Spring (51 page)

‘The rain’s stopped,’ he murmured, painfully aware that there was not an inch of his body, from head to toe, that did not feel bruised, battered, strained and weak.

He was very surprised to find his arms wrapped tight around the snoring form of Bedwyn Stort who, hearing his voice, stirred a little before snuggling deeper into the straw-filled palliasse they were sharing with Master Brief. Pike and Barklice were nowhere to be seen.

Jack sat up gingerly, each movement bringing pain to some new bruise or injury from the boat journey. He stretched, winced a bit and finally got up, pulled open a rickety door and found himself in a panelled corridor that smelt deliciously of roasting meat.

He followed its scent and turned finally into the inglenook room that served as the Muggy Duck’s main place of entertainment. The tables had been rearranged in a large square, the chairs around the edges, as for a feast.

There was a general hum of activity about the place, as of a well oiled machine, but no sign of it in the room, There, it seemed, the preparations had long since been made.

Ma’Shuqa, her plaited hair now gaily ribboned in reds and greens, sat under the inglenook at the far end, humming quietly to herself. She was basting a great haunch of venison, using a wooden ladle to scoop clarified butter from a bowl on the hearth before her. It was this that smelt so good.

Outside the rain had stopped and doors and windows were open to let in fresh air and sunshine. From the feel of things Jack guessed it had gone midday.

He picked his way towards his hostess and greeted her.

She gave him a warm smile, murmured a welcome to the day, took a steaming jug from a special holder by the fire where it was keeping warm and poured him a generous cannikin of the brew.

It smelt coffee-like and almost tasted like it too.

‘Colomby bean mixed with smoked Charn acorn,’ she said by way of explanation. ‘You’ll not find a better pick-me-up after a night before in all the Hyddenworld. Sup well, lad, and dunk this corncrake in it for sustenance. Big meal’s on the way.’

She saw his hesitation and showed him what to do.

She nodded first at some round, soft, yellow figgyways on a plate, one of which she picked up, rolled into a tube, dunked in the colomby and then proffered towards his mouth as if she was feeding someone young or an invalid.

That lesson learnt he dunked the rest himself, watching as she tended the meat, its juices dripping to a bubbling tray below from which she scooped more liquid to continue basting it. Obviously the venison was to be the centrepiece of a communal feast later that day.

Jack sat by the fire recovering his strength in companionable silence as memories of the long night before came back to him.

The fire crackled and so did the surface of the venison.

‘Smells good,’ he said.

‘Roadkill,’ she murmured by way of explanation. ‘Barklice nabbled this one before he jaunted off long days since with Pike and Master Brief to find you, so it’s been well hung and goodly matured. Arnold told me you did good and earned your first groat. That’s put the good word out about you.’

Jack nodded, liking the praise.

He glanced at her a little shyly, for all he could remember of their meeting the night before was the way she had enveloped him in her arms by way of greeting and saying goodnight, as she did the others. That seemed the Bilgesnipe way.

She was large and bosomy, the coloured ribbons in her hair matched by the colours of her striped silk dress, which though almost down to her ankles was not quite long enough to hide the full yellow petticoats beneath, and the matching lacy camisole that peeped above her bodice.

Her plump fingers were adorned with rings and her wrists with golden bracelets which jangled as she worked at the venison, which as well as basting she routinely poked with a skewer.

From all Brief and the others had said, and from the dark shiny colour of her skin, Jack guessed he was in the presence of his first genuine, full-blown, Bilgesnipe and he liked what he saw. She breathed life and good cheer and a kind of energetic contentment which engaged with him, as with all else about her.

‘That’s ’im coming!’ she announced, ‘So it’s rousting time.’

She stood up and went and opened a door into the kitchens.

Jack heard feet on the wooden floor above his head and a wheezing coughing followed by the sudden explosive sound of someone spitting followed by what seemed a long silence before he heard the metallic clang of a spittoon in receipt of the lump of phlegm.

‘He’s spat, he’s on form and he’s coming!’ roared Ma’Shuqa into the kitchen, ‘so look about folks! You know the where and the why so all you’ve to do is the what. Meal in an hour when the Chosen One and her party turns up.’

‘Not you then this year, my dear!’ sang someone from within.

‘Nor any day to come from now to eternity!’ replied Ma’Shuqa good-humouredly. ‘I had my day as Bride and won the swainiest of ’em all.’

‘You did, Mirror rest his soul!’ said someone else sympathetically.

From this exchange, and the sudden sad look in her eye, Jack guessed they were talking about her husband, Arnold’s father, and that tragically he was no more.

‘That be so!’ she said, guessing Jack’s thought. ‘Pa’Shuqa they called him, though he were never no Bilgesnipe. That be his stave above the inglenook waiting for the day he’s able to come back, for come back he will. The Fyrd got ’im but I doubt they killed him because he’s not the dying kind.’

The stave was huge and was attached to the wall with hooped nails covered in soot.

Women came in from the kitchen carrying ewers of water and some large round brots on wooden platters.

Brief and the others appeared looking half asleep and out of things as Jack had earlier.

At the same moment Old Mallarkhi himself appeared, having wheezed his way from above down some unseen stairs, and through a door from the rear of the property.

‘They chosen yet?’ he said, eyeing Jack briefly before offering himself up to his daughter for a loving and respectful hug and kiss on both cheeks.

‘ ’Tis nearly gone one and a half, Pa, so I ’spect they have. But the rain’s stopped and the flood paused ready to fall back and a watery sun showing its arms and legs. So they’ll not be shading our door a while yet!’

‘Time enough,’ announced Old Mallarhki, ‘for us to have our natter with Jack.’

He offered his hand with a wrinkled smile and Jack took it, surprised how strong his grip was.

‘We’ll take our vittles in the Big Parlour, my love,’ he said, leading them back the way he had just come to a room almost as large as the main one, but not beamed. It was a talking shop and rest-place and had chairs plenty enough for them to sit down in comfort.

While the others had colomby and dunked corncrake Jack looked around. There were some rickety shelves, a few tatty ledgers, an out-of-date calendar from a manufacturer of gas lighting for the year 1912. There was a fire which burned cheerfully in a cast-iron grate set into the wall raised off the floor. Wood was stacked on one side, coal in a scuttle on the other, and safely out of the way was a small box of tinder and a larger one of kindling.

Mallarkhi was of average height but very thin, with a face grey and cadaverous, but from illness rather than any defect in humour or personality. He looked as he was, a hydden whose days were numbered.

Yet he exuded such strength and life, such overwhelming warmth and purpose, and obvious courage in the face of illness, that the initial alarm that Jack felt at his sorry outer appearance was replaced at once by a desire to see him right in every way.

His clothes were of very mixed quality, his trews being of thick, high-quality stuff, dark and well cut. But they were hauled in around his waist by a piece of green twine, of the kind used for tying up bales. His shirt was of delicate white cotton, very clean, but its collar was far too big for him and his painfully thin shoulders did not fill it any more. Jack knew he was looking at clothes once made and worn for a man who was no more, except in spirit, and that still fighting for life every inch of the way.

The air in the room held the pleasant scent of sweet, aromatic tobacco which Mallarkhi obviously enjoyed because he raised his head back and smelt the air as if smelling the perfume on a woman. A shelf above the fire had a rack of pipes and a tin box labelled
The Fabled ’Dammer
in raised but chipped and faded red-lettering, against several images, external and internal, of a foreign hostelry very like Mallarkhi’s own.

He opened it and the rich, moist scent of fresh tobacco emerged most deliciously. The substance itself was inside a yellow pouch, made of a flexible opaque material that looked like a cross between rubber and plastic.

Mallarkhi opened it, sniffed it long enough to close his eyes and seem to dream for a few moments, and then took a pinch and placed it on an iron plate that hinged out horizontally from the fire, where it curled in the heat, blackened slowly and began to smoke and so add its scent to the room.

‘One and all,’ said Mallarkhi, whose authority in his own domain took precedence over Brief’s, ‘ ’tis safe to say that Jack here’s accepted. We know what he did, how he’s come, and the scars on his poor body which I have heard some of you espied yesternight in the baths confirm the tale that Master Brief was long since personal witness to, as were you Mister Pike and you Master Stort, though but a lad then. That tale being that he saved the life of the girl Katherine and thereby fulfilled certain prophecies and the like upon which Master Brief be the expert not me. Which being so means that the main purpose of his coming to Brum has been served and satisfied.’

They all nodded enthusiastically except for Jack.

‘I thought I came to Brum to find Katherine,’ said Jack.

‘Ah!’ said Brief ambiguously.

‘Hmmm!’ murmered Stort.

Pike breathed in heavily but said nothing.

Jack waited.

Old Mallarkhi broke the silence and said, ‘I can’t say I be mightily surprised at his confusion, seeing as the brains of Master Brief and Stort combinate into a labyrinth of cleverness filled with spidery webs of mystery which often leaves ordinary mortals like me here puzzled, as it now has Jack. He don’t understand the web you weave, so you better disentangle it for him. Make it plain, Master Brief, make it plain.’

‘All I want to do is find Katherine,’ Jack repeated.

‘My dear fellow,’ said Brief, ‘that is not the issue, not the issue at all.’

‘Well I think it is,’ replied Jack angrily. ‘You don’t seem to understand . . .’

‘We
know
where she is,
that’s
not the problem.’

Jack looked astonished.

‘Where is she then?’

Pike pulled out his chronometer.

‘Right now? She’s being made up to look like a Sister of Charity and already she’s enjoying herself getting ready for the birthday party of the High Ealdor.’

‘Oh,’ said Jack, not understanding much of this.

‘It won’t be too hard to get her out when we need to, but the problem is getting you both out of Brum
without
you getting taken by the Fyrd or by Sub-Quentor Brunte,’ said Brief, ‘which is the tangled web Mister Mallarkhi is talking about . . .’

Jack stood up. He wanted to get going.

‘Take me to her!’ he demanded.

‘Sit down if you please, Jack,’ said Old Mallarkhi, taking command again. ‘It disturbs me when folk stand over me and I’m liable to stab ’em in the giblets.’ His right hand wandered menacingly towards the sturdy-looking dirk that hung from his belt. ‘Old habits die hard among us Deritenders. Tell the lad the truth gennelmen and we can all rest easy. It’s time he knew.’

It seemed to Jack that everyone in the Hyddenworld knew what was going on but him.

‘But you’re sure she’s safe?’

Only when they had all confirmed that much did he sit down again.

Brief began to talk.

‘In the next few hours Igor Brunte will take control of Brum. It will be the first serious insurrection against the Fyrd in a major city in the Hyddenworld for nearly twenty years. The last one resulted in the execution of over two thousand people and the public flaying of the instigators, so Brunte is doing something very risky.

‘Strictly speaking he’s not a Fyrd at all. He’s a Pole who has been brought up a Fyrd after they wiped his family and village out. He hates the Fyrd and he hates the Sinistral who rule them. He’d kill the whole dynasty if he could.

‘So he’s got something in common with the free-thinking peoples of Brum and Englalond, a fact of which our High Ealdor Lord Festoon is well aware and which we wish to turn to our advantage. So we support what he’s doing when it comes to ridding us of Sinistral control of our city.

‘Now this is where you come in, Jack. Brunte’s known of your existence and that of Katherine, and the bond between you – and the fact that the Peace-Weaver watches over you – ever since the night of that terrible crash . . .’

‘How can he possibly know that?’

‘He was there, Jack, he saw it happen. As were myself, Stort and Pike. We were none of us there by chance. You could say our wyrds brought us there but that’s too simple an explanation, true though it be. Stort led myself and Pike there because he had a notion, as he sometimes does, that something was going to happen.