Spring (5 page)

The boy was of average height but stocky, and he looked exceptionally strong and healthy. Whoever had abandoned him had thought to dress him sensibly against the chill winds that blow across the North Yorkshire Moors. But there was an odd thing about his clothes, in that they carried no clothing company labels. They were old-fashioned and hand-made, as if someone from a bygone era had dressed him. He was carrying a suitably child-sized backpack made of old, worn leather, most beautifully stitched and preserved, unlike anything that could be bought nowadays in a shop. It looked as if it came from another time and culture and it was certainly a lot older than its owner. It showed signs of having done a lot of travelling.

The oddest thing of all was that there was nothing inside it except for a ragged but obviously much-loved soft toy, a horse that was once white but now grubby. The boy let the staff examine the pack but kept a tight hold of the horse.

Some numbers and a name were inscribed inside the flap of the backpack in Gothic script of the kind that used to be common only in Germany. The name was ‘Yakob’, but when they repeated it the boy shook his head firmly. Despite their best efforts to question him he remained silent, so they named him Jacob or usually Jack for short.

There was no record of a missing child of his description to be found on any of the national or international registers, nothing at all. But, for the time being, the newspapers were kept out of it because, in such cases, something usually turned up.

Just then, anyway, the newspapers had something better to shout about than a missing child, namely the strange behaviour of the weather. All over the world it was out of kilter with both latitude and season, and was acting as if it was feeling deliberately malevolent towards mankind. It was as if a band of mean old gods, long since banished even from folk memory, had returned to say just how much they disliked mortals.

Their violent breath, in the form of freakish winds, scattered the sands of deserts and felled the bushes and trees of the temperate zones; their rough old hands tore clouds apart and caused such deluges of rain that people the world over were not just drowned, they were swept away; and what the roaring thunder in their voices did not scare to death, their cold stare froze wherever it stood, even in places that had not experienced a frost in decades.

Not yet, however, on the North Yorkshire Moors, or any other part of the British Isles either, which continued to enjoy that strange and beautiful early Spring, even if uncertainty about the coming days was growing as such extreme weather began to encroach on neighbouring parts of Europe.

The authorities decided to keep the boy there in the foster home where he had arrived so mysteriously, until inquiries about him bore fruit and a decision about his future could be made.

But, six weeks after his arrival, he made it for them.

The boy, for all his obvious physical well-being, was a natural target among the other children, some of whom had problems with controlling anger and aggression. He didn’t speak or answer to ‘Jack’, the name they generally used, and he had a habit, annoying to others, of being nearly incapable of being by a window or door without wanting it wide open. He seemed not to feel the cold.

In the common room one evening after supper, an older boy of ten, who along with two others mildly terrorized the younger ones, grabbed the new boy’s pack and pulled out his toy horse.

Until then the boy had said nothing in all the time he had been there, and certainly nothing provocative or in any way aggressive, but now he spoke out.

‘Give it back,’ he said firmly.

But the older one said he wouldn’t until the boy told them his name.

‘You do have one, yeh?’ he taunted.

The boy fell silent, seeming more surprised than scared.

‘But it’s mine,’ he said finally, stepping forward and stretching his arm up as the older boy raised the horse just out of reach. That was when someone else tripped the newcomer up.

As the boy tried to rise to his feet, someone pushed him back down.

Then they all moved in, kicking and punching and shouting at him.

What happened next was as extraordinary as it was unexpected.

The boy rolled away from his tormentors, stood up, and looked around the room for a weapon. The only thing he could find was a tatty TV magazine, which he rolled up tight.

His attackers stood back and then laughed as they saw what he hoped to defend himself with. They began to close in, and the atmosphere turned ugly with excitement and bloodlust.

There was another derisive laugh as the boy raised the baton of newsprint in front of him. Maybe they should have been warned by the expression on his face, but he was smaller than the bullies, despite his muscular build.

If they had known how to assess it, they would have recognized unusual determination and self-control.

He rolled the magazine even tighter, his calm and measured movements sufficiently intimidating for them to pause. Too late: like a firework exploding the boy lunged hard and fast against the first and tallest bully. He thrust one end of the rolled magazine up hard into his throat.

As his victim gasped with pain and began gagging, the boy pulled back to consider for a moment, then lunged forward again, this time thrusting the magazine hard into the other’s groin. The bully collapsed straight to the floor, his mouth gaping in pain, his skin turning pallid in shock as he tried desperately to catch his breath.

The boy turned instantly on another of his attackers, thrusting the makeshift weapon straight into his armpit. His second victim clutched there instinctively, leaving his solar plexus open to a further jab, then he doubled up and toppled slowly backwards, hitting his head against the arm of a chair.

By now the others sensibly backed off, and the sound of screaming and moaning had brought a member of staff into the room. The boy calmly retrieved the toy horse and returned it to his backpack.

‘My name is Jack,’ he said quietly.

Of the pair he had attacked, one was taken for treatment by a doctor, while the other was obliged to go and lie down for several hours.

The foster home isolated Jack instantly, and phoned the authorities. The incident was so strange that reports of it very quickly went from local to regional level.

‘Are you sure there’s no clue at all about who he is? He hasn’t mentioned anything at all about someone who might know him?’

They confirmed there were no clues at all. Even though Jack was talking now, he would not or could not shed any light on where he’d come from.

‘Check again carefully. Things easily get missed.’

They did, and found that something had indeed been missed.

It was the jumble of numbers written, alongside the name Yakob, in his backpack. They were oddly spaced but, looked at the right way, might resemble a telephone number.

It was Arthur Foale’s number.

They rang it the following morning.

A
t about the same time that day, the White Horse arrived with Imbolc as if from nowhere out of a cloudy sky. It landed in a fallow field in Warwickshire, in the realm of Englalond, its great hoofs sending mud and grass flying to right and left as it skidded to a stop in the lee of a blackthorn hedge, whose white blossoms trembled briefly and then stilled.

The Peace-Weaver’s work was hard, so many were the conflicts between the hydden and human worlds, so hard and complex their resolution. But that day Imbolc’s eyes shone bright, excited by the coming of the giant-born and her meeting a month before with Bedwyn Stort. A new generation was taking over and things were as they needed to be.

Her hand reached automatically for the pendant around her neck, wrought for her by Beornamund, to touch the last remaining gem, which was that of Winter.

Her finger probed again, and felt nothing. Her eyes widening in surprise, and then alarm, she slipped the pendant’s chain over her head to take a closer look.

She peered, she fingered it again, she shook her head.

‘Oh!’ she said and no more than that.

Winter was gone, lost somewhere across the world during the past few weeks. She really was living on borrowed time.

‘Oh, Beornamund, my journey is almost over and now . . . now . . .’

Across the field she saw some people approaching, tiny figures in a landscape.

‘This,’ said Imbolc the Peace-Weaver, ‘is the beginning of my final task, and the greatest. Like it or not, my years now being numbered to but a few, I
have
to find the Shield Maiden.’

One of the figures across the field called out, ‘Is it this way or that, eh? We’re getting cold. Make up your mind!’

Imbolc smiled, for a Peace-Weaver’s work is never done even when she is living on borrowed time.

‘To work!’ she murmured.

A
rthur Foale had been hoping for weeks that his old-fashioned telephone would ring a second time, with further news of the boy. But when it finally did ring, the call was not quite what he expected.

It came from Roger Lynas, a senior child-welfare officer with the North Yorkshire Health Authority. He was circumspect, very. There was an unidentified boy, who was in trouble. Arthur’s number was found written on his backpack and—

Arthur broke in to ask some questions.

The replies were evasive. It was their primary job to protect the child, so they wanted information, though were not prepared to give any. Arthur, never good in such situations, felt his hackles rising.

His voice began to rise, he began to bluster, but just as he was beginning to shout, Margaret came into the room.

She arched a questioning eyebrow and he calmed down at once.

‘Just a moment,’ he said. His hand covered the receiver.

‘Who is it, Arthur?’

‘It’s a Mister Lynas of the North Yorkshire Health Authority, and he . . .’

Arthur then explained as best he could. As he did, the feeling began to grow in him that he was in the process of making a mess of what might be the most important telephone call he would ever receive.

He took up the phone again.

‘I think,’ he said as mildly as he could, ‘that you should be talking to my wife. Could you hold on, please?’

Margaret took the receiver and started the conversation over.

‘Hello, I’m Margaret Foale. Could you . . . ?’

By the time Margaret was finished she had established a friendly rapport with Roger Lynas, found out that the boy’s name was Jack and extracted a promise that they were now to be kept in the loop. She had succeeded in conveying the impression, without telling any actual lies, that they knew a good deal more about this boy than they did, and managed to establish the idea that she and her husband should now be involved further. However, a meeting would be necessary before they could help.

She was given a number to call, received effusive thanks, and, most important of all, got information that Jack was being sent that same day to London for further assessment.

‘Tomorrow, then, you’ll call us,’ she finally agreed.

But as she put down the phone she looked pale. She began breathing rapidly so she had to sit down.

‘What is it?’ asked Arthur.

They had not been able to have children, though both had much wanted them. They had always known that this huge and ramshackle country house, which was Margaret’s inheritance, needed children. It was that kind of home, full of space for children to play and a garden with trees to climb, and places to build dens and to hide in, which needed young life.

The phone-call had stirred something in Margaret’s emotions deeply, and pushed her to a place she had never thought she would have the opportunity to go to.

Arthur went over to her. ‘What is it?’ he asked gently.

‘That conversation,’ she said. ‘It is the first I have ever had about any child as if . . . as if . . .’

She bowed her head and reached blindly for him.

‘. . . as if it were my own.’

‘But, darling—’

‘I know, I know but . . . this boy has no one. Absolutely no one. Can you imagine that?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Something’s happening, Arthur, and it’s something important. It’s a beginning of something, and that boy
is
its beginning. I’ve never been a mother so I supposed I’d never have a mother’s instinct, but there’s something about the boy – they’re calling him Jack – which has changed something in me.’

She fell silent.

‘Tomorrow; we’ll know more tomorrow,’ was all he could say.

Sudden rain lashed against the window. They heard the conservatory door crash shut.

‘It’s started already,’ she said suddenly. ‘It’s happening
now
. . .’

Arthur looked baffled.

‘. . . and do you know something?’