Awakening (58 page)

‘You mean Katherine?’

‘That’s the one!’

‘And I thought he was dying!’

‘You stick to your work, Mister Stort and I’ll stick to mine if you please. What he needs now is a good night’s sleep, but I have my doubts with these folk about he’ll get it . . .’

But in that she was wrong.

For the pilgrimage had been a long and hard one and they had only arrived earlier that day. Come the midnight hour, when the church clocks in the Vale struck midnight, all were asleep, even Jack, even Stort himself.

But down in the Vale, a little way on from the end of the pilgrim road and on its far side, across a stream and over a meadow, under a strand of barbed wire and through a henge, a dog ran. It dropped the object it had been carrying outside the conservatory doors of Woolstone and howled.

Katherine woke at once.

It howled again.

She opened her window and saw nothing at all but the moon over White Horse Hill.

The dog howled a third time and she heard Arthur get up, go downstairs and open the patio door.

‘You heard it?’ she said, coming down.

‘I found this,’ said Arthur, ‘just outside.’

It was Jack’s stave, formerly Brief’s. It sparked and crackled with blue light.

She dressed quickly as if for a very long walk.

The dog barked again.

‘Do you want me to come?’ said Arthur.

‘This is something I need to do alone,’ she said. ‘His stave will protect me.’

‘Where exactly would you say you’re going?’ said Arthur. ‘And when are you coming back?’

‘Into the Hyddenworld,’ she replied without hesitation, ‘I do not know when I’m coming back.’

She held him tight, knowing that now he would be alone in the house. But that did not feel wrong at all. He needed time alone, as she and Jack now did.

‘Soon,’ she whispered, ‘we’ll come and get you. But for now . . .’

‘Off you go!’ he said.

With the stave in her hand she passed through the henge and into the Hyddenworld like an adept.

‘Easy,’ she said to herself, but the walk afterwards was hard. She finally reached Wayland’s Smithy at two in the morning. The dog woke Stort and, yawning, he came and found her.

‘Where is he?’

‘I wondered where the dog went to . . . ah, thank goodness, you have his stave. He’s over here.’

‘Is he all right?’

‘Mirror knows,’ said Stort, ‘yesterday he was dying, today he might outwalk the lot of us . . .’

She went to him where he lay on the ground and put her arms around him, he fearful that it was Cluckett with another cure until she kissed him.

When he knew it was not, he held her as tight as he ever had.

‘I love you,’ he said.

‘And I you,’ she replied.

It was dawn three days later on White Horse Hill and Jack and Katherine were up there, waiting for the sun to rise. All the others bar Stort had set off back to Brum and they were about to leave.

Stort was on the far side of the hill, standing alone in the wind.

Each had their way of saying farewell to the past and of greeting the future.

‘She’s still here,’ said Katherine quietly. ‘She’s waiting, I think.’

‘I think she is,’ said Jack. ‘But time to let her go, to be herself.’

They were not talking about Margaret, whose spirit had gone now, far ahead. It was Judith of whom Katherine spoke.

She had hoped for some sign or other, but she didn’t know what. Something that told her her daughter was free, if not of life’s hurt then of childhood. Her freedom would be Katherine’s too.

‘I’m frightened for her,’ said Katherine.

‘And . . . ?’ said Jack.

‘And for myself.’

‘We have a whole life to live and already we’ve done so much.’

‘Yes,’ she said, but it didn’t feel that way.

‘She’s here,’ whispered Katherine later, shivering a little with the chill of the dawn. She stood up.

‘I wish I could see her one more time before we leave for Brum.’

‘Look!’ said Jack. ‘There, down in the combe.’

He pointed at the wraiths of early morning mist that gathered beneath the Hill, swirling, waiting for the sun to chase them away. It was down there that Judith, little more than a child, had raised her hands and arms in joy at discovering the Earth.

‘We’re ready to go,’ said Jack.

Still Katherine lingered, hoping.

‘She’s so alone,’ she said.

‘No,’ said Jack, ‘
you
think you are. But you’re not, you’ve got me and we’ve got us!’

He grinned at her.

‘Stort’ll catch us up,’ said Jack. ‘He’s resting and thinking like he does, let him be. He too wants to say goodbye. Now . . . let’s go. We’ll take the Ridgeway for a while and then drop back down to the pilgrim road for Brum. We know it well enough.’

Moments later the sun finally showed and they stood to honour the moment. The mist had shifted and was suffused with light.

‘It’s always so beautiful when the sun first catches it,’ said Katherine.

Westward, the other way along the Ridgeway, the trees were still dark and the great copse of beeches that surrounded Wayland’s Smithy, the barrow on the horizon, was dark against the waking sky.

They stood shoulder to shoulder.

No real point in hurrying.

This was what living was for.

A patter of feet, light and fast, and a grey shape raced across the sward before them and chased mist across the down.

‘Morten,’ said Katherine, recognizing the dog from Byrness. ‘Judith must be near. Maybe we’ll see her after all.’

They waited in the silence of the dawn.

Stort was resting because he had got up in the deep of the night, packed his ’sac and left it under the hawthorn on the Hill ready for the off next day.

Then he trekked down through the dark to Woolstone, stood in the henge, went to the chimes. There was something he had done which he had regretted and so he had come back to undo it.

It was the chime Judith gave him, the day they ate tomatoes, which, being superstitious, he had hung back up.

He knew the one but . . . though he looked hard with a light on them all, it wasn’t there.

He felt a pang of disappointment and shook his head. Moments come and then they go and a hydden should grasp a gift when it is given, with a glad and welcoming heart.

‘Next time . . .’ he murmured, but there might not be a next time. Of course there’d be a next time! That’s the way to think!

Suddenly he could feel her. Right there, very near in the garden, then out across the downs, racing, running, flying, circling, finding for herself where she should be and where she must go, summoning up first light.

The chimes sounded, he shone his light on Arthur’s tomato plants, cherry-red and ripe.

He bent to try one and knew at once she was right there, wanting to give him one.

Did he pluck, did she give it? He didn’t know.

It was cool but full of taste, a burst of Summer in his mouth.

The chimes trembled and even as he looked in the dawn light they shifted and changed, one going, one coming, and a new one right there before him . . . yet old, it looked old, though its sound was young.

He looked closer and knew it was the one she had given him.

A gift when it is given . . .

He left it where it was. It was not for him to touch the chimes. He sensed her laughter, turned towards her, and felt her race away up the Hill. He followed and, reaching the tree and his portersac again, sat down and fell asleep.

What finally woke him was Georg, restless and eager. He sat looking about, tail swishing, as if expecting a visitor.

‘We’ll see what we see,’ said Stort, watching the sun rise, glimpsing Jack and the others but not going near. He wanted these last moments alone as, he was sure, did they.

The White Horse was just out of sight, below the fall of the slope.

‘Go on!’ he said to Georg. ‘The sun’s rising, go and chase wraiths!’ Georg did, as happy as could be.

Stort got up.

The Hill was deserted, the combe below swirling with mist, the sun not yet quite high enough to reach right down.

He walked to the flat area of grass above the Horse, the fort rising behind him.

Georg, who had disappeared, raced suddenly at him, right past and off again, ears flapping.

Stort stood with nowhere else to go.

He took out the gems, thinking he might just leave them for her, somewhere on the chalk carving of the Horse, in the centre of its eye perhaps.

Another dog raced by, grey and beautiful, utterly benign, silent in the morning, its feet barely touching ground, flying, turning, exquisite.

‘You’re near,’ he whispered, ‘and now I’m suddenly trembling because I won’t know what to do.’

‘Hello,’ she said, from where she stood, over by the Horse, down a little. ‘Hello, Bedwyn Stort . . .’

He dared to look.

She was a girl before, now she was a woman, tall and strong: the Shield Maiden. Her dark hair held the sun, it lit her eyes and robe and was warm and golden between them.

‘Hello, Judith,’ he said, aware that that was who she always would be to him, if to no one else. ‘Hello again.’

‘I saw you this morning by the chimes,’ she said.

‘I knew you were there.’

‘I wanted us to run together in the henge like we did.’

‘You always can with me,’ said Stort. ‘I’m not much good at that sort of thing but, well, with me you always can.’

‘You’re my . . . friend,’ she said.

He felt a pang of longing and regret. Friend was not what he wanted to be, but what else can a Shield Maiden ever have but that?

‘I am,’ he said. ‘I always will be.’

‘Yes . . .’ she said, also unable to say more.

She too felt regret because of what could not be.

I love you, Stort,
she wanted to say but she could not and never would. The love of a Shield Maiden is for all not one.

‘Until the end of time,’ said Stort. ‘I’ll be your friend and call you by your given name, Judith.’

I love you,
she told him with her whole being.

And I you, Judith,
he replied.

Their longing was the whole world’s and their silence a hundred thousand words of love, not one of which could ever be spoken out loud.

Their dogs raced back and forth, here and there, down and up, so beautiful, his dog and hers, weaving a pattern of love across the grass, down in its hollows, over the Horse’s lines, through the mist and back out of it. It took Stort’s breath away.

‘I don’t know what to say or do,’ he said at last.

‘Nor I,’ she said, ‘and I’m meant to be the Shield Maiden!’

The last of the Summer breeze was in her dark hair, the first colours of Autumn in her eyes.

He wanted to go to her but didn’t know how.

She too, to him, but it felt too far.

Far, far down, in the combe beneath them, their dogs raced and turned, weaving the mist into shapes that turned and wove into yet more. Turned and rose as if the Earth Herself was sighing.

Rose up as if from the dark western sky.

As if from the pale east, turning, the shape changing as the dogs, spirits of the new morning, wove the sunlight and the mist into something that made distant thunder, a Horse’s hoofs, the Earth turning beneath them as they came.

It was then the great White Horse came to her and knelt down for her to mount it for the first time.

‘I think,’ said Stort, trying to see her where she was, which wasn’t easy that morning, not easy at all, ‘I think . . . that it must be time . . .’

He took the pendant from his own neck and went to her. She leaned down towards him as he put it over her head.

‘And this,’ he said, offering the gem of Summer, ‘is for you to put in its right setting because I don’t know . . . I’m not . . .’

‘You place it there,’ she said, ‘for there is no one else. You can touch them without harm.’

She looked at him as he at her, near and far, here and over there, down by the grass, up in the sky, into each other they looked.

He took the pendant in his hands with the chain around her neck and carefully placed the gem of Summer where it must be.

She laughed then, sitting up, reins in one hand to steady the White Horse, reaching to him with the other.

‘I have something for you too,’ she said. ‘Come near.’

He came closer, the Horse stilled, she let go the reins and slipped the golden thread that held the chime he had left where he thought it should stay, over his head.

‘There,’ she said, tucking the chime inside his jerkin, ‘there, Bedwyn Stort and . . . don’t ever part with it again!’