Between her paws. I shivered. He is mad from having been between her paws and being there no longer. He is mad of being ‘rescued’. He is mad of grief and rage, of breathing town-air and house-air, people-farts and the breath of bedding and cold ashes. Yesterday he were in the forest, with the sky and leaves overhead and greenness all around, the tree-trunks holding up the canopy so that bird and breeze might be free to fly through. Yesterday he were between her paws, spelled by her amber eyes, and now she is dead, and she have taken his mind with her.
‘I will go and see him,’ I says.
‘You think you ought?’ says Mam.
‘Why not, ever?’
‘Only I don’t want you catching it off of him, if he is still enchanted.’
‘You daft-mam,’ I said, and patted her worried cheek.
I walked out through the busy lanes. Many a man shook my hand as I made my way along and down to Noer’s da’s house. People told me on the way that his family had prisoned Noer in the hut in their backyard there, as being not fit for human company and distressing his mam and his brothers and sisters, so I went around and I let myself in their yard, and there was Oswest, sitting carving by the backhouse door.
‘Bullock,’ he says. ‘Look at you, man, in your own skin. I heard o’ that. That is some relief.’
‘How is Noer?’ I says to the door. ‘Have his furs fallen off him too, like mine?’
‘His bonnet is gone. If the rest is loose, still he will not cast it off. And can no one get near him to tek it off him. He have been wild. I thought he would knock the structure down, chains or no chains.’
‘Chains?’
‘Nowt else will hold him, poor nonny. He is strong as a bear, just as he’s dressed like one.’
As if he had heard us, Noer inside sent up a loud, weird wail, and the backhouse shuddered and thudded as he wrestled his bonds inside.
‘Let me go in to him,’ I said to Oswest next time I could be heard above the noise.
‘Oh, you don’t want to,’ he said. ‘He will tear you up; he is quite wild, and angry at everyone.’
Almost I shouted, They have crossbowed his wife, man! Who would not be wild after that? But I did not say it. ‘Let me see him, Oswest, and him me. My poor friend!’ Noer wailed within; the back of my neck crawled at the sound, so much more mournful than threatening.
‘Very well, I will chance it,’ says Oswest eventually, putting down his knife and wood. He stood and went to the shuttered window. ‘Noer? ’Tis your friend Bullock has come to see you. Bullock? You remember? What was Bear with you?’
The wailing faltered and stopped. I held my breath, thinking Noer would explode again.
Oswest listened too awhile. He made a thoughtful face and opened the shutter, peered inside. A low, awful growl shook the wooden wall. Oswest waved me up urgently. ‘See?’ he said nervously to Noer.
I could see nothing inside. I was afraid a bear-claw would swipe out the opening and take off my face. ‘Noer?’ I says, even nervouser than Oswest.
A thick black silence maintained in there for several moments, and then a voice came out. ‘Bullock?’ And in pronouncing that name, so precise and so piteous, he showed himself to be still himself, still my poor friend and fellow fool Noer.
He commenced to sobbing. A powerful familiar smell of sweaty skin-dirt pushed me back from the window. ‘How can he breathe in there?’
‘Can none of us get in there to clean him,’ says Oswest. ‘I tell you, he has never been like this, just crying. Either he fights or is asleep—that has been the way of him since they brought him back this morning, all bound up for his own safety.’
‘Bullock,’ came Noer’s voice from inside. ‘Bullock, are you still there?’ There was a stir, and the rattle and thunk of chains pulled tight.
‘I’m here, Noer. I’m not goin anywheres.’ I went again to the window so he could see me.
‘You have lost your hat off too.’
‘I have, Noer. Let me in to him, Oswest.’
‘Are you certain?’ Oswest whispered. ‘He is as best he’s ever been, but I don’t know he’ll stay that way.’
I trembled not to hit Oswest—he could not help his ignorance. ‘I am certain. Open the door. Please, Oswest, before my heart cracks wide.’
Shaking his head and frightened, Oswest took out the key and unlocked the backhouse door. The smell spilled out and filled the yard as he stood back. ‘Stay beyond the reach o’ the chain,’ he whispered as I passed.
But I went right straight in and gathered Noer up, his filthy bearness into my fresh-washed arms of person-skin, against my clean, thin clothes of cloth. I stood and rocked him, and he wept on me a long time, a long time. The only things he could speak of to me were too great horrors for words, and the only comfort I could offer was understanding them, without him having to tell them.
Words we did find, though, eventually. We sat side by side against the wall, and every now and again one of us would attempt some halting thing, and after time the haltingness eased somewhat.
Oswest peered in the window at us, and brought family, and they observed us too, and ventured enquiries as to Noer’s health and sanity.
‘I am more or less myself,’ he says to them. ‘But I am not at all sure who that is, to be true with you. Bullock here is helping me remember.’
‘Will you not come and eat with us?’ says his mam. ‘And take off them awful furs, and wash the madness off you? When was the last time you ate, boy?’
‘Don’t worry, Mam. I’ll come out presently. Leave us be, for now, while we catch ourselves up.’
His da undid his chains and then the family left us to our commiserating. All that morning and afternoon we sat, and while we sat, the bearmeat-feast were assembled. The mayor-hall up the hill from Noer’s had the only kitchen big enough, and the only pots, and we could not help but hear the shouts and chats of cook-wives and meat-hands and trestle-men, the tumbles of cut logs delivering for the kitchen.
‘Is Filip up there, then?’ Noer said bitterly, ‘putting up tables and such?’
‘Filip? What are you—Oh, but of course, how would you know it?’
‘Know what?’ says Noer, full of dread.
‘Filip is not there, nor at any feast again, Noer.’
‘What happened to him?’
I searched my neat-trewsered knees for the way to tell him.
‘He is imprisoned too?’ says Noer. ‘Or worse? He is not dead!’ But he confirmed it from my face, and clapped his filthy sleeve-ends to his mouth.
‘He were shot for a real bear by mistake.’
‘No!’ he whispers into his fur. ‘When? How?’ he says, tears catching in his throat.
So there was that unhappy accident to tell, on top of all the other improbables.
His family brought us bread, and smoke-meat, and ale, and when they heard that we would not be coming to the bear-feast, so scandalised were they that they brang more ale. Oswest, poor fool, even offered to convey some bear-meat to us when it were done, though he stumbled and stopped half through offering it when he saw me shake and shake my head, and Noer’s cold stare.
There were nothing I could do to keep the smell of her out, though, the hall and its chimneys were so close. She hung over the place in a cloud, strong and rich; we might not eat her, but we could not help but breathe her.
‘Mebbe we should get out of this town,’ I said. ‘Go out in the fields. You could wash yourself in the river. I could fetch some trews and shirt for you from your mam.’
He thought on that, but were unable to bring himself to leave the little malodorous refuge we had there. So we stayed, and every little while someone would come and replenish our food and ale, but mostly they let us alone, under instructions from Noer’s mam.
For a while that evening there was quiet as they said the prayers up at the mayor-hall, honouring all beasts but in particular the sizable races and the fierce, such as wolves and bears.
‘At least there is some reverence there,�
�� I said to Noer, who were quite drunk by then and falling to weeping. ‘This is the closest we are likely ever to come to appropriate ceremony. We ought be grateful.’
But then the mayor shouted and there was a cheer from all the men, and the lady mayoress cried out, and so then did all the women, and the feasting began; and for me it was bad enough, but for Noer the noise must of been like hundreds of biting spiders under his skins. For a time there he could not keep still, pacing out into the yard and back again in the heavy, savoury air, the mouthwatering air, however hard we tried not to find it enticing. Terrible moans came out of him, but it were only ale that made them sound so animal, not any returning bearness of him.
All night I stayed with him in that hut and yard, holding him back from losing himself in his own mind, making him talk proper when he were done with each spell of weeping and raving.
‘I do not want to know this,’ I asked him as we sat out under the stars in the deep of that night, the both of us very full. The singing had started up at the hall, and the thunders of dancing. ‘But it is eating me up so as I cannot think of anythin else.’ And I breathed beer-air across his dazed face.
‘I know what it is, my friend. I know what it is,’ he said.
‘You do?’
‘I do. You’re wanting to know exackly how. The exack degree of . . . you know, as we were as husband and wife. Whether we had congroonce like you do between man and wife—as man does, as people do. Whether we lay abed together.’
‘I do not want to know it.’
He sat up straight, preparing himself to answer. Some pocket of beer-bubbles trickled tunefully up the back of his throat.
‘Ah,’ says I. ‘Even in the belches you can tell the quality of Keller’s ale, the superior nature.’
‘Erp. Indeed.’ And like it takes a cart horse something of a winding-up and a goading to get a laden wagon moving, he initiated himself forwards again, throwing his arm around my shoulders. ‘Which I was about to say, Bullock. I am very happy to be able to tell you, if you do not want to know, that I cannot say.’
‘Iss too private,’ I agreed.
‘No, I just cannot . . . not not remember, exackly.’ He frowned up at the sky and the drifting smoke. ‘I may well have, but I could not say definivvely. I coonot give you instances: moves nor locales nor how the flirting nor the seducing went, you know? It is all lost in one big bearish wonderland, her fur and the smell of her and her weight and splendence and . . . We companioned each other, Bullock, and were all that the other needed. Your question—even though you have not asked it!—forgive me, but it is a chile’s question, a smutty-minded peerer-into-bushes’ question, peerer-into-barns’. Though I understand you asking and I realise you did not mean it so.’ He squeezed my shoulders.
‘I dinnit even want to know that much,’ says I gloomily. ‘Every word you say about her is like a stab to me, is like a smack and a laugh in my face, I was so spelled by her in that short time.’
He put his other arm around my front and held me hard.
‘Easy. I’ll be sick,’ I said.
He released me only a little. ‘You know,’ he said, grinning in pain. ‘You know something of what I am enduring, Bullock, my friend. You are the only man in the world who can intimate this.’
‘Well, it is no pleasure,’ I told him.
‘Oh, no. But at least I am not quite utterly alone in this. At least someone has a whisker of understanding.’
‘Not much more than that,’ I says unhappily. Through the ale and sleepiness I were beginning to see somewhat more clearly how us three Bears—well, the two of us surviving—how our lives had been tumbled like a half-keg of salt-herring rolled down a hill, and now we lay unpacked and dizzied at the bottom.
‘I were worried,’ says my Todda, ‘when Miss Dance said she ought to bring them back.’
It was the middle of the night; she had just brought Ousel in with us; he was busy and breathing in his nest between us, and above him she watched me, the thoughts pouring out her eyes in the dark.
‘Why is that?’
‘Well,’ she says unwillingly, ‘I thought perhaps the mother had . . . a place in your heart, Davit.’
‘Oh, she does, and she did,’ I said. There is something about talking in the night, with the shreds of sleep around your ears, with the silences between one remark and another, the town dark and dreaming beyond your own walls. It draws the truth out of you, straight from its little dark pool down there, where usually you guard it so careful, and wave your hands over it and hum and haw to protect people’s feelings, to protect your own.
‘The way you spoke of her, when we first talked about it.’
‘Yes,’ I said. I thought about her at the stream there in her prime, much the age of Todda now; I mused upon the sensations and the muddied impressions that come to a man through his bear-fur, through his bear-mind.
Then I realised she was waiting, listening to me muse, not knowing what I were about. ‘You’ve no need to worry,’ I said, and reached across and rested my hand on her hip. ‘So much has come between, so much more: you and these babs. I married you, remember?’
‘I should not like to think it were a duty now, and you preferred another,’ she said low.
See? You can bring out the jaggedest feelings—if you are my wife and know how to state them calm—into the night quiet. They will float there for consideration, harming no one.
‘It is no duty, Todda, but a joy and a revelation to me every day. Had I the choice now, I would not go back to that place, don’t you fear.’
‘No?’ she says.
I put it before my mind’s eye again. ‘No.’
Ousel made a small, greedy noise. Todda’s doubt floated over us between the grains of darkness.
‘I said no, Tod,’ I moved my hand on her hip.
‘When she came through, though,’ she murmured. ‘When first she stepped out of that other land; when first you saw her, Davit?’
‘Relief,’ I realised, with a little laugh.
‘I were relieved too,’ she chimes. ‘Why were you, though?’
‘That she had not the same spell over me. That all I felt was worry that she and Branza should be comfortable here, not be too frightened.’
‘I were glad, and this is not admirable of me . . .’
I gave her hip a little shake. ‘Go on. You were glad because?’
‘Because she was older. At first I thought Branza was the one, and that made me think, Oh, she is beautiful. I am lost. Maybe I am! How do you feel for Branza?’
‘Todda, I knew the girl as a bab, almost! ’Tis indecent to do more than think, Well, haven’t she grown up fine from that little sprite? But go on: then you realised?’
‘Then I realised it were the older woman and . . . I were glad she were older, that’s all. I were glad she were old enough to be a grumma. Not that she is at all ugly or careworn—she is beautiful. But . . .’
‘But no longer the girl I met.’
‘Yes. But then I also thought, Well, where am I bound, if not for that age too? Do I want women like me, young mams, to be so relieved? Do I want my man to look at me when I am twoscore and more, and feel no desire for me?’
‘I promise I will not.’
She laughed at how earnest I said it, and how fast.
I hoisted up on an elbow and listened over Ousel. He sucked a little, half woke by my movement, then slipped back into his milky dreams.
‘Here,’ I whispered, ‘give me that bab and I will put him out the way of our husband-and-wifing. Before you is too wizened and ugly for my consideration, eh?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she laughed up at me. ‘We had better move right smartly, I think.’
Towards dawn, I roused myself and shook Noer, who had fallen to weeping and then sleeping on my lap on the hut floor. ‘I must go. They’ll be doing the bones soon,’ I says to him. ‘Do you want to be there for that?’
He sat half up and squinted about, stupid as if he’d been blonked with the consta
ble’s cosh. ‘Whather?’
‘Like her funeral,’ I says.
He looked at me and dragged his answer out from behind some drunken dream. ‘No, Bullock. I coonent. You go for me, though. You pay my respecks.’
So up I went to the hall and joined the procession of the hunters, carrying the she-bear among them—her peeled bones, her scraped and her boiled, her broken for the marrow, her giant skull, her knuckles and backbones in rattling bags—out of the town and up onto the Mount, where they buried her, and rolled a stone onto her that would be rolled off again next spring to set her free, and Wolfhunt said the long prayer that was all about the bear-strength they had eaten, and the threateningness and the savagery of bears. It were awful—I felt the awfulness of it on behalf of Noer-who-had-been-between-her-paws, and it seemed hardly dulled at all by the amount of ale I had taken.
When it was done, we went down the hill again and the town rose opposite. I knew that place should be my home, but after my night in Noer’s mind it seemed a peculiar pile, its streets a maze, needlessly crowded, where we slender people, so naked of fur we must make extra skins for ourselves, muddled and ambled and skipped in our dance of alliances and enmities, offences and fancies. We thought too much; we calculated too hard. I would rather have wandered among trees, with their more meaningful conversation. I would rather have been solitary and unharried, never required to speak nor account for myself, to do anything else but what come natural.
But I could not make for the forest now. My friend needed me. He was in that pile, in that town somewhere, sleeping and suffering. I would go and wake him—now was the right time for that. I would see him cleaned and set aright. And then I would go to my own home and sleep myself, and perhaps when I woke, all this stirred-up anger and magic would have gone back to its resting-place, and life would not seem such a strange and sad affair.
Miss Dance tied her bag to the saddle and briskly turned back to them. There was still something skull-like about her handsome face. She had had no more than an hour or two’s rest last night, answering all their questions, and asking many of her own, and spending time aside with both Liga and Lady Annie.
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