Cloud Walker, All Fools' Day, Far Sunset

by Cooper, Edmund

  In the summer afternoons, he would go with Petrina to the woodlands of the downs – the ridge of hills that rose almost like a man-made barrier ten or twelve kilometres from the sea. There, on land that belonged to the roe deer, the pheasant and the rabbit, they would construct worlds of make-believe.

  Petrina was a wide-eyed nervous girl, with hair the smokey colour of wheat that was overdue for harvesting. One day, Kieron would be her husband, the father of her children. Therefore she determined to learn about him. She already knew that he had a secret ambition; but she did not know what it was.

  On a hot summer afternoon, partly by chance, partly by design, she learned what Kieron wanted to do most of all.

  They had wearied of climbing trees, disturbing deer, picking wild flowers; and now they were resting on short, brilliantly green grass under an enormous beech tree, gazing up through its leaves at the sky.

  ‘When you are a great painter,’ said Petrina, ‘I shall be able to buy beautiful fabrics and make dresses that will be the envy of every woman in the seigneurie.’

  ‘I shall never be a great painter,’ said Kieron without regret.

  ‘You are apprenticed to Master Hobart. He is a great painter. You will learn his skills, and to them you will add your own.’

  ‘I shall never be as great as Master Hobart. He gave his life to it. I cannot give mine.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because, Petrina, there is something else I must do.’

  ‘There is nothing else you can do, Kieron. You are apprenticed to Master Hobart, and you and I are contracted for marriage. Such is our destiny.’

  ‘Such is our destiny,’ mimicked Kieron. ‘Stupid talk. The talk of a girl child. I want to fly.’

  ‘Don’t you want to marry me?’

  ‘I want to fly.’

  She sighed. ‘We are to be married. We shall be married. You will be a grand master of your art. And we shall have three children. And your greatest painting will be of a terrible fish that destroys men by fire. It is foretold. And there is nothing to be done about it.’

  Kieron was intrigued. ‘It is foretold?’

  Petrina smiled. ‘Last summer, the astrologer, Marcus of London, was summoned to the castle. Seigneur Fitzalan wished to know if his lady would ever bring forth a son.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘My father was commanded to repair the bearings of the stand for the astrologer’s star glass. My mother persuaded Marcus to cast your horoscope in fee … So Kieron, the future is settled. You will be a grand master, and I shall bear three children … Listen to the bees! They dance mightily. If we can follow them, we can come back at dusk for the honey.’

  ‘Hang the bees!’ exploded Kieron. ‘And hang the astrologer Marcus! I alone can decide my future. I shall complete my apprenticeship with Master Hobart. There is nothing I can do about that. Besides, he is a kind man, and a better master than most. Also, I like to draw. But when I am a man, things will be different. I shall be my own master. I shall choose my own future. And I choose to learn how to fly.’

  ‘Will you sprout wings?’

  ‘I shall construct a flying machine.’

  Petrina turned pale. ‘A flying machine. Kieron, be careful. It is all right to speak of such things to me. I shall be your wife. I shall bear your children. But do not talk of flying machines to anyone else, especially the dominie and the neddy.’

  Kieron pressed her hand, and lay back on the bright green grass and stared upwards through the leaves of the beech tree. ‘I am not a fool,’ he said. ‘The dominie is like the neddy, in that his mind is stiff with rules and habits. But the dominie is just a weak old man, whereas the neddy—’

  ‘Whereas the neddy could have you burned at the stake,’ cut in Petrina sharply.

  ‘They don’t burn children now. Even you should know that.’

  ‘But they still burn men, and one day you will be a man. They burned a farmer at Chichester two summers ago for devising a machine to cut his wheat … Kieron, for my sake, try not to think about flying machines. Such thoughts are far too dangerous.’

  Kieron let out a great sigh. ‘All the exciting things are dangerous … Look at the sky through the leaves. So blue, so beautiful. And when the white clouds pass, don’t you wish you could reach up and touch them? They are like islands, great islands in the sky. One day I shall journey among those islands. One day I shall reach out and touch the clouds as I pass by.’

  Petrina shivered. ‘You make me feel cold with this wild talk.’

  ‘I make myself feel cold also. The First Men had flying machines, Petrina. Silver birds that roared like dragons and passed high over the clouds. The dominie says so. Even the neddy will admit to that. It is history.’

  ‘The First Men destroyed themselves,’ retorted Petrina.

  ‘So did the Second Men,’ said Kieron tranquilly. ‘They also had flying machines; though not, perhaps, as good as those of the First Men. It must have been wonderful to pass across the skies at great speed, to look down upon the earth and see men go about their tasks like insects.’

  ‘Men are not insects!’

  ‘From a great height, all living things must seem like insects.’

  ‘The First Men destroyed themselves. So did the Second Men. That, too, is history. The neddies are right. Machines are evil.’

  Kieron laughed. ‘Machines have no knowledge of good and evil. Machines cannot think. Only men can think.’

  ‘Then,’ said Petrina, ‘too much thinking is evil – especially when it is about forbidden things.’

  Suddenly Kieron felt strangely old, strangely protective. He said: ‘Don’t worry, little one. I shall not think too much. Very likely, you will have three children, as the astrologer says … I know where there is a plum tree. Shall we see if there are any ripe enough to eat?’

  Petrina jumped up. ‘I know where there is an apple tree. The high ones are already turning red.’

  Kieron laughed. ‘Plums and apples! Let us drive all gloomy thoughts away with plums and apples.’

  Hand in hand, they walked out of the glade, out into the rich gold splendour of late summer sunshine.

  2

  On his tenth birthday, Kieron ate his farewell breakfast with all the solemnity required for the occasion. Then he shook hands with Gerard, his father, and kissed Kristen, his mother, once on each cheek. It was only a ritual farewell because they would still see each other frequently. But it was the symbolic end of Kieron’s childhood. He would sleep no more in the house of his father.

  Gerard said: ‘Son, you will attend Master Hobart in all his needs. He will impart his skills to you. In years to come, your paintings will adorn the walls of the castle. Maybe, they will also hang in the great houses of London, Bristol, Brum. Then, perhaps, your mother and I will not have lived in vain.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Kieron, forcing back the tears that came to his eyes for no apparent reason, ‘I will learn from Master Hobart all that I may. I will try to be worthy of you. I would have been a joiner like you, had it been your pleasure. But, since you wished me to make likenesses, I will paint portraits that will not shame the father of Kieron Joinerson.’

  Kristen held him close and said: ‘You have three shirts, three vests and two pair of leggings. You have a lambskin jacket and good boots. These I have packed in the deerhide bag. Keep warm, Kieron, eat well. We – we love you and shall watch your progress.’

  He sensed that she, too, was miserable. He could not understand why. It was supposed to be an important and joyful occasion for all concerned.

  ‘I will see you soon, mother.’ He smiled, trying to cheer himself up as well.

  ‘Ay, but you will not lie again in the bed your father made for you. You will not curl up under the sheets I wove and the down quilt I made before you were born.’

  ‘Enough, Kristen,’ said Gerard. ‘You will have us all whimpering like babies.’ He looked at his wife and was aware of the white streaks in her hair, the lines etched on her face. She was twenty-eight ye
ars old; but her back was still straight and her breasts were high. She had worn well.

  Kieron picked up the deerhide bag. Suddenly, the sense of occasion was upon him, and he felt very formal. ‘Good day to you, then, my parents. Thank you for giving me the breath of life. Thank you for filling my belly in summer and in winter. Ludd rest you both.’

  Kristen fled into her kitchen, sobbing. Gerard raised a great hairy arm to his forehead, as he often did in his workshop, and wiped away sweat that did not exist.

  ‘Ludd be with you, my son. Go now to Master Hobart. As I am the best joiner in fifty kilometres marching, so you will become the best painter within a thousand kilometres.’

  ‘Father, I want to—’ Kieron stopped. It had been on the tip of his tongue to say: I do not want to be a painter. I want to learn how to fly.

  ‘Yes, Kieron?’

  ‘I – I want to be worthy of you and to make you proud.’

  Gerard laughed and slapped his shoulder playfully. ‘Be off with you, changeling. From now on, you will eat better food than we have been able to give you.’

  ‘I doubt that it will taste as good.’ There was more he wanted to say. Much more. But the words stuck in his throat. Kieron went out of the cottage and began to walk along the track that led down to Arundel. He did not look back, but he knew that Gerard was standing at the door watching him. He did not look back because there was a disturbing impulse to run to his father and tell him what he really wanted to do.

  It was a fine October morning. The sky was blue; but a thick carpet of mist lay over the low land stretching away to the sea. Arundel lay beneath the mist; but the castle, its grey stone wet with dew and shining in the morning light, sat on the hillside clear above the mist. A faerie castle, bright, mysterious, full of unseen power.

  There was a saying: those who live in the shadow of the castle shall prosper or burn. Master Hobart had a house under the very battlements. He had prospered. Kieron hoped that he, too, would prosper. Only a fool would risk burning. Only a fool would want to build a flying machine.

  High in the sky a buzzard circled gracefully. Kieron put down his bag and watched it. Such effortless movements, such freedom. He envied the bird. He envied its freedom, its effortless mastery of the air.

  ‘Some day, buzzard,’ said Kieron, ‘I shall be up there with you. I shall be higher. I shall look down on you. You will know that a man has invaded your world. You will know that men have reconquered the sky.’

  Still, this was no time to make speeches that no one would hear, and particularly speeches that no one should hear. Master Hobart, doubtless, would be waiting and impatient. Kieron bent down to pick up his bag.

  He saw a dandelion, a dandelion clock. A stem with a head full of seeds. He plucked the stem, lifted the head and blew. Seeds drifted away in the still, morning air. Seeds supported by the gossamer threads that resisted their fall to earth.

  Kieron watched, fascinated. A few of the seeds, caught by an undetectable current of warm air, rose high and were lost against the morning sunlight. Even dandelion seeds could dance in the air. It was humiliating that man should be earthbound.

  Kieron remembered that, on this day of days, Hobart would be waiting to welcome him with some ceremony.

  He sighed, picked up the deerhide bag and marched resolutely towards Arundel. Ahead of him there would be months and years wherein he would have to master all the secrets of Hobart’s craft. But when he was a man, when the apprenticeship had been served with honour, that would be the time to learn to fly.

  Meanwhile, there was always the time to dream.

  3

  Winter came, turning the land bleak, capping the downs with freezing mist, weaving a delicate tracery of frost over trees, grass, hedgerows and the walls of houses, bringing ice patches on the placid Arun river, making the air sharp as an English apple wine.

  Hobart coughed much and painted little in the winter. The rawness ate into his bones, brought pains to his chest. He spent much time sitting by a log fire with a shawl or sheepskin round his shoulders, brooding upon projects that he would undertake in the spring. There was the mural for the great hall to consider; and Seigneur Fitzalan had commissioned a symbolic work, depicting the fall of the First Men, to the greater glory of Ludd, and for the Church of the Sacred Hammer.

  Widow Thatcher, who cleaned house for Master Hobart and cooked for him, made many nourishing stews of rabbit or pheasant or lamb or venison with parsnips, mushrooms, carrots, potatoes, and the good black pepper for which Seigneur Fitzalan paid exorbitant sums to the skippers of windjammers that sailed as far as the Spice Islands.

  Master Hobart would take but a few spoonfuls of the lovingly made stews. Then he would cough somewhat and draw shivering to the fire. Kieron, waiting properly until his master had finished eating, would gorge himself until his belly swelled and he felt the need to walk off his excess of eating in the frosty downs.

  Though Hobart himself was idle during the dark months, he did not allow his young apprentice to remain idle. He instructed Kieron in the art of making fine charcoal sticks from straight twigs of willow, in the mysteries of fabric printing, in the newly fashionable art of collage, and in the ancient disciplines of colour binding and the preparation of a true canvas. He was even prepared to expend precious whale oil in the lamps so that on a dull afternoon Kieron would have enough light to sketch chairs, tables, bowls of fruit, hanging pheasants, and even the protesting Widow Thatcher.

  Master Hobart was a white-haired old man, nearing his three score. The pains in his chest warned him that the summers left to him would not reach double figures. But he was stubbornly determined to live at least the eight years Kieron needed to complete his apprenticeship. Ludd permitting, he would see the boy established before he was lowered into the flinty earth of Sussex.

  He permitted himself a small heresy – only a very small one, which surely Ludd would excuse. He permitted himself the secret delusion that Kieron was his natural son. Hobart had never lain with a woman. His art had been enough. But now he felt the need of a son; and Kieron, a boy with bright eyes and a quick mind, was all that a man could desire.

  So Kieron escaped many of the usual rigours of apprenticeship. He was well fed, he had much freedom; and Hobart slipped many a silver penny into his purse.

  Kieron understood the relationship very clearly. He loved the old man and did not object to the presumptions of a second father. Besides, Hobart was a great source of knowledge, and knowledge was what Kieron desired above everything.

  In the evenings, before Hobart retired to an early bed, he and Kieron would sit, staring into the log fire, discerning images and fantasies, talking of many things. Hobart drank somewhat – to alleviate the pains and the coughing – of usquebaugh, or akvavit, or eau de vie, depending on which brigantines had recently traded with the seigneurie. In his cups at night, he was prepared to discuss that which he would shun sober in the morning. He was prepared to talk about the First Men and the Second Men. He was even prepared to talk about machines.

  ‘Master Hobart, the dominie says that the First Men choked on their own cleverness. What does he mean by that?’

  ‘Pah!’ Hobart sipped his usquebaugh and felt the warmth tingle pleasantly through his limbs. ‘Dominie Scrivener should teach you more of letters and the mysteries of nature and the casting of numbers than of the First Men.’

  ‘Yesterday, when I was making a picture of this house as it stands below the castle, and represented the roughness of the flint walls, you said I was clever. Is cleverness a bad thing? Shall I, too, choke on it?’

  ‘Peace, boy. Let me think. It seems I must not only instruct you in matters of art, but in matters of the world, and in proper thinking.’ More usquebaugh. More warmth. More coughing. ‘What the dominie says is true. The First Men did choke on their own cleverness. They made the air of their cities unfit to breathe, they made the waters of their rivers and lakes unfit to drink, they covered good farming land with stone and metal causeways, at times t
hey even made the sea turn black. All this they did with the machines they worshipped insanely. And, as if that were not enough, they devised terrible machines whose sole purpose was to destroy people by the hundred, by the thousand, even by the ten thousand. Missiles, they were called: machines that leapt through the sky with their cargoes of death. Ay, the dominie was right. They choked on their own cleverness … But your cleverness, Kieron is something different. You are clever in an honest art, not in the love of mechanisms that destroy the hand that creates them.’

  ‘Must all machines be bad?’ asked Kieron.

  ‘Yes, Kieron, all machines are evil. The Divine Boy understood that a thousand years ago, when machines first began to corrupt this fair land. That is why he attacked them with his hammer. But the people would not listen; and so he was taken and crucified.’

  There was silence for a while; silence punctuated by the crackling of logs on the hearth, and by Master Hobart noisily sipping his usquebaugh.

  At length, Kieron grew bold. ‘It is said that Seigneur Fitzalan has a clock in the castle. A clock that goes tick-tock and tells the hours, minutes and very seconds of the day. A clock is a machine, isn’t it, Master Hobart? Is a clock evil?’

  The usquebaugh made Master Hobart splutter somewhat. It was a while before he could make his reply. ‘I see that neither the dominie nor the neddy have shed as much light on this matter as they ought. It is true, Kieron, that a clock is a machine; but for the great ones of our world, who have many matters to attend to and little enough time to deal with their affairs, a clock is a necessary machine. Holy Church makes much distinction between necessary machines, which are proper, and unnecessary machines which are improper. So Seigneur Fitzalan’s clock, which I have seen many times and which is a most marvellous thing – executed, so they say, by the best horologist in Paris – is a proper machine. There is no record that the Divine Boy ever attacked clocks.’