by Maurice Gee
‘See,’ the Limping Man whispered.
‘See!’ bellowed the crier. ‘Worship him. Worship the Man.’
The strength sucked out of them flowed back into the crowd. They shrieked like fangcats. They flung their arms in the air. Some fainted in ecstasy and sank in the sea of faces all around. The Limping Man let it go on. At last he raised his stick and the crier lifted his trumpet and blew. Silence. Terrible silence. Hana wept.
The Limping Man whispered to the crier, who stepped forward, pointed his sword and bellowed at the crowd: ‘This man is the consort of witches. Their leader. He will drown in the water he came from. He will go first. This girl’ – he swung to Hana – ‘is the chief witch. For all her youth. The last of them. She will burn when the others have burned. You will hear the evil spirit scream as it flees from her. And then, my people, the world is yours to use as you wish, while you continue to worship me.’
The roar of love mounted like a cumulus cloud. The Limping Man regained his sweetness. He smiled at Hana like a little old woman. It filled her with horror – his transformation. She fled into the sky, fled to Hawk and trembled there, behind his eyes, seeing nothing for a moment. Then she looked at herself, chained to the stake; at Ben, tied at the elbows and feet, crawling like a crushed insect at Lo, and Lo, struggling to kneel and falling back. Vosper too – she saw him limping towards his throne at the foot of the steps.
A gust of wind jolted Hawk sideways. Down in the square it whipped across the crowd, over the women tied to their stakes, ballooned the Limping Man’s robes, puffed out his head-dress – and Hawk’s focus changed. Where was he looking? Why there? Why the head-dress? It seemed to throb and stir and rearrange itself as if something alive . . . A picture of a sun-warmed rock came into Hana’s mind, floating as though under water, with small ants at the foot, tearing flesh from a dropped fish bone; then warriors bursting out to fight invaders, and killing them, except for one with a mite riding in the joint between its body and head. The mite, the rider?
Hana clamped her mind on Vosper’s secret.
Hawk, she cried, but had no need. He was diving. She raced away from him, into her body, and saw Hawk falling out of the sky. He came like a stone towards the pond. He seemed to be aiming at the statue.
Hawk, she whispered. Again there was no need. His wings snapped out, half their reach, he sped across the pond, over the staked women, over Hana, to where the Limping Man had begun to turn. Slow, slow, and Hawk was fast. His claws were hooked. They caught the scarlet head-dress, pulled it from Vosper’s head, with its fastening band and its waterfall of cloth. Hawk jerked in his flight, was frozen in the air for a moment, but struck downwards with his wings, once, twice, three times, and climbed above the Limping Man. The cloth trailed from his claws as Vosper screamed. Hawk rose across the cobbles and the crowd, with the scarlet streamer trailing behind. He dropped it and it opened like a flower as he turned.
There was more. There was the green toad with the blood-red stripe on its back, clinging to the Limping Man’s shoulders.
The crowd breathed out, a prolonged whisper. The crier’s trumpet clanged on the cobbles. The toad remained placid, his mouth fastened on the back of Vosper’s neck. And Vosper dropped his stick, put his hands up to the creature and gave another cry when he felt its skin.
Hawk turned. He dived again, claws extended. They hooked into the toad and he flapped and flapped again, but the creature’s sticky pads kept their hold on Vosper’s neck. Vosper locked his hands on its back legs. Hawk beat. He beat his wings. Hawk was stronger. The pads came free. The back legs slid from Vosper’s grasp. But still Hawk could not rise with the toad. Its tongue was buried deep in Vosper’s neck, under the skull bone. As Hawk whacked the air with his wings it began to stretch, but the toad held on. The crier drew his sword.
Hana put her strength into Hawk. She did not know how, but she touched him as though with her hands. It was enough. With a wet sound the tongue came free and sprang back into the toad’s mouth. Hawk rose with the creature in his claws. It beat the air with its pads, its back legs paddled. Hawk went higher. He rose over Hana’s stake until he reached the height of the buildings round the square. The toad made a squeaking noise as Hawk let it go. It tried to inflate itself, lighten itself. But it fell like a bladder full of liquid and burst on the stones at Hana’s feet.
She turned her eyes away. The Limping Man – he was the one. What was the Limping Man doing? But he was gone. Vosper stood in his place, a little man in scarlet clothes, turning aimlessly. His feet slid, he sank to the ground, mumbling to himself and wiping his eyes.
Too many things happened then for Hana to remember with clarity. Some, perhaps, she had not seen, and Ben had told her, or Lo or Blossom; but she felt the memories were her own. Lo took back his strength as Vosper lost his. He rose to his feet, robbed a stunned soldier of his sword and cut Ben free. Ben darted past the crier, scattered the wood at Hana’s feet with a kick, unhooked the chain that held her hands behind the post, hugged her against his chest for a moment, then ran to free Blossom and all three set about unhooking the other women. Lo cut the cords tying Hubert and Danatok.
Meanwhile the men on the stands, the men on the cobbles and around the pool, began to stir, the slow stir of an animal waking from hibernation. They began to grunt and clear their mouths and spit, to clamp and unclamp their hands and flex their knees. They shook their heads, shaking the Limping Man out. Some began to cry. Their cheeks grew wet with tears. Others turned round and round as though their heads were empty and their balance gone. They fell. They stood up. Some walked to the gates of the square and walked away. Others cried with shame at their captivity. And many looked for someone to kill. They clambered from the stands, they churned through the edges of the pool. On the cobbles, by his throne, they found the Limping Man.
Hana, Ben, Lo, Blossom, Hubert, Danatok: they stood in a knot. They were tiny in the crowd. There were men, hundreds of men, pulling each other, knocking each other aside, fighting for a place about the litter and the throne. Timber cracked. The scarlet roofs sank into a sea of shouting faces and clenched hands.
‘Stop,’ Lo cried. His voice was swallowed. He turned and started up the steps to the place where Vosper had sat. Ben followed with Hana, then Danatok and Blossom. Hubert paused long enough to snatch the crier’s trumpet from the cobbles. They reached the platform. Some of the tribal leaders had fled to the gates, others had joined the maelstrom around Vosper. The stands were bare.
‘Stop,’ Lo cried again; but nothing could stop or alter the last act of the Limping Man’s reign. Hands lifted him, held him high. Perhaps he was dead already. His robes rucked about his thighs, his shins, thin as sticks, gleamed in the sun.
‘Don’t let them,’ Hana said. Lo shook his head.
They carried Vosper to the pool and held him under the water with hands and feet. All Hana saw of him was an edge of scarlet robe lost a moment later as men tramped it down. Then nothing but churned water and screaming faces.
Vosper was dead. The crowd drowned Haggie the crier and the attendant. Then they looked for other victims and found the bearers huddled by the wreckage of the litter.
Hubert had been trying to blow mud out of the trumpet. Hana found a stick and hooked it out. Hubert blew.
The men knew the sound. It froze them and before they could react and storm the stands, Ben seized the trumpet and hurled it into the air. It landed on the cobbles by the toad, where a man grabbed it and smashed it against one of the stakes.
‘No more trumpets,’ Ben cried. ‘Now listen to my father.’
Lo did not raise his hands or shout, but spoke in his normal voice, which travelled easily across the crowd.
‘Your king is dead. Now it’s time for you to leave this place. Leave these men, the bearers, they were his slaves as much as you. You men from the south, take your armies home. Throw away your weapons, fight no more. And you city men, leave the burrows and Ceebeedee. These places are dead. Go into the plains. Make fa
rms. Make villages. Fish the seas. Forget this city and the man who made you slaves – the man who made you hate your wives. Free them too, free the women. Without them you are half, you are less than the toads in the swamp. Go. Go now. And remember, no more kings.’
‘You be our king,’ someone cried.
‘No!’ Lo’s voice was raised at last. It was like Haggie’s trumpet. ‘You are free. No more kings. No limping men.’
They trickled away – the leaders from the south, the city men, the burrows men. Slowly they went, all of them silent, some still crying, some half stunned. They trod over the green and red puddle made by the toad. People’s Square was empty, except for Hana and her friends sitting at the top of the stairs.
Vosper, the Limping Man, floated face down in the green pool, with Haggie the crier on one side and the attendant on the other. Beyond them the sunken statue shouted at the sky.
Hana looked for Hawk. He was sitting on the chimney she had climbed on the day Mam died.
Mam, she said.
Hawk, she said.
He preened his shining feathers in the sun.
FOURTEEN
They climbed out of the city over the hill. Vosper’s palace was ransacked. The tanks in the toad-house were smashed and the toads all dead. Burrows mice ran about the floor.
Beyond the swamp they met bands of men travelling aimlessly. Some were savage, some confused, and none could understand the emptiness they felt. Lo repeated his message. He and Blossom and Hubert kept a close watch. Once they found a hacked body and once a man hanging in a tree.
‘Nothing’s going to change, is it?’ Hana said.
‘Vosper’s gone,’ Blossom said.
‘They’ll make a new king. They don’t want to be free.’
‘Some do. Some don’t.’
‘There won’t be an invasion, so we’re safe,’ Ben said.
He was unhappy with himself. Vosper had enslaved him so easily. Sometimes Hana caught him looking at his new knife as though it were the old and had let him down.
‘He was stronger than Blossom and Hubert,’ she said. ‘He was stronger than Lo.’
‘He was only a toad,’ Ben said.
‘No,’ Blossom said, overhearing. ‘He used the toad. It wasn’t feeding on him, he was feeding on it. Taking all that hunger and greed. And I think he heard his voice through it, swollen like a toad. Vosper won’t come back.’ She cupped her hands like the hands of the woman Hana and Lo had seen on the ballroom floor. Hana wondered if she believed a picture would be enough.
Northwards, then west towards the Inland Sea. Danatok left them, heading for Stone Creek.
‘Can I fly with Hawk and see you?’ Hana said.
‘If you can find me.’ He pressed her hands in his three-fingered ones, smiled with his cat eyes, and went away.
There were no more bands of men. The forests were safe. Hana and Ben sat on a rock high on a hill. The sun was low. Ben was looking at his knife again.
‘Put it away,’ she said.
Hawk dropped down and hovered over them.
‘He won’t come as long as you’re unhappy.’
Ben put the knife in its sheath. Hawk sat by Hana on the rock. The next afternoon he landed between them and Hana was not jealous when he let Ben touch the feathers on his damaged wing. Ben grew happier after that.
The Dwellers at the Inland Sea had the boat ready to sail. With five of them there was little room but the sea stayed calm and a breeze blew steadily behind them. Hawk perched on the bow by Hana at night.
Pearl and Hari were waiting on the shore. Xantee and Duro were there with their children. Lo was easier now. He could say names. He would stay, and go when he needed to, and come back when they called. Blossom and Hubert, quiet and still, wondering at their defeat by Vosper, stayed on too. They were not unhappy, they were stronger and more rested than before.
Pearl and Hari had their family round them for the first time since the gool. Ben was part of it. And Hana, new and uneasy at first – a family had been her and Mam – fitted in gradually. She spent a lot of time in the forests and on the shore, often with Ben, sometimes alone.
Hawk came and went. He was not always there, but when Hana needed him he appeared. Now and then she climbed into the sky and looked at herself, tiny on a headland or a hill. And once, out fishing with Ben, she slipped away and looked at them both, sitting close together in the dinghy, but it did not seem right and she slid back down. They pulled the dinghy up on the sand and swam in the warm sea, then walked along the beach and into the forest. She moved around to his left side so she could hold his hand.
Hawk turned in the sky. He did not mind.