Reagan (Hengist-People of the Horse Book 3)

by Jacky Gray

  ‘If I hear that one more time, I swear I’ll …’

  ‘Smile and congratulate them. It’s done wonders for the community. There seem to be twice as many people here.’

  ‘Whoever thought of creating tunics with the horse on the back is doing a roaring trade. Everyone’s wearing them.’

  ‘Reagan, as I live and breathe. Best day of my life, meeting you. You must let me buy your lunch.’

  The big man clapped him on the shoulder, pitching him forward. Reagan recovered his balance and made the introductions. ‘Thearl, this is Archer, Archer this is Thearl, the master craftsman who designed Hengst.’

  As they shook hands, Thearl said, ‘Not Archer, son of Sedge? As in the song?’ Archer looked away, not quite so embarrassed these days but still bashful at the mention of the song celebrating his heroic deeds. ‘Well, that’s settled then. I must buy you both lunch in this fine hostelry and you must tell me the real tale, the bits they left out.’

  Except Draedan, the innkeeper, would not hear of any of them paying for any food or drink. He bellowed for Darma to come and see who was here. Archer was again impressed as the dark-haired beauty gathered Reagan up into a bone-crushing hug.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re here; we were only talking about you last night. How much you’ve done for us; business has never been better. Draedan’s talking about having a new rooming house built to cope with all the visitors who are coming to see “The best white horse after Uffington.”’ Reagan smiled as everyone, including Archer, joined in with her words.

  The meal was a long drawn out affair as several of Thearl’s friends appeared, asking Archer to repeat his tale and elaborate each part of the adventure. Each time, the song was sung and everyone in the inn seemed to know all the words. Thearl sang loudest, if slightly less in tune the more ale he drank. He admitted at one point he was thinking of moving to Somerford - he had more friends here than back in Aveburgh. Then he started talking about the song which should be written about Reagan’s exploits, and it was Archer’s turn to get his own back, passing on embarrassing anecdotes from years before. Reagan went out to the garden for a breath of fresh air; he’d drunk too much ale, even though it was well watered down.

  ‘Alright, Reagan? Not had any more of those funny turns have you?’

  ‘Hello Darma.’ He crossed his fingers behind his back to negate the lie. ‘I’ve been fine since the horse was finished. There’s still more to do, but now we understand more about the way of things, it seems to be going well.’

  ‘I’m so glad. I was really worried when I found out you could mind-link and everything. There were so many tales …’

  Reagan sensed she was reluctant to say more so he tried a little deception. ‘You mean about the chosen children? I heard some strange things. Did you know someone, then?’

  She sat down next to him on the wooden bench. ‘Not exactly, but it’s common knowledge around here about the local girl who had visions of a horse on the motte.’

  ‘I heard about that, but they chose Seagry instead.’

  ‘Apparently she continued to have these dreams every full moon and she started having headaches and nose bleeds. They said she could mind-link with animals and all the dogs in the village started howling when she was having these visions. They got very frightened and would snap at her; one even bit her.’

  Reagan kept his tone light. ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘There’s a number of tales. Some say she died of poison from the dog’s bite. Others that she turned into a wolf and disappeared but could be heard howling at the full moon. Then it gets silly. They say the headaches and nosebleeds got so bad her head exploded. But I’m sure they’re all just nonsense.’

  ‘Was she a chosen child, then?’

  ‘Yes. No. Not exactly. The chosen children are the ones who have the visions about the white horses which are built. They usually have extra special connections with things like stones or trees or spirit lines and some of them can mind-link.’

  ‘What do you mean by extra special?’

  ‘You know how we are all connected to the earth and try to live our lives in harmony with it? And how we respect the idea all living things have a soul and we ask their permission before using them for our benefit?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, some people can go further and actually communicate with animals and plants or sense the memories in inanimate materials like stones.’

  Reagan nodded and she continued. ‘This gift is quite rare and only usually happens for a year or so at the start of puberty, but it can be too powerful for the child to control and there have been a number of stories about the chosen children suffering all kinds of problems.’

  ‘Like headaches and nosebleeds.’

  ‘And so much worse. That’s why I was so concerned when you were in the death sleep. But the horse is created now and you’re obviously fine and well, so you have escaped the danger.’

  Reagan wanted to know more, but she was called to help with some food orders and he lost his chance. Losing a few memories and a bit of brain power couldn’t exactly be called danger, could it?

  43 Prime or Fibonacci?

  Reagan spent Saturnday morning continuing with the work on the latest disaster while Kalen was away in Marlburgh. It was quite clear the pins were forming clusters around certain areas. Cherhill had seven pins, Marlburgh had six, Alton Barnes had four and Hackpen had three. Looking at the overall picture, there were seven places marked in total, each village was about the same distance from Aveburgh. A small hamlet called Allington was the last with merely one pin, but as he stood there, Fenella put two more pins there, another two on Alton Barnes and one more on Hackpen. By the time he’d verified Allington was the closest village to the Tan Hill horse, she had added another pin there.

  As the last family in the queue left, Fenella studied the names. ‘They’re mostly white horse towns, aren’t they? I know because I deal with the scouring committees. Malduc makes it a priority to go along whenever he can.’

  ‘Except for these two. Clevancy and Highway. One case in each. They seem much closer together than all the other towns, almost as if it were one.’ Reagan tilted his head round, looking for symmetry.

  ‘They are both very small hamlets, not even half the size of somewhere like Allington.’

  ‘There’s no white horse in either of them, the closest is Cherhill. Or Hackpen.’

  ‘And it’s on the way to your new one at Somerford. I hear you went there yesterday. How did you get on? My niece lives over there, she talks about you as if she knows you. She says her daughter and half the girls in the village have got a big crush on you, but that’s young girls for you.’

  Reagan tried to steer the conversation away from such an uncomfortable topic and focus on the numbers, but she seemed keen to pursue it, so he was glad when some more people came to her desk. He overheard her telling them the standard message about letting the patient sleep, drinking plenty of water with sugar and salt and, if they could manage it, peppermint or honey and lemon. She then gave them a small pamphlet with more information and suggested if they were still worried after a week, they should talk to Ganieda.

  ‘But my son hasn’t eaten for five days. Surely he will die if he doesn’t eat soon?’

  ‘As long as he is drinking, he can survive for a lot longer than that. But don’t worry, none of these cases has lasted more than a week. In fact so far, most of them have lasted exactly a week from what I can tell. So in two days’ time he should be right as rain. If not, that’s when you should see Ganieda, but she is quite busy at the moment.’

  ‘Only two more days. It would be a blessing, I hate to see him so helpless.’

  ‘Just thin gruel and watered juice for the first couple of days. You can soak a little bread in it if he wants it, but no crusts and definitely no milk or dairy foods for a few days. And if you could let us know when he is well again, it would help with our knowledge. Thank you.’

  Reagan approached
the desk where she was filling in a ledger with the details of the latest case. ‘I just heard you telling someone that all the cases have been a week. Is it true for every single one?’

  ‘Of all the cases where they have come back and told us, yes, but it’s only been about half of them. We didn’t realise how useful the information would be at the start, so we weren’t asking.’ Writing Rockley in the column marked town, she continued. ‘When Ganieda realised, she told me to ask people to let us know. It’s less work for her people than if they have to go chasing it. She will have the complete records. I pass them onto her at the end of every day.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He went back and made a note on his slate. Seven days, seven towns. He tried to check it out with Ganieda, but she was out visiting patients.

  On Moonday, Kalen suggested they should go and measure the next crop circle. Even though there had been no report of a sighting, he predicted a tridecagon would have been made on the 13th on the spirit line. When they reached the field after the heptagon, Reagan dismounted to walk along the line and see if he could detect any change in the vibrations.

  By the time Reagan reached the field, Kalen had settled the horses in the pasture next to a small pond and had already counted the circles. ‘Looks like we got this wrong, there are only twelve circles.’

  ‘Really? Are you sure you haven’t miscounted? That changes everything. If it’s not prime or Fibonacci, then what could it be?’ Reagan felt his head spinning and his knees buckled. Kalen got to him hurriedly, apologising.

  ‘Sorry, that was stupid of me. It’s thirteen and definitely prime. Just my foolish jest.’

  Darma’s words about chosen children came back to haunt Reagan as he felt a trickle of moisture run down from his nose. Wiping it away with his finger, he was relieved by the absence of blood and a sneezing fit had Kalen worrying about pollen counts. He insisted they should just do the minimum, so they picked four circles at random to measure the angles and diameters.

  ‘One hundred and fifty two and a bit. Perfect. If you think you can manage it, we could have a look from the ridge.’

  They cantered swiftly up to the top of the ridge, and Kalen had no sooner remarked there had been no sign of the Renegates when they heard the sound of hooves. Guiding their mounts into the cover of the trees, they watched as the small band patrolling the area rode past with an air of ownership. Kalen knew enough to wait for ten minutes after they’d ridden past in case they were lying in wait at the edge of the clearing. Unfortunately, so did the rebel leader. As they paused to look at the crop patterns from the vantage point, he gave a low chuckle.

  ‘Well, well. If it isn’t those two friends of Archer. Or should I say, the horse-makers, Reagan and Kalen.’

  Philly was startled and reared up, but Reagan got her under control as he searched for the rest of the band.

  ‘Don’t fret Hengst-master, my boys are off seeking some poor pilgrims to the north. I stayed back to shake the hand of such a shining example of vision and courage in this day and age.’ He offered his hand in a victory handclasp and Reagan took it, flushing in pleasure as the man clapped him on the back in approval. ‘It certainly was an extremely important project; they don’t get much more important than that.’

  ‘But I thought it was customs like the white horses which made your people break away in the first place.’ Reagan regretted the words as soon as they were out.

  ‘Many folk would like to think so, but we are still a spiritual people.’ He bowed his head in a gesture of piety. ‘Especially when we get such rich pickings from all the pilgrims who flock to see your remarkable creation.’ He laughed at the irony as he clasped Kalen’s hand. ‘To be serious, you did a good job, The horse reminds me of bygone days when the world was a simpler place. You are both guaranteed free passage through all Renegate patrols. If anyone questions you, tell them Rattrick has given you a safe permit.’

  ‘And they will believe me?’

  ‘They will answer to me if they don’t.’ For a moment his face took on an expression nobody in their right mind would challenge. Regan bowed his head and watched as the man melted into the shadows.

  Kalen spoke for the first time. ‘I believe he is an honourable man.’

  Reagan created drawings for the crop patterns with eleven and thirteen circles while Kalen looked at complex relationships between prime numbers and right-angled triangles, but they were just biding time until Reagan’s next dream pointed the way.

  Walking through the hall on Tiwsday, Reagan noticed many of the clumps of pins were the same size and when he counted, several of them had seven pins. His eye was drawn to five pins north of Marlburgh in a small hamlet called Rockley. Then the arrangement directly opposite caught his eye. There were four pins in Clevancy and three in Highway, but on the scale of the map, it actually looked like a single clump of pins.

  He counted them: there were seven pins in each of Hackpen Marlburgh, Alton Barnes, Allington, Cherhill, and Clevancy/ Highway. If Rockley had two more pins, it would be seven towns, seven pins and the plague lasted seven days. He rushed into the office to tell Kalen, but he was out measuring the latest crop pattern. Fenella was nowhere to be seen, and he remembered he’d not yet spoken to Ganieda. For once, she was at the healing centre, but too busy to give him much help. ‘Seven days you say. It sounds about right, but I haven’t really been in a position to study the records. Do you think it’s important?’

  ‘There are seven towns if you count Clevancy and Highway as a single town and seven pins in each town except one, meaning seven people. Which would be three sevens. I would say it’s important.’ It seemed quite obvious to Reagan.

  ‘But there are new cases coming in every day. I’m sure there are still some to come.’

  ‘Which is why I need to check all your records. Fenella says you have the complete set. I’m sure if I sorted them into the towns there would be a pattern.’

  ‘You are welcome to have a look, but don’t be too disappointed if there is no pattern. In my experience, when it involves people and illness, there are nearly always more exceptions than there are rules.’

  Reagan didn’t have much time; the moon was full that night so he had to hurry. With his usual sense of order, he drew up a table and started filling in details. It took all day. The records in the ledger were in order of when they were reported, not when the illness started, so it was tricky to keep it organised and there were a couple of mistakes. As Ganieda arrived to shoo him out, he got his answer. The number of days each time was seven and the number of people in each town was seven.

  ‘I’ve never seen so many sevens. Looks like you’re on to something. Seven certainly seems to be important as far as these mystery illnesses go. There were seven children suffering from the infection last moon.’

  ‘Seven children? But I thought there were eight.’

  ‘So did we, but one of them merely had chicken pox. When the spots came out it was quite obviously different from the rest. Every bit as nasty, but we knew how to treat it. I’ll see you later for the willow dreaming.’

  Reagan stopped for a second. Something was bothering him about the list of incidents. If the first eight was really a seven, then maybe the other eight was really an eleven. Racing back to the council house, he got there too late. On full moon, they finished an hour early to allow people extra time to prepare for the esbat celebration. Kalen had left straight away for Marlburgh, so Reagan did something he’d not had a chance to do in a while: visiting his willow tree to try to put his mind at rest.

  But this time she couldn’t help him, although she did provide him with a brand new wand for the night’s work. He thanked her profusely; he had a feeling he was going to need it. He was quiet all through dinner, racking his brain to try and recapture the list of the disasters. He remembered the five dead rats, the eight children which were now seven and the thirteen dead sheep, but something was stopping him from remembering what the other eight stood for. All of his notes were back in Kalen’s office,
so he gave it up and read a book until it was time to go round to Ganieda’s house.

  The light was fading when the sight of a flock of birds circling round a tree nudged a link in his brain. Eight dead birds. Three on the second day and five on the third. Except his subconscious remembered there were another three birds in a lime cart. Which made eleven in total. Closing his eyes for a second, he went through the list again: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 prime numbers. And now 7 lots of 7 lots of 7. It was as though Gaia knew they’d got it wrong and was trying to let them know.

  With that settled, he had no trouble falling asleep and was quite happy when Blaise returned to Marlburgh to pick up the last leg of previous moon’s journey. She headed northwest, which meant Hackpen, but she never got there.

  The first time she flew over it he did not recognise the horse, but he remembered seeing another town to the east with seven pins in it. Despite three more circuits flying around it, he could not remember the name of this town. His brain overloaded and he fell into the deep sleep of death.

  44 The Death Sleep

  ‘Please, can I just sit with him for a while? I won’t be any bother and it means you can free someone else. I know how busy you are with the green plague and everything.’

  Ganieda smiled at the sweet face. She had always liked Amiera, and it reminded her of three years earlier when her own son, Archer, had lain unconscious. ‘Alright then, but the second he wakes you must find me. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing or who I’m with, he will need instant attention.’

  Thus began Amiera’s daily vigil. The healer she relieved was so grateful she brought along several cups of herbal tea throughout the day and was happy to take over when the younger girl needed a break. But Amiera wanted nothing more than to sit and hold his hand, telling him what was going on in the village. She sang some of the songs they’d learnt at lehren and the popular tunes of the day. The first time she sang Archer’s song she felt him stir, so this was something she did every couple of hours.