by Sarah Rayne
‘Why not,’ said Goibniu slowly, ‘allow one of the Humans to act as our emissary?’
‘Let a Human go!’ cried Arca Dubh, who was particularly partial to Manpie and who did not think he had had his fair share after the last Fidchell. ‘I never thought to hear you say that, Goibniu!’ He looked at Goibniu in horror.
‘I say skewer them tomorrow!’ agreed Fiachra Broadcrown.
‘Fry’em,’ muttered Goll. ‘You can’t beat fried Human. My old grandmother always said it made your beard grow, fried Human — ’
Goibniu banged the table and the crystal window rattled and the firkins of wine jumped and slopped onto the table.
‘Would I let Humans go?’ said Goibniu, very meaningfully, and the giants looked a bit sheepish. ‘Well?’ said Goibniu. ‘Have you ever known me to let a Human slip through my fingers? Didn’t I order Caspar, under pain of being spitted on a skewer and roasted slowly, to lock them into their rooms?’
‘He obeyed as well,’ muttered Arca Dubh. ‘I was standing in the gallery and I saw him do it.’
‘Exactly,’ said Goibniu, leaning back in his chair. ‘I can always smell out Humans,’ said Goibniu, grinning now. ‘And I shall smell out these three if they try to get away.’ He rearranged the Marriage Settlement and stroked his chin. ‘The Gnomes should soon be here with the Crown raiments for Flame,’ he said. ‘We’ll send to the Fire Court and we’ll send the Man-Human-what’s his name? Floy?’
‘Yes?’ said Inchbad, as Goibniu paused.
‘But because we want Floy to return,’ said Goibniu, ‘we’ll keep the Girl-Human here. As pledge.’
‘Yes?’ said Inchbad again, and Arca Dubh poured another measure of onion wine. ‘Ought we to trust him to come back, though?’ said Inchbad, frowning.
‘Of course we shan’t trust him!’ said Goibniu, shocked to think that anyone would believe him so stupid as to trust a Human. ‘We’ll send somebody with him,’ he said and the giants all looked at one another worriedly, because the journey to the Fire Court was long and arduous, and brought you close to all manner of nasty things. It was all very well to be brave and fierce when you were in your own Castle (Tara or Gruagach, it did not make very much difference), but being brave and fierce in the depths of the forest on your own was another thing altogether. Goll the Gorm reminded everyone that the road to the Fire Court passed dangerously close to the Robemaker’s workshops and a shudder went through the giants.
‘I’m not going,’ said Fiachra Broadcrown firmly. ‘Risk being taken by the Robemaker and put to the treadmills? Not for a dozen Marriage Settlements! Your Majesty,’ he added, belatedly.
‘Well, nobody need expect me to go,’ said Goll the Gorm. ‘Fiachra’s perfectly right. The Robemaker’s servants haunt that road; nasty skulking things. Everyone knows that.’
‘Yes but see here — ’ began Inchbad and was shouted down by the assembled giants, all of whom feared the Robemaker, none of whom was prepared to risk passing so closely by his workshop.
‘Send Goibniu,’ said Goll, with a sudden grin.
But Inchbad knew they did not dare send Goibniu on his own with two Humans. They would never see the Humans again. He said, a bit hastily, that Goibniu was needed at Tara to deal with important matters of State.
‘So are we all needed at Tara to deal with important matters of State,’ said Fiachra Broadcrown, and a general murmur of agreement went up.
Goibniu said, thoughtfully, ‘We might send Balor,’ and the giants all turned round to stare.
‘He’s quarter-witted,’ said Goll.
‘He’d never find the way there, never mind find it back,’ added Fiachra.
Goibniu looked towards Inchbad. ‘Sire?’ It’s your decision, said his tone, you’re the King after all.
And Inchbad, who was getting really rather annoyed with people who tried to tell him what to do and who thought he could not make proper decisions, spoke.
‘We’ll send Balor. He’s quite capable of finding the way if we give him a map.’
‘Of course he is,’ said Goibniu. ‘And as well as that,’ he added, ‘if we keep the girl-Human with us, it will be a little extra inducement to Floy to secure Reflection’s consent to the marriage, and to return. I think we can trust Floy to find the way there and back.’
He grinned, and drained another goblet of the onion wine. ‘If Floy doesn’t return from the Fire Court, inside of a week, with Madame Reflection’s assent to the marriage, then the Girl can be thrown onto the Fidchell board.’ He smiled round at them all. ‘And in the meantime,’ he said, ‘she can tell us some tales of their travels each evening at supper. It will keep us amused.’
‘And after supper?’ said Fiachra Broadcrown, beginning to grin hugely. ‘What shall we do with her after supper each night?'
Goibniu smiled even more widely. ‘I daresay I can think of something,' he said.
Chapter Eighteen
Caspar had gone rather irritably out of Tara, through the Western Gate, and was making for the first sprinkling of cottages on the edges of the Wolfwood. He had a friend or two there, who would be sure to ask him in and maybe offer him a drop of poteen, or even a bite of supper. He had eaten one supper already tonight, but eating in the presence of Goibniu and the rest could be a rather unpleasant experience and frequently took away any appetite you might have brought to the table with you. A bite of supper, taken with proper, ordinary people who did not spray soup over the table, or hold competitions to see how far they could spit out kipper bones, or search through the gravy with their fingers to find onion pieces, would go down very nicely.
Caspar had not decided whether or not he believed in the Angry Sun, even though Goibniu and the others had asserted that it had been a fine old sight. In any case, even if the Sun did exist, there was no more reason to think it had Humans in it than there was of believing that Tara would return to the Wolfkings. Caspar did not think he believed in the Sun, but he did think it was a sorry thing when you had to go hunting your own kind, simply to please great brutish lumps of giants. It had been enough being ordered to lock Floy and Fenella and Snodgrass into their rooms and then to be positively stood over by Arca Dubh to make sure he carried the order out. Arca Dubh had thought he had been very furtive about hiding at the far end of the gallery but, of course, everyone had known he was there.
It had felt deceitful and sly to sneak furtively along the gallery and turn the locks and slide the bolts across on Floy and Fenella and Snodgrass and Caspar had disliked himself very much. It was traitorous and treacherous and he was feeling very bad indeed about it.
He was still feeling bad about it now, prowling down the hillside, keeping a weather eye open for any stray Humans who might be taken up to Tara on some pretext or other and thrown into the dungeons to await the next celebration of the Fidchell It was a terrible thing to have to do.
He had decided to try to get Floy and the rest out of Tara and away from the giants’ greedy clutches. It would be quite hard and it would probably be extremely risky, but if Caspar could just come up with a plan, a really good watertight plan that would fool the giants, he would put it to Floy and they could be off out of Tara and Caspar would be off with them as well! People had their limits and he had reached his.
He was skirting the fringes of the forest now and he was just starting to look out for the first of the cottages where he might be given a welcome and thinking it would be O’Dulihan’s and his daughter’s cottage and very nice too, when the sound of singing, coming through the trees, assailed his ears.
Gobble gobble gow; it’s off to Tara we go.
Gobble gobble gach, off to the Gruagach.
Shall we escape the King?
Yes, if we run fast.
Shall we escape the tables?
Yes, if we are able.
Since this was not the sort of thing Caspar had expected to hear when he was supposed to be hunting Humans, he stayed where he was and waited. Presently, along the forest path and out on to the road, came a b
and of the strangest creatures that he had ever seen in his life. He recognised them for gnomes at once, although he did not recall ever having actually met a gnome before.
There were at least eight of them; Caspar thought there might easily have been nine or ten. They were marching quite jauntily along the forest path, plainly bound for Tara’s shining citadel, and not a one of them was above three feet in height. They had quite elderly, quite wizened faces, with jutting chins and rather happy expressions, and they nodded and bobbed amiably, one to another as they marched. They were colourfully dressed, some of them in scarlet jerkins and bright green breeches; one wore a yellow neckerchief with blue spots on it and another was topped by a wide, mushroom-shaped hat with a pleated brim and a feather in it and they all carried bundles tied to sticks on their shoulders. Several appeared to have shovels, and the yellow-neckerchiefed one sported an enormous spade, which appeared to be giving him considerable trouble.
They sang as they marched.
Off to Inchbad’s Court,
For the dancing of the Fidchell.
Oh there’ll be fun and games, my boys,
And there’ll be skips and hops, my boys,
If the giants bake you for pies, my b-o-y-s —
If the giants bake you for pies.
There’ll be no more digging for you.
There’ll be no more dancing for you.
If the giants bake you for pies, my b-o-y-s —
There’ll be no more digging for you.
A wave of amiable chuckling wafted across to where Caspar stood and then the leader of the little creatures (the one with the mushroom-shaped hat) stopped short and said, ‘Oho, there’s a traveller waiting to meet us, lads.’
‘A traveller, to be sure. Isn’t that a traveller and him knowing it in the twinkling of a gnat’s whisker?’ cried his comrades. ‘A traveller it is, and very likely come out to show us the way to Tara.’
They beamed at Caspar and several waved their hats and several more said, to be sure, wasn’t it a remarkable thing that just as you thought you’d missed your way, didn’t someone come along to direct you? The one who seemed to be the leader, whose name turned out to be Bith of the Bog-Hat, took a firmer grip on his shovel and trod purposefully across the remaining stretch of forest path and said, quite politely, ‘We bid you a good evening, sir!’
‘Isn’t that the way of it?’ cried the others. ‘A good evening it is, and him knowing it straightaways!’
‘Good evening to you,’ said Caspar, torn between annoyance at having his journey interrupted, and amusement at being addressed by creatures quite half his height and easily three times his age.
‘Would you be from Tara, by any chance?’ said Bith of the Bog-Hat, his head on one side, his eyes rather twinkly and definitely curious.
‘From Tara, that’s where he’ll be from!’ put in the others, and three of them sat down cross-legged and beamed at Caspar, while four dug their shovels into the ground, handle end up, and used them to sit on.
Caspar said, ‘Indeed I am from Tara. Would you, by any chance, be from Gallan?’
The gnomes said they were, to be sure they were, and on their way to Tara, only that they’d just missed their way a bit, which was a thing that might happen to any man, or even any gnome.
‘Is Gallan very far?’ asked Caspar. ‘How long a journey have you had?’
The gnomes were vague on this point. It was several days’ march from Gallan, they said, although it might very well be a week or two. It depended on how fast you travelled, of course, and on how many times you missed your way. But you started out keeping the sun in the west, of course, although it was a remarkable thing how often you lost it on the way and ended up with it on the other side altogether.
The gnome with the yellow neckerchief started to tell about how the sun sank in the west and rose in the east and an animated debate arose over this, because not all his colleagues went along with this view.
But be that as it might, they said, they’d finally got here, and hadn’t they a fine old commission to be undertaking for Inchbad, the finest commission for many a long year and as welcome as a Wolfking returning. They looked a bit worried at saying this and glanced over their shoulders, to see if anyone might have overheard, and Bith of the Bog-Hat frowned at them and told Caspar that wasn’t it difficult to guard against the old sayings sometimes and he hoped that Caspar would not be repeating such a slip of the tongue in quarters where it might be misunderstood.
‘Of course not,’ said Caspar.
The gnome with the yellow neckerchief, who appeared to be something of a nonconformist, said if you had to watch every word you said it was a terrible old world and you might as well be inside the Robemaker’s Workshops and have done.
To which his companions said, very hurriedly, that Culdub Oakapple had no sense of self-preservation to give tongue to such a remark and it the Purple Hour, with everything fine about them, and a gentleman traveller from Tara come to show them the way, which they’d unaccountably missed.
To which Culdub Oakapple said, be bothered and be blowed to self-preservation, because couldn’t a person with half a wit spread in his head see that it was a Human they were talking with, and had they any of them ever heard of Humans consorting with giants? ‘And no more have I,’ said Culdub Oakapple and the gnomes nodded solemnly and said you never heard of Humans and giants together, no more you did, and the Oakapple knew what was what, with him having the wits of three people put together.
‘At least,’ said Bith, turning round rather suddenly, so that the brim of his hat flapped wildly and nearly fell off, ‘at least, I suppose you are a Human are you?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Caspar, rather crossly. ‘Can’t you see that I’m a Human?’
The gnomes said they could, couldn’t anyone with half an eye see it, and one or two got up from their spades and slapped their thighs in agreement and clapped one another on the back and Culdub Oakapple was knocked off his spade-seat and had to be helped up and Bith lost his hat altogether.
‘And,’ said one of them after Culdub had been dusted down and Bith of the Bog-Hat’s hat had been squashed back into shape, ‘and, we haven’t yet introduced ourselves, sir, no more we have.’
His colleagues said no more they had and wasn’t that the rudest thing you’d come across in a ten-month?
Caspar started to say he thought he knew who they were already, but the gnomes had decided on proper introductions and would not be put off.
‘We’re the Gnomes of Gallan,’ said Bith, proudly, ‘and the finest goldsmiths in the whole of Ireland!’
‘You’d travel far and far worse before you found finer,’ added another and Bith said, even more proudly, that they were Court goldsmiths as well and wouldn’t that make you feel as great as great could be, just to know that you were responsible for forging the Royal Crowns in the Mountain Fires of Gallan. Then he turned to frown at Culdub Oakapple, who was polishing the toes of his boots by rubbing first one and then the other on the backs of his breeches, which was the height of discourtesy when you were making an introduction.
‘Well, now we’re here,’ said Culdub loudly. ‘We’re here because of the commission.’
Bith said, with great solemnity, that it was a fine old thing to be given a commission and it the low season, when the most that people would ask you to fashion was a silver ring, or at best an armlet.
‘You can’t live on that,’ he said seriously to Caspar. ‘Not when there’s taxes and Partholon’s Pence to be paid, never mind the stoking of the forges. So we accepted the commission.’
‘What is the commission?’ said Caspar, who thought that if he was going to think up a plot to free the Humans, it might be useful to find out as much as he could about what Inchbad and the rest were up to.
Bith scratched his head and said frizzle him for a flying fish if he hadn’t for the moment forgotten. ‘But it’ll come back to me,’ he said firmly. ‘It’ll be all that travelling, never mind missin
g the way a time or two, sir, because that’s a powerful fine thing for driving thoughts out of a person’s head. I wouldn’t have thought I’d forget something so important, but that’s just what I have done!’
Several of the other gnomes said they had forgotten it as well, and wouldn’t it make you fit to worry into a nothingness to know it.
Culdub said, crossly, ‘It’s a commission for an entire new set of Crown Raiments for Inchbad,’ and Bith at once said that was the very thing and hadn’t it been on the edge of his tongue all the while.
‘Inchbad,’ Bith said confidingly to Caspar, ‘is going to take a wife. Well, you’d call it a Queen, wouldn’t you, him being a King? Not that he’ll ever be a true King of Ireland, of course, long live the Wolfkings.’
‘Inchbad wants to marry the daughter of the sorceress, Reflection,’ said Culdub, morosely. ‘He thinks that by sending her a casket of jewels — ’
Bith turned round at this and said that this was the first he had heard of any caskets being involved and did Inchbad suppose them to be vulgar box-makers? ‘We’re goldsmiths and silversmiths,’ he said, hurt. ‘Craftsmen. It’s a tradition in Ireland. Why, sir, if you were to say to anyone, anyone in the entire world: Where would you buy the finest-wrought gold and silver, bless my soul if the answer wouldn’t be: From the Gnomes of Gallan!’
Culdub, who was looking extremely gloomy, said, ‘We didn’t want the commission, of course. Well, I put it to you, sir, who would want to be working for the Gruagach. But we took it on and we’ll make a fine old job of it. I’ve got several ideas already,’ he said, and his companions beamed at him and said you could always rely on the Oakapple to have an idea.
‘If,’ said Culdub, ‘Inchbad marries Reflection’s daughter, it’s very likely that people will point to the new Crown Jewels, and say: my word, there’s a fine set of jewels. My word, we ought to be thinking of consulting whoever it was who wrought those. You never know,’ said Culdub. ‘So I’ve got some very good ideas for a crown, and maybe a nice diadem or two and a gold torque. You can charge a very good price for a gold torque,’ said Culdub seriously. ‘And what with Partholon’s Pence — ’