Spring (26 page)

‘What’s Old English sound like?’

‘German, Frisian, even like Modern English in places, though you wouldn’t recognize that fact if you saw it printed.’

‘Read us some,’ said Katherine.

She did better than that, she began reciting from memory:

‘Sounds really powerful,’ said Jack.

‘It’s a warrior language and so is meant to. Anyway that particular poem is strong stuff in its own right. It tells of a city in ruins, its well-built walls destroyed by fate, the work of “giants” and stone-smiths. It says the city’s now nothing more than mouldering dust, its citizens’ lives over, caught in “earthgrip” and “gravesgrasp” for more than fifty generations.’

‘“Earthgrip”,’ repeated Katherine slowly.

‘“Gravesgrasp”,’ murmured Jack.

‘Scholars call that particular poem
The Ruin.
The buildings the poet describes were impressive, bright with colour and light, with busy people and the flow of clear water. “Wyrd changed all that!” he declares, and destruction descended and decay came, and death too.

‘The poem’s incomplete because it got badly burnt. The last lines are lost. Most scholars tend to believe it describes the ancient city of Bath, which was built by the Romans but abandoned after they left in the fifth century. Needless to say, Arthur disagreed with that theory.’

‘So what did he think the poem was about?’ asked Katherine.

Margaret hesitated and then sighed. ‘It was one of his more outlandish notions I’m afraid, but he thought it described the future rather than the past. He thought the poet had somehow travelled forward in time, and then come back to leave a warning to future generations.’

‘Did he have any particular city in mind?’

‘As a matter of fact he did. He interpreted it as a description of the ruins of Birmingham after some kind of extreme weather event crisis in the future.’

‘A holocaust happening right in the middle of England?’ said Jack. ‘That seems a bit unlikely.’

‘It happened before, as a matter of fact, in the middle of the seventh century ad, at the time of a legendary craftsman called Beornamund. There occurred then one of the most severe climate events ever to hit the British Isles, far, far worse than any of the local hurricanes you hear of today. It seemed like the beginning of the end of things, and Arthur believes
The Ruin
is intended as a warning to us that it might all happen again.’

Jack felt a chill run up his spine, a prickling at the back of his neck.

He stood up suddenly, Arthur’s chair spinning behind him.

‘Is Birmingham the same place as Brum?’ he asked.

Margaret said nothing.

‘That’s where he’s gone, isn’t it? He’s gone off to the Hyddenworld equivalent of Birmingham, and he can’t get back!’

‘Jack . . .’

‘Hasn’t he, Margaret?’

She looked suddenly bereft and helpless.

‘
Hasn’t he?
’

‘I . . . don’t know. He was trying . . . he wanted . . . Jack, I just don’t know.’

‘He needs help, doesn’t he?’

‘I didn’t want . . . I can’t ask . . .’

‘Jack!’

It was Katherine protesting. She hadn’t yet made the connections Jack had. All she knew was that she didn’t want Margaret crying, or Jack ever again getting drawn into something that might involve him risking his life. That would be a grief too far.

‘We’re tired now,’ she said, ‘and we need some sleep before tomorrow. And, yes, a holiday at the cottage in Northumberland after that would be great.’

‘Just a few more days then,’ said Jack, not sure if he meant before they would be going away, or the time he had in which to do something about Arthur.

In one way it seemed a very long time; in another, not nearly time enough.

O
n the day of Clare’s funeral, nature itself honoured the dead woman’s passing with a display of changing moods that mirrored the feelings of those who loved her.

The day began with the clouds and cold winds that matched the sense of grief that pervaded the little congregation taking part in the service at Oxford Crematorium.

Sudden violent showers thudded on to the roof of the chapel as the service proceeded, until, with the committal of Clare’s body to the flames, the most violent shower of all drove hard into the windows and darkened the entire building.

Then, moments later, as Katherine rose to say a few words in celebration of her mother’s life and to speak of her lack of any fear of death, the rain stopped, the gloom lifted, and the sun came out. It projected a mosaic of colour onto the floor before the altar which, now bright, now less so, then bright again, was as alive as the memories that Katherine tearfully created for them all.

Her final words were simple: ‘Mum was there when I needed her, right through the years of growing up. She taught me many, many things which will stay with me always, like the memory of her smile and her touch. Mum loved me all the harder because she knew Dad wasn’t there to share it with her, so she did it for both of them.’

Katherine could say no more after that, though she wanted to and stood alone there weeping until Jack got up and guided her back to her place.

When the service was over, and all Clare’s favourite music had been played, they came out into sunshine so bright it was already drying up the puddles left behind by the rainstorm.

The sun, like the puddles, reflected the mood of Clare’s mourners, and turned out to be the start of a week of those lovely bright days and soft evenings that make for an old-fashioned late Spring. It was perfect for the building of the great bonfire which Jack, Katherine and Mrs Foale assembled slowly but steadily just outside the wood henge, by the two great conifers that marked its entrance.

This bonfire, they hoped, would be like a fiery herald before the henge itself, serving the twin purposes of sending Clare’s ashes up into the sky over its great mystic circle as well as serving as a vivid closure to her life on earth.

The temperature now rose with each passing day, and even old things that had been left rotting for years in the many dark, dank corners of the house, or in outbuildings and the garden, rapidly turned tinder-dry and therefore suitable for burning.

Jack did most of the physical work, using a wheelbarrow to carry combustibles from various places all over the property. Old boxes, piles of papers and unwanted things from inside the house, an old kitchen table that had ended up discarded in the vegetable garden, apple-tree branches pruned by Mrs Foale, all of these were going to be burnt.

These were good days, happy days, in which Jack and Katherine experienced a rebirth of that strange confusion of feeling and desire for each other that had faltered with the onset of Clare’s final hours of life. They were like two young planets whose influence on each other was as yet uncertain in its nature and power, and whose universe was, for the time being, confined here to Woolstone.

But Mrs Foale, while sitting on the cracked old terrace at night and listening to their chatter nearby, understood better than they that it was in the nature of things they would soon be gone out into the wide world.

‘You all right?’

It was Katherine, followed by Jack, arriving to slump into some garden chairs nearby.

‘You could have some wine,’ said Mrs Foale, helping herself to another glass.

The nights now felt safer and more relaxed, as if the malevolent spirits of the previous weeks had fled. Jack thus felt confident that nothing sinister would or could happen before they departed for Northumberland.

T
hree days before the night chosen for the bonfire, Margaret announced at breakfast, ‘I was thinking of driving over to have another look at Waseley Hill. Anybody want to come along and keep me company?’

It was a bright, warm day and they were feeling lazy. They looked at each other both thinking the same thing: that it would be good to have the day alone together, without chores.

‘Any special reason for going there?’ Katherine wondered indifferently. ‘It’s up near Birmingham isn’t it?’

‘It was where we took you out for a walk soon after the accident, and where we sort of decided to have you come and stay with us.’

Katherine’s interest was piqued.

‘But the main reason is that I have to go to see the farmer on whose land Arthur was once thinking of doing a dig before he saw another way to search for what he wanted. Arthur used to spend a lot of time up there, so the farmer’s naturally been wondering where Arthur is.’ She stared for a moment at the table. ‘Waseley’s where Beornamund is meant to have lived.’

Whatever Jack and Katherine’s previous inclinations, they now agreed a day out would be good.

The drive north was easy, and fortunately the farmer wasn’t too worried about Arthur’s long absence from the site.

‘He’s a busy man I dare say and the site’s well away from the public path. Do you want to take these young folk over there now, Mrs Foale? It’s dry underfoot, as there’s been so little rain this last week.’

The river itself was not much more than a stream, but it had carved out its own steep little channel over the years. This was filled with gorse and brambles, and the exploratory trench Arthur had dug and then refilled was already growing weeds.

‘So this is what exactly?’ Jack wondered aloud.

‘Probably nothing, but Arthur supposes that if Beornamund really did have his workshop right beside the river, it would have been up here somewhere rather than down in the Deritend area which historians reckon is the oldest part of the city. Whichever is right, at least we’ll get a better view up here.’

They climbed on up through sheep pastures to the source itself: a spring of clear water running from a muddy scar in the hill to flatter ground below, which was strewn with reeds wherever it was not churned up by livestock.

Though there was nothing much else to see, they stood staring in delight at the clear bright water bubbling straight out of the ground.

‘It’s easy to see why a spring so often became a place of worship in pagan times,’ observed Margaret. ‘It’s the beginning of things, a source of life, which is why explorers have always been obsessed with tracing the source of great rivers. It’s like returning to the original home. Many such locations are associated with deities, but this one is best known for an ordinary craftsman who actually lived here, creating items you can still find in our greatest museums.’

She then recounted the legend of Beornamund to her silent audience.

‘How near to the truth it is, we’ll never know, but he certainly lived somewhere along the banks of the Rea, between here and the broader stream it runs into.’

‘So that lost piece of the pendant called Spring is still here somewhere,’ said Katherine dreamily.

‘Maybe,’ said Margaret. ‘I like to think so.’

Jack had walked a little way off and now stood looking across the city of Birmingham, though he could see little more than a blue haze of pollution, above which rose a few towers and some cranes, signifying yet more urban development.

He thought back to his meeting with the Peace-Weaver on White Horse Hill, and realized that as she was wearing a long dark cloak which completely covered her neck he wouldn’t have seen the pendant, even if she was wearing it.

‘Jack?’

He didn’t turn round but carried on staring across the city.

‘So it was Beornamund who gave his name to the place,’ said Margaret, finishing her discourse. ‘It’s really Beornamund’s
Ham
or settlement, which through time became corrupted into Beornmundingaham, and sometimes even Brummagem . . .’

Jack shivered uneasily to think of what degree of cataclysm could reduce so vast a city to ruin.

There had been times back at Woolstone when his premonitions of terrible things had been bad enough, but here they felt a thousand times worse.

It felt like the sun had suddenly gone in and everything turned cold.

Like the bad spirits were following them, even here.

‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Okay?’

They headed back to the car in silence.

K
atherine grew more relaxed each day that passed, becoming more talkative and less prickly. One afternoon, the bonfire nearly complete, the pair of them lay in the grass talking.

‘My mum loved bonfires, but so did my dad before . . . you know.’

As Jack lay on his back, he had found his mind drifting, though he wasn’t sure to where. Then suddenly he realized what Katherine had said that was so unusual: she had mentioned her father.