by K T Findlay
Which was how Grimketil found himself highly miffed, in second rate quarters.
Thomas on the other hand, was on familiar ground. The coterie set themselves up in the same room that Thomas had used during his recovery, and much to the royal servants’ dismay, his villagers took over the room next door. It was a bit crowded, but they made it homely enough.
Wulfstan took advantage of his not being needed for a moment, to seek out the Queen, and found her in the main hall, consulting with Ravena over the evening’s arrangements.
‘The Prince’s villagers seem to be making themselves at home in the royal apartments.’ said Ravena sourly.
The Queen nodded slowly. ‘It does rather lower the tone somewhat, but I trust Grimketil so little, I wouldn’t put it past him to slaughter a few of them before the night is out. So I’ve agreed with Wulfstan that we can make an exception, just this once.’
‘Your Majesty knows best.’ said Ravena, her face blank of expression.
For the merest moment, a smile flickered across Cynethryth’s lips before she was all business again.
‘That alcove in the middle of the west wall, where we normally set up one of the beer barrels, we have to leave free for the Prince.’
‘Why Your Majesty?’
‘Because he has some special gift for the King, and he needs a spot in the hall to put it.’
‘It will get beer spilt on it.’ observed Ravena. ‘The men are used to the barrel being there.’
‘Oh I don’t know. Would you spill beer on the King’s present, in his presence?’ asked the Queen.
‘Perhaps not Your Majesty.’ Ravena conceded.
Wulfstan laughed heartily. Clearly Ravena hadn’t been completely cured of her reservations about him just yet.
Just then Thomas arrived with half a dozen of the villagers, all carrying bits of equipment.
‘Hello mother!’ he cried. ‘How lovely to see you again! I’ve missed you!’
She opened her arms to his, and they embraced happily.
“Hello Ravena.’ he said, once they’d finished. ‘I’ve missed that sparkling smile of yours as well.’
Ravena, whose face had radiated a perfect nonchalance throughout, simply inclined her head and said. ‘Thank you Your Highness. You are most kind.’
Thomas grinned broadly. ‘Not at all, not at all. Where can I put my surprise mother?’
Cynethryth pointed to the alcove. ‘Will that be alright?’
‘Perfect!’ he said. ‘Bring it all over here lads.’
‘We’ll leave you to it then. Come Ravena, we need to see that the King’s beer has arrived.’ said the Queen.
For the next hour and a half, Thomas worked tirelessly with his team to set up his creation. When it was done, he stepped back and looked at it with great pleasure.
‘It looks even better than it did at the manor. It deserves a mighty home, and here it’s got one.’
‘It’s magnificent!’ said Fulton.
‘Well you should know! You built bits of it!’ smiled Thomas. ‘I can’t wait to see their faces this evening.’
Then very carefully, he covered it with a cloth, and left it under the watchful eyes of one of the King’s guards.
The guests began filtering into the hall for the feast an hour before sunset. Thomas joined the top table, whose occupants were in exactly the same places as the last time he’d been there. The coterie were positioned with their backs to the west wall, between the end of the royal table and the alcove containing the present. Grimketil and his men occupied the table against the east wall, and the remaining parts of the hall was filled by the rest of the court. Servants flitted to and fro delivering drinks to the guests, and cooks tended the various meats roasting above the huge central fire.
Once Offa was sure that everyone had arrived, he stood up and called for silence.
‘My friends, it is good to see you all here! Tomorrow we hope to witness a great spectacle, as my son tries to win his bet, and Grimketil tries to keep his head!’ he boomed.
A wave of laughter washed around the room. Even the coterie joined in, despite knowing that the betting was firmly against them.
‘Before we start however, Wulfstan tells me that he has made me a gift, to remember him by.’ continued Offa.
There was more laughter, but a bit stilted in some places, as it seemed to imply that the King too believed the fight was a foregone conclusion.
Thomas led the King and Queen across to the alcove, and took a corner of the cover sheet in his hand.
‘In fact Your Majesty, you may find it a timely reminder indeed!’ he said, and whipped away the cloth to reveal a breathtaking sight.
It was a staggeringly beautiful clock, just over three feet high and two feet wide, rectangular in section with a wrought iron frame visible up the edges. Its front surface was a beautifully polished slice of walnut, with a long rectangle of deep red glass running almost completely from top to bottom. Set into the red glass was a series of white glass numbers, running from zero at the bottom, to twenty four at the top. A vertical slot in the walnut to the right of the red glass allowed a silver pointer to slide up and down, which at this moment was almost pointing at the number eighteen.
‘It counts off twenty four equal length hours each day, so it’s actually better than your sundial, whose hours change a little as the days lengthen and shorten throughout the year. It works throughout the night, as long as you keep the room above freezing, and it works when it’s cloudy, making it particularly useful in Mercia!’ said Thomas.
At that very moment the pointer moved up a little to point directly at eighteen, and a little silver bird on the top of the device started to flap its wings up and down. Just beneath it, two pipes sounded the call of the very first cuckoo clock since the time of the ancient Greeks.
Offa gasped in amazement.
‘Astonishing! But how does it work?’ he asked.
Thomas briefly showed him the internals. Some of it, such as the gearing to drive the little bird, and the bellows that created its song, were beyond him, but he grasped the concept of the water buckets. It was very similar to the setup Thomas had used in his earlier work to measure the length of a second.
‘It’s accurate to within a few seconds a day Your Majesty. All that needs to be done is for a servant to refill the top reservoir once every twelve hours, and it will run for as long as you want it to. You can change the time if you need to, by adding or removing water from the bottom reservoir.
Offa looked at it in awe.
“Where did you find it, and how much did it cost?’ he asked.
‘I found it inside my own head Your Majesty, and it cost just the time and materials my people and I needed to make it.’ replied Thomas.
‘Inside your own head?’ asked the King, perplexed.
Thomas managed a small smile. ‘As we discussed a year ago in this very hall, when you were so vexed with me, I said that as a child I played, and as I played I watched, and as I watched I learned, and as I learned I thought. Thanks to your bet and your money, I have now been able to actually do, and turn my thoughts into reality, like this.’
Lost in thought, Offa nodded his head in silence, and fingered a white backed glass tube running up the front right edge, attached to the walnut just in from the iron frame.
‘That Your Majesty, is another device. It measures how warm it is. Watch.’
Thomas retrieved a bowl of cool water from the coterie’s table, and rested it gently against the mercury filled glass bulb at the bottom. As the King leant in to watch, the mercury gradually sank lower down the scale.
‘If it hits zero, then you can expect water to start turning to ice soon after, and if you took it off the clock and stuck it in hot water over a fire, it will reach one hundred just as the water starts to boil.’
‘Amazing!’ breathed the King.
‘There’s one last thing Your Majesty. You may be wondering about the pretty little flask on the top?’ continued Thomas, pointing
to a beautiful teardrop shaped flask about a foot high, with a spout coming out and up from the bottom.
Inside the flask was some water, stained dark with oak bark liquor, but there was something strange about it.
‘Look at that!’ gasped the astonished King. ‘The levels are different between the flask and the spout, even though they are connected!’
Thomas tried to explain.
‘Swing your hand through the air please Your Majesty.’
Offa did as he he’d been asked.
‘You can feel the air, yes? So even though we can’t see it, we can feel it. When the wind blows strong in a storm, we feel it all too well! So it has substance, yes?’
Offa nodded, his face a picture of concentration.
‘So it must have weight too? Pick up a knife and it rests in your hand. Tip your hand and it falls to the ground, just as you do when you dismount from a horse, as does beer when spilled from a horn. Everything falls to the ground, so air must too.’
Offa nodded his agreement with this strange logic, so Thomas continued.
‘I had my glassmaker create a glass jug, similar to this one, and left it sitting there with water part way up it, just like this in fact. I noticed over the next few days that the levels changed, and I managed to work it out. What seems to happen is when the spout goes up and the flask goes down, the weather is more likely to get worse. When the spout goes down and the flask goes up, the weather tends to get better. It must be something to do with the air changing with the weather, but I don’t yet know why. All I know is that it works!’
In fact of course, he knew perfectly well, but it didn’t seem the right time or place to be going into a complete explanation of fluctuating air pressures and their meteorological consequences.
‘So I can predict the weather with this?” whispered Offa.
Thomas shook his head.
‘Not reliably I’m afraid Your Majesty. If the change is small, or it happens slowly, then it indicates that it’s more likely to go one way or the other, but it’s not a guarantee. However, if you get a big change, really quickly, then it’s almost certainly going to happen.
Offa turned his head to look at him, disbelief written all over his face.
‘And you… you learned all this by… just watching? And you worked out how to make this entire thing… because you played?’
‘And watched, and learned, and thought, and tried things out, Your Majesty.’ Thomas nodded.
The entire hall was so silent, they actually did hear a pin dropping from a serving woman’s hair onto a silver serving spoon.
Offa straightened himself up and shook his shoulders.
‘Marwig tells me that you have cut the death rate in your village to almost zero.’ he said.
‘That’s true Your Majesty.’
‘And that you have a new farming system, which will treble production?’
‘Starting next year Your Majesty. I can do many things, but I can’t speed up Mother Nature.’ Thomas smiled.
‘Marwig also tells me that you and your women successfully defended the manor against an armed night attack by a band of outlaws?
Thomas nodded.
‘Then you have won every aspect of your bet with me but one. I am sorry Wulfstan. I have never been so wrong about anyone in my life, and I apologise. I should never have doubted you.’
Thomas shrugged.
‘If you hadn’t, then perhaps none of this would have come to pass.’ he said, indicating the clock. ‘Apologies gratefully accepted Your Majesty.’
Offa shook his head sadly.
‘Well, whoever wins tomorrow, the King will certainly lose. I shall either lose a son I never knew I had, or I shall lose one of my finest warriors.’
Then, recollecting that everyone was watching him, he led Thomas back to the royal table, his arm firmly around his shoulders.
‘Well done my son.’ he said. ‘And thank you. It’s a fabulous gift.’
‘I have another for you, all ready to assemble.’ said Thomas. ‘So you can take one with you on your travels, or gift it to someone. Or perhaps you’d like to sell it to recoup the money I’ve cost you this year! I’ve got three of my own to sell, so I won’t be a drain on the royal coffers anymore.’ he grinned.
Offa shot him a look. He knew the diplomatic effects that a gift of one of these clocks would have, and they would be all the greater if he himself was the only source.
‘How much are you thinking of asking?’ he enquired.
‘Two hundred pounds of silver each.’
Offa never batted an eye. If he had a monopoly in their supply, they’d be worth several times that amount, but all he said was.
‘I’ll take all three.’
‘Thank you, Your Majesty.’ said Thomas. I’ll have them delivered within the month.’
‘You’d best make those arrangements tonight Your Highness!’ called Grimketil, triggering a wave of laughter from his table. He’d been as impressed as anyone else in the hall, but he knew the value of morale, and wanted to prick the Prince’s bubble of happiness.
Rowena glared at him from across the room and was about to say something in return when Freawaru leaned in, and whispered a suggestion into her ear. A ghost of a smile played across Rowena’s lips as she nodded, then the two women silently collected the rest of the coterie, and led them in procession from the room towards the kitchens.
‘Oh dear.’ said Grimketil loudly. ‘I am so sorry Your Highness. I didn’t mean to frighten your warriors away!’
The gaiety levels in his half of the hall stepped up another couple of notches, but Thomas just smiled indulgently.
‘Women’s business I suspect. I’m sure they’ll be back in their own time.’ he said mildly, before addressing his conversation towards his little sisters.
Rowena led the coterie past the kitchen ranges, and into the buttery and the King’s beer barrels.
‘Now, you all know what to do?’ she asked.
Before they could reply, a young voice rose from below.
‘I don’t!’
‘Gundy!’ said Berthilda. ‘Whatever are you doing here?’
The little girl grinned. ‘I was just counting things, trying to understand how this place works. It’s big!’
‘Yes… you would be, wouldn’t you.’ laughed Melody.
‘So what are you doing then?’ asked Gundy.
‘We’re going to give Grimketil and his men a present. We’re going to give them some beer. Very special beer.’
Gundy’s face creased into a frown.
‘Why? They’re horrible! He tried to steal me!’
Rowena knelt down and explained what they were going to do. At first Gundy’s mouth opened wide in astonishment, then almost split with the widest naughty girl grin the world had ever seen.
‘Oh good! Can I make one for Cuthbert? He’s at that table too!’
Rowena looked uncertain, but another voice made up her mind for her.
‘I think that’s an excellent idea young lady.’ said the Queen.
‘Your Majesty!’ gasped Rowena.
Cynethryth stood there smiling warmly, a drinking horn in each hand.
‘I’ve come to get the King some more of his special beer.’ she explained.
‘Your Majesty, we-’ Rowena started to explain, but the Queen put up her hand to stop her.
‘I know exactly what you’re doing.’ she said, causing their faces to pale. ‘And I heartily approve!’
She burst out laughing. ‘I know all about it girls. Let’s get on with it, and I’ll lead us back out into the hall in case Grimketil tries to suggest you’re poisoning him.’
Each member of the coterie filled their horn until half an inch from the top, then followed the Queen back towards the hall. They halted in the corridor, where everyone but the Queen, squatted down for a few moments, one hand in the straw on the floor, the other holding their horn.
‘I can’t!’ whispered Deana to her sister. ‘I haven’t got enoug
h!’
‘Oh give it here then.’ hissed her sister. ‘I’ve got plenty for both of us.’
Then she had another thought. ‘They can never tell the difference between us anyway!’ which set the whole coterie off into giggles.
The Queen waited until everyone had regained their composure, before leading them, horns brimmed, into the hall and across to Grimketil’s table.
‘Heads up.’ Wulfstan whispered into Thomas’s ear.
Thomas thought he could tell by Wulfstan’s insane giggling what was happening, but it wasn’t until the coterie came to a halt, that the penny really dropped.
‘What? All of them? Even Gundy?’ he gasped.
Wulfstan’s insane cackling gave him his answer, and keeping his face straight over the next few minutes was one of the hardest things Thomas had ever had to do in his entire life.
‘Lord Grimketil.’ said the Queen. ‘Your opponents wish to honour you with a final gift before tomorrow, as a token of their respect.’
The coterie lined up on the opposite side of the table to the diners, each bowing respectfully as she passed across her horn.
‘Lord Grimketil.’ said Rowena. ‘One last drink for the road, your favourite I think.’
An astonished Grimketil glanced at the Queen.
‘It’s perfectly alright Grimketil. I supervised them myself. They’re not poisoned!’
He nodded uncertainly, took Rowena’s horn, and sipped carefully. It was almost exactly the same as he’d had that night a year ago. It was like nothing else, and he wondered how on earth she did it.
‘You can have one too priest!’ said Gundy.
Cuthbert’s eyes widened in alarm, and his body retreated just a touch from this strange intense child.
‘She’s gone to a lot of trouble for you Cuthbert.’ said the Queen. ‘It would be poor manners to refuse.’
Much against his better judgement, Cuthbert accepted the gift with a cursory nod of thanks, but Gundy stayed where she was, looking at him.
‘Aren’t you going to try it? It’s from the King’s special barrels you know.’ she said sweetly.
