‘He will one day no doubt. He was born in Brum. All hydden like to return home once in their life.’
Riff, unused to conversation of that kind, said, ‘Understood?’
Slew smiled, went straight below, slept and didn’t puke.
When he woke, dawn was showing behind their craft and straight ahead the coast of Essex was a flat, black sliver against a dark grey sky. Human lights showed. The bells of buoys tolled. A lightship’s beam arced across the sky.
‘Morning!’ he said.
The crew were silent but respectful. They liked passengers who caused no trouble and didn’t complain when they emerged. They liked them still more when they didn’t leave a smell behind.
Borkum Riff, bearded and barrel-chested, nodded an acknowledgement.
‘Water?’ said Slew.
A crew member gave him a tin bowl of it.
‘Fresh?’
‘As a daisy.’
Slew swilled it round his mouth, spat it overboard, doused his face and neck, and asked, ‘How long?’
Riff replied at length, for him: ‘You can’t tell it from here but straight ahead’s the Isle of Maldon. It’s connected to the mainland by a causeway that’ll be exposed in half an hour’s time when the tide’s halfway out. Sunrise is in an hour.’
The rest of the voyage they did in darkness, side by side, which normally Riff would not have liked.
But Slew was something else.
The first who had never puked or felt ill or said something unsailorly.
‘How do you like to be called?’ asked Slew as they came in on the seaward side of the Isle.
‘Riff will do. And you?’
‘I thought you needed no names.’
‘It is in the wyrd of things that you and I will meet again. The sea tells me so. The waves hold it in their rise and fall. The likes of you and the likes of me are rare. We will meet again and you’ll have need of me and I of you. So . . . what’s your name?’
‘Witold Slew,’ said Slew.
They shook hands.
‘I need three weeks, and I want you to pick me up, Riff, no one else.’
‘A pleasure. We’ll wait three days after twenty-one, which is a full moon. After that, you’ll have to take passage with whoever comes along. On this stage they’re only Fyrd.’
‘Understood.’
Slew was over the side and on the wooden landing stage as fast as a shadow disappears when light is no more.
A crew member threw down his portersac.
Riff held his stave.
‘Can’t see you,’ he said to the shadows before the cutter’s side.
‘Throw it and it will find my right hand,’ said Slew.
The stave arced through the night, from boat to shore, from the right hand of one dark hydden to that of another.
The cutter eased away, the wind riffling her briefly slack sails before, with a thwump! they were full again and the prow was slicing through the waves.
Borkum Riff looked back.
Light had come, Slew was gone.
‘That’s a hell of a one,’ said a member of the crew.
‘That’s the future of the Hyddenworld,’ said Riff.
Slew headed east, his objective Chelmsford, one of the meeting points for pilgrims on their way to Brum from Harwich and smaller ports along the east coast. From there the pilgrims preferred to travel in caravans or groups for safety. The next leg of their journey, which was St Albans, required that they negotiate the dangerous damplands of Hertfordshire, with their obscure valleys, confusing green roads, and thickets and winding hedgerows that lured even the most experienced traveller to ambush and death.
Slew packed his dark cloak and donned rough fustian, the pilgrim pendant of Beornamund embroidered boldly on his jerkin, sign of a past completed pilgrimage. He also dyed his hair black.
He kept to himself, affecting a spiritual quiet and answering any enquiry briefly, saying – which was true – that he came from the Thuringer Wald of Germany. He carried himself and his stave firmly enough not to be troubled by the many that preyed on others along the route.
He watched and he listened, seeking out not the group-inclined pilgrims aiming directly for Brum, but the solitaries whose objectives were more spiritual, who wished to test their courage and faith by travelling alone.
‘Whither bound, pilgrim?’ he would be asked.
‘Brum.’
‘Alone?’
‘So it seems.’
‘Rumours fly, my friend.’
‘They do for good and ill. Let us share them over mead . . .’
This meeting and others like them informed Slew of all manner of things, including naturally the one rumour more important than all others, that the gem of Spring had been found.
‘It’s true then?’ Slew asked one solitary, a monk in brown from the Netherlands.
‘I had it directly from one returning from Brum only yesterday. It was found on Waseley Hill.’
‘It would be. Who by?’
The solitary traveller shrugged. ‘Someone who got lucky, or was blessed by the Mirror.’
‘We shall see it I should hope,’ said Slew.
‘You before me, brother, for I’m making a diversion to worship at the holy well in . . .’
So Slew found out things, learnt about the different groups, pretended he was resting before the big trek to Brum. Until, two days later, he found what he wanted: a group of four religious, not celibates because two had their plump daughters with them, making six travellers in all.
Slew avoided contact but at night, on the periphery of the campfire, he listened in. They were a perfect cover and offered appealing opportunities as well. The next day he struck camp at first light, ahead of the solitary he had talked with on the first day and from whom he found out his route. Slew found a lonely spot along it and lay in wait.
A pleasant time for Slew.
Englalond’s Summer was moister, gentler, more beautiful than any he had known in his own land. He meditated. He ate a little and drank water from a stream and then he caught and killed two rabbits from snares set when he first arrived in that dell.
One he skinned, cleaned, washed and readied for a stew. The other he left as it was, for the moment.
Then he waited until he saw his acquaintance of the previous day coming up the valley. He stood astride his path, his stave hand relaxed.
‘Whither bound, pilgrim?’ he said, ironically raising his stave, musing whether or not to make a fight of it. He decided against, for he had nothing to prove, and before the pilgrim, who had shared food with him, could even greet him in return or understand the threat, he struck him straight between the eyes as if he had unleashed a bolt from a crossbow and then, as he fell, he delivered a second blow into his throat.
Dying but not yet dead, the pilgrim could not stop Slew stripping him of his brown robe, removing two of the pilgrim seals from his stave and putting them on his own. Both were from popular and well-visited sites and their combination was not unusual. The others he left on the monk’s stave.
He hauled him by the collar of his shirt up among the trees to one, an oak, whose bole was split and the inside rotten. He stuffed the body in and stuck his knife in hard, twisted it and spilled the guts. Then he took the rabbit he had left nearby, placed it in the bole against the body and sliced its chest and belly open so the stomach and guts spewed out as the hydden’s had done, masking by sight and smell the horror within the tree.
There he left them together in death, their stench an attraction to predators. Foxes, badgers, rats, it didn’t matter. They would come and anyone drawn by the stench would see rabbit fur before mortal skin and, not wanting to go closer, would infer the wrong thing. Slew had never done that before but he had heard of it and took pleasure in such tricks as those.
But he had his superstitions: he took the monk’s stave and broke it because he didn’t want to be followed by a well-armed ghost. His habit, however, he put on.
Then, newly d
isguised and ready for the onward journey, he made the trek back to the route to St Albans. He met some other travellers, enquired after the party of six he had an eye on, satisfied himself they had not passed and, finding a thick piece of woodland, crept into its shadows.
The place was crawling with villainy and smelt of highway robbery and murder. He scouted about and found two groups of robbers: one a group of three thieves of no great consequence, the second a group of six, a gang, that looked worthy of the name.
The group of three appeared first, and no doubt to harmless travellers would look intimidating. They did not to Slew. They took a vantage point not far from his, lurking as stupid incompetents do, lumpishly. The gang, which he doubted had anything to do with them, stayed out of his line of sight, though they could see the three.
The day began on the pilgrim way below and the first groups of pilgrims came along from Chelmsford, loud and full of false cheer as they hurried through the dank woods, palms sweating on staves, imagining dangers, loud in their fearfulness.
The three robbers spotted a group coming, not part of the one Slew was after, and ambled down to it, as they thought looking carefree and innocent. They were, in fact, as conspicuous as a lump of shit on a maiden’s shoe.
The would-be assailants greeted their intended victims but saw they were well-armed, no-nonsense folk from France. Slew had seen them himself the day before.
The robbers backed off and returned to their temporary lair to wait for easier prey and pickings.
Not long after, Slew saw the pilgrim party he was interested in striding along, the young wyfkin, rested now, bright of eye and cheek, well-coiffed, attractive. Foolish to so display themselves in those parts where females have value beyond their domestic skills.
The three robbers were as good as licking their lips and sucking their rotten teeth when a bolt from a crossbow went straight through the head of the largest of them and another into the side of the next as he turned.
The last was knifed in the throat as he stood up, open-mouthed, and the gang came at him, like rats swarming over living prey.
Slew was content to have the trio out of the way.
The numbers were perfect for his purpose: two would linger where they were, four would go down and take the group below, with crossbows first to kill and disable, then with ironclads, for fun. The females would be kept alive, hauled back into the woods and wishing as time went by – days and weeks, even a month or two, as they were traded and degraded and their value steadily fell – that they were dead.
Slew’s plan was to be their saviour.
It happened as he predicted. The moment the four went on down, leaving the two behind, Slew eased over to them and killed this pair in silence, one knifed, the other garotted.
Then he watched the scene on the path below unfold, creeping nearer, weighing the odds of four against four, the females discounted.
When the assault began he waited until one of the pilgrims was disabled and another bleeding badly and the females uncertain, white-faced.
Then he appeared, shot one of the gang from behind and clubbed down a second.
The odds had shifted but the other two fought harder still, expecting their friends to come down from their hiding place. Slew did not want a death among the pilgrims. It would change things, and his desire was to be accepted as one of them, not to be one of a party of mourners.
He interposed himself between the fighters, doing what he did with such easy grace and skill it looked a little lucky. Cries, screams, moans, the villains turning and fleeing, Slew in pursuit, rough and ready and monkish and foolishly brave. Or so he hoped it seemed.
It did.
The wounded pilgrims were patched up.
The unscathed ones badly shaken and eternally grateful.
Slew, who introduced himself as Brother Slew, was modesty itself. He explained he had foolishly pulled off the track to relieve himself. He saw the gang descend, disposed of two of them who had no idea he was in the bushes – ‘One does not dance and sing when one is relieving oneself under cover of brambles,’ he said – and the rest they knew.
They had all been lucky.
‘Would you travel on with us, Brother Slew?’
He said that it would be a pleasure but he had a confession to make – he was not a real religious like the other noble solitaries along the way. No, no, he was a trained Fyrd who had earned his leave and wished to make a pilgrimage to Brum to ease a soul troubled by things he had done.
‘A worthy aim, friend. We’ll call you brother all the same . . . and the stave, the other seals of pilgrimage?’
‘Folk are good,’ he said, ‘and a pilgrimage produces good things. I promised a dying pilgrim in Harwich, whose ambition had been to add the seal of Brum to these two for reasons of his own, to carry his stave as penance to that fabled city and leave it as an offering on Waseley Hill. This I shall do.’
‘In our company, if you’ll honour us with yours.’
Their daughters’ eyes lit up when they shook his hand. Dark eyes, strong grip, modesty – a hero.
By the time they had reached the East Gate of Brum, in fine fettle and health, Brother Slew was as close to them as a real brother might be. As for the females, he had had his hand up the skirts of one and bedded the other.
In short, he had a good time of it.
But time was running out.
He did not have long to find the gem, steal it, and get back for his rendezvous with Borkum Riff.
‘Good Brother Slew,’ they cried, ‘you can take lodgings with us!’
‘If you insist, I will!’
20
WILD CHILD
Judith woke and stared at the ceiling, her Mum big and heavy at her side.
She could hear birds, see the skein of a cobweb hanging from the cracked plaster, floating back and forth in a draught, and Mum’s shape.
Impulsively she rolled over and out of bed, clad in her nightie which was her Dad’s T-shirt, which came to her ankles, and stood staring at the black tuft of hair that was all she could see of Mum. Not awake. Her breathing was a slow, soft rhythm in the room and the birds were loud outside.
She turned to the open door, padded across to the room where Dad slept on the floor and went in, standing, her calves cold.
Something was wrong, the world had changed.
It took her a few seconds to work it out and then she did: she felt no pain.
Nothing.
That was what was wrong.
There was cold air on her ankles and legs but that wasn’t pain.
Mum was a tuft of black hair among the folds of their duvet, Dad was a hairy leg and boxer shorts.
Mum was a milky, soapy smell.
Dad was something stubbly and shaverly and warmerly, like a great hairy scarf round her face and head.
Both were big and this morning her knees didn’t hurt or her ankles or her back and her arms or her wrists or the big bones in her legs or anything.
She went down the corridor to where Arthur and Margaret slept, but the door was closed.
She stood outside listening, and hearing nothing reached up and touched a white plastic light switch, then pulled loose wallpaper below it looser still and, feeling the rough carpet beneath her feet, itched her right foot against it, rub rub.
She wanted the wee that woke her and headed for the toilet, but through the banisters she saw the sun slanting across the floor in the hall below. She turned and went down the stairs, feeling the bounce of her fingers against the rails as she went and the way they sprang back to position; bounce spring: bounce spring: bounce spring.
The sun had come through the door, which was ajar, that led into the conservatory.
Judith pushed it open with a little shove, the way she had before. It swung with a creak and as sun covered her body all over with its warmth the door stilled and swung back as it liked to do.
She did it again and stepped forward into the light, the door swinging back behind her.
Birdsong filled the conservatory and its greenery with trills and squeaks and clicks and shrill repetitions. She closed her eyes and whirled around in the birdsong sound, her toes wiggling towards the blue sky above the glass.
Opening her eyes again Judith stepped onto a rug, the tessellated floor being cold, from where she contemplated the doors outside. The key hung on a nail to one side, out of her reach without a chair.
There was a wicker one, and for the first time since she woke she minded that others might wake as well. She struggled to lift the chair off the floor and eventually pulled and shoved it to the door, climbed up and got the key.
It was easy turning it, hard to stop the door swinging and banging but, carefully, she managed it.
Then going out into the cool morning air, the song and sounds of nature, lit by sun, like a glistening road before her, she stepped outside, walked across the broken patio and onto the dewy grass beyond.
Her toes wiggled again, in the wet this time, deliciously.
Judith saw a snail, thin, tentacly ear-things questing, moving slowly along. Its shell was a spiral of black and pale yellow. There was another near it.
She stilled, suddenly alert, hearing a sound; no, feeling the sound; no, seeing it.
Life moved somewhere across the lawn.
Judith crouched down and, reaching for the snail, stopped that and stayed absolutely still, brought her gaze up, the sun warm on the tops of her feet and nice on her nose, and sensed the fox.
She stood up and looked at it a hundred yards away and it looked at her. She began walking towards it, grass and dew between them, mistress of her domain, staring it down, eyes alight to see it.
It turned and slunk but did not disappear, as if not allowed.
You stay there Mister Fox until I say you can go!
The fox, uneasy but not frightened, dithered uncertainly, paws here and there, eyes on Judith.
You stay!
The fox retreated between two of the trees of the henge.
The chimes sounded to Judith’s left.
The trees shimmered with light and sound high above her head and she slowed, feeling the life of the Earth above and below, to all sides.
Awakening Page 14
