Heriot (5 page)

O
ut in his farm in County Glass, Heriot Tarbas was sitting on his own in a corner, playing cards. He was draped in a thick woven rug with a hole for his head and slits for his hands. A chilly wind was blowing around the courtyard, but, apart from any wind or weather, he was now in the habit of covering himself up as much as he could. The cats suddenly looked up, then flattened themselves to the ground and fled, but his little cousins clustered around, staring in amazement at the stranger who rode into the courtyard, staring at his long, green coat edged with fur and his boots, so soft and polished they looked as if they were made of silk rather than fine leather. He wore gloves, and the fingers of the gloves were crowded with rings. His face was far older than his short, bright chestnut curls might have suggested.

Heriot stared like everybody else at this shiny insect of a man, out of place yet utterly commanding in the Tarbas courtyard. His authority sat on him so naturally that everything around him immediately grew subservient, yet his voice, when he spoke to Joan, was gentle rather than commanding. Heriot couldn’t hear all that was being said, though he gathered Great-Great-Aunt Jen’s presence was being demanded. What he could make out was an unfamiliar accent, much quicker and more clipped than the family voices, and more careful. Lord Glass polished every word a little bit before he let it out on its own in the world.

Joan hurried off. Lord Glass turned and looked around him. A breeze turned back the edge of his green coat to show a scarlet lining embroidered with gold. Heriot’s mouth opened a little. He was bewildered to think a man might ride with such a coat belted across when he could ride with it open, showing off that wonderful lining.

A progressive disturbance, beginning somewhere on the first floor of the house and rattling down the stairs, marked Great-Great-Aunt Jen’s rapid descent into the courtyard. Out she came, hesitated and then gave a stiff bow to Lord Glass, who immediately dismounted, and turned towards her, holding out his hand.

‘Jenny Tarbas,’ Heriot heard him say, and thought that ‘Jenny’ was an unexpectedly sweet and yielding name for a woman as dauntless as his Great-Great-Aunt Jen. She was taller than Lord Glass, but he acted as if he were the taller, easily accepting a square of bread and a glass of wine from Wish.

‘Through this gift of bread,’ he was saying in a formal ritual, ‘obligation returns to your Lord and magnifies the King and the Hero who are boundless in the land.’

Heriot knew Lord Glass was not just Lord of County Glass, but Castellan, Lord Palatine, the King’s Devisor and one of the Council of Ten, those of the General Council who most closely advised Hoad the King, a man who had given up his own name and taken the name of the land when he first came to the throne, and who would not reclaim his given name until he died. Lord Glass was one of the Lords on that mysterious plain on the other side of the hills, where the King and the Hero, together with Lords and Dukes, were struggling to negotiate a peace of some kind with the Dannorad and Camp Hyot, those ancient enemies of Hoad. It was strange that he should be here and not there among the other Lords, where fortunes and futures were being settled. Heriot could tell Great-Great-Aunt
Jen’s anxious welcome was not simply because he was the rock upon which so much of their prosperity depended. Some other anxiety was involved. Her voice rose with a vague desperation and, for the first time in his life, Heriot heard her say something which was almost a lie.

‘What boy? The place is full of boys.’

Lord Glass laughed and patted her arm. His next words were lost, but then a slight turn of his head brought his voice clearly to Heriot’s ears. ‘And, Jenny, we’re too old for these games, you and I. Word’s got around. Even out here people enjoy gossip, and gossip flows. So just put the perplexing Heriot here before me, please. You might as well do it now as later.’

Great-Great-Aunt Jen slowly turned and looked over at Heriot, sitting in his corner, the cards spread out in front of him in their four suits – Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Great-Great-Aunt Jen crooked her finger at him, so he carelessly swept his cards together before he rose, and, sliding them into his pocket, walked reluctantly across the courtyard, pulling the old woolly hat lower as he did so. Great-Great-Aunt Jen met him and took his hand, placing him directly before Lord Glass.

‘This is my great-great-nephew Heriot Tarbas, my Lord. He’s a good boy, very dear to us all. I don’t know what you’ve been told, but he’d never intend any harm to Hoad, the land or the King. In many ways I don’t think he believes they exist.’

‘Well, I am here to convince him they do,’ Lord Glass replied. ‘Hello, Heriot Tarbas … your fame has gone abroad in the most gratifying way.’

From behind Lord Glass, Wish was making impatient signs to Heriot, so he pulled his hat off and made a clumsy, ducking movement that was his idea of a bow. ‘Now I’ll come to the point at once, which I almost never do. Someone tells me you have had a vision of a sort. Is this true?’

Heriot’s thoughts began to run quickly but somehow coolly. He shot a look at Great-Great-Aunt Jen, then looked back to Lord Glass.

‘I warn you I shall take silence for assent,’ said Lord Glass a little sharply. ‘Don’t stand there looking stupid, because, by now, I know a lot about you. I know you’re not stupid, and if you pretend to be I will get cross, and we won’t get on. Don’t you think that would be a pity?’

‘My Lord, you’re confusing him,’ Great-Great-Aunt Jen cried indignantly.

‘Come now, Jenny, he’s not so very confused,’ Lord Glass said. ‘I’ll swear he knows exactly what I’m talking about. Heriot, I didn’t come alone. Just look towards the gate there, and my companions will ride through.’ He raised his gloved hand by way of a signal. ‘First on the bay horse comes Dr Feo, the Queen’s astrologer and the master of the King’s clocks. He is very wise, and tutors noble children in Diamond. And behind him, look carefully, is that a face you know? Ah, I see it is.’

The second rider, on a white horse, pushed his white hood back from his blood red hair, and it was the Wellwisher, the Assassin of his dream. This time he was dressed entirely in white, his face painted and powdered white, but Heriot was in no doubt about whom he was seeing. The pale blue eyes with their dreadful emptiness, the straight nose, under the dyed and braided, glittering hair were part of his memory for ever. He would always recognise the single nature of this creature, who seemed entirely without the many falterings self-doubt puts into the human heart.

‘Oh, I’d definitely say you were recognised, wouldn’t you, Cloud?’ Lord Glass fluted cheerfully, lifting his eyes from Heriot’s stricken face.

The long lips parted. ‘He recognised me,’ said Cloud in a very soft voice, little more than a whisper, touching the corner
of his eye reflectively as though minutely adjusting his vision, and then falling silent again.

‘It is the recognition, you see,’ said Lord Glass. ‘I understand your boy has not left the farm, and Cloud will swear, moreover, that they have never met, for he has never once been here. And yet apparently the boy described him in detail, and news of that description has seeped over to the old battlefield.’

Great-Great-Aunt Jen looked around the circle of faces as Wish came up from the stable and stood behind the women and children.

‘Someone has been talking of Heriot’s illness,’ Great-Great-Aunt Jen said to him. ‘I hope it was no one in our family.’

Lord Glass signalled to Dr Feo and Cloud, dismounting as he did so. ‘People will do it, Jenny, they will do it,’ he said cheerfully.

‘The boy’s mother had better be sent for,’ said Great-Great-Aunt Jen in a resigned voice, and gave Heriot’s shoulder a reassuring pat. ‘Baba, get your mother, will you? Wish, it might be a good idea to call Radley in. Come, my Lord. Will your companions come with you?’

‘Oh, Feo will. I may need him, and somehow I think it would be hard to keep him out,’ Lord Glass replied. ‘He’s such an enthusiast. Now Cloud would prefer to stand here by the door, wouldn’t you Cloud? He’s a very observing creature – and his presence always makes people think, you know, and to my mind that’s always a good thing, particularly out here in the country where we can easily become so casual.’

‘Anna,’ Great-Great-Aunt Jen cried as Heriot’s mother arrived from work in the still room, wide-eyed and anxious. ‘Don’t worry, Anna. Nothing’s wrong, but come to the big room with us. Baba – will you and Joan bring wine and cakes.’

Lord Glass, following Great-Great-Aunt Jen, marched through the house into the big room with a self-confidence
Heriot resented. He promptly seated himself at the head of the table, inviting Great-Great-Aunt Jen, with a courteous wave of the hand, to sit in one of her own best chairs, and pointing Dr Feo to another. His smoky eyes flitted with curiosity over the glass lamps and the carved chests where curtains and blankets were kept folded in dried camphor and lavender. Baba and Joan carried in trays of glasses and goblets.

‘Very nice, Jenny,’ Lord Glass said. ‘Oh, it warms my heart to see that you have fallen on good times. So well-deserved too! And now, Heriot, you’re not the first person we’ve met who is reputed to have had a vision. Feo here is quite an expert on visions, so I want you to tell him everything you can about yours, particularly what it felt like. And, in return, Feo may be able to help you to understand what happened.’

‘Speak up, Heriot,’ said Great-Great-Aunt Jen. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of.’ But she was frightened herself, even as she said this, so it was not in her power to comfort him.

Dr Feo was a slender, stooped man with a grimacing smile that curved his lips down rather than up. He had very long, well-kept hands. He smiled at Heriot now, folding these hands one over the other as he prepared to listen. Heriot, speaking into the space between Dr Feo and Lord Glass, began telling the story of his courtyard vision. Born on a farm he had often seen blood, for animals were always being killed and cut up for food but, as he recalled Carron’s face and his lively lips spilling words and blood with equal passion, he stumbled and grew silent, putting his hand over his left eye, his puzzled one, to stare hard at Lord Glass for a moment before he dropped his hand and looked at the floor again.

‘Well, Feo?’ said Lord Glass. ‘Is this child a Magician of Hoad, or is this another wild-goose chase?’

‘How could he be a Magician of Hoad?’ asked Heriot’s mother. ‘The Magicians of Hoad are madmen … so empty of
themselves that something else talks through them. That’s what we hear of Izachel, the King’s Magician.’

Lord Glass saw Heriot glance at her, and read something in his expression.

‘A good point!’ he agreed. ‘Izachel is a Magician, and like most Magicians … he gives mysterious and enlightening utterances … he reads the minds of other men and tells the King what he reads there … but at the same time he’s an idiot in almost every ordinary way, a prophetic doll. Of course, having said that, there are at least two exceptions in our history. The
rational
Magicians of Hoad. And great blessings they have been to the Kings for whom they worked. Now it is possible, just possible, that Heriot might be a rational Magician. After all, he’s one of your people, and you are like the Orts, the ones you call the Travellers. You are all descended directly from that ancient people, the Gethin, the ones who lived here hundreds of years ago … the ones waiting for us when we first landed here. Now I am a King’s man, and I have to follow all possibilities, no matter how remote. Feo – you have studied the Magicians of Hoad, including Izachel, for years. I need your opinion.’

Dr Feo sat Heriot in front of him, took his wrist, laid cool fingers on his pulse and began to question him about his vision. Had anything like this ever happened to him before? How did he feel afterwards? Did the figure of Cloud appear quite solid or could he see through it? He stared with large, melancholy, hazel eyes deep into Heriot’s own eyes, and then asked him to look into a crystal, to breathe some smoke from leaves, burned in a bowl, and then to watch a silver pendulum swing backwards and forwards.

When the pendulum stopped, Dr Feo turned to Lord Glass.

‘There are some characteristics,’ he said cautiously. ‘There’s certainly a discontinuity in the flow of his awareness … a jump of some kind, as if something else was pushing in on him. And
he might not know it, but he watches the pendulum and me simultaneously. It’s worth pursuing.’

‘Well, I can’t read what you call awareness but I can read faces,’ said Lord Glass. ‘Jenny, Dr Feo is very excited at the prospect of working with your great-great-nephew.’

Dr Feo smiled politely, and looked at Heriot with a benevolent expression, in which there was a hint of something that was not at all benevolent.

‘What are you going to do about all this?’ cried Heriot’s mother.

Lord Glass gave her a smile that was all his own – sweet and yet without kindness.

‘We’re merely messengers, my dear,’ he said, ‘sent to convey Hoad’s interest …’ Lord Glass hesitated, ‘and Dr Feo has just told us your boy is worthy of the King’s interest. Apparently he is very promising.’

‘For what, my Lord?’ asked Heriot’s mother, the very question Heriot was secretly asking too.

‘Who can say, my dear? But do not take a sombre view of things.’ Lord Glass waved his hand, then, drawing off his gloves, he poured wine for himself and Dr Feo, from the family bottles displayed, along with goblets, on a long shelf, choosing to drink from the most elegant goblet. ‘Now be honest … er … Anna, is it? … May I call you Anna? … Ask yourself what there is for anyone with his apparent talents here. Country life is wholesome and charming in its way … but it is limited. Mind, I’m not criticising, but I believe he will come to be grateful to the chance that takes him to Diamond.’

‘Well,’ said Great-Great-Aunt Jen, ‘you still owe us some explanation, my Lord. Why take him? We’re not under obligation. We’re not at war.’

‘Come now, Jenny,’ Lord Glass said, holding his goblet up and looking at her over the top of it. ‘Think of El-El, or
Zazareel, or more recently, Izachel – think of the mysterious part Magicians have played in our lives over hundreds of years. A Magician is a treasure to a King, and any Magician automatically belongs to Hoad the King, so your boy will come to Diamond and make his fortune. Because of course, as even you may have heard, even Magicians age and Izachel is no longer reliable. Our King really needs a Magician and your boy may very well do.’