Winter

by William Horwood

  While Stort looked about, knowing he still had something important to do, hoping the lights would help him remember.

  ‘Ah!’ he cried, ‘I do believe . . . goodness me, how could I forget? Eh, Jack? You should know and you too, Katherine! Arthur, surely you can remember?’

  ‘What, Mister Stort?’ said Judith.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ he replied.

  ‘What?’ she demanded.

  ‘You’ll see. Now . . . What’s the time? Is it midnight yet?’

  ‘Minutes to go . . .’

  ‘Then there’s time, for if we get started before the midnight hour, the Mirror will rest content that we’re on the way, so to speak. If we’re a mite late doing the last few things there’ll be no harm done. It is betwixt and between is this time of the season but, you see, that’s what makes our worlds come close.’

  He stopped climbing.

  ‘Here, we’ll start here . . . but who will begin?’

  Any one of five thousand people on the hill would have been willing to but Stort knew who it must be. In another life, another place, which wasn’t far from where they were just then, in fact it was right there, she had known the White Horse better than anyone. She had been its Rider and this night her work was done and the time of the Peace-Weaver was returning.

  ‘Judith,’ said Stort, ‘you stand here and hold your candle high because others need to see. Yes, so!’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘You’ll soon find out . . .’

  ‘Now, who else will lend a helping hand? You, sir, good, stand next to Judith, don’t slip for the sward curves round and is steep in places. Yes, you too, madam . . . Come here . . . yes . . . and you too, all of you, make a sinewy line . . .’

  ‘What’s he doing?’ whispered Katherine.

  ‘Search me,’ said Bratfire, ‘but whate’er it be ’tis important work.’

  ‘What exactly are we doing, Stort?’ asked Barklice.

  ‘We’re lighting the horse across the hill,’ he replied. ‘Its long, long body, its galloping legs . . . yes, there, three of you must move along please and up a step, yes up . . . well obviously . . . You’re an ear, not its head, that’s . . . that’s . . . well then, if you must . . .’

  He turned to Arthur.

  ‘There are times,’ he said, ‘when I despair! Folk don’t do what they ought to do. Folk are wilful and errant. Still, needs must and we’re getting there!

  ‘Yes . . . all of you there . . . That is indeed its head and its pricking ears and its eye, of course . . . Very good. What are we doing, Mister Barklice? We’re lighting the horse on this special night because the Shield Maiden’s work is done but she’s old and cannot see and needs our help if she is to find her way home.’

  He was alive again, doing the thing he had forgotten he must do, drawing a horse to lighten the darkness for his beloved.

  ‘I’m not sure I understand,’ said Jack.

  ‘I’m not sure we need to,’ replied Katherine, ‘except in our hearts.’

  ‘Nearly done,’ cried Bedwyn Stort, dancing about as if he was indeed young again, directing the last candles to where they should be. ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘Gone past the midnight hour,’ said Barklice. ‘Have you nearly finished?’

  ‘We’ve certainly begun!’ cried Stort happily. ‘This is – yes that’s right, you three are the last of the longest leg and please, no, you’re backs, not ears . . . good, excellent . . . and this is the end of the beginning, my dear Barklice, the rest is up to them.’

  He pointed up to the edge of the hill, where hundreds waited, wanting to help.

  ‘Where’s Jack?’

  He came.

  ‘Got your stave? No? This is the one you should be carrying, I think.’

  Barklice withdrew the stave stuck through the back of his belt and gave it to Jack. One moment it seemed no more than an ordinary stave but the next, alive once more in Jack’s hand, its energy flowing into him, it caught the light of the stars in its depths.

  Jack trembled for a moment and then, as it seemed to them all, stood taller and more proud; stronger and more purposeful.

  Barklice smiled.

  ‘You’re ready to be a leader again, Jack, and to show them the way. Folk need to know what it is they have to do.’

  ‘I’m not sure I know myself yet, but it’ll come, it’ll come.’

  The stave glimmered brighter still and as it did Stort stumbled, his brief youth fleeing, fearful age showing in his eyes.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Jack.

  ‘He’s scared, Master Jack,’ murmured Barklice, ‘always was worried by love, for that’s his final journey and I can’t help him with that. We can show the way, me on the green road, like I’ve trained young Bratfire to do, and you with folk to keep ’em safe and show them things I never could. But now Stort’s afeared of the journey he’ll have to make alone, now his job is almost done on Earth . . . but I’ll stay with him as long as I can.’

  Of all the candles there only one wavered then.

  ‘What will I see?’ asked Judith. ‘My arm’s tired. I can’t see a horse, just candles and candles all along the hill. No ears, no head, it’s all jumbled up.’

  ‘It just feels that way,’ said Stort, ‘help me to her, Barklice. I’ll show her.’

  Then . . . ‘Look,’ he said, putting his hands on Judith’s shoulders and she coming close, ‘look and hold your candle high for you’ll see it soon, reflected in the night sky . . .’

  What he saw came down slowly across the far horizon and had a thin, bright edge to it. For a moment his heart jolted, as it reminded him of the Scythe, but almost at once he knew it was not. It was something larger, something greater, and it covered the whole Universe.

  But it came closer, stretching, curving, ever bigger, forcing them to look up and up and higher still, craning their necks to right and left. It was dark like an eclipse of life itself.

  Slowly it seemed to come, though in fact its speed was the speed of light but it being so vast and the distances too, so beyond the scale of mortal mind, it seemed to move barely at all until, the darkness complete and then held awhile, they saw a softer light, flickering and gentle, reaching across the Universe as if a horse was there that was made of candlelight, with elongated legs, the long thin stretch of a body, ears that pricked, a mouth all open and a single eye.

  ‘But that’s the horse which Stort has made,’ whispered Katherine. ‘That’s this horse here.’

  It turned above them, as big as the sky itself, and they turned with it, unable to see it all, it was so vast. An immortal horse made of mortal candlelight, moving slowly as they stared.

  ‘That isn’t a horse,’ said Stort, ‘it’s a reflection of what we’ve made. That’s the Mirror itself passing overhead.’

  It really was above them, moving at the pace of the Universe itself, the Mirror-of-All was overhead and the wondrous sound it made was the musica, vast, beyond their minds to think it, but that as it passed they saw the horse they had made galloping across the sky, one way, all ways, exquisite in its form.

  Jack’s horse.

  Katherine’s for a time.

  Judith’s now.

  Everyone’s.

  Then, the Mirror, tilting as if some great hand was touching it, reflected the light over the hill, the horse galloping fast to light the dark of Englalond, over the sea where Borkum Riff lives, catching Leetha in her dance, there where all the others are and it lights the slow path of she whom Stort most loved, who waited for him so long.

  There she too goes, the light from the Mirror soft at her stumbling feet, for the path is steep where the Modor lives and her door is ajar and she is not yet home.

  The White Horse, who never speaks, following close to see she’s safe, says, ‘Modor, your work as Shield Maiden is nearly done. One last task and you can love him until the end of time.’

  Oh, she is old now and she can barely put one foot in front of the other to get to her own front door. />
  ‘He said he wouldn’t take long when he left,’ whispered the Modor, going inside, ‘but he’s been gone a whole lifetime. If he ever comes back, White Horse, will he remember what I was before I became what I am now?’

  What the Modor had been, in that universe in which Bedwyn Stort had had his life, was Judith the Shield Maiden. What Stort was in the Mirror’s light, which is greater than all things, was the Wita, the Modor’s consort. But shifts of time and place, shimmers among the Mirror’s universes, can make a Bedwyn Stort forget, and even a Modor uncertain.

  So the Modor now. She peered back outside, as best she could, and stared at the mist among the trees where the White Horse had been.

  Jack knew what he had to do and got them working at once, cutting the sward so the chalk began to show, following the lines of the horse whose image Stort had lighted across the hill with candles, the horse that galloped across the slow Mirror’s face as it passed over their heads, confirming faith and establishing memory.

  They hewed, they cut, they lifted up, those hundreds of humans and hydden alike, right through the early hours and ahead of the sun rising on the first spring day while they still had time.

  Following the lights, cutting the lines deep and true, creating the horse in its beauty with the sweat and sinew of all they were, in heart, body and spirit.

  Until old Barklice said, ‘Stort, it’s nearly done.’

  ‘It is indeed,’ said Stort kneeling by the new-carved eye of the Horse, ‘yet not quite so. There is still a mote in its eye and it’s best we remove it so that it sees all the better what it must see now and ever more.’

  Yet it was no mote they found, no scrap of a thing, no mite of grit within the chalk, black as night though it was.

  Stort knelt down by the eye of the Horse, reached forward and dug out what he saw, grunting with the effort of doing so. For, small though it was, the moment he took it up he knew, as did Barklice as well, what it truly was and that in any other hand it might have weighed as heavy as winter itself. Then, when he put it in his palm it began to wake from its years of sleep.

  He trembled as it did so, for he held the gem of Winter in his hand at last, vivified by light, its rays of dark majesty shining in his eyes.

  He shuddered too, seeming about to fall until Barklice took his arm and steadied him.

  ‘It is too much for me to hold, Barklice, too much . . .’

  But Barklice shook his head.

  ‘You bore the other gems, Mister Stort, and you’ve borne the winter of two lives. You’re strong enough to take the gem now to she who has waited these long years . . .’

  ‘Am I?’ said Stort rather fearfully.

  ‘You are. Now put it out of sight lest it begins to darken our spirits . . .’

  Stort put the gem in an inside pocket, as he had the others he had found. The darkness and the cold it brought eased away.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Barklice, helping Stort to his feet once more. ‘Not a minute too soon!’

  ‘Just so,’ agreed Stort.

  They stood together with their friends by the eye of the Horse as the sky lightened with the rays of the rising sun. They saw that the Mirror was gone, the Horse was free to gallop on through time as the spring, not yet quite there but holding its breath, was now ready to come.

  Just so.

  It is said Stort insisted that he climbed to the top without help and alone which, reluctantly, Barklice allowed him to do.

  It is said that winter, reluctant to leave, sent a scattering of snow right across the hill, as if to try to obliterate the fresh-cut horse in chalk, to hide it in crystalline white.

  But spring breathed out and the sun cast its warm rays across the hill. All there saw what happened then: the snow evaporated into a million tiny threads and curls of mist which, turning and thickening, reached to the White Horse already above them, or maybe became the Horse before their eyes. The rising mists became its mane, caught by the soft breeze like dappling leaves; became its great flank and legs and hooves; became its wondrous head and gentle eyes as, knowing that Bedwyn Stort’s journey was finally done, it knelt upon the hill to which it gave its name and awaited his coming.

  Tall he was but not tall enough when he reached up to that great Horse.

  ‘Mister Barklice! I need a hand. Help me if you will!’

  Which, with an affectionate shake of his head and a smile, Barklice climbed up the hill to do, content to provide that last service for Mister Bedwyn Stort, scrivener of Brum, seer of things great and small, lover of life, beloved of Judith the Shield Maiden, Wise One now.

  Very old, the Modor, old as time.

  Her consort, the Wita as some called him, had gone off saying he had things to do, but that was a long time ago. A lifetime even. Two lifetimes perhaps.

  Even the wise get lonely. They too wither and die.

  Mortal or immortal, all life needs touch and a word of love and a smile.

  Lonely was the Modor, her head bent to her chest, her hands hooked, her hair thin and lank and her doubts very great. What was there left to love any more, she wondered, in one as old as she?

  He had seen her age as Shield Maiden, but she had only ever seen him young.

  Her beloved, how he had made her smile.

  But not to be able to touch him, or feel his touch, that had been her agony, the price she paid to help him save the Universe and mortalkind.

  Old the Modor today, grumpy too.

  Shuffling about and muttering.

  ‘Doing things? If he comes back . . . I’ll . . .’

  But she had no idea what she’d do. So, muttering, she went outside and stood staring.

  ‘Where’s that damn horse?’

  I’ve not finished with you yet! One last thing to do. If he comes. Which he probably won’t.

  She moved back inside and closed the broken old door and stared about.

  Food? She wanted none now. Hadn’t eaten in years.

  Drink? She shook her head.

  Sleep? Can’t.

  Sit? Weep.

  Sit then, remembering, yearning, longing for his firm touch.

  ‘Doing things! What he’s been doing all these years has nearly been the death of me!’

  55

  THE JOURNEY ON

  The White Horse would have gone faster, but this Rider is old. And tottery. Nearly fell off over the Channel. Hung on for dear life on the great silver way of the stars. Cried out in fear at the final descent, and fell off exhausted.

  He was fearful, too.

  What to say? What to do? Everyone suffers nerves before the face of love, especially him.

  The White Horse clip-clopped in the snow.

  ‘Snow still here?’ cried Stort. ‘Can’t stand the stuff! Slows my brain.’

  The White Horse stamped not once but twice and then a third time for good measure and the snow riffled off the trees of their mountain home and the new sun, risen already across the world, rose there where he and his beloved had lived their many lives.

  But each time was new and this time Bedwyn Stort was especially nervous.

  He arrived with a gift, but it didn’t seem much.

  He came in hope, but that seemed forlorn.

  He was old now, stiff, and he needed the spring sun to liven him up, but she’d not love him if he was so old he couldn’t get on the Horse without help, let alone ride it. As for getting off that . . . was . . . no . . . joke!

  He stood finally outside their old shack of a humble, glad to have the ground firmly back under his boots again. Here he was and here he would stay if only she’d agree to have him back!

  The day’s new warmth cheered his face. He looked at their old home and then beyond it in every direction and he saw the new world rising.

  ‘Better get it over,’ said Stort aloud. ‘Better do it.’

  He straightened himself as best he could. He adjusted his jerkin and trews. He scowled at his boots but thought better of retying his laces. Too far to get down, too hard to
get up.

  He saw some remnant snow on a branch and had an idea. Scooping it up, he rubbed it into his hair in the hope of making it sleeker than it had been for a while.

  Then, knowing he had delayed enough, his heart beating most painfully, words deserting him, with only his gift to cling on to, he went to the Modor’s door and wondered if he should knock by way of warning or just open the door with a cough to announce his arrival and walk straight in.

  ‘What would she prefer?’ he murmured as a good lover should.

  He walked straight in.

  Dark was their home, winter still lingering, shadows still thick, cold staying put.

  He could hardly see her but when he did she was sitting, head to her chest, old and lonely, half blind now, she who had been Judith and was Modor once more was barely able to hear him or didn’t dare to.

  Stort stared at her and his heart filled with love.

  She was his beloved and she was most beautiful.

  He went near slowly, not wanting to frighten her, and knelt down and took her hands. Warm were his own but cold were hers, and fretful too.

  ‘I have something for you,’ he said, digging in his pocket and taking out the gem, its dark light shining, its fearful light most terrible.

  She saw it in his hands but dared not look up into his eyes for fear he was not there at all, but just an imagining, a hope.

  Stort reached to her neck and found the golden chain that held the pendant Beornamund had made. He freed it gently, and saw the gems of Spring and Summer and Autumn shimmering, waiting, wanting, yearning to be made whole again.

  ‘This is my gift to you,’ he declared, and he put the gem of Winter into the setting made so long before by Beornamund.

  ‘There!’ said Stort.

  The gems united and the Fires of the Universe were at one again as the Modor took his hand and looked into his eyes once more.

  ‘You are,’ said Stort, his heart back to normal, his knees knobbly on the rough floor, his life returning, ‘most beautiful to me and I have missed you every day I have been gone. Every day.’

  She looked at Stort and at how the gems, coming to life now, cast the colour of the seasons in his bright eyes and across his lovely face. Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, all were there for her to see in him.