Straw Into Gold (3 page)

Together we walked back to the cottage. She turned at the doorway and reached out for the water. "I've nothing to—"

She stopped and held out her hand as if to touch my cheek.

"What is it, Mother?"

Her outstretched finger, gnarled and bunched, pulled back. Then she shook her head. "An old woman's fancy. That's all that is left. An old woman's fancy." She took the buckets from me, and with a look of such longing that all the wealth of the East could not fill it, she turned and went inside.

Slowly I climbed back up the Dapple. "Hers is a lonely, hard life."

"There's the miller to keep it with her."

"But there's a coldness about that place. It looks like it lost something a long time ago."

"It does," Da said quietly."Like the queen."

On to Wolverham. Soon others joined us on the road, walking with slung packs, or riding in carts or on jaunty horses. It seemed as if all the kingdom were draining into Wolverham to see the procession of the king. The Gray and the Dapple caught the excitement, and we had to hold their heads tightly.

"Once we're in town, what shall we do, Da?"

"Tousle should go to the castle to see if their majesties are ready to receive him."

"Da."

"If not, then they'll find a spot to see the king's procession, and after that, the day will unfold itself as it will." A vision of the procession came over me. It would be grander than anything I had ever seen. Horses and banners, trumpets and armored knights, pageant wagons and cavalry—I imagined them all marching to echoing cheers, cheers that would join with the blaring trumpets, neighing horses, and thundering hooves to deafen me.

"He is grinning," said Da.

"I suppose."

"He looks like a lunatic, grinning at nothing."

"You look like a madman, scowling at everything."

"Then there's a fair pair," he called, and swatted at me.

The first sight of the gates of Wolverham did not disappoint. Long yellow streamers flowed in the breeze, lofting and sinking with the air. The arches were larger than our whole house, taller than most trees I had seen, and as we drew near and felt the press of the crowd, they loomed round and open and grand. Once beneath them, I hunched down under the terrible press of weight held up by the arch's invisible hand. I reined the Dapple in and looked up to where the stones rounded into a perfect curve, marveling that they should not fall.

Ahead of me, Da turned around."If he stops there long enough, that fellow behind him—the one with the manure cart—will dump his load in a place neither had expected."

I pressed the Dapple out from the shadow of the gates and came to the edge of the town square of Wolverham. I suppose my mouth gaped. Da shook his head at me and whispered,"Like a lunatic," but I could not care. It was bigger and noisier and smellier and grander than I had ever imagined. I slipped off the Dapple and balanced on the solid roundness of cobblestones. The clatter of carts and the ringing of horseshoes filled the air. Merchants cried out, hawking ducks, butchered pigs, last fall's turnips and apples, embroidered clothes "from faraway Cathay." The spiced scents of roasted sweetmeats wafted from small fires and mingled with other smells that had more to do with barns.

"He should close his mouth," Da said."First, to livery the horses. Across the square there. And then, to eat." I took the reins of the two horses and led them to a stable that charged a fee so high that even the stableman grimaced with the saying of it.

"So much, then?"

"So much on the day of a procession."

Da scooped up some dirt, clenched his hand, shook it once, and dropped two silver coins into the hand of the startled stableman. "There will be two, perhaps three more come evening."

"When you'll find the horses curried and fed, sir," the stableman answered,"better than if you and the boy were to do it yourselves."

We left the Dapple and the Gray nuzzling an unexpected portion of oats—and the stableman digging frantically at the dirt where Da had stood—and soon Da was juggling hot sweetmeats in his hands and I was following with the hamper. We sat at the edge of the square, Da squeezing honey from the comb onto his brown bread and pouring hot cider from a jug, me burning the tip of my tongue on the sweetmeats, but mostly just watching as we ate. Day after day these smells, these sounds, these people filled the square. And they filled it without me. Day after day.

When he finished his brown bread, Da pulled up his beard and checked it for crumbs. Then he plucked his pipe from his vest pocket.

"Da, the procession!"

"The king will not wait for a smoke?"

I stood. Da sighed, and started to fuss with the hamper. "Da, we'll be late."

"Then Tousle should take this to the livery, and by the time he is back, he'll..."

But I did not wait to hear. I pushed through the square with the hamper, left it with the stableman—he was still digging for coins—pushed back through the square, grabbed Da's hand—"But the pipe is just lit!"—and soon we were jostling for a place on the broad way that stretched from the square to the castle. The crowd was so thick that I walked in front to keep Da from being trampled. I had not imagined what it would be like to have so many bodies pressed against me. And all the while, far ahead down the way, the massive stones of the castle rose like a mountain, tier after tier into the sky.

We found a place on the rise of an arched bridge spanning a small rivulet and stood with our elbows out to fend off the crowds. At the sound of trumpets, we craned our necks down the way, and I leaned out to be the first to see.

It was all as I had hoped—and much more. Banners sprang high, and I could hear the battering of the iron-shod horses. The crowd throated its cheers, so loud that the very stones of the bridge rang to them.

Da took me by the elbow. "He must remember what the procession is for."

"Of course, Da. For the king." I shouted so that he might hear me. More trumpets sounded, with notes high and clear and so piercing that it seemed as if they must crack the glassy blue of the sky. I leaned out even farther, but I still could not see anything but crowds and the high banners.

"Tousle is not quite right."

"For the king's victory over the rebels." But I could hardly listen to Da, for suddenly the feathered helmets of the first horsemen waved over the crowd.

"For the king's victory over those who rebelled against Lord Beryn," Da corrected. "He must listen to me now. No, to me. Listen. The rebellion was against Lord Beryn."

"Yes, Lord Beryn, the first of the Great Lords. I know. There, Da, the cavalry. Can you see?" The sun mirrored their silver armor, and reflections from it danced merrily against the houses that fronted the avenue.

But Da was not listening. He reached up with both hands and pulled my face down toward him. "Nothing is ever quite by chance. What spins out now took its place on the wheel long ago. Does he understand? Does Tousle understand?"

"Da," I said,"the procession."

I think he sighed. It was hard to tell, with the sounding trumpets. But he held on to me and spoke once more. "Our home on the hillside: let it come back to him now and again."

And then the procession was upon us, louder than glory, brighter than song. While the glittering cavalry passed, trumpets silvered the sunlight. After the trumpets, foot soldiers strutted past, gleaming lances held to the sky, blue coverlets fringed with gold slapping from the tips. Then the king's stable: white horses groomed to the ideal, their manes and tails ribboned with golden thread, their hooves polished to shiny horn, their eyes red and nostrils flared.

And on the largest of these horses the king himself, in bright golden armor crested with feathers whiter than nature had ever conceived. He held his arms out to his people, and I cheered and hollered and pressed forward to touch the sunlit, golden king. He seemed to carry the light of the day on his shoulders.

Just behind him came the twelve Great Lords, robed in ermine, riding on twelve piebald steeds. Lord Beryn rode first, the crowd calling out his name when they saw him. He moved through the cheering air like a proud statue, oblivious to those around him. So too the other eleven lords, so proud, so powerful that they would not look beneath them. Their horses strained at the reins, but the stone hands of the Great Lords held them in check, so even the jeweled rings that fell from their lordly ears hung perfectly straight and still.

They pulled after them Lord Beryn's own Guard, knights mounted on stern, high-stepping horses. With swords unsheathed and held upright, they seemed a small forest of glittering steel, and the crowd drew back from them as they would from a loosely chained wild animal. The tunics that covered their armor were bright white, with no ensign.

Then I stood on my toes to watch for the queen. And when I saw her, I knew that Da's misty vision had been just right. She rode on a piebald palfrey, and she too did not look at the crowd. Her eyes were always to her hands on the reins, and so quiet and small she looked after the golden king that the crowd stilled. She wore her ermine robes like a costume that did not fit, and the silver diadem that flashed from her hair seemed duller than it should be. I wanted to call to her, but I somehow feared to. I suddenly thought how beautiful she might look baking brown bread.

She passed, and the crowd began to cheer anew.

For behind her came the king's servants, themselves clothed in gold-threaded capes, bags of coins at their hips. They scattered silver and gold to the crowd as the cheers doubled, tripled, as hands reached to catch the king's coin. One fell at my feet, but before I could bend to grab it, those nearby had leapt at it and bloodied their knuckles with reaching.

Then more trumpets, more foot soldiers—the king's guard this time, with red coverlets and lions rampant. The cheers were becoming throaty and hoarse.

"It is grand. Isn't it grand, Da?" I called, but I did not look to see if he had heard. "The king must be the greatest, richest man in the world."

But the procession was not yet over.

A black horse creased through the crowd, his muzzle taut over yellow teeth. On his back the brawniest of men rode high, clothed all in black. A black hood draped over his head, but the steel of his eyes showed through slits, as cold as if he could have skewered us all before breakfast and then sat down to eggs and meat without washing the blood away. He rode like Fear, one mailed hand holding the reins tightly, the other grasping a coiled whip.

Besotted soldiers came behind him, wearing dented and stained armor, mismatched and hugger-mugger in their marching. At first I thought that the boos and catcalls echoing down the way were for them, but they were not. The crowd was calling to those they led: the rebels.

A hundred men and women staggered behind the soldiers, their faces looking down at their manacled hands, their feet fettered to a shuffle. Except for the clanking of their chains, the prisoners made no sounds. The men kept to the outside, shielding the women from the rubbish that the crowd threw. But they could do little to protect them. The crowd beside me cupped fetid mud from the rivulet and lashed it at them. Those watching from upstairs windows along the route spilled worse.

"Scum to scum!"

"Stinking rebels! Traitors!"

They did stink. A stench moved with them in the close air of the street. A stench of contamination and of the blood their bare feet left on the road. The crowd hated them the more for the smell. They hated them for the blood.

I stared, stunned, as the rebels trudged against their chains, some dodging the refuse being thrown, others with eyes closed, too exhausted to dodge. They were all gray and red and tattered. They moved hopelessly into hopelessness.

Except one.

At the very end of the crowd walked a boy who looked to be almost my age, his arms held protectively around two young girls. Most of his shirt was torn from him, and he was covered with filth. A rock had cut his forehead, and blood that he could not wipe away had dried across his face. The soldiers swaggering behind prodded him forward with bloodied lances, and though he stumbled, he walked as erect as he could, striding as far as his chains—and the young girls—would allow, ignoring the howls that flew at him like demons.

And he was blind. Below the bloody dark hair that fell down his forehead, a terrible slash cut across his eyes and sealed them with scars.

The inside of my gut wrenched at the sight, and I vomited into the rivulet, vomited until I could hardly breathe, hoping all the while that I would vomit out the sight of the blinded eyes.

But I could not.

The procession passed by, and the crowd surged onto the way, pushing me like a mountain avalanche, as irresistible as nightfall. "Da, Da," I sputtered, half panicked for myself, half panicked that Da would be crushed. But no matter how far I craned my neck, I could not see him, and with the roar of the crowd, I could not hope to hear him. So, shouldered and shoved, I was herded along, swears and curses louder than blaring trumpets in my ears, until at last the way opened up into a wide courtyard. There the castle, darker and more shadowed than I had first seen it, crouched under the clouds scuttling across the sky, the high wind tearing at the banners.

Here the soldiers stretched out in a double line, their lances holding the crowd back. The rebels leaned wearily against one another, shivering. Some fell to the ground. But the blind boy still stood and still held the two girls close to him, his bare back taking the brunt of the wind.

Above them—above us all—trumpeters marched to the edge of a high parapet. As one, they lifted their brassy horns to the dark sky and sounded a single clear note. When it died away, the golden king stepped forward. Though he had dismounted, he looked somehow even larger. The Great Lords moved into a half circle around him, and just outside the circle the queen waited. The king paused until they were all in place, like an actor waiting for a cue. We all felt the moment. The crowd fell to an absolute silence. The clouds stopped their scuttling. And then he spoke, and the wind sprang up to carry the frost of his breath.