Therefore, a scholar presenting himself at the Library was likely, very likely, to have worked for or with someone Brief already knew; or in an institution whose reputation and personnel were familiar to the great scrivener.
‘Ah! Master Monk! Slew, I believe.’
Slew fell to his knees before Brief, which he hoped would embarrass him. He attempted to kiss his red velvet robe which, to his relief, Brief pulled away. Close-to it was grubby and ragged and Slew was particular about such things.
‘Please, Brother Slew, there’s no need for any of this . . . I am but a scholar like any other . . .’
‘But a great one, Master, indeed a very great one.’
‘Well, well . . .’ said Brief, ‘and what may we do for you?’
‘I come, Master Brief, in all humility while I am on pilgrimage in Brum to pursue a small, private study of my own . . . nothing much, a field I am sure, many have visited before . . .’
‘The subject being?’ said Brief, a mite impatiently.
Slew’s garb was clean, that was certain. His sandals, too. But he looked all brushed up for the occasion, too much so, not like a serious scholar from one of the great Continental Schools or Libraries.
‘The Seasons,’ said Slew.
Brief sighed, it was just the kind of vague subject scholars like this would pursue.
‘Fine, excellent, a worthy study!’ said Brief rather tetchily. ‘And your Library . . . I mean the one where you normally study or to which you are in some way attached?’
Slew sighed and shrugged and said in a heavy kind of way, with a hint of despair and hopefulness, ‘I am a wandering scholar, Master Brief, in search wherever I may find it of truth, of insight, of a greater understanding of the meaning of things and, naturally, but you would understand this, I feel that—’
Brief sighed inwardly still more.
A wandering scholar, the very worst kind: unattached because no one wants them, pursuing dubious theses and wild propositions that cannot be tested, incapable of studying a subject in any depth because hard work might be involved.
‘Splendid,’ said Brief, cutting him short, ‘we welcome you to Brum and to this Library and look forward to the contribution which, I am quite sure, in time, you will make to the world of scholarship on the subject of . . . of . . . what did you say you were studying?’
‘The Seasons,’ said Slew.
Brief snapped his fingers.
An assistant came running.
‘Any particular one, or all of them?’ asked Brief, a touch acidly.
‘Spring and Summer,’ said Slew.
‘Show Brother Slew to the stacks in the lower reading room,’ Brief commanded his assistant, ‘and ask Librarian Thwart to give him what help and guidance he might need.’
Slew looked eager and ingenuous.
‘Are the books in the lower reading room younger or older?’ he asked.
‘Older,’ said Brief shortly.
‘Ah, to sit where other scholars greater than myself have sat, perhaps even that wonder of our age Master Stort!’
‘Wonder?’ repeated Brief doubtfully. ‘Whether he is that or not I may tell you he never sits, he is nearly incapable of doing so. But I must . . .’
He left Slew to it, glad to have no need at his time of life to listen to the blathering of a third-rate wandering scholar.
Slew watched him go, pretended awe in his eyes, dislike in his heart.
In fact the awe was not so hard to masquerade, because the moment Brief was gone and Slew knew he was accepted, the great, ancient, dusty, murky, many-cornered sense of history of the place bore in on him.
He arrived at the lower level and found himself faced with a long high room whose walls were of dressed stone. To one side was a desk at which a wan, thin librarian sat, his spectacles propped on his forehead as he examined a document.
On the room’s other side was a series of arches leading into corridors and chambers of various kinds in which books and manuscripts were stored on shelves. Some of the arches were open, others closed with barred gates, heavily padlocked.
‘Yers?’
‘Librarian Thwart?’
‘Yers.’
‘Master Brief sent me.’
‘Yers?’
‘He said you would show me the way things work down here.’
‘Subject?’
‘The Seasons.’
‘Be specific.’
‘Summer.’
‘Be more specific.’
‘Well—’
‘Days? Dates? Fauna? Flora? History ancient, history modern? Climatological records? Meaning of?’
‘History, ancient.’
‘English or Estrange?’
‘Estrange?’
‘Old hydden for foreign.’
‘English and perhaps Estrange. I have some titles . . .’
‘I am listening.’
Throughout this terse exchange Librarian Thwart continued to read his document. He now stopped and eyed Slew.
‘You are monkish,’ he said.
‘I am. A pilgrim, a modest wandering scholar.’
‘Ah, yes, taking the high road and the low in search of truth and wisdom. Which titles?’
Slew decided to be clear-cut. ‘I need to look at Pluvar’s Phases of course, and Hindrick’s Lencten and The Boke of the Abundant Sumor . . .’
‘Well sir – ’
Slew rattled off a few more titles kenned in the Bochum Library on the basis of the research Stort was known to have done. He was aware that some were a good deal rarer than others.
The assistant was at once impressed and stressed, trying to stop Slew’s expert flow, to explain that . . . well, access was . . . and the fact that Master Brief had . . . yes . . . it didn’t mean . . . no . . . but . . . well . . . he supposed . . .
‘I’ll start with The Meister’s Monologue on the Earthly Seasons,’ he began firmly.
‘We have copies,’ suggested Thwart.
‘The original has notes in the margins by Skurt.’
‘But—’
‘You have gloves I take it?’
‘Yes indeed we have.’
They descended a spiral medieval stone staircase, past bolted gates, on down to an open vault where, in a cool, dry, perfect temperature, the greatest collection in the Hyddenworld of material on the four seasons sat on shelves, hid itself away in boxes, or curled in ancient script-rolls, all in arched corridors, also gated and padlocked and very secure.
‘These are the open shelves of what might be called the main collection. There is always an assistant hereabout to help.’
‘You . . . ?’
‘I’m one of them.’
‘And these special collections?’ said Slew.
‘Depends. Best to ask what you want.’
‘How do I ask for what I don’t know you have?’
‘That’s scholarship I suppose!’
‘I suppose it is,’ laughed Slew icily.
No matter, he was here and here was where, somewhere, Stort would probably have hidden the gem.
‘I would rather not sit where Master Scrivener Stort works, out of respect.’
‘He generally stands,’ said Thwart, ‘but that’s his desk. He prefers it not to be disturbed.’
He pointed to an untidy desk which, to Slew, looked like a treasure trove of clues as to where the gem might be.
‘Thank you,’ said Slew, ‘I’ll be careful not to sit where that great scholar stands!’
Thwart smiled appreciatively. ‘Let me show you how things work around here,’ he said.
23
ON THE HILL
Three days after Judith’s early morning exploration of the garden, which Jack had not felt it necessary to mention to anyone else, he and Katherine, with Arthur too, took her up White Horse Hill.
She had been alive for just three weeks but by Arthur’s calculations, based on his continuing measurements, she was now physically and mentally six years old. Until then she had dressed
haphazardly, everything having been bought in a rush, it being nearly impossible to keep up with her. Katherine got her new trainers for the outing, a new T-shirt and trousers. Also, a child’s backpack into which she put some snacks.
The walk had special significance for Katherine.
When she first came to Woolstone her mother Clare could still walk, though with difficulty. Arthur had led them both through the garden, through the henge and onto the path across the meadow and so up the Hill. In those days she knew nothing about the Hyddenworld and had no idea that the path crossed the old pilgrim way by which, so many years later, she and Jack would return to Woolstone from their venture among the hydden. It had been a happy day, but never repeated once Clare became bed-ridden.
This memory came back as she went the same way with Judith. From the start strange things happened. Judith stopped still in the henge, looking about with wary curiosity, sniffing at the air and peering among the trees.
‘What is it?’ said Katherine.
‘Nobody,’ was her odd reply but one to which they did not attach significance.
They stopped to point out where she had been born and Jack took her arms and swung her round and round saying, ‘Look at the sky, watch the trees being a carousel.’
‘What’s a carousel?’ she asked later, having thought about it for a while.
‘Like a roundabout only golden and with horses and music,’ said Arthur.
Judith’s development had been so rapid that it had dawned on them only slowly that she needed feeding with ideas and experience as well as food. The food had been easy, the rest was more difficult. But both the Foales had their childhood books and Katherine had hers as well, so there was no shortage of reading material. Added to which theirs was not a house lacking in conversation and ideas.
Toys were a different matter, and that was left to Jack to work out with the assistance of shops he went to in Wantage and Oxford.
Judith learnt very fast, though her reading was slow, perhaps like that of a four-year-old. But she absorbed everything around her like a sponge, one thing after another, so that they were constantly surprised by her growing vocabulary and the things she knew.
‘Her speech is keeping pace at least,’ said Arthur.
‘And she can say “Anglo-Saxon”,’ said Margaret, ‘because I taught her.’
‘Much good may that do her, my dear,’ growled Arthur.
They had no television that worked. But there was the internet and all of them but Margaret sat with her and showed her things on screen.
Margaret’s role was different and more hands-on.
‘You can help me plant some lettuces, Judith . . . They’re called scones, my dear, do you want to make some . . . ? Come and help me pick some daffodils, Arthur likes to have them on his desk and your mum puts them in her room . . .’
One way or another Judith learnt things and learnt them fast.
What she lacked was friends. Arthur, now the expert on child development, said warningly, ‘She needs friends if she is to learn to socialize, otherwise she could become a criminal.’
‘Yes, well,’ muttered Katherine, ‘even if the law ever caught up with her, which I doubt, I’m not sure under whose jurisdiction a Shield Maiden falls . . .’
The walk up White Horse Hill was a landmark event in Judith’s short life which Margaret was sorry to miss, but she got more tired these days, she explained, and it would be nice to have the house to herself for a little while.
‘She gets more than tired,’ said Arthur, ‘she gets pains in her arms and legs. Her days for walking are long over and she’s on pills for blood pressure which she won’t take unless I force-feed her, which I do!’
They climbed the Hill quite slowly, letting Judith take her time. It was not the climb itself that slowed her but the sights and the sounds of other people as they climbed. When they reached the top Judith hid behind Jack’s legs, staring, especially at children of her own size.
Later she took his hand and ventured forth a little.
‘She wants to make contact but doesn’t know how,’ whispered Katherine.
‘Shall I . . . ?’ began Jack, always one to push things forward.
‘Let her do it her way.’
Arthur sat down on the grass, huffing and puffing as he produced an old-fashioned vacuum flask of tea.
Judith sat with him.
‘The Horse,’ he said, ‘is just there, over the brow of the hill. We passed it coming up but it’s not exactly obvious.’
‘Where?’ she said.
‘Show her,’ said Arthur, not wishing to heave himself up.
‘No, you,’ said Judith.
‘Well . . .’
But he didn’t mind, she had been easier and less in pain for the last day or two.
With Judith and Arthur exploring the Horse, Jack and Katherine put their arms around each other and had a moment to themselves.
‘Our special place,’ she said.
They had often walked up from the house two years before in the Summer when they renewed their brief childhood friendship and fell in love. He turned her round to look across the other side of the Hill towards the Ridgeway, the old prehistoric way that ran from Avebury twenty miles to the west; and to the east along the downs to the Chilterns and from there up into East Anglia, where it became another path, but still part of the ancient system.
‘We promised each other that one day we’d go that way right to the end,’ she said.
‘We will,’ he murmured, ‘somehow we will, I can feel it . . .’
He could too, in his bones, in his spirit, he and Katherine and Judith, one day . . . somehow . . . they might . . . they must. Some journeys feel written in the stars.
‘We will,’ he said again.
They turned their attention back to Judith, who was arguing with Arthur.
‘It isn’t a horse, it’s white lines. Like a picture.’
‘A picture of a horse,’ said Arthur.
‘Where?’ she persisted.
He peered about, helplessly, because she was quite right, it was too big, too abstract, to make sense of from the ground.
‘There’s a picture of it from the air here on the public noticeboard,’ said Jack.
Judith came to him and he picked her up to have a look.
‘It’s a picture of a horse,’ he said. ‘This horse,’ he added.
‘Where?’ she said a third time, unable to make the conceptual leap of imagination needed to turn the diverging, ancient lines into something as concrete as the legs, head and body of a horse.
Jack took her hand and placed one of her fingers on the eye of the Horse. It had a special significance for him because he had climbed up here on the day Clare, Katherine’s mother, had died, and he had met Imbolc the Peace-Weaver, legendary sister of the Shield Maiden.
‘That’s the Horse’s eye,’ he said. ‘We’re not meant to but let’s stand on it.’
He helped her down the steep sward and they stood together on the eye.
‘This is how the Horse sees,’ he said.
‘Here?’ she said, dropping to her knees and looking straight into the eye, which was just a white circle of bare chalk. ‘Here! I can see the Horse and the Horse can see me!’
There was sudden wonder in her voice.
She stood up, stared at the complex lines of the head, then at the legs and back and she said, ‘I can dance the Horse alive.’
She raised her arms, stepped from the eye and walked to one of the lines and began hopping and skipping along the lines, as if she was in a maze finding the way in.
‘Look, Daddy, look!’
She danced the lines all by herself, over the rise, off down the slope, back and back down, leg by leg, along the body, back to the head and eye.
‘I danced the Horse and he’s gloppolling over the grass towards the sky, look!’
She was happy and in touch with something beyond herself. All might have been well had not a primary school group come along and see
n her and stared.
Judith, not street-aware, misread the signals and, wanting friends, danced over to them, perhaps a little scarily. Someone or something among them had caught her eye. They backed off and one of them said, ‘She looks weird.’
Judith, stubborn, went towards them again and grabbed at a girl her own size.
Before Jack or Katherine could intervene there was a scream, a push, a shove and Judith was on the sloping ground, rolling a couple of rolls down the grass to where it steepened towards the Horse and then carried on down and down into the great deep combe below, so far that people above looked down on the birds flying there.
The girl was on the ground, messed up and crying. A bigger boy looked belligerent. A teacher, purposeful, headed towards Jack, who also purposeful, but angry and protective too, headed towards him.
But for Judith there might have been a war.
She got up, slowly raised her hands, and said, ‘Look! I’ll glallop with the Horse!’
With that she went to the edge of the grass escarpment, cartwheeled over it down to the Horse, came upright with her feet plumb centre of the eye and before anyone could say or do a thing, tumbled on, bouncing, jumping, dancing the sward and earth, cartwheeling the clouds, laughing the breeze, flying the knapweed and the scabious until she disappeared from view halfway down the slope.
A car was coming up a road, another going down, they disappeared where she had gone and wow! Like a bird she shot from off the road she had landed on and carried on free-running down the terracettes, on and on through a flock of sheep, Jack and Katherine and Arthur open-mouthed, the teacher standing still alarmed, the kids staring wide-eyed, as on Judith went until with a cartwheel and slow turn in the air she landed upright on a green swathe of horizontal ground, the perfect stage for her finale, which was to look back up, apparently all right, and raise a hand.
Stumbling, tripping, grumbling, Jack and Katherine, with Arthur taking the long way round, made their way down to her. It had been magnificently terrifying and when they got up close they thought at first she was all right: hair a mess, clothes grass- and earth-stained, face scratched, hands and nails torn, but all right.
‘Let’s go home,’ said Jack heavily, not knowing what else to say.
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