Awakening

by William Horwood

  ‘You’ll see and you’ll know.’

  ‘But I do know,’ said Stort, ‘of course I know because once I stood on a stage like that and waited like he is now. Right through a night and then another and then another until he—’

  Her hand grew tighter on his arm. ‘You did,’ she said.

  ‘But he . . .’

  Stort could not bear to tell that truth, as he could not bear to watch the waiting boy, alone on the stage watching the rise of the mist, hoping that out of it, against all odds, despite all fears, out of it . . .

  ‘He never came for me,’ said Stort.

  Her hand was tighter still.

  ‘And that’s why you’re Barklice’s true friend,’ she said, ‘and brought him here because you know what’s right and what’s wrong and what blights a little life . . . now . . . now . . .’

  Stort dared look again.

  Still nobody came.

  Still the lurid mist drifted by, the boy sturdy and solid against it, refusing to give up, his new-packed portersac on the stage at his feet, ready to embark on a craft that hadn’t arrived, with a father who had never come back, leaving him to be the last and the left. There he stood, refusing to believe a truth that would break his heart.

  The talking among the gathered group ceased; it seemed they had given up. Stort noticed one in particular, no longer quite young, rather plain, but graceful, gentle in the way she stood, the firelight catching the back of her head as she stared at the boy, her hair touched with grey, the fire turning it red. She turned to one of the others, taking her eyes off the boy for a moment, and Stort saw her face. Even she, it seemed, now had her doubts, and there was a measure of sadness in her eyes.

  Well, she seemed to say, well then . . . I suppose . . .

  An older woman went to her, and a man, bilgesnipe both, large, warm, hands ready to reach out to any who needed comforting.

  So they didn’t see that out on the landing stage the boy had suddenly stiffened and taken a step forward.

  Stort, his old hurt memory gone, stiffened too.

  Then he saw a light wavering in the mist, a lantern held aloft, and a voice very familiar to Bedwyn Stort which called out, ‘You be a warnin’ me where that blessed stage may be, my chumly Mister Barklice, for Arnold cannot see a thing! Not even his own nose!’

  It was Arnold Mallarkhi, grandson of Old Mallarkhi of the Muggy Duck, bringing a craft out of the mist, across the current.

  ‘What do you see, Mister Barklice?’

  The light showed first and then an arm and then, as the arm came through the mist, the prow of the craft on which stood, precariously, his hand shaking, holding the lantern with one hand and a lanyard with another for support, the Master Verderer of Brum.

  ‘I see a . . . I think . . . it is . . .’

  ‘Call it plain, Mister Barklice, call it good,’ cried Arnold, ‘be it near or be it far?’

  ‘Near.’

  ‘What’s near, chumly, a river bank, a rocky obstruction, a landing stage?’

  The boy stepped forward eagerly, Barklice let go the lanyard and stood up straight.

  ‘It’s my boy,’ he said simply.

  The boy turned suddenly landward, for the briefest of moments, and never in his life had Stort ever seen such joy and pride on a face.

  ‘It’s my pa!’ he called out and then, very simply, ‘Ma allers said he’d come for me, down all those years she said he’d come and here he be!’

  Of the next few moments Stort never remembered much.

  Barklice forgot to tell Arnold how close they were.

  For once that bilgeyboy missed a trick and hit a landing stage.

  The boat smacked hard, Barklice staggered off, the boy held him fast, his ma came running, her ma and pa came running too, and then the whole lot were clattering down the landing stage . . .

  ‘Hold fast, lubbers!’ yelled Arnold with a laugh, ‘else the stage and its planks and all you folk’ll collapse in the water.’

  Together, all as one, as a family they held fast to the boy and his pa and led them safe to shore, clacketing down the planks back to shore with happiness.

  ‘This be him,’ said the boy, and Stort watched as Barklice shook so many hands he lost count, ‘this be my pa!’

  ‘Be it true you’m the Master Verderer of Brum?’ cried out one.

  ‘Well, I suppose, if you put it that way, I do bear that title but—’

  ‘And you know all sorts of folk, low and high, high and low?’

  ‘Quite a few, yes, but I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Like Lord Festive?’

  ‘Festoon,’ said Barklice, ‘yes, I certainly know him in more than a passing way but . . . I would like . . . I mean . . . I ought . . .’

  The boy had hold of Barklice’s hand and pulled him towards the woman Stort had noticed before.

  ‘Be it true, Mister Barklice sir, that Brum is as big as a city ought to be?’ called another.

  ‘That’s true but really . . . I can answer your questions later . . . but you see I’d very much like to know . . . my . . . my son’s name.’

  The boy reached the woman and pulled Barklice towards her.

  ‘Pa, meet Ma,’ he said.

  And the woman, bilgylike, warm as toast, good as a plate of stewed tomatoes on a misty morn, laughing, put her arms around Barklice and whispered, ‘Ask him yourself !’

  So Barklice looked at the boy and knelt down so they were one and the same and said, ‘Tell me your name.’

  ‘Bratfire,’ said the boy, ‘and I’ve learnt hyddening better than most but they say you’ll teach me a trick or two.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And is it true, Ma says it is but no one else thinks it so, that . . . that . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you know the most famous hydden of them all?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure who—’

  ‘That you’ve talked to him, like we are now . . .’

  ‘I may well have done but . . . who . . . ah! You mean Master Brief. Well, of course . . .’

  Bratfire shook his head rather impatiently.

  ‘Pa,’ he asked rather severely, ‘tell us one and all, here and now, if it be true or not that my pa actually knows and has talked to, maybe even shaken the hand of, the famous Mister Stort?’

  Barklice looked astonished. Then a slow smile came over his face, the firelight dancing in his eyes.

  ‘You mean the famous Mister Bedwyn Stort?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The one who rescued Lord Festoon?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘The one who speaks so many languages that sometimes he forgets to speak his own clearly?’

  ‘He’m the one we’ve heard of.’

  ‘The inventor of . . . of all sorts of things?’

  ‘Well, do you or no?’

  Barklice laughed, really laughed, for the first time in days, perhaps in a certain way for the first time in years, if ever.

  ‘If your mother says I do then of course I do, because she’s always right and never tells a lie!’ he said, tempted suddenly to tell a slight one himself.

  But not a bad one.

  In such circumstances a certain massaging of the truth seemed permissible.

  ‘I am a little late,’ he said, ‘because it took a great deal of persuading to get Master Scrivener Stort to agree to come to Paley’s Creek tonight to—’

  ‘He’s here!?’ said Bratfire in delighted astonishment. ‘Like . . . here?’

  Bratfire looked round to see if his mother had heard, which she had. Indeed, she was looking as amazed – and as impressed – as their son.

  Barklice stood up and looked around indifferently, as if it was the most natural thing in the world that one of Englalond’s greatest scholars should be wandering about Paley’s Creek with him for no good reason other than to be there.

  For Bratfire the night was turning magical.

  ‘Yes, he’s certainly here somewhere or other . . . now
let me see if I can spot him . . . Ah, there he is!’

  Bratfire looked in the same direction but all he spotted was someone he had noticed before and dismissed – a tall, rather distracted-looking hydden, whose arms and legs seemed too long for his body.

  ‘That’s him,’ said Barklice, ‘that’s Mister Stort of Brum, the best friend a hydden ever had.’

  ‘Him!? And who be that standing akin to him? Stocky feller, fierce eyes?’

  ‘He,’ said Barklice sternly, ‘is not to be dismissed as a mere “him” in that tone of voice. And that other gentleman is not a mere “that”.

  ‘In fact, the fine upstanding hydden next to Mister Stort is a very great and important hydden indeed, namely Jack . . .’

  Bratfire looked suddenly terrified.

  ‘Jack? Not he who . . . ?’

  ‘The same. Stort and Jack, friends indeed. But of course, if you don’t want to meet them just because one looks fierce and the other odd, then . . .’

  ‘I do want to meet them,’ said Bratfire, ‘and I think Ma does too.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Barklice, ‘now’s the time!’

  He put his hand on Bratfire’s shoulder as naturally as if he had done it a thousand times before and led him over to Stort and Jack.

  ‘Mister Stort!’ cried out Barklice rather grandly, ‘here’s someone who would like to meet you, and you too, Jack!’

  They looked down at the young hydden, saw at once how much like Barklice he was, smiled benignly and shook his hand.

  Bratfire was tongue-tied.

  ‘You can introduce them to your mother,’ said Barklice in a fatherly way, ‘and then get us a hot brew, one with a bit of kick to it if you please!’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ said Bratfire. ‘And something to eat. That’s the thing tonight, isn’t it?’

  ‘I think it may be,’ said Barklice, ‘eh, gentelmen?’

  ‘I think it may very well be!’ they replied.

  That was a Paley’s Creek to remember . . .

  And it didn’t end there.

  Bratfire’s family was not going to let their lad go without a long hello, a good bit of storytelling and a long goodbye. The visitors were given seats of honour by the fire where they couldn’t so much as raise a hand without some new sweetmeat, delicacy, brew or pottage being thrust into it.

  Full was not in it.

  They were filled to bursting.

  Then, something more amazing to round things off, but it wasn’t food, it was unexpected guests.

  ‘Look!’ said Jack.

  They came through the crowd of people with ribbons in their hair and folk knew what and who they were, for they fell back amazed. Katherine looked afire with life, Judith with excitement.

  ‘Be that or be that not ’oo I think it be and honerring us with their presence?’

  ‘Aye, it be the Shield Maiden in making, Mirror bless ’er old soul.’

  The females went to them, reached their hands to them and made a dance around the fire, the most elusive of dances, for the bilgesnipes’ silks and ribbons seemed to slowly adorn Katherine and Judith with each flare and flame of the fire until, when the circle stopped and brought them in front of Jack, they were the most beautiful, the prettiest, of the night.

  ‘Welcome to ’ee mother, welcome daughter, go and sit by your spouse’ll friend and your’n father too. Bratfire, show ’em food! This was Paley’s way to be and we’m honrin’ his memory and more.’

  ‘Sound the tuble, beat the skirmish drum, hammock the rhythm of the night and tell time to stand still a while longer, for we in this family bain’t done yet!’

  Eating, dancing, making merry, making love and making friends.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Bratfire and your’n?’

  ‘Judith. Can you dance?’

  ‘Wind-like and across the field, I will one day, but nary yet,’ said Judith, using wild words from out of a wild night.’

  ‘Hmmm, come on, I’ll show you. If Mum can, you can . . .’

  All the while Barklice’s new family extended itself around them, other bilgesnipe and hydden strolling over and introducing themselves as cousins, aunts, great nieces, uncles, great uncles, mothers-of and brothers-to and ‘old friends who were one of the family’.

  Barklice, Stort and Bratfire, with Arnold at the helm, did not make passage from Paley’s Creek for Brum until dawn, by when they were well fed, well watered and nearly asleep. Jack was staying behind, unconvinced he could be of use in Brum, certain his duty lay with Katherine and Judith.

  The entire assembly came to say goodbye, gathering on the river bank, weeping, wailing, hugging and kissing them all before finally allowing them aboard.

  Yet that was not quite Stort’s final memory.

  The dawn mist was shot through with rising Summer sun, and as the last of Bratfire’s family was lost to sight behind them, and he sat down next to Barklice looking tired and nervous at the prospect ahead, Stort saw a bent figure on the far side.

  She was very old, older than he remembered from the night before. The Modor, the wise hydden, watching as he went. Was that who had asked for his arm?

  He felt a pang of sadness and loss so deep that he had to stand up in the craft and raise a hand in farewell as if that movement and gesture might alleviate the unexpected grief he felt.

  She did not raise a hand, perhaps she was too weak to do so, but she nodded towards him and perhaps she smiled.

  Jack saw it too from the bank, Katherine as well, but Judith most of all.

  ‘Who is she?’ she asked.

  ‘A wise woman who’s seen much and learnt more,’ said Jack.

  ‘Why’s she sad and bent?’

  ‘Loneliness,’ said Katherine, ‘that’s why. For wisdom’s the hardest and most lonely path of all to find and stick with to the end.’

  ‘Hasn’t she got a friend?’

  ‘Too old,’ said Katherine.

  ‘Too hard to find again once they’re lost,’ said Jack, taking Katherine’s hand and holding it tight, ‘so don’t go and lose your friends if you can help it.’

  ‘No,’ said Judith, ‘no . . .’

  Then, though none could swear it, they thought they saw loom out of the mist behind the Modor wise and old, the white flank of a horse, and puffs of what seemed steam from great nostrils, which filled with light from the sun and swirled with the swish of the horse’s tail.

  Then she and the horse were gone.

  When the mist lifted and the morning emerged in its full Summer glory along the river bank, there was nothing left to see but the sun in the dew.

  ‘Pa?’ said Bratfire later, when he had slept, ‘how long will it be afore we get to Brum?’

  ‘A bit of time,’ said Barklice happily.

  Stort and he raised their hands to wave goodbye to Jack and the others.

  ‘He didn’t come,’ said Barklice.

  ‘I didn’t ask him to,’ replied Stort. ‘He’ll have to do that for himself but it’s already stirring in the wind . . . it’s on its way . . . and Jack will know he’s needed.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Trouble,’ said Stort.

  28

  THIEF

  The Great Library of Brum opened its doors on a Sunday at nine, when, in a time of pilgrimage, most folk were still asleep, or just getting up.

  But every library had its Sad Readers, their lives bound to the hours of opening and closing of their alma mater, they having so little else in their lives that to avoid the reality of its emptiness they must escape into filing cards, bibliographies, the comfort of a solitary desk, the pursuit of reference, the rediscovery of something forgotten which was not worth remembering, attachment to things so obscure that the only other hydden who know what they are talking about are Sad Readers in other libraries somewhere across the Hyddenworld. Their only respite from the dusty hours inside being the daily small pleasure of the miserable munched brotkin of a lunch alone outside watching the real world go by. Then back to wor
k and the long walk to the scholar’s grave.

  Pity them, for they know no other life than that, slinking back and forth from board, bed and guttering hearth, their minds filled with scholarship of a desperate kind and strange thoughts that are best suppressed. Like: is the most exciting thing that ever happened to this tome, which only two or three folk have looked at in eight hundred years, that it was half eaten by bookworms and half burnt by fire?

  ‘What is it you do?’ their acquaintances ask uneasily.

  ‘I . . . well, I . . .’ But the explanation falters before the incomprehension of their interlocutor and they never say much that makes sense.

  For such as these, late opening or shorter Winter hours or, something worse by far, no opening at all, are trials to be borne with the seasons and the years as their hair grows grey, their skin ever more pale, their muscles flaccid, their minds unused except in parts, their emotions flat.

  Until something happens and their world briefly turns to something different and new.

  A flood perhaps – that’s news.

  A commotion in a reading room – that’s exciting.

  A retirement of a librarian loved, so far as love creeps about the stacks, wan and unexpressed as it must be – that’s sad.

  Then back to normal, and another year or two or three rolls on until something else, so exciting that it’s news, happens and their year is made.

  Or, once in a rarer while, ten years perhaps, part of the library roof falls in. That’s a year to remember.

  Or, through mismanagement and a confluence of unfortunate events, every fifty years or so, a fire happens, or a Reader goes insane.

  That’s good news as well.

  Only once a century, or even once in five centuries, does something truly terrible happen, so terrible that it is too much for such Readers as those to bear. They deny it ever did. They return the following day as if all is normal and well.

  They deny that sometimes life itself is changed for ever and their world, perhaps the whole of the Hyddenworld, will never be the same again.

  That morning, at a few minutes before nine, last night’s rain still falling and setting in under a low-clouded sky, the Sad Readers of Brum huddled in the shelter of the doors of the Great Library, not talking to each other as they waited to be let in.