Authors: Iain Pears
‘So go, examine, come back. I can’t shut it down until we get Rosie out, but we can deal with her later. You can still work for me, if you like. I’ll need help. You can’t imagine how much fun it can be here, once you get the hang of the place. What on earth is the matter with you?’
Chang suddenly looked as though he was about to be sick. His face turned white, then red and blotchy, and he was breathing hard.
‘I …’ he began in a strange voice, rather like someone who had swallowed something too big for him. Then his voice changed completely. ‘Angela,’ he said. ‘Robert Hanslip here. You really must come back. I fear Oldmanter will make Emily will pay a heavy price if you refuse. I’m sure you know what that means.’
Then he stopped and his face recovered its colour. ‘I’m sorry. My mind was wandering.’
‘What did you just say?’
‘I said I didn’t want to stay long.’
Angela sat very still for a few moments. ‘You just spoke like Hanslip,’ she said.
Chang wrinkled his nose in slight distaste. ‘Did I? He said he was sending a message to you. It was meant to appear if I found you. Maybe that was it. Was it useful?’
‘No.’
There was a short silence as Angela – for once seeming quite unsettled – disappeared into herself.
‘Well, it doesn’t change anything,’ she said eventually. ‘I still have to find out what it is, and you still need somewhere to hide. It’s very simple, not like the other machine. Say you need the toilet, go downstairs. You’ll see an iron pergola against the far wall. Just walk through. I’ll reopen it in the same place in six days’ time. Your time, not the time here. Be back where you arrived without fail. If something goes wrong …’
‘Such as?’
‘I don’t know. I’m just being careful. I don’t want to lose another person in there. If you do miss it, go to the Circle of Esilio at Willdon. That gives me a place. Timing is more difficult. Aim for the evening of the fifth day of the fifth-year festival at Willdon. I’ve already done the calculations for that.’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘There are festivals to mark the accession of the rulers there. There’s no better way of calculating dates that I know of. They don’t have any rational or fixed system for counting time. Henry never devised one and I used the absence to keep it secure. Their attitude to time is one thing I need you to check.’
Chang opened his mouth to ask more questions, but she was spared the difficulty of answering by the door opening once more.
Wind peered round at the two people. ‘Who are you?’ he said to the unknown man. ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter. I just thought I’d tell you that the van will be here any moment now. I’ll be off as well.’
He glanced briefly at the other person in the room, who had raised a hand like a naughty schoolboy.
‘I need to, ah …’
‘Ah what?’
‘To go to the toilet.’
Wind grunted. ‘Good for you,’ he said. ‘I believe it’s on the half landing, if that’s what you want to know.’
‘Shouldn’t you go with him?’ Angela asked loudly.
‘Why on earth would I want to do that?’
‘I just thought … oh, no reason,’ she said. ‘Up to you, of course. I’m sorry.’
Wind stared at her. Odd woman, he thought to himself as he heard the sound of footsteps going towards Lytten’s cellar.
37
By late morning the next day, a passing fox might have paused, sniffed the air cautiously, then quietly changed its course to avoid a small copse of trees deep in the forest of Willdon. It would have known by the faintest of smells that something unusual lurked there. An inquisitive beast would have found, curled up in the perfect blanket of dry leaves left over from the previous autumn, two recumbent forms, lying in each other’s arms in a pose of complete friendship. One, the shorter, snored gently. The other, the taller, grunted in her sleep as she relived in her dreams the remarkable events of the previous twenty-four hours.
As the sun rose in the sky, a large fly settled on the nose of the taller figure, and slowly, after a moment’s careful thought, decided to investigate the possibilities of food up the left nostril. The intrusion provoked a response. The girl sat up and slapped her own nose with her hand, causing her to cry out in pain and surprise. The sound made her companion roll over and groan, then open an eye.
‘I’m sleeping,’ she said.
Rosalind did not answer; instead she was too occupied trying to make sure that whatever it was that had crawled up her nose was gone. By the time she was satisfied, she was fully awake and standing up. Only then did she realise that, if she had been dreaming, then the dream, quite against all custom, was continuing to run its course. She was, indeed, dressed as a man, having evidently spent the night sleeping in a wood with a singer she had met, in some entirely unlikely land which was as real as the fly up her nose. The shock was so great that the alternative – that she should be in double French – never even crossed her mind.
Instead, she sat down heavily and burst into tears.
Her companion was more perplexed than sympathetic, although she too was beginning to realise the enormous consequences of her presence there. She had fled from her master after trying to murder him. Fights and physical violence were one thing; laying him out cold was quite another. This time she had gone too far. Curiously, though, she did not regret it in the slightest. What possibly could happen to someone as beautiful and as gifted as she was? She had lost her master. She would find another. She would never starve and now she could sing as she wanted, not as Rambert said she must. She was free.
She was also hungry. As, indeed, was Rosalind when, after five minutes of constant crying, her companion had done nothing whatsoever to comfort her.
‘Are you finished?’ Aliena asked when the sobbing finally came to an end.
She nodded.
‘Good. Horrible noise.’
‘I’m upset. Don’t you see?’
‘Of course I see. But what do you want me to do about it?’
‘You’re meant to cheer me up.’
‘Very well. Cheer up.’
Aliena brushed the leaves off her clothing and stood up, then stretched herself.
‘I want my breakfast.’
‘So do I.’
It was at this precise point that the shepherd – looking for a stray ewe and curious about the sounds of life coming from the little copse – discovered them.
He was a good-looking man in his way, with an open face hard and tanned from life in the fresh air, gnarled hands and strong chest and arms. He approached, saw the pair sitting on the ground and, after a few moments’ contemplation of the scene, smiled broadly.
‘Ah, young lovers! Good morning to you both, good sir and
young lady. It is a fine day to awake so.’
‘What?’ Rosalind said in utter astonishment, not least because for the first time she found she could understand much of what he said.
The shepherd winked. ‘You’ll have been at the Lady’s Festivity, I’ll be bound,’ he said, ‘“where love blossoms and fair affections thrive,” as they say.’
Rosalind stared open-mouthed. She understood that wink. It was left to Aliena to reply.
‘Indeed, but as it is said also, “love does not always welcome the light, nor the eyes of strangers.”’
‘That is certainly true, young lady. But what is hidden is often the most valuable.’
Aliena nodded appreciatively. ‘You are a very learned shepherd.’
‘And you are a lady of refinement, but what of your silent companion here? Is he so exhausted from his night’s labours he cannot even talk?’ He winked again, which Rosalind found offensive. Aliena, however, seemed to be enjoying herself.
‘Ah, good shepherd, “his virtues do not lie in his words,”’ she said, at which the man laughed heartily.
‘“He who labours, hungers after,”’ he responded. ‘In that case, you must allow me to offer you the sustenance you require, you and your young man. I have a poor abode, small and rough, but it is comfortable and welcoming to those of good heart. In it there is porridge and milk fresh from the ewe; bread and butter, honey from the hive. All that man or woman could desire. Or almost all,’ he added with another wink.
‘Lead on, then, good man,’ Aliena said with a curtsy, ‘and let us be honoured by your hospitality.’
‘As my house will be honoured by your presence,’ came the reply.
He whistled to his dog, which bounded up and sniffed around the newcomers, then walked off. Aliena dug Rosalind in the ribs. ‘Wasn’t that lucky?’
Rosalind, however, was still in a state of indignation. ‘But he thought … he thought … He winked at me.’
‘You are dressed as a man, you know. Your hair is short, and those clothes cover up your shape very effectively. So of course he winked. Don’t you find it funny?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, dearest Rosalind, don’t be cross! It is a beautiful morning, we are in the forest, we are going to eat. What more could woman (or man, in your case) want?’
‘You have no idea,’ Rosalind said.
‘We can talk about that later. In the meantime, we must eat, and pay for our food.’
‘How are we going to do that? I have no money.’
‘Nor I. We must pay in entertainment. We must give you a new name, to go with your manhood.’
‘Why?’
‘How are we going to cross his threshold if we are not presented to the house spirits?’
‘Oh. Silly me,’ Rosalind said.
*
She found the meal in the forest cottage even more enchanting than the world of the grand house. Unlike the squalid abode of Aliena’s teacher, it was fresh and clean and airy, more a shelter than a house, open to the elements, with a table outside under a little awning of creeper from which hung delicate purple flowers that gave off a faint but agreeable scent. They were presented to the house as Mistress Aliena and Master Ganimed – this a name that Aliena came up with on the spur of the moment – and breakfast was served, although this was marred a little for Rosalind by the frequent toasts from the shepherd that the fruit of her loins be sturdy. But the food was all simple and delicious.
‘How do you do all this?’ she asked when they had finished eating. ‘All this food? Where does it come from?’
‘Why, my friends give it, in exchange for looking after their flocks, of course. I have a deep cool hole to keep it fresh; the milk I get myself, the fruit I pick myself. The water comes cold from the stream. What more could I desire, which nature does not provide?’
For a moment she agreed, and then Rosalind thought of her mother’s new washing machine, the comfy new sofa, the iron, the radio … there was no point even mentioning such things, though. She would have to explain how they worked, for a start.
‘Isn’t it cold in winter?’
‘Oh, I don’t stay here in winter, young sir. I take my flocks back to their owners and rest myself with them, one after the other, until spring comes again. It is only in the snow months that it is truly difficult to be in the open.’
‘What if you get ill, or something like that?’
‘Then I get better again. If I do not, then I die,’ he said simply. ‘How else could it be?’
Rosalind had no answer to that one, although she felt instinctively that there should be more to say on the topic, so she lapsed into silence while Aliena carried on the conversation. She was beginning to get the hang of how the ordinary people spoke, but it was still an effort to understand, and an even greater one to say anything. She let her mind drift and watched the shadows dance on the ground, feeling the warmth of the air. It was going to be hot today. She should be tired, but her senses were so alive she felt no fatigue, just a sort of dreamy state where she was aware of everything, but only as a bystander. She even stopped wondering where on earth she was. If, indeed, she was on earth.
She came to as she heard Aliena saying that it was time to move on, that they had trespassed on his hospitality for long enough. The shepherd was in no rush, though; Rosalind got the feeling that he didn’t have much company, alone in the woods, and was grateful for the diversion.
‘Where are you going?’
‘We don’t really know,’ Aliena said. ‘Into the forest. We need
… time. And privacy.’ Here she glanced archly at him.
He nodded knowingly. ‘I understand. I was young myself once. It is natural that you wish to know each other first. But you cannot go into the forest. It is dangerous if you do not know it. A good friend to those it accepts, but not safe for anyone else.’
‘We don’t have much choice.’
‘Have my cottage.’
‘We can’t!’ Rosalind said, and instantly regretted it. The man’s face fell, the disappointment clearly marked.
‘You must forgive him,’ Aliena interrupted quickly. ‘He is a stranger and does not know our ways. He thinks only of the inconvenience to you, and of our unworthiness for such kindness. Not that your cottage is unacceptable to us.’ She gave Rosalind a look.
The man’s face brightened. ‘There is no inconvenience, as today I lead my flock up into the hills to settle them for the summer, and will not return for several weeks. As for your unworthiness, then mine is the greater.’
‘We will not fight over such things,’ Aliena replied. ‘We both accept your kindness with the greatest of pleasure and honour. Don’t we, Ganimed?’
‘Oh … yes. Of course, honoured. Very,’ Rosalind said.
*
For two days and nights, then, Rosalind and Aliena lived in perfect happiness in the cottage, cooking, sleeping and talking. Rosalind was delighted; she had never had a proper girlfriend before, someone to talk to without restraint, to gossip and speculate with. Aliena was like her in one thing: she was still at an age when all is believable, if explained by a friend.
So Rosalind told her of her home and her life. Of the pergola in Lytten’s basement. Of her bemusement and slightly giddy feeling about being in a world which Aliena took for granted.
‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘you call it Anterwold.’
‘That’s its name.’
‘Yes, but it’s so very like what someone told me once. In fact, all of this could almost be his story …’
‘… What’s a school?’ Aliena interrupted. ‘Do you mean a college?’
‘… Hockey?’
‘… A gas cooker?’