The Spellcoats (UK)

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “Solid gold!” said our King. “I swear to it! This is his latest change, is it?” We nodded. Our King carefully turned the One round to have his face beneath the lamp. Now that he is gold, the One’s features are much easier to see. He has a strong nose, a little like Hern’s or Gull’s. The King saw this. I saw him look at Hern’s profile. “How long has this fellow been in your family?” he asked Robin.

  “For as long as anyone knows, my father told me, Majesty,” Robin replied.

  “Hmm,” said our King. “Your family must once have been a very important one, young lady, did you know that? And you truly put him in a fire every year after the floods?”

  “Every year,” said Robin. “My father said we have never once missed.”

  “That was the sign by which I knew him,” our King said, turning the One over. “You have been faithful to the bargain your ancestors made with him. Do you know who he is, this golden gentleman?” He waved the One towards us, from side to side, not wholly respectfully.

  “Yes,” I said. “He’s the One.”

  “That’s a silly sort of name,” said our King. “You told me his real names earlier. My fluffy-haired maiden, he is the River – the great River himself! What do you think of that?”

  “I think it isn’t true,” I said.

  “Oh, yes, it is true,” said he, still waving the One about. “We Kings have a hard time of it and have to put up with a great deal from our subjects – flat contradictions from little girls, among other things – but our reward is that we are told more than most people. I know about your One. As a matter of fact, I had him searched for when the Heathen came. If only Jay had found him when he came to Shelling, I wouldn’t be in this pickle now. He could have got us out of it. Only fancy him turning up like this! You’d almost think he did it on purpose. What do you think you’re playing at, you stupid golden beggar?” he said to the One. “It wasn’t nice to hide away!” This was not quite a joke – or only a joke in the way that everything our King says is a sort of joke. I could see Robin was shocked.

  “How do you know he’s the River?” Hern asked bluntly. I could say that Hern was tired out after our day’s troubles, and it would be true. On the other hand, I have never once heard him speak respectfully to our King.

  “Knowledge is handed down from King to King,” said our King. “When our people first came to this land, there was a Queen called Cenblith, who may have been a many-greats-grandmother of yours as well as mine, I think. She found a way to bind the River to the service of man. They say she was a witch. I think it just as possible she was simply very pretty, and the River fell for her like a waterfall. Anyway, he submitted to be bound. He agreed among other things to support our people in battle with his not inconsiderable strength, which strength he obligingly let Cenblith put into this small image of himself. But he made one condition: that he be put into a fire once a year. When his dross was purged and he turned to gold, then he would be at his utmost power. And here he is, golden and too late!” The King’s eyes twinkled almost as if they were wet, as he looked at the One between his hands.

  I remember looking at the One and wondering about the great floods and Kankredin’s struggle with the River. I still do not believe the One and the River are the same – or not quite the same.

  “He was daft to let himself be bound,” Duck said.

  “I agree, but I am very glad he did,” said our King. He held the One up towards the coloured roof of the tent. “Now we can prosper and succeed together,” he said. “Now I’ve got you, you slippery golden beggar!”

  “Majesty,” said Robin, “the One is ours.”

  “So he is, young lady,” said our King. “You shall stay with me and keep him for me.” He passed the One to Robin. “There. Back to his rightful guardians. Keep him safe. We have a lot of travelling before us, now the floods are down.”

  And travel we did that next morning. This is what has made Robin so ill. She has been hurried here and bumped there and made to sit in the rain until the King is ready. After the first day’s travel our King had his physician see her. He said it was the River fever and, as she had had it once, she would soon be well and was quite fit to travel. It is this same physician who took off Jay’s arm. Jay says if it were not for that physician, he would still have two arms. I share Jay’s opinion. Robin does not get well, even resting.

  The King has taken a fancy to Hern. He gave him a pony to ride, while the rest of us bumped and creaked in the baggage carts. Every evening, I had to attend to Hern’s saddle sores, before I could see to Robin. Now I know why Robin so often exclaimed, “Why does nobody help me!” Everything falls on me. For the rest of the day the King has Hern beside him. “Fetching and carrying,” Hern calls it. He is not in the least grateful. The trouble is, our King loves people who are rude and familiar with him. This is why he is so fond of Jay. So the crosser Hern is, the more the King admires him.

  Hern is in a black mood. He does not show half of it to our King. He says he went down the River to rescue Gull or avenge him. He did not believe in enchantments. Yet first Tanamil and then Kankredin defeated him with spells. He could do less than Duck or I could. He was forced to admit that enchantments exist. This has damaged his respect for his own mind.

  “But enchantments are of the mind too,” I said.

  “Not of my mind,” said Hern. “That’s why I’m a failure. I wasn’t even sure people had souls. Then I saw the souls in the net and knew I was looking failure in the face. It’s an awful feeling.” Yet that was not the whole story, as I found out later.

  Duck is gloomy, too, because he is bored.

  All this while our King hastened with us across the country. He does not stay near houses or in any one place for long, for fear of the Heathens. Whenever we come to a farm or a village, the King’s men knock at doors and run into houses shouting that the King has come. If the place is empty because of the floods or the Heathens, they take what they can find. When there are people, the King orders what he needs. The people often protest; I know how we should feel if they came banging at our door and carried off all we had saved from winter before the supplies had grown again. The King promises payment and takes so much that we sit high up in the carts on piles of corn and dead sheep. Collet is our King’s memory man, and he memorises the debt. He tells me that he holds many thousand payments in his head, for food or promised rewards. He does not think they will ever be paid.

  It was very rough travelling after the floods. Robin suffered more and more because after a while she became too weak to get out and walk in the worst places. “I can’t stand this any more!” she said one evening when the sun was down, but we still went jolting on.

  Hern had looked in on us, and he saw how ill Robin was. He went and asked the King if we could stop.

  “Oh, the light’s good for miles more yet,” said our King. “Besides, there seem to be Heathens coming up behind.” Our King gets news of Heathens from everyone we encounter. And we went on.

  I was so angry that I jumped down from the cart and ran among the horses to the King. “Majesty,” I shouted. “The One wants us to stop here!”

  I did not think the King would listen, but he did. We stopped at once. After that I chose our camping place every day, speaking for the One. We spared Robin a good deal of jolting like that. It amazes me that our King believes I know the One’s wishes, but I think it is the one thing he takes seriously. I have become spokesman for the One. Every day the King asks me jestingly, “And what has the golden gentleman to say to me today, fluffyhead?” I could tell him anything.

  “If he believes you, he’d believe anything!” Hern said scornfully.

  Our King, of course, talks to everyone, freely and cheerfully, but he talked to me much more after that. I cannot be familiar with him. The weight of kingship and all our Kings before him makes him a heavy matter to me. Our position oppresses me too. We cannot be called prisoners, yet what else are we? So when he makes his jokes, I do not laugh.

  “Flu
ffyhead, you do come of a serious-minded family,” he said to me one day, in a brown field, where the grass lay plastered down with mud in long ripples. “Can’t you laugh? I know you’ve had your troubles, but look at me. I’ve lost my two sons, my wife and my kingdom, and I can still laugh.”

  “I expect you’re looking forward to conquering the Heathen and getting your kingdom back, Majesty,” I said, “and I’m not.”

  “Great One!” he said, twinkling his eyes at me. “Do you think so, solemn face? I gave up that idea months ago. The most I hope for is to save my skin until I can get a new heir. It will be my son who benefits from the One’s help, not me.”

  I thought this was just his joke at the time, but it has now become clear to me that our King has indeed no intention of fighting the Heathen again. He enquires daily about the Heathen, but this is in order to avoid them.

  Many times it has been on the tip of my tongue to tell him that the Heathen he is running from is only Kars Adon – though I think there are other little bands too, as Kars Adon said – and that the real menace is Kankredin. But I have not said. Kars Adon is a Heathen and an enemy, but his way is better than our King’s. I do not blame our King. Jay has told me how terrible the wars were. But I will not tell him about Kars Adon. Duck will not tell him either. He says our King bores him, and nobody can do anything about Kankredin. As for Hern – well, I found out when we had news of Kars Adon at last.

  Summer drew on us as we travelled. We approached the River again, which seemed to revive Robin, and came into the hills at the end of the great lake. The lake was beautiful. It was blue as solid sky. The many trees round it were reflected upside down in the blue. But it was spoilt for me by the people there. They said we were Heathens and stoned us. Duck has a scar from it which will last all his life.

  Jay stopped the stoning by saying we were Heathen princes under the protection of the mages. Robin was very angry with Jay.

  “What should I have said, lady?” Jay asked. “You try telling them the truth.”

  While we were there, some men came over the broken bridge, very pleased with themselves. They had fought Kars Adon. They knew it was him by the flags. Kars Adon’s people had been surrounded in a valley across the River. Numbers of them were killed before they could fight free.

  “Why didn’t you kill them all?” our King asked pleasantly.

  Hern told me this with a pale face. “The fool!” he said. “The stupid fool! Fancy getting himself penned in on low ground!”

  Now I know the other part of Hern’s misery. As Hern has failed in what he set himself to do, he has taken comfort in the dreams of Kars Adon. He knows it is wrong – that is why he is so moody – but he cannot help himself. I had often wondered why Hern listened so eagerly to the King’s daily messages about the Heathen.

  He was hoping for news of Kars Adon. Now we have it, it is bad news. Poor Hern. It is lucky our King does not intend to fight the Heathen. Hern would be on both sides at once.

  WE JOURNEYED THROUGH forest beyond the lake. Robin was bounced over tree roots and thrown out of the cart once. It seemed to me that much more of it would kill her.

  “Go and tell the King the One wants us to stop until Robin’s well,” said Duck.

  It was an excellent idea. “Suppose I tell him the One wants us to be left behind in an empty cottage, on our own?” I said.

  “He won’t do that,” said Duck. “He wants the One.” He was right.

  Our King readily agreed to camp until Robin was well. “Still looking very peaky, isn’t she?” he said. He pointed through the budding green. “Suppose she rests up in that old mill over there. We’ll camp outside, and the village over the River can send us food. We’ll give her a week or so. There don’t seem to be any Heathen in these parts.”

  I had no idea we were near the River. It was all forest to me. Imagine my surprise when I found it was the mill across the River from Shelling – the one that is haunted by a woman, that they say the River forbade them to use. I told the King it would do perfectly. I hoped I would see Zwitt’s face when he knew.

  Jay went over to Shelling in the punt Uncle Kestrel keeps on the millpond and gave them the King’s orders. Shortly Zwitt and some other people came over in boats, bringing a few things and protesting about the rest. I think food was short. The floods had been in all the gardens. But Zwitt would protest if he was sitting on a heap of vegetables a mile high and someone asked him for a carrot.

  Zwitt saw Hern with the King and knew him at once. He asked to speak to the King alone. I looked out from the mill and saw them walking together among the forget-me-nots by the millrace. Zwitt, by his face, was uttering dire warnings. Our King was laughing and patting Zwitt on the back. I see why our King was so pleased. Now he knows that we told the truth and the One is indeed the One. I think he came to Shelling on purpose. It is what I would have done in his place, I suppose, but my heart is heavy. He will never let us go now. Hern says Zwitt made the King promise him twice as much as usual, as a fee for leaving us alone. But promises are easy.

  “Your friends across the water tell me you put bad spells on them,” Jay said to me. “Are you a witch?”

  “I wish I was. I’d – I’d turn their feet back to front!” I said.

  “Temper, temper, now!” said Jay.

  I am still very bitter. From upstairs in the mill, where I sleep, I can see the ruins of our house. Zwitt did that. It was to soothe my bitterness and my worry about Robin that I began to long to weave. Then came my dream. Then Uncle Kestrel.

  We made Robin a bed in the dry room on the ground floor. It has a door, for loading flour, which opens on to the River, and I have this open in the daytime so that Robin can see the River. All the time I have been weaving it was at its most beautiful. The water is a deep, shining green, like an eye in the light. It flows lazily, slowly. The sun slants down in beams and turns the water green-gold. Midges circle in. Every so often a fish leaps, or a willow bud falls heavily and swims to the doorstep. But Robin does not enjoy it. And I find it so hard to be patient with her.

  That first day I was near shaking her. As we were settled, I wanted Gull with us, where I could see him. If we exchanged him for the Young One, no one but us would know the difference. Robin unwrapped Gull and let me have him. But she would not have the Young One in exchange.

  “I won’t have him near me,” she whined. “Take him away.”

  I have had to hide the Young One in my bed upstairs. If I even speak of him, Robin begins to cry. And yet she clings to the One so that even I hardly get a glimpse of him. The King came in that evening – as he comes every evening – to enquire after his “golden gentleman”. Robin would not let our King look at the One at all.

  “I wish the King would leave us alone,” she said.

  Then Sweetheart put a mouse on her bed, and you would have thought it was a poisonous snake. Then Jay came in. Jay made a lot of noise and merriment. He says laughter cures. But the reason he came, I saw of a sudden, is that he is courting Robin. I was shocked. It does not seem right when Robin is ill. Jay is quite old and has loved many women. He boasts of it. That shocked me too. But I like Jay all the same. My head was in a muddle about it.

  “Do you like Jay enough to marry him?” I asked Robin when Jay had gone.

  Robin shuddered. “No! I can’t bear the way the stump of his arm wags about!”

  It is true. Jay’s stump of arm seems to have a life of its own. I do not like to look at it either. “Don’t you like him at all?” I said. “He likes you.”

  “Don’t talk about it! I don’t want him! I shan’t ever marry!” Robin said frantically. I could have kicked myself. It was gone midnight before she was calm enough to go to sleep.

  When she did, I opened the door to the River and sat thinking. It seemed to be all my fault, this, because I had twice wronged the One. As I sat, I thought I saw a light in the River. I knelt in the doorway and stared, terrified, down into the green-gold depths of the water. There was a huge shadow there
, like a man with a long nose and a bent head. If it had not been that I had only just got Robin to sleep, I would have screamed. I was sure it was Kankredin.

  “That one-armed jokeman says my Robin is poorly,” Uncle Kestrel said. He was rowing towards the door with a tiny light in his boat. Where my shadow came from, I do not know.

  It did me good to see him. “It’s no good going for mussels,” I said. “The King’s camp is by the millpond.”

  “I know that, my love,” he said. “I came to see how you all did.”

  I knelt on the doorstep, crying a little, and told him about our travels, our King and the One. But I did not tell him about Gull. He thinks Gull died on the way.

  “Kings and Undying are like that,” said Uncle Kestrel. “They take no account of the trouble they cause. You make sure to keep Robin here until she’s well. That’s what matters. Is there any little thing I can get you from your house?”

  “You’re the only person in Shelling I love!” I said. “Did they break my loom as well as the roof?”

  “Now don’t get so fierce,” he said. “They did not. They only took their feelings out on the walls and roof.” Then he said something that has made me angry ever since. “I’m not excusing them,” he said, “but you gave them provocation, you know, even Robin. You all knew you were different, and you acted as if you were better. It made for hard feelings.” I was too angry to speak. “You want your loom brought?” he said, and I had to forgive him.

  “And my bobbins and my shuttles and my needles and my spinning wheel,” I said. “And don’t forget my yarn.”

  “You’re trying to sink my boat!” he said. “Sometimes you sound just like your aunt.” But he brought them, every one, and my spindles, which I had forgotten to ask for. I have never seen a boat so packed with wool. The loom was perched on top. I had to wake Duck to help me drag it indoors. He could not think what I was so excited about, but I think Uncle Kestrel understood.