Awakening (20 page)

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

W
ILD
C
HILD

J
udith 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.

She wanted to wee herself into the ground, the grass and the Earth, so she did, by the rhododendrons, listening to the chimes and the birds skittering in the undergrowth and above her head as she squatted.

Relieved, she stood up, let her nightie fall back down her legs and knew what she wanted.

She went and stood at the entrance to the henge, her two favourite trees towering protectively above her, and stared between them to contemplate the White Horse on the hill. It seemed to her never to stop moving.

‘Mister Fox,’ she whispered, not taking her eyes off the Horse, ‘you’re there.’

Mister Squirrel was also, and ants on her feet among the pine needles where the grass ended, and the collared dove and its cooing in the trees like an echo in a high room, and the Horse, from which she did not take her eyes for a moment, all were there.

But it was the Horse that held her as the ants walked off her feet again and the dove flapped off among the branches of the henge.

Judith smiled.

No pain, just standing in the world.

She wanted to run and dance and turn a somersault, each foot, head, hand and her long dark hair touching the Earth and sky and trees and leaves and the coat of Mister Fox, but she couldn’t.

She was missing something she never missed before.

Something different than Dad and Mum and Margaret and Arthur.

She felt no pain but she felt an ache for what she was missing.

She didn’t know its name or even if it existed.

She had no word for it.

The word was ‘friend’.

Jack woke, stretched and got up like he usually did, no messing.

Wake and up and out of bed, that was Jack, on with his trainers and the day.

He had a pee and went downstairs and saw, across the hall, wet footprints, small, coming his way. He frowned, not comprehending.

He looked at the carpet of the stairs and saw they came on up and past him and headed past his door. He felt a draught from downstairs and knew a door was open.

He turned, went back upstairs and pushed Katherine’s door gently open.

The usual tuft of her hair at the top end of the bed, deep breathing, and over her back Judith’s arm. He stared and saw projecting from beneath the duvet over the side of the bed two small feet, grassy and dotted with pine needles.

He looked at them and their pink soft roundness and the way grass and needles had accumulated in the arch, and between the toes and wondered if he had ever in his life felt such love for another as he did for Judith then. A surge of love so powerful it took his breath away. He wanted to reach out and touch her feet but didn’t do so. She slept so deeply, she lay so free and wild and he loved her so much.

Jack went to the window and looked out.

He could see her trail through the grass, a triangle of tracks.

From the patio to the rhododendrons, then to the two conifers, then back to the house again.

He retreated quietly, went down to the conservatory, saw the chair, worked things out, shook his head and smiled and went outside as she had, kicking off his trainers and walking barefoot through the grass.

He went straight to the two trees, stood where she had, smelt the fox and saw the White Horse. He contemplated the Horse, as she had done, imagining it to be moving as she had, as he often had before.

He could put up more barbed wire, build fences, lock doors, close the gate out onto the road, watch and worry and fret, but she had started her exploration of the world and no way was he going to be able to stop her and nor would he ever want to. Time was running out for all of them, very fast. People were born into the world to run and dance, not to be restrained.

Over breakfast, in the midst of the usual chaos and cacophony, he said, ‘We’ll go for a walk, Katherine, like we used to, up to the White Horse; it’s time. With Judith.’

‘Judith?’

‘Every moment’s precious,’ said Jack.

‘It is,’ she replied.

21

O
N
T
HE
R
OAD

S
tort’s journey from Brum to Woolstone with Barklice to assess the situation with the Shield Maiden and perhaps make contact with Jack and Katherine should have been straightforward.

They had made the journey before and Barklice was a master of the minutiae of such travel over distance and under pressure of time. The quickest method of transport also involved the most dangerous for hydden – undermost human trains. It involved waiting for a train at a junction near the West Gate, where they always stopped briefly, and using wooden boards to form a platform beneath the train on which a hydden could easily lie.