The Seeing Stone (5 page)

A
STAIRCASE CLIMBS OUT OF OUR HALL. A FLIGHT OF
fourteen oak steps winds you round and lifts you up to the gallery.

The gallery is a good place to stand if you want a lot of people to be able to see you. When the guisers come on Hallowe'en, and when all the villagers crowd in at Christmas and the hall is packed, my father goes up there, and rings his handbell, and speaks to everyone.

Musicians sometimes play and sing from the gallery. Last year, a man with a cymbal and stick climbed up without our noticing him while his wife was singing a song about how a wicked knight seduced and then abandoned a miller's daughter. “Wicked!” cried the woman. And her husband up in the gallery clashed the cymbal with his stick, and gave us all a great shock. There's not enough room up there for dancers or mummers, though, because it's only one pace wide.

Two little rooms lead out of the gallery. They are like nests under the eaves. The first room is stuffed with barrels of wheat and barley. My father thinks it's prudent to keep some food stored inside the house, in case the Welsh raiders do come and stop us getting out to the kitchen or the barn. But our mice and rats don't like waiting. Our meal for tomorrow is their meal today. “Grab it! Scoff it!” That's what they squeak.

If they hear what happened to the jumpers, the raiders won't be in a hurry to come. They may not risk coming at all. It was last November. Just before dawn the jumpers tried to climb into our chamber through one of the little windows. But my father heard them. He rolled out of bed and picked up his sword. Then he crept over to the window and stood to one side of it and raised his sword.

As soon as the first man put his head through the window, my father brought his sword down. He cut the jumper's head right off.

“Quick!” said a muffled voice outside.

Then the second jumper gave the first one's twitching legs a push, so that the rest of him fell into the chamber.

“Go on!” said another voice. “Quick!”

So the second jumper heaved himself up and stuck his head through the window. Then in the gloom he saw…and at once he tried to jerk himself back. But his friends outside were holding onto his legs and trying to push him into the chamber. Then the jumper yelled and my father crashed the sword down for a second time.

“His head was still yelling after I had sliced it off,” my father said.

I don't think that can be true, because our words and sighs and screams and farts are all made out of air—the air we breathe in through our mouths and down into our lungs. Merlin has got a whole skeleton folded up in a chest, and he got it out once and explained this to me.

When the men outside heard their friend yell, they ran away, and we don't even know how many of them there were. But after that, my mother wouldn't sleep in the chamber for a long time.

The bodies of the two men were buried in the same pit in the north corner of the churchyard, while their heads were buried in a hole in the south corner.

“And that way,” said Oliver, “their ghosts won't be able to trouble you.”

Then Tanwen got Ruth from the kitchen to help her. They took out all the chamber-rushes and burned them. They even washed the clay floor with wet cloths. Then they brought in fresh rushes, and laid them, and laced them with sprigs of rosemary and tansy and thyme.

After that, my father asked Oliver to say prayers of purification in the chamber.

Even so, my mother wouldn't sleep in there. She had the mattress of the Great Bed dragged into the hall, and that's where she and my father slept all through the winter.

After that, my father had the two little chamber-windows almost blocked in. They are just slits now, and Sian is the only one who can get her wrists through them.

The second little room off our gallery is empty. The inner walls are quite soft. If I so much as touch them, they sprinkle me with flakes and pale powder. The outer wall is made of stone, though, and sparrows often fly in through the wind-eye and pick and peck at the mortar, because they like the taste of lime. The gaps they have made between the blocks of dressed stone are homes for all kinds of little creatures. Sometimes, when I'm sitting in the window seat, I can hear whirring and humming and soft scratching and throbbing and buzzing and ticking all around me.

So the walls are alive and, up above me, the huge beams and the
thatch are alive too. The nests of martins and swallows. Hanging bats…The thatch is old and grey, so it doesn't smell fresh, but it does smell comfortable. I think thatch-scent is a kind of medicine: It helps to soothe anger and cure fear. It makes me think summer thoughts, and sometimes it makes me sleepy.

For most of the time, this room's quite warm because of the heat rising from the hall. But in winter that wind sometimes blows from the north, and then it whistles in the thatch and pours through the wind-eye.

When our old apple tree fell down, I sawed off a big slice of the trunk, and Gatty helped me to haul it up here. I perch my inkwell on it.

So I sit in this little window seat with my knees up. And if I press my back against one side of the alcove and my feet against the other, there's just enough space.

Here is my quill. My cream page. This is my writing-room.

M
ERLIN AND OLIVER OFTEN ARGUE, AND OLIVER
sometimes gets angry.

I walked several times round the moat with them today, and they began by agreeing that the complete and flawless number is nine. But then they disagreed why.

“The reason, Merlin,” said Oliver, “is perfectly obvious. Lord God is our Father. He is the Son and he is the Holy Ghost. Three-in-one and one-in-three.”

“And three equals nine,” said Merlin.

“No, Merlin! Three does not equal nine.”

Merlin waved his hands impatiently.
“Constipatus!”
he muttered.

Oliver took no notice. “Three is the divine number, and threefold three is nine,” he went on. “So nine is the flawless number.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
”

“I get the idea,” said Merlin.

“You get…” snapped Oliver, and he blocked one nostril with his right forefinger and blew snot from the other onto the ground.

“I'll tell you nine,” said Merlin quietly. “The nine spirits, each with a bottomless chalice…”

“That is blasphemy!” said Oliver loudly.

“Nothing of the kind,” replied Merlin.

“Do you deny Christ?”

“Not for one moment,” said Merlin.

“It's as well for you,” said Oliver.

“Are you threatening me?” asked Merlin.

Oliver glared at Merlin. “Your own tongue is your enemy,” he said.

“My tongue is my servant.”

“And it often leads you into mortal danger. There is no room in the house of Christ for nine spirits.”

“One person sips from the chalice of poetry,” continued Merlin, “and shapes poems for us. Another person sips from the chalice of song, and delights us.”

“Cow dung!” shouted Oliver. “A load of cow dung! And you know it!” And he turned his back on us, and flounced off.

“Who are the other spirits?” I asked.

“I will tell you,” said Merlin, “in a little while and soon. In the meantime, you must find your number.”

“What do you mean?”

“Each of us is born under one star, and it guides us. In each of us, one element is most powerful. Each of us is true to one number, and it is time for you to find it.”

I
HAVE WORKED OUT THAT I HAVE THREE SORROWS, THREE
fears and three joys, so my number may be nine.

My first sorrow is Serle, who is unfair and mean to me.

My second sorrow is my tailbone. I am almost sure it is growing. My third is the secret Lady Alice told me, and the pain she feels. These are the sorrows of my heart and body and head.

My first fear is that my father will never agree to let me go into service away from home. And my second is even worse. I'm not all that good at my Yard-skills, my tilting especially, so what if my father doesn't mean me to be a squire at all? I know Grace likes me and I do hope that we will be betrothed. But my third fear is that my parents may want her to be betrothed to Serle and not to me.

My three joys. The first is to go out and about with Gatty, and Tempest and Storm. They're my companions; I am their leader. My second joy is my skill with the longbow. I am the best at that, and have even beaten my father. My third joy is my reading and writing, and what I learn when I talk to Oliver and Merlin.

A
S I WALKED INTO THE HALL, TEMPEST CAME RUNNING
out with some teeth between his teeth. They looked like a row of spikes: like the long, pointed teeth of the witch, Black Annis.

I called Tempest back and made him open his jaws, and what fell out was the comb I carved for Sian for her last birthday! I don't know where it had been hibernating, but I thanked Tempest for finding it and washed it in the moat. Then I gave the comb back to Sian and told her to use it sometimes. “Otherwise,” I said, “Black Annis will come in the night and eat you.”

“Not just for that!” said Sian. “Would she?”

S
LIM COOKED MUTTON STEW TODAY, AND MY MOTHER
complained he put too much spice into it.

“I can't taste the meat at all,” she said, “or the onions. Only the cinnamon.”

She liked the honey custard, though, and so did I. At dinner, I told everyone my Jack-words. Jack-Daw and Jack Frost, Jack-Straw. “And there's Jack-o'-Lantern,” I said.

“There is!” cried my mother. “And the uglier the better!” Then she screwed up her eyes. I should have remembered that baby Mark died on Hallowe'en last year.

“Go on, Arthur,” my father said.

“That's all I know.”

“I know another,” my father said, “and so should you, Serle.”

“I do,” said Serle. “Jack. Just jack.”

“What is it?”

“A kind of coat,” said Serle. “Without any sleeves. I think jacks are made of leather, usually.”

“They are,” said my father. “Cloth or leather.”

“With small iron plates sewn into the lining,” said Serle. “We wouldn't wear them. Foot soldiers wear them.”

“Very good, Serle,” said my father.

L
YING BESIDE THE HALL FIRE LAST NIGHT, I STARTED
to think about the names for different pieces of armor. Then on the far side of the hall, Nain began to snore. And then I connected them:

And her shoes are connected to her shin guards,
And her shin guards are knotted to her knee joints,
And her knee joints are tied to her thigh plates,
And her thigh plates are thonged to her mail-shirt,
And her mail-shirt's strapped to her neck flap,
And her neck flap's fastened to her helmet,
And her helmet's bolted to her nasal,
And her nasal's what covers Nain's nose!

I
WAS HALFWAY UP TUMBER HILL WHEN I HEARD A SHOUT
and saw Merlin climbing up behind me. He has never done that before.

When we reached the top, he asked me whether I had ever thought about crossing-places.

“You mean fords?” I said.

“Fords, yes. Bridges! And the foreshore, where the ocean tries to swallow the land, and the land tries to dry up the sea.”

“I've never seen the sea,” I said.

“You will,” Merlin replied. “Look over there, beyond Pike Forest. Where England ends and Wales begins.”

“It's trembling,” I said.

“Exactly!” said Merlin. “Between-places are never quite certain of themselves. Think of dusk, between day and night. It's blue and unsure.”

“New Year's Eve is a crossing-place,” I said.

“It is,” said Merlin. “Between year and year. And this year, between century and century.” He snapped a piece of grass, then wrapped one hand around the other, and stretched the blade between the joints of his thumbs, and blew on it so that it whistled.

“And the king is dying,” said Merlin. “You see? Strange things will happen.”

“How do you know he is?” I asked.

Merlin didn't answer my question. What he did was unfasten his cloak, and pull out of an inside pocket a dusty saffron bundle. Then he slowly began to unwind the cloth.

“What is it?” I asked.

“A gift,” said Merlin.

Inside the cloth was a flat black stone. It was four-cornered, and its span was just a little larger than Merlin's outstretched hand. One face of the stone was lumpen and covered with little white spots and patches, but when Merlin turned it over, the other side was smooth and glossy. It flashed in the sunlight.

“Take it!” said Merlin.

When I stared at the stone, I could see myself inside it. It was black of black, and deep, and very still. Like an eye of deep water.

“A mirror,” I said.

“Not really,” said Merlin.

“What is it?”

“A gift.”

“I mean, what is it for?”

Merlin shrugged.

“What kind of stone is it?”

“It is made of ice and fire,” Merlin said. “Its name is obsidian.”

“Obsidian?”

“It's time for you to have it,” Merlin replied. “It's time for me to let it go.”

“What is it for?” I asked again.

“That depends on you,” Merlin said. “Only you can tell. It's like your number.”

“Nine,” I said. “I think it's nine.”

“It's like that,” repeated Merlin. “The stone is not what I say it is. It's what you see in it.”

I turned the flat stone over and over between my hands.

“The shape,” I said. “It reminds me of something. Lots of things. A wolf skull, almost. Or look! The spread of the manor lands below us. I don't know. The big bruise on the face of the moon.”

“It is for you,” Merlin said gravely.

“But what…”

“What I can tell you is this,” Merlin said. “From this moment, here on Tumber Hill, until the day you die, you will never own anything as precious as this.”

I held the stone with both my hands. “What if it breaks?” I asked.

“It won't,” said Merlin. “Not if you drop it! But you must guard this stone. No one must know you own it…”

“Why not?”

“…or see it, or learn anything about it.”

“Why not?”

Merlin smiled gently. “You must keep the stone to yourself until you discover its power. Until you understand its meaning. Otherwise, it will not be of much use to you. Come on now—down into the world again!”

In my writing-room, snails and beetles and spiders and lice live in most of the little gaps and cracks between the blocks of dressed stone; but there is one gap which is empty, and a fingerspan wide, so that is where I have decided to hide Merlin's gift.

No one comes up here except for me. And even if they did, they wouldn't notice a dusty cloth bundle stuffed deep into the wall.

My rough-and-shining stone! My dark halo! My strange obsidian!