by Alex Myers
Life at Ringmar resumed its normal pattern after Wendell’s visit, but Silence felt now that a weight had settled on him. The world became a little less bright. Clopper was not a fierce and fast mount; he was a plodding horse, good enough only for a girl. The wooden sword was just a stick and waving it around would never make him a warrior. The tapestries were just dusty old pieces of cloth (one even had mildew at a corner where an oak’s roots were embroidered) and Ringmar itself was just a pile of stones, set to moulder in the woods. A place to be forgotten. A place where he could grow up in secret, hide away his Nature, and put on a false face to the world. As his father wished.
The winter was long, made longer by the thought that perhaps even now Young Wendell sat by the hearth in the great hall of Tintagel, learning the arts of knighthood from Silence’s own father. It was more than he could bear. Now that he knew he could never have it, he wanted it more than ever. That truth had settled on him over the course of the winter. If, as Griselle had told him, he would inevitably blossom and become a lady under his clothes, then he would never be a knight. No set of armour could hide that Nature. It seemed so cruel, that his father had put this fate upon him; it seemed so cruel that Silence felt such a deep and unchangeable desire to be a knight, when Nature made it impossible.
Spring broke through at last, in the way it does in Cornwall, the howling wind calming to a gentle breeze, the freezing fog becoming mere mist, the icy ground squelching into mud. As soon as he could, Silence took long walks through the forest, a couple of hounds for company, a quiver of arrows on his belt and his bow (the string wrapped in oiled cloth – this the seneschal had taught him properly) against his shoulder. He tried to teach himself to walk silently, quieter even than the hounds; he wanted to embody his own name, to become Silence. It seemed fitting, just what his father would want of him: to be invisible.
On one spring day, when the woods still held pockets of snow and ice in their deepest shadows, Silence stalked along, following the trail of a hart. He wouldn’t hunt it in early spring; the seneschal said it was the time of year for all things to breed, for young to grow, for the world and all the animals to quicken new life. It wasn’t the time for killing.
The hoofprints led near to a spring; not the one close to Ringmar (for he had wandered quite far into the woods) where he used to sit with Griselle and hear stories, but one he hadn’t chanced on before. Someone had been here, though, for a wooden cup hung from a tree branch above the spring. For a moment, something tingled through Silence, a squeeze of recognition. How many stories had some sort of sign; the hero stumbling across a horn hanging from a tree, a horn that must be sounded to free … But no, Silence was not a hero, the woods of Ringmar were not magical, and this was but a wooden cup.
Still, he took it down with care, and remembering what Griselle and the seneschal had told him, he first crossed himself and then knelt on the squishy ground, the two hounds panting alongside him. ‘May I take some of the water?’ he asked, feeling a little foolish. He leaned over the small pool that the spring formed as it spilled forth. His own sweaty face scowled at him (he hadn’t known he was scowling, though Griselle had complained all winter that he was doing so) and he tried to force it into a more pleasant expression.
‘Oh, don’t bother,’ said a voice in his ear. ‘I’m not fooled. I can feel how angry you are.’ Silence jerked his head to the side, to see who was speaking to him, but no one was there.
‘In here,’ the voice said.
He looked again into the pool and to his great shock, another face had appeared. Where his skin was pale, with flushed cheeks, the other face was so pale as to be tinged almost blue. And where his hair was golden-blond and falling in sweaty clumps on either side of his face, the other’s hair (which was held back by a simple leather band) was silver-blond, a yellow so light it was almost white. ‘Who … what …’ Silence stammered. He saw his own grey eyes go round in confusion, while the other’s eyes – a clear blue the colour of the water itself – twinkled in amusement.
‘Who am I? What am I?’ The spring gurgled and splashed into the pool, a sound like laughter. ‘Let’s say I’m the nymph of the pool. I know you’ve heard the stories.’
‘But nymphs are ladies,’ Silence said. He realized he had heard the stories, but the stories were awfully short on details.
‘And am I not a lady?’
Silence couldn’t tell. He studied the face in the water. It was just a face, a young face, not unlike his own, only drawn out to more extremes. High cheekbones, a thin nose with the slightest hook at the end. And red, red lips. ‘I don’t know,’ Silence said. ‘I can’t see all of you.’
‘Can any of us see all of anyone else?’
Silence frowned, his forehead wrinkling, and one of the hounds gave a little whimper.
‘Give them my water,’ the nymph said. ‘They’re thirsty. So are you. Drink. It won’t hurt you. It’s only water.’
Somehow, Silence did not find these words reassuring. But he was thirsty, so he dipped the cup, the ripples distorting the nymph’s face, and watered the dogs and then gulped down a few swallows himself. Icy cold. He hung the cup back up. ‘Thank you,’ he said and stared into the pool again.
‘What are you looking for, Silence?’
‘Why aren’t you here in the flesh?’ he asked.
‘Those of us who live in Fey find it easier not to burden ourselves with a body, most of the time.’ The nymph smiled, parting those red lips to show even white teeth. Several of them looked very sharp. ‘Is that what you want? Not to have a body? I can see how it would be a burden for a boy like you. A boy who is a girl under his clothes.’
Silence jerked away from the pool and stood up. ‘How do you know?’ he said, looking wildly around, as if there might be someone to overhear them, this deep in the woods.
‘How could I not?’ More of the gurgling, splashing laughter. ‘I’m sorry it causes you anguish.’ And the nymph did sound truly sorry. Silence once again knelt by the spring, running his hands down the hounds’ spines, scratching their ears.
‘I don’t want to be a girl,’ he whispered.
‘Then don’t be.’
‘But I can’t be a boy.’
‘Oh, you’ll do well enough. Stop thinking of it as a problem, and believe it to be a strength. You’ll be a boy who has something no other boy has, who knows things no other boy knows. You’ll be aware of being a boy in a way no other boy could be.’
‘But my Nature,’ he stammered. ‘No matter what I want, my body will blossom and …’
‘Nature is but the mould that forms us,’ the nymph said. A breeze sent ripples across the pool and a strand of silver-white hair blew loose, straying across the nymph’s forehead. ‘Nature might have given you delicate hands, but if you work all day with wood, what happens?’ The nymph’s eyebrows lifted.
Silence stared at his hands. The chill had turned them red. Days of carving wood, fletching arrows, cutting leather, not to mention practising shooting his bow, all had made scrapes and nicks and callouses aplenty on his fingers. ‘They grow rough,’ he said.
‘Indeed.’ The nymph sounded amused. ‘We can form ourselves, through our labour, through our love, through our desire. We can form our own selves, despite what Nature intends.’
Silence thought about this. The leaves above him rustled and the wind brought a chill through his jacket. He had been walking long and hard and now his sweat had cooled. The hounds, too, shivered against him. He ought to be getting back to Ringmar. The nymph’s words puzzled him, but he couldn’t deny their truth. ‘Thank you,’ he said, rising to his feet. He brushed the mud from his knees and dug in the purse he carried on his belt, sorting through all the odd bits he stored there, the blue feather, the arrowhead, the mouse skull … and settled on a pale red stone he’d found elsewhere in the woods, perfectly smooth and round, though it hadn’t come from a stream. He set it beside the spring.
‘Thank you,’ the nymph’s voice said. ‘I shall enjoy
its company; I am sure it has stories to tell.’
Then Silence offered a bow, the one Griselle said he should use for a lord, and whistled for the hounds to follow as he plunged back into the woods. He abandoned the hart’s path, thinking instead to find a faster way back to Ringmar.
He must have tracked further than usual, for the woods around him were unfamiliar. These tumbled rocks, green with lichen, might once have been a druid’s temple, and he had certainly never chanced upon them before. The hounds ran close to his legs, as if wary of the place. The woods gave way to swampy ground, and Silence looked again at the sky. The sun had arched over and was plunging down, and he knew from its angle exactly which way he should go to return to Ringmar … so through the bog he plunged, getting his feet and shins soaked. The hounds padded beside him, pausing on every dry patch to shake themselves. Beyond the bog a meadow stretched out, still swampy in parts, and here and there bursting with clumps of spring’s first wildflowers. Purple and white and pink and yellow, they made him give a little laugh of joy. How perfect. As he passed a clump, he bent down and cut a few stalks with his belt knife, thinking that Griselle would enjoy them. He thought of the story of ‘The Knight of the Flowers’, and then he thought, as he gathered a few more blooms, of what the nymph had said and how he could make himself a knight. How he might undo his Nature … could he? Or was it a mad idea from Fey?
And then, just as he was puzzling this over, a scream drove all thought from his mind. The hounds’ noses went up, their ears pricked, and without a second of hesitation, Silence ran towards the scream. The horrible sound came again and again, and he sprinted across the meadow, once sinking up to his knee in a boggy spot, emerging onto the very track that ran to Ringmar (how had he wandered this far?) and seeing there – oh, horror! – Lord Wendell’s little daughter, staring at a mangy, grinning wolf.
Flowers lay scattered near the girl’s feet, suggesting that she had been enjoying the same activity as Silence, and she screamed once more. The wolf, as if in answer, crouched low, the fur of its back raised in a bristly ridge, its tail swish-swishing. Silence recognized that posture from the dogs of the kennel – it meant they were stalking and would soon leap. He tore the oiled cloth away from his bowstring and quickly fitted it tight, nocking an arrow and taking aim, pausing only to shout, ‘Run clear!’ before letting loose the arrow, nocking and loosing another, and another.
The first went wide; he shouldn’t have tried to yell and shoot at once. But the second hit the wolf in the shoulder and the third landed deep in its belly. The girl stood as if rooted to the track. ‘Run!’ Silence yelled and let loose another arrow, which barely missed its mark.
But now the wolf had settled on Silence as its target and turned its growling maw towards him, stalking close. Too close for the bow to be of any use. Silence let it fall and drew his knife – a tiny blade, useful for whittling and eating; oh, this would be his end. He whistled his hounds and felt them tremble by his legs. ‘Come now,’ he said. ‘All of us together.’ And against all sense, he launched himself towards the wolf, the two brave dogs sprinting beside him. He yelled, a horrible full-throated scream, and the dogs barked and brayed, too. A noise so terrible it gave the wolf pause, then it too answered, baring its fangs and growling as it launched itself straight at Silence.
Silence lunged with the knife, holding out his arm towards the wolf, whose head grew nearer and nearer. Silence bent his knees so the knife could land right in the wolf’s neck, and he rolled his body to the side at the last moment. The knife made contact; he could feel the impact down his arm, shivering into his shoulder, and then he felt the wolf’s claws sink into his forearm, rake down his wrist. He screamed.
The hounds were a fury of teeth and claws, and Silence heard the wolf’s jaw clack together, heard the dogs yelp. He tried to pull his knife loose, but it wouldn’t come; his hand was too slick with blood to get a grip on it.
‘Stand back! Stand back! Call your dogs!’ a voice boomed.
Silence turned, disoriented, and saw a horse cantering down the track, its rider calling to him. ‘Stand back!’
Jumping backwards, Silence stumbled and fell to the ground. ‘Return! Release!’ he shouted and one hound bounded away as well, coming to his side. He grabbed the dog’s collar and scuttled further back.
Then the horse was upon the wolf, kicking with its hooves and its rider leapt down, jabbing with a short spear, landing the tip in the wolf’s flank, leaving it there. The rider – Silence recognized him now as Lord Wendell – drew his sword and plunged it into the wolf’s belly. The beast clenched and spasmed, then went slack.
All the growling and barking ceased, and Silence heard only the ragged panting of his own breath, the whimper of the dog next to him. He looked at his arm, saw blood dripping down, trickling between his fingers and falling to the ground. Odd. He felt no pain.
With his good arm, he petted the hound beside him. One ear had a tear, and a patch of fur had been torn away on his back, but otherwise, the hound had fared well; the blood that splotched its muzzle was not its own.
Lord Wendell strode up the track to where his daughter stood and bent down to say a few words to her. Then the girl trotted off, and Lord Wendell came over to Silence. ‘Are you wounded?’
Silence held out his arm.
‘We should see that tended to. What you did was very brave. How did you happen to be here?’
‘I’m not certain I know where here is, sir. I was in the woods with my hounds and meant to head back to Ringmar.’
‘Ah. These woods can turn even a good tracker around. You are not too far from Ringmar. You’re on the edge of my holding, and I came down with my wife and daughter and my steward to inspect the sheepfolds. I thought it would be nice to get out in the first spring sunshine. Little did I suspect …’ He shook his head and trailed off. ‘I’m no healer, but we should try to staunch your bleeding. I’m afraid your other hound didn’t survive.’
Silence followed Lord Wendell over to his horse, where the man drew out a kerchief and tied it tightly around the deepest gouges in Silence’s forearm. Then Silence knelt beside the wolf’s body: it gave off a powerful stench as if it had already begun to rot. There was his hound, his teeth red with blood, his fur mangled and belly open. Silence put a hand to the dog’s neck, still warm, and whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’
Squeaking and the jangle of metal came from up the track and Silence stood. A cart and two horsemen approached. Behind them trailed Lady Wendell on her shaggy pony, her daughter held tightly in her lap.
The driver and Lord Wendell lifted the wolf’s body into the cart. Then Lord Wendell placed the hound’s corpse beside it. By this time, Lady Wendell had dismounted and she came over to Silence and offered him a deep curtsy. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ she said. ‘I owe my daughter’s life to you.’
Silence felt himself blushing all over and stammered, ‘It was nothing, and your husband had to save …’
‘Nonsense,’ boomed Lord Wendell. ‘Now, my lady. Go back to our keep with the guards. Silence and I will bring this foul beast to Ringmar, and I will tell Lady Griselle of his valour and courage myself.’
And so they rode the track to Ringmar, arriving just as the sun touched the western horizon. Griselle ran out into the yard as they approached, the seneschal close behind. ‘What’s happened?’ she called. ‘Silence! What trouble have you been …’
Lord Wendell swung himself off his horse. Silence stepped down from the cart. He could see that his arrival had stirred the groom out from the stable, broom in hand, and Cook suddenly felt the need to pick the herbs that gave a clear view of the yard.
‘My lady,’ Lord Wendell boomed. ‘Good seneschal. Come near and see what your wonderful boy has done. Let me tell you a marvellous tale.’ He put his hand on Silence’s shoulder, and Silence stood up straight. A story. About him and his exploits. ‘Brace yourself, my lady. This is a grim sight.’ He took her hand and led her around the back of the cart. Griselle screeched.
Lord Wendell sank his fingers into the wolf’s foetid fur and pulled back the monster’s head. ‘And here,’ he said, ‘young Silence sank his knife into the wolf’s throat.’ He pulled the knife out now and handed it, gory and slick, to Silence. ‘At great peril, I might add. His arm will need some treatment, Lady.’
Griselle, who was clutching her hands to her bosom, now let forth a wail and flung her arms around Silence. ‘Oh, my dear. My darling. You could have died!’
‘It is more likely, Lady, that my daughter would have died had he not come along. And though I did ride up at that moment, and deliver a killing blow with my sword, I would still award the death to Silence’s valour and strength. It might have taken a minute longer, but I believe that his stroke with the knife would have felled the wolf. I but hastened its demise.’
Silence’s ears burned, and he tried to stammer some denial. It was too much praise. And now, for the first time, his arm began to throb and ache. ‘I am sorry the hound died, too.’
‘We’ll give it a fitting burial,’ the seneschal said. ‘Near the roses. And soon enough there’ll be more puppies.’
‘Oh, Silence,’ Griselle sobbed, for now she was weeping, still clinging to him, which wasn’t helping his arm much at all.
‘My lady, you have raised a noble boy. Noble in deed and not just in lineage. Brave in the face of danger. Willing to risk his own life to save another. And modest in his victory. I wish he were my own son.’ Lord Wendell looked at Silence, his brown eyes steady and hard. ‘I do not know why Earl Cador has kept you confined at Ringmar. You will be a very good knight. I know it, and I would sponsor you myself, were such a matter permitted. As it is, I set out this week for Tintagel, to see how my own son’s training is coming along. My lady, I would take Silence with me. This boy belongs at court. This boy ought to be a knight.’