Unicorn Ring - Here There Be Dragonnes Part 66

"They took the road to Evreux, according to a peasant we met, but we went a good five miles down and no sign of them. Another fellow coming back from the town reported a wagon going the other way, but we saw no sign of it."

"Fresh instructions: Sir Robert found a door or something leading up to the walk-away, and has reason to believe the girl may be wise to the pursuit. Go back the way you came, search along the way for more clues. We are taking the western road. Orders are the same: lose 'em, permanently!"

"Jewels still missing?"

"So the lady says."

"How's the boy taking it?"

"State of shock. Can't believe it. I fancy he was sweet on her. Can't say as I blame him: know which one I'd've preferred."

And they rode off in the direction of the fork in the road, leaving me in a state of disbelief. So that was Sir Robert's excuse: I was supposed to have stolen some jewels! I realized that it would have made no difference what I had written; valuables would still have disappeared, and I should have been to blame. So now there was a price on my head, and death the reward. No turning back, however much I might have wanted to.

I wondered when the jewels would conveniently turn up again-or would Gill's father believe it worth the game to leave them buried or whatever, and buy Rosamund some more?

Once we reached the demesne, the Wimperling led us along deer tracks through the forest, at a convenient distance from the manor house. We described a great loop around the demesne, going short of food because I couldn't light fires, though the Wimperling and Growch were quite happy with raw sausages. On the third day the Wimperling declared us free of the de Faucon estate, and we found a road of sorts.

At the first village we came to, two days later, I threw caution to the winds, and spent far more than I intended on bought food, luxuriating on pies and roasted meat. In the next village and the next I recouped some of the results of my spendthrift ways with a performance, but villagers have little enough to spend at the best of times, and now the winter was fast approaching.

Which led to the question of where we were headed.

All I had thought about up to now had been escaping Sir Robert, but now was the time to consider our future. I knew Growch had said he wanted a warm fire, a family and plenty to eat, and I had set off on this whole enterprise with the thought of finding a complaisant and wealthy husband, but as far as I could see, neither of us were nearer our goal, once I had refused Matthew's offer. And what of the Wimperling? He had never asked for a destination, had seemed content to follow wherever we went. But we couldn't just go on wandering like this: if nothing else we had to find winter quarters, and soon.

The question of which way to go came up naturally enough. One morning we stood at a crossroads; all roads looked more or less the same, and I had no particular feeling about any of them, except that south would be warmer, and it might be easier to over-winter in or near some town.

"Which way?" I asked the others, not really expecting an answer, for Growch was a follower rather than a leader, and the Wimperling had never expressed a preference. Now, however, he did have something to say.

"Er . . . I'd rather like to discuss that," he said diffidently. "Perhaps we could sit down?"

"Lunchtime anyhow," said Growch, looking up at the weak sun. "Got any more o' that pie left?"

"We finished that yesterday. Cheese, apples, bean loaf, cold bacon-"

"Yes."

The Wimperling chose the apples and I munched on the cheese.

"Right, Wimperling, what did you have in mind?"

He still seemed reluctant to ask. "When-when you so kindly rescued me," he began, "I said I would like to tag along because there was nowhere special I wanted to go. . . ."

I nodded encouragingly. "And now there is?"

"There wasn't then, but there is now. Yes." He sat back on his haunches, looking relieved. "Let me explain. When I was little I was brought up as a pig and believed I was one-in spite of the wings and the other bits that didn't quite fit." He held up one foot, and looked at the claws, much bigger now.

"See what I mean? Well, ever since then as I have been growing I have felt more and more that I wasn't a pig. What I was, I didn't quite know, though I had my suspicions. Then, that night when we crossed the border, I thought I knew. And the feeling has been growing stronger ever since."

"Can you tell us?"

He shuffled about a bit. "I'd rather not, just yet. In case I'm terribly wrong . . .

But I should like you to come with me, to find out. You might find it quite interesting, I think."

I looked at Growch, who was practically standing on his head trying to get a piece of rind out of his back teeth. No help there.

"Of course we will come. Where do you want to go? How far away is it?"

"One hundred and twelve miles and a quarter west-southwest," he said precisely. "Give or take a yard or so."

I flung my arms about his neck, laughing, then planted a kiss on his snout.

"How on earth can you be so-"

But before I had finished my sentence an extraordinary explosion took place.

The Wimperling literally zoomed some twenty feet into the air vertically, then whizzed first right and then left and then in circles, almost faster than the eye could see. As he was now considerably larger than I was, I was tumbled head- over-heels and Growch disappeared into a bush, rind and all.

The whole thing can only have lasted some fifteen seconds or so, but it seemed forever. I curled up in a ball for protection, my fingers in my ears, my eyes tight shut, until an almighty thump on the ground in front of me announced the Wimperling's return to earth.

I opened my eyes, my ears and finally my mouth. "You nearly scared the skin off me! What in the world do you think you're doing?" I asked furiously.

Then: "You're-you're different!"

He looked as if someone had just taken him apart and then rea.s.sembled him rather badly. Everything was in the right place, more or less, but the pieces looked as if they might have been borrowed from half a dozen other animals.

His ears were smaller, his tail longer, his back scalier, his snout bigger, his chest deeper, his stomach flatter, his claws more curved, and the lumps on his side where he hid his wings looked like badly folded sacks. He looked less like a pig than ever, while still being one, and his expression was pure misery.

My anger and fright evaporated like morning mist. "Oh, Wimperling! I'm so sorry! You look dreadful-was it something I said? Or did?"

His voice had gone unexpectedly deep and gruff, as if his insides had been shaken up as well. "You kissed me. I told you once before never to do that again. . . . Remember?"

I did, now. "Sorry, sorry, sorry! It's just that-just that when one feels grateful or happy or loving it seems the right thing to do. For me, anyway." I thought.

"It didn't have the same effect on Gill. And, come to that, I've never kissed Growch. . . ."

"Who wants kisses, anyway?" demanded the latter, who had crept out from his bush, minus rind, I was glad to see. "Kissin's soppy; kissin's for pups and babies an' all that rubbish!" Something told me that in spite of the words he was jealous, so I picked him up and planted three kisses on his nose.

"There! Now you're one ahead. . . ."

He rubbed his nose on his paws and then sneezed violently. "Gerroff! s.h.i.t: now you'll have me sneezin' all night. . . . Poof!" He nodded towards the Wimperling. "An' if that's what a kiss can do, then I don' wan' no more, never!"

I turned back to the Wimperling. "Better now?"

He nodded. "Think so . . ." His voice was still deep, and if I hoped he would regain his old shape gradually, I was to be disappointed. "As I was saying, before all-this-happened-" He looked down at his altered shape. "I should like to go to the place where it all started. The place where I was hatched, born, whatever . . . The Place of Stones."

This sounded interesting. "And is this the place that you said was a hundred miles or so to the west-something?"

He nodded.

I wasn't going to miss this, hundred miles or no. "Will you set up your home where you were born?" "Hatched" still sounded silly. Pigs aren't hatched.

"No. It will merely be the place from where I set out on a longer journey, to the place where my ancestors came from."

"A sentimental journey, then," I said.

"An essential one. Without going back to the beginnings I will not have my coordinates."

"Yer what?"

"Guidelines, dog. Itinerary to humans."

Growch scratched vigorously. "Me ancestors go back as far as me mum, and I doubt if even she knew who me dad was, and as for me guidelines . . . I follows me nose." And he accompanied the said object into the bushes, his tail waving happily.

"And how far is it to where your ancestors came from?"

"Many thousands of miles," said the Wimperling. "A journey only I can take.

But I should be glad of your company as far as the Place of Stones. . . ."

"You have it," I said. We sat quiet for a moment, and I suddenly realized that my conversations had been, for a long time, on a different level with the Wimperling than with the others. He didn't just "talk" in short sentences about the food or the weather, he communicated with me as though we were two equal beings, talking about feelings and emotions, even philosophizing a little. He wasn't really like an animal at all- "And then you will be free to seek that husband of yours," continued the Wimperling, as though I had just said something. "Will you tell him your real name?"

I gazed at him blankly. "My real name? What do you mean? My name is Summer-well, Somerdai."

"The name on the register, as you keep telling yourself. Your birth was recorded by the priest but he never knew the exact date. So he wrote 'Summer day,' only he ran the letters together and misspelled them because he was an old man. . . . But when you saw it written down you seized on the name, as a convenient way of burying deeper the hurt when you learned your real, given name. . . ."

I was stunned. How did he know about the register? But it was my name, it was, it was! If I'd had another, then my mother would have called me by it instead of "girl," or "daughter" as she always did.

"I know because the memory is still there inside you," he said, "hurting to get out. Thoughts like that escape sometimes when you are asleep because they want to be out in the open. I have become used to your thoughts in the time we have traveled together. You have tried to kill the memory because you are ashamed, but let it go and you will feel better. I know, because I am not what they called me, Wimperling, and when my new name comes I shall be a different person."

A nasty, horrid picture was forming in my mind, however hard I tried to stifle it, cry "Go away! I don't want to remember. It happened to someone else, not me!" A child, a girl of four or five, a fat little girl, was playing on the doorstep as one of her mother's clients came to the door. And the mother said to the child: "Go and play for a while, girl. . . ." And the man said: "Why don't you call her by her given name?"

" . . . and my mother said: 'How can I call that shapeless lump with the pudding-face Talitha when she is neither graceful nor beautiful, nor will ever be? I was pregnant when-when her father died, and he had made me promise to give her that name if it were a girl. Of course I agreed, never expecting she would be so plain and clumsy!'" I was crying now, hot tears of shame and remembered humiliation. "How could you remind me! I had forgotten, I didn't remember, it hurts!"

"And that is why you stuffed the memory away for so long, just because you were afraid of the hurt. But it was a long time ago, and things-and people- change. Now you have let it out, you will heal, believe me, and be whole." He hesitated. "I will not be with you much longer, so please forgive me. I did it for you."

"Yes, yes, I know you did. . . ." I tried the name on my tongue. Now I remembered my father had chosen it, it seemed right. "I feel better already.

Thanks, Whimper . . . But you said you weren't. Aren't . . . you know what I mean! What is your real name?"

He shook his head. "That's the exciting thing. I don't know yet. It comes with the change, the rebirth if you like. All I know is that I took a form and a name that was convenient at the time, in order to survive. That's how I remember how far it is, counting the steps we traveled when they took me away. And that is how I can guide you there."

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's get going. Come on Growch, wherever you are: we are going to a place full of stones, and you can christen every one!"

"Oh, I don't think so," said the Wimperling. "These stones are-different."

We were now in the last couple of weeks of October, and the weather stayed fine. We made leisurely progress, ten or twelve miles a day, but the terrain changed dramatically with every turn of the road. Villages became smaller, more isolated, there were fewer farms and no great houses or castles. The land became rocky, wilder, less hospitable, and now, instead of dusty lanes, there were sheep tracks, moorland paths, great stretches of heather, thyme, gorse and broom. A barren land as far as crops went, but with a wild beauty of its own.

The winds blew with no hindrance, whirling my hair into great tangles and carrying in their arms gulls, buzzards, crows, peregrines and merlin. The undergrowth hid fox, hare, coney, stoat, weasel and an occasional marten; under our feet the ground was springy with mosses, lichen, heather, bilberry, juniper, cotton gra.s.s and bracken, the latter the color of Matthew's hair, Saffron's cat-coat. Away from the paths the going was tough; wet feet, scratched legs and turned ankles the penalty for trying a shortcut.

We came upon a small village, some seven days before the end of the month, and the Wimperling advised me to stock up. They had only had a small harvest, but were eager to have coin to buy in some grain, so I used what little I had left and was rewarded with cheese, salt pork, honey, turnip, onion and small apples, till I could hardly stagger away under the weight. Once away from the village however, the Wimperling insisted I load most of it on his back.

"My strength is much greater now I approach the end of my journey."

"So is your size," I said, for now he was truly enormous: over twice as big as me, length and breadth.

"Ah, but I have much to hide. . . ."

"If you hides it much longer you'll burst," said Growch. "If'n I had that load abroad I reckon me legs'ud be worn to stumps."

"Really? I was under the impression that is what had happened already. . . ."

The next day we topped a rise in the land and there were the Stones in the distance. Not just ordinary stones, but ones of great size and power, even from miles away. I could feel them now from where I stood, both repelling and attracting at the same time. We had already pa.s.sed the odd standing stone and the stumps of plundered circles, but there for the first time was a veritable forest, a city of stones: circles, lanes, avenues, clumps; grey and forbidding, they pointed cold stone fingers at the sky, now whipped by a westerly into a roil of rearing clouds. Down here at ground level it was still relatively calm, but the heavens were racing faster than man could run.

The Wimperling heaved a great tremble of antic.i.p.ation and satisfaction. "The Place of Stones starts here. Half a day's journey and we are there."

Briefly I wondered how we were going to find our way back to civilization without our guide, but I held my tongue, sure he would have a solution.

That night we sheltered in a dell, the freshening wind creaking the branches of the twisted pine and rowan above our heads, the latter's leaves near all gone, the few berries blackened. I fell asleep uneasily, with Growch tucked against my side, to wake half a dozen times. And each time it was to see the Wimperling standing still as the stones, his gaze fixed westward, the wind flapping his small ears, his snout questing from side to side and up and down, as though reading a message in the night only he could comprehend.

In the morning the wind had swung to the northwest and it was noticeably chillier. After breakfast, as I strapped the Wimperling's burdens to his back, I noticed how hot his skin felt, as if he was burning from some internal fever; I made some silly quip about burning my fingers, but I don't think he even heard. His gaze was fixed on the journey ahead, and he didn't seem ill in any way, only impatient to be off.

The further we went, the more stones; some upright, others broken, a few lying full length, yet more with a drunken lean like the few trees in this bare landscape, which all grew away from the prevailing westerlies, like little hunched people with their hoods up and their cloaks flapping in the breeze.

More and more stones, and yet we never seemed to get near enough to them to touch. There they were to left and right, ahead, behind, distinguishable apart by their different shapes, height, angle, markings and yet as soon as I headed towards one I found I had mysteriously left it behind, or it had grown more distant. I even felt as though I pa.s.sed the same monolith a dozen times as if we were walking in circles through a gigantic maze, but the Wimperling still trotted forward confidently and the ring was quiet on my finger.

At last we came to a great avenue of stone, and there in the distance was a huddle of ruined buildings on a small rise. The Wimperling stopped and looked back at us. "There it is," he said simply. "Journey's end."

It didn't look like much to me, and looked less so the nearer we approached.

It was the remains of what had obviously been a small farm-cottage, barn, stable and sty-and the buildings were rapidly crumbling. The thatch had gone, apart from some on one corner of the cottage, the broken-shuttered windows gaped like missing teeth and all walls and fencing had been broken down. The place was deserted, no people, no animals and, perhaps because it was the only sign of civilization we had seen in a couple of days, the desolation seemed worse than it probably was.

"And all this in less than a year," said the Wimperling, as if to himself. "They angered the Stones. . . ." Then he turned to us. "You must be hungry and tired.

And cold, too. Come with me and don't be afraid. I promise you will feel better in a little while."

I hoped so. Just at that moment I felt I had had more than enough of the mysterious Stones: all I wanted was to find some cozy corner inside where I could curl up and forget outside.

He led us to that part of the cottage adjoining the barn where there was still a corner of roofing. The room itself was about twelve feet square, with a central hearth, but I dragged over enough stones to make another fireplace under the remaining thatch. There was plenty of wood lying about, and I soon had a cheerful blaze going, the smoke obliging by curling up and disappearing without hindrance. I found a stave in one corner and, binding some heather to the end, made a broom stout enough to sweep away the debris from our end of the room. Then I went out and gathered enough bracken to make a comfortable bed for later. The Wimperling showed me where a small spring trickled away past the house, and I filled the cooking pot and set about dinner.

I had the bone from the salt bacon, root vegetables and onion, and was just adding a pinch or two of herbs when the Wimperling strode in with a carefully wrapped leaf in his mouth. Inside were other leaves, some mushrooms and a powder I couldn't identify, but on his nod I added them all to the stew, and the aroma that immediately spread around the room had me salivating and Growch's stomach rumbling. I had a little flour left so I put some dough to cook on a hot hearthstone. I tasted the stew, added a little salt, then walked outside to join the Wimperling and Growch, who were variously gazing up at a waxing moon, some three or four days off full, riding uneasily at anchor among the tossing clouds, and searching the old midden for anything edible.

"Will it rain tonight?"

"Probably," said the Wimperling. "But we have shelter."

"Is it-time? Are you going tomorrow?"