Solem

by Clive S. Johnson

  20 A Wonderment’s Meaning

  “Are you decent, Janeen?” Fulmer called in from outside, to which she assured him she was. “I’ve got the change of clothes the lad’s donated,” he said as he came in, “although I reckon you might be swamped in them.”

  He placed a bundle on her knee and beneath her free hand, her other again clasping the towel to preserve her modesty.

  “I’ll leave you to finish off washing. Hmm, this water’s gone a bit cold. Do you want me to freshen it up?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve just about done. Only need to dry off and find my way into whatever Craith’s given me.” She felt Fulmer’s fingers beneath her chin, tilting her face up, his thumb briefly stroking beside her mouth.

  “Cheer up. You’ll feel better once you’re dry and dressed. I’ll be out on the seat by the backdoor, nursing my jaw. Do you think you can find your way that far?” and this time she nodded.

  The water was cold, but once she’d dried herself off it left her feeling more invigorated, enough to set to, working out what Craith’s bundle contained.

  Before long she had on a pair of rough pants that wouldn’t stay up of their own accord, a coarse vest of some kind and a loosely-woven but surprisingly well-fitting waistcoat. Up and until now she’d kept her drawers on for the sake of propriety but they now lay by the bowl, in need of washing. At least her boots felt reassuringly familiar, even without stockings.

  Feeling her way to the backdoor, her hand outstretched before her whilst the other held up her pants, she edged out onto stone flags. A creak to one side gave away where Fulmer now sat.

  “Well,” he said, a pause then speaking volumes, “you certainly look, erm, well…fresher. And that cardigan could have been made for you.”

  “The pants won’t stay up.”

  “Ah, well, never fear. I’ll find you some string ‘til I can sort out a belt. Oh, and I’ve also got you this.” She felt him take her free hand and guide her to the seat before placing what she took to be a long stick in her palm.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s my pig-stick. What I use to guide them when they have to be moved,” to which she only frowned. “You can use it to feel ahead, so you don’t go tripping or bumping into things.”

  “Ah, right. Thank you, Fulmer, but won’t you be needing it? For the pigs, I mean.”

  “Oh, I can easily make another. Now, sit here with me awhile. I’ve got most of the day’s important chores done, so we can spend some time brushing up on your Espousal past, eh? Do you fancy that? Learn a bit more about Fonschore?”

  Janeen played the end of her new stick across the flags before her, feeling their well-worn smoothness, the nicks between that held the odd tuft of grass or wormcast. Fulmer quietly waited until she abruptly lifted the stick and brought it sharply against the ground, making him jump.

  “Is this what it’s going to be like for the rest of my life? Is it, Fulmer? This black world of confusing sounds and untraceable smells. Am I going to have to feel my way around it to my dying day?”

  “I…I honestly don’t know, Janeen. I’d be lying if I said I did.”

  When she lifted the stick again, Fulmer grabbed hold of her hand until she’d relaxed.

  “I may not know,” he told her again, although more softly this time, “but something tells me there’s more to this than—”

  His abrupt silence unnerved her. “Than what, Fulmer?”

  “Er, well, I was going to say ‘than meets the eye’, but, well…” at which only the twittering of birds disturbed the silence that slid in to fill the dark space between them—until Janeen began laughing.

  Fulmer must have thought she was crying for he apologised most earnestly, saying how thoughtless he’d been, but then he too soon joined in, clearly realising his error. Eventually, despite each fuelling the other, it ran its course, leaving Janeen’s sporadic hiccups punctuating the silence that once more slipped in between them.

  “What were you going to say, Fulmer?” she eventually managed to get in.

  “Say? Oh, nothing. Nothing I can really put my finger on; just an odd feeling I have.”

  “Feeling? About what?”

  Fulmer remained silent for some time, unmoving beside her on their shared seat. Janeen strained to hear the familiar sounds of the trees rustling in the slight breeze, somewhat removed to each side, of the birds chirruping and flitting about around them, but then Fulmer quietly said, “It didn’t strike me until the lad asked what demons were.”

  “What didn’t?”

  “It’s…it’s hard to put into words, really. I suppose it was his wondering that made me think, that brought my own recent turn of thoughts into sharp relief.”

  “Your own thoughts?”

  Fulmer fell quiet again, but then the bench rocked and his voice came softly from above her. “We live in an ordered world, Janeen, all of us: both in The Espousal and throughout The Green.”

  His voice moved slowly back and forth before her, the tread of his boots hardly impinging. “It’s an ordered and unchanging world, intentionally so, the safest and longest lasting there can be. But you see, I think I now understand why that means it’s never had a place for wonderment, no place at all, why wonderment is so alien to its folk.”

  “But I wonder, Fulmer. I’ve wondered all my life, about all sorts of things. It’s what my dad schooled me to hide when he eventually got over the shock of losing Mum, when he was well enough again.”

  “Ah, did he, did he indeed.”

  “His friend, my Uncle Calver, looked after me when Dad couldn’t, not that I remember much about it; I was only about eight at the time. When he got well again, though, I do remember him being really stern about me asking things. You know, when I wondered about stuff I didn’t understand.”

  “So he knew then about your demon, but for some reason chose to disobey our laws.”

  “I don’t know. The first I ever heard about demons was the last day I saw him, when he took me fishing and mentioned them, before he…”

  Fulmer’s hand rested on her shoulder, a gentle pat or two before he sat quietly beside her, taking her hand in his.

  Janeen hesitated at first, but then had to say it: “You lied to Craith when you told him you didn’t know what a demon was, didn’t you?”

  “No, Janeen, I didn’t. When he asked, I truly didn’t know.”

  “But you do now, don’t you?”

  This time, when she felt his gaze upon her, intense and unwavering, she could almost sense his features: his heavyset eyebrows, the tufts of thin hair at the sides of his head, his shiny bald pate, grey eyes full of guarded concern, his mouth’s tentative tremble.

  She clenched his hand and drew it between her own, folding her fingers about his. Then he nodded, ever so slightly, and she knew, knew deep down that he’d found an answer to his own first wonderment.

  “I wish…” slipped quietly from Fulmer’s still quivering lips. “I wish I’d seen all this more clearly before Craith left. Maybe then I’d have made my warning far more dire. I just hope he’s taken it to heart and remembers, remembers it well, and doesn’t reveal a tainting he doesn’t know he’s now carrying into the heart of The Espousal—into Gryff.”

  21 Geetholden

  The occasional view at each turn of the stone-flagged road’s zigzag climb up the hill, away from the two huge columns that flanked its start, fascinated Craith. He took each higher opportunity to stand beside Duncan and to stare out over the treetops that spilled down the steep slope below them, each time marvelling the more.

  Other than the lake’s reflection of the sky towards the winter-set, glinting with the Sun’s lowering spring light, and the glittering course of another river away to the noon-high, all that lay before them was forest. It rose, beyond the river, to a low tree-enshrouded line of hills. As Duncan and Craith’s climb progressed, though, he began to see beyond them, to where the forest lay flat as far as the eye could eventually see.

  “Bleeding D
wargstor,” he breathed out at what appeared to be their last clear view before the road lessened its climb and straightened out, soon to be swallowed once more by the dense forest ahead. Looking out at the view, he shivered a little.

  “I thought it were only towards t’spring-set that The Green ran so low and flat. And there seems to be so much more of it on this side,” at which he tangled his fingers in Duncan’s mane to steady his thoughts. His averted gaze now latched onto the river, following its lazy course towards the lake.

  There, he caught the telltale glint of its further journey, out towards what he’d been told was the far off sea in the spring-set. And sure enough, when he shaded his eyes and peered that way, a faint shimmering line of silver and grey along the distant horizon replaced the forest’s hazy blue spread.

  When he turned away and led Duncan towards the dark embrace ahead, Craith again blew out a long breath. “I never knew anywhere in The Espousal were as high as this. Nowhere,” and Duncan seemed to whicker back his agreement.

  Despite the darker press of the forest, into which Craith now rode Duncan, he welcomed the loss of the views it brought, and according to Woodwright’s instructions, the nearing end of their journey. Gryff should lay not far ahead, which was fortunate, for the afternoon was already creeping on towards evening.

  Woodwright had told Craith it was the only way into Gryff’s geetholden, where he’d to deliver the letter still held in the satchel at his hip. Throughout the climb up to here, he’d hailed a handful of oncoming carters, clearly returning with their empty carts or unladen donkeys, but now he and Duncan seemed the only wayfarers on the road.

  The day’s fast fading light soon brought even deeper gloom to the forest, as though they were being swallowed into Gryff’s dark belly. Craith again shivered, but this time more noticeably.

  As he began to worry about not being able to see their way ahead, a small verdant hint of light marked a distant arch in the blackness before them. Craith nudged his heels into Duncan’s flanks, but they’d both seemingly drawn no nearer by the time the next hour had slowly slipped by. Only when well into a further hour did the arch reveal itself to be the forest opening out into a large clearing, a wall or a low building at its furthest side.

  “Looks like we’re here at last, Duncan: the geetholden,” and Craith saw more of the building revealed to each side as they trotted towards the clearing’s widening spread of the day’s diminishing light.

  As they came out into the open, Craith now saw how far the building ran: right the way across the far side of what was a sizeable space. Each end of the building turned to run along the wall of trees to either side, until their gable ends abutted stockyards, between which Craith had now brought Duncan to a halt. Goats and some pigs, and cages of hens, partly filled the subdivided yards, a drove of donkeys in one corner.

  Craith dismounted and led Duncan on into a courtyard, the stockyards now behind them on one side, the building embracing the other three. The warm glow of an open doorway beside a gated archway ahead drew Craith to a long hitching rope, where he tied up Duncan.

  “Think you might ‘ave some company tonight,” Craith told him, looking back at the penned donkeys. “Woodwright said they’d have lodgings here, so I won’t be far away.”

  Immediately through the doorway, two parallel handrails ran away from it and aimed him squarely at a long and low counter on the far side of a wide, lamp lit and seemingly empty room. It looked like the bar of a pub, but instead of pots of beer and barrels, its surface boasted piles of large and shiny books, all neatly stacked.

  To one side and between two such piles, he now noticed a black capped head bobbing about, barely visible above the counter top, things out of sight being clunked and scraped. The flopping cap’s owner seemed to be holding a mumbled conversation with someone, but Craith could see no one else about.

  Leaning on the counter, Craith cleared his throat.

  The hat jerked up, bringing with it the startled face of a black-robed man, his high red-ruffed collar accentuating a pale and drawn face.

  “By Solem’s most gracious gifts, you scared the shit out of me! What you doing creeping up like that?”

  “Sorry. I thought you’d heard me come in.”

  “No. I was a bit preoccupied. Anyway, you’re cutting it a bit fine, aren’t you? I was just shutting up shop, although I can still book you in, but it’ll be morning before you can unload.”

  “I’ve only got a letter.”

  “A letter?” and Craith fished in his satchel. When the man read who it was addressed to, his eyes grew large.

  “Ah, and there was I, thinking I’d get off on time.” He looked across at Craith and held up the letter. “Is a reply expected?” and when Craith said it was, the man’s face dropped further still. “Well, you’ll have to wait,” and he marched off along his side of the counter, beckoning Craith alongside him on the other.

  At the end, the man lifted a hinged section and tied it back against the wall, then stepped through and swept Craith to a doorway in the corner and into a passage.

  “The refectory stays open ‘til late. You can get yourself something to eat until I can get back and show you to your room.”

  “M’donkey’s tied up outside.”

  The man stopped, sighed and slowly shook his head. “Very well; let’s go get that out of the way first then, shall we, whilst there’s still a bit of light.”

  As they came out to where Duncan was tethered, the man asked, “Your first time here?” and Craith nodded. “Thought I’d not seen you before. Well, I’m the cumyena on duty—still, it would seem. Cumyena Preost. And you?”

  “Craith.”

  “Ah, and your donkey—”

  “Duncan.”

  “Really, how appropriate. But what I was going to say was your donkey will need to go in on its own. We’ve already got some others in, you see, but they’re being taken off at first light. Don’t want…er, Duncan going off with them, now do we?”

  Having settled Duncan in to his own pen, a scattering of straw for his feed and its water trough topped up, Cumyena Preost finally delivered Craith to the refectory. Here, a dozen or so long tables—benches along each side—stood largely deserted. Just the one hosted a group of five other carters, all in heated discussion, cleanly scraped platters before them.

  At the far side of the refectory, a dish laden trestle table fronted a couple of stone sinks and three clay ovens. An older woman in striped pinafore and headscarf vigorously raked embers from beneath one whilst a young lad in robes, his sleeves rolled up, leisurely tackled a sink full of dirty platters.

  “Ellisa,” Preost called out as he guided Craith between the tables, “what have you got left for our late arrival?”

  “Eh?” she said, turning. “Oh,” and her eyes lit up as she grinned widely at Craith. “For such a fine young lad as this, I’m sure we can rustle up something to whet his appetite.” She wiped her hands on a cloth and used it to lift the lids from three large, rectangular earthenware dishes set side by side on the trestle.

  “This one’s mushroom and onion topped with mash. They’re last year’s dried mushrooms, but I reckon my special herbs make all the difference. Then we’ve got—”

  “That looks great,” Craith enthused, his mouth already watering.

  “Well, we’ve also got spinach and goat’s cheese. That’s gone down pretty well today. There’s still enough here for a large portion, though.”

  Preost thanked Ellisa but then excused himself, telling Craith he’d be back by the time he’d finished eating.

  “I’ll take you to your room once I’ve got this,” and he slipped the corner of the letter from his robes, “to Biscop Driscoll’s aide. I doubt it’ll be attended to until the morning, though.”

  Craith soon sat at an empty table, a large steaming portion of mushroom pie before him. Ellisa had been right: it tasted wonderful.

  After he’d been eating awhile, one of the carters at the other table caught Craith’s e
ye and nodded.

  “Alright?” he asked.

  “Aye, and you?” Craith mumbled past his mouthful of pie.

  “You’re late in. Big load?”

  “No. Just a letter,” and the carter seemed to relax.

  “Ah, right. Wondered, given I ain’t seen your face afore. Thought we’d got someone muscling in,” and he smiled disarmingly as he nudged his neighbour and they quietly laughed.

  “Muscling in?”

  “Supplying Gryff.”

  “Oh, I see. No, I ain’t stepping on no one’s toes. I’ve enough on along t’river,” and Craith returned him his own smile.

  “Well, seeing you’re not a threat, fancy joining us for cards? You could make up a sixth. We’re just about to get started…once these platters ‘ave been cleared,” he finished off in a raised voice.

  The lad at the sink turned abruptly, wiped his hands on his robes and rushed over to clear the table.

  “’Appen I might,” Craith said, “but I think I’ll just take a check on m’donkey first, if you don’t mind?” and he quickly finished off his meal and pushed his own platter across the table for the lad to collect as he passed by.

  Craith had only got as far as the door to the courtyard when Preost called “Craith Waindrifa, wait,” from beyond the counter. The man was clearly out of breath as he rushed to join Craith, wiping his brow with his sleeve.

  “Sorting out a room for you will have to wait.” Craith only stared dumbly back. “I’ve to…well, I’ve to take you…take you into Gryff itself,” and he looked flustered.

  “Into Gryff?” and Craith was about to ask “Why?” when he remembered Fulmer’s warning.

  “Come on. This way,” and Preost rushed off, back through the lifted counter section, only stopping to hurry Craith along behind him.

  22 Bewitched

  After their evening meal, Janeen found her own way out to the seat by the back door, breathing deeply of the encroaching night’s air as she began thinking. She’d offered to try and wash up, but Fulmer would have none of it. It didn’t seem to take him long, though, before he clomped past, telling her he was only taking the slops down to the pigs. Revealingly, she recognised the squeak of the metal bucket’s handle, the one to which her eyes now owed so much.