A Necklace of Souls

by R. L. Stedman

  ‘Are you alright?’ asked Owein.

  ‘I’m too hot,’ I said, plucking at my bodice, trying to lift it off my sweating skin.

  He nodded. ‘It’s a bit much, isn’t it?’

  ‘I thought you liked this sort of thing,’ I said, surprised.

  He shook his head. ‘Eleana’s not here.’

  ‘Where is she?’ I said. I hadn’t met Owein’s fiancée.

  ‘Her sister’s with child,’ he said gloomily. ‘She wants to be with her during the confinement.’

  Mother was speaking animatedly to a distinguished ancient, all white wig and lace cuffs.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I hissed.

  He grinned. ‘Where should we go?’

  ‘The balcony. At least it’s cool there. And no-one can see us.’

  The heavy curtains, drawn to protect the candles from errant breezes, shielded us from Mother’s sight. Leaning on the stone balustrades, we stared out at the gate house. Below us the moat sparkled, little chips of light caught in the ripples.

  ‘You know,’ said Owein, ‘it’s not a bad view from here.’

  Lanterns set into iron holders for the Festival flared in the darkness, lighting up the faces of the servants who held their own dances in the courtyard below. It sounded more fun than the ball; a raucous mix of accordion and drums and much laughter and passing of ale cups. The night breeze was gentle, the air mild. A lovely midsummer’s night. I sighed.

  ‘So, who is he?’ Owein asked.

  I lifted my hair from my forehead. Ruth had piled it in a great lump on the back of my neck, telling me that it was a French style, considered very elegant, but my face hurt because she’d pinned it so tightly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s pretty obvious. There’s someone, isn’t there?’

  ‘There’s no-one,’ I said, looking for the evening star.

  ‘Falling in love isn’t a crime.’

  I sighed. ‘It’s not a crime,’ I agreed. ‘But it’s pointless, isn’t it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I turned and pointed up at the tower that loomed behind us like an arrow pointing at the night. A lamp gleamed in the topmost room, Rosa’s room, but it wouldn’t be a light of celebration, dancing or music. It would be because she was concentrating on her globe, using the necklace to build defences about this little island.

  ‘One day,’ I said, ‘I will be up there.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘You know,’ I added, ‘you’re the best off of all of us.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You can be whatever you want. You’re not stuck being the king, like Alden, or being the Guardian. You can be yourself.’

  ‘Alden loves the idea of being king,’ he said, his voice bitter.

  ‘Does he really? Or is it just that he’s making the most of fate?’

  ‘He loves it. Look.’

  Through the window, Alden, blond and handsome in crimson velvet, danced with a brunette. The dance concluded as we watched, and the dancers poured back to their seats, women fanning flushed features. Alden bowed to his partner, a graceful dip and bend of knees, and smiled graciously at the young ladies who came to cluster about him, fluttering their silk like butterflies seeking the warmth of the sun. He smiled, laughing with them.

  I shrugged. ‘What of it?’

  ‘He’ll be a terrible king. He’ll be like Grandfather.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Hasn’t Father told you?’

  ‘Told me what?’

  Owein patted the seat at the base of the window. ‘You’re not cold?’

  I shook my head and sat next to him on the bench.

  ‘Grandfather came close to ruining the Kingdom,’ he said. ‘Never paid attention to the crops; he only worried about appearances, about looking magnificent. Father says he spent money as though we had a well full of gold. Grand father’s death saved the Kingdom.’

  I remembered that first dream, the dancers with their stupid, sinister faces and the king and queen on their bright thrones.

  ‘He wanted the best of everything,’ said Owein. ‘Best food, best furniture, best musicians, best books. He wanted the Kingdom to not only be the best place to have a party, but the most exclusive venue for learning, for trading. Merchants from all over the world visited here.’

  Daddy discouraged merchants, issuing licences infrequently. He preferred the tinkers, who went from place to place and treated all people equally. They were, he said, better value.

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  He shrugged. ‘The barons tell me. They remember.’ He looked over his shoulder again at Alden smiling at his attractive audience. ‘He’ll be just like that. He doesn’t care at all about boring things like crops and food and budgets.’

  The Castle became crowded with a raucous medley of servants, villagers, farmers and all manner of entertainers. Covered stalls were set up in the courtyard for the sale of iced drinks, spiced wine and other sweetmeats and, overnight it seemed, a tiered stand grew in the parade ground. This was to be the site of the main festivities: tournaments during the day and a flame-lit circus at night. But the entertainment spilled over, tumbling, I was told, into the village beyond.

  ‘There’s a man with a little dog that does tricks,’ said a chambermaid excitedly. She bobbed a curtsy like an afterthought. ‘And a carousel that plays tunes as it turns. It has horses on it that go up and down. Never seen the like, Princess. Do you want your green silk?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Tell me about the little dog.’

  ‘Oh, it’s ever so cute, lady. It wears a skirt! And the man has a little whistle and when he blows on it the dog dances on its hind legs. And it rides a little cart and jumps through a hoop.’

  How I wished I could go to the village.

  ‘There’s a rope set into the topmost windows of the houses and if you can walk across it, a man will pay you two shillings,’ she said. ‘And there’s a tent with a bearded lady, and jugglers who can throw fire and knives and,’ this last was breathless, ‘there’s a naked man who can make a snake dance!’ She dropped another curtsy. ‘Do you need anything else, lady?’

  ‘No,’ I said and as she turned to leave I added, ‘Thank you.’

  She looked surprised and then smiled. ‘You’re welcome, I’m sure.’

  So I decided to go to the fair. Not the formal tournament of knights jousting for favours, but the low-bred entertainment for the masses. How Mother would despise it! I’d make my way down to the villa re Guardian, it was my duty to investigate the Kingdom’s inhabitants. But this time I’d try not to use a coal cart.

  The timing couldn’t be better. The banging of all-night carpentry and the shouts of the guards as they wrestled with flags (and chambermaids) had been too much for Nurse. Yesterday’s argument with Ruth was the final straw; not only was she uncomfortable from the heat and unable to sleep with all the noise, here was the queen thinking she wasn’t doing a good enough job with the princess. Overnight her fabric-swaddled face had turned an alarming shade of puce. I had persuaded her to rest quietly in her quarters.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said airily. ‘Don’t worry.’

  Such luxury to be unattended! I pulled on my training hose and twisted my hair into rough braids. I’d tie them up under the old cap that I’d kept since my coal-encrusted trip.

  I filched an apple from a stallholder.

  ‘Hey there!’ he called, but the courtyard was so crowded with urchins selling strong-smelling pigs that he didn’t bother giving chase.

  ‘Give us a lift?’ I called to a moustached carpenter driving a cart laden with tools and pieces of sawn-off wood.

  He nodded. ‘You’ll have to climb up yourself, lad,’ he said, yawning. ‘Fair beat I am. Up all night building that stand.’

  I clambered up quickly and settled beside him on the roughly padded seat. He jerked his thumb at the wooden stands as we passed. The tiered seats rose, it seemed, to the
heavens. I must have looked impressed, for he pulled a strip of dried meat from the box under his seat. ‘Here, lad.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, eyeing the leather-like strand. It didn’t look very appetizing.

  He yawned, a great gape of his mouth that showed all his teeth and part of his gums.

  ‘Are you going to the fair? In the village?’

  ‘Too tired,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m waiting for the fireworks.’

  ‘They were getting them ready this morning.’ I’d watched them putting the wooden and cardboard tubes on the west and south towers, lining up the fuse wire so it travelled over the gate house.

  ‘You don’t say! Are there Catherine wheels?’

  I nodded, finishing my apple. ‘And crackers. At the end there’ll be great rockets that shoot up into the sky and burst into stars.’

  He breathed in deeply. ‘Ah! Well, that will be something.’

  I pulled my cap low over my eyes as we passed under the gate. I’d sparred with some of these guards before, including this bearded one who was stopping all the wagons coming into the Castle.

  ‘Being right particular, they are,’ grunted the carpenter as we clattered over the drawbridge. ‘Searching everyone. Never seen the like at Festival.’

  The guards were checking everyone who passed under the portcullis, asking farmers who they were, where they came from, what they were carrying. Most people took this in good heart, but an old man, hard of hearing and short of temper, grew angry and began calling them names. A crowd grew; some taking the side of the oldster while others argued that the guards were just doing their jobs and old Tom should leave them be and then we’d all pass by much quicker.

  I slumped on the seat beside the carpenter, trying to look like an exhausted apprentice. It must have worked, for two guardsmen, sweating under their metal helms, gave us a cursory glance and waved us onward.

  With much rustling of petticoats and cries of ‘Bless me!’, a fat woman clambered up into the cart beside old Tom and pulled on his arm, forcing him to sit. As the cart clattered off we could still see his gnarled fist waving in the air and his shrill voice telling us that he’d sort this; old people should be treated with respect.

  We passed through the gate house just as Tom’s audience took a collective breath and searched around for fresh entertainment. It didn’t take long, for up the hill came Ruth, followed by the strangest group of people. Two shrunken old people sitting awkwardly on small horses, a tall, straight-backed man with a pointed helmet who neither touched the reins nor turned his head, as if the crowd at the gate house were beneath his notice. Directly behind the bustling Ruth rode a slumped, unkempt man. He was wrapped in torn strips of cloth as though diseased, and regarded the activity as a starving man watches food. I sat upright in my seat, tipping my cap back to see better. Why did these strangers seem familiar?

  Ruth looked at me and froze and I ducked back into my seat, bending towards my shoe as if there was a stone in it. The carpenter clucked to his horses and we headed down the road, the carpenter with one hand on the brake, for the hill was very steep. I watched Ruth from my semi-prone position. Would she call the guard? She turned her head as though searching for something that she thought she saw. Then she shrugged, continuing on her way through the crowd. But the dirty man twisted in his saddle, staring down the hill as though he’d heard something.

  ‘Be very careful.’ A faint whisper, a thread of sound on the air that somehow carried above the laughter of the crowd and the harsh shouts of the guardsmen.

  I sat back in the jarring seat and pulled my cap low over my eyes. Rinpoche’s whisper was soft, just a breath of breeze. ‘That one, he is evil.’

  ‘A magic worker?’

  There was no response, just a feeling I was right. Then: ‘Remember your dreams, Princess.’

  The carpenter sat beside me, his head nodding. He couldn’t be asleep — how could one sleep though this jolting? I closed my eyes. Mother had said she was waiting for merchants, and the old people had had something of the look of people who trade goods for a living. But what of the straight-backed man in the metal hat and the chain-mail vest? I considered him and, as Rinpoche had taught me, shaped his image in my mind; the saddle decorated with images of deer, the spiked helmet and the long black plait of hair that hung to the middle of his chain-mailed back.

  The image stirred, turning. He looked right at me from slanting eyes and I knew him, I knew him, for I had been him as I’d ordered my soldiers to lift their curved swords and remove the heads from the singing villagers.

  My eyes snapped open. Whatever the man was doing here, it couldn’t be good. Rosa needs to be warned. The carpenter stirred when I slipped down from his lumbering cart, but didn’t open his eyes. I ran up the hill to the guardhouse.

  ‘Stand!’ said the guard. ‘State your business.’

  I took my hat off and shook out my hair. ‘It’s me,’ I said, truthfully if ungrammatically. ‘Let me pass.’

  The guards exchanged glances. ‘Begging your pardon, lady,’ said one.

  The other swallowed and shifted his feet. He had a purple bruise across his cheek. ‘You’re wearing lad’s clothing.’

  ‘This?’ I said. ‘Oh, I often wear it. Did I give you that mark?’

  He smiled, his swollen face moving stiffly. ‘Aye. Beauty, ain’t it?’

  ‘Well then,’ I said. ‘I was wearing lad’s clothing when I fought you, wasn’t I?’

  The guards looked confused, looking at each other: you first, no you. ‘We thought you had run away, lady. You look as if you were escaping.’

  ‘Not that we’d blame you, like,’ added the undamaged one.

  ‘She can’t be running away, stupid,’ said the other. ‘She’s coming into the Castle. Not leaving.’

  I tucked my hair back into my cap and darted across the drawbridge before another crowd could form. What would it be like to run away?

  I huddled into the shadows of the gate to the inner keep and tucked my hair under my hat.

  ‘Not like that,’ said the wind, whispering in my ear. Rinpoche.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The wards are up.’ No sound, just a sigh, tripping around the corner like a piece of paper blown from some stallholder’s stand.

  I peeped around the stonework at the tower. There were no guards, nothing to stop me. What did he mean? And then I realized: there was no doorway at the base of the tower. Just a blank, well-crafted wall of stone.

  Could I knock on the stonework? These strangers were in my home; I needed to go straight to Rosa, or Father or N’tombe.

  An image of my practice arena passed through my mind. ‘Sometimes the shortest route is not the fastest,’ said Rinpoche, louder this time, but obscure.

  I sighed. ‘Knocking would be easier.’

  ‘She wouldn’t hear you.’

  In the pleasure wood I sat against an oak, its thick trunk hard against my back. ‘Now what?’

  There was no answer this time, but I hadn’t expected one, for I knew what I had to do. Breathing deeply, in and out, calming the centre, soothing my thoughts. Threads of gold spilled from me, out into the forest, leaping from my head, my heart, connecting with fountains of light from the trees. Like strands of wool, gold tangled about the birds and animals that lived in this tiny, controlled woodland. When I closed my eyes, warmth enfolded me.

  ‘Search with your inner eye,’ whispered Rinpoche.

  I didn’t have to open my eyes to know that he was there; I could feel him, a nexus of joy seated beside me.

  ‘Is this real?’ I asked tremulously, and even as I spoke the wonder-filled light about me flared and faded with my disbelief.

  He laughed before he disappeared. ‘What is real?’

  Breathing slowly, I tried to regain the magic, the light, but I churned with anxiety and the need to hurry. Ignoring the fear, I thought only of breathing; deep sigh in, releasing out. And then I had it! Like a key turning in a lock, reality expanded.

 
‘Now,’ said Rinpoche, ‘you can talk to Rosa.’

  Where was she, though? I turned my head as though seeking her, which made him laugh. Searching for someone in this golden maze of energy was strange; you had to think not of what the person was but who they were. Not the wizened woman in the tower, with her white robe and stringy hair, but the princess with a great ruby at her heart. Rosa.

  Golden lines wreathed the tree trunks and leapt in fountains from their leaves, arching from one to another. Under the soil too, the energy spread, from one to another; a great, living net of heat and light. Entwined in its cables, I felt its warmth. When she came, speeding through the ether like a tidal wave, the forest quivered, the trees bending towards her as if bowing. She stopped when she reached me, towering above me: a golden goddess of light.

  ‘Dana,’ she said.

  Awed, I was speechless.

  Rinpoche, all light and air, called to her. ‘He has come.’ His speech was thoughts, tangles on the currents that flowed between us like jewelled wires.

  ‘The enemy?’ I sensed incredulity, chagrin. How could she have missed this?

  ‘A servant only,’ he said, and she relaxed.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, and took my hand, so our thoughts became one.

  I showed her the group of people riding with Ruth; the merchant riding like a warrior, the old people and the ragged one that reeked of evil.

  ‘Ah!’ she said. ‘You have done well, Dana.’

  She left, disappearing like smoke from a doused fire, and I sat alone in a forest of gold. Tired, my mind disengaged and I dropped, falling like a stone, from this vision of rippling light into the grey world of the everyday. I blinked and sat up. Had I fallen asleep?

  But when I stared up at the tower, high against the moving clouds, I saw a black speck leap from its highest point and fly, like a seeking arrow, to my father’s study. I clambered stiffly to my feet and staggered when I stood, as exhausted as though I’d had a morning’s training session.

  ‘I hope you had a reason for your journey,’ said N’tombe.

  I pulled my hose off, rolling them into a bundle under my bed. ‘You remember my dream?’ Quickly, I told N’tombe what I’d seen. ‘I told Rosa.’