The Spellcoats (14 page)

Hern took the jar from me. “Lucky the tide's running out.”

“It isn't,” I said. “It's running up-River.”

“Then why is it so low?” said Duck.

At that we all said at once, “The floods are going down!” It was a great relief to find Tanamil had not made us miss the One's fire after all.

“What a shame Robin's ill for it,” said Duck.

“There are Heathen near,” I said. “Should we make a fire? I pulled a Heathen brat out of the water.”

“It can't be helped,” said Hern. His head went pecking forward, as it does when he is determined. “I'm not going to let any Heathen, magicians or otherwise, interfere with what the One thinks is due to him. Let's get some firewood.”

It has to be a special fire for the One, newly kindled from our hearth. Usually we do it on the bank of the River near our house. As I went shivering to the camp with the water, I hoped the One would not find it too strange when he came out of his fire on this miserable island. Usually, too, we celebrate with a feast, but I knew there was no question of feasting this time, even before I saw Robin.

Robin was worse. She was shivering as badly as I was, but she had thrown off the blankets and taken off most of her clothes. She said she was too hot. “I'm so thirsty!” she said.

I gave her a long drink and made her get under the blankets again. She would not put on her clothes. She had thrown them up the hill and the cats were lying on them. “Well, if you won't wear them,” I said, “I will. I'm soaked.” I was so frozen by then that I could not bear to unpack all the lockers in the boat to find my own clothes. I put on Robin's underclothes and her awful blue skirt. My rugcoat was dry, of course, so I put that on, and my shoes. The cats came and sat on the skirt again, with me in it, which helped me to get warm. But Robin still shivered. She looked uglier than ever.

“I'm sore all over,” she said.

“You've got the River fever again,” I said. “It won't last long.”

“Where are the boys?” she said.

“Gull's in the boat,” I said. “Hern and Duck are getting wood for the One. The floods are going down.”

Robin sprang up again. “Oh, I must see to it! They'll never get it right!”

“Lie down,” I said. “They can do it here where you can see them, and you can tell them what to do. But I'll tell them not to do it at all if you get up.” I am like that with Robin all the time—not kind. I try to be patient, but she is far more annoying ill than well.

Hern and Duck came back with loads of wood. They had pulled up the thick-branched prickle bushes from all over the island. They were determined to make it a good fire, in spite of the situation. They dug a flat shelf out of the sand above the camp and built the wood up there as Robin told them. We took a long time and did it really well.

When it was ready, Hern, as head of the family, took the One from the boat and put him in the niche we had made in the center of the wood. The One looked just as usual, dark and rigid, and covered with small glisters. It was hard to believe that he knew what was happening. Robin sat up between Duck and me while Hern lit the wood with a coal from our firepot.

We all said, “May the clay purge from you. Come forth again in your true strength.”

This is what we always say. Then we watched the flames roar up in the wind. Our campfire was dwarfed. In that light, wide space the flames looked pale and saw-edged. The One was soon lost in them. They raced up from the edge of the hill, whirling round and round, and dropped flaming pieces on the water.

We were staring at the blaze, thinking that it was the best fire we had ever made, when we heard shouts.

“What was that?” said Robin.

“
Hey there! You on the island
!”

“I'll go,” said Hern. Naturally Duck and I went over the hill with him.

On the shore opposite, beyond the small stream that was all that was left of the racing channel, a row of Heathen men were standing.

“Hey you!” they shouted. “Come over here!”

8

At first I thought the Heathen were monstrously tall, with strange-shaped heads. Then I saw that they had on iron hats which came high in the crown. The strange shapes were decorations made of feathers and tufts of fur and colored tassels. They had tunics like the Heathen brat's, but they wore long boots and gauntlets and flapping heavy cloaks, which made the outfit look a little warmer. They were all strong, strapping men. Three of them leaned on spears. The other two carried what looked like short planks with a little bow on one end. We knew those were the bows Uncle Kestrel told us of, which could send a bolt through two men at once.

“The fire gave us away,” said Hern. “Pretend we're Heathens, too.”

“How can we?” I said. “With the One in his fire.”

“Shut up!” said Hern. The Heathen were shouting to us again to come over to them. “Why should we?” Hern shouted back. “What do you want?”

Several of them shouted back and beckoned. We could not hear what they said. “Are they talking about a King?” Duck said. The confused shouting and the beckoning continued, but none of the Heathen tried to cross the channel. They thought, as I had done, that it was still sinking mud there. As we still stood there, the two with bows pointed them at us.

“I think,” said Hern, “we'd better do what they want. Tanaqui, go and tell Robin to lie low and look after the One. Don't upset her.”

They hoped to cross over to the Heathen while I talked to Robin. I would never have forgiven them for that. But when I went back over the hill, Robin was asleep with the cats curled up round her, and the One's fire was blazing majestically. I threw some wood on the campfire and raced back. I was in time to catch Hern and Duck as they walked into the water. I bunched up Robin's skirt and splashed after them.

The Heathens were taller than I thought. They wore iron waistcoats, which looked even odder than the hats. All of them had brown skins and long noses like Hern's, and from below the metal hats tumbled hair that was either fair as ours or the brown color of the sand. They stared at us with as much interest as we stared at them.

“Just as Ked said!” one of them remarked. “Who would have thought it! Tell me, your honors, which of you pulled a lad from the waters awhile back?” The Heathen accent is hard to understand. Their voices lift in all the wrong places. That was why I had not been able to understand the Heathen brat very well. You have to listen hard, as if you were deaf.

“Er—that was me,” I said.

The Heathen raised frosty eyebrows at me. He had a very grizzled and important look. “The lad said it was a youth.”

“I was wearing my brother's clothes,” I explained.

“She was soaking, and she had to change,” said Duck.

“If you think it's important,” said Hern.

The Heathens heard us attentively, with strained frowns. I think they found us hard to follow, too. “It is important, your honors,” said the grizzled one, “if I am to take the right one to the King.” Then he gave an apologizing kind of cough. “Will it trouble you all three to come with us?”

It was strange that he was so polite. It ought to have made me much less frightened. But the men with the bows remained tense and alert, holding an arrow ready to fire and glancing from us to the land around all the time. Looking back, I think maybe that it was not us they intended to shoot.

Hern was very good all through. He did not understand what the man asked straightaway, but he made it seem as if he was considering. “We shall be pleased to see your King,” he said, and pecked with his head, graciously.

“This way,” said the Heathen. He turned and walked off. Another spear-carrier stepped in front of him, releasing his spear from his cloak. The spear proved to hold a flag full of all sorts of colored devices. We walked behind him over the sandy hills, feeling like part of the Shelling River Procession. I had only seen a flag used for religion before, but this one, as it clapped to and fro over our heads, held no religious picture that I could see.

It was not very far, onto higher land and crustier sand, where grew a stand of trees all bent as if to hold their backs to the sea. There, by another sandy river, was a collection of dwellings no larger than Shelling. As Duck said later, it would have frightened us to death if we had known our camp was so near the King of the Heathens—always supposing we had noticed the King's camp when we saw it. It was of tattered tents and driftwood huts, with rubbish thrown about. It was poor beside the poorest village I have seen since. Yet more flags flew from the rickety roofs as proudly and religiously as you please.

“What kind of King have we come to?” Hern said out of the corner of his mouth.

Duck and I did not feel so scornful. The bowmen could shoot us here as easily as in a palace.

The grizzled Heathen stepped into one of the tattered tents. We waited outside with the flag and the crossbows. Since it was a tent, we could hear what was said inside amid the rattling of the canvas. But we had difficulty understanding it.

I heard, “I have brought no less than three young mages, lord, not knowing quite what else to do.” There followed talk I could not hear for the tent flapping. Then, “I think Ked told the truth for once, lord. I find them very hard to understand, and by their dress, they seem to have gone native.” After this they spoke so rapidly that I was lost, until the messenger said, “I agree, lord. It may be just what you were wanting.”

Meanwhile, we stood feeling slighted and uneasy. We did not know why the King should want us. We thought of Gull and of Tanamil. And we found it ominous that though there were numbers of Heathens about in the camp, they did not come crowding to see us, as people would have done in Shelling. I saw that women and girls kept quietly slipping across behind us to the sandy river, where they fetched water in iron pots. They could not all have wanted water at once. It was an excuse to see us. They were none of them as pretty as Robin, but I liked their clinging dresses. Men and boys were finding excuses to be about, too. Someone tidied a heap of rubbish. Someone came past with a tall horse. A boy staggered with a sack from one hut to another, and so on. We were being seen secretly all the time we waited, and it made us most uncomfortable.

At last the messenger came out and held the flap of the tent for us. “Please go in. My lord is waiting for you.”