In The Grip Of Old Winter Read online

Peter nodded.

  “I have not heard Eorl Oswald speak of one such as you.” A pulse beat in his neck.

  “I haven’t spoken to him.”

  Wulfwyn’s gaze flicked from Peter’s face to his anorak and then his jeans. “What are you?”

  Peter swallowed. “I’m Peter and I’ve come - I’ve lived - I live in the future - many years forward from now in the house where Leonor and Oswald live. Grandma and granddad live there, it’s different now because it’s made of stones and I’m spending the Christmas holidays with them and my mum and dad...”

  Wulfwyn’s troubled gaze darkened. “You speak strange words. Are you one of King William’s brats, or Eorl Bosa’s spy that revealed our camp?” His hand went to the hilt of a knife attached to his belt.

  Peter shuffled further back. “No - no. I’m not French. I’m not a spy, either.”

  The outlaw tensed and then released the knife. He rubbed his chin so that the stubble rasped. “This may be so. The Norman’s talk with words that few understand. Your words, I know, though not all. Eorl Bosa,” and he spat on the ground, “means to deceive and I wonder if you are some crooked fiend sent to trick?”

  Peter didn’t know what to say. Wulfwyn’s stare frightened him.

  After another silence the outlaw said, “How might one small, unarmed boy help the Eorl Oswald and his kin? Is it these coverings on your body? Do they hold some unknown skill?”

  Peter shook his head. “This is what we wear in my time. They’re just - clothes.”

  Wulfwyn pointed to the backpack. “A weapon?”

  Peter reached to pull it closer and Wulfwyn grabbed his knife.

  “This isn’t a weapon.” Peter let go. “It’s my backpack, for carrying things. I’ll - I’ll show you.” Careful not to move too fast, he eased the button along the drawstrings that opened the backpack’s top and unclasped the buckles. “I’ve got sandwiches and a thermos of hot chocolate and a torch.” He tipped up the backpack to show Wulfwyn and the outlaw leaned forward to peer inside.

  “Shall I show you the torch?”

  Wulfwyn’s brow knitted into tighter lines and Peter guessed that he didn’t know that word. He tried to explain. “It’s a light - like a flame - only not.”

  Wulfwyn gave a brisk nod. “Show me this flame.” His hand stayed gripped to the knife’s hilt.

  Peter lifted out the torch. “It works with a switch. I press it like this and the light...” The bright beam dazzled Wulfwyn, who sprang back as if he’d been hit.

  “Oops, sorry. I didn’t mean to blind you.” Peter played the light across an overhead branch and then into the shadows around the tree’s roots. “It’s just a torch, so that you can see in the dark.”

  Wulfwyn recovered from the shock and knelt. He held his hand out and Peter passed the torch across.

  Wary of the beam’s brightness, Wulfwyn squinted into the light. Satisfied that it didn’t harm, he shone the light across the same branch. He pointed it close to the ground until the beam narrowed and brightened, hard and white. Then he shone it at the iron pot in the middle of the glade and a sheen of light reflected off the pot’s round sides. “This is not flame. It does not burn. It sees far away.”

  Peter knelt too. “It works on batteries. They last a long time, but you have to change them when the light goes dim.”

  Wulfwyn shook the torch and the beam zigzagged through the trees. “How is it that it does not see?”

  Peter took a moment to understand. “There’s a switch on the side.” He shuffled closer. “That big black button. Press it and the torch will go off.”

  The outlaw peered at the button and prodded it several times with his finger.

  “You have to press quite hard,” said Peter.

  Wulfwyn exerted more pressure and with a click, the light went out. He peered into the lens, pressed it against his ear and then turned the torch over and over in his hands. With his fingertip, he picked at the torch’s rubber casing and then pressed the button again. He switched the torch on and off several times, mesmerised by the sudden appearance and disappearance of the light. Then he handed it back to Peter. “This sees further than flame and can show what you want.”

  Peter dropped the torch into his backpack.

  Wulfwyn sat. “This is no weapon. You have not knife or bow. There is no deceit upon your brow and yet you are one against many. For such a one your purpose appears ill. Give reason to your claim.”

  “You mean about rescuing Eorl Oswald and Leonor?” Peter sat down opposite Wulfwyn. How to explain Bear and the way time passed at different speeds in different Ages and the seal-amulet and the barghest? He didn’t understand most of what had happened and to think up a sensible explanation made his head whirl. “I heard your plan with Eorl Oswald about bringing Leonor here and setting a trap for Eorl Bosa.”

  Wulfwyn’s eyes glittered. “How did you hear this?”

  Peter pointed to the other side of the glade. “I hid behind a bush in the ravine. I followed Eorl Oswald here. Before that, at Oswald’s manor I’d seen Eorl Bosa and heard him say that he wanted - a union with Leonor and after he left, she was really upset and begged her father not to let it happen.”

  Wulfwyn stared back. “And Leonor came to you - why?”

  He didn’t know how to make the outlaw understand about ghosts. “Not exactly - she doesn’t know I’m here. It’s just that - she sounded so upset that I wanted to help.” His confidence faltered.

  “This is strange that you help Leonor who you do not know?”

  Peter flustered. “Well, I didn’t know, I mean how to help - then I heard you talking to Eorl Oswald and I thought that if she came here, she’d be safe - and I thought that was what happened.”

  Wulfwyn’s face darkened. “Show me the means of your help.”

  Peter swallowed. He feared to show Wulfwyn the seal-amulet. He might recognise it, understand its potential and take it. Perhaps the thermos flask or the tin foil round the sandwiches might be substituted as possible weapons, but he dismissed these ridiculous thoughts in an instant. He had no choice and he reached into his pocket and pulled out the seal-amulet. “I was going to use this.” He needed to ask the question. “Are you waiting for it?”

  Wulfwyn’s face contorted into a frown and then into a scowl. He squinted at the dull red disc and the silver shapes that flowed across its surface. He made no attempt to take it. “I have not laid my eyes upon such a weapon. To fight with this is strange. Show me its use. How is it that these,” and he pointed to the silver marks, “are not still?”

  To admit that he didn’t know how it worked revealed him to be a liar. Wulfwyn’s reaction proved his ignorance of the seal-amulet’s existence and therefore its strange possibilities.

  “I’ve only used it once,” said Peter. “I made the barghest run away when it attacked Eorl Oswald after the Eorl left you...”

  His body tingled. That time then, this time now, centuries ago, Eorl Oswald died, but because he saved him with the seal-amulet, events that happened afterwards, then, now, centuries ago, never occurred.

  The meaning of Bear’s words, to be wary of his actions when he used the seal-amulet, resonated loud and clear. The tiniest difference made by the seal-amulet wiped out whole histories. For people who lived then, now, centuries past, would know nothing about them, because they didn’t happen. It made him dizzy to think about and he shut his eyes.

  “Is this what you do to make a fight?”

  Peter focused on Wulfwyn’s angry tone to stop his brain from exploding. He thought he might go mad if he grappled with the meanings of the seal-amulet’s capabilities but, like a long length of twine that winds a kite back to earth, his focus returned to the here and now, the then, centuries ago, where he too lived a part of his life; where the possibilities to change history beckoned.

  He opened his eyes. Wulfwyn crouched before him, his knife drawn.

  ***

  Peter held up the seal-amulet. “This isn’t mine. The carrier gave it to me. Thi
s belongs to somebody else and she wants it back, but I mustn’t give it to her. I made it work once and I tried to help the outlaws when the knights attacked, but I couldn’t make it work in the same way.” Panic, that Wulfwyn refused to believe him, made his legs tremble. “I can’t understand it.”

  Wulfwyn rotated the knife’s tip. “You speak of the carrier and Eorl Bosa and...?”

  “A spae-wife. From far away, across the sea, where the land is cold. I think it might be Norway or Sweden.”

  The outlaw tipped the knife up and down. “I have heard of such a one, in old tales told around a fire. Even so, how can it be that this,” and he pointed the knife at the seal-amulet, “is with you and not with her?”

  “Because the carrier...” Peter floundered as a new idea blossomed. If the spae-wife didn’t have the seal-amulet, then the spae-wife didn’t exist, in this time or any other unless, like him, she moved through time without the seal-amulet’s aid. Bear said that she escaped and hid and now walked upon the land again. That might mean she walked in Bear’s time, Leonor and Oswald’s time or his time, or all three, because she followed the seal-amulet, determined to claim it back. She might appear anywhere, at any time. He spun round to face the ravine.

  Wulfwyn demanded; “What troubles you?”

  Peter clasped the seal-amulet between his hands. “I think I understand a bit more about what this means.” He ran the chain through his fingers. “Though I still don’t know how it works.”

  Wulfwyn’s gaze fixed on the distant ravine. “What did you hear?”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” said Peter, “I just wanted to be sure. The carrier crept up on me when I listened to you and Eorl Bosa and I didn’t notice him until almost too late.”

  Wulfwyn’s tone hardened and he rose. “Is this so?”

  “He gave me the seal-amulet and now he keeps trying to get it back.”

  The outlaw stepped past him and peered across the glade. “That might be so or not. I am thinking that the words you speak explain how this hidden place came to Eorl Bosa’s knowing, because the carrier took a chance.”

  Peter shuffled round to face Wulfwyn’s back. “He heard the plan and told Eorl Bosa?”

  “Aye.”

  “It’s the seal-amulet the carrier wants, I’m sure.”

  Wulfwyn sheathed his knife. “The carrier’s ways serve only the carrier. His allegiance is to no man and to every man. With one hand he helps, with the other he takes. None trust him, yet he lives, for once met, even by chance, his broken form may benefit a man with profit that he did not know before.”

  Peter dug his palms into the seal-amulet’s hard edge. He’d led the carrier into the ravine, revealed the outlaw’s hiding place and then let him escape to tell Eorl Bosa. No, he mustn’t take all the blame, for Oswald showed the way first.

  Another odd thing, time in whichever Age he appeared, always moved forward. He might be able to change the outcome of events in a past Age, but not the events that had already passed in that Age. A trigger, the extreme weather Farmer Brunt said, released a repetition of events from a certain point. If he did nothing else in this Age, Eorl Oswald always survived the barghest’s attack.

  “Did Eorl Oswald bring Leonor here?”

  Wulfwyn’s shoulders slumped. “He did, though such an action proved to be folly.”

  “What happened?”

  The outlaw strode past Peter and sat. “Eorl Bosa’s men came up the common way and more came by a far route through the trees. Some knowledge of that difficult path,” and he jerked his thumb at the forest behind, “is needed if you are not to be lost or stumble into a swamp.”

  “The carrier?” suggested Peter.

  Wulfwyn shrugged. “Who is to say? There are many who live beside these trees who know the secret paths between. And who, for a token or a promise, will show the way.” He drew his knees up to his chest. “Surrounded, taken by chance, our will to save the Eorl Oswald and his kin carried no luck. To save our lives needed all our skills. Many died and those that lived, fled. I returned. What news, I wondered, from Eorl Oswald’s manor, but there are none here but you?”

  Peter rotated the seal-amulet round and round in his fingers. “I saw the fighting, well some of it, because I was trying to understand how to make this work. There were too many knights in armour. And... and they charged the outlaws on the common way with their spears.” He glanced up, but Wulfwyn gazed into the middle-distance. “I don’t think many escaped.”

  “It is as I feared.” The outlaw faced him. “It makes me wonder that you might fight. Even with this - trinket.”

  Peter didn’t meet his gaze. “Where are all the bodies? I didn’t see any on the common way either.”

  Wulfwyn’s frown softened. “The knights are quick to drag them out of sight. They fear the flare of rebellion if dead kin are found. They throw the corpses in some new-dug pit, concealed from all but those most gifted with nature’s lore, those that recognise the broken patterns upon the forest floor.”

  Peter wondered if those pits, now full of skeletons, still existed in his time? He’d ask granddad if he’d ever dug up any bones. “Where did the knights take Eorl Oswald and Leonor?”

  “I did not see. Eorl Bosa’s manor lies to the east. His men there may keep them under guard, for he is sure to accuse Eorl Oswald of treason against the Norman King.”

  “We’ve got to rescue him. And Leonor. She doesn’t want to marry Bosa. Can we go there?”

  Wulfwyn snorted. “One man, one boy, what can be done against men in metal?”

  It didn’t sound hopeful, Peter agreed, but even if they crept close, just to have a look, that must be better than doing nothing. “There might be a secret tunnel, or perhaps we could disguise ourselves?”

  “You tell me you have seen Eorl Oswald’s manor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Water runs around Eorl Bosa’s walls. The earth banks stack as high as a tree’s branches. There is no secret path, for men cross the water on a bridge that commands easy sight to all who step upon its wooden boards. To see Eorl Bosa’s manor, even at many paces distant, is to know the meaning of safe-keeping.”

  Peter understood Wulfwyn’s reluctance, but if the manor stood close-by, why waste the chance to scout it out? “I want to see. I don’t mind going alone, if you point the way.”

  The outlaw hugged his knees closer to his chest. “Much has gone ill this day. The hopes of all English men have died. Our chance to hold this small part of land from the Normans has failed. Eorl Bosa’s allegiance to the new King strengthens the King’s cause against those that rebel against his conquest. Our numbers, already few, are now diminished and soon there will be none.” He rubbed his chin from side to side on his knees. “What is left for those like me? Swear allegiance to a foreign man who soils this land with every step he takes, or live out my days to be hunted like a beast in the field? I have no wish to die, but to be shackled to a post, as a bear that dances to another’s tune, is an agony to my heart.” His voice lowered to a whisper. “That is not to be endured. No, I will fight and hard unto my last breath. It is the only way.” He faced Peter. “Let us claim back this land with our blood.”

  Peter swallowed. “I - I don’t want to fight. I just want to see if there’s anything I can do to help.” He swung the seal-amulet like a pendulum. “If I can learn how to use this, then of course I’ll help in any fight - I think.”

  Wulfwyn watched the seal-amulet swing backwards and forwards. “Why not...”

  A vicious low-pitched snarl echoed from the ravine. Wulfwyn sprang to his feet, knife in hand. Peter scrambled up and ran to the outlaw’s side.

  The barghest, head lowered, teeth bared, stepped into the glade. Its muscles quivered with strength. The eyes blazed red and fixed their gaze upon them. Behind the monstrous dog came the carrier who scuttled towards the nearest trees.

  Another figure appeared, shrouded by the ravine’s shadows and a grey dust that coiled and twisted as if blown by some unseen wind. Li
dless eyes stared; skin, thin and stretched, clung to yellow bones. Wisps of long white hair trembled and the lipless mouth grinned as a skull’s might of one who is long dead.

  ***

  Peter grabbed his backpack with one hand and held it against his chest. The seal-amulet burned crimson and the silver marks flared and rotated in opposing circles. They made him dizzy to watch.

  Wulfwyn instructed. “Stay behind me.”

  With a single bound, the barghest reached the middle of the glade. The carrier scurried between the trees as he came towards them on their left.

  The silver marks spun, but not one emerged brighter than the others. Peter sobbed. “Why can’t I make it work?” His heart pounded hard enough to make him sick.

  The dark figure emerged from the ravine and into the glade. Each limb jerked as if pulled by some unseen string and the jaw jabbered, faster and faster, so that each time the teeth struck, they clacked.

  Peter yelled. “What shall I do?”

  Wulfwyn, knees bent, ready to fight, shouted. “Take hold of a weapon.”

  The carrier leapt from the trees and made straight for Peter. The barghest crouched, ready to spring. Without time to think, Peter slipped the seal-amulet over his head.

  A sensation, like falling in a dream when it turned his stomach over and over, coursed through his body. His blood flooded through every vein as swift as a running river and his fingers tingled. No need to look at the seal-amulet, for two silver marks appeared in his mind, one above the carrier and the other over the barghest; his choice to decide which to use first.

  With a great bound, the carrier launched his deformed body into the air as if he meant to crush Peter from above.

  The silver mark in Peter’s mind shone like a fist and he clenched his right hand and punched. His fist didn’t make contact, but the airborne carrier doubled over, as if hit in the stomach, and flew backwards halfway across the glade. He landed on his back in the cold ashes and screamed.

  Peter staggered as if he had been hit, too. His whole body throbbed and his sight blurred.