Awakening (42 page)

‘Where was she?’

‘In an embroidery.’

‘By ã Faroün?’

‘It nearly took me into its own story.’

‘Not nearly, Witold Slew, it did. Now . . . tell me, please, that you brought it with you?’

‘I . . . no, Lord, I didn’t. I left it there.’

Sinistral rose, anger incarnate.

‘You may have left the greater prize,’ he hissed, his voice reverting briefly to what it was when he was decayed. ‘Because, you fool, the embroidery is a map to universal delights – and the other gems.’

Slew frowned. He had sensed something in the cloth but not quite that.

He felt nauseous.

‘You did not say . . .’

The Emperor’s mood swung the other way and he smiled. ‘I had quite forgotten that it existed until you mentioned it, but now you have . . . well . . . there is time . . . we shall get that too. It alone is reason enough to invade the city of my birth.’

He laughed at the thought.

A city destroyed to win a piece of cloth!

In the background, listening, Blut drew out his little book and made a note. A cloth embroidered. A map that might be a guide to the other gems. Delights. A crone. Blut’s eyes glistened as he too looked at stars.

36

V
OWS

C
luckett approved of Jack the moment she met him.

And disapproved a short while later when she discovered that he was to take her Mister Stort away from her that very evening.

‘But he hasn’t even had time to rest his scholarly head upon the herbal pillow I have made for him,’ she said. ‘He needs rest and respite if he is to do his work.’

‘So do we all,’ said Jack, who was quickly getting the measure of her, ‘including myself. Now listen, Goodwife Cluckett—’

‘I prefer plain Cluckett, sir, but I am listening.’

She said this breathlessly, bosom heaving, feeling that though he might be the cause of Stort’s imminent departure there was in the service of Stort and his many friends an excitement and a testing of her wyfly mettle that she had never experienced while her husband was alive.

‘Cluckett then. I am tired, Mister Stort is tired, and I do not intend to waste valuable time discussing the finer points of Stort’s pillows. Nor have I the energy to discuss whether or not he should be coming now. He is essential to our secret mission . . .’

‘Secret, sir?’ she repeated with suppressed excitement, ‘I didn’t realize.’

‘Yes.’

‘And my master is essential?’

‘Absolutely. The future of Brum depends upon him.’

‘On Mister Stort?’ she said, beaming with pride.

‘It does, sort of. Therefore—’

‘Mister Stort is very wonderful is he not, and so often misunderstood?’

‘
Therefore
, Cluckett,’ Jack said very forcefully, ‘we do not need any further discussion now. What we need you to do while we are resting—’

‘Yes sir, that’s it, name it! I like a hydden who knows his mind and is masterful in explaining his needs to others, especially Cluckett.’

‘Good. Now, we will require such supplies as you judge will give us sustenance for at least three days to get us started. Water we’ll find, but a mead concentrate will be appreciated and some kind of biscuit and hard rations needing a minimum of preparation that will see us through the coming days until we are well on our way.’

‘That is easy, sir. Regard it as done. You’ll need medical supplies I daresay, toiletries, stout twine . . .’

‘Twine?’

‘For snares, sir. Knives, of course, and plastic bags, small but powerful torches . . .’

‘You have done this kind of thing before, I take it.’

‘The late Mister Cluckett was a dab hand at living rough and off the land. It goes without saying you’ll need a compass each and . . . lucifers and paper of the purpose of ablution.’

‘Cluckett, do it and let us sleep.’

‘Oh, sir, I shall,’ she cried happily as she set to. ‘I shall wake you at half past two and have both baths ready . . .’

‘Two baths?’

‘Rest, sir and don’t flurry your mind one second more,’ she said, adding in a tone as firm as Jack’s had been, though with a different bent: ‘Leave it to Cluckett!’

Jack rested better than he had for weeks and had been able, for the first time since Judith’s birth, to appreciate what parenthood had meant to Katherine and himself. His journey to Brum had been straightforward enough, but pressured by time. Even then, as the distance increased between himself and Woolstone, he had seen how lucky he was: Judith well and Katherine too. Now he knew he loved them both and was loved in return and lay on a palliasse in Stort’s room in a state of pleasurable half-sleep, enjoying these thoughts.

He had expressed some of them during the night to Stort, the two friends prone and in proximity as they had so often been under the night sky the previous Summer, their limbs and minds and spirits relaxed.

Jack fell asleep again, for longer than he thought, for when Stort woke him he was surprised to see he was already washed, brushed and dressed for travel.

‘It is nearly four in the afternoon,’ he explained, ‘but Cluckett advised me to let you sleep and I have done so. Food is ready, a briefing with the others at Festoon’s residence has been arranged for six, and no doubt we can make a decision then about when and how precisely we should leave Brum, secrecy being of the essence. Meanwhile, Cluckett has drawn a bath for you . . .’

Jack was up at once and into the small area at the far end of Stort’s kitchen that served as a washery.

A thin curtain offered privacy but Jack cared little for that.

‘Talk to me while I bathe,’ he said to Stort.

‘But Cluckett—’

‘She’s a goodwife, Stort, and I doubt she’s prudish. She’ll have seen naked flesh before I expect, though rarely any as scarred as mine . . .’

Jack stripped off and climbed into the hip bath she had prepared.

‘Goodness, sir,’ she said, unabashedly bringing him a hot drink as he soaked, ‘those must be the evidence of that grim accident that Mister Stort once told me about . . .’

‘They are,’ said Jack.

‘Let me take a look at your back and neck.’

‘There’s no more anyone can do,’ said Jack shortly.

‘There’s much that a trained goodwife can always do, if you please!’

She took a look, running her strong fingers gently over his neck and right shoulder.

‘You must know the meaning of pain,’ she said softly. ‘I am so sorry.’

‘Well, I . . .’

‘A moment!’

She came back with an embrocation of her own devising, rubbed it on him after he had dried himself, and informed him that she had put a jar of it in his portersac.

‘Do these scars ever weep? When you are stressed perhaps? As now, for I presume from their state that you have been under some pressure of late?’

‘I have,’ said Jack gruffly, ‘and let’s leave it at that. But I thank you—’

‘Say no more, sir,’ she said. ‘Meanwhile, a robust tea will be served in the parlour where your guest awaits you.’

As Jack got dressed and Stort reappeared he whispered, ‘What guest could I possibly have?’

‘Come on, Jack, time’s limited and there’s much to do,’ said Stort, avoiding giving an answer. ‘Make yourself decent, she’s waiting.’

‘Who’s waiting?’ he asked, but Stort had wandered off again.

When Jack pushed the parlour door open he was overwhelmed by several potent scents – florid, robust and bold – as of a female no longer young who might on occasion like to be.

‘My dear Jack!’ Ma’Shuqa cried, enveloping him as she always had. ‘Welcome back!’

As he hugged her in return, his hands lost in the layered brocades and silks of her bilgesnipe dress, she added, ‘My, you’re bigger and stronger than you were. But that’s how our Stavemeister should be.’

Stort poked his head round the door, said he had already had tea, did not want more and would leave them to it.

‘To what?’ said Jack, but again Stort had gone.

‘So . . .’ he said cautiously as he tucked in to Cluckett’s sandwiches and cakes, ‘what’s this all about?’

Ma’Shuqa came straight to the point.

‘There be a matter touchy and hard on which it’s my duty as her adoptive Ma to talk plain and speak frank. You know my meaning I think?’

Jack had no idea what or who she was talking about.

‘The female whose life you’ve ruined!’

‘Me? What female?’

‘My sweet ward, poor Hais, who you traduced and laid waste on life’s hard road.’

‘Hais?’ said Jack, frowning. ‘The bilgesnipe girl who . . .’

It all came back and an odd memory it was. He had barely thought of her since the day he and Stort and the others had escaped from Brum with Festoon, at the time when Brunte’s insurrection was in full swing and they were in danger of their lives.

Jack had attended a betrothal lunch at which Hais, a friend of Katherine’s, was the bride-to-be. He might have forgotten the occasion entirely but for the fact that he unwittingly unloosed a knot – a Cunning Knot as the bilgesnipe called it – which by tradition meant that he became betrothed to Hais. It was so clearly an accident, and he was so obviously needed elsewhere, that he had apologized to the company and to Hais and left. It was true however that for a moment he and Hais had exchanged a glance of the kind that in other, better, circumstances might have led to love. But their wyrd took them separate ways, Jack and Katherine had gone theirs together, Judith had been born, and the matter was surely no more than an embarrassing memory in which no one did anything to regret.

But here was Ma’Shuqa on the warpath.

‘That be she I’ve on my mind, Jack, and have had since that sorry and difficult day you unloosed the Cunning Knot and with it a deal of trouble and tears.’

‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ he said, ‘it came loose in my hand.’

‘But now you’re spoused and with a babe.’

‘I’m settled yes . . .’ though ‘babe’ was not a word he could apply to Judith. She was about as baby-like as a summer storm.

Jack sensed trouble.

‘Ma’Shuqa,’ he said, ‘first, I don’t see how
you
fit into this . . . ’

She looked outraged.

‘Second, I think it’s Hais I should be talking to not you . . .’

‘Humph!’

‘And finally I’m not spoused yet but I expect to be.’

She looked utterly disbelieving.

‘Not spoused!’

‘No. We were intending to but—’

‘Not spoused?’ she said again, more quietly.

‘Well, of course, we were going to get married sometime but there’s not exactly been the time – and now . . .’

She sat back and beamed.

‘Well, Jack, lad, you be a one, you really be, and I’ve been a-thinking all this time, what with Hais weeping and wailing and off her food which is a pity ’cos she’s comely and food helps keep her so . . .’

Jack stared at her, puzzled.

‘You seem amazed and I agree ’tweren’t your fault. Spoused is one thing, the odd child here and there is another, but nary a problem if you’re a loving hydden which we know you are, and Stavemeister too, and can support ’em all. Least we expect is a few wild oats sprouting here and there.’

‘Judith is not a wild oat, she’s—’

‘Oh!’ said Ma’Shuqa indifferently, helping herself to cake, ‘that’s her scroungy name is it, Judith? Humph. Not much o’ a name in my view, and I can tell you right now that my Hais, bless her, won’t go for a name like that when you spouse her, which now you can, and have young, plenty I hope ’cos I like—’

‘
Marry
her?’ said Jack.

‘Got to,’ said Ma’Shuqa, ‘seein’s you loosed the Knot. Loose that one and you tie another, that’s the simple fact of it.’ Her face darkened. ‘Don’t tell me you’re thinking o’ scuffling out of it like wot males often do, because if that’s the case—’

There was a knock at the front door and the murmuring of an urgent voice. It was opened, and Stort, looking unhappy and pointing mutely at his chronometer for Jack’s benefit to indicate that time was short, announced a second guest.

Hais appeared.

She was as darkly, plumply beautiful as all bilgesnipe females were, dressed in the traditional silks with a warm face and smile. In no way was she a tragic figure.

‘Ma’Shuqa,’ she said, ‘I might have known! This is not your business, it’s mine.’

‘My sweeterling,’ cried Ma’Shuqa, ‘be not angry with your would-be Ma! I have good news and true! This rogue b’aint spoused, so he’s all yours to ’ave and to hold. Take him! Wed him this evening! Bed him tonight! Ma’Shuqa knows best, she did the same!’

‘And where, Ma’Shuqa, is Pa’Shuqa now?’

‘He be heroic and lost without his stave!’

‘He be a coward and run off more like! Now, I need to talk to Jack and he hasn’t got long . . .’