Awakening (52 page)

‘For Brief,’ he said coldly, ‘five minutes of whose life was worth yours in its entirety.’

‘Nooooooooooooo!’

It was Lady Leetha, running past the Emperor and to Slew’s side, her jewels torn and tumbling from her chest, her arms raised against Jack’s stave.

‘He is my son.’

Jack’s eyes were cold and black as the agate she had worn, which now lay in the dust.

To right and left the jewelled arks swayed.

He reached a hand to still them, first one, then the other.

‘Your son killed a much-loved hydden to steal the gem whose possession you now celebrate. Why then should I not kill him?’

He raised his stave higher.

Tears came to Leetha’s eyes and her hands and arms fell slowly to rest on Slew’s chest and shoulder as he groaned.

‘Because he is your brother,’ she whispered. ‘Because of that.’

Jack stood staring down at them, unable to make sense of what he heard, unable to believe into whose eyes he gazed, unable to think.

Leetha helped Slew sit up, Jack backed off.

Slew staggered to his feet, his stave clattering on the ground, his pale smile returning.

‘He doesn’t remember, Mother, he was too young. Let him then have something to remember me by next time we meet . . .’

Slew opened the ark that contained the gem of Summer and reached inside.

He found what it was he sought and sighed.

He seemed suddenly to gain strength, his eye to heal, his face to glow with health as light suffused him for a time and dazzled them all. Then, closing his hand upon the gem, he quelled the light.

He took his hand, a fist now, out of the ark and held it high.

‘You can take the other one as you will,’ he said, ‘but this I give freely to my brother . . . for – ’ he laughed a bleak, ill-intentioned laugh – ‘for letting me live.’

He offered his clenched hand to Jack.

‘Take it,’ he said.

Jack, confused by all that was happening, silently offered his hand.

Stort pushed forward past Feld, ‘No! Jack! Do not touch the gem . . .’

It was too late.

Jack took it, fell back at the shock of it, steadied himself as Slew turned away, shaken by the fight, made weak by the gem. Jack opened his hand, shook his head in puzzlement, slipped the gem into the pouch Stort proffered and said shakily, ‘I’m all right, I think I’m all right.’ Perhaps he was, but he looked dazed and seemed unable to think clearly, or to know what to do next.

It was Feld who took final command.

‘Stort, get the other gem and its pendant.
Now.
Barklice, help him. You others, form a protective ring around us; I am not convinced that Jack is well and we need to get him out of here.’

Stort and Barklice took the other gem from its ark without a single word from the Emperor, who simply stood and stared and seemed not to care.

Leetha went to his and Slew’s sides. She stared at Jack, horror-struck and guilty, but he did not look at her. He was too dazed, too confused.

‘Right,’ said Feld, maintaining the initiative, ‘. . . and where now?’

The fire had taken hold in the area where they had come in. The hall had emptied through the other entrance but that was now filling with Fyrd, summoned to help and beginning to look threatening. The strength of the opposing forces, having gone one way, now swung back to the other.

But there was one person there who had barely moved at all from beginning to end of these events, having taken refuge behind the arras. He now emerged.

He was small, he was bold and he was Parlance, the most famous chef in the Hyddenworld.

‘
Ah, Messieurs Stort et Jacques!
’ he cried, unruffled by the mayhem all about. ‘’Ow good to see you again. Zis way!’

He moved back quickly behind the heavy arras to an open door there. Feld pushed Jack through and Stort and Barklice followed, and as Blut shouted a command to stop them Barklice crashed it shut and bolted it.

‘
Parlance?
’ said Jack unbelievingly.

The diminutive chef was dressed in his work clothes, his knives at his belt and his huge chef’s hat upon his head. The medal that the Emperor had awarded him earlier was on his chest.

‘It is
moi
,’ said Parlance, ‘but forget the
politesse
, your lives are at stake. They are slow now, but soon they will be fast. You will go that way . . . and I will tell them you went
this
way . . .’

‘That way’ was up some stairs and round a corner out of sight.

‘There is a door,’ said Parlance almost urgently, ‘take it for it leads to
la liberté
, but have a care, there are
chiens méchants
out there . . .’ He shrugged philosophically. ‘But paupers cannot be choosers,
n’est-ce pas
?’

‘Aren’t you coming?’

‘Ah
non
!’ said Parlance, sadly, ‘I ’ave a soufflé awaiting my attention!’

‘Well . . .’ said Jack, suddenly hesitant.

Something was dawning on him.

If Slew was his brother and that woman was Slew’s mother then she must be his mother too . . .

The door they had bolted was now being battered by heavy feet and staves and could not last many seconds more.

‘Quick
mes braves
! Shoo . . .
shoo!
’

Which Jack and the others did, their heads full of questions, but in the knowledge that the gems were safely in Stort’s possession.

‘
À bientô!
’ cried Parlance, running towards the bolted door and affecting, as it gave way just as Jack and the others disappeared, to be trying to open it himself.

‘
Ah! Messieurs et Madame!
I am so short I cannot reach zis bolt! But quick, you may still catch
les monstres
from Brum, they ’ave
disparu
down zos stairs . . .’

They charged in the direction he was pointing, Slew at their head, Blut following behind.

Parlance, having made sure that Jack had made good his escape and no one was looking, darted up the stairs and closed and bolted the door through which they had gone up to the outside world.

That done, the chef checked his chronometer and headed back down the stairs towards the Imperial kitchen, mopping his brow.

43

E
VENING

W
hen Katherine and the Foales had got back to Woolstone Margaret still felt unwell. Next day Arthur took her for a check-up in Oxford. Katherine wanted to do the driving but Margaret preferred to go with Arthur alone.

Until the last year she had never been unwell in her life. It had always been Arthur, and always she who looked after him. Now it was his turn to look after her and it felt right that way.

They had been married nearly half a century, had good times and bad, and they had reached the point where, for some things, words were not needed.

This was one of them.

The falls had given due warning of Margaret’s decline. The seriousness with which their doctor took them, his insistence on more frequent tests and check-ups, and the pills she was prescribed for blood pressure told them both that things would never be the same. But what spoke loudest of all was that she no longer wanted to do very much, or walk, or even garden.

Death held no fear for her: she had had a good life and was tired now and beginning to let go. There was fear of loss but not of death itself, and for her visit to the doctor Margaret wanted no one else but Arthur with her.

‘You can have a rest my dear,’ she told Katherine, ‘have a sleep. These have been hard times for us all.’

The appointment was at ten in the morning, so they left at half past eight. Arthur called home at eleven to say things had been delayed and they were doing other tests.

‘Is everything all right?’

‘She’s so tired, Katherine,’ was all he said.

Tired was what Katherine was too, but a sleep-in she could not do. She was restless, irritable, and it was the first time she had been alone and in the house since Judith was born.

She missed Jack and Judith terribly with a pain like no other she had ever known.

Distressed, she got up and felt the house all oppressive around her and went out to stand on the crumbling patio and listen to the garden and the chimes . . . In fact, she told herself, it was the first time in years she had been alone in Woolstone. Maybe the first time ever.

She caught a glimpse of a tall, thin, haggard woman in the glass wall of the conservatory: clothes dowdy, hair lank, posture stooped. A defeated woman. It took her a while to recognize herself.

She looked through her own reflection on into the conservatory to where her mother had lain bedridden and hurting for so long. The last time, the only time she could remember her parents alive, together and normal, was that day they picked up Jack in the health centre in North Yorkshire. Her Dad’s face was now just a photograph with no connection with real memory. Her mother was different.

‘Mum,’ she said aloud . . .

Mum, I’d like to talk to you.

Mum, I don’t know what happened.

Mum, I did everything wrong.

Mum, I’m numb inside and out.

Mum, why did you leave me alone?

She went back inside and up to her room.

No, friends, no one to talk to.

First Mum, then Judith gone like a bad dream that came and went and left devastation inside my heart.

Jack’s gone, he’s gone and he was my rock and I fear he may never
come back.

Everyone’s gone, nothing and nobody left. Purposeless and drifting.

She wept for the sense of the loss of them all.

An old birthday card stood on her desk near the window.

It was from her old school friend Samantha, who had moved to Hong Kong when her Dad’s work took him on a contract there. After that, Australia. She had never come back, but they exchanged cards and emails and she knew all about Jack coming into Katherine’s life.

When they went into the Hyddenworld Katherine stopped replying to Sam’s emails, which piled up in her inbox until space ran out. When she had come back to have the baby there had been no time to clear her emails or write to Sam. Anyway, what was she going to say? What
could
she say? To anyone else it would make no sense.

Katherine had a telephone book with friends’ numbers in, but she had so few friends it was nearly empty. She had no mobile yet. No time or inclination. She went back online and found a file with Sam’s old emails and the one with her contact details in Australia.

What was the time there?

Ahead or behind? She couldn’t remember and she didn’t care.

‘Sam?’

It was an old woman at the other end of the line. Maybe her mother.

‘I’ll get her. Who shall I say . . . ?’

But Katherine couldn’t get her own name out.

‘Sam! It’s for you. I don’t know. No. Female. Yes.’

Then, to Katherine, ‘She’s just coming . . .’

‘Hello?’ said Sam.

Katherine sat breathing, then not breathing, silent and not quite silent.

‘Hello . . . ?’

Sam’s voice, gentle like it had always been. Back then it was like that, before all this.

Before.

‘Sam?’

‘Yes . . .’

‘Sam . . . I . . .’

‘Katherine?’

‘I . . . Sam . . . I . . . I . . .’

Katherine did not cry easily. She had certainly never cried like that, not like
that
. She cried like she would never stop. She wept. She howled like a small broken animal that has no one and nobody.

‘Katherine, whatever is it?’

Her voice was caring and she was crying too, for in Katherine’s tears she heard the cry of the world.

‘It’s something bad isn’t it?’

‘Yes . . . but . . . I . . . c . . . can’t . . . oh, Sam, I can’t . . .’

I can’t say it because no one can know, no one can ever know, and it’s not bad it’s worse than that it’s . . .

‘Look, Katherine, I’m going to ask you questions like we used to when we couldn’t get something out or we were too embarrassed. Remember? I ask, you answer. Easier that way.’

‘Okay.’

‘Are you missing your Mum?’

‘Yes. But it’s not that.’

‘Is it to do with men?’

Sam’s voice smiled and then stopped smiling.

‘No. Worse.’

‘Jack? He’s . . .’

‘Not Jack, it’s . . .’

That’s a revelation, thought Katherine: it’s not Jack.

‘Okay . . .’ Sam was thinking. ‘You’re pregnant.’