Fair Weather

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “One last thing,” Gerald had said to me before creeping back to bed. “You know that beautiful little pool with the falls and the stream, where you told the others to bury Richard, and they did. My mother’s buried there too.”

  That had awakened murmurings of understanding. “Yes, Vespasian often went there. It had magic, I always knew that. He said it meant something to him too, though he never told me what.”

  “First they buried her all grand in the churchyard with the priest and Latin services. But afterwards Vespasian ordered her body removed and two of his men secretly carried the coffin all the way down south to the forest. Vespasian took me to her grave. It’s right next to Richard’s, though the mound is flattened now. It’s covered in the wild herbs Vespasian planted there. He says it’s holy ground and not being consecrated by the church doesn’t matter at all.”

  I said, “I’m glad I’ve been visiting your mother’s grave even if I didn’t know it.”

  Now I dressed in the mismatched garments that Vespasian had brought me, buckled my sword with a garish red leather baldric and tucked the ouroboros into my belt. I walked down the wide staircase and joined Gerald at the main doorway to the hall. He was more grandly dressed than I had ever seen him. “Vespasian bought me all these,” he said, somewhat apologetically. “You’d already run off to London. He took me to the market and we didn’t steal a thing. He chose all the materials himself and ordered this cotte made. He said I had to look the part when we faced Arthur.”

  I wondered what part I’d look myself. Even Gerald eyed me with some amusement. My white stolla was too long and I had to hitch it up and although the bliaud was grand and red velvet with gold embroidery, it was three sizes too large and the neck so wide that it fell off my shoulders. At least I had a good leather belt to hold it all together and the baldric helped. The cloak was red too though a little too short, and lined with otter pelts. I thought it particularly beautiful and useful too, since it covered my other ill fitting clothes. There had been no camise so now the stolla’s stiff fabric scratched my breasts, but at least I had new shoes that fitted fine.

  I was admiring Gerald’s powder blue finery while embarrassed by my own oddments, when Vespasian strode out from the hall. I stared at him in amazement. I was used to seeing him scruffy and uncaring, his clothes often threadbare, stained and dust clogged, though sometimes lately I had seen him grand and loved his occasional beauty. Now he looked like a king. He was dressed in dark blue and gold, breath taking and majestic. The glint of his cuirass was visible beneath his embroidered cotte, then the wide leather stripe of the baldric across his right shoulder. My mouth must have been open in surprise. He looked back at me and his mouth twitched slightly, black eyes bright.

  “It isn’t funny,” I said. “You and Gerald are putting on a glorious spectacle and I look like the forgotten serving girl.”

  “Not in that cloak,” interrupted Gerald kindly. “It’s really nice.”

  “My dear Tilda,” said Vespasian, “what you wear will be of little consequence I assure you. You may prove to be the most important of us all.”

  I waved that aside and thought he was teasing me. “You wanted to leave me at the convent,” I pointed out.

  “It would have been far better had I been able to do so,” he said, and he was serious again. “But there’s nowhere else of safety I can leave you, so you will have to come with me and play out your not insubstantial part, as is inevitably destined.”

  I had been frightened that he might want to leave me alone at Gerald’s house so now I was happy enough to ignore the irony in his voice. “If only you’d explain what I’m expected to do, then I might be more use to you,” I said and Gerald at my side nodded agreement at once.

  As usual Vespasian avoided what I said and answered my silent thoughts. “I cannot leave you where you’d have no protection, and equally, where I would have none from you,” he said. “There are servants here on the land, but few of them and no one I can trust. You will both therefore behave yourselves like well mannered and obedient children, and keep quiet until I tell you to speak.”

  “Yes, my lord,” said Gerald, who was easily overawed. I resisted Tilda’s urge to giggle and said nothing. Vespasian led us out through the big studded doors and they clanged shut behind us with an echo I found somehow ominous.

  It was the last day of October but outside the sun was warm. Gerald’s farm lands stretched wide and distant, golden behind their scrawny hedges. A vegetable garden had grown a little wild. The estates had not been well looked after, hardly surprising in the absence of any master. Some steward had probably been leaching the profits for himself. Now Vespasian had installed new staff and there was a sense of bustle while abandoned land was being reclaimed. A stable boy was waiting patiently with two horses ready bridled. Neither one of them was the horse we had ridden from the convent the day before. These were well groomed beasts who would snort down their nostrils at Vespasian’s ugly brown gelding. I glared at both of them.

  Gerald mounted the grey from the block and Vespasian tossed me up into the saddle of the other. He was black and glossy and all pride but he nuzzled Vespasian’s hand with pleasure so I forgave the stallion his snobbery. Vespasian mounted behind me. “Where have you kept the ouroboros?” Vespasian asked and I realised he didn’t want Gerald to hear. I tapped my belt. “You cannot lose it easily,” he said, which I had certainly found to be true. “But make sure to keep it safe. Solve et coagula. You should always be conscious of where it is.”

  We set off slowly with Vespasian leading but once into the narrow country lanes between the fields, we quickened to a canter. The peasants turned their heads to watch us ride past. It must have been strange gossip for them to see their lord appear, little more than a boy, after so long a time after the previous baron’s death. The harvest was already in, the wheat was heavy in the sheds and it was the time for sowing the winter grains. The harnessed oxen trudged furrowed fields, wide patient heads to the earth, dragging the cut of the plough and guided by the ploughman in his mud clogged boots. The sudden splash of scarlet autumn poppy flung sideways from its roots was like blood in the sun.

  With the day mellow on my face, the strength of Vespasian’s arms around me, his body tall at my back and the fur lined cloak muffling me against the wind, I cuddled more hot than warm. The marks of yesterday’s burns were still uncomfortable on my left cheek and I tried not to think of what was inevitable and imminent. Since Vespasian had, as usual, refused to explain what was coming, I accepted that the ignorance I loathed might instead prove the basis of my own protection.

  The morning was balmy and the sun’s warmth muted though it fluttered brilliant in the glorious autumn leaf above our heads. Hazel, ash and oak, willow, birch and alder waved scarlet and bronze above, their shadows striping the path. We rode for some hours through lane, pasture and forest, across the gentle roll of placid hills and splashing through the shallow sparkle of woody streams. I counted time as the sun rose high into the tree tops, and then, announcing afternoon, began to slide down against the blue. I saw we were travelling west. With the dazzle in my eyes I almost dozed, but then, unexpectedly, Vespasian began to speak. “In last night’s dream,” he said, his voice careful as if he did not want to alarm me, or perhaps not give away clues he would rather keep to himself, “you cut the tarocchi pack. Did you see the creature that held the cards?”

  “No,” I said, a little sleepily. “I saw nothing until the cards came whizzing towards me. But there were three voices. One of them, I think, was Joanna.”

  “What else?” he demanded. “They named you portal keeper, or holder of the gates?”

  That made me wake up. “You’ve called me that yourself. And yes, they did.” I couldn’t look him in the face because he was behind me and the horse was making a good speed, so I sat still and took a deep breath. “So, what doors do I open?” I said. “What gate do you all talk about and how do I open it? And who is Veleda?”

  “You will f
ind all that out this evening,” he said, almost casually, as if discussing the weather. “You will celebrate Samhain as you have never done before.”

  I could hardly tell him that I had never celebrated it at all and had no idea what it was. “Now you want to frighten me,” I accused him. “Will it be so terrible?”

  Vespasian did not answer me at first. There was a silence and I could hear only the steady thud of the horse’s hooves, the bright wind in the trees and somewhere a blackbird which sang of its prowess and its home. Each creature claiming its title, as Gerald wished to do. Then Vespasian said, “Do you remember the first card that was cut, when the tarocchi pack was shown to you, but when it was I who took the card in your place?”

  “The card of The Moon,” I said. Then I remembered that I was confusing Tilda with Molly and Vespasian had led me into a trick, to make me admit more of myself. I wondered how much I should say. “The woman in the dream told me,” I prevaricated quickly, “before I chose The Fool.”

  “If you lie to me,” said Vespasian pleasantly, “I shall happily torture you again, and this time on my own initiative. Now, tell me the truth.”

  “It was the card of The Moon,” I said under my breath. The blackbird continued to sing as if all the serenity of the countryside was his own, and without evil or complicity or magic. “You know that because you cut it. But I know it because I was there too.”

  “Very well, that is better,” said Vespasian. “But this is a conversation we shall continue once we arrive. In the meantime, you have slept very little through several much interrupted nights. Sleep now if you can. But remember brat, that I am not one of your naïve child admirers and I know almost all your story. You would be wise not to try and lie to me.”

  I had no answer and for once no desire to ask questions. It seemed we both had our secrets, both denied each other our true stories, and both distrusted the other. I slumped down and closed my eyes.

  When I woke, the sun was dipping from afternoon to evening, a vapour hung like silver mist all around us and the nightmare had already begun.

  Chapter Forty Six

  It had become very cold and there was a sparkle of light rain across the grass. The two horses stood in the glowing haze of different worlds. Beside me Gerald sat wooden, holding so tight to his reins that his knuckles were as blue as his smart new cloak. His hood was up against the drizzle and I could not see his face. Behind me and sitting straight and quite still, Vespasian supported me, the reins of our horse loose in his gloved hands. I took a deep breath and held it. The world around us did not clarify.

  Vespasian spoke softly to me, his mouth against my hair. I was sure Gerald could not hear him. “This is the place I prepared for us last night,” Vespasian said, “and why I was not present in what you call your dream. Do not be frightened. It will seem strange, but the power of nature is our friend. This is the ultimate nemeton, sweet and clean without vice. I did not want this final confrontation to take place in the soiled cellars of necromancy.”

  I thought I saw the clearing in the forest by the remains of Ingrid’s burial mound and where the cold pool I loved banked Richard’s grave. I saw the wild flowers and wandering herbs and I saw the silver ripples of the water. Then, in lingering shadows and towering from roots knarred and mossed, I saw the yew tree that was from Molly’s world and had no place in the southern woods of old England. I had met Vespasian there once when he slipped through the doorway I must have opened myself. So he knew the yew tree, as I did. It was old enough to have been young in medieval days, not here but in the west country where Molly lived. Then I saw the chestnut tree from my own Cotswold garden and the blurred hint of a striped hammock looped beneath. Other trees twined branches, the ash whose strong branches had served as our first arrows when Vespasian taught us archery, the full green summer oak from behind the forest house, a floating whisper of willow reaching its leaf into the reflecting water and the grasping gloss of a strangling fig, all hollowed by the tree it had once killed and eaten. There was the stream that divided east and west in my own Gloucestershire village but the little Tudor bridge was gone, and a now beech paddled its roots amongst its own russet leaf fall. Beside it an alder stretched, clad in mistletoe, all thick with glossy white berries. Yet the alder waved fresh summer leaf while the mistletoe displayed proud winter fruit. The ancient yew yawned its shade above us all. In my time it was an empty giant and had lost half its heart. Now here in the majesty of its prime, it was solid and strong and wide. I thought, for just a moment, I could hear its song.

  “It is two worlds,” I said.

  “It is all worlds,” said Vespasian.

  He dismounted, nodded to Gerald to do the same, and held out his arms to me. I tumbled into them like a child, all crumpled and shivering. He set me on my feet and stood looking at us both. The horses snorted and tossed their heads, frightened by intangibility. Vespasian tethered them both to a hornbeam branch just beyond the edge of the clearing beside the stream, where they bent to drink and gradually calmed. He strode back to me, removing his gloves and tucking them into his belt.

  The pool was both pools and perhaps more, for under the huge yew tree there was also forest water and here the edges merged as if a hundred silver ribbons plaited back through the Earth’s memory. Beneath my feet was a tracery of perfume from the herbs Vespasian had once told us to collect. I could smell the colours and the fresh washed sky and the worms ploughing underground and the secrets of the whispering trees. I could smell lavender and betony and harewort. There was dock and pretty purple vervain in the shadow. I stood on fronded fennel and chervil, white thyme, golden buttercup and bright periwinkle. I lifted up my face but there was no warmth in the air, the wind stung and the sky was almost hidden. The leaf of a thousand trees encompassed all seasons. There were autumn cascades in carmine, rust, ruddy orange and fading purple. There was winter’s burnished copper falling from bare etched branch. There was the soft lemon green of spring’s new birth and above it, the canopy of rich summer emerald.

  I thought Gerald would misunderstand but he was lost in the misted magic. I looked straight back at Vespasian who was watching me closely. “Tell me about Molly,” I said.

  He smiled quite gently and I realised he was surprised. “I thought you would deny her,” he said.

  “How could I?” I answered. “You’ve brought her world into this one.” I nodded towards the chestnut tree and the vague striped outline of the hammock. Beneath lay medieval fern and bracken, slick with sliding rain drops. Its patter was a hundred muffled voices deadened in the gloaming. Wet earth, wet leaf, the moisture of drinking growth.

  I was waiting, hoping that Vespasian would speak again, but Gerald interrupted us. “It’s my mother’s grave,” he said. He was bending down, his beautiful blue silk knees in the grass. There was a white rose lying where the mound had once been.

  “She has a right to be here,” Vespasian said. “She was the first they slaughtered. She was tortured and mutilated because of me but she was sacrificed to Lilith. She was the beginning and has a right to see the end.”

  “Richard’s grave is here too,” I said. Henbane and strawberry runners had grown over its grassy hillock.

  “You may see him again before this night is over,” said Vespasian. I stared at him but he didn’t explain.

  “Will I see my mother?” gasped Gerald, bright eyed, but Vespasian shook his head.

  “I do not believe so, child. It’s more than twelve years and she’s gone too far on,” he said. “But she’ll hear the echoes of this night’s work and what happens will ease her passing into the next great adventure.” I wished quite suddenly, as I knew Gerald was wishing, that I had known this woman who Vespasian had loved so much. He was not a man who would give his love easily.

  Since Vespasian had not answered me about Molly, I walked over to the edge of the pools with their interspersed banks and pebbled shallows, and looked down through the varied levels of water to the flurry of fishes and the strange, sudden
leggy hop of tadpole into frog. As I watched, the dragonfly emerged from its larvae, wet drooping winged from the silvered surface, the water beetle scurried busy across the ripples and the curricled snail clung to the weedy fronds below. This was all pools and all seasons as the trees were all trees. Then the sun came out and the rain turned to rainbow.

  I watched the reflections on the water slither into brilliant refraction and the spectrum repeat in all the million droplets amongst the undergrowth. I saw a hologram of rainbows, shimmering multicoloured candles in the wind. Our stage was lit.

  I heard Vespasian behind me but he put his hands on my shoulders and kept me facing outwards. “As this is a combination of many worlds,” he said and his voice crept like a hint on the breeze without malice, “so you are many people. You should feel at home here.”

  “I do,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”

  The sting of cold had flown with the sun’s arrival. A buzz of warmth was birthing up in the high leaves, accentuated in the dazzle. Vespasian said, “Do you still switch, you and her, or are you now always combined?”

  “I thought you knew everything,” I said.

  He spun me round quite suddenly and looked down at me, still holding me firm by the shoulders. I felt the force of his hands and wondered if he could break me if he wanted, but the strength in his face wasn’t anger. It seemed more like hunger. “What I know, and you do not,” he said, still soft, “is that within you, the two innocents are united by danger. Molly is represented by the tarocchi card of The Moon, Tilda by The Fool, which is the sweetest card of all. But soon you will be told to cut the final card, which is that of the Path Holder.”

  It was warm now but I shivered. “I would have told you everything I knew before, if you’d asked me,” I said. “And if I’d realised how much you knew already. But you frightened me and hurt me and talked in riddles. And I – me – Tilda – didn’t fully recognise Molly until a few months ago. I’m not trying to hide anything, really I’m not. I’m not a danger and I don’t want to harm anyone.”