The Seeing Stone (11 page)

W
HAT IS A SCHOOLMAN, EXACTLY?” I ASKED
Oliver.

“First things first,” said Oliver. “You can't bring those hounds into the church, and you know that perfectly well.”

“Why not?”

“Because they're beasts.”

“So is Serle.”

“They have no souls,” said Oliver.

“If you bring in caterpillars, why can't I bring in Tempest and Storm?”

“That was to curse them and get rid of them,” Oliver said. “Do you want me to curse Tempest and Storm?”

So I called the hounds to heel, and shooed them out into the porch. Then I slowly shut the oak door in their faces.

“That's better,” said Oliver. “Outside are the hounds and sorcerers! Now, Arthur, what were you asking?”

“A schoolman?”

“Schoolmen are thinkers. They build bridges between us and our Lord.”

“Are they monks?”

“They teach in cathedral schools, sometimes in monasteries. Yes, they are monks. Why?”

“Because my father says I could be a schoolman.”

Oliver rubbed the end of his nose and gave me an owlish look. “He does, does he?”

“Has he talked to you about his plans for me?”

“No.”

“I don't want to be a schoolman.”

“Have you heard of Pierre Abelard?”

“Who?”

“Or Pierre Lombard? Or John of Salisbury?”

“You know I haven't.”

“They were all great schoolmen. You see. How can you tell what you will or won't be when you don't even know what you are talking about?”

“Does my father know about them?” I asked.

“I very much doubt it,” Oliver replied.

“Anyhow,” I said. “I don't want to be a schoolman.”

“That,” said Oliver, “is rather like a clod of mud wheezing that it doesn't want to be a star. Or a cat miaowing that it doesn't want to be a queen. Now come on! It's time we began.”

“It's still All Hallows tide,” I said.

“So?”

“So will you show me Saint Edmund's nails?”

“I did, yesterday.”

“Will you open the box?”

“Certainly not!” said Oliver indignantly.

“All right!” I said. “Will you explain the four Edmunds painted on the wall?”

“That is a better question,” replied Oliver. And he turned on
his heel, and led me up the north nave. “Red lead,” said Oliver. “Malachite. Arsenic salts. All kinds of colors!”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you to pray for scribes,” said Oliver, “with their aching wrists and elbows, their aching necks and backs.”

“I do,” I said.

“Is that why you called on—who was it?”

“Raphael, the angel.”

“Is that all?”

“Saint Gerard.”

“Ridiculous,” said Oliver. “Are you pregnant?”

“No.”

“You are. Your head is pregnant with ideas it should never have conceived. Now! You pray for scribes and you should pray for artists too. Mixing their paints. Decorating their manuscripts. Teaching us on the walls of our churches. Think of all the work. Grinding and mixing the paints. Building the scaffold. Priming the wall. Pricking out all the curves with compasses, all the circles and diagonals. All this before the artist even started painting. All this,” said Oliver rather grandly, “
Pro amore Dei et Sancti Edmundi
—for the love of God and Saint Edmund.”

I tilted back my head and stared up, and with their large, quiet eyes, the four Edmunds stared down at me.

“Who painted our Edmunds?” I asked.

“Strangely enough, a man called Edmund.” Oliver pursed his lips. “A very strange man too, if that's what he was. His hair hung down to his waist, and his whole body was covered with hair. He
grunted like a beast. He ate like a beast. But he painted like an angel.”

“Did you know him?” I asked.

“Dear boy! I'm not that old. Our Edmunds are four generations old. When your father's father's father was a boy…that's when they were painted.”

“I think you could be a schoolman, Oliver,” I said.

Oliver's eyes gleamed. “You think so?” he said.

“I do.”

“Do you think so or know so?”

“Oh! Oliver,” I said. “Not this afternoon.”

“Are you practicing your writing?” Oliver asked.

“Yes.”

“Each day?”

“Yes, Oliver.”

“With your right hand.”

“With both hands.”

“Just because you can write, you mustn't neglect your memory. On the contrary, memory and writing support one another. Many things do not need to be written; they can easily be remembered.”

“Yes, Oliver.”

“What is the difference between length, depth and width? Can you remember?”

“Imagine a spear pierces the top of a man's skull,” I said, “and comes out of his arse. That is length.”

“That measures length,” said Oliver.

“If the spear goes in through a man's chest and out through his
back, that measures depth. If it goes in through one rib cage and out through the other, that measures width.”

“Right, Arthur! That will do for today.”

“Oliver,” I said. “Have you heard of Tintagel?”

“What?”

“Tintagel.”

“What is it?”

“Oh! It doesn't matter,” I said.

“What does it mean? Tintagel?”

“I don't know,” I said.

O
LIVER SAYS, OLIVER SAYS,” GRUMBLED MY GRANDMOTHER.
“The trouble with our Oliver is that he gets in his own way. He only sees himself.”

“That's like Narcissus,” I said.

“Who?” said Nain.

“Narcissus. He was in Oliver's book about the Greeks. He fell in love with his own reflection.”

But Oliver isn't really like Narcissus at all. He isn't young, and he certainly isn't beautiful. I think he just puffs himself up in case we don't notice him.

“And the trouble with you, Arthur,” Nain continued, “is your writing. You're always writing or reading.”

“Oliver says…” I began.

“There you go again,” said Nain.

“I do practice remembering, Nain,” I said. “Writing and reading and remembering.”

“That you should!” said Nain sharply. “Do you know what happens each time you write a thing down? Each time you name it? You sap its strength.”

“But I think…”

“Who are you listening to? Me or yourself?” demanded Nain. “You're as bad as Oliver.” Nain gripped the side of the table and
pulled herself up from the bench. Then she hobbled over to the door and opened it.

“Come over here!” she said. “What's the wind saying?” I closed my eyes and tried to listen.

“How it praises God!” cried Nain. “On its way from yesterday to tomorrow. The spirits in the copper beech! The grumble and chuckle of stones. Listen! Our words must dance like they do. Mouthfuls of air, not dry ink.” Nain sniffed and then she glared at me. “Oliver says, Oliver says,” she grumbled. “You should learn to honor the power in things. You'd do better to listen to Merlin.”

Poor Nain! It's her November now. She looks more stooped each day, as if she is growing into the ground.

I don't believe everything she says but I wish I could take her once to the top of Tumber Hill, and look out with her into the heart of Wales. I would remember every word she said.

Y
GERNA MOANS. SHE SOUNDS LIKE LITTLE LUKE WHEN HE
is asleep, or half-asleep, and doesn't even know he is whimpering.

“Let me see,” she pleads. And then again, fiercely: “Show him to me!”

The midwife holds up the baby and Ygerna reaches out for him. But Uther raises his right hand. “Wrap him in gold cloth,” he tells the midwife.

Then Uther sits on the edge of the bed, and looks down at his wife, and Ygerna grasps the king's right wrist and digs her fingernails into it. “It is not what I wish,” the king says gently. “It is what I promised.”

King Uther walks out of the chamber, carrying the baby, and my stone goes with him. He strides down a corridor. The pale oak floorboards creak. The walls are painted with hounds and wolves, hares and cats, owls, blackbirds and other birds and beasts.

Now the baby begins to wail, as if he knows he is being taken away from his mother.

Footsteps and cries…in the corridor, they bounce from wall to wall, ceiling to floor. The whole world is full of beating drums and flashing knives.

The king unbolts a door and, outside, the hooded man is waiting.
For a moment, the two men say nothing. They just stand there, on either side of the threshold.

“Ygerna…” the king begins. But that's all he says, because it is useless to say anything. He shakes his head.

“I said I would help you,” the hooded man says. “I never said there would be no price.” Then he looks at the baby, wrapped in gold.

“Will I see him again?” asks King Uther.

“He will be safe,” the hooded man replies.

“That is not what I asked.”

The sorcerer looks at the king. “Some questions are better not asked,” he says. “A knight and his wife will foster your son. They are loyal to you, strict and kind. They have a young son of their own, he is almost three. The woman will wean him and feed your baby with her own milk.”

“What are their names?”

The hooded man says nothing.

“Where?” asks Uther. “Where are you taking him?”

“Away to the west,” the hooded man replies. “He was conceived where sky and water meet. He is the child of crossing-places, and I will take him home.”

“Home?” repeats the king.

“His foster parents will name him and have him christened. They will bring him up, and teach him to dress and serve his lord, to tilt and to parry, even to read and write. They will keep him at home until he is thirteen—and I will watch over him.”

“And then?” asks Uther, King of Britain.

The hooded man takes the baby out of the king's arms. “I will come for him,” he says, “when his time comes.”

W
HEN THE HOODED MAN TOLD KING UTHER
that his son was the child of crossing-places, I remembered how Merlin said that between-places are always chancy. Our Marches and the foreshore and dusks and bridges: They're times and places where strange things happen.

My moon-bruise! My wolf-skull! In a way my obsidian is a kind of between-place: between me and everything I can see in it.

And what about Nain? She's a crossing-place, too, whenever she tells us stories.

It's only seven weeks now until this century ends and the new one begins. I don't think anything amazing will happen, like half the world breaking off, but I can feel things will be different; I just don't know how.

“Let little Luke get well,” said my mother. “That's the change I want.”

“We still got to eat, haven't we?” said Gatty, and she sucked her raw knuckles. “Things may change for you. Nothing won't change for me.”

“Let things stay as they are,” sniffed Nain.

“What kind of change?” Merlin inquired. “Without or within?”

M
Y MOTHER SAT UP IN THE GREAT BED AND HUGGED
little Luke to her to keep him warm, to give him some of her life.

“John and Serle were wrong,” she said. “Luke wasn't screaming because of King Richard, or because of the weather. Tanwen's right. The evil's inside him: Luke was born to die.”

“God is merciful,” said Nain. “He shows mercy when He takes a child out of this mad world.”

“Luke is suffering,” my mother cries, “and I am suffering. I know it is all because of me. All I have done. All I've left undone.”

“At least John has an heir,” Nain said. “You have given him Serle.”

Tears were streaming down my mother's face. She bent over little Luke.

“Serle's strong and healthy,” continued Nain. “You should be grateful.”

“Come here, Arthur!” my mother croaked. Then she reached out with one hand and fiercely pulled me to her, and for a while we huddled on the Great Bed, with little Luke between us.

Late this afternoon, my mother called me down from this writing-room, and asked me to go with her to see the wise woman, Johanna.

I'm glad she didn't want me to go on my own. I don't mind
Johanna's half-moustache and whiskers, or her hut which smells like bad eggs, but her sudden rages scare me. One moment she is normal, the next she's glaring and shouting.

“Tomorrow's an evil day,” Johanna said. And then she snapped, “Hear that? Woman?”

No one else would dare to speak to my mother like that.

“Yes,” said my mother meekly.

“So do what you do tonight before midnight,” Johanna ordered her.

Then Johanna told my mother to mix dried shepherd's purse with honeysuckle, and grind them both to powder. “Put the powder in warm red wine, and give it to Luke.”

“He won't drink,” my mother said. “Not honey-water. Not ale. He won't even drink my own milk.”

“He'll drink this,” said Johanna. “After that, undress him, and sit him on a stool with a hole in the middle. Drape a cloth over him. Boy!”

“Yes,” I said, and my heart jumped.

Johanna glared at me. “You are to do this. Make sure the cloth reaches down to the ground. Light a little charcoal fire right under him, so the heat enters him…You understand?”

“Yes, Johanna.”

“You don't. You don't understand anything.”

“She is a terror,” said my mother, as soon as we had left Johanna's hut, “but she does know recipes.”

“I don't believe half of them,” I replied.

“She healed my nipples when they were inflamed…”

“You said that was Saint Gerard.”

“…and Nain's oozing eyes,” added my mother.

“Tanwen knows recipes too,” I said.

“Yes,” said my mother. “For enchanting.”

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn't matter,” my mother said.

“Mother,” I began. “You know you said you would talk to my father.”

“What about?”

“His plans. He does mean me to be a squire, doesn't he? He will let me go away soon? He doesn't want me to be a priest, or a schoolman?”

On the bridge across the moat, my mother paused and put her hands on my two shoulders, and looked into my eyes. “Arthur,” she said.

“I can't be those things.”

“I will talk to him,” my mother said, “and ask him to talk to you. But not tonight.”

Then she turned towards the hall, and I followed her.