Awakening

by William Horwood

  ‘I stay here,’ he said, repeating what he had said to Katherine. ‘This is where my family is.’

  It did not take long for the nightmare to come true.

  Three days later Birmingham was hit and they watched footage of flooded streets in the old quarter of the city.

  ‘Which means Brum,’ he said. ‘I feel I ought to be there . . . but I know it would be wrong.’

  Katherine said nothing, understanding his worry, feeling his pain.

  ‘How would I ever know if something happened to Stort, or Barklice or any of them? How would I know?’

  He took it out on the house, suddenly taking it into his head to decorate a room, clear the loft, dig the garden, anything.

  He took it out on them, even on Judith, at whom, for the first time, he shouted.

  He was watching a report on a tremor in Oxford and she turned the set off without explaining why.

  ‘For God’s sake, Judith, just go away – I’m trying to . . . I’m . . . sorry.’

  Her face had fallen. She had wanted to talk to him.

  He cuddled her and the moment passed but the guilt remained.

  They all began following the news, for there was rarely a day when a seismic event didn’t happen in a country where it had previously been almost unheard of.

  ‘And it’s happening on the Continent too,’ said Katherine. ‘The world’s falling apart.’

  ‘The Earth’s angry more like.’

  The experts quoted in the paper and on television said the tremors were freak seismic occurrences but in the normal range of historical probabilities.

  Arthur said little but kept a record of everything. Astral Cosmology was his subject and he knew the records as well as anyone. In medieval times, in various places in England, buildings had collapsed and church steeples had fallen; coastal dune lands were submerged for ever beneath the North Sea.

  ‘There’s no doubt either that such events as these occurred during Beornamund’s life. Of course it has to do with Judith’s birth, or the other way round. It’s chicken and egg and I believe far, far worse is going to come.’

  For the commentators there had to be a scientific explanation – but they couldn’t find one in the terms of conventional science. The media wheeled out every expert and crackpot opinion they could find, but soon grew tired of it.

  After the big tremors came the smaller ones that got only a line or two in the inside pages. Like a tremor in Darnbrookdale where the spoil tips of an old limestone quarry collapsed with no one hurt. No one had lived near the place for years.

  ‘Humans, that is,’ said Jack.

  Like Arthur, he was beginning to wonder what the real toll was in the Hyddenworld.

  He began to look haunted, conflicted between his desire to go back to what he thought of as his hydden people, and the need and duty to stay with his human family. He was a doer by nature and doing nothing was torture.

  When the quakes began occurring on the Continent Arthur got a new scrapbook and started keeping his own records all over again.

  ‘There seems no way that science alone can provide an explanation for these kind of seismic events,’ said Arthur, ‘but I think we all know what a hydden would say.’

  ‘You don’t need to be a hydden to work it out,’ said Katherine. ‘Being pagan will do. What my mother would have said is that the Earth is angry, but so am I . . . so am I when I think what we’ve done to the Earth over the centuries.’

  ‘Join the club,’ said Margaret. ‘It’s an old one. This was being said fifty years ago.’

  In the end it was Katherine who made the decision for Jack to leave, a rather more local earthquake being the cause. It shook Woolstone House hard enough for glass to fall out of three of the conservatory windows and a crack to appear in a ceiling upstairs. It was more omen than warning, but it was also decision made.

  ‘Right,’ she said, ‘you’re going to Brum, Jack, I’m worried about our friends there too. You could go up quickly by the pilgrim road we travelled down on and try to get Stort and some others out of there. They can come here . . .’

  Jack shook his head.

  ‘I thought that’s what you wanted?’ she said.

  ‘I do and I will. But I was thinking of something else. Do you remember when your mother died we thought it would be good to go north and spend time in Arthur’s cottage in the border country?’

  ‘Y . . . es,’ she said hesitatingly.

  ‘I think you should take Judith there. She needs more and more space to roam and maybe it would be safer; there have been no tremors that far north . . . What do you think, Arthur?’

  ‘Good idea, horrible cottage, I believe. It’s years since we went.’

  ‘Horrible place,’ said Margaret, ‘but plenty of trees and moorland and mist for Judith to lose herself in and at this time of year it shouldn’t be so bad. I think it’s a good idea.’

  It was agreed. Jack to Brum, the rest up north and Woolstone House closed for a while.

  ‘You can join us up there when you’ve finished in Brum.’

  He dallied two or three days longer, getting Judith used to the idea. Other fathers left for a while, mothers too, it couldn’t hurt for a week or two.

  ‘I’d prefer you being absent for a while and content to be back than restless all the while, Jack. You understand?’ Katherine said. ‘In my heart I never thought we’d keep you from the Hyddenworld for ever, so a visit once in a while seems like a good idea.’

  Those last days and hours they were a family, close and warm. It was a happy time, a time to cherish, but at last he had to leave, which he did with the rising sun.

  ‘Got to go,’ said Jack finally to Judith, kneeling down to give her a hug. She was too big to pick up easily any more. ‘Excited about your holiday?’

  She nodded and hugged him, her hands tight on the rough scars on his neck.

  ‘Look after each other,’ he said. ‘Judith, keep an eye on your Mum. Katherine, watch out for Margaret. Arthur, don’t take any nonsense from them . . .’

  He walked down to the entrance to the henge, telling them to wave from the house. Some hope. Judith ran down to say her own final goodbye by the henge.

  The chimes said their own farewell, and in the shimmer and shift of their sound it seemed to his family, watching him leave, that the great tall conifers bowed and bent away into the distance towards White Horse Hill and formed the green road down which he journeyed away until they could see him no more.

  ‘Will Dad come back?’ asked Judith.

  ‘Soon,’ whispered Katherine. ‘Soon.’

  31

  GOOD FUNERAL

  The funeral of Master Brief took place a week after his tragic death.

  It had been his wish that he be conveyed by boat to the place of burning. Because of the enormous love felt for him, and the anger and grief at the nature of his passing, everyone wanted to see his coffin pass by.

  Lord Festoon decided that his cortege should be taken westward by canal and road, before being laid upon a craft moored on the River Rea in Northfield where Brief was born, for its final journey through the city. The route was packed with mourners who threw lilies on his passing coffin, which brightened the sad scene and cloudy day.

  Bedwyn Stort and his party had arrived back from Woolstone only two days before. Stort’s shock was deep and his dreadful guilt very real, for he felt sure that Brief would still be alive if he had not hidden the gem where he had. His friends tried to reassure him that it was not his fault, but Stort was not consoled.

  He journeyed wanly by the coffin all the way to its embarkation point and then sat sadly beside it, ignoring everyone and everything. Barklice and Pike sat nearby too, silent and grim.

  Brunte, who had himself only recently returned to Brum, sat with Feld and Backhaus and some Councillors in a second craft behind the first.

  A great pyre of faggots had been raised on the wide, open marshy ground at the confluence of the Rea and the River Trent, Brum’s traditional
place of farewell to its great ones.

  It was mid-afternoon, the day was still murky and the short way from boat to pyre marked by flares, whose flames leapt upwards, sending down sparks like fiery tears.

  In all the sadness and commotion surrounding the appalling event, only Librarian Thwart had thought to bring Brief’s carved stave to the funeral, but he held it uneasily, no one else willing to. It was associated with Brief alone and its deep, strange carvings, so powerful and potent when he’d carried the stave, glowing angrily, their depths all reds and blacks, made the stave look far too big and impressive for one such as Thwart.

  But there it was, and what else he was meant to do with it he did not know. Yet by virtue of the fact he held it he found himself thrust next to the coffin as it was carried to the pyre, and then to one side once it had been placed in position, as if he was a solitary and reluctant guard of honour.

  ‘Mister Pike,’ said Thwart, ‘I really don’t think it should be me . . .’

  Pike shook his head.

  ‘Mister Stort, you were so close to Master Brief, surely you—’

  ‘I could not and I cannot hold his stave, Thwart, I am not worthy for that, and anyway I do not think it in the wyrd of things that I do!’

  ‘Well,’ whispered poor Thwart, this not being a conversation fitted for public consumption, ‘it’s certainly not in my wyrd but . . . ah, Lord Festoon . . . perhaps you would . . . ?’

  Festoon gazed down at the hapless librarian.

  ‘You’re doing a fine job, my dear fellow, a fine job!’

  So there Thwart stood, very unhappily, holding the great stave and waiting for the ritual, a long one, to get under way.

  To heighten the sadness and the grief of the occasion there was dismay as well, and not a little concern, its undercurrents spreading in whispers, as the day wore on.

  At the heart of this was a very real sense that no one, from Lord Festoon down, knew what was going to happen when the funeral was over. In short, what to do about recovering the stolen gem.

  The true identity of Slew, as Master of Shadows, was by then well known, though what the true meaning of that title meant, and the likely near-invincibility of he who held it, was known only to a few.

  To wrest the gem back from him, which meant taking it from the protection of the Emperor himself, was an attractive dream but a dangerous cause. One, Brunte and Festoon understood very well, that would inevitably bring forward the Empire’s attack on their city.

  The truth was too that possession of the gem would have been a bargaining chip in any coming negotiations between the city and Bochum. Now that advantage was gone and they lay open to Imperial might.

  These were thorny problems that needed clear thinking and leadership, both of which now seemed to be lacking between Brunte and Festoon, for neither knew quite what to do next. They could not very well attack Bochum. Nor did they want to just sit and wait to be destroyed.

  ‘When the funeral’s over we’ll work something out,’ Festoon had said to those close to him, like Pike.

  ‘Until I’ve had time to think about it properly I cannot see a clear way forward,’ Brunte declared to Feld and the others.

  All that the citizens of Brum wanted was their gem back, and Brief’s death avenged.

  It was no surprise therefore that there was unease and unrest at the funeral, even as the rituals began.

  The pyre funeral rituals of Brum were simple ones. They began with an invocation to the Mirror-of-All to accept the deceased back into her eternal, reflective depths.

  This was spoken by Festoon.

  There were silence and prayers, some mournful tunes and a valedictory address from Brunte on one hand and Mister Pike on the other, both commendable but neither catching quite the mood or the deep communal need of the occasion.

  Sometimes fine words are not enough. This was an occasion when only an open expression of real feeling could make something of the moment that was memorable and true.

  So it was that when the call went out to begin the burning the crowd muttered that they would like first to hear a few words from Mister Stort, for he had been Brief’s greatest pupil, and all there knew that the Master Scrivener had regarded him as the nearest thing he’d ever had to a son.

  Of course Festoon and Pike had already asked Stort to speak, but he had refused. He was never one for public speaking anyway, but how could he, who had as good as caused Brief’s death himself, possibly add anything of value or importance?

  ‘I cannot, I just cannot,’ he had said.

  But now the pyre waited, and the hands of those who would light it had been stayed, and, whatever Stort might feel, all eyes were upon him and expectant.

  It so happened that at this very moment, unseen by the crowd, for it was lost behind them a little way up the river, a bilgesnipe craft approached.

  At the helm, looking utterly exhausted and yet very pleased with himself, was Old Mallarkhi.

  ‘I be damned if they war goin’ stop me a-being witness to the Master’s funereal! And if you’ll only . . . oops, I nearly went scatter-ways into the water.’

  The strong arms of his passenger kept him upright and lifted him onto firm ground.

  He was, it must be said, a little worse for wear in the alcoholic sense. Not much, but enough. The sight of the cortege passing by earlier had started it, and his desire to drown his very real sorrows when it disappeared from sight continued it. But what had provoked it still more, and made him prop a bottle of Muggy Mead in the bilges lest he need it en route, was a request from a late mourner to be conveyed to the funeral.

  ‘Can’t do it,’ he had said. ‘I’m at death’s door.’

  ‘You’ve been at death’s door for years and you can do it.’

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘It’s the least Brief would have expected.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I’m sure. And how else am I to get there myself?’

  ‘I mustn’t; Ma’Shuqa forbade it.’

  ‘Are you your daughter’s father or her scullywench?’

  ‘Dang me,’ said Old Mallarkhi, ‘I’ll do it for ’ee and for me both!’

  And he had.

  Now he had arrived at the rear of the crowd with his passenger just at the moment when Stort found himself being thrust to his feet before a crowd that needed desperately to hear words that expressed their loss and their fears at Brief’s unhappy passing and their forlorn hopes that out of it some good might yet be found.

  ‘Well, one and all—’ began Stort.

  ‘Can’t hear you! Speak up, Mister Stort!’

  ‘Oh . . . well . . . I was . . .’

  ‘Still can’t!’

  ‘I was going to say, I want to say that . . . well, Master Brief, he . . . was . . . I mean, without him . . . without . . .’

  There is no shame in tears, especially heartfelt ones, and there was not one person in the crowd who did not sympathize with Stort or was not glad that he shed them.

  ‘He was the hydden who gave me most in all the world,’ he said when he had recovered a little, ‘the hydden who stood for what was right and what was wrong even if, sometimes . . . well, often . . . he could be and in fact was . . .’

  He wept again.

  ‘Say it lad when you’re ready, don’t give up!’

  ‘He was, I would say, grumpy. Sort of. And when I was young and he thought I wasn’t working as I should he . . . I didn’t mind this, really I didn’t . . . but he was inclined to . . . it didn’t hurt exactly . . . but . . .’

  More tears.

  More patience from his audience.

  There was a growing sense among them that having started poorly Brief’s funeral was turning into something that might be memorable.

  ‘If I fell asleep at my books, he was inclined to rap my knuckles with his stave, that one just there in fact, and say, “Bedwyn, are you paying proper attention?”

  ‘And there was something else . . .’

  In this faltering way Sto
rt managed to say enough to begin to bring alive again the hydden now gone from Brum for good.

  Then suddenly, when he faltered once too often and seemed at last to be heading down a cul de sac, there was a cry from the back of the crowd and to everyone’s horror someone shouted, ‘Master Brief ’ad a guilty secret and it be time it were out!’

  The crowd parted and Old Mallarkhi advanced upon Stort, carrying his half-consumed bottle of Muggy Mead.

  ‘Master Stort ’ere won’t mind I daresay if Brief’s old friend and drinking partner says a word or two . . .’

  ‘Pa, you should be home abed not tottering about the countryside!’ cried Ma’Shuqa, appalled to see her father bringing shame upon the family.

  ‘A pox on that, daughter!’ he retorted. ‘Brief would have done the same fer me!’

  This brought a cheer, and Stort, glad of diversion and support, actually clapped, which others did as well.

  ‘All Old Mallarkhi was agoin’ to reveal, and it ain’t been told afore, is this.’

  He stopped and swigged at his bottle of mead and took his time doing so.

  The crowd waited until he was ready.

  When he had finished he held the bottle up and pointed at it.

  ‘This ’ere brew was never to my recipe, no it never war. It war Master Brief who come up and out with it, from a ancient tome on the subject of toping the yeast and the hop, “it” being a receipt, as he said they said in them gone days, for a mead offering a quick way to salvation invented by the knavish monks of Lichfield, where once there be’d a monasterium as bookish folks say it. So here, now and ever more this mead wot you all know of and some of you drink is being renamed The Master’s Mead, or Masters for short. In his memory. And that’s allus Old Mallarkhi’s got to say on that subject! Now you can carry on, Master Stort!’

  With that Old Mallarkhi collapsed sideways into his daughter’s arms, who revived him with a daughterly embrace and the words, ‘Pa, you are a one, you are!’

  Somehow the mood changed.

  It was suddenly more serious and the undercurrent of concern for the future that ran among the fold there was still not expressed, nor tamed nor harnessed.