In The Grip Of Old Winter Page 11

  “Who?”

  Almina waved her hand towards Bear. “This clever man, that’s what I call him. Prospero lived on an island and worked magic, Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I played Miranda in the nineteen seventy-eight Old Vic production.” She flicked her hand as if that didn’t matter. “What do you call him?”

  “Bear.”

  Almina’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Oh... Why?”

  Peter picked up the seal-amulet and ran the metal links through his fingers. “But how did you get here this time, you didn’t have this?”

  “I caught hold of the carrier just before he touched the burnt branch. He seems to be able to travel about without that trinket, much like you. I came here... I don’t know where he went.”

  Peter pushed his finger against the seal-amulet’s hard edge until it hurt. “Is that after you pushed dad off the ladder?”

  “What?” Almina’s shocked expression pulled her face up and down and from side to side. “I didn’t... oh for goodness sakes, is that what granddad said? Of course I didn’t push him off the ladder. The carrier did it, that’s why I chased him. I wanted to beat him, but he hid and jumped out at me and we fought and he touched the branch. I’d never do anything like that to your father, Peter. It was lucky there was so much snow, he didn’t fall very far.”

  “He cut his leg on a potato harvester and Farmer Brunt’s taken him to hospital on his tractor.”

  Almina’s hands fluttered. “Oh! Really? A bad cut?”

  Peter nodded. “It wouldn’t stop bleeding.”

  Almina covered her mouth. “Did the carrier... Oh no...”

  “What?” asked Peter.

  Almina shook her head, unable to speak.

  “The carrier,” Bear said, “is infected with pestilence.”

  ***

  Peter said, “What’s that?”

  Bear replied. “A scourge to men. Swifter than smoke rising from a flame, its touch is death.”

  Almina recovered and taking a deep breath said, “You must have learnt about it at school, Peter. The Great Plaque of London in sixteen sixty-five, sometimes called The Black Death. It ravaged whole continents for hundreds of centuries before that, though of course it was called other names. Even in the Bible...” She covered her eyes. “I can’t bear to think ... your father... has the carrier...?”

  Peter remembered they’d learnt about The Black Death in history and that it killed thousands of people in London. If the carrier caught it too, why wasn’t he dead? “He can’t have it, because he’s still alive.”

  “A few that fell to the contagion,” Bear said, “did not succumb and the carrier proved to be one such. It maimed his body, but left him his life.”

  Almina rose. “We have to get back - we must warn them about the danger. A bad cut and with the carrier so close... come with me, Peter.” She hurried into the trees. “I need you with the seal-amulet, I can’t work this branch without it. And together we can help your dad. You can cast a spell to make him better.”

  Peter rose to follow, but Bear strode forwards. “I want Peter to stay, for I must learn and understand his words.” He faced the skin-walkers. “Aid her return.”

  The nearest skin-walker, their robe shimmering a golden yellow as the soft folds caught the firelight, swept after his aunt. Eagle, Peter guessed.

  Almina called. “Peter must come with me. It’s his dad we’re talking about and he can use the seal-amulet to help. I shan’t be able to come back and find him.”

  “He is safe with us,” said Bear. “There are different paths that he might take.”

  Almina reached the charred branch. “What? I mean what shall I tell the others? I need the seal-amulet.”

  Eagle joined her and placed his hand on her shoulder.

  Almina twisted to escape Eagle’s grasp. “He’s only a boy and doesn’t understand what’s happening...”

  Eagle touched the charred branch and Almina vanished. The skin-walker returned to the fire.

  Peter sat down. Tiredness, like a sudden wave, swamped his thoughts and he leaned forwards with his head in his hands.

  I must go back to Leonor before she arrives at the outlaws’ hideout and find out what Bear wants me to know, but dad needs my help more. What am I supposed to do in my time or Leonor’s?

  He heard the rustle of robes as Bear approached.

  What use might he be in either time? He’d chased away the barghest, but that had been an accident, or luck. If he hadn’t been there, then... he raised his head. “What happened when the barghest attacked Oswald - I mean when it really happened a long time ago?”

  Bear sat down. “Oswald died. The barghest killed him and his mount and took their bodies.”

  Peter shuddered, did that mean eaten? “So how did Leonor know what to do? She needed to find the outlaws’ camp.”

  Bear gazed towards the fire. “The knowledge of her father’s fate and the plans he’d laid to keep them safe remained unknown to her in that time.”

  “She didn’t escape?”

  Bear’s robes shimmered purple as he shook his head. “Eorl Bosa and his men came upon the house and took her captive. Betrothed to the Eorl, unable to flee, unknowing of her father’s fate, despair racked her thoughts with torments. On the day of her union with Eorl Bosa, in the early morning light, she went upon the tower that stands higher than the manor and whether by fate or by design, tripped. They found her broken body upon the ground.”

  Peter’s heart thumped. She’d died so long ago and yet still she glided through granddad’s house as if she lived. Poor Leonor, to be so upset that death was all she wanted. Yet, because of what he’d just done with the seal-amulet, Oswald lived. “Oswald isn’t dead, not this time, because I chased the barghest away. So Leonor won’t be captured. She’ll live.”

  “That may be so,” Bear said. “For the seal-amulet works to your will, though you did not craft or lay the charms upon its surface. A mist clouds my understanding of your abilities. I thought the spae-wife walked once more to will her thoughts upon the seal-amulet from afar, but now I wonder, for it worked to your bidding and that fills my thoughts with hope, but also fear.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Bear rose. “You are tired and must rest.” He raised his arms to encompass all the skin-walkers. “We will talk while you sleep.” He faced Peter. “Behind the fallen tree you will find a bed of leaves. You will sleep well there.”

  When Bear said tired, Peter yawned. It sounded like the best idea he’d ever heard. He stumbled round the fallen tree and found the mound of leaves. They covered the ground like an enormous mattress and when he lay down, they rustled and he sank into their softness and went straight to sleep.

  He dreamed that he floated through space, past cold planets and spirals of many-coloured gasses where stars glittered. Comets hurtled across the immense blackness and left behind shimmering tails of dust that drifted and separated and faded. Life as he knew it, with people and animals and trees and the cycle of day and night, did not exist away from Earth, for Time, more time then might ever be imagined, made different patterns of existence, for the planets and the comets and the stars and the gasses. For what purpose he didn’t know, enough that he understood that much and to be left in awe.

  Then he dreamed of the skin-walkers and they stood in a silent circle around the fire. The flames flared and as he watched, they changed colour. Sometimes blue, then yellow, purple, bright green. Fire, that warmed and burned, that boiled water and heated furnaces, that erupted from volcanoes, that burst into existence as the Earth took shape and had never been extinguished. Such an ancient element deserved respect and in his dream Peter understood the skin-walkers reverence towards this long-lived element, though not how or why fire served their purposes.

  The dreams faded and he thought to wake - when Leonor appeared. Her lips parted as if to speak and her eyes gazed at him as if to see, though she drifted past without a word and when he called her name she made no attempt to reply. Musical notes,
soft and high, from a song that he didn’t know, came to him and he felt refreshed to hear such sounds in the vast black silence. Leonor floated away and out of sight and he opened his eyes.

  He lay on the leaves and enjoyed the comfort. The fire crackled and spat with a consistent and regular force, a bit like a gas flame, thought Peter, whose strength and weakness is easy to control and which never goes out however low it burns. At home, you needed to push the knob on the cooker and then turn it to ‘Off’ to extinguish the flame altogether.

  He giggled for thinking of something so silly. The skin-walkers fire and the gas flame on the cooker at home didn’t have anything in common and that made him giggle even more. He imagined a huge round knob somewhere in the trees and all the skin-walkers jumping up and down on top of it to push it down and then together, turning it anti-clockwise until the bonfire went out. His body shook with laughter and the leaves rustled.

  He turned on his back to draw breath and gazed up at the stars. Did Almina reach dad before Farmer Brunt drove him to hospital? Had Leonor and Oswald arrived at the outlaws’ camp? With a grunt, he rolled off the leaves and sat up. His stomach growled and a sudden hunger demanded that he eat straight away.

  He pulled his backpack closer and pulled out the sandwiches wrapped in tin foil. No need to check the fillings, just eat. The first bite and the sulphurous tang of egg mayonnaise erupted onto his tongue. Devoured in four big bites, he picked up the next sandwich. Ham and piccalilli and that took five bites to finish.

  He unscrewed the cup on the thermos and wisps of steam floated out. With the cup balanced on his thighs, he filled it to half with hot chocolate and then screwed on the top.

  He cradled the cup in both hands and sipped the sweet confection. A glow of contentment spread through his body.

  Bear didn’t understand how the seal-amulet worked. Almina called him a ‘natural.’ That meant... he didn’t know what that meant. That the seal-amulet worked to his will made him feel good and he wanted to do it again because, like the heroes in his computer games when they found a magical talisman, its use granted the finder increased powers and abilities. Able to dominate, they took control with ease.

  ***

  “Are you rested?” Bear stood over him.

  Peter drained the remains of the hot chocolate and screwed the cup back on the thermos. “Yes.” He scrambled to his feet. “I have to go to Leonor and Oswald. If I’ve changed the story because I saved Oswald, then they will need my help again.”

  “That is a wise choice.” Bear sat upon the fallen tree. “The seal-amulet is fickle. There will be many choices that you need to make and they will be profound, for past events will change and their impact will fall upon the present. Be wary of what needs to be done, the seal-amulet is chained to one who uses it for her own purpose. That those charms respond to you may be chance, or they may be design. I have told you that once we were eight and that the spae-wife meant to destroy us all. She wanted our knowledge of the Ages, past, present and to come, to use to her will. Had she succeeded, the stars would cease to shine and all that was to be, even your life, would be clouded in cold and darkness.”

  Peter held up the seal-amulet. “She could do all that - with this?”

  “It is the seal-amulet that offers such possibilities.”

  Peter frowned. “I can’t understand how she can do anything. I’ve got the seal-amulet and I’m not going to give it to her.”

  Bear’s hooded face gazed towards the fire. “The spae-wife is cunning and sly. She walks once more, I am certain, though in a changed form, much as you witnessed our forms change when the carrier attacked. I say to you again, take care in whom you trust.”

  Peter’s stomach tightened. Everything Bear said sounded scary. “Why didn’t Almina use the seal-amulet when the carrier gave it to her?”

  Bear sat silent before he said, “Reasons, like threads, are weaved by Time and their joining cannot be determined. Strands may touch that afford a glimpse of some experience, but that will not be understood until all the strands are woven as one. When small, Almina appeared to us, confused and frightened, and the seal-amulet seemed nothing more than a talisman to send her through time. She did not show it to us because she did not desire to learn its meaning. That we might have questioned her deeper about how she came to us through the Ages is our carelessness, because we did not discern the seal-amulet’s presence or its renewed potency.”

  Peter hoisted the backpack onto his shoulders. “But why didn’t she keep it?”

  “I suspect the carrier to feature in that telling.”

  “Like when he tried to take it off me?”

  Bear faced Peter. “That is so.”

  “It’s weird how the carrier keeps giving it to the wrong people. He must see that we aren’t the spae-wife - well, not me anyway.”

  “I do not know what he sees and the spae-wife is known to take on different forms.” Bear gazed back to the fire. “The spae-wife worked him to meet her demands. I discern that she taught him to retrieve the seal-amulet, should it be long-forgotten. If that is so, he has learnt the lesson well.”

  “He doesn’t understand that it has to go back to her though, does he?”

  “She might be lost to his sight if her physical form is incomplete.” Bear stood. “He works hard to return it to her, more this season than in seasons past, another step to my understanding that she walks once more.”

  Peter joined Bear on the other side of the fallen tree. “The carrier crept up behind me just before I chased away the barghest, but I saw him and he ran away.”

  “He is bolder than before.”

  “Why did he attack dad, though?”

  Bear paced towards the fire and all the skin-walkers faced the flames. “That is strange. Go now. Keep the seal-amulet close. Return at will. Have courage.” The skin-walkers raised their arms and the fire flared and as the flames crackled, Peter heard again the melodic notes from the music in his dream and the harmonies slid from one to another without any break.

  He ran through the trees to the charred branch and just before he touched it, he shut his eyes and said, “Leonor.”

  The music diminished as if swept away by a great wind. He opened his eyes and faced the manor. His heart thumped. An outlaw crouched no more than two metres away, his attention focused towards the track, a bow gripped in one hand and a quiver of arrows slung across his back.

  Peter sank to his knees as slow and as quiet as possible. He peered through the trees and picked out more outlaws, some hidden under bushes, another kneeling, one up in the boughs of a tree with a leg curled around a branch.

  Peter lay on his stomach and half-crawled, half-slithered, backwards, away from the charred branch. He glanced towards the manor and saw, up on the tower, four outlaws. No one spoke, yet a tense, expectant, ‘somethings about to happen’ atmosphere, tingled as alive as lightning.

  Oswald and Leonor must have fled. Tobias, on Oswald’s horse, ridden to Eorl Bosa. These outlaws, on Wulfwyn’s command, taken the manor and if he remembered Wulfwyn’s plan in the correct order, pretended to take Oswald and Leonor hostage. Now they waited for Eorl Bosa, with however many men-at-arms mustered at short notice, to counter-attack.

  He crawled further away. The outlaws, when he picked them out at this distance, proved harder to spot. He reached the exposed roots of a horse chestnut and, careful to stay quiet, slipped off the backpack.

  A distant rook cawed. Then, to his left, leaves rustled and he jumped. Two black eyes glared back at him, whiskers twitched and a long tail quivered. A red squirrel, like the ones in picture books, watched him, its mouth distorted by a large bulge. He’d never seen a red squirrel before. Smaller than a grey, its dark red fur gleamed. It leapt away and legs apart, scampered up the tree.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the seal-amulet. Cold and blank, he ran his finger over its smooth surface. What made it glow? What triggered the appearance of the silver marks? It was as if it needed a button, or a switch. D
id the spae-wife use it from a distance? Did the carrier tell her who had it, now?

  His fingers tingled and, like a radiator when it first comes on, a hint of warmth blossomed across the seal-amulet’s surface. In the distance, there came the steady thud-thud, thud-thud of horses’ hooves on frozen earth.

  Peter peered over the roots of the horse chestnut and though he half-stood and shifted sideways, the tangle of bushes and trees made it impossible to see anything. Not a single outlaw remained in sight. He sat down and cupped the seal-amulet in both hands.

  The surface glowed red and the silver marks emerged as pale shadows that faded in and out of view. Not one glowed more than any other. The tingle spread through his hands and into his wrists.

  The horses came closer and some of them snorted as if they smelt danger. He also heard the clink of metal. A voice boomed, sudden and loud and the thud-thud of the hooves ceased. Peter guessed they’d reached the top of the track and now had the manor in view.

  Wulfwyn’s plan involved the outlaws left behind at the camp to close in on Eorl Bosa’s men after they passed; a pincer movement that meant to trap them all. How many men did Eorl Bosa bring?

  The silver marks revolved in opposing circles as if unable to settle.

  “Come forth,” bellowed the voice. “Lay down your arms.”

  No answering cry replied.

  “In the name of King William...”

  There came the swish of arrows and several men shouted and horses whinnied before the thuds as the arrows found their targets. Knights urged their mounts forwards with terrible cries and the outlaws answered with a ferocious roar.

  An outlaw darted around a tree as a knight charged and jabbed him with his spear. The outlaw escaped and, with so little room to manoeuvre, the knight cursed as he tried to pull his horse round. Another outlaw dropped out of the tree and landed on the horse’s back. He gripped the knight with one arm and they both tumbled off. As they fell, the outlaw drew a black-bladed knife and struck. The horse stamped and snorted and sprang away towards the track.