The Seeing Stone (16 page)

“A matter of faith,” said Grace.

W
E'RE NOT ONLY MADE OF CLAY; WE'RE MADE OF
spirit as well.

But after that, what matters most? My name? The name of my family? How I loved my family and they loved me? My concern for other people, all the people living on this manor? Or is it that I'm loyal to the king? English and true?

I keep thinking about the words for little Luke's tombstone, and there's so little to say, but so much to say. I think the words must be short and simple, because that's what Luke's life was. He only lived for ten months.

SON
LITTLE LUKE

FIFTH SON OF
SIR JOHN AND
LADY HELEN
DE CALDICOT
BORN AND DIED 1199

BROTHER

How does that look? The more words I think of, the more difficult it is to choose.

M
Y STONE WAS THE DARK OF THE MOON.
But I didn't want to wrap it up and hide it in the crevice. I needed it. And I think it heard my lonely prayers.

I saw myself, Arthur-in-the-stone, wearing a coat of mail and a helmet as though I were a knight, and my charger was wearing a trapper right down to the ground and a green cloth hood; there were slits for his eyes, and his big ears stuck out of them.

At first I thought the forest was Pike, but then through the trees I saw a castle. And as Arthur-in-the-stone approached the drawbridge, two bells rang. One sounded like our own church bell, grave and kind; the other was like a little bird sounding an alarm.

A goshawk rises out of the castle courtyard, trailing its long leash and wearing its bells. It flies to the top of an elm tree, and its leash catches on a branch. The hawk tries to free itself, it flutters up and down and round and knots itself to the tree.

Now a lady steps out of the gatehouse, and onto the bridge across the moat. She's wearing an orange cloak. It is Lady Alice.

“Sir!” she calls. “Have you seen my goshawk?” And she walks across the bridge.

“Up there!” says Arthur-in-the-stone, pointing to the top of the elm.

“I was feeding her on my fist,” Lady Alice says, “and her leash slipped my wrist. She's our only hawk and she's trained to take herons. She sleeps in our chamber.” Lady Alice looks at me fearfully. “Whoever you are, I beg you to help me.”

“I'll try,” says Arthur-in-the-stone, “but I'm not much good at climbing trees.”

I dismount and tether my horse to the elm. Then I unfasten my helmet and Lady Alice starts to help me. She unfastens my broad waist belt and my two sword-belts and lays my sword on the ground. She unties my coat of mail at the wrists, and helps me pull it over my head.

“My husband has such a foul temper,” Lady Alice says. “If I lose our goshawk, I'll be lost too. My husband will kill me.”

She stoops and loosens the thongs of my mail-leggings, and then she grasps the hem of my quilted tunic between her small hands.

“Raise your arms,” she says, and she pulls the tunic over my head.

Dressed in nothing but my undershirt and breeches, Arthur-in-the-stone seizes the lowest branch and starts to climb the elm. Up! Quickly up from bole to fork, and fork to branch.

The goshawk stares down on me, and I stare up at the goshawk. Nearer and nearer. Then I reach out and grab her! Now I tug and loosen one of the tree's rotten stumps, and tie the goshawk's leash round it, and throw the stump down from the tree. It falls to the ground, and the goshawk flutters down after it.

At once an old knight reels out of the gatehouse, and he strides across the drawbridge to the foot of the elm. It is my uncle, Sir William, and he is holding a naked sword.

“I've been waiting for you!” he shouts. “Come down and die.”

“You can't kill a defenseless boy,” says Arthur-in-the-stone.

Sir William gives a dry laugh. “You won't be the first,” he says.

“Let me have my sword,” I shout. “Hang it on the bottom branch.”

“Come down, you coward!” roars Sir William.

I'm standing on a leafless branch. It's dead. Quite dead. First I lower myself on to the branch below me…I tug and wrench at the dead branch and suddenly it breaks.

At once I climb down the tree, carrying the dead branch in my left hand.

The rims of Sir William's eyes are red; his eyebrows are white and tangled. But he's seasoned and still very strong. Arthur-in-the-stone grips the dead branch with both hands, shouts and leaps out of the tree.

Sir William roars. He raises his sword and slashes at me. But I can fend off the blade with the elm branch, and as Sir William rocks back, I use all the strength in my forearms and upper arms to swing the branch after him.

The branch whacks Sir William on the side of his head. It knocks him down, and I launch myself at him and pinion his wrist. I squeeze it and grab his sword as his grasp loosens. Then, as he reaches out and half-rises, I swing the shining sword and cut off Sir William's head.

Lady Alice shrieks. “My husband,” she cries. “Why have you killed him?”

“His own treachery killed him,” says Arthur-in-the-stone.

“And it has wounded me,” says Lady Alice in a low voice.

Two bells ring inside the castle: one safe, one nervous.

I know Sir William's men may come out of the gatehouse at any moment. I roll up my hose and pull my quilted tunic over my head. My coat of mail. My helmet. Silently, Lady Alice looks at me, then she lies down beside her husband's body, and her orange cloak covers them both, like the wing of a phoenix. Her goshawk waits beside her, glaring angrily at me.

Arthur-in-the-stone untethers and mounts his horse and, as he rides away, deep into the forest of his life, all the pictures and sounds draw back into my stone again.

Once more, my obsidian was the dark of the moon.

What did it all mean? Why did Sir William want to kill me? And was Lady Alice in danger because of her husband's terrible temper?

Merlin says our questions have their answers inside them. So what is it I need to know?

S
IAN'S A WILDCAT, AND SOMETIMES IT GETS HER INTO
trouble.

At dinner, my mother asked her to help make soap, because Dutton slaughtered three sheep yesterday.

“Dutton's mutton,” said Sian.

“And then we must scent it with rosemary and lavender,” said my mother. “And after that, it's high time Tanwen washed your hair. It hasn't been washed all this month.”

Sian just grinned at my mother but, as soon as we were allowed to stand up, she skipped across the hall and swung open the door.

“Come back!” called my father, but Sian ignored him. Serle and I looked at each other; neither he nor I would be able to get away with disobedience like that.

“The little…” began my father.

“She hasn't even got her cloak on,” my mother said. “Please, Arthur. Go out and get her.”

“I'll drag her in,” I said.

“And you put on your cloak,” said my mother.

“Your mother's right,” said my father. “It's freezing again this morning.”

Outside, I called for Sian several times, but she didn't reply. She wasn't on the bridge and she wasn't in the Yard, climbing the ladder, so I went to look for her in the stables.

She wasn't there either, but Gatty was. She was helping Jankin muck out the stables, but when she saw me she lowered her eyes, and drove her twig-broom into the sludge so that it flew up and spattered the stable wall.

“Mind that,” said Jankin. “Or Hum'll have me cleaning the walls as well.”

Gatty said nothing, and I knew it was because I had upset her. I should have stood up for her when Serle bullied her in the yard. Then I thought how pretty she looked—the wild curls of her fair hair and her pink cheeks spotted with freckles and speckled with manure.

“He can clean it hisself,” said Gatty, and she splashed the manure a second time.

“Seen Sian?” I asked.

“No,” said Jankin.

“The little wildcat,” I said. “I can't find her.”

I ran round the back of the house then. Sian wasn't in the sheepfold, and she wasn't in the copse; she wasn't in the herb garden.

This was when I heard a loud crack, and then a scream from the fishpond.

“Sian,” I yelled, and I raced round the hedge and over to the pond. Sian had gone through the ice, at least ten steps out. She was in the water up to her shoulders, clutching on to the jagged edge of the ice-sheet with her white fingers.

“Arthur!” she screamed.

“Keep still!” I shouted. “Don't try to move.”

“Help!” screamed Sian.

“I'm coming,” I called.

At the edge of the pond, I lay down on the ice and began to pull and slide my way across. I looked down, down through the thin ice into the drowning darkness, and saw the darker shapes of gliding carp and trout, and when I looked up again, Gatty was there! She was running round to the other side. Then she, too, bellied onto the ice, and silently began to swim out across it.

Again and again Sian screamed.

Gatty reached her first and grabbed Sian's arm.

“Quiet!” she said fiercely.

When I tried to get hold of Sian's other arm, some of the ice around the hole broke away; then it cracked under me, and I let go of Sian and slid back.

Sian began to scream again.

When I reached out for the second time, I could hear the ice groan and feel it bending.

“Go on!” said Gatty. “Lift, Sian!”

Sian grabbed Gatty's shoulder, and then my hair. She strained, she moaned, and then all at once she slid out onto her stomach, dripping and mucky and wailing, as if she'd somehow given birth to herself. She'd risen from the darkness into the light, and Gatty and I were the midwives, pulling her up onto the bending ice.

Then Gatty spread herself out on the ice again, and we began to pull Sian back to the nearest bank.

“How did you know?” I asked Gatty.

“Worked it out, didn't I,” Gatty panted.

“She would have drowned,” I said.

Then Gatty put her left arm around Sian's shoulders, and I put
my right arm round Sian's waist, and together we half-walked, halfhauled her back to the door of the house.

My mother couldn't have heard us, but she knew we were coming, and met us at the door.

“She went through the ice,” I said.

“Bring her in!” said my mother.

“Gatty saved her.”

“Quickly!” said my mother. “Come in, Gatty.”

“'s all right,” said Gatty, and she pulled her arm away from Sian's shoulder.

“Sian!” said my mother angrily. “You little wildcat!”

“Gatty saved her,” I said again.

Gatty's curls were sprinkled with silver and her lower lip was bleeding; her river eyes were flooded with tears.

K
ING UTHER SAID HIS SAXON ENEMIES CALL HIM THE
“half-dead” king. He beat them in battle, though, and their leaders Octa and Eosa were killed.

In my stone, I saw four of the Saxon survivors sitting around a fire in a forest clearing.

One man stands up, and I can see his left arm has been hacked off at the elbow-joint. “Good riddance!” he growls.

“Damn them!” says a second man, who has a scar right across his forehead.

“And what if they had won?” a third man demands. “They couldn't stand each other.”

“Octa would have slit Eosa's throat.”

“Or Eosa would have stuck a knife into Octa.”

“
Nil de mortuis
…” sneers the scarred man.

“The same to you,” says the one-armed man.

“Don't dump on dead men. That's what that means,” the scarred man says.

“So what now?” asks the third man. “That's the question.”

Beside the fire there's a heap of sacking. Now it begins to shake, and then to growl, and a fourth man sits up. A large gold brooch is pinned to his chest. “Uther won't last,” he says. “Not for long.”

“How come, Walter?” asks the third man.

“He won the battle, didn't he?” says the scarred man.

“The battle, not the war,” says Walter, the fourth man. “Uther's old and ill. He's weak in body, and weakness sows dragon's teeth.”

“What's that?” asks the one-armed man.

“Plant one enemy and one hundred spring up,” Walter says. “Uther's had it, one way or the other.”

“It's not as if he's got a son,” says the third man.

“Only that girl.”

“What's her name?”

“Anna.”

The scarred man fingers his scar and the one-armed man yawns. A little stick in the fire blossoms—brilliant orange petals. Then it fades again.

“His followers are all at each other's throats,” says the second man. “Each of them has his eye on the crown.”

“So we'll help them, shall we?” says Walter, grinning.

“What do you mean?” asks the third man.

Walter feels around in the sacking and pulls out a leather bottle, and takes a swig from it. “Ugh!” he says. “Gut rot!” He narrows his eyes at his three companions. “Have seven of our men disguise themselves as beggars…”

“That won't take much.”

“…and follow Uther back to St. Albans, and nose around until they find the king's well.”

“Got you!” says the scarred man.

“And crush one hundred devil's berries, and drop them into the water,” Walter says.

“Very good, Walter,” exclaims the scarred man, and he claps his hands. “That'll help King Uther from this world into the next. And some of his knights with him.”

G
O ON, THEN,” BARKED JOHANNA, AND HER WHISKERS
twitched. “Pull down your breeches.”

So I turned round and pulled down my breeches.

“Bend over,” said Johanna.

I felt Johanna's hot breath on the small of my back as she glared at my tailbone. “It's a mess,” she said. “A mess! You understand!”

“Yes,” I said meekly.

“You don't,” said Johanna. And then the old woman planted her thumbs on either side of my tailbone. “A mess!” she shouted, and suddenly she tore my skin apart as hard as she could.

I yelled, and jerked up, and my eyes filled with tears.

“Devil's part!” exclaimed Johanna. “Cuckoo's beak! What next? There's not even a stump.”

“That hurt,” I cried.

“Your wound needed breaking,” said Johanna. “It's full of rot. It's just a tailbone and it'll never heal until you get out all the bad blood. You understand?”

“Yes,” I said, rather shakily.

“Leave the wound open until you wake tomorrow. Then ask Lady Helen to boil horsemint and strong vinegar with honey and barleymeal. Boil them dry, and rub the mixture into your wound.”

Johanna's recipes didn't help Luke, and I don't think they'll
help me either. All the same, I'm glad I showed her my tailbone because even after what my aunt told me, I still thought it might be growing. For a long time, it has been my second sorrow, the sorrow of my body.

When I got back to the manor, Sian was crouching beside the fire and sobbing, because my father had just beaten her for her disobedience yesterday.

“And the ice has got into her blood,” my mother said. “She's sniffing and snuffling like a piglet, and the next thing is she'll catch a fever.”