Heriot

by Margaret Mahy

  Beside him was a cloth set with a wineskin, a loaf of bread that looked very fresh, and thin slices of smoked beef, delicately veined with a little fat. There was also a sausage which the man was cutting into rings, so that he could toast them on the end of a long stick. His clothes lay folded to one side of him. For all his nakedness and the campfire breakfast, Heriot knew he was not looking at a vagrant. The way the man’s hair was trimmed, the pure whiteness of the cloth, the elegant way the beef was sliced, the warm blush of light along the blade held out to the fire, all suggested someone used to money and style. Yet what Lord could he be, alone on this remote shore, naked in the late autumn morning, cooking sausage with a knife that looked beautiful, ancient and wicked?

  A piece of driftwood crumbled. The man shifted, half-turning his head. Heriot opened his mouth to speak, feeling his intention fly out ahead of his words. Then, before he actually spoke he had an overwhelming answer. Unhappiness poured into him, unhappiness shot through with a terrible ferocity, accompanied by another feeling, a twin to misery, a feeling he could not name though it made him shrink back among the lupins. These feelings were accompanied by a huge irritation. The man was deeply unhappy about something, and, at the same time, angry with himself for his own unhappiness. Somewhere along the line, he had done something terrible, and, though he wasn’t sorry he had done it, the memory of doing it was infuriating him.

  These wild emotions were flowing directly from the naked giant before him, and though Heriot was receiving them, they belonged to that man alone. Heriot stepped back as silently as he could, but the man turned sharply, teeth slightly bared. Then, seeing Heriot, he paused and relaxed; he smiled; he even laughed a little at his own momentary shock. His red-gold eyebrows arched with astonishment, his long thin-lipped mouth turned up at the corners in a curling smile that reminded Heriot of the smiles on the faces of the carved lions in his garden at home. That tide of savage feeling seemed to sink rapidly away into the rocks and sand, though it did not totally disappear.

  ‘Don’t look so frightened,’ the man said. ‘You’re welcome, whoever you are. I could do with company. Sit down and have breakfast with me.’

  Heriot looked around doubtfully, not knowing whether to retreat or advance.

  ‘It’s a command,’ the man said, a different tone now creeping into his voice. Heriot slowly obeyed, baffled by some quality in this encounter. It was hard to think that anyone with such a warm, easy, amused voice could be the source of the menacing distress that had assailed him only a moment earlier.

  ‘You’re one of the Orts?’ the man said after a moment. Heriot looked confused. ‘A Traveller? Yes?’ the man added. Heriot’s black plaits and olive skin had misled him.

  ‘Half and half, I think,’ Heriot said cautiously. ‘Like, I mostly don’t travel. Well, I might be travelling right this minute, but only just.’

  ‘Oh!’ said the man as if he understood everything. ‘You’re running away then?’ Heriot did not reply, and the man, nodding as if Heriot’s silence was an answer, clapped a slice of beef between two bits of bread and passed the sandwich over to Heriot, who, even though he felt shy in the presence of a stranger, both naked and noble, took it gratefully. The man looked at him closely, apparently puzzled.

  ‘You’re not a girl by any chance, are you?’ he asked.

  ‘No!’ cried Heriot indignantly.

  ‘Oh, do excuse me!’ the man exclaimed, lifting his eyebrows in amusement at Heriot’s vehemence. ‘You look so shy, and then your long hair made me wonder.’

  ‘Our lot like it long,’ Heriot explained. ‘It’s the way you tell us from the Hoadish men.’

  ‘So your father wears his long, too?’ asked the man, grinning a little.

  ‘I don’t know about him,’ Heriot said doubtfully. ‘He was in the King’s army, and died before I was born.’

  ‘I’ve placed you now,’ said the man, in a more subdued voice.

  ‘You come from among those ruins over the hills back there, don’t you? You’re one of that family.’

  ‘Right!’ Heriot agreed. ‘The Orts wander, but our lot, we stand still in the old place.’ He gratefully accepted a ring of sausage from the end of the knife.

  At this moment the horse suddenly swung around, lifted its head, and put its ears forward. It nickered and another horse, further down the beach in the direction from which Heriot had come, neighed faintly but distinctly. Heriot scrambled rapidly to his feet, cramming the ring of sausage into his mouth as he did so.

  ‘Someone chasing you?’ asked the man sympathetically.

  ‘Well, they could be,’ Heriot said. ‘Not that I’ve done anything wrong,’ he added hastily. ‘It’s just I don’t want to go to places where other people want me to go, that’s all.’

  ‘Hide!’ the man suggested. ‘No one will search too closely around me. I can promise you that.’

  Heriot gave him a grateful glance, and wriggled back among the lupins as quickly as he could.

  ‘Get yourself comfortable,’ the man advised. ‘I’ve had to hide a few times in my life, and it’s important to start off by being as comfortable as possible.’

  ‘I know,’ Heriot said, thinking of his wretched night on the roof of the old barn. If he put his hands against the ground, the rhythmic approach of the strange horse could be felt like a heartbeat under his palms, but it still took a few minutes for it to arrive. And there was Lord Glass himself, curiously resplendent in his marvellous green coat, trotting towards them. Heriot’s self-appointed protector, who had continued very calmly to make himself a sandwich of beef and bread, stared, started, and leaped to his feet with a shout of incredulous laughter.

  ‘Dorian, Lord Glass!’ he shouted. ‘You of all people! What are you doing out here on a deserted beach in the early morning?’

  ‘This is County Glass, after all,’ Lord Glass replied, dismounting. ‘It is my county. What are you doing here, naked and solitary as the first man in the world? I thought you were taking advantage of the break to put your island in order. A change for you, my dear! No flash of steel! No splash of blood!’

  ‘I wanted to be on my own,’ the man said. ‘I wanted to think things over. It looks as if the King might get that great peace he has worked for, but what happens to the Hero when there’s no need for his Heroism? After all I’m not so old – nearly forty– that’s still young. I’ve got a long way to go. Anyhow, I thought I’d come back to my own place and enjoy a little solitude.’

  ‘You wanted the war to go on?’ Lord Glass asked as if he could not quite believe what he was hearing, but the man merely laughed.

  ‘Can I offer you food? Drink? You’ll have to drink from the bottle, mind you. And then you can tell me just why you of all people have appeared out of nowhere.’ His voice changed, growing suddenly eager. ‘The King hasn’t had second thoughts about my suggestions, has he?’

  ‘No,’ said Lord Glass. ‘The King never has second thoughts, my dear. And as for me, I’d love to sit, tipping the bottle and gossiping, but unfortunately I’m too busy to be sociable. I was sent to escort a young man back to Diamond. He’s turned down a royal invitation, and you know just how pressing they can be. You’ve haven’t seen a dark-haired boy, have you? I left Cloud following what might have been tracks in the sand back there, and cast on ahead myself.’

  The man ignored the question. ‘Cloud?’ he exclaimed. He sounded thunderstruck. ‘This boy … do you want him alive or dead?’

  ‘We were intended as his escort, not his huntsmen,’ Lord Glass sighed. ‘It’s a long story, my dear.’

  ‘I haven’t seen anyone,’ the man answered, ‘but if I do, I will look at him very carefully indeed. He must be a treasure.’

  ‘Well, if you do come across my runaway you could bring him to the Tarbas farm over the hill. Largely unharmed, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ the man agreed rather savagely. ‘By the way, what has this boy done to deserve such very distinguished attention?’

  ‘He represents a
possibility, nothing more,’ Lord Glass replied. ‘As you know the King likes to collect curiosities of nature.’

  Through a cross-hatching of stems and a stipple of leaves beyond them, Heriot watched Lord Glass wheel his horse, and ride back the way he had come. He wasn’t sure why the naked man, so familiar with Lord Glass, so lordly in himself, had chosen to conceal a runaway.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ the man murmured, as he, too, stared after Lord Glass. Then he began dressing rapidly, talking all the time, in a low but sharpened voice. ‘I’ll take you up in front of me and carry you further down the shore if you like. Lord Glass is a true King’s man, so I owe him a bad turn. You can edge out now … he’s well around the next headland.’

  As Heriot scrambled out, his hair catching on dried stems of lupin, which were behaving as if they were trying to pull him back into hiding, his protector turned to face him, wearing a very different expression from the one he had worn earlier. ‘I take it you know who that was?’

  Heriot said nothing. He watched the man knot a sash of brilliant colour at his waist, then twist it to display its fringe, after which he slid rings of turquoise and silver out from his pocket and then, one by one, on to his fingers. Naked and pale, he had been a casual companion. Dressed and coloured in, he had suddenly become a master.

  ‘Lord Glass is a great man in the land,’ the man said, straightening the rings, then holding out his hand in front of him as if he would be able to admire them better from a distance. ‘He’s the King’s Devisor, and his closest friend. If you’ve really done nothing wrong he’d be good to you.’

  ‘I just want to be let alone,’ Heriot said.

  The man laughed. ‘Too much to expect!’ he replied. ‘After all, I wanted to be left alone too, and you broke in on me, disturbing my thoughts.’ His last words sounded brotherly. Heriot’s heart warmed to this voice.

  ‘Lucky I did, though,’ Heriot said cheerfully. ‘No fun having thoughts like those – all black and savage. It must be good to have a break from them.’ The man had been shaking the sand from his cloak, but, for a fraction of a second, he froze, smile fixed, eyes staring straight ahead. He recovered in the same moment, and, as he slung the cloak around his shoulders, he said in an absent voice, ‘Thoughts like what?’

  Heriot already knew he had made a mistake. ‘Just joking,’ he said apologetically. The man did not press him for any more answer than that.

  And then, a moment later, they were cantering, even galloping along a stretch of hard sand, Heriot clinging on to the horse’s mane, his rescuer’s powerful arms on either side of him. He laughed aloud with relief and pleasure, and the man responded by laughing too. ‘Wonderful to go free!’ he shouted.

  ‘Run off like me then,’ Heriot cried back.

  ‘Ah, but I never run away!’ the man replied. ‘Never!’

  They slowed down to pick their way around one rocky headland, cantered again, then slowed a second time, as they confronted a narrow stretch of stones that ran between the sea and the severe cliffs, which seemed to beetle out over Heriot and his companion. Perhaps quarter of a league further down the shore, Heriot could see that these cliffs dwindled abruptly to banks, and were cut by an impatient stream, which split into a series of winding channels before reaching the sea.

  At last the man spoke, pointing over Heriot’s shoulder. ‘If you go up that stream you’ll come to a path. You can’t miss it. It’s quite easy to see. Just keep going until you get the aqueduct in your sights. The aqueduct marks the main road, and, after a league or so, the road forks into two. The left-hand road is the one that leads to Diamond. And once you’re in Diamond you can lose yourself for ever.’

  ‘Diamond?’ Heriot exclaimed blankly. ‘I’ve run off so they won’t be able take me there. Where does the right-hand road lead to, then?’

  ‘It leads to the plain, but the plain’s crowded at present. Probably will be for a few more weeks,’ the man replied indifferently. ‘All right then! Live in the woods if you can, but remember it is winter. And for some reason I get the impression they’ll be searching for you very carefully indeed.’

  And then he slipped his hand in under Heriot’s hair to take the back of his neck in a gentle but disturbing grip. ‘Why do they want you so much?’ he asked.

  ‘Lord Glass is our Lord,’ Heriot replied glibly. ‘We’re under obligation to him.’ His companion laughed; his grip on the back of Heriot’s neck tightened slightly. Heriot felt himself being shaken a little.

  ‘That’s not a true answer,’ the man said. ‘Come on. Tell me. Why do they want you?’

  ‘It’s nothing I’ve done,’ Heriot said at last. ‘It’s more what I am. What they say I am.’

  ‘And what do they say you are?’ the man asked. Heriot shrugged, and the hand tightened still further. By now the grip was painful.

  ‘They say I’m one of those Magicians,’ Heriot blurted out despairingly, and suddenly knew, beyond any doubt, he must move on at once. He swung his right leg across the horse’s neck and withers, slipping from under his companion’s grip, towards the ground, which seemed an enormous distance below him.

  The man remained sitting on the horse, staring rigidly ahead.

  ‘You read minds?’ he asked in a noncommittal voice. ‘You read what was in my head back there, didn’t you?’

  He looked down at Heriot. His eyes of a clear shallow green like rock pools carrying the hint of a deeper sea. ‘My thoughts. You knew what I was thinking.’ He swung himself gracefully down from the horse to stand over Heriot. ‘Is that why you looked so alarmed?’

  ‘I didn’t try reading you,’ Heriot said. ‘I didn’t mean to. What you were thinking back there, the feeling of it, just pushed in on me.’

  ‘Well, not everyone wants his thoughts to be read,’ the man remarked. He held out his hand. Heriot hesitated, then, very cautiously, he took it. ‘So goodbye, Magician,’ said his companion. ‘Because I’m afraid I really must move you on. No sign of anyone coming after you?’

  Involuntarily Heriot turned his head to look west, though the curve in the cliffs cut off almost any view of the way they had come. Something whispered slickly beside him, but, even before that whisper reached his ears, he had received a warning. Later, he remembered it as a furious jolt that somehow thrust him out of the man’s grasp and into the margins of the sea. At the same time something burned him, or so he thought at first, as pain slid up his ribs, and slanted into the flesh under his arm. His companion’s hand snatched at him, but Heriot was already free, still spinning away … spinning with the shock of the original warning. Suddenly knee-deep in restless water, still actively retreating, he looked up once more into those pale green eyes. The horse snorted and backed. Its master, knife drawn, advanced another step or two as Heriot moved back, his hand clapped under his arm.

  ‘You knew that was coming, didn’t you?’ the man said, sounding interested. ‘Otherwise it would be all over.’

  ‘But I’ve done nothing,’ Heriot cried.

  ‘Sorry!’ the man replied briefly. ‘It’s not what you’ve done. It’s what you are. You’re just too risky,’ he added, as if this was an explanation that Heriot himself would naturally accept. The horse shifted uneasily as the man gathered himself to finish what he had begun.

  Heriot shrieked with an unexpected hatred as much as fear, and found he had the capacity, not merely to express pain, but the power and even the will to impose it as well. The sound he made was so startling that the man stepped back from him. As the cry tore its way up from somewhere deep inside, Heriot’s wild braids of hair stirred and lifted, and lashed like serpents, and he felt himself transforming. Even the sea shrank from the dreadful sound he was making. The water surged away around his legs and left him standing on wet stones. On and on he screamed with no pause for breath, until the very earth winced and shivered, toppling Heriot on to his knees and flinging the man sideways.

  Over Heriot’s shriek, came the cry of the horse and the thud of its stumbling hoofs. In front
of him the man twisted gracefully over and on to his feet again, his rising somehow a continuous part of his fall. Then he made for Heriot, his face twisted with fury and repulsion. Heriot let himself tumble, rolling over and over, leaving a series of brief, bloody patches on the stones behind him. The man overtook him, grabbing at him, and swinging the knife high – and at that moment something enormous struck both of them, tearing them apart once more. Emerging from confusion, Heriot found himself scrambling back into the shadow of the beetling cliff, while the freakish wave which he had somehow commanded rushed wildly back once more, then swept in towards them again. As his enemy, hampered now by soaking clothes, came forwards, Heriot could see he had lost his knife. However, he was still implacable.

  ‘I could strangle you with one hand,’ he said, which was true.

  A single stone fell from somewhere above, and smashed at his feet. The man lifted his eyes to the cliff under which Heriot now crouched, and his expression changed. Shingle and dust began trickling lazily from somewhere overhead but Heriot did not take his eyes from his enemy.

  ‘We’d both be buried,’ the man said. There was a flicker of reluctant awe on his face.

  ‘Not me,’ Heriot croaked, and believed this was true, although he could only guess at what the man might be seeing. He was certain he did not have a cry left in him, yet he clapped his hand over his left eye, and took a breath, curling his lip back once more, feeling his face somehow alter, as he smiled a smile he knew he had never smiled in his life before.

  ‘Don’t!’ the man cried, stepping back, grimacing as he did so. ‘After all, you can’t prove anything,’ he said, speaking to himself, but also as if Heriot would understand just what he was talking about. ‘And after all, I am the Hero. I’m beyond the law. I’ve never backed off from any man,’ he added contemptuously, glancing up at the cliff again. ‘But you, you’re not a man. You’re a sad little monster.’