The Chalk Giants (34 page)

‘Thoma,’ he said, ‘to the gate, to welcome her. No, to horse; take a troop, go welcome her from me. Take her this ring.’

‘My Lord,’ said Thoma, ‘my place is at the gate.’

‘Yes, yes to be sure. Thoma, is it she? Where are my Captains, where is Briand?’

Here, my Lord,’ said Briand. He too had profited from the transactions at Odann’s Tower. His tunic and leggings were of richest cloth; his yellow hair and sweeping moustaches gleamed like silk.

‘Good Briand, go to her,’ said his master. ‘And Usk, where is Usk? Let him also ride.’

‘My Lord,’ said Thoma, shocked. ‘To send a Jokeman...’

‘He sends no Jokeman,’ said a sour voice at his side.

The seneschal turned, staring; for Usk was no less resplendent than the rest. His tunic was of green silk, well stitched with precious thread, his cloak lined with red and trimmed with snow-white fur. Rings glittered on his fingers, a jewelled dagger hung at his hip. ‘See to your offices about the Tower, friend,’ he said loftily. ‘I with my lord’s permission, will bear his greetings.’ He took the ring, bowing, and skipped for the stairs, calling for soldiers to attend him; and Thoma favoured his retreating back with a glance that was both foreboding and dire.

‘Now,’ said King Marck, all unaware, ‘The bride-price, Thoma j is the balance prepared?’

‘It is, my Lord,’ said the seneschal heavily, and turned to follow his King.

Every window of the Tower shone with light. The noise of the feast, the shouting and laughter, rang across the baileys; so that the gate guards turned from eyeing the crawling mists to stare up with longing and resentment. Pigs and oxen, roasting whole, dripped and sizzled over blazing courtyard fires while in the Great Hall every available inch was taken up by trestles and the diners. Serving men and girls threaded their way between as best they might, bearing aloft steaming dishes; in the winestores cask after cask was broached, bowl after bowl filled sparkling to the brim.

On the Royal dais, set high above the heads of the commoners, gleamed the greatest wonder of all: candles of priceless beeswax, filling the air with a golden scent. At one end of the long table was placed the painted chair of Marck. Flanking the King, in strictest order, sat the officers of his household; Thoma and Briand, the Captains of Infantry and Horse, the Serjeants with their wives. At the far end of the board, between two women of the Plain, sat Miri. Her black hair glittered with dustings of gold; her eyes in the candlelight looked dark and huge, her face and faithlessly modelled arms seemed brown and warm as the honey wax. She wore a simple dress of green, embroidered at the throat with golden thread; and on her breast, glinting, hung the great Gift of Atha. She sat unsmiling, eating little, drinking occasionally from the cup at her side; and Marck, his head spinning with the heat and wine, gripped the seneschal’s elbow urgently.

‘It is she,’ he whispered. ‘The Fairy-girl of the hills. Thoma,
it is she ...’

But Thoma, sweating heavily and hampered by an unaccustomed fork and knife, answered with little more than a grunt.

The moon was sinking to the rim of hills, and the mists floating high amid the trees that lined the brook, before the last of the feasters sought his bed. The bride had long since retired to her chamber; below in the Great Hall, yawning kitchen staff scraped up the last of the leavings, extinguished the rushlights that had burned in profusion along the walls, squabbled at the High Table for the drippings of scented wax. In the courtyard the remnants of the fires pulsed sullenly, sending up columns of smoke that mingled with the mist. Between them, close to the great inner wall, stood the Jokeman. The collar of his fine tunic was soiled with food, and he had been a little sick; but he stared up fixedly at the massive pale face of the Tower, the light that glowed softly from its upper chamber into the dark.

In the chamber, Marck stood at the foot of the Royal bed. On it, heaped in profusion, lay creamy fleeces and the skins of spotted cats the Midsea traders brought. Above it hung a drape of yellow silk; and among the skins nestled the Lady. The eyepaint she still wore made her look fierce as some forest creature; and her face was set like stone. Round her neck she wore a delicately worked gold torque, and below it a shift of fine green silk, through which her breasts showed with their firm, high buds.

The King rumpled the linen at his hips, helplessly. The vision had uplifted him; faced with its reality, he was all but dumb. It seemed her very stare drained his strength from him; the room spun a little, and he attempted to smile. ‘But my dear,’ he said meekly, ‘I am your husband now. You are bound to obey.’

Her nostrils widened. ‘You are my purchaser, King Marck,’ she said, ‘and that is all. Obedience may not be bought, as you yourself should know. Like love, it must be earned.’

Marck took a half-step, shuffling his feet. He said, ‘Then tell me... what may I...’

Her eyes with their heavy lashes drifted closed. She said tiredly. ‘Restore me to my home, and King Odann, Is this within your power?’

He twined his fingers. ‘My child, the gifts are given...’

She snapped at him.
‘Then leave me...
.’ She rolled her head miserably against the furs. ‘Oh why did I come here, why did I let him persuade me ... No!’ That to Marck, who had once more moved toward the bed. He stopped, mouth working; her eyes blazed at him, then softened. She smiled, and patted the skins. ‘My Lord,’ she said, ‘do not alarm yourself. Here, come sit with me. For a little while.’

He scotched, hesitantly, on the side of the bed. A scent came from her that set his pulses racing; yet it seemed he dare not raise his. eyes. A silence; then she spoke again more kindly. ‘This you must understand,’ she said. ‘My father sold me, for fifty horses; like a ... chattel, or a dog. I cannot so quickly .., give myself afresh.’

He gripped her hand impulsively, and kissed. She stiffened, for an instant it seemed she might pull away; then she relaxed once more. Her fingers were brown and slender, the nails flat like the nails of a boy. He marvelled at her, feeling a great surge of joy; and she squeezed his hand, as if protectively. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘since as I say you own me, my will is yours. And you will find me dutiful. If you ... force me I will not resist, for my father’s sake with whom I still keep faith. But my Lord, to force would be a dreadful thing, with Athlinn’s green knot still about my waist. For the first night belongs to the Gods who made us all. Also, and this you surely know, women who are tired, as I am tired, cannot love well, or truly.’

‘I...’he said. ‘I...’

‘My Lord,’ she said. She squeezed his hand again, and drew away. She wriggled, where she lay among the fleeces. ‘How welcome you have made me,’ she said. ‘And what a fine bed you prepared, I never saw a finer. Or slept therein.’ She lay with her great eyes fixed on him, solemnly. ‘King Marck,’ she said, ‘grant me one wish. And make me truly happy.’

‘My dear,’ he said, moved. ‘Anything. Anything ...’

She gave him a tiny smile, that barely curved the corners of her lips. Her eyes searched his face, moving in little shifts and changes of direction. ‘Give me... a little time,’ she said. ‘Just a little. And I will come to love you truly, as a friend.’

She saw the shadow that crossed his face. He wrestled, it seemed, with some compulsion; then he nodded, inarticulate. He said, ‘It will be... as you say.’

She sighed. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘how I regret my sharp words now. For I can see in your face, that you would never bring me harm. Now, this is what we will do. Are you listening?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, my dear.’

‘You will come to me,’ she said, ‘each day. And we will talk. Perhaps many times each day. You shall instruct me; for on the Plain they say you are the greatest scholar in the land. Also I wish to see your realm of Southguard; for my father told me many wonderful things. Then when I know your country, and know its people, and truly feel it to be my home ...’ She let the sentence hang delicately in air, and smiled once more.

The heart of King Marck was lightened by the words; and he rose. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘all this will be done. Now you must rest, for I see you are very tired.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’ Then as he turned, ‘My Lord ...’

‘Kiss me good night,’ she said.

He stooped to her. She raised her hands modestly, covering her breasts. His lips brushed, lightly, her hot, dry brow; he smelled the perfume of her hair, and rose. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘if you should need... the housepeople...’

She shook her head, eyes sleepy and warm. ‘Nothing, King Marck,’ she said. ‘Good night. And ... the Gods attend your sleep.’ The smile curved her lips once more; it stayed fixed there long after he had taken the lamp, and the chamber was dark.

Toward dawn the Jokeman hemmed in his sleep, and coughed. Thoma groaned, champing his lips like a dog; and Briand turned, and dreamed a certain dream. While in the highest chamber, lit by its marsh-sprite lamp, a strange sound might have been heard; dry and repetitive, like an old shoe scuffed endlessly against a plank. It came from the Royal couch; where Marck of the Gate, great vassal of Atha the Good, wept in expiation for an uncommitted sin.

Spring deepened to summer. Once more the martens nested under the high eaves of the Tower, raising their broods of squeaking young; skies gleamed blue and faultless, while white dust rose behind the waggons that toiled down to the great gap in the chalk. They came from Long Creek, and the sea-haunted lands of the west; from Great Grange and the Hundred Lakes and Morwenton itself, the sprawling metropolis where Atha had his Hall. Silks they brought and linen of marvellous fineness, jet and amber from the north, mirrors of burnished bronze; and once a tub of honey from the Misty Isles, brown and rich and smelling of the heather from which it had been won. Nothing it seemed was too much, no expense too great, for the Lady of the Gate; and the Queen fulfilled her bargain faithfully, delighting her lord in many different ways. From him she learned the great tales of his people, their sieges and battles and wanderings; and the King never found a more willing audience. Also she rode the length and breadth of the Southguard, by litter or on horseback, speaking to all not as great lady or Queen but as an equal. For this and for her beauty, she was much beloved; so that children would run to bring her flowers, or field-gifts of cider and beer.

Marck for his part showed her his kingdom with joy; the swaying, rolling uplands of the chalk, dotted by gravemounds old when Time began; the tree-lined coombes, drowsy with bee-sound, each with its nestling village and chuckling stream; the Great Heath, empty and vast, rhododendrons blazing beneath dark-topped clumps of pine. He showed her fishing villages, clinging limpet-like between sky and sea; headlands that strode each beyond the next, hazed with sunlight against the brilliant blue; ragged saw-edges of cliff, where the mist whirls up in summer and the wind comes in. He showed her the Ledges, where stone groins slope into the water and the sea sucks down and up, and no boat can live; and there she swam, for her Lord’s delight, in a great rock pool among green and dark-red fern.

At length it seemed he saw, reflected in her eyes, a dream that had been his own. He spoke of this, one morning in high summer. She heard him through, not frowning; but when he had finished she shook her head. ‘My Lord,’ she said, ‘half of what you have said I admit I have not understood; but it seems you do me too much honour. Lord, women are not Goddesses. This you must know. We eat like you, and sleep like you, we have needs of the body and ... functions; in truth, no Goddess lives in me. I would not see you so sorely disappointed.’

‘But you do not understand,’ said Marck. ‘You have not listened. I knew you, you see, so many years ago.’

‘As a baby, yes,’ she said. ‘My father told me.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, no, no ...’

She knelt, and took his hands. She was wearing a new white dress, and her hair smelled of summer grass. ‘My Lord,’ she said, ‘you have been kinder to me than I would have believed. Kinder than my own father, who once was all I had; and I am your Queen, so I can speak frankly. Do not make me a Goddess, King Marck, or think in such terms again. Goddesses are for worshipping; and I... am not worthy.’

He touched her hair. ‘You do not understand,’ he said. ‘But why should you? Miri, if a Goddess is in you, she may not choose to reveal herself. But... listen, Miri,’ he said earnestly. ‘You have brought me great joy. My dear, have you heard the people? Have you heard what they say? They say, "King Marck laughs. King Marck is happy." And Miri, this is true. Listen to me now.’

She sat beside him, hands in her lap, and smiled.

‘This was my dream,’ he said. ‘But words are not enough. Have you seen ... the grass, the greenness of it? Green, and soft ... And the grain, standing against the sky? And the sea mist, how it stripes the hills? And with the sun behind it,
gold. . .’

She said, puzzled, ‘My Lord?’

He flexed his hands, stammering in his eagerness. ‘This was my dream,’ he said. ‘That I
was
the grain, and earth, and creeping things upon it. And mist and sky, the stones the Giants placed between the hills. I was the land, Miri, and the land was me. In the dream I found a woman, who was also the land; and we made children who would ... know the land, and live out golden times. And ... this too was the dream. That we died, returning to earth; but we
were
our children, and their children’s children, and the golden grain again. It seemed a ... Mystery, a worthy thing.’

She stared at him, with troubled eyes; then took his hand, and laid her head against his shoulder. ‘I cannot say,’ she said. ‘But... perhaps, some day, these things will be.’

Nothing further passed between them at that time; but it seemed the notion of the Mystery remained with the Queen. She spoke of it some weeks later, to a servingmaid. Autumn was on the land; a calm, mild autumn of gold and blue. In the Tower rooms the first fires had been lit, crackling with sweet-scented cones. Before one such hearth Miri lay, amid piles of fleeces. She wore a skirt of pleated green linen, held closely to her hips by a splendid belt broidered with gold. Between her breasts hung the Gift of Atha; but she was otherwise bare. The girl, a daughter of a Sea King’s thrall, knelt beside her. Something of the sea seemed to have marked her wide-spaced eyes, which were blue as Miri’s were brown; they sparkled now with amusement as she laughed. She took up a little vial of scented oil, poured a few spots between the shoulders of the Queen and began to massage gently.