At the Crossing Places (4 page)

O
N MY WAY DOWN TO THE STABLES LATE THIS AFTER
noon, I was thinking about Arthur-in-the-stone. To begin with, I actually believed I was him and he was me. But then I saw him doing things I could never do, and now he has pulled the sword from the stone and been crowned at Westminster.

But to see Arthur reunited with his mother fills me with hope in my quest for mine, and to hear Merlin cautioning Arthur about Sir Ulfius reminds me that things contain their own opposites. Where there is loyalty, there can also be betrayal. My whole life is changing, and in a way, my patient stone is showing me all the different parts of myself.

When I looked up, I recognized her at once. She was limping and still a long way off.

I ran down the hill and slithered to a stop right in front of her, in almost exactly the place where Winnie collided with me.

“Gatty!”

Gatty looked at me. Her nose was red, her eyelids were orange, and she'd dragged her lower lip against her teeth so often that it was puffy and raw.

“How did you get here?”

Gatty sighed and looked at her feet.

“You've walked here?”

“Mmmm,” murmured Gatty, as if she were mumbling in her sleep.

“From Caldicot?”

Gatty dragged her lower lip against her teeth again and closed her eyes.

“But how did you find the way?”

“Didn't,” muttered Gatty.

“When did you leave, then?”

“Yesterday.”

“Yesterday!” I cried. “You slept in the forest?”

“Got up a tree.”

“The wolves!”

Gatty shrugged. “Wanted to see for myself, didn't I.”

“But…”

Gatty's eyes were shining and turbulent, like the Little Lark in flood.

“Does Hum know?”

Gatty shook her head. “No one,” she said.

“They'll think you've been caught in one of Macsen's snares. Or a wildman has carried you off into the forest.”

Gatty brushed her sore eyelids and half-smiled.

“Well, you can't go back tonight,” I said.

Gatty took a step toward me, but then she grasped her right knee and grimaced, so I put my left hand around her waist and helped her up the path. “I don't know exactly what to do,” I said, more to myself than to Gatty. “Warm food…somewhere to sleep. I could ask Gubert…”

“Don't matter,” Gatty said in a numb voice.

“No,” I said uncertainly. “I'll have to tell Lady Judith. Lord Stephen's away at Knighton for the manor court, so I'd better tell Lady Judith.”

Lady Judith was in the hall with Rowena and Izzie, embroidering a square for her wall hanging. As soon as she saw us, she rose and drew herself up to her full height, and eyed us fiercely, like an indignant bird when someone comes too close to her nest.

I told Lady Judith that Gatty is our reeve's daughter and that she'd walked from Caldicot, all the way; I explained how Gatty saved Sian when she went through the ice, and separated our bulls, and stopped the wolves from taking more than one of our sheep, and then I said she just wanted to see Holt for herself.

I don't know quite what Lady Judith was thinking, though, because her face was expressionless and she didn't ask any questions.

“Well!” she said, when I'd finished. “We can't have one of Sir John's tenants freezing to death.”

“She slept up a tree last night,” I said.

“Like a bear cub,” Lady Judith said tartly. “And that's what she looks like in all that hairy sacking. Izzie! Take this…what's her name?”

“Gatty,” I said.

“Take Gatty down to the kitchen. Tell Gubert to give her something. Then bring her back up here and find her a bolster.”

“But where will she sleep, my lady?” asked Izzie.

“Here,” replied Lady Judith.

“Here!” exclaimed Izzie, and she screwed up her face, and led Gatty out of the hall.

Lady Judith looked at me and smiled grimly. “I see you inspire great loyalty, Arthur,” she said.

“I didn't know,” I mumbled. “I mean…”

“Lord Stephen is going to have to keep a close eye on you,” she said. “Winnie last week! And now this Gatty! Who next?”

By the time Gatty and Izzie had come back up to the hall, Lady Judith had already wished me a peaceful night and retired to her solar. Gatty yawned and pulled the sacking off her head; her fair curls gleamed in the candlelight. Then she yawned for a second time.

“You haven't seen half,” I said. “I'll show you in the morning.”

Across the fire, Gatty looked at me, worn out, wistful; then she buried her face in her bolster.

I had planned to show her my writing-room, and creep into Lady Judith's solar and show her the wall hanging. I was going to take her down to the dark river because there are stepping-stones right across it, and you can see big trout suspended and gliding just under the water's skin. And I wanted to ask Gatty about her and Jankin's betrothal, and whether Lankin was still against it, and everything else that's happened at Caldicot. It's already ten days since I left.

But when she woke up this morning, Gatty had a fever. Her blood was too hot and her nose was streaming, and she said she had a knife in her throat. She just lay by the hall fire and kept shuddering.

Lady Judith instructed Izzie to boil fennel and mullein and dill in wine, then add a little horehound, and strain it all through a linen cloth.

“Drink it warm,” Lady Judith told Gatty. “It will clear the foggy smoke in your nose and throat, and wash away the harmful slime.” Then Lady Judith glared at me. “This is all most irregular,” she said. “She'd better stay here today.”

Before midday, I heard rolling cartwheels, and when I ran down to the courtyard I saw Jankin arriving with Easy, our old affer, and my wooden chest.

“Jankin!” I called. “She's here! Gatty's here!”

“Gatty!” exclaimed Jankin, quite amazed. And then he hugged me. “Everyone's searching for her. The barns. The millpond. The forest. Some people thought she'd been caught in a snare…”

“I knew it.”

“‘Little runt! Stupid reckling!' That's what Hum keeps saying.”

“She slept in the forest.”

“She didn't,” said Jankin.

“Two days in Pike Forest,” I said.

“The clucking clinchpoop!” said Jankin, grinning.

“She is,” I said. “And she's a crock of mucus. She's got a fever.”

“Where is she, then?”

I pointed over my shoulder.

“What? In the hall?”

“And Lady Judith's looking after her.”

Jankin shook his head and whistled.

“What about your father, then?” I asked.

“No change,” Jankin replied. “He says he'll see Hum dead before I marry his daughter. Can I go up?”

“I will first,” I said, and I ran up the circular steps to the solar, and informed Lady Judith of Jankin's arrival.

“Behold the Hand of God!” Lady Judith exclaimed, and she crossed herself. “He can take Gatty back to Caldicot.”

“Jankin and Gatty want to be betrothed,” I said.

“They'd better get on with it, then,” Lady Judith said, “before some bear snaffles her for breakfast. Make sure Jankin gets something to eat.”

Gubert gave Jankin bread and three collops and a draft of milk. Then he unloaded my chest and carried it up to my room, and after that we went off to find Rhys in the stables. He let us have a big bundle of wheat straw and some dry sacking, to make a bed for Gatty in the cart.

“Better than walking,” I said.

“You ever ridden in a cart?” Jankin asked me. “Bruises every bone in your body.”

Last night Gatty was too tired to talk, and this morning she felt too ill to talk. But what would we have said anyhow? We never say much, Gatty and I.

I stood on the back of the cart and stared down at her.

“You got the sky on your shoulders,” she said quietly.

“What do you mean?”

Gatty half-smiled and looked up at me, unblinking.

“Well, you've got stars back in your eyes,” I said, “so your fever's cooling.”

Jankin was sitting on the front edge of the cart, and he flicked his whip without touching Easy.

“We're off,” he said.

“I wish I were coming too,” I said. “I mean, it's all right here…”

“Lonely?” asked Jankin.

I could feel tears welling up behind my eyes and I swallowed. “But there's going to be time to come back to Caldicot. Before the crusade. I think there is.”

Then Jankin flicked his whip again; the old affer started forward and I jumped off the cart.

For a while I watched as they bumped and rattled down the track, but Gatty didn't sit up, and Jankin didn't look back.

O
UT OF MY CASE I LIFTED NEW ARROWS, NINE OF THEM,
their silken flights made from the feathers of Lord Stephen's peacocks. Then a spare hempen bowstring and my old leather bracer. Three purple tunics. A linen bag bulging with my ivory chess pieces. And several pairs of drawers and hose. Underneath all this was my house-cloak, with a piece of parchment in one pocket.

I recognized Sir John's simple writing at once. “Here is an old friend,” he wrote, “as beautiful and horrid as we all are. Keep him with you, and he will watch over you. Try the other pocket!”

I did, and the burnt orange tile was in it—the one Sir John bought last year from a peddler. It has a man's face on it, shaped like an upside-down pear. His brow is broad and his eyes wide apart, but his jowls taper and his little beard is pointed. Spiny leaves sprout out of his open mouth and nostrils and ears, but what's even more strange are his eyes. Sometimes they look kind, sometimes angry, and wherever I stand in my room, they're always looking at me.

They make me think how I am only a little lower than the angels; but they also make me feel little better than a hideous beast. Beautiful and horrid. Both. How strange that is.

Although Sir John can read, he has never learned to write properly, and from the way he forms his letters, you'd think he was a
young boy. I suppose that's one reason he has made me work so hard at my own writing lessons with our priest, Oliver.

This is the first time he has ever written me. His letter makes me very proud, but it makes me lonely too.

I haven't got any friends here at Holt, and when I think about meeting Sir William as my father, and searching for my mother, and learning how to serve Lord Stephen as he expects, I sometimes feel afraid.

L
ORD STEPHEN AND LADY JUDITH HAVE BOTH GONE TO
the manor court at Verdon. But I wish they had asked me to accompany them, because then I would have seen Winnie again.

I couldn't practice my Yard-skills because it rained all day, and as Haket is sick, I didn't have my lesson with him either. I was quite pleased about that because I don't like Haket half as much as Oliver; there is something strange about him, and I can't work out exactly what it is. I did try to talk to Rahere in the hall, but he was very melancholy, and just sat beside the fire with his head between his hands.

“Go away!” he said. “It's raining blue inside my head.”

So I went up to the solar and kept Rowena company while she stitched a new panel for the wall hanging, and she told me that when she and Lady Judith went to the fair at Chester last year to buy colored silks, they saw a woman in a cage who was born without hands.

“But her toe joints were so long and loose,” Rowena said, “that she could thread a needle with them, and stitch. She was just as nimble with her feet as I am with my hands.”

I remembered how Gatty and I had planned to go to the fair at Ludlow, where there's a woman with three breasts, and then I saw Gatty sadly gazing up at me from her straw bed in the cart.

“What's troubling you?” Rowena asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Too much.”

“You sound like Rahere.”

For a while I thought, and Rowena stitched. “If God loves us all the same,” I said, “why doesn't He treat us all the same?”

In the dusk the rain eased and I went walking. All the snow has melted into pools and mud poultices, except for the white bandages along the hedgerows.

W
HEN LORD STEPHEN AND LADY JUDITH RODE BACK
from Verdon, they brought Winnie with them.

“I told her we're going to find you a warhorse,” Lord Stephen said, “and she wants to ask the breeder about Dancer's burns. Anyhow, I didn't think you'd mind a little company.”

I grinned.

“Now, Arthur, go and tell Rhys we want to ride over to the stud farm tomorrow.”

“Is he coming?” I asked.

“Of course,” said Lord Stephen. “Rhys is a fine judge of horses. Without him, we wouldn't be able to understand a word the breeder was saying.”

At dawn, the air was as keen as a newly honed knife, and the sky forget-me-not blue. The four of us rode out of Holt, following the river Clun, heading west.

To begin with, we rode four abreast, but then Winnie kicked Dancer and I followed her, and we raced each other for several furlongs, and I won.

When we drew up, Winnie blew out balloons of white breath. “The last…” she gasped, “shall be first…and the first last.”

“What do you mean?”

Winnie stared at Pip and widened her chestnut eyes. Then she narrowed them.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Jading Pip.”

“What's that?”

“Stopping him from moving. I'm going to fix him where he is.”

“You can't do that.”

“I did once. I froze Dancer.”

I dug my heels into Pip and he ambled forward, innocent of Winnie's designs. Then I turned round in the saddle. “You're a horse-witch!” I shouted.

Winnie laughed and trotted up alongside me again.

“Is it true?” she asked. “Is Grace de Gortanore your sister?”

“Who told you that?”

“My mother.”

“She's my half sister,” I said. “Sir William's our father. But I only found out a few weeks ago.”

“So you can't be betrothed to her,” Winnie said.

“Who said I wanted to be?”

“No one,” replied Winnie. “Why? Did you?”

“I can't, anyhow. She's my half sister. Tom's my half brother.”

“Tom,” said Winnie, and she smiled a little, secret smile. “Come on! Let's have another race!”

After about an hour, we rode up to a huge earth-bank running from north to south, and although I've never seen it before, I recognized it at once.

“I can't think why King Offa bothered to build it, whoever he was,” Winnie said. “No dyke would keep the Welsh out of England.”

“It would,” I said, “if it were manned and defended.”

“Impossible!” said Winnie. “It's more than one hundred and fifty miles long. Anyhow, my father says fighting Wales is like trying to hold a slippery salmon. Not even the Normans could, and they planted castles all over the country, and married Welsh women…”

“That's what my father did…” I said. “Sir John de Caldicot, I mean.”

“What about your mother?” Winnie asked. “Is she Welsh? Who is she, anyhow?”

At this moment, Lord Stephen and Rhys rose up. The stableman stared up at the earthwork and gave a loud sigh.

“
Sais!
” he growled, to no one in particular.

“What does that mean?” asked Winnie.

“Saxon,” I said. “Bloody Saxon! My grandmother says that.”

“He can't say that,” protested Winnie.

Lord Stephen smiled at his niece indulgently. “Saying is usually best,” he observed.

After this, I rode for a while with Lord Stephen. With his straw-colored, mud-spotted cloak gathered tightly around him, he looked like a large speckled egg.

“Yes,” he said, “it's true the Welsh are our enemies, and it's only thirty-three years since they defeated us in the Berwyn Hills. But I admire them.”

“Why, sir?” I asked.

“For being what we English are not,” Lord Stephen said. “The way they honor the power in each and every thing: each leaf, each stone…”

“That's what my Nain says.”

“…and for their singing voices; their hoard of stories. But you know all this. Lady Helen's mother was married to a Welsh warlord.”

“I know,” I said. “And she's told me about the Sleeping King, the King Without a Name…”

“Look over your left shoulder,” said Lord Stephen.

I looked and saw a hill, its heather almost black, its dead bracken pale gold.

“Weston Hill,” announced Lord Stephen.

“Weston!” I cried. “That's where he's sleeping…there or Caer Caradoc. Until the day he wakes and marches out and forces the Saxons back into the sea.”

Lord Stephen screwed up his eyes and nodded.

“Do you believe that, sir?” I asked.

“I don't disbelieve it. What about you?”

“I don't know,” I said. “But isn't it best to believe, unless it's impossible to do so?”

“That's a very good answer,” Lord Stephen said. “And there's another thing I admire the Welsh for: their horse-breeding. Come on! You'll see.”

At Duffryn, there was a ford. After crossing the Clun, we rode southwest, and about three miles farther on we came to the stud farm at Quabbs.

What a sight! The palfreys in one paddock, the mountain ponies with their sweeping tails in another, the sumpters and other packhorses in a third.

Two sheepdogs rushed out to meet us, furiously barking, their
eyes on fire. They were followed by two dwarf dogs with legs so short they looked as though they'd been sawn off; their stomachs were almost sliding along the ground. And following them was a smiling man with pink cheeks and a tangle of white hair.

“Rhodri!” called Lord Stephen. “God's greetings! I'm glad to see you.”

After we had dismounted, Rhodri broke into a tumble of words that sounded halfway between speech and song. Then he noticed Dancer's burns, and at once Winnie launched into an explanation.

“Wait a while, Winnie,” said Lord Stephen.

“But…”

“First things first! Rhodri, this is my squire, Arthur de Caldicot, and he's looking for a great horse. A young destrier!”

Rhodri smiled and his blue eyes danced with light. He beckoned us to follow him and led the way round the stone farmhouse to the paddock behind it.

There they were, on the far side of the field! Broad-browed and wide-muzzled, deep-chested and lustrous—three young princes.

As soon as they heard us, all three pricked up their slender ears, but while the two black colts quietly stood their ground, the third trotted towards us with an enquiring look. A friendly look! His eyes were like ripe damsons, and a silver-white star shone on his forehead; his coat was the color of a horse chestnut as it breaks out of its spiky shell, gleaming like silk. I gazed at him, he gazed at me, and that was the moment we made up our minds.

Lord Stephen smiled. “Love at first sight!” he said. “Well! Instinct is often right, but it needs the support of reason.”

“I'm absolutely sure,” I said.

“Let's find out more about him, then,” Lord Stephen said. “And more about the others as well.”

Rhodri told us that all three colts were three-year-olds, and the black ones were half brothers while the chestnut was born to the same mare as Dancer.

“Not only that! The same stallion covered her both times,” Rhodri told us. “So this chestnut here and Winnie's mare are brother and sister.”

I looked at Winnie and she grinned at me.

“I don't want a black colt,” I said. “Not really. Witches sometimes disguise themselves as black colts. Anyhow, look at this chestnut! How light-footed he is. And look at his long fetlocks. He's the one!”

Rhys untied from around his waist a length of sisal marked at intervals with dark red spots; and while Rhodri held the chestnut, Rhys measured the distance from the point of his shoulder to his withers, and across the broadest part of his chest, and from hip to hip across his loin, and from his cantle, just above his lovely silver-white star, to his swishing dock.

Then Rhodri and Rhys strolled over to measure the black colts, and Winnie followed them.

“Whichever beast you choose,” Lord Stephen said, “you must think of him in two ways. He's a piece of equipment, and like all your other equipment he must be well made and strong and a good fit. But a destrier is also your friend. He'll travel with you, sometimes sleep next to you. If you cherish him, he'll protect you and even lay down his life for you.” Lord Stephen put his hand on my right shoulder. “Arthur, the choice is yours.”

“But…the cost,” I stammered.

“Sir William will pay for your new suit of armor,” Lord Stephen replied, “and Sir John will pay for your mount. And since you're my squire, I will be paying for your horse's upkeep. Very expensive! Destriers like oats.”

“Which colt would you choose, sir?” I asked.

Lord Stephen smiled and licked his lips. “Let's hear what Rhys and Rhodri have to say, shall we?”

We listened to pedigrees, and listened to measurements; we listened as Rhodri described each colt's character; then he saddled them, and I rode each of them round the paddock.

“You're sure?” said Lord Stephen.

“Quite sure,” I replied.

So then Lord Stephen and Rhys and Rhodri began to bargain. They pointed at one another, their voices rose and fell; in the end, they agreed on a price and shook hands.

My brain circled in the blue air somewhere above my head, and my heart thumped in my chest. And at last, after Rhodri had given Winnie an ointment for Dancer's burns, we all remounted and turned away from Quabbs.

Rhodri walked alongside us, stroking and patting the chestnut colt.

“What is he saying, Rhys?” I asked.

“Keep him on an easy rein,” Rhys replied, “and keep talking to him. Reassure him. You're taking him away from his home.”

“What's he called?” I asked. “I haven't even asked you that.”

Rhodri shook his head. “No name,” he replied. “You name him. He's been waiting for you, Arthur.”

“I will,” I cried. “I'll find out his name.”

“Very good,” said Rhodri, and with that he buried his pink cheeks in the chestnut's mane and turned back towards his farmhouse.

Overhead, a red kite spread its drooping tail. Buzzards wheeled and dipped, and every mouse and weasel and stoat for miles around quaked in its burrow hole.

“You're a ford-jumper!” I told my chestnut. “You're a hoofweaver and a trailblazer! You're a heaven-leaper!”

Away to the south, there was a little lake between two black hills. Under the ganging clouds, it looked ruckled and bitter.

“Beautiful yet sinister,” Winnie said.

“Nain told me a story, a true one, about a lake like that,” I said, and at once I could see us all sitting on the benches and floor at Caldicot, and I longed for us to be riding back there so I could show everyone my chestnut colt.

“What happened?” asked Winnie.

“A young woman lived in the water and a stableboy married her…”

But then Rhys began to chant in Welsh, and I asked him what he was singing.

“An old song,” he replied. “A battle song:

Youthful and strong-limbed,
With a heart for combat,
A quick, thick-maned stallion
Between a young man's thighs.
Look at his shivering blade!
His dark cloak, silver braid…”

That's how the little lake looked when the January afternoon sun punched a hole through the clouds: a battle-blade, shivering; a dark cloak edged with silver.