Spring (43 page)

‘Hais.’

Footsteps again, somewhere above them.

‘So why did they hit you, Hais?’

‘Because I said I think all this rain means there’s going to be flooding, and so I need to get back to Deritend while I can. I’m to be Bride for the Day, and that only happens once in a lifetime!’

‘What’s “Bride for the Day”?’

‘Most areas and a lot of streets in Brum celebrate the High Ealdor’s birthday tomorrow. The Deritend celebration is the most famous apart from the High Ealdor’s party itself, but it’s only people from the rich families in New Brum who get invited to that! And unusual visitors like you. In Deritend what happens is that the Bride finds her groom and gets trothed . . .’

‘You mean you go round the streets looking for someone to marry?’

Hais laughed.

‘No, we fix it so that the Bride gets the right groom. In my case it’s a boy I’ve known all my life, and so it’s a public way of saying we’re likely to get wed.’

‘Sounds great,’ said Katherine.

‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ replied Hais rather soberly.

Katherine picked up what she was thinking at once.

‘You mean you like the idea of being the Bride but the boy concerned isn’t the right one?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Do you have to marry him?’

‘No, but done this way and with the Deritend families involved it will be a bit harder to get out of! It would be fine if the choice was made by me, but unfortunately it’s decided with the Cunning Knot.’

Katherine looked puzzled.

‘It’s the Bilgesnipe way of deciding certain things where emotions get in the way of reason, to quote my father. I think it’s a lot of nonsense but you know what older people are like. They believe these superstitions!’

But Katherine was thinking of something Hais said earlier which struck too close to home for comfort. Her friend Sam had always said Katherine let her mind rule her emotions. She wished she’d been more honest with Jack about what she really felt for him while she still had the chance.

‘I don’t understand why the Sisters are angry with you,’ said Katherine.

‘It’s not about me going to the celebration in Deritend. Sister Chalice is just being mean about it because she’s jealous I’ve been chosen to be Bride for the Day, which
she
was never chosen to be! They know I have to go because they know my father, his brothers and our extended family, which means half of Deritend, would come and get me and drag me down there! The revolution some of our people talk about would finally happen and all because of me!’

She laughed again and it was infectious, because Katherine laughed too and felt better than she had in days.

Hais got serious.

‘But you shouldn’t be here. You must go back to your room before they find you’re missing.’

Katherine shook her head. ‘I’m trying to get away, not go back.’

The footsteps sounded louder again, and this time they heard voices too. Katherine could hear the unpleasant laughter of Sister Chalice, and Hais’s eyes widened in fear.

‘They’re still upstairs but she’ll be coming down soon.’

‘Is there any way out of here?’ asked Katherine urgently.

Hais shook her head. ‘Not without going past the guards, and you don’t look at all like a Sister of Charity. You look too much of a mess.’

Katherine giggled, not offended. ‘What will they do to me?’

‘Make you into a Sister, so you can serve him.’

‘Serve who exactly?’

‘The High Ealdor, of course.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘He’s like . . . in charge of things, I think. His Bride of the Day will be chosen tomorrow too, so be warned. It might be you!’

‘What’s he like? Very old? Wise? Cruel? His title makes him sound he might be one of those things.’

‘I’ve never met him but they say he’s large, very.’

‘I like tall men,’ said Katherine playfully.

‘I didn’t say tall, I said large. But I mean he’s fat. Very. You had better go before they come . . . If you run and they catch you, they’ll probably give you over to the Sub-Quentor for punishment. Not recommended!’

The sound of the footsteps sharpened and now became metallic. Someone was descending some metal stairs.

‘Will you help me get away?’

Hais shook her head. ‘If I do and they find out, I most certainly won’t get back to Deritend in time for my big day.’ There was fear in her voice now. ‘You’ve got to go. If they even think I’ve been talking to you . . .’

The footsteps got louder and nearer.

‘Run, Sister Katherine!’ said Hais desperately. ‘Run back to your room!’

Katherine did, reaching the door to her cell just in time to slip back through it, put the shoes back where they were and dive onto the bed.

She did not have to pretend to be asleep for long. In moments the long hours of her journey and the changes during it caught up with her once more and she slept again.

T
he clinkers were advancing horribly over Jack’s body down from his head and up from his feet and he realized that, if he did not break free of the paralysis that had gripped him, they would soon reach his privates, and then . . . then . . .

‘
No!
’

He woke up, regained movement and brushing them off his body he sat up and – bang! – fell back on to his plank again.

‘Jack, wake up! We’re here now!’

It was Barklice tugging at one end and Pike at the other, trying to get him to roll of the plank.

‘I thought the clinkers were getting me,’ he muttered, reality breaking in.

They laughed. ‘Hurry, the train only waits here a minute or two.’

Sleepily Jack did as he was told, his head feeling thick and his body stiff. He pushed his portersac and stave down onto the track below and followed them.

‘Bring your plank as well,’ called Barklice. ‘It must be stored ready for someone else to use.’

He found Brief and Pike standing together in the convenient shelter of a huge, empty, wooden cable reel which lay on its side beside the track. The rain thundered down all around them.

‘Let’s have the planks then,’ said Barklice who, without any complaint about getting himself even wetter, took them one by one and secreted them under some concrete slabs nearby. He then wandered off to see how things were looking beyond the track.

‘You’ll know where they are hidden by the broken ragwort and rosebay willow herb,’ explained Pike, ‘should you have need of them in the future. That’s our tradition. Failing which, shove ’em anywhere convenient but use your common sense!’

‘The planks you mean?’

‘That’s right, so other travellers can find and use ’em. I take it you do know what ragwort looks like?’

Jack nodded, and the willow herb too. He had identified both with Katherine, during some stage of their wanderings.

His head was now clearing. ‘Where are we exactly?’

‘On the approach to Brum’s West Gate. It’s only three hundred yards further along the track, down the embankment and on the right-hand side,’ said Pike. ‘But, of course, we can’t just stroll up and ask the Fyrd to let us in. We may well have to find some other way, but that’s Barklice’s job.’

Jack peered along the track towards the city and then through the tall metal fence separating it from a road below. Heavy traffic was sloshing along, with headlights switched on early, windscreen wipers struggling furiously. Over the right-hand side he could see a water course, the water risen so high it was lapping at the edges, the wind catching the wavelets and turning them to spray.

Barklice now rejoined them, his cloak streaming wet.

‘The river’s very high, but it’s not backing up yet. If the weather’s been like this all day, then the Bilgesnipe are doing a good job controlling it. But getting into the city unseen with Jack was never going to be easy, gentlemen, which is why I arranged for some backup before we left.’

Brief, a bit too tall for the sheltered space they were huddling under, stood leaning forward on his stave and seemed preoccupied. The others said nothing either, while they waited for him to speak. Stort had sat down and, having slipped a green plastic shopping bag over each of his feet, was securing them tightly with string just below the knees.

There was, Jack was beginning to realize, an old-world courtesy about them all – evident in the way that, having sensed that Brief was about to say something important, they let him do so in his own time; and also in the easy acceptance they showed for Stort and his eccentricities.

‘Who are these Bilgesnipe, Mister Stort?’ whispered Jack, squatting down beside him.

‘ “Stort” will do, so drop the honorific. They’re water folk primarily. They live and breathe water, and keep Brum working at times like this when flooding becomes a danger. Be warned, Jack, they’re very inventive but inclined to passion, and they sing a lot, which can sometimes be annoying. But don’t ever accept the help of such hovellers if you’re not ready to pay in cash or kind for their services.’

Just then, Brief finally spoke.

‘Gentlemen, I suggest we go carefully from now on. Clearly the city will be flooding, but there may be greater danger than that – to ourselves in particular and therefore to our mission.’ He spoke slowly and cautiously.

‘What aren’t you telling us, Master Brief?’ said Barklice.

Brief’s face still gave nothing away. ‘I have an inkling that things – great things – may be afoot in Brum today. It may be wiser that I say no more than that for now. However, let us observe the gate and see what we can deduce about the state of things within, from there. It may be, Mister Barklice, that we will need your special knowledge of the routes into Deritend.’

They moved off cautiously, keeping to the shadows under the wall that edged the embankment on its watery side.

Jack, fully recovered from his bone-rattling rail journey, felt good in himself and excited too. He was nearer to finding Katherine now, and more comfortable in this new world in which he found himself.

Despite the remorseless rain and the lash of water all about, he was glad to be back within a city. Its sounds were those same ones he had grown up with, and familiar too were its broken shapes and silhouettes in the murky afternoon, its chiaroscuro of light and shadow, its very smell, its ordered chaos, its busyness, its sheer life.

He felt alive and strong and ready for anything.

‘We cross the track here,’ Pike turned to him, pointing at a run of shadow from a tall building which loomed over the track. ‘Go one at a time . . . and be very alert on the other side. This is a favourite spot for Fyrd to try to catch us out.’

‘Not on a night like this,’ said Barklice with confidence.

They crossed the line and were soon at a vantage point that allowed them to easily survey the West Gate, though at first Jack could not see what they meant by that. Eventually he worked out that what they were all focusing on was a rectangular hole in a wall halfway down the embankment towards the river. It was blocked off by a gate but, as his eyes grew used to the dark, he could see dim lights moving back and forth there.

Pike produced a bulky monocular from his pack and examined the scene carefully.

Barklice was doing the same, using his circled hands as if they were binoculars.

‘Try it, Jack,’ he murmured.

Jack did and it worked, cutting out ambient light and drawing the eye to the scene they needed to focus on.

Pike took his time and eventually said, ‘Something’s up, eh, Barklice? Something’s definitely not right. There’s no guards on the gates and they’re . . . damn me if they’re not ajar! There’s even folk coming out!’

It was true.

There were people emerging through the great gates, some carrying bundles, a couple holding their children’s hands, hurrying down through the undergrowth to the river’s edge where they became impossible to see, it being so dark.

‘Eight o’clock left!’ said Barklice grimly. ‘By the guard door . . .’

Jack spotted it at once: someone lying face down on the ground.

‘It’s a guard! And there’s another one at two o’clock. Got it?’

Pike sat back and lowered his monocular. ‘The revolution’s started and I’ve missed it!’ he said.

‘You’ve missed very little, Mister Pike,’ Brief murmured, ‘since what’s going on here began less than an hour ago.’

Barklice pulled back into the shadows and silently led them closer. The open gate and the motionless bodies were now easy to see, but for the moment there was no one else in sight.

‘You were saying, Master Brief?’ said Pike in a low voice.

‘I wasn’t going to say anything yet, but now I see I need to. This is not a revolution that you’re witnessing,’ said Brief slowly, ‘it’s an insurrection. Which is to say a revolt against the Fyrd from within their ranks.’

‘Led by who?’ asked Pike.