Читать книгу Diana Wynne Jones’s Fantastical Journeys Collection - Diana Wynne Jones - Страница 15

Holytown was a little low grey town with an irregular jetty. From the moment we reached it, it was all confusion. The Captain couldn’t wait to get rid of us. Our bags were thrown out on the jetty almost before the ship was tied up and we found ourselves following them into a frenzy of fish and shouting. We seemed to have arrived just as the fishing fleet came in. All around us silver streams of fish were being poured into barrels, or laid out in boxes, or being bought and sold out of deep, smelly holds. Bernica people are not very tall. It added to my confusion that Aunt Beck and Ogo towered out of the crowd and even I found I was nearly as tall as most people around me.

“I’m starving,” said Ivar. “Can we buy some?”

“Not at these prices,” Aunt Beck said. She was staring keenly around, evidently looking for something.

Ogo nudged me and pointed. Just for an instant I had a sight of Plug-Ugly rubbing himself against the legs of a little person in green robes. He was gone again as I looked.

At the same moment, Aunt Beck said, “Ah!” and strode towards the green robes.

There was a whole group of them ambling cheerfully among the fish, pausing to bargain and then moving on with a fish or two in their baskets. They did not look very well-to-do. All the green robes were frayed and grubby. The men mostly went barefoot; the women had home-made-looking sandals. But the oddest thing about them was that each of them had an animal or a bird. I saw a squirrel on one man’s shoulder and one woman had a rabbit nestled in her basket alongside the fish. Somebody else was leading a sheep and another seemed to have a fox.

“Who are they, Aunt?” I asked as Aunt Beck surged purposefully towards them.

“Monks and nuns,” she replied. “They worship the Lady.”

This left me very little wiser. Nothing could have been more unlike the Priest of Kilcannon and his novices. As we came up with the group, I found myself surrounded by cheerful faces and strange beasts. I assumed the nun nearest me had an odd black-feathered headdress, until the headdress turned a round yellow eye on me and went, “Craark!” And I realised she had a raven sitting on her green hat.

“His name’s Roy,” she said. “He’ll not hurt you. And what will you folks be wanting?”

“Your help, brothers and sisters,” Aunt Beck said. “We need to be directed to the king.”

“The king!” said several of them, rather astonished.

And one little fat man asked, “And why would you be wanting the king?” He was perhaps the oddest of all the monks because he had a beard that grew in two long wisps, one wisp from each cheek, that were long enough to be tucked into the rope he wore as a belt. On his shoulder sat a truly magnificent green bird – shiny green with an arched beak and round yellow eyes even more knowing than the raven’s. Each eye was surrounded in wise pinkish wrinkles that made it look very clever indeed. The long, long green tail swept down the little monk’s back like a waterfall even longer than the monk’s wispy beards.

And it spoke. Ogo, Ivar and I all jumped when it said, in a loud, squawking voice, “It’s Thursday! It’s Thursday!”

“Oh, and so it is!” said the nun with the raven. “Green Greet is quite right.”

“No, no,” said another monk. “It’s Wednesday, I swear.”

“It is indeed,” someone else declared. “The foxes always bark on a Wednesday.”

“They bark when they like,” another monk said. “Thursday it is, when the sun is on the tower.”

“Oh no,” disagreed a nun in the distance. “Wednesday is today, and the Lady’s birthday only a week away now.”

“Thursday,” someone else insisted. “The Birthday is only six days away.”

The argument went on and on, with our own heads turning from one to another. By this time, there were people insisting it was only Tuesday and others who seemed equally sure it was a Friday today.

At length Aunt Beck said, highly exasperated, “What does it matter what day it is? I only asked to be directed to the king.”

“But that is just the point, Wise Woman,” said the monk with the green bird. “The king is under geas, poor man. He is forbidden to see strangers on a Thursday.”

“Oh,” said Aunt Beck. “I’ve heard tell of this kind of thing in Bernica. What will happen to the king if he does see a stranger on a Thursday?”

“No one knows, except that it’s bad to anger the gods,” said the little monk. “And—”

“And how do you know I’m a Wise Woman?” Aunt Beck demanded.

“It sticks out a mile,” said the monk. “Green Greet saw it at once.” He reached up and patted the bird on its head. The bird promptly seized one of his plump little fingers in its beak. I suppose it was meant to be affectionate, but it looked painful. The monk took his hand away and shook it. “Why are you wanting to see the king?” he said. “Are you in need of justice?” He looked from Aunt Beck to me and on to Ogo and Ivar as if the idea puzzled him greatly.

“Not exactly,” said Aunt Beck. By this time, everyone had stopped arguing and was staring at her with interest. She drew herself up tall. “We are on a mission, for the High King of Chaldea,” she said.

All the green-robed people seemed impressed by this. Their green hats and little round caps turned and nodded as they looked at one another. “Well then,” said the one with the bird, “it seems best that we take you to our House so that we can divine what day it is. Would you care to take breakfast with us there?”

“Oh yes!” Ivar said, heartfelt. Ogo’s stomach gave a sharp rumble.

“We shall be delighted,” said my aunt, stately as ever.

So the group went on choosing fish. I noticed that they did not pay much for it. Most fishermen seemed quite ready to give them fish for nothing. “For luck,” said each man, pouring handfuls of tiny silver fish into the baskets.

Beyond the wharf was a market. Here the party acquired armloads of bread, several crocks of butter, a lot of early apples and a great many cherries. Again, they did not have to pay much for it.

“It’s almost worth being holy,” Ogo said to me, as we went out from the market and among the grey houses of the town. There he nudged me again and pointed. I was just in time to see Plug-Ugly crouched in a patch of sun with a large fish in his mouth. He was gone when we came level with the place. “Do you think that beast is magical?” Ogo whispered.

“Yes,” I said. “He must be.”

The monks and nuns, chatting cheerfully, led us on to the edge of the town. Their House, when we came to it, was more like a barn than a religious establishment. It was lofty and dark and warm inside, with a fire in the middle of the floor in a most smoky, old-fashioned way. That fire puzzled Ivar because it was low and glowing and made of dark chunks of stuff. Ivar had only seen log fires before. “What are they burning?” he said, peering at it.

“Peat,” said Aunt Beck. “This island is made of peat, they say.”

Peat seemed to be lumps of marsh, but it served perfectly well to cook fish on. Fishes were sizzling in iron pans in no time. We were each given a heaped wooden plateful of them and nothing but a chunk of bread to eat them with. Everyone sat on the floor to eat. Ogo and Ivar kept getting their long legs in the way. I was as unused as they were to eating on the floor and I kept having to shift about, trying to get comfortable. Aunt Beck of course sat elegantly cross-legged and daintily picked up fish with bread and her fingers as though she had been doing this all her life.

“I call this dreadful!” Ivar grumbled. “It’s not civilised!” Luckily, he had the sense to grumble in a whisper, but even so, Aunt Beck shot him one of her nastiest looks. Ivar turned very red and sat with his back to her after that.

The fish was delicious. We all ate a great deal, being very hungry by then. When we were finished, a grubby rag – which Aunt Beck looked at rather primly – was passed around so we could wipe our fingers. Then the monks and nuns fetched out all manner of strange implements, and an abacus and some sheets of parchment and sticks of charcoal, and began to calculate which day of the week it actually was.

“I make it Friday,” Ogo whispered to me. “We set out on Monday, didn’t we?”

Just then the great green bird flew up into the rafters on a huge spread of green feathers, shouting, “It’s Thursday! It’s Thursday!”

Ivar and Ogo and I went off into giggles. Aunt Beck said, “I’ve heard of parrots. It would probably say that if it were Sunday. Quiet now.”

But, do you know, the monks and nuns still couldn’t decide what day it was. At last, Aunt Beck lost patience and stood up. “We shall go to the king now,” she said, “and take a risk on what day it is. Can someone set us on our way, please?”

The monk who owned the parrot stood up too. We had gathered by then that his name was Finn. “I’ll take them,” he said, “and bring them back if need be. Does anyone know what became of my sandals?”

There was much hunting around the edges of the barn and a nun eventually produced a pair of thick leather sandals. Finn stamped his chubby feet into them and beckoned the green bird down to his shoulder. “Off we go,” he said, cheerfully picking up Aunt Beck’s bag. Ogo picked up his and Ivar’s, I picked up mine, and we thanked the others and left. As we went, they were busy feeding the animals, almost as if they had forgotten us.

“Is it far to the king?” I asked as we left the houses behind.

“A mile or so,” Finn said.

I was glad. My bag was heavy. I envied Ivar striding ahead with Aunt Beck. We were taking a track that led gently upwards among dozens of small green fields, most with sheep in them, but some growing crops I couldn’t recognise. There was honeysuckle in the hedges. The air smelt moist and sweet. Every so often it rained a little – fine rain that made my eyebrows itch and Finn’s parrot shake its feathers irritably.

“Bernica is the most western of our islands,” Finn explained to me. “And we get all the rain from the ocean beyond.”

“Is that what makes everything so green?” I asked.

Finn nodded, pleased. He seemed pleased about most things. “Bernica is the green place,” he said, “loved of the Lady.”

“And this king we’re going to see rules it all?” Ogo panted. He was finding things heavy too.

“Oh, bless you, no!” Finn told him. “Colm rules only as far as the mountains.”

We all looked around for these mountains. Nothing. I was supposing they must be very far away and Colm’s kingdom very big, when Aunt Beck said, “Do you mean those little hills over there?” She pointed to a line of low green bulges a few miles off.

“I do. I was forgetting you come from the jagged island of Skarr,” Finn said. “Bernica is a gentle place.”

Ogo began to look contemptuous. Ivar laughed. “Those would hardly count as foothills on Skarr,” he said. “Have you had your parrot long?”

“I have had Green Greet for twenty years now, ever since old Bryan died,” Finn said. “Before that he was bird to Alun and before that to Sythe – but I never knew Sythe, who died before I was born.”

“Then he must be ever so old!” I said.

“He is. He has lost count of how old,” Finn told me.

About then we came out from among the fields and joined a level grassy road much cut up with wheel and hoof marks. This led across a wide marshy heath full of rattling rushes. I saw herds of donkeys, cows and pigs and even some horses in the distance. I wondered how anyone knew which belonged to whom, but I didn’t wonder too hard because my bag seemed to get heavier and heavier. Just as I was thinking I couldn’t carry it a step further, we arrived at the king’s house.

Ivar was not the only one of us who stared at it scornfully. Even Aunt Beck raised her fine eyebrows at the sight of messy walls of mixed mud and stone sheltered by a few miserable trees. The only thing to be said of the place was that it seemed to cover quite a lot of ground. Otherwise, I have seen more impressive farmhouses.

There was a rough wooden door in the messy wall with a fellow standing guard in front of it. He was a fine, tall young man with wavy fairish hair and an extremely handsome face. He wore leather armour on his chest and legs with a helmet on his head and he was armed to the teeth. He had a spear with a wicked sharp point, a sword and a dagger on his great studded belt and a bow in his hand. A quiver of arrows – also wickedly sharp – hung off his shoulder. I thankfully put down my bag and rubbed my sore hands together while I admired him. He was truly beautiful, except that he was scowling at us.

“What do you want?” he said. “You should know better than to come here on a Thursday.”

“So Green Greet was right,” Finn murmured. He said to the young man, “These people are a delegation from Skarr, young sir, sent to meet with the king.”

“Then they must come back tomorrow,” the young man said. “The king’s geas forbids him to see strangers on a Thursday.”

Finn turned away, looking resigned. “We’ll go back to town,” he said.

“No, we shall not!” Aunt Beck said. “I have not come all this way to be turned back like a nobody. I am Beck, the Wise Woman of Skarr, and I insist on being allowed to enter!” She drew herself up and looked really formidable.

The sentry drew himself up too. “And I am Shawn, third son of King Colm,” he said. “And I refuse to let you enter here.”

“I’m a king’s son too,” said Ivar.

“Shut up,” said my aunt. “How severe is the geas? How are you so sure it’s Thursday? And how do I know your king doesn’t just use this excuse to be lazy?”

“It is a strong, strong geas,” Shawn retorted. “And kings have a right to be lazy.”

“Not when I’m at their gate, they’ve not!” said my aunt. “Stand aside and let us through this instant!”

“No,” said the sentry.

“Very well,” said Aunt Beck. She put one hand out to the young man’s armoured chest and moved him aside. He didn’t seem to be able to stop her. He simply stood where Aunt Beck had put him, gaping rather.

I thought and wondered and thought how Aunt Beck did this and I still can’t see it. I tried to do it myself, experimenting on Ogo and Ivar. Ogo just said, “Why are you pushing me?” and Ivar said, “Who do you think you’re shoving?” and neither of them moved. Aunt Beck must have been using some art of the Wise Woman that you only get when you’re initiated. And of course I wasn’t.

Anyway, the rough wooden door seemed not to have a lock of any kind. Aunt Beck opened it with one bony knee and beckoned us impatiently through. We picked up our bags and trudged through into a small muddy yard full of ale barrels and on into the king’s house itself. The door there was standing open – probably for light, because the hall inside was very dim. There were quite a lot of people inside, all sitting about and yawning. They all jumped and stared at us as Aunt Beck led us in. The green bird on Finn’s shoulder squawked out, “It’s Thursday, King Colm. It’s Thursday.”

King Colm was sitting in a big chair at the far end. I think he was asleep until the green bird spoke. He was rather fat and his belly quivered as he sprang awake and roared out, “What are you doing in here, woman?”

Shawn the sentry came rushing in past us. “Forgive me, Father!” he said. “She would come in, whatever I said. I think she’s a witch!”

“No I am not, young man,” Aunt Beck retorted. “I am the Wise Woman of Skarr, I’ll have you know!”

“I don’t care who you are,” said the king. “Didn’t anyone tell you I am under a geas not to see strangers on a Thursday?”

“Yes, but I’ve no patience with that nonsense,” Aunt Beck said. “What do you imagine will happen now you’ve set eyes on us?”

“How should I know?” the king said. He looked rather nervously up at the dark beams in the ceiling. “All I know is that the gods will be angry.”

Aunt Beck opened her mouth. Almost certainly she was going to say, “Nonsense!” But at that moment there was a tremendous CRASH somewhere outside. People began yelling and screaming out there; hens cackled, pigs squealed and donkeys brayed. Aunt Beck said, “Well I never!” instead.

King Colm, with his face as well as his belly wobbling, got up and hurried to a door near his chair. Shawn sped after him, crying out, “Father! Be careful!” and Aunt Beck strode after Shawn. Ogo and I looked at one another, dumped our bags, and raced after Aunt Beck.

We came out into quite a big farmyard sort of place. There were sheds and huts all around it, some of which seemed to be for people and some for pigs, hens or geese. One seemed to be a hay barn. In the middle of the farmyard was a smoking hole. Steam was rising from the mud around it. People – women, children and old men mostly – were backed against the huts, staring at the hole or – if they were very young – burying their faces in their mothers’ skirts and crying. Alarmed hens and indignant goats were running all over the place, while a squad of donkeys crowded into one corner and made the sort of dreadful noise only donkeys can make.

We all hurried to the hole. In fact, we were practically pushed there by all the men crowding out of the hall behind us, Ivar among them. It was a deepish hole. At the bottom of it lay a small black smoking stone.

Aunt Beck said, almost drowned out by the donkeys, “That’s a meteorite.”

“A fallen star!” the king cried out. “Sent by the gods to punish me!”

“Och, man, don’t talk rubbish!” said Aunt Beck. “If the gods aimed it, they missed you.”

“I tell you it’s my geas!” bawled the king. “My fate!”

I discovered Finn beside me looking down into the hole, interested. On his shoulder, the green bird was equally interested. It put its head this way, then that, to inspect the smoking stone, and the lines around its eyes looked wiser than ever. “A meteorite, a meteorite,” it muttered. Then it stood up tall on Finn’s shoulder. “The geas is broken!” it said.

Finn turned his head to look at it. “Are you sure of that?” he demanded.

“Sure of that,” the bird echoed.

“Good,” said Finn, and reached to tap the king’s shoulder. “Majesty,” he said loudly, “your geas is broken.”

King Colm turned and glared at the little monk. It was fairly plain to me that he had cherished that geas. “And what makes you say that?” he demanded.

“Green Greet says so,” Finn explained. “He is a messenger of the gods.”

The king stared at the bird. So did Aunt Beck. “That parrot?” she said.

“A messenger of the gods,” the parrot said to her.

“You’re just repeating what your owner says,” my aunt told it – and I confess I would have said the same. Except that no one else had said, “The geas is broken.”

“No I’m not,” said the bird. “It’s Thursday. The geas is broken. I’m sure of that. It’s Thursday.”

“A marvel, isn’t he?” Finn said, smiling all over his chubby face.

“Hm,” said my aunt. She turned to the king. “Well, Majesty, it looks as if your lazy Thursdays are at an end.”

“By your doing, woman,” the king said bitterly. “Why couldn’t that bird have just kept quiet?” He sighed, because everyone crowding the farmyard seemed to have heard the bird quite clearly. They were all smiling and thumping one another on the back and congratulating Shawn on his father’s delivery. “And why couldn’t you have kept the woman out?” the king said to his son. “That geas has been handed down, father to son, for hundreds of years. You’ll live to regret this.”

Shawn looked startled. “I’ve always thought the geas would go to one of my brothers,” he said. “Why me?”

“Because you failed to guard the gate of course,” the king said.

“I fail to see,” Aunt Beck said, “why inheriting a non-existent curse would bother anyone. Majesty, we—”

“Oh, be quiet, woman!” ordered the king. “Who knows what trouble will fill the hole where my geas was, every Thursday. You’ve brought bad luck to my family. What do I need to do to make you go away?”

Aunt Beck looked decidedly taken aback. Finn said placatingly, “Majesty, they are from the High King of Chaldea who has sent them on a mission to Bernica.”

The king said testily, “No doubt he wanted to get rid of her too. All right, all right. Come back into the hall, woman, and tell me why you’ve been sent to shake up Bernica. Does he want me to wage war on Gallis or what?”

I could see Aunt Beck was seething with rage at being treated so disrespectfully. As we all trooped indoors again after the king, she was muttering, “I call this downright ungrateful! For two pins I’d put the geas back. And I’d make it every day of the week!”

But, by the time he was in his chair again and we were all standing in front of him, she had a grip on herself. She explained, perfectly politely, how we had been sent to rescue the High King’s son and – possibly – to destroy the barrier too.

King Colm said, “Woman, it’s all one to me if you choose to attempt the impossible. What do you expect me to do about it?”

“To give us your aid, out of the royal goodness of your heart, Majesty,” Aunt Beck replied. “If you could set us on our way by providing a donkey and cart, and maybe some food and a little money, I—”

“Money!” exclaimed the king. “Didn’t the High King even give you funds for this mission of yours?”

I thought, Oh dear, he’s stingy as well as eccentric!

Aunt Beck drew herself up proudly and said, as if the admission was being dragged out of her, “We were given a purse, Majesty, but it proved to be full of stones.”

King Colm seemed astounded. A shocked murmur ran round the hall behind us. “But it is the duty of any king,” he said, “to show generosity at all times. Very well, you shall have money. And I can probably spare you a cart and a donkey. Is there anything else?”

“One thing,” admitted my aunt. “According to the prophecy, we must have with us one man from each of the islands. Have you a man from Bernica you might spare to go with us?”

I had forgotten that we needed this person. For a moment, I was very excited, hoping the king would give us Shawn. He was so good-looking. And indeed the king’s eyes did move towards his son. Then Finn piped up. He gave a little cough and announced, “Majesty, I am that man. There is no need for you to deprive yourself of anyone. I and Green Greet have already decided to go with these good people on their mission.”

“Speak for yourself, speak for yourself,” muttered the parrot.

The king gave a great relieved laugh. “Splendid!” he said. “They will have the gods with them then. Go with my blessing, Finn Fitzfinn. And be careful,” he added to my aunt, “that this monk doesn’t eat and drink you out of all my money.”

So that was that. Half an hour later, we drove out of the king’s back gate in a neat little cart, with Aunt Beck driving a neat little donkey with a black line all around her like a tidemark. The people who hitched the donkey to the cart didn’t seem to think she had a name, so I called her Moe. I don’t know why, except that it suited her. There was food in the cart and jars of ale and, as she drove, my aunt kept smugly patting the fat purse on her belt.