Awakening (6 page)

Stort might have had trouble remembering who he was, but the name of his beloved mentor came readily enough.

‘What business?’

‘Business that is not your concern, you villains! Tell him . . . tell him that . . . I need to see him . . .’

They looked at each other doubtfully. Brief was the Master Scrivener of Brum and one of its most respected citizens. His door was generally open to all who came in a spirit of genuine scholarship and spiritual guidance, but it seemed unlikely that he would want a visit from a common traveller on a day like this, especially one so unpresentable.

The stranger tried to speak once more but he seemed lost in a world of his own, one of confusion and worry, one of despair. Only mutterings came out, and vague protests, as he clenched his fists and tried to fend off imaginary enemies. His pallor increased and his breathing grew shallow and desperate.

Any attempt on their part to examine his person or portersac for clues to his identity, or what he was about, provoked him into a violence that bordered on madness.

Despite his protests they used their staves for a makeshift stretcher to carry him into Brum at once.

May Day morning was not the best of times to be portering a litter burdened with a reluctant patient through the narrow medieval streets and lanes of Brum. The luckless stavermen found themselves jostled by shoppers, cursed by traders and objects of the idle curiosity of pilgrims. Though at times he seemed so poorly he was near death, at others their patient roused himself angrily and tried to rid himself of the straps that bound him to the litter, cursing his helpers as he did so and generally making himself a nuisance.

‘Soon be there!’ said one of the bearers heavily.

‘He’ll be given an opiate and he can sleep it off,’ said another.

‘But I don’t want to “sleep it off ”!’ cried the hydden angrily. ‘It’s Master Brief I need to see, not a goodwife wielding a sleeping potion.’

The crowds got thicker, the difficulties greater, until the bearers could hardly move together, those on the right side being stuck fast, those on the left dragged suddenly forward.

It was then that the litter tilted dangerously. As they struggled to right it someone in the crowd thought it would be a laugh to give it a shove and suddenly it tipped right over. The straps broke and its occupant tumbled to the ground at their feet.

‘Get ’im up or he’ll run off,’ cried one of the stavermen.

But it was too late.

The fall put new life into the traveller. Unable to rise up into the pressing throng and unwilling to put himself back under the control of those who were trying to help him, he scrabbled off among the legs and feet of the crowd, dragging his portersac behind him. Moments later they glimpsed him on the far side of the street, staggering down an alley, through a doorway out of sight.

They only caught up with him some time later as he stumbled up the steps of the Great Library to an annexe in which Master Brief lived. ‘You’re under arrest!’ cried one of them.

‘Anything you say, any protest you make and any further attempt to fight the officials of the law will go hard against you, so be still!’ roared another.

They hauled him to his feet. But as they began dragging him off to the infirmary the doors of the Library crashed open.

Master Brief himself stood there, dishevelled but impressive, for though getting on in years he was well built and stood tall.

He was still clad in his nightshirt, with a large tome in one hand and a pair of spectacles in the other. His white hair was untidy, his beard tousled and he looked ill-pleased indeed.

‘What is this?’ he roared. ‘It’s bad enough that I have been kept awake all night by those rumblings in the city’s foundations, but to have one of my few rest days of the year disturbed by ruffians is going too far!’

The stavermen explained what had happened.

Brief’s glance fell upon the portersac and stave they had found with the prisoner, which one of them was now carrying.

‘Where did you find those?’ he demanded at once, his fury replaced by astonishment.

‘With this ruffian.’

‘Humph!’ said Brief very ominously.

Despite his state of dishabille he came down the steps, put on his spectacles and examined the portersac and looked dumbfounded. There was only one hydden who packed his ’sac so badly.

He went at once to the hydden and peered closely at him.

‘But . . . but . . .
but . . .
’ he spluttered, ‘do you not know who this is? The whole of Brum has been awaiting his return and you . . . you . . .’

A crowd had gathered. It now pressed closer.

‘This hydden who you have harried hither and yon,’ cried Brief, ‘who has tried to run to me seeking sanctuary from your rough hands and violent staves, who was dragged down the steps of the Library bumpety-bump even as he tried to summon my aid . . . this excellent hydden . . . why he is . . .’

‘Who am I?’ said Stort sitting up and peering round, as bemused now as before and staring at Brief in puzzlement, ‘and who are you? Another villain from this most villainous of cities! Let me be free. Lead me to Master Brief!’

‘I
am
Brief, Master Scrivener of Brum, and you, sir, who seem quite literally to have forgotten yourself, are, if I am not mistaken . . . my one-time best and ablest student, Bedwyn Stort.’

‘Am I?’ said Stort.

‘You are,’ said Brief.

‘And you claim to be Brief?’

‘I do, and dammit I
am
.’

Then turning to the stavermen he said, ‘Take him to my quarters in the Library, lie him down and hold him still, fetch a goodwife worthy of the name, and let us get to the bottom of all this . . . and another thing, fetch Master Pike as well as the High Ealdor, Lord Festoon. And Marshal Brunte too! Fetch ’em all at once to the Library!’

‘But, sir!’ said the stavermen, for Brief’s instruction to summon the most important people in Brum there and then went beyond their competence and perhaps even his own.

‘Do it!’ thundered Master Brief, climbing back up the steps to prepare himself for what promised to be a very trying first day of Summer.

The news that Bedwyn Stort had returned to Brum in an injured and demented state spread through the city like wildfire and brought his friends and acquaintances hurrying to the Library, the crowd outside increasing. It barely dispersed overnight and grew larger still the following day.

He had to be restrained all night and any attempt to clean him up, to feed him, even to loosen his clothes, met with a crazed and violent resistance so ferocious that anyone trying to minister to him soon stopped.

There were one or two attempts to place efficacious drugs in his mouth, but he spat them out. Others tried soothing words, but these too were of no avail.

Marshal Brunte, de facto commander of Brum, and a tough, thickset hydden used to getting his own way, failed utterly to get any sense from Stort who, as the second day wore on, grew wilder and weaker at the same time. ‘Inform me if death threatens him,’ said Brunte, ‘or if he recovers his sanity. Meanwhile we must fear the worst and set in motion plans for a military funeral or a ceremony and will present him with posthumous honours . . .’

Stort might not look much of a military hero, but only his quick thinking at the time of Brunte’s insurrection against the Fyrd had saved the life of Lord Festoon. Without him it was unlikely that the irascible citizens of Brum would have ever given the Marshal the support they had.

Lord Festoon, High Ealdor of the city, was still wearing his chain of office from a function he cut short when he heard a new rumour that Stort was dying. He was an admirer and friend of Stort, at once authoritative and kindly. His prematurely grey hair gave him a magisterial air.

‘If only he would let us examine and tend him properly,’ he said sadly. ‘He once saved my life at considerable risk to his own and I cannot understand why he will not let us help him now.’

Brief could not but agree.

‘It is odd, is it not, that he seems to gain strength without our help but will not let us so much as wash or feed him? If it did not defy all reason I would suggest that something apart from ourselves is affecting him.’

Finally, it was Ma’Shuqa, daughter of Old Mallarkhi, wizened owner-proprietor of the Muggy Duck, the finest and most historic hostelry in Old Brum, who broke the deadlock.

Her affection for Stort, who had lodged with her in his youth, ran deep. She asked for a goodwife she knew well to be sent to his house and told Brief that he should be taken home at once.

‘Goodwife Cluckett is strict but fair,’ she said. ‘She’ll sort him out.’

These words, spoken as if Stort was not in the room, appeared to have a sobering effect on him.

He opened his eyes, sat up and said, ‘I do not like goodwives. They frighten me and in any case I am rapidly getting better.’

Ma’Shuqa said, ‘That’s as maybe. But I bain’t stopping her now. We’m taking you home and Cluckett will have you spright as a sparrow in no time!’

Half an hour later, by the light of a dozen lanterns, Stort was carried through the narrow lanes of Digbeth to his home. By the time they arrived he had so perked up that he was able to stand, with a little support, and dig about in his pockets for his key.

He opened the door himself, his strength returning even more. Someone lit a fire, someone else fetched water, a third some sweetmeats and provender of the kind that tempts jaded palates. Candles were lit and all made as comfortable as was possible in his dusty, untidy, cluttered home. Then everyone was sent packing but for his closest friends, Brief and Mister Pike and Barklice, the city’s Verderer and in the past a frequent travelling companion of Stort’s.

‘Promise you will not leave me in this goodwife’s hands when she comes,’ he implored. ‘Look! I am well after all! She will be the death of me.’

They no sooner promised than there was a sudden and peremptory knock at the front door, the kind of solid, heavy
knock-knock-knock
that people who expect to be admitted at once generally make.

Brief opened the door.

Stort took one look at the female standing there with a formidably large leather bag at her feet and an impatient look in her eye. He fled into his parlour and locked the door.

‘You are?’ she asked Master Brief.

‘Me?’ said Brief, taken aback.

‘Yes, sir. You, sir. Who are you?’

‘Well, I’m Master Brief and this is Mister Pike . . . we . . .’

‘Where is my patient?’

‘In the parlour,’ said the mild Barklice, ‘behind that door!’

She glared at the door, tried the handle, shook it and said, ‘The key if you please. It is very bad practice to lock patients in.’

Pike smiled grimly.

‘It’s we who are locked out,’ he said.

Goodwife Cluckett’s eyes bulged and her cheeks flushed dangerously as she muttered, ‘Absolutely unacceptable!’

She rat-tat-tatted on the door and said, ‘Open this door this
instant
, sir.’

There was a sliding of bolts and Stort opened the door and eyed her.

She eyed him.

Then she turned to the other three and said, ‘Please leave at once, I can handle this gentleman quite without your further assistance.’

‘But . . .’ began Stort, whose day had been a very hard one and now looked like it was going to get harder. ‘Cannot my friends stay? In fact they promised they would. They must! I cannot be left alone with . . . with . . . with a female.’

‘They cannot stay and you cannot go,’ she said, ‘and that’s an end to it.’

She sniffed and then sniffed again and as good as stuck her nose into his chest and sniffed a third time.

‘You are whiffy, sir, and whiffy will not do for someone in my care. To your bedroom at once and remove your clothes that they be fumigated and your person washed.’

‘Me washed?’

He looked with ghastly appeal over her shoulder towards his friends.

‘They are leaving, are they not?’ she said, turning on them, her eyes narrowing.

Barklice backed away towards the door.

‘You cannot,’ said Stort, ‘you promised . . .’

But as she eyed them beadily, one by one they began to leave.

‘Please,’ bleated Stort after them, ‘do not desert me, dear friends, do not leave me in her hands!’

But they had fled.

The goodwife closed the front door, locked it, removed the key and added it to several already attached to the vast metal ring that hung from the girdle round her waist. Then, for good measure, she shot the bolts at the top and bottom of the door.

Stort stood in his own corridor looking at her with all the desperation of one who knows that all possibility of escape is gone and he must submit to his punishment.

She advanced upon him, her keys clinking, her shiny forehead dazzling, her bosom like the prow of a warship about to engage the enemy.

‘Well, Mister Stort,’ she said, ‘and what exactly is it that you’re waiting for? We have work to do! Disrobe at once!’