The Pale Companion

by Philip Gooden

  “Oh, I followed my father’s advice – eventually.”

  “And . . .?”

  “The woman and I, we married. We were blissfully happy. Or as near to bliss as one can approach on this side of the door. She was Kate’s mother.”

  Something about his tone discouraged any further comment. Anyway at that moment, my horse Napper stopped. I don’t mean that he slowed and halted. He simply stopped, dead. If we hadn’t been going at an amble, I would have been pitched forward. Since he’d dug his heels in, I dug mine in too, into the jade’s flanks. He’d soon learn who was master. The answer came quick: he was the master.

  I spoke harshly, I spoke kindly. I spoke pleadingly. All to no effect. Fielding’s palfrey continued to pick his civilized way down the whitened track. I don’t think the Justice was aware at first that I’d been left behind. When he eventually turned round, his first response was laughter. “Nicholas, you ride a horse as though you were sitting in a chair.” Then advice, shouted across the distance between us: “Abandon all hope, Nicholas. Think that your horse will never move again. And let him know that you do not care. Whistle or something.”

  So I folded my arms, whistled a country air and acted all blithe and unconcerned. Eventually Napper, piqued by my attitude, lumbered into motion once more. When I caught up with Fielding, he was struggling to keep the grin off his face. But I hadn’t finished quizzing him. There were other matters, Instede matters, to be explained.

  For example, what was the connection between Peter Paradise, the leader of the pious players, and Oswald the drama-hating steward? I described to the Justice how I’d followed the stick-man away from the lakeside and down into the wood, and also repeated some of the fragments of dialogue as far as I could remember them.

  “That is easily enough explained, I think,” said Fielding. “Can you keep your horse at a little distance, by the way.”

  “I’ll try but he is not very responsive.”

  “It is a question of command – and the indifference of command. Do not worry whether you will be obeyed.”

  I yanked Napper away from his attempts to nuzzle Fielding’s palfrey, at the same time trying to get the conversation away from my rotten riding and back to the subject of Oswald and Peter Paradise.

  “It may be easily explained,” I said irritably, “but it’s a mystery to me.”

  “Rather like horsemanship, I suspect,” said Fielding. “But if you come to Oswald and the leader of the Paradise players, it is yet another case of brothers. Oswald Eden is Peter Paradise’s brother. Peter changed his name when he started touring in this part of the world. He warns of purgatory but he advertises paradise.”

  “What? Oswald?” I said, surprised and yet somehow not surprised. It’s only a short hop from an Eden to a Paradise, after all. “Oswald is related to that pious crew?”

  “Not to all of them. They aren’t real brothers anyway. I believe that only Peter is officially blessed with the name of Eden – or Paradise. But Peter calls the other two ‘brother’ and doubtless they’re all happy enough to live under the heavenly banner of his name, his assumed name.”

  “So when Peter was saying ‘brother’ to Oswald he wasn’t just saying it, he really meant it . . .? Wait! Whoa there!”

  My little horse, my little Napper, now took it into his pinhead to go off on a personal circuit across the plain. Eventually, by dragging on the reins and with a mountain of curses, I brought him back to the straight and narrow. Or rather he elected to come back to it in his own good time.

  “Is that why the players were tolerated at Instede?” I asked, when I’d recovered my breath. “Because of the fraternal connection between pious Peter and Oswald?”

  “As fraternal as Cain and Abel, I should think,” said Fielding. “No, it was rather my Lady who encouraged their presence. She turned pious herself after her young days. Last night we heard the reason why. She thought she might be damned for causing . . . for allowing her first child to be removed from her. This was her way of making amends, one of her ways. She is a good woman at heart.”

  “A case of brothers . . .” I repeated Fielding’s earlier words to myself. Then a sudden thought struck me under the open sky of the plain, and several things came together in my head at once.

  “Adam,” I said, in my excitement. “Did you ever see Robin the woodman? The man who hanged himself or did not hang himself – or who was suspended by his simple brother or who was not suspended – or whatever may be the truth of that . . . did you ever see him?”

  “He was a shy creature of the woods. How should I have seen him? Why?”

  “It’s just that he looked a little like Elcombe. They shared the same bony features.”

  “So?”

  “He uttered all that talk about being heir to a great estate.”

  “Living among trees addled his brains.”

  “And when you questioned Lord Elcombe about Merry,” I pursued, undeterred, “you remember what he said about her? That she was open to all – what was it? – ‘any fellow on the estate might have covered her’.”

  “And so?”

  Fielding’s dismissive attitude irked me. After all, I had listened to enough of his ideas. So I went on. “Lord Elcombe’s father, of whom I have heard only a little, no doubt behaved with the . . . the licence that fitted his rank. Suppose that he ‘covered’ this woman on his estate – in his youth maybe. That would account for the likeness between Robin and Elcombe, perhaps even explain why the one suffered the other’s presence on his land.”

  “You could be right,” said Fielding after a time. “The same idea occurred to me almost at the instant that Lord Elcombe gave that reply.”

  “Oh, well then . . .” I was obscurely disappointed.

  “No one would be helped by the discovery, though,” said Fielding. “You are right about old Elcombe’s behaviour. There was a greater licence in those days, a memory of the late king, I expect. It is possible that old Elcombe was the father of poor Robin. But in the present circumstances, a certain knowledge of this – even if it were obtainable – would only increase the family’s pain, to no good purpose. We should rest in doubt, we should leave well alone. Let sleeping bodies lie.”

  I might have debated this with him, even though it was really none of my business. But at that instant Napper again chose, maliciously, to take off. On this occasion, instead of travelling in a circuit, he elected to go in a straight line. But not the straight line in which Fielding and I had hitherto been moving. Rather we shot at a slant across the great plain. I was barely conscious of where we were going, my steed and I, because I was busy clinging for dear life to reins, mane, pommel, anything. At every instant I could have been pitched or tossed onto the hard, shardy ground, there to make acquaintance with one of the many little hummocks of rock which dotted the plain.

  The landscape blurred past. The horizon leapt up and down as I bounced around on top of Napper, every jolt and jerk jarring my bones. The horse’s hoofs thundered on the turf, pounding it into submission. Though my steed was short and somehow peasant-like in his overall demeanour, he could move fast. Very fast, faster possibly than any animal had ever moved or human being been moved before. I became convinced that Napper was travelling so rapidly not for his own pleasure but in order to put me in fear of my life. I became convinced that the Instede stable-lad had deliberately foisted on me the most wilful, vicious animal in his stalls. I shouted curses and imprecations to the air and, when those didn’t work, whispered endearments in the horse’s ear (on those occasions when I found myself close to it), trying to soothe and flatter the beast into slowing. But Napper raced on in his own sweet way. I dared not look round, couldn’t look round, so didn’t know whether Fielding was aware of my predicament. He was most likely sitting at ease on his immaculately behaved palfrey, roaring his head off at my discomfort.

  To my jumping vision, something white and blockish now seemed to be gathering form in the distance. As we drew closer I realized that it was the
strange collection of standing stones which we had passed on the way to Instede House. The stones which had reminded me of the uprights and cross-pieces of a giant’s house and which, according to Richard Sincklo, had been transported to this place and erected by the magic of Merlin in Arthur’s age. Last time, walking with my fellows, we had not approached the stones so near as Napper now seemed determined to take me. From a distance, the pillars and cross-pieces were imposing enough, partly on account of their strangeness and the mystery of their origins, partly on account of the way they stood up against the large sky. Close to, they were as alarming as God’s teeth.

  Close to . . . and closer to . . . and closer to still! Jesus, when was this horse going to stop going, or slow down, or swerve aside from a course which must bring us – me! – into the most immediate bone-snapping skull-shattering meeting with hard stone. “Napper! Napper!” I shouted, screamed, pleaded. “Napper!”

  But to no avail. The mighty blocks of stone reared up like fragments of cliff-face. Evidently my mount, deciding that neither of us deserved to live any longer, planned to fling himself headlong at an immovable object many times larger and harder than himself. I clung low round his hot neck while a few prayer-like phrases rushed pell-mell through my head.

  At the last instant Napper swerved and came to a stop so abruptly that I was almost somersaulted forward over his neck. Then, without a pause, he began to crop at the grass which grew in thick tufts near the base of the stones, for all the world as though we’d been out for a gentle amble. I scrambled off his back before he changed his mind. My legs were simultaneously stiff, from clinging tight to the horse’s flanks ever since Instede, and trembling from terror, and I near buckled to the ground. The horse went on grazing contentedly, his white legs planted foursquare on the turf as though nothing would shift him this side of doomsday. I was quite glad he hadn’t looked up to witness my weakness. I dare say he was aware of it, though. Animals are like that.

  After a time I’d recovered my wind and wits sufficiently to start inspecting my situation. I was standing just outside the perimeter of the great white teeth. Another couple of seconds and we’d most assuredly have collided with that monster over there, and Revill’s brains – to say nothing of Napper’s lack of them – would be spilled all down the stone. Well, it was just a matter of waiting for Adam Fielding to catch up with me. Then, pleading the intractability of my horse, I’d beg a hoist up onto the back of his civilized grey palfrey for the last few miles to Salisbury. Napper could stay grazing, or make his own way back to Instede, or go to the devil, for all I cared.

  I waited. At my back the wind whistled softly through the stones, and I couldn’t help thinking of someone whistling through their teeth. I listened for the distant clop of hoofs but heard only the lazy murmur of a summer’s afternoon, insect buzz, bird song. Where was Fielding? Surely he must have seen the direction I’d taken off in? Scattered around the edge of the upright rings were fallen slabs and tumbled blocks. I clambered on top of one of these slabs and was surprised at how much better a vantage point it gave over the surrounding plain. Shading my eyes, I gazed out to the hazy west, ready to shout and wave whenever Justice Fielding hove into sight. But he did not appear. Gentle mounds and humps disturbed the grassy spread. The wind whoo-whooed mournfully among the stones and the grasses bent to the breeze. I shivered slightly, to think once again of the mighty race which must surely have had a hand in the cutting and shaping of these mighty stones, unless Merlin’s magic had done it all. In such a spot, it is easier to believe in magic.

  It was lonely out on the plain under the bare sky by God’s teeth. Even Napper, that browsing self-destructive steed, had shifted out of my line of sight and was presumably munching grass round a corner. Well, I told myself, I’ll give it another few minutes and then I shall set off back to Salisbury relying on that never-failing mode of transport: human legs. It was no more than a handful (or legful) of miles to the city. In that direction, I rather thought, turning round, an easterly direction . . . so if I kept my shadow more or less in front of me . . . I should arrive well before nightfall.

  But it wouldn’t be necessary after all to trust to the Revill legs because, turning back, I now saw in the distance a mounted figure making his easy progress across the plain. I was more relieved than you might think. I called out, I waved my arms in the air, and was pleased to observe the figure making a slight alteration in his course to steer towards the stone circle. I sat down on the slab, then lay down on my side, keeping half an eye on Fielding’s unhurried advance. The surface of the stone was warm and its mossy indentations might have been shaped to the body, my body at least. I closed my eyes. The westering sun warmed my face and limbs. I allowed my mind to drift, imagining how I’d fend off Adam Fielding’s jibes at my poor horsemanship, then moving on to think of his daughter Kate. I hoped she hadn’t grown too familiar with Will Fall on the drive to Salisbury. Surely the daughter of a Justice, with her impatient wit and sharp eye, would find Fall, well, a bit common? He was used to drabs after all and should not aspire higher, being only the son of a carter (not that I’m normally disdainful about origins, of course). And he was short of stature. Short Fall.

  I must have fallen asleep for a moment. Because when I next looked at the sky the sun had slipped down a notch and the figure on the plain had grown bigger. The air between us was thick and dazzling, and he and his mount shimmered in the gathered heat of a late June afternoon. I almost made to sit up and wave him in over the final two or three furlongs but he was obviously heading in this direction without my aid, so again my eyes closed, involuntarily. Seconds later, it seemed, they flew open to discern the black figure larger, much larger, as if he’d suddenly put on speed in the intervening period. But that couldn’t be, because he was still travelling at the same leisurely pace.

  Once more, I made to sit up but an instinct caused me to stay still, to lie close along the top of the slab.

  There was something about him . . . what was it?

  It’s easy enough to recognize someone on foot, from their pace, their posture and outline, even if you’re only halfway familiar with them. It’s harder with a person on horseback because together they make a new shape. However, I saw – now that the figure was only a couple of hundred yards off – that it was not Adam Fielding. I’d expected to see him, and that expectation had conspired with the hazy dazzle of the afternoon to make me believe that the approaching shape must be him.

  Instead, it was Oswald the steward, Oswald Eden, riding a pale horse.

  There was a gentleman I had no wish to meet.

  I wondered whether, if I lay very still atop my slab, he might pass me by altogether. Foolish Revill, to have stood up earlier, shouting and waving. Then, in front of my eyes, pranced that treacherous beast Napper, fresh from his grass-cropping and ready for another bout of running, almost as if to draw attention to my presence among the stone rings. For, even if Oswald wasn’t sure of my exact whereabouts, he’d know that I wouldn’t be far from my horse.

  I didn’t doubt that Oswald had come to harm me. Or, if that sounds too self-concerned, I didn’t doubt that he was up to no good and that when he found me in his way he would not scruple to harm me if he could. I thought of leaping off the slab where I lay stretched out like a sacrificial offering but he would have seen me shift for certain, if he hadn’t already noticed me.

  It was Napper came to my rescue. That doughty little beast, all skirring white legs, saw in the distance an equine fellow. The fact that it happened to have a human being on top of it was immaterial. They say horses are sociable beasts, don’t they? Just as he’d earlier tried to make friends – or mischief – with Fielding’s dignified palfrey, so Napper now set off to make hay with Oswald’s pale mount.

  The steward was a much better rider than I’ll ever be, and probably didn’t have much difficulty in controlling his own mount and seeing off the unwanted little Sweathland. I didn’t wait to find out. Oswald was distracted for a space, sufficient t
o let me stage an unobtrusive exit. I half rolled, half jumped off the far side of the slab, putting it between me and the rider. I landed awkwardly on the turf and a protruding stone stabbed me in the ribs but I took no account of that and scuttled further into the stone circles, sometimes on hands and knees, sometimes at a crouch. The monumental grey-white columns and cross-pieces, which had previously seemed alien, now offered shelter. Out on the plain I could hear whinnies and whee-hees and the odd shout. Good. Oswald was still occupied. Perhaps he wasn’t such a good horseman after all. Near the centre of the rings, I found a pair of fallen blocks angled together, perhaps a cross-piece and an upright. Even in their fallen state they stood taller than me. The grass here was longer and some straggles of bramble had thrown themselves across the slabs. Oblivious to the brambles, I snugged myself into the sunless corner. Huddled down here, I hoped to go undiscovered, at least if Oswald made only a cursory search. Then, when he’d ridden away, I would emerge from my hiding-place and walk to Salisbury, walk briskly, to get back to cities and men and civilization.

  I waited. The sounds from the plain had died away. Again, I waited. I seemed to have been waiting among these stones for ever. The rings might have been magic circles inside which time was halted. But time had not stopped. I observed the shadows lengthening on the grass and inching up a facing stone. There was no sound, apart from insect hum and bird calls. A rabbit scuttered across the rubble-strewn centre of the circle. The place was pocked with their holes. Still silence.

  I made to move. I was stiff from having huddled in the stone angle, and my hands and face tingled from bramble scratches. I was almost upright on my feet when I froze.

  A clink of stone and a kind of shuffle somewhere behind me.

  Quicker than thought, I dropped back into my hiding-place.

  “Are you there?”