The Seeing Stone (3 page)

W
E HEARD BAD NEWS TODAY.

Just before dinner one of Lord Stephen's riders galloped in. My father gave him leave to speak, and he told us King Richard has been badly wounded. A French arrow went in through his left shoulder at the base of his neck, and came out through his back.

Then we all started asking questions at the same time, and the messenger did his best to answer them.

“In the southwest of France, ma'am…a castle on a hilltop… Chalus…I don't know, sir…one of Count Aimar's…”

“Will he live?” asked Serle.

“Lord God gives life and Lord God takes it away,” my father observed.

“Lord Stephen says you will know what to do,” said the rider.

“Indeed we do,” said my father. “We'll light candles. We'll get down on our kneebones. Every man-jack living in this manor.”

My grandmother Nain slowly sucked in her breath.

“What is it, Nain?” asked my father rather wearily.

“What is it with your kings?” my grandmother asked in her singsong Welsh voice. “Harold first. An arrow through his right eye. Then Rufus, nailed to his own saddle. And now, Coeur-de-Lion.”

“If King Richard dies, it will be three times the worse for us,” said my father. “A new king means a new tax. Remember what we
had to pay so Coeur-de-Lion could fight Saladin for the kingdom of Jerusalem. The Saladin tithe!”

“You Englishman!” cried my mother, flaring up like a candle that hasn't been properly trimmed. “Your king is dying and all you do is talk about money.”

“I didn't know the Welsh cared much for King Richard,” said my father, smiling.

My mother's eyes filled with tears. “He brought home a piece of the Holy Cross, didn't he?”

“Sir William taught me a poem about that,” said Serle:

“Hot wind! Flags and banners streaming!
Helmets shining, broadswords gleaming!
Who can stop him, Coeur-de-Lion?
Cry Coeur-de-Lion! Jerusalem!

But thirty thousand Saracen troops,
Some alone, some in large groups,
Hoot and jeer him, Coeur-de-Lion.
Cry Coeur-de-Lion! Jerusalem!”

“You see, John?” cried my mother. “He's no king of mine, but he roared and rattled the gates of the Saracens.”

“Which is more than his younger brother will ever do,” said my father. “Prince John's not half the man his elder brother was.”

“That often happens,” said my mother.

I could feel Serle was staring at me, but I didn't look back at him.

“Far better King Richard's nephew became king,” my father said. “Prince Arthur.”

“Arthur!” I exclaimed.

“But he's only a boy,” my father continued. “I fear for England if John is crowned king. And especially, I fear for us here in the March. The Welsh are like dogs. They can always smell a weakness.”

“Did you hear that, Nain?” my mother asked.

“Speak up!” said Nain.

“John says there'll be trouble.”

“Double?”

“No, mother. Trouble! Welsh trouble.”

“It's the English who cause trouble,” Nain said sharply. “Years and years of it. Generations!”

This afternoon, the sky bellowed. The day darkened and quivered but the rain never came. It would have been better if it had.

Then Sir William's freeman, Thomas, rode in, and he brought the same news. The same but different. He told us King Richard had ridden up to the hilltop castle at Chalus with a dozen men, right up to the portcullis, and that one of the king's own crossbowmen, supporting him from behind, fired short. “His bolt fell short of the battlements,” said Thomas, “and it pierced the top of the king's back. It came out through his neck.…No! Not a French arrow. It was Norman or English. It was loyal fire!”

Which story is true? Is either of them true?

Oliver, my teacher, says it is better to record important messages. “Written words,” he says, puffing up his chest, “are more reliable than spoken ones, because some messengers have very rich fancies and some have very poor memories.”

T
HE BONE AT THE BOTTOM OF MY SPINE STICKS
out a bit. Sometimes it aches and sometimes it feels as if it's about to burst right through my skin, and grow into a tail.

In the church, there's a painting on the wall of Adam and Eve and a grinning devil. The devil has a tail as long as a grass snake, and he's holding it in his left hand and twirling it.

“Do devils always have tails?” I asked Oliver.

“Always,” he replied.

“What about humans?” I asked.

Oliver harrumphed and shook his head. “Never,” he said. “Not unless they're devils in disguise.”

“And what if they are?”

“Their devil's parts begin to grow, until they can no longer hide them.”

“And then?”

“Then,” said Oliver darkly, and he put his right forefinger across his throat. His eyes gleamed. “Why, Arthur? Have you got a tail?”

“Of course not,” I said.

Firstly, I need to find out whether my tailbone is growing, and until then I must be extremely careful that no one at all finds out about it.

And then I need to know why it sometimes aches, as it has done all today.

Last night, I kept thinking dark thoughts. I thought that I don't care whether or not King Richard dies. Why should I? After all, he doesn't like the English. He has only come to England twice and never to the March. All Coeur-de-Lion wants from us, my father says, is money and more money. So what does it matter if he does die?

I'm not quite sure yet but I'm beginning to suspect that dark thoughts like these make my tailbone ache. But what if it's the other way round? What if it's my devil's part that causes me to have these dark thoughts?

L
ITTLE LUKE COUGHED AND WAILED FROM DARK
until dawn, a wretched cry as thin and cutting as the new moon. My mother and Tanwen and my father and I and even Serle tried to comfort him, but it made no difference.

My father says it's likely half the children in the kingdom cried last night to warn us that King Richard is dying.

“Babies can tell great births and deaths before they happen,” he said. “Sometimes they rise and bubble, as they've never done before; sometimes they sink deep into themselves.”

But Serle thinks Luke cried because it's such strange weather, hot and damp. “On days like this, we all feel wrong with ourselves,” he said. “Even the dogs have their tails between their legs.”

“Nonsense!” said Tanwen. “A baby cares only for one thing, and that's himself. What's wrong with Luke is somewhere inside him. Something he ate yesterday.”

My mother didn't say what she thought, but I could see she was remembering how baby Mark began to wail one night early last year. No one knew why, and no one could stop him. None of Johanna's medicines made any difference, he just wasted away.

So no one got much sleep last night except for Nain, and that's the advantage of being deaf. Maybe this is what Merlin meant when he told me that everything contains its opposite.

This morning, though, our cook Slim cheered us all up at dinner by serving a surprising pie. The pastry was shaped like our own dovecote, and there was a feather sticking out of the top of it.

Slim bowed to my father and set the pie on the table in front of him. “Sir John,” he said, “do me the honor.”

Well, when my father cut open the crust, there was a great commotion inside the pie. My mother and Sian squealed and stood up. Then a pink-eyed pigeon poked out its head and flapped its wings.

We were all showered with bits of crust, and the pigeon flew up to the gallery. Everyone clapped, and then Ruth, who helps Slim in the kitchen, carried in the real pie.

M
Y FATHER TOOK SERLE HUNTING WITH HIM AGAIN
today, but I had to stay at home because I helped Gatty to save our two bulls from killing each other.

After studying with Oliver, I saddled Pip and rode him round the Yard ten times. Except I didn't ask him to climb the ladder. Not even horses should be asked to do that.

My uncle William told me how he and his reeve once played a practical joke on one of their neighbors. They hoisted one of his cows into the hayloft and then removed the ropes and pulley to make it look as if the cow had climbed the ladder, but when he got home, the neighbor was very angry because he couldn't get his cow down again; he had to kill and butcher her up in the loft.

While I was in the Yard, I saw Gatty and Dusty stagger behind the butts with sacks of mast and bean-squelch for the pigs. So I rode over to them.

“Go on, Dusty,” said Gatty. “I'll catch you up.”

Dusty grinned at me.

“Go on!” said Gatty more sharply.

But Dusty still didn't move, because he doesn't understand words, and isn't any good at doing things on his own.

So then Gatty pushed him and his bean-squelch a few steps in the direction of the pigsty, and I dismounted.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

Gatty shrugged. “Same as usual,” she said.

“I mean, he beat you with a twig-broom.”

“Better than a stick. A stick he's got sometimes.”

“My father uses willow rods,” I said.

“Or a whip,” said Gatty. “My father's got a whip.”

“Without you,” I said, “one of our bulls would have been killed.”

“Harold,” said Gatty.

“Yes. And I told my father how brave you were.”

“Your brother didn't do nothing,” said Gatty.

“Exactly,” I said. “We got the bulls apart, and we got punished. It's Serle who should have been punished.”

“Gotta go,” said Gatty suddenly. “Dusty's no good on his own.”

“I haven't forgotten our expedition,” I said. “Upstream. This summer we'll do that.”

“What about the fair then?” Gatty asked, and she lowered her eyes. When she does that she looks quite pretty because she has long eyelashes, and they tremble.

“That too,” I said. “We'll go to the fair at Ludlow.”

“You'll get beaten,” said Gatty.

“So will you,” I said. “But it's worth it.”

At the end of the afternoon, I went up onto the hill with the hounds, Tempest and Storm. As soon as you're past the orchard and the copper beech, the ground arches its back. The hill makes my calves and thighbones ache. I'm stronger than it is, but I'm always panting by the time I get to the top because I try to get there as fast as I can.

The light was so strong and bright that away beyond Pike Forest and the wilderness, I could see violet hills. And beyond the violet hills, I saw—or thought I saw—the shadowy dark shapes of the Black Mountains. I have never traveled that far west, and my father says it would be dangerous to ride so deep into Wales and that, anyhow, there is no reason to go there. But each time I stand on Tumber Hill and stare, I think there is a reason, and I know that one day I'll ride west; I'll climb the violet hills and cross the Black Mountains, and gallop beyond them until I come down to the western sea. I would like Gatty to come with me, but I don't suppose that is very likely.

Today Storm chased a doe rabbit, and actually caught her. When he brought her back to me, she was still screaming, so I wrung her neck.

Later, I gave the doe to Slim.

“What about baking two pies with crusts like rabbit hutches?” I asked him. “One for his doe, and one with Sian's white rabbit alive inside it.”

“I never boil the same cabbage for pigs twice!” Slim replied rudely.

While Tempest and Storm raced around, I sat down on the crown of the hill. I thought about my tailbone a bit, and then about Serle. He pretends he likes me when we're in company, but he's mean to me whenever we're alone. Sometimes he twists my arm behind my back until I have to get down on one knee and my arm almost breaks, but mainly he hurts me with what he says. I know Serle tells on me as well, especially to my mother, and she doesn't stop him because he's the apple of her eye.

After a while, I began to think about my father's plans for me. What are they, and why won't he tell them to me now? When I talked to him, he didn't say I could go away into service. He didn't promise I could be a squire at all. Is this because I'm not good enough in the Yard? Or because of something I don't even know about?

Everything is difficult now in my life but, all the same, I was more happy when I ran down Tumber Hill than when I climbed it. It helps to ask questions, even if I don't know the answers.

When I reached the bottom of the hill, I saw my father had come back from hunting, and he and Merlin were sitting under the copper beech. My father was out in the soft sunlight, but Merlin was dapple-dressed with yellow spots and purple patches of shadow.

“Too much sunlight turns today into tomorrow,” said Merlin. “And it pickles the brain.”

I know Merlin and my father were talking about me because they stopped talking as soon as they saw me.

“That's a fat doe,” my father said.

“Storm caught her.”

Then Storm began to bounce, and that made Tempest bounce.

“So,” said my father, and that meant he was getting impatient.

“I'm going,” I said.

“You were saying, John,” said Merlin. “Your brother…”

“Sir William!” I exclaimed.

“Arthur,” said my father. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

“I thought…”

“I don't mind what you thought. I'm talking to Merlin, not to you.”

Then Merlin winked at me. He winked so fast that I wasn't quite sure whether he had winked or not.

“Yes, father,” I said.

“I do know an old charm,” said Merlin, “which makes second sons vanish.”

“Huh!” exclaimed my father. “You must teach it to me.”

What were my father and Merlin talking about when I interrupted them? I don't think my father can know what I know. What Lady Alice told me. Because she said she would never tell anyone else at all.