She took Madeleine’s hand and opened it into a shallow cup which she laid like an offering in her own larger hand, leaving the lines on Madeleine’s palm open to view. To Madeleine, the hand was just the same callused thing she wiped on her clothes fifty times a day. But for Myfanwy, it was a reassurance. She saw the lifeline, long, deep and, as she’d known it would be, involved with many smaller lines. She saw the heart line, corkscrewing uncertainly, but unbroken. Stories for another time.

  There are few perfect fits in life. A baby’s mouth and a mother’s breast. The lips of lovers. And for that moment, those two hands – fitting as neatly as a closed eye – lower lid and upper lid pressed together – separate parts of a single whole. Without warning, Madeleine found her vision beginning to alter, falling through the ash-stained flesh of her palm, past the blood and the bones, to that interface – the back of her hand and Myfanwy’s palm.

  Then she became aware of a tiny vibration within her bre
ast – just where the hollowness had always lived. It was as though her heart had begun to purr. And the very moment her mind noticed it, the vibration began to move, drifting lazily up her throat and into the space behind her eyes. Before she knew it, her head seemed occupied by a hive of tranquil, humming bees, which she recognised as the sound of peacefulness.

  It lifted her like a feather of down; lifted her from the seat, from her clothes, from the hall. She lost contact with the earth – found herself floating, suspended. She imagined herself a fish, drifting in a river’s current, caught in the lull between heartbeats, with every freckle, every pore, every pale scar, every follicle of hair, from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head held in undisturbed quiet. So total a sensation that there was no sensation. And then, with a sudden lurch of astonishment, she saw.

  She saw an endless landscape of trees, brooks, meadows and marshes; of scree-ridden slopes and deep, fertile valleys. She saw shimmering points of radiance in secret places – here a gnarled oak, there a tiny hidden well. She saw the wind! Not just its effects, but the wind itself, palely weaving its way! She saw seasons and stars and clouds. She saw animals and plants and people. She saw points of howling darkness.

  She saw that the whole was divided into two landscapes; one of death and another of life, with the thinnest of veils between. And she saw that everything moved, spiralling, interlacing and changing, in patterns as graceful, immutable and unfathomable as the tides. She saw, rather than heard, how it creaked and crackled and groaned and twittered, like pond ice under a great weight. All this she saw, not in parts, as a traveller might see it, but all at once and she saw that the whole glistened with a meaning far beyond the meanings of its parts. It was a single, vast, slow, ancient pulse. And she realised, with an almost overpowering sense of joy, that the vibration she felt within herself was a perfect echo, a lingering resonance of that pulse. She was a part of it, and it of her.

  A voice at her ear spoke. It was Maude’s voice. Her shy little sister was somehow there, at her side. “It’s the world, Maddie – as the ancient ones knew it to be.”

  Together, they watched and as they watched they saw the blue cold of winter begin to settle and the wind to peel snow from the mountaintops. The animals and plants slowed and began to curl in on themselves. For the first time in anyone’s memory, Madeleine began to cry.

  “No need for that!” she heard Maude say, and she knew it was true. She knew, as everyone knew, that, in the old order, the first day of November – All Souls Day – this very day – was the start of the winter season of Samhain – the start of the New Year. Harvest Home was past; the last of the flocks were hurrying in. Samhain was a time to reflect on the cycling of life and death; a time to confront fears and to make plans for when the summer would come again.

  “Look!” Maude said. The wintry land swam and altered until the village of Clun appeared before them. Madeleine saw it in its long, lean winter. She saw it two ways. One was cold and forlorn and beset by evils. The other was cosy, full-bellied and braced.

  A voice she hadn’t heard before – somehow a combination of Maude’s and Myfanwy’s – said, “Nothing is set. Not until we make it so.”

  “We have choices?” Madeleine asked.

  “The world must ever renew itself, Madeleine. That’s what winter is for. That’s what we are for. There’s good and there’s evil; there’s better and there’s worse. Yes, we do have choices. And our choices make a difference.”

  The village, in its turn, faded and the faces of Gwilym and Gwenith, of Anwen and Brenton, appeared, twisted with expectation. And Maude appeared, reaching a hand toward them, a flame painlessly arching from her palm. Before Madeleine could frame the question, the voice said, “The bonefire was not lit in Clun on All Hallows Eve. But the hearths are rekindled, nevertheless – by the children of Clun.”

  “But this . . . ?”

  “Not all fires are alike, Madeleine.” Madeleine was puzzled.

  “Why am I not there with them? With my family?”

  Myfanwy’s own deep eyes swam into view, blocking out the visions of her family, of Clun. “You have only to choose it,” said the voice gently. “There is no lord in Clun and there is no lord in your heart. You are free. Like the boy. Only more so – and less so. You have a healer’s touch, Madeleine. You can learn much. You need not be blind. Choice is always the first task.” The smile began to fade. Everything began to fade until all that was left was the outline of Myfanwy’s eyes. Then that too, was gone.

  * * * *

  For the second morning in a row, Madeleine awoke, startled, in her own bed. The weight of her body against the ground was instantly oppressive. She clawed her way upright, twisted about in panic. What force kept returning her to this place? The wattle and daub walls, the dank cold! Already she grieved for the vibrant, intertwined world Myfanwy had revealed. In the distance were the unmistakable sounds of the village; nearer, the buzz of milk into a bowl. Someone was milking the goat.

  In the main room, she found Gwilym, sitting on a stool, head propped on the goat’s rump, working the udders. He glanced up at her, but didn’t interrupt his work. Even in the grey light, Madeleine could see that his eyes were softer than she’d seen them in a long while.

  “Where’s everybody?” she asked.

  “All up in the Great Hall, nursin’ them boys. The Cunnin’ Woman said it was too soon to move ‘em. Says you’ll know when.”

  “Me? Isn’t she . . . ?”

  “Gone. Wanted to be out o’ the Marches before the snow came, she said. Snow’s comin’ tonight, she said.”

  Madeleine looked around in confusion. “Why am I . . . ? How did . . . ?”

  “I brought you, Maddie. Jus’ wanted ye to wake up in yer own home. Besides which, I had some thinkin’ to do. An’ I do that best here.” He gave each of the udders a last tug and sat back. She saw no option but to follow his lead.

  “What ye thinkin’ about, da’?”

  Gwilym put the milk bowl on the table and unfolded himself slowly, gingerly reaching his arms toward the roof, bending from side to side, stretching the muscles in his back.

  “Thinkin’ about . .!” The stretch ended with a great sigh. His arms dropped and his head fell forward but his gaze wandered distractedly about the room. “Thinkin’ about Clun, I guess, for one thing!” He began, affectionately, to stroke the goat’s ears. “Not worth much thinkin’, some folk’d say – little place like this!” He bent and spoke directly into the animal’s ear. “ ‘At’s not what you’d say though, is it, goat? Clun’s the whole world to you, innit?” He still didn’t look at Madeleine, but she was aware that he was building to something. “You said . . . t’other day, you said I was scared. Scared to listen . . . case I might have to do somethin’ different. Case things might have to change.”

  “I’m sorry, da’! It was just stubbornness talkin’, you know that! There’s nothin’ in the world scares you! Not knights wi’ swords! Not even Owain Glydndwr!”

  “Yeah, well . . . sometimes it’s hard to separate bein’ brave from bein’ stupid, Mad’. But you were right. I was scared! I am scared! Scared-er today ‘n’ I was yesterday! I don’ know what’s gonna happen to Clun, Maddie; what wi’ Sir Roland turnin’ ‘is back on us! At least when Mister Rowe was in the castle, we could pretend we were connected, ye know? Even if no lord’s ever came! But wi’out even him. . . I jus’ ent sure ‘ow we’re gonna go!”

  “Da’!” There was, she saw, a tinge of panic in his eyes. “It’s just a new thing, da’! Somethin’ to make the best of! Not the end o’ the world! You ask Maudie ‘bout it! ‘Bout all the connections around us – keepin’ us goin’! She can tell ye, Maudie can!”

  “Yeah? Well maybe I’ll do that sometime. Meantime, o’ course, t’other thing I’m thinkin’ about . . . is you.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m over all ‘at, see? I mean, I know Clun’s far away from everythin’ but . . . well, it’s still part o’ everythin’ too, innit! I reckon if nothin
’ else come outta this past week, at least I figured that out!”

  “Yah!” he laughed. “I reckon we all figured that out! Still, ye know . . . one o’ the things I always loved ‘bout Clun was ‘ow it was out o’ the way! Safe! As near to bein’ predictable as anythin’ can be! An’ I wanted to keep it that way, for you ‘n’ yer sisters ‘n’ yer ma ‘n’ everyone else livin’ ‘ere! Problem is, though, it’s what I wanted ‘n’ maybe what yer ma wanted – but it wasn’t what you wanted! Young folks like you . . . ‘n’ prob’ly Eustace . . . I reckon ye’re a new kinda people, Maddie! Ye need to be testin’ out a new kind o’ world – one ‘at you’ve ‘ad some say in.” He drew a deep breath.

  “Sorry, da’. I ain’t bin easy, I know! Ma says I’m ‘er questionin’ girl. Born on Childermas – December twenty-eight. Days don’t come no unluckier, do they?”

  Gwilym snorted softly. “No they don’t! But yer a Thursday child as well, ye know! ‘Wednesday’s child is full o’ woe, an’ Thursday’s child has far to go.’ So what I’m thinkin’ now is . . . if ye got far to go . . . maybe all yer questionin’ makes sense! How else ye gonna figure out . . . ‘ow to get wherever it is yer goin’? So no! It in’t a time for bein’ sorry. It’s a time for bein’ ready!” He paused again and finally got around to looking directly at her.

  “So ‘ere’s the thing! I know things’re changin’ an’ I know I en’t gonna win no prizes by fightin’ it. So I want you ‘n’ me to ‘ave a new start, see? Ye aren’t a child no more an’, in some ways, ye aren’t mine no more neither. No, nor Clun’s, neither! So I jus’ wanna say, whatever it is . . . whatever ye’re waiting for . . . wherever ye’re goin’, for better’r worse, I know it’s jus’ gonna be that way. But I’d like it if . . . ye’d be here, wi’ us . . . part of our family . . . ‘til yer ready.”

  She listened for a long, strenuous time to the quiet that followed. Gwilym and the goat both waited and watched. Then, indistinctly but definitely, far away behind her eyes, she heard the tranquil humming of summer bees. And for a second time, she began to cry.

  * * * *

  There is little more to tell in this part of Madeleine’s story. Sir Roland, Sir Perceval, Marie, Lady Joan, Silent Richard, Jeremy, Eustace – none of them ever came back to Clun. But before Christmas, Jack Sorespot would limp out of the forest, shivering, exhausted and hungry. He had helped to bury the greatest man he would ever know. He had shed the greatest weight of his grieving. And he had come back for his friend, Roger Ringworm. Maude had told Madeleine he was coming, two full days before he actually arrived in Clun. “An’ he’ll be ‘ere for a long, long while,” she’d added with a shy smile.