Awakening (55 page)

Help?!!
The big dog heard it and seemed to think:
Is my master under attack? Can it be that another dog dares to threaten him?

Such, or something like it, were the thoughts that lumbered through the canine’s brain.

It ceased licking Stort.

It stared into his eyes and seemed to say, ‘Leave this to me!’

It turned like a trained athlete, torn though its shoulder was from its earlier fight, and it growled.

The other dogs backed off at once.

It looked back at Stort for clear instruction.

Master, what shall I do? Only tell me, I shall obey!

Stort understood.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose . . .’

The other dogs moved aside and the big bull terrier reappeared.

‘Um . . .’ continued Stort, ‘perhaps you could . . .’

The bull terrier moved forward fast.

‘Kill!’ cried Stort.

The dog launched itself off at once, now a canine army all by itself, its shoulder no longer seeming to hurt at all.

Kill? Your wish is my command!

It dived in, grabbed the murderer of its mate and pups, shook it about as Cluckett might shake a duster at Stort’s front door on a Friday morning, and then tossed it away, its lifeless body falling into shadows.

Stort was getting the idea.

‘Heel!’ he cried.

The great beast came to heel, blood dripping from its maw. It looked at Stort in expectation of a pat or two, which it duly got.

‘What’s this?’ said Stort, realizing that the dog had a collar. The dog was or had been owned by a human and it had a name.

Stort read the metal tag aloud:
Georg Friedrich Händel.

‘Strange name,’ said Stort, ‘distantly familiar, but plain Georg will do!’

At this utterance, Georg’s happiness was complete, his identity returned. It looked up at Stort with pride and pleasure for a job well done, it bent its head a little as if to say ‘What next?’ and when Stort began walking the way the others had come, it trotted behind him, its head not much below Stort’s, but its position a respectful two paces behind.

Stort spoke his thoughts aloud, as was his habit: ‘I wonder where the others might be?’

Georg took this as a command, ran forward a little, sniffed about in the rubbish a good deal, and then having found a scent, looking back to see that Stort was following, he set a fair pace forward, twisting and turning through the maze of the rubbish piles and leading Stort confidently on.

Jack and the others were in dire straits.

They had realized they had lost Stort, and with him the two gems; it was too late to go easily back, for they were pursued by too many dogs to fight.

They slowed down, hoping that the dogs would disperse, which rather mysteriously they did, and then very cautiously they headed back. But the fire in the Hall had died, the wind had grown as flukey as Barklice had feared, and with no moon or stars showing it proved nearly impossible to get their bearings. They had wandered and wandered until, despair and tiredness overtaking them, they stopped.

‘All we can do,’ said Jack judiciously, ‘is to rest a little, wait for dawn, and hope against hope that the gems in their pouches may still be found . . .’

A growl, deep-throated and threatening.

A great dog’s face peering round the mound at the base of which they had stopped.

‘More dogs,’ muttered Barklice as they all stood up to fight once more.

The dog stood proud, looked back the way it had come to what they thought must be its fellows. Instead Bedwyn Stort appeared, a majestic, heroic silhouette against the clouds, the gems safely on his person.

‘I feared for a moment I might have lost you,’ he said, before pointing at Georg and speaking words he thought he would never hear himself say: ‘Don’t worry about him, he doesn’t bite.’

Of their five-day escape from Bochum and Germany a good deal was afterward said.

The truth was simple.

Stort proffered the gems in their pouches for the dog to sniff and said softly, ‘Now . . . find a way to get us home.’

No challenge, not even that one, was too great for Georg. He cocked his head, peered about a bit, sniffed again and seemed to get in touch with something beyond himself because he offered up a howl to the very Universe itself.

He went to Jack and then to each in turn.

Then back to Stort, biffing him with his head as if to say, ‘Trust me, I know where to go.’

He headed south out of the city, by forgotten railway tracks and closed collieries, by Alten Bochum and Wasserstrasse, from the south by Weitmar and Haarl . . . through woodland and sward, and down to the old River Ruhr.

There they found a craft by following Georg’s questing gaze, and headed upriver for mile after mile.

Only one thing troubled them as they went. It was Jack. With each day that passed he grew sicker, until a day came when they noticed blood on his shirt and jerkin. His old burn scars were opening up.

‘We must get you safely home,’ said Stort. ‘I fear it may be because you touched the gem of Summer. Some it helps and some it harms . . . We must make sure these open wounds do not become infected.’

‘Did not Cluckett provide us with an embrocation against such an eventuality?’

He dug around in Jack’s portersac and found a small jar of the remedy the goodwife had packed. Stort applied the balm liberally.

‘This should keep the infection at bay even if Jack’s spirit does not yet improve. It took me a good while to recover mentally from exposure to the gem of Spring.

He was right.

Another day passed and Jack got worse.

‘Stort . . . I can hardly walk . . . I’m sorry . . . I . . .’

From that moment on they took turns to carry his portersac and his stave and to help him along.

Georg the dog seemed to understand and hurried his pace. Until, resting by day and travelling by night, they reached the valley of the Loermecke River and the prehistoric limestone caves there. Georg grabbed Jack’s jacket as if to say, ‘Come with me, giant-born, the Great One among your Neandertal forebears lived here once. As he led you to Bochum so shall he guide you back to Brum.’

So as they came, did they go, the carvings of Jack’s stave calling up the crackling blue light of the ancients as it had before.

Into the caves they went. Georg stopped at the entrance to wanly watch them go. Head to one side, a sound of sadness, his life bereft, his new master leaving.

Stort looked at Jack and ill though he was he looked at Stort and nodded.

They turned into the timeless tunnels of the cave as Stort called with new-found love in his voice, ‘Come on then, come
on
!’ and Georg, his great spirit surely touched by his ancient forebears too, followed after the master he would always love, protect, honour and obey.

45

C
OMING OF
A
GE

I
n the last days of July the Earth grew still again, the days calm. A quiet, warm Summer briefly reigned. Balmy morning winds and a curtain moving gently at the open window, which was the first thing Margaret Foale saw when she woke up.

‘Arthur . . . ?’

‘Yes, my love.’

‘It is so beautiful, the Earth.’

‘She is.’

Margaret was slow now, tired, giving way.

The house was at peace again after the noisy, violent, fractured, secret raising of Judith to be the Shield Maiden, which had taken them all to the edge of themselves and Jack away again.

They all missed him as they missed Judith, both bright stars in their quiet firmament.

‘Arthur, can I take her anything?’ wondered Katherine downstairs. ‘Tea? Breakfast? Anything?’

He shook his head, unable to sit down, fingers fretting, wishing there was something he could do but knowing there was nothing.

‘She’s fine, she’s happy, she’s looking at the view from our bedroom window. She loves to lie and stare out now. The White Horse resplendent, galloping who knows where.’

They went up to her and sat on either side of her bed, holding her hands.

‘We were wondering where you think the Horse is going,’ said Arthur.

‘To the ends of the Earth,’ Margaret replied. ‘Now, I think I ought to sleep a little.’

The White Horse was the last thing Margaret saw, waking to it one morning, whispering to Arthur to stay with her, hold her hand, because she felt tired, so tired, and . . .

‘It is so beautiful . . .’

She held his hand and with the other reached for the Horse, to touch it, to stroke its great mane, reaching through the window, through the light Summer breeze, reaching out at last as her friend Clare had reached before her.

‘I wanted to see her ride it, Arthur, I want to see Judith ride but you can, you will . . . she will be . . . it is . . . so . . .’

She fell silent, her hand falling still on the blankets.

Arthur held her, Katherine moved softly about downstairs.

She stirred closer to him and said, ‘. . . so beautiful,’ and was gone.

In the days following, busy days when the world went on hold with grief and Katherine saw Arthur through the worst and they feared they were the last in Woolstone House, the last of all . . . Katherine knew that Judith had come home.

‘She’s here, Arthur, she’s here . . . I can feel her near, being with us.’

‘Being with
you
, Katherine. That’s what children do when their parents need them: come home. It’s what they do. It’s their true coming of age when they see they have a role to play. It’s the moment of paradox when they can say goodbye and parents can be free and their love is deeper than it has ever been.’

‘But I was never a mother . . .’

He said, quite sharply, ‘Never say that, never. You made her and carried her and gave her birth. You are her mother. She has no other, you’re the one.’

‘I never talked to her, never shared the moments a mother’s meant to share except . . .’ She smiled and blinked back tears. ‘. . . except once when we put ribbons in each other’s hair and flew upon the wind.’

Arthur shook his head and said, ‘It isn’t over, your job with her. If she’s here . . .’

‘I know she is.’

‘If so, then go and find a way to talk to her, she’s probably as fearful as you are. But she’s come home when you need her maybe that’s because she needs you too. Go and talk to her.’

‘I don’t know how to.’

‘I think you do, you had the best of teachers – your mother Clare. You could start with the chimes. Those damn things are always tinkling away in a know-all kind of way. Talk to them. Maybe Judith will hear you there.’

‘I . . .’

‘I often do when I tend my tomatoes and find that someone’s been stealing them . . . is it you?’

She laughed and shook her head. ‘Wouldn’t dare,’ she said.

‘We all have to start somewhere with our grieving,’ said Arthur, ‘it’s the living’s new beginning. Not my words – Margaret’s. Go and talk to your daughter; truth travels furthest of all when it comes from the heart. It’ll reach her.’

‘I miss Jack,’ said Katherine simply.

‘Then tell her,’ he said. ‘Who better to comfort you?’

So Katherine did, out in the garden, under the trees, whispering her words to lost Judith, saying she didn’t know what she should say but she’d try. Wresting the truth from herself and letting her see her cry for Jack.

That same pagan Summer, which started with tremors and storms in May and was ending with quiet in July, was a time of change in the tunnels of Bochum too.

The fire that started in the Hall on the night of the aborted celebration had caught hold and raged through the tunnels for a time.

The Emperor, once so decisive in his rule, was suddenly ineffectual and able only to wander about and say, ‘Disperse! Disperse! It isn’t worth it.’

Insanity was the whisper of those days, as the Court tried to recover itself and find a new direction: ‘The Emperor is insane.’

‘Disperse, dispersal, my Lord?’ wondered Blut. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The end of Empire, when people leave the comfort of what they know.’

‘Anarchy?’

Sinistral shook his head.

‘Freedom, Blut. I have seen one fire too many now and this one marked the beginning of the end of days. The gems are gone, I can no longer rely on Summer – and never even had a chance with Spring – to prop my ageing body up. Though I shall try my best to live and even do more things. Am I not, for my age, still young?’

Blut could not but agree.

‘Who needs Summer when they have themselves, Blut?’

The truth was that Sinistral’s exposure to the light of Summer, and his dalliance with the light of Spring, had given him back the bloom of youth, for a time. But he was stiff and seemed less quick, less sure than before, though Blut thought that he denied it and made excuses.