At the Crossing Places (2 page)

T
HE FIRST DAY OF MY NEW LIFE BEGAN WITH ICE AND
ended with flames.

As soon as I woke, I was wide-eyed awake. Under my badger-skin it was warm, and for a little while I lay still as a huntsman in a covert. I stared around me at the high hall where I have slept and woken almost every day of my life. I tried to wake my brother and sister by making faces at them. I listened for a moment to my grandmother Nain snuffling, and one of the hounds groaning and grinding his teeth. Then I leaped up. The whole world was waiting for me.

When I unbolted the hall door and tugged it open, the ice in the jambs clattered down. Then I saw Gatty. She was standing beside the mounting block with my horse Pip. I had to look twice because she was dressed in dirty sacking, sparkling with frost, and all I could see were her large river eyes and one fair curl.

“Gatty!” I exclaimed.

“Jankin said I could.”

“How long have you been here?”

Gatty ignored my question. “The biggest saddlebags we got,” she said.

I kicked at the shards and thorns of pearly ice and, barefoot, I walked out and slapped Pip on the rump.

“You look as if you've been here half the night,” I said.

Gatty lowered her eyes and shook her head dumbly.

“Oh Gatty! When I reach Jerusalem, I will send you a message. I'll try to.”

Gatty stared at the ground. “Don't matter,” she mumbled.

“It does matter,” I said. “We're friends.”

“Can't be,” Gatty replied. “Not with the likes of you.”

“But we are. We rescued Sian when she went through the ice, and we separated the bulls, and drove off the wolves together. Didn't we?”

Gatty sniffed. “You could load up,” she said.

“Nobody's awake yet.”

“I can help, can't I?”

“You're frozen.”

“When are you coming back?” Gatty demanded.

“Three years,” I said. “Two, maybe.”

Gatty shuddered and hunched her shoulders.

“Go on, Gatty,” I urged. “Get out of this cold. I'll see you before I leave.”

Gatty looked at me. She gazed at me as gravely as the painting of Mary on the church wall, and her long eyelashes flickered. Then she turned away.

Nain and my brother and sister and Ruth, our chamber-servant, were still asleep, so I hurried back across the hall. Avoiding the fourth and fifth steps, and the ninth and tenth, the ones that always creak, I ran up the staircase and along the gallery to my freezing writing-room.

That's where I've hidden my seeing stone since Merlin gave it to me last summer. We were up on top of Tumber Hill when he un
wound this saffron bundle. Inside it was a flat, black stone, my obsidian, just a little larger than the palm of my hand, deep as an eye of dark water, and it flashed in the sunlight.

“Until the day you die, you will never own anything as precious as this,” Merlin told me. “But no one must know you own it, or see it, or learn anything about it.”

Merlin is right. My seeing stone is my other world. My guide. My echo. I can't leave that behind!

I pulled the stone out of the gap in the wall and ran back downstairs. I went straight out to Pip and jammed the saffron bundle into the very bottom of one of the saddlebags.

All morning I was very busy. I cut reed scabbards for my quills and shaved acorn stoppers for my ink bottles, and I wrapped my valuable parchment pages in shaggy towels. I stuffed my saddlebags with writing materials and clothing. In my wooden chest, which is going to be sent after me, I laid more clothing, my new flight of arrows, my ivory chess pieces, and my mail-coat. Then I went round the village, and found Merlin, and Oliver the priest, and Jankin, who was mucking out the stables, and took my leave of them; but Gatty and her father, Hum, weren't in their cottage. After that, I set up the board for the Saxon-and-Viking game, and showed Sian how to play one more time. Then I had a rough-and-tumble with Tempest and Storm, our running-hounds, and Storm tore my right sleeve, so Ruth had to mend it. And then I decided to take my own practice-sword with me, and my brother Serle said in that case I ought to clean it properly, otherwise Lord Stephen would be sure to notice and it would reflect poorly on him and my father. But he didn't offer to help.

We were still eating dinner when Lord Stephen's rider, Simon, arrived to escort me to the castle at Holt and my new life as Lord Stephen's squire.

I've met Simon before. He's very thin and his cheekbones are so sharp they look as if they might shear through his skin. He usually looks rather melancholy, but I like him because he has a very long upper lip, like a horse, and makes quiet jokes, mainly against himself.

“Simon!” exclaimed my father—my foster father, that is. “You look like a snowman. Come and eat with us.”

“Thank you, Sir John.”

“I hope your ride has given you an appetite,” my foster father said. “You look as if you could eat a horse.”

“I am a horse,” said Simon in a hollow, dark voice, and his upper lip looked even longer than before.

Although I've wanted to be a squire so much, and for so long, it still felt painful to be leaving Caldicot. I think Sir John knew that, and as soon as he had said grace after dinner, he walked across the hall and picked up my traveling cloak and whirled it around my shoulders.

Then I embraced everyone—Sir John and Lady Helen, who held me to her so tightly I thought I would burst, then Serle, and Sian, and Nain on her two sticks.

They all came out of the hall to wave us goodbye.

Sir John looked up at me in the saddle. “Do you remember what I told you on New Year's morning?” he asked me quietly.

“I think so.”

“I told you I'm proud of you. I told you that who we are isn't only a matter of blood; it's what we make of ourselves.”

“I do remember,” I replied.

“And I said that you, Arthur, are fit to be a king.”

With that, Sir John slapped my left thigh, and Pip started forward. I heard Tempest and Storm barking. I heard my family calling out, wishing me a safe journey, wishing me joy, wishing me peace, wishing me Godspeed.

So Simon and I crunched away into the snow, which wasn't falling so much as circling us and blowing upwards. When I turned round in the saddle, everyone was still standing outside, silent and waving. When I turned round for a second time, they had gone. Gone as if they had never been. Snowflakes on my eyelids, my checks; the huge blurred hulk of the manor house, patient and grey; nothing else.

I looked around me for Gatty: I kept looking for her. Day after day of fieldwork, barnwork, stablework, and half the time she's hungry. I'm sure she had been waiting for hours in the dark. I hoped she was somewhere warm.

As we rode away from the manor, we passed Joan and Will and Dutton dragging back deadwood from the forest. I pulled up and greeted them, and they wished me good health.

“You tell Lord Stephen what I said,” Joan instructed me.

“What was that?”

“At the manor court. I can't even pick up deadwood and I get fined. He's so high and mighty, but he wouldn't live that rich except for us.”

For a while, Simon and I rode side by side down the track that leads west through Pike Forest. But before long, the forest closed in around us, and I felt like a hare caught in a trap, snagged and
dragged back by everything I was leaving behind. I kept thinking about all the things that have happened during the first few days of this new century.

On New Year's Day, Sir John told me I could be a squire. He said he'd arranged for me to go into service with Lord Stephen at Easter. When I heard that, I leaped up and embraced him. But no sooner had he told me this than he shocked me by saying that he and Lady Helen are not my true parents, my blood-parents. They're my foster parents. But I've lived with them since I was only a few days old, and I'll always think of them as my mother and father.

Then Sir John told me my blood-father is his own brother, Sir William de Gortanore. He's vile and violent. Worse than that, he's a murderer, and I don't want to see him again.

And my blood-mother…who is she? I don't even know who she is, or whether she's still alive. I don't know where she is, but I'm going to find her.

And then, after all this, Lord Stephen sent word to say that he wanted me to come not at Easter, but in three days' time. He had decided to take the Cross. We're going to join the crusade that Fulk, the friar, preached about when he came to Caldicot last autumn. So that may mean there won't be time to meet my blood-father…

I must have been thinking about these things for a long time because, when I looked around me, we were already passing the forest hamlet of Clunbury.

We reined in, and I drank a few mouthfuls of milk from Simon's gourd.

“Slow going in this weather,” Simon said. “We must push on or the dark will overtake us.”

This tenth day of January, it has been one of those days when it gets dark before it gets dark, and then by the time we neared Clun there was very little light left.

“Lord Stephen told me to get back ahead of you,” Simon said. “Follow this track. Just before you come to an open field, there's a track up to the castle on your right.”

With that, Simon cantered off, while Pip and I continued to pick our way along the snowy track, stepping over branches that had fallen across it, wading through hidden pools of mud and mush.

Holt Castle is on top of a small, steep hill, and as I was riding up to it, a rider came dashing out of the courtyard and across the drawbridge. Down the hill towards me pelted the horse and rider, and the horse was whinnying and neighing. Down the hill they came: sliding, slithering, forelegs splaying, the rider yelling—desperate and yelling—and the horse almost wailing, and then I saw the rider was a girl, and the hem of her cloak was on fire.

Orange flames! Blue flames! The girl's cloak was alight, and her horse's belly and flanks were scorched and smoking.

As they careered towards me—the girl helpless, her horse wild—I swung Pip round to meet them sideways and braced myself.

We were hurled to the ground. Pip snorted, he trumpeted, and but for the blanket of snow, I would have broken every bone in my body. At once I scrambled up and staggered through a drift. I dragged the girl out of her saddle. I pulled her down into the snow, and heaped it over her legs, her feet and legs, right up to her hips.

The girl's horse, meanwhile, just dived into a drift; it writhed and wriggled, and neighed pitifully.

I looked at the girl. And she looked at me. She had a blaze of red-gold hair, tied back at the neck, and tawny eyes the color of horse chestnuts.

I gave her a hand and pulled her up, and she blew out her pink cheeks, and smiled.

“He bolted!” she exclaimed.

“You were on fire. Your horse's mane was burning.”

“Poor Dancer,” said the girl.

“Are you all right?”

“I think so,” said the girl, brushing away the snow from her legs and feet, and inspecting herself. “My cloak's ruined. And your nose is bleeding.”

“What happened?”

“I don't know. Before I left the hall, I was sitting beside the fire with my uncle.”

“Who's that?”

“My uncle? Lord Stephen, of course! The fire was spitting and crackling, and one of the cinders must have caught inside my hem. Who are you, anyhow?”

“Arthur,” I said. “Arthur de Caldicot.”

“Arthur!” cried the girl. “The new squire.” She shook herself. “And I'm Winifred. Winifred de Verdon. You may call me Winnie.”

Together we walked our poor horses up the steep path and across the drawbridge, and then we tied them to the mounting block in the courtyard. Winnie led me through the storeroom and up the circular stone staircase to the hall. She threw open the hall door, and there I saw Lord Stephen de Holt and Lady Judith and his whole household waiting to greet me.

Lord Stephen took one look—at the snow and filth and soot smeared all over us, Winnie's scorched cloak, my bleeding nose—and then, seeing that neither of us was seriously hurt, he burst out laughing.

Not Lady Judith, though. She is a whole head taller than Lord Stephen, and she bore down on Winnie and buried her in her arms.

“Arthur—” announced Winnie, wrestling herself free, “Arthur saved me. Me and Dancer. Otherwise, Dancer would be ten miles away, and I'd be smoke and ashes.”

When Winnie had explained, Lord Stephen gave me a curious, lopsided smile. “Well, Arthur,” he said, “what use is chivalry if it doesn't begin at home?”

Lady Judith looked down the beak of her nose and then she smoothed Winnie's blaze of red-gold hair. “I warned you not to leave so late,” she said. “Now you'll have to stay here tonight.” And with that, Lady Judith put an arm round Winnie's shoulders and ushered her out of the hall and up the second flight of stairs.

I am writing this by poor candlelight, crouched in one corner of the hall. Instead of my grandmother Nain and Serle and Sian and Ruth and Tempest and Storm, my sleeping companions tonight are Simon, and Miles the scribe, whom I met at our manor court, and Rahere the musician, and Rowena and Izzie, who are both chamber-servants, and they're all asleep.

There's so much more to write, about Lord Stephen and Lady Judith, and about Winnie—she's a year younger than I am, and Lord Stephen says she comes to Holt quite often. I want to write about this castle, and everyone here, but I can't stop yawning.

Today I have crossed from ice to flames.

I
F I MAKE MY HAND INTO A FIST AND PLANT IT ON THIS
ledge with my curled little finger at the bottom and my thumb at the top, partly tucked in, I can see four levels.

This castle is like that. The bottom level is the storeroom, and above that is the seven-sided hall. From there, another circular flight of steps leads to the third level, my middle finger, which is Lord Stephen and Lady Judith's private chamber—they call it their solar. The fourth level, my index finger, consists of six little rooms, each of them triangular, and each leading out of the seventh room, which is at the center and has the stairwell in it.

Lord Stephen has given me one of these rooms for myself, and this is where I'm to study and practice my writing. He says my brother Serle used the same room when he served here as a squire, and on warm nights Serle sometimes slept up here.

My writing-room at Caldicot has three plaster walls, and it's tucked right under the roof-thatch. Little birds fly in and out through the wind-eye, and beetles and spiders and flies and cater-pillars are busy in the thatch, so it's almost like being in a nest. This room's not as friendly as that, because all the walls are stone, but it's quite light, and I can sit on the ledge under my lancet window and look right into Wales. Offa's Dyke, which separates England and Wales, is less than five miles from here.

Below me, I can see the castle courtyard. And below the court
yard, there's a grassy bank so steep that it would be impossible to attack the castle from this side.

Beyond that, I can see the South Yard and the cottages and crofts of the people who live on Lord Stephen's manor; I can see the archery butts and, far below me, the drawn bow of the dark river, which half-surrounds this castle.

“Does everything here look very strange?” Lord Stephen asked me at dinner. “Well, it's when things look strange that we see them most clearly.”

I've noticed one of the floorboards in my room stops short of the outer wall. When I raised it, I saw that the joist had a hollow in it, and that's where I've decided to hide my seeing stone. I don't think anyone will find it there.

I couldn't see anything in my stone at all when Merlin gave it to me—not to begin with. Nothing but my own reflection: my sticking-out ears and blob nose. But after I'd looked into it a dozen times, and polished it, and warmed it in the palm of my right hand, I began to see deep into it. I watched the white dragon of England fight the red dragon of Wales, and saw King Uther fall in love with Ygerna, wife of the duke of Cornwall. I saw the mysterious hooded man help Uther by giving him drugs to change his appearance so that he looked like Ygerna's own husband. I saw Ygerna giving birth to their baby son, and how he was put out to foster parents when he was only two days old.

In the stone, I'm myself but not myself: I'm a boy who looks like me, and talks like me, but is not me because he knows magic, and has fought his murderous uncle and killed him, and has ridden with his father and brother to a tournament in London.

I watched my namesake gallop to the churchyard of Saint Paul's and pull the sword from the stone. Arthur has proved he is the king of all Britain. To begin with, most of the earls and lords and knights of the country refused to accept him because he was a boy. He was thirteen, like me. But then the hooded man addressed the crowd in his voice of thunder: “I tell you all, you men of Britain: Arthur is Uther's blood-son, the trueborn king of all Britain. Arthur's time has come!”

In the stone I heard the townspeople of London cheering and shouting, I saw them waving their cudgels. I saw all the great men of Britain reluctantly get to their knees and swear allegiance.

“I will be just to rich and poor alike.” That's what Arthur-in-the-stone told them. “I will root out evil wherever I see it. I will lead you by serving you and serve you by leading you as long as I live.”

Merlin gave me my stone, my other world, and because he knows magic, he was waiting for me inside the stone until I recognized him. He is the hooded man, I know he is, but when I challenged him he turned my words on themselves.

“But who are you?” he asked me. “And who are you to be? That's what matters…Anyone without a quest is lost to himself.”

I have been wondering whether serving as a squire is a quest.

Finding my true mother…that will be a quest.

Taking the Cross. Perhaps that will be the greatest quest of all.

Yes, this castle is like a fist. Upright and tight and knuckled. It's at the ready. And so am I.