The Sterkarm Handshake (10 page)

The men were glad of the excuse to fall back from the thing, but after Andrea had gone on a pace or two, she found Toorkild at her side, though he'd left his horse behind in someone else's care. She could feel his apprehension about the big, noisy steel box, but he would never allow himself to appear afraid in front of his men, even less in front of a woman, even an Elf-Woman. And he had to greet Elf-Windsor personally because anything else would be, in his own eyes, insufferably rude.

When they neared the car, Windsor halted it and got out. He remembered Andrea, now he saw her. A big lumpy girl. Her round face was all red from the cold, and her hair was pulled back and pinned in prim plaits around her head. She wore a thick, mannish jacket and a long skirt, with solid boots appearing at the hem. Her choice of dress was obviously practical, and possibly in deference to local custom, but Windsor suspected it was what she would wear to a garden party or on the beach. Big lumpy girls were always prudish, because nobody wanted them to be anything else.

Standing beside Andrea was Old Toorkild Sterkarm, who was the kind of man it took to make Andrea look dainty. He had a big head of thick, shaggy long hair hanging to his shoulders and becoming an equally shaggy beard. He was tall too, every bit as tall as Windsor himself, and wore an odd kind of cross between a cloak and a coat with a big cape of fur across the shoulders, making him look enormously broad. He was grinning through his beard, showing big, square, slightly yellowed teeth. Luckily for FUP, however impressive Old Sterkarm might look, he was as ignorant and dim as he was wide. He thought France was a town in England.

Toorkild came at Windsor, arms spread, and enveloped him in a powerful, furry embrace and a strong stink of musk, old wet fur and rank, masculine sweat. Before Windsor had time to react, the harsh mass of beard was shoved into his face and a kiss planted on his cheek. He couldn't stop himself trying to pull away but remembered in time that this was the Sterkarms' way. They hugged and kissed everyone, regardless of age or sex. Nerving himself, Windsor grasped the big man's shoulders and gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek in return. Hey, whatever it took.

Old Sterkarm was speaking—that is, he was making a snarling, coughing noise that was incomprehensible to Windsor, even though it was supposed to be some peculiar kind of English. Andrea translated, as Toorkild beamed at Windsor. “It's his pleasure to welcome you again, and he thinks it's been too long. He's brought a horse for you to ride to the tower, and he and his wife will be unhappy if you don't eat with them. They have gifts for you, as they're eager for the friendship of the Elves.”

“Tell him it's my great pleasure to be here and that I'm looking forward to meeting his wife again.” If Windsor remembered correctly, Mrs. Sterkarm was rather a fetching little piece, if no easier on the nose than her husband. “I'll be delighted to eat with them, but I'll pass on the horse if he doesn't mind. Not dressed for it.”

Indeed, Toorkild was staring at the cloth of Windsor's dark suit, which had a smoothness and tightness of weave that couldn't be found in even the best cloth the Sterkarms could steal. “Ask him,” Windsor said, “if he'd like a ride in the car.”

But Toorkild, asked if he would like to ride in the Elf-Cart, politely declined, saying that perhaps at some other time he would, but that day, he was sad for it but he had to get back to his men and the horses. He would ride ahead to the tower, so that everything would be ready for them when they arrived. In the middle of saying this, he turned to Bryce, opening his arms, hugging and kissing the security man even more enthusiastically than he had Windsor, since he knew him a little better.

“Vordan staw day?”
Bryce said, as Andrea had taught him— How stands it? or How are you?

Toorkild laughed and thumped him on the back and said something. Bryce didn't understand a word but smiled and nodded throughout. He gathered that Toorkild was amused by his attempt to speak like a Sterkarm, and was generally being pleasant.

While Toorkild was talking to Bryce, Windsor smirked at Andrea and said, “Well, hello there, Sexy.” She looked startled, which was what he wanted. “Who else will call you ‘Sexy' if I don't? I see they're not starving you.”

Andrea had been thinking that she ought to tell Windsor about the ride the Sterkarms had sent out. Now she changed her mind.

“Join us in the car,” Windsor said. “We can have a few words before the meeting.”

Andrea had to translate again, as Toorkild made another attempt to persuade his guests to ride the horses he'd brought for them and then apologized for having to go back to his men. As Toorkild went away down the hill, Windsor opened the door of the Range Rover.

“Get in the back, Andrea. Sit in the middle—then maybe you won't roll us over on these slopes.”

Andrea climbed into the car, feeling elephantine and clumsy, and wishing she could suck the blood back out of her face and not give Windsor the satisfaction of seeing that he'd made her blush. She could feel Bryce's embarrassment on her behalf, and that embarrassed her still further. Neither of them was really in a position to fall out with Windsor, however rude he chose to be—which, of course, was exactly why he enjoyed being rude. She couldn't imagine anyone among the Sterkarms ever being so casually offensive. In fact, when Toorkild and Per were with people subordinate to them, they were generally more polite, not less. At least, they were if the subordinates were Sterkarms.

Unpleasant as Windsor was, it had to be said he drove the Range Rover well, taking it down the steep, uneven slope and then over some very rough ground on the valley floor, alongside the river. They rounded the hill spur and came in sight of another part of the valley, a bowl surrounded by cloud-­shadowed hills against a gray sky.

They crossed Bedes Water at the ford, driving very slowly through the brown water and over the loose pebbles, and then followed the riverbank again, rounding another hill spur and coming into still another part of the valley. Andrea pointed out the tower on its hill above them. Its full thirty-foot height could be seen now, surrounded by a wall half as high, and all built of the local grayish-reddish gritstone.

Windsor ducked his head to see it and said, “Amazing.” The car jolted on toward the steep path that climbed to the tower. “What I wanted to say was, I'm going to have to be pretty blunt with your friends, and I don't want you softening what I say. They've got to start leaving the survey teams alone.”

“Okay.” She felt a great deal of sympathy for the geologists who'd been waylaid, and had wanted to get Per and Toorkild to feel sorry for them too. Toorkild had been unable to understand what she'd been getting at. The Elves hadn't been hurt, had they? Well, then, what was their complaint? Per had, eventually, expressed some remorse, but she knew that it had been intended purely to please her and that, given another opportunity to rob a survey team, he would almost certainly do it again—just because it teased. She knew this ought to make her angry, but, instead, if she was honest, she had to admit it made her want to share the joke. I shall finish up, she thought, writing to some agony aunt.

Just at that moment, though, she was much more concerned with the steepening ground ahead of them and her memory of the hard climb up to the tower. The path wasn't wide enough for even a cart. “Do you think we'd better leave the car here and go up on foot?”

“I could drive this car up the side of a skyscraper,” Windsor said.

Andrea sat back nervously as the car rocked and swayed and bounced, and fervently wished she and Bryce were walking with the Sterkarms. She'd be glad to see Windsor turn his car over then.

The ground became steeper until the car seemed to be clinging to the slope like a fly. The track was so narrow that Windsor often had to drive on the grass beside it, and would then find a boulder in his way, or a sudden hollow or hummock. Several times Andrea thought—with some satisfaction—that Windsor was going to have to abandon the car, but he coaxed it right up to the ridge of the hillside above the valley, where the wind thumped against the windows and thrummed the aerial.

Even Windsor had to admit that he couldn't get the car through the tower's gate. The tower itself was built on top of a crag, a large heap of rocks dumped by a glacier, which rose abruptly from the hillside. The path leading up the crag to the gatehouse was for feet and hooves only, and Windsor had to be satisfied with halting the car on the most level spot he could find near the crag. Even there it was tilted at an acute angle.

A crowd of people had come from the tower to meet them, murmuring with curiosity at the sight of the big, gleaming Elf-Cart. Windsor, Bryce and Andrea climbed out of the car into the hilltop wind that buffeted their ears, tugged at their clothes and pulled their hair.

Toorkild came pushing through the crowd to greet Windsor all over again, with another hug and another kiss, which Windsor thought was doing him too much honor. Mrs. Sterkarm was with him, her fair hair all tucked away under a rather stylish little cap, her cheeks and nose very red from the wind, but her wonderful big blue eyes and smile as pretty as he remembered. She chattered away at Windsor in “English” and offered him pattens for his shoes—wooden soles, each raised on two wooden blocks, that you fastened under your shoes with straps, to raise you out of the mud. There was always plenty of mud in the alleys of the tower, well mixed with dung, clumps of dirty old straw, and vegetable matter too rotted to be identifiable.

While the Elves fastened on their pattens, Toorkild and his wife gabbled. Andrea translated.

“They say, Come in at once, dinner's ready to be served.” She added, “We'll be eating in their private rooms—and they'll be serving you big helpings of the very best they have.” She was anxious for her friends, afraid that Windsor wouldn't appreciate their effort.

Toorkild and Isobel led the way up the steep, rocky path that climbed the little crag to the tower's gatehouse, with Windsor, Bryce and Andrea following slowly. It wasn't easy to walk over such rocky ground in the inflexible pattens. Behind them came the general crowd of Sterkarms—every inhabitant of the tower who could get away from their work for long enough to gawp at the Elves.

The gatehouse's big wooden gate, with its massive iron hinges, stood open, and they passed quickly through the short, dark tunnel with its green smell of long-standing water and mud. Then they were through into the tower's yard, which disappointed Windsor all over again. This was perhaps his third visit to the tower, and during the long periods between visits, he began believing his own promotional talk of “authenticity” and “tremendous possibilities for development.” It created a picture of the tower in his own head that the real tower could never match. The real tower was cramped, ugly and dirty.

The space enclosed by the wall wasn't large, and it was crammed with many buildings used as storehouses and dormitories. Between them wound narrow, muddy alleys. The buildings weren't picturesque, just inconvenient. They were all rough plastered in a mud color, and had thick, dark thatches that raggedly overhung the lanes and dripped. None of the buildings had doors or windows at ground level. The doors were all in the upper stories and were reached by ladders, many of which leaned against the walls, partly blocking the ways, so they had to be moved or scrambled over. The people who often had the most money to spend on expensive vacations were the elderly, and would they want to climb ladders all the time, or keep moving them out of their way?

The place was no pensioner's dream of half-timbered thatched cottages with gardens of old roses and pinks. It stank. It reeked of sewage and garbage and smoke and old food. And it was noisy. Children screamed, dogs barked, someone was hammering and clanging away at iron with a hammer. Crashes, bangs, yells and gusts of heat and shouting came from another building as they passed—the only building with a door at ground level. “The kitchen,” Andrea yelled to him, and Windsor had a sudden qualm about eating anything that came out of it. Chickens scattered from under their feet, and a pig ran away from them into a dark alley, screeching with a noise like iron rubbed on iron. You had to wonder about people who were happy to live in such filth. It was all a damned sight too authentic, and would need a hell of a lot of development and improvement before anyone could be expected to pay to stay there. The essential flavor of sixteenth-century life would be preserved, of course, and the improvements could only make things better for the Sterkarms too, so how could anyone object?

Even the tower itself was lacking. Surrounded as it was by a clutter of outbuildings, it lacked dignity while still managing to look as grim as a prison. There were no windows in the ground floor at all, and the only door was tiny, barely wide enough to admit Windsor's shoulders, and so low he had to duck.

Inside was a dark place with a barreled ceiling, lit only by whatever light managed to get in at the door. It stank like a stable. Tangles of dirty straw and dung covered the floor. They stopped in this unpleasant place to take off their pattens, and then the Sterkarms, having first pulled back a heavy gate of iron gridwork, led the way up a dark, narrow and frankly sinister staircase. The first stretch was entirely dark, and Windsor had to grope for each step with his feet. Behind him, Bryce and Andrea were boring on about whether the stairs were really easier for a left-handed swordsman to defend than a right-handed one. The climb, in that dark, confined space, with smelly people ahead of him and behind him, seemed endless. Then a slit of a window admitted a smear of light, but they were so close packed on the steps that all he could see was the place between Mrs. Sterkarm's shoulder blades.

They came to a landing but passed by the door that opened from it, and climbed a second flight of winding stairs, though these were slightly better lit. Eventually, to Windsor's relief, Toorkild opened a door and there was a flood of light.