Читать книгу Diana Wynne Jones’s Fantastical Journeys Collection - Diana Wynne Jones - Страница 16

The way was very level and green, first through more of the little fields and then through wide-open boglands. Moe trotted cheerfully on, pulling the rattling little cart, while we took turns to ride. There was only room for two of us beside the person driving. I don’t think Moe could have pulled all five of us anyway. She certainly couldn’t when we came to the hills. There, everyone except Aunt Beck had to walk.

But, while we were on the levels, Aunt Beck was very talkative. She had a long discussion about religion with Finn, while Ogo sat looking glum and mystified and Green Greet kept saying, “Mind your own business! Mind your own business!” until, Ogo said later, he wanted to wring the bird’s neck.

When it was Ivar’s turn and mine to ride, Ogo went striding ahead to cool off and Aunt Beck said to Ivar, “You were mighty slow coming out of the hall when the meteorite fell. What kept you?”

Ivar shrugged. “It sounded dangerous out there.”

“It was. Someone could have been injured,” Aunt Beck said. “You could have helped them.”

“Someone in my position,” Ivar said, “being a king’s son and all, has to be careful. I could have been killed! I don’t think Bernica’s gods take much care of people.”

“But they do,” said my aunt. “That thunderbolt didn’t hurt so much as a chicken! What are you being so careful of yourself for, may I ask?”

Ivar was surprised she should ask. So was I, as a matter of fact. “I could be king one day,” Ivar said. “At the rate my brother carries on, I could be king tomorrow.”

“If you think that, you’re a greater fool than I took you for,” Aunt Beck snapped. “Your brother Donal is a very canny young man and one that lands on his feet like a cat, I may tell you.”

“I don’t think it exactly,” Ivar protested.

It seemed to me that Aunt Beck was trying to show Ivar up in the worst possible light. First, he was a coward to her and then he was stupidly ambitious. Without waiting for what she might make him out to be next, I interrupted. “Aunt Beck, what made you think of going to King Colm?”

Aunt Beck, as I hoped, was distracted. “It was our obvious choice, Aileen,” she told me. “We were in a strange land with no money, no food, no transport, and we had a task to do. All kings are supposed to be generous, provided you can give them a high enough reason. And, as you see, it worked – although I must say,” she went on in a most disapproving way, “I’d not expected to find a fat man snoring in a smoky barn and clinging to his geas as an excuse to be lazy. If I were his wife now – and I think his queen must be as bad as he is – I wouldn’t stand for it longer than a week.”

And she was off on a tirade about King Colm and his court that lasted until we reached the first of the hills. She seemed to have noticed far more details than I had. She mentioned everything, from the dust on the king’s chair to the squalor in the farmyard. I remember her going on about the gravy stains on the king’s clothes, the laziness of his household, his underfed pigs and the ungroomed state of his horses, but I didn’t attend very hard. My attention kept being drawn to a softness and a throbbing by my shins.

I kept looking down, but there was nothing in the cart but our bags and the food. In the end, I reached down and felt at the place. My fingers met whiskers, a cold nose and a couple of firm, upstanding ears on a large round head. It was as I half expected: Plug-Ugly. Invisible. Who would have thought such an ill-looking and magical cat could have such very soft fur? I couldn’t resist stroking him – he was like warm velvet – and I could easily do this unnoticed, since Ivar was staring moodily over the edge of the cart, highly offended by Aunt Beck’s accusations, and Aunt Beck herself was haranguing the landscape.

Actually, Finn was listening to her as he trotted beside the cart. “Hold your horses, Wisdom!” he protested as Aunt Beck moved on to the tumbledown state of the huts in the farmyard. “Why should a king be grand? Give me a reason.”

“For an example to the rest,” my aunt retorted. “For standards of course. And talking of standards …” And she was off again, this time about the responsibilities of a king to set an example to his subjects.

Plug-Ugly purred. He rumbled so loudly I was amazed none of the others heard. Or maybe Green Greet did. He interrupted Aunt Beck’s discourse by saying, “Claws and teeth, claws and teeth underneath!”

But no one took any notice, except my aunt, who turned to the parrot and said, “If that’s aimed at me, shut your beak, my good bird, or you’ll be sorry!”

Green Greet rolled his wise eyes around to her and stopped speaking.

The hills, as I said, were hard for Moe the donkey, and for Finn, who puffed and panted and went pink in the face, but like nothing to the rest of us. Bernica is a low country, with lumps in it, and nothing like the deep slopes of Skarr. As Moe toiled up the hill, I looked around at the green, green landscape dappled with moving patches of sun from among the moist purple clouds, and I thought I had never seen such lovely countryside. It came on to rain near the top of the hill and at once there was a rainbow arching over it all. I found it glorious.

“Pah!” said Aunt Beck. “Wet.”

I could tell she was in a really bad mood. When Aunt Beck gets like that, the safest thing is to keep quiet, but none of the other three seemed to understand this. Finn said soothingly, “Ah, but Wisdom, the rain is what greens our lovely island so.”

Aunt Beck made a low growling noise. She hates being soothed.

Then Ivar asked innocently, “Where are we going? Do you know the way?”

“To the next town of course!” Aunt Beck snapped. “Cool Knock or some such name.”

“Coolochie, Wisdom,” Finn corrected her.

“And of course I know the way!” snarled my aunt. “I was here as a girl, for my sins.”

“But—” said Ivar.

Ogo tried to help. “The prince really means,” he said, “what is our route? Don’t we have to make for Gallis?”

This got him in trouble from two directions. Ivar said, “Don’t speak for me. Dolt!”

Aunt Beck glared at Ogo and snapped, “Naturally, we do, you great fool! We go south-east, down to the Straits of Charka, and find another boat. Do you think I don’t know what I’m doing?”

Ivar still didn’t seem to understand. “How do we go? Is it very far?” he said.

“Shut up,” said my aunt. “You’re a fool too!”

Ivar looked so puzzled at this that Finn sidled up to him and whispered, “It will be three or four days for the journey. Bernica is larger than Skarr, but not so large as Logra.”

“Did the boy learn no geography?” Aunt Beck asked the wet sky.

After this, I cannot remember anyone else speaking much for the rest of the day. We stopped for a silent picnic of bread, ham and plums and then went on across the green pillowy plain. By dusk it was raining really hard and quite obvious that we were not going to make Coolochie that day. We were forced to stop at a damp little inn for the night.

Aunt Beck glowered at the rain pattering off its thatch and the green moss growing up its walls. “I hate Bernica!” she said.

I sometimes wonder if my story would have been different if the beds in the inn had been comfortable. They were not. The mattresses seemed to have been stuffed with gorse bushes. They prickled and they rustled and the bed frames creaked, and I know it was hours until I got to sleep – and I only slept when Plug-Ugly came creeping in beside me, warm and soft. Aunt Beck probably had a worse night than I did. When I got up soon after cockcrow, she was still fast asleep, looking exhausted. I crept away downstairs where I found that Ivar had ordered a splendid breakfast for himself and Ogo and Finn, but forgotten Aunt Beck and me entirely.

“I’ll order more for you now,” he said. “Does Beck want any?”

My aunt never eats much for breakfast, but she does like her tea. When I asked in the kitchen, they only had nettle tea. No camomile, no thyme, no rosehip. I told them to take her up a mug of what they had and went out into the yard to see to Moe. Ogo had made sure she was fed luckily, and brushed her down, and Plug-Ugly was sitting in the cart, fully visible, eating the rest of the ham. I went and sat with him and finished most of the bread, and most of the plums.

“You are a strange creature,” I said to him. “What are you really?”

He just rubbed his head against my arm and purred. So we sat happily side by side until an uproar broke out in the inn. I could hear the landlord and his wife protesting mightily, sharp cracks of anger from Aunt Beck, Finn shouting for peace and Ivar yelling that it was not his fault. Shortly, both Ogo and Ivar shot into the yard, still eating, and Finn hurried after them, feeding a handful of raisins to Green Greet.

“What is going on?” I said.

“Your aunt’s being a sow!” Ivar said through his mouthful.

“Sure, she meant for us to eat in the cart as we travelled,” Finn explained.

It turned out that Aunt Beck had not budgeted for our stay at the inn, nor for the breakfasts – Ivar and Ogo had of course eaten the food they’d ordered for me. And Plug-Ugly and I had eaten the rest of the food in the cart. Aunt Beck was furious because this meant that we had to buy food in Coolochie now. I must say I didn’t feel this was a very good reason for being so angry. I put it down to the bad night on the bad bed, and I sympathised with Ivar when he kept saying, “She could have told us!”

We set off under another rainbow – a great double one – as a very subdued group, Aunt Beck all upright, with her mouth pressed into an angry line, and the rest of us hardly daring to say a word. Only Green Greet said anything, and he kept squawking, “Double bow, double measure!” Aunt Beck shot him looks as she drove, as if she was longing to wring his green feathery neck.

We reached Coolochie around midday. Ivar made moans of disgust when he saw it. It was not a large place and its walls were made of mud. Inside the big sagging gates, houses were crowded irregularly around a marketplace and it all smelt rather.

“I’ll say this for Skarr,” Ogo murmured to me as the cart squished its way into the market, “at least your towns smell clean.”

“Of course they do,” I said proudly. “And I suppose you remember the towns in Logra so well!”

“Not really,” he said. “But I do remember there was no mud on the streets.”

I sighed. Logra was all perfect in Ogo’s memory.

Aunt Beck meanwhile drove the cart among the scattering of poor-looking market stalls and drew up grandly in front of the largest. I looked at its stack of elderly cabbages and the flies hovering around the small heap of bacon and hoped she was not going to buy either of those.

Actually, my aunt is a good shopper. She managed to assemble some quite decent provisions and sent Finn off to the bread stall while she bargained for what she had chosen.

“Why are you sending him?” Ivar wanted to know.

“He’s a monk. He’ll get half of it free,” my aunt snapped and turned back to the bargaining.

This did not go well. Whatever price Aunt Beck suggested, the woman behind the stall named a higher one. And, when Aunt Beck protested, all the woman would say was, “You must remember there’s a war on.”

“What war is this?” my aunt demanded.

“The war against the Finens of course,” the woman said.

“What are the Finens?” said Aunt Beck.

“Cheating monsters from Ballyhoyle way,” was the answer. “You must know that the Finens never paid us for our cloth in my grandmother’s time. And were forever cheating and lying ever since. So last month our men went and took their sheep for payment. Last week the Finens came asking for the sheep back. But naturally we had eaten them by then, so the Finens took all our cattle and the food out of the fields, and when we asked for it back they threw stones. So yesterday our men took up their weapons and went out to teach the Finens a lesson or two. There was a great battle then.”

“Who won?” Ivar asked with interest.

The woman shrugged. “Who knows? For all we can tell the fighting still goes on.”

“But I am sure,” Finn said, arriving back with a great basket of bread rolls, “that the might of the men of Coolochie will prevail.”

The woman looked pleased at this, but she did not let Aunt Beck have the food any cheaper. Aunt Beck sighed and graciously paid over most of the money King Colm had given her. “And now let’s get out of here,” she said to the rest of us.

We had lunch a couple of miles on into the plains beyond Coolochie. “Do you think Coolochie’s in the right in this war?” Ogo asked, thinking about it as he munched.

“Of course not,” Aunt Beck said irritably. “Both sides are complete blackguards. From the sound of it, they’ve been stealing each other’s property for centuries. Are you finished? Let’s be on our way. I want to be out of this miserable country as soon as I can be.”

We had none of us really finished, but no one liked to argue with Aunt Beck in this mood so we walked along still eating. Finn said soothingly, “You’ll find Bernica’s not so bad, Wisdom, when you’re used to our ways.”

Aunt Beck shuddered.

We came over a couple of gentle rises to find the war blocking our road.

The road here divided into several flat green tracks. Spread out over most of them was a bright-coloured, struggling mass of people. We could see red, yellow and orange crests of feathers, shining swords lifting and hacking, and long shields painted with lurid designs. There were yells, hoots and groans. Every so often a pair of fighters would come loose from the rest and rush across the nearby fields, plunging into ditches and through ponds, and screaming insults as they whacked at one another’s shields. Meanwhile, the battle heaved and walloped away across all the tracks but the one on the extreme left.

Aunt Beck pulled Moe up in disgust. Ivar, rather nervously, half drew his sword. Ogo made as if to pull his dirk out and then thought better of it. There were a lot of people there. Finn made religious signs.

“Do we wait?” I asked Aunt Beck. “They must have been going for a day and a night by now.”

“I suppose so,” my aunt replied sourly. “They have to stop soon.”

“No, no!” squawked Green Greet.

“Oh no, Wisdom,” Finn said. “You see, they will have prayed each man to his chosen god for strength to fight for a week. And poured whisky out to seal the bargain.”

“What a waste of good liquor,” said my aunt. “But I see that they have.”

So did I see, now I thought. There was an invisible cloud hanging over the tussling men which was strong enough to feel. “So what do we do?” I asked.

“We take the only free road,” Aunt Beck said, sighing, “and hope that it leads us to a king sometime soon.” She clucked to Moe and we set off again, slowly and cautiously, along the left-hand track. I felt nervous sweat break out all over me as we came closer and closer to the war. I was ready to scream as we came level with it. The red faces, the grunts and the banging were simply appalling. Once the battle was a little way behind us, it was almost worse. We all went with our heads turned over our right shoulders, in case someone broke away and came after us, and none of us spoke until we had put a low hill between us and the fighting.

Then Finn took off his frayed green cap and mopped his face with it. “Praise the Goddess!” he said. Then he laughed. “You spoke of a king, Wisdom,” he said, “but in this part of the country we are quite as likely to find a queen. Queens are very frequent here. Does this worry you, Wisdom?”

“Not at all,” said my aunt. “Women have far more sense than men.”

Ivar snorted at this, but at least he had the sense not to say anything.

We went along the track for some way until, about the time the noise from the fighting died out of hearing, the path suddenly divided into three. Aunt Beck pulled Moe up again.

“Now this is very annoying,” she said. “Finn, have you any idea which is our way to go?”

Finn looked absolutely nonplussed. “No, Wisdom. Can you not divine?”

“Oh!” cried my aunt, quite exasperated. “I thought you were our native guide! Very well. Aileen, unpack my divining bowl from the green bag, will you?”

We moved the cart over beside a convenient flat stone, while I dug in the bag – which still smelt strongly of seawater – and disentangled the bowl from Aunt Beck’s underclothes. Everyone gathered around to watch except Ivar, who sat loftily facing the other way, trying not to yawn. Ogo leant over my shoulder. Green Greet sat on the edge of the cart, bending over to look, with Finn beside him in exactly the same attitude. I felt Plug-Ugly’s soft coat brushing my legs as he came to watch too.

“Now—” said my aunt.

She was interrupted by a little red-haired man who had evidently been dozing with his back against the stone. “What’s all this?” he said. “Clattering bowls about. Can’t a man sleep?”

“I beg your pardon,” my aunt said icily. “I was merely trying to divine the right way to go.”

“Oh, I can tell you that,” the man retorted. “No need at all to clatter. Take the middle way. That will bring you to your queen.” And he settled down to sleep again with his pointed chin on his chest.

“Thank you,” said Aunt Beck. “I think,” she added when the fellow just snored. Nevertheless, she got back into the cart. I put the bowl away again and we went on down the central road of the three.

Finn and Green Greet seemed mightily disappointed. Finn said, “And here was I hoping to see a Wisdom at work!”

Ivar muttered that he couldn’t see what difference it made which road we took. “It’s all the same in this beastly flat country,” he told Ogo.

Ogo said, “Funny, I feel the same way about Skarr.”

“What do you mean?” Ivar demanded. “Skarr’s not flat.”

“No, but there’s always just another mountain,” Ogo said.

“Oh, you’re such a fool!” Ivar said and went stalking angrily ahead along the turfy track.

“Do you mean that?” I asked Ogo. “Can’t you really tell one mountain from another?”

“Well, they have different shapes,” Ogo conceded, “but they’re all high and steep and rocky and – well – the same colours.”

I supposed he had a point.

After that, we trudged along for miles, through several more showers of rain and rainbows as the sun came out again, until I for one was both tired and hungry.

“Hold up,” Finn said to me kindly. “Here we come into the town.”

“What town?” Ivar said. There was nothing around us except green humps. They were the sort of humps you get when people have been mining years ago and then gone away and let grass grow over the spoil heaps. These heaps grew taller and taller as we went along.

Aunt Beck gave Finn an irritable, puzzled look. “This doesn’t look like any town I know.”

Finn beamed. He almost glowed, he was so happy. On his shoulder, Green Greet stretched his neck and gave out a most unparrot-like warbling sound. But I had been thinking for some time now that Green Greet was not exactly a parrot. He was more something along the lines of Plug-Ugly really. Finn lifted his beaming face up to my aunt and said, “No more should you know, Wisdom. This is my Lady’s town.”

I saw what he meant. If I screwed my eyes up, and sort of peered at the green humps, I saw them as house-shaped, with green thatched roofs and high arched doorways. At length, Aunt Beck was driving Moe down a wide turf avenue with mansion-sized green houses on either side and ahead a tall, tall hill that managed to be both rounded and castle-shaped at once. She looked down at Finn, trotting beside the cart. “Would you say,” she asked, “that the person beside that stone happened to be a leprechaun?”

“Oh certainly, Wisdom,” he said joyfully. “No doubt of it.”

“Then are we to be wary of tricks?” asked my aunt.

“Only if you invite them, Wisdom,” Finn said.

“Hm,” she said.

We reached the castle-mound then and we were suddenly surrounded by little red-haired men, who flooded in from nowhere and took hold of Moe and unhitched her from the cart, chattering all the time.

“Sure, the queen will be glad of this!” I heard, and, “This is royal visiting! Has no one yet sounded a fanfare?” and “Can you smell the sea on them? They come from distant islands, all but one,” and all sorts of other things. “See the bird!”

In no time at all Moe had been led off one way, and the cart hauled away in another, and we ourselves ushered into the castle-mound. There were different people in there, though they were very hard to see. It was as if there was a veil over everything inside. But, if I screwed my eyes up and peered hard, I could tell they were very tall and dressed most magnificently. Almost equally hard to see was the table they led us up to, all laid out with steaming dishes of food, piles of fruit and golden candlesticks.

“Be pleased to sit and eat,” they told us.

Ivar and Ogo made a dive for the tall chairs at the table. Aunt Beck stopped me and looked at Finn with her head on one side, questioningly. “Ought we?”

“You come in friendship. Yes,” he said.

So we sat down to eat. It was all delicious, and I saw that there was even a cup of nuts and diced fruit for Green Greet. Dimly, on the floor, I could see that there were dishes of food for Plug-Ugly. They knew he was there, even if he was invisible. We all had the best meal I’d seen since we left Skarr.

When we had finished, the tall people led us off again, to a place that I knew at once was the throne room. Ogo had eaten so much that he was quietly letting his belt out as we were led in and he had to stop in embarrassment. The place was one where you had to behave reverently. The air of it was warm and fresh and cool at the same time, and it was scented like a garden. There were nets in there, though I couldn’t see them clearly, with birds in them flitting. Green Greet took off from Finn’s shoulder in a whirring of wings and went to perch on one of the half-seen branches.

Then the queen came forward to greet us. I gasped: she was so beautiful. And merrily and eagerly friendly with it. She wore a green dress that hugged her shape and flared at her feet, with a gold girdle hanging on her hips. I remember thinking, This is how a queen should be! as she came towards us.

“Welcome,” she said, and she smiled, meaning the welcome. “It’s not often that we see people from Skarr. What brings you to Bernica?”

My aunt stepped forward, very straight and precise. I could see she was still struggling with her bad mood, but she bowed politely and said, “We have been sent on a mission to rescue the High King’s son from Haranded, Your Majesty.”

“Oh yes, the prophecy,” the Queen said, “to raise the barrier too, is it not?” She looked at us all one by one. “That means you must bring one man from each of the islands. You,” she looked at Ivar, “must be the man from Skarr.”

Ivar nodded. “Yes, I’m the son of King Kenig …” he agreed and tipped his head back proudly.

“A prince, no less,” said the Queen, and there was just a trace of mockery in the way she said it. It made me want to jump forward and explain that Ivar had been brought up to be proud of his birth, but I said nothing, because the Queen had turned to Finn by then. Finn, to my surprise, was on both knees and seemed almost terrified. “And you are the man from Bernica?” the Queen said.

Finn clasped both plump hands in front of him as if he were saying his prayers. “Oh yes, Lady,” he more or less whispered, “unless you think me unworthy.”

The Queen laughed. “How could I think you unworthy, keeper of Green Greet?” she said.

“Well, sure, he does me great honour accepting my care,” Finn said.

The Queen glanced up at Green Greet where he sat among the hard-to-see leaves above us. “What do you say to that, Green Greet?” she asked the bird.

Green Greet put his head to one side and nibbled with his beak. “Honest man,” he said. “Man of peace.”

“There you have it!” the Queen said, laughing again. She added to Aunt Beck, “You’ll have to leave any fighting to these lads, you know!” She looked at Ogo then. “And you, young man?”

Ogo had been staring at her as if she were the most marvellous thing he had ever seen – and I don’t blame him: she was truly lovely. When she spoke to him, he blushed bright brick colour and went down on one knee. “I – I’m from H-Haranded really,” he stammered. “I was brought along as Ivar’s servant.”

“But rightly brought along,” the Queen said. “The prophecy asks for a man from each island, doesn’t it? And we are four islands. I’m sure you’ll prove your worth.” She turned to Aunt Beck again. “You’ll need your man from Gallis too of course. I’ll give you money to see you there—”

Here, while Aunt Beck was graciously bowing her head in thanks and Ogo was struggling to his feet, looking stunned, the Queen was interrupted by a solid, invisible presence that pushed itself up against her skirts. I could clearly see the shape of him in the bellying and rippling of the green fabric.

“Oh, Plug-Ugly!” I said. “Honestly!”

The Queen stooped to put her hand where Plug-Ugly’s head seemed to be. “Is that what you call him?” she said. “How did he find you?”

“He was on an island that seemed to be part of Lone, Majesty,” I said. “He – er – sort of followed us.”

“Or followed you,” the Queen said. She turned to Aunt Beck again. “You are very lucky to have such a gifted assistant,” she said.

I knew I was blushing redder than Ogo. Aunt Beck shot me a scathing look and answered in her driest way, “If gifted means secretly adopting a stray cat, then I suppose I am lucky, yes.”

This did not please the Queen at all. Her beautiful eyes narrowed and she said, quite fiercely, “I know this cat. He would only follow someone of great abilities.”

Aunt Beck shrugged. “I’ve no idea what Aileen’s abilities might be.”

“My good woman!” the Queen exclaimed. “Why not?”

If there is one thing my aunt hates, it is being called a good woman. She drew herself in like a poker. “Why?” she said. “What a stupid question. Because Aileen failed her initiation of course.”

I think I went even redder. My face was so hot that when I put up my hands to hide it my fingers were wet with sweat. I know Aunt Beck was in a bad mood, but did she have to tell the Queen that? I could hear Ivar trying not to laugh.

The Queen made me feel no better by saying angrily, “She can have done no such thing! You must be very unobservant. I can see she is as well qualified as you are. And I do not like your manner, woman. I have said I will grant you money and so I will, but I shall do nothing more to further your mission. And you, particularly, may leave my presence unblessed! Go!” She flung out an arm, pointing.

And that is the last I remember of her. Ogo says he thinks he remembers that people took us and hustled us out of the place. But I only remember being outside, among the green mounds, with Moe already harnessed to the cart beside us. My aunt was clutching a chinking leather bag and looking surprised and angry about it.

Finn was crying, with big tears rolling into his strange beard. “Oh, Wisdom!” he sobbed. “How could you so insult the Lady?”

Green Greet added to this by swirling down from somewhere, crying out, “Unwise Wisdom, unwise Wisdom!”

“Huh!” said Aunt Beck and stomped her way up into the driving seat, red heels flashing annoyance at us all.