Arcadia

20

After Henary left an ill-humoured Jay by the side of the road outside Willdon, he went off on his donkey feeling strangely downcast. He hoped he was doing the right thing. He didn’t even know what outcome he wanted. Did he want just to spend an evening with the Lady Catherine, discuss pleasant matters and return the next morning to find Jay there, still in a bad mood?

If that was what happened, it would be an immense weight off his shoulders, certainly. The alternative promised difficulties and heartache. He had spent much of the last five years working on the problem; he had constructed an entire intellectual edifice of speculation which now rested entirely on Jay being disobedient. But what would that really mean?

He could share his ideas with only a few people, but fortunately the Lady of Willdon was one of them. He had taught her informally before her marriage and continued to do so afterwards. He had advised her after Thenald’s death, taught her much of what she needed to know about rule and authority. While few outside the world of the scholars had much taught knowledge, some grandees were educated to a fairly high degree. None would use it for practical purposes, but many studied the stories and loved lengthy discussions about their meanings. Some, by their own efforts, came to a level of understanding that approached that of the scholars themselves. Catherine was one such.

Several of the domains scattered around were of immense age and possessed treasures of great antiquity. In theory, written material was meant to be given to the scholars to be copied and protected. A copy was always presented to the original owners when this had been done, to make it worth their while. It was understood that every scrap which might elucidate or expand the Story should be known, catalogued and made available. Except, of course, that human beings often fall below the standards expected of them and there were still many documents and manuscripts the scholars knew nothing about. Henary had found some at Willdon.

The manuscripts were old but exceptionally well preserved. Half a dozen fragments and scraps written in scripts which took immense labour to decipher. Even now, after many years of study, he had only managed some thirty lines of text.

It was all but meaningless, yet that suggested its meaning was deeper than anything Henary had ever come across before. Words were magic; he who unravelled them took possession of their power. Properly deciphered, even these few lines of scribbles might shed light on the darkness, the forgotten times. He who understood the darkness would also understand the Return, for the beginning and the end were one and the same.

His colleagues would have been violently critical of him for keeping it to himself. There was a reason nothing was known of the darkness and that was, mainly, that people did not want to know. The exiles returned, settled, and history began. Men believed two things simultaneously: that there was no before, and that it was the age of giants.

Instead, the scholars focused on the Story, which began with the Return. All else was myth and allegory, which was left to the mystics, the hermits, the seers and the insane. There were many of them, the believers in prophecies and signs and hidden meanings. It was a constant struggle to stop them from whipping up people with silly ideas, of gods and disasters. The world will end; a Herald will come and summon the emissary of the divine. He will judge Anterwold and either forgive it or destroy it. It took a perverse mind to read such stuff into the texts, unless you deliberately quoted them out of context. By concealing the document, he had saved it from being hidden in an archive or from being an encouragement for the foolish.

He had found it when Catherine, then the dutiful wife, was sorting out the muniments room to restore some order in it after the neglect of her husband. Mainly legal documents, the memorial stories of long-dead members of the domain, records of crop yields and so on, dusty unrewarding work that had taken weeks to complete with a handful of assistants. The manuscripts were in a lead box, inside a wooden, iron-clad chest.

‘Do you wish to take them?’ Catherine had asked.

He had shaken his head. ‘Not yet. Not until I know what they are.’

‘How can you know, if you can’t read them?’

‘Work, my Lady,’ he said with a smile. ‘The sweat of my brow, the labour of the years. Persistence and effort. If I can’t read it, no one else can. So I’m hardly depriving the scholarship of anything.’

‘Arrogant man!’ she said. ‘Even if you are truthful. Tell me why it is so important.’

He had done so, and she had listened with fascination. ‘Where did we come from? Who are we? Who were the giants? I doubt this will provide an answer, but it may offer clues.’

‘This will tell you?’

He smiled ruefully. ‘How should I know? All I’ve unpicked so far is a few short sentences. It speaks of a young boy who has a vision on a hilltop. His name is Jay. The longest passage reads, “It smiled once more, a radiant, celestial smile that brought the warmth back to his body. It raised its hands in what Jay took to be a gesture of peace, then took a step back and was gone.”’

‘What do you think is the meaning of it?’

‘It makes no sense to me. It is obviously of a deep religious significance; the balancing of the celestial with warmth in the sentence suggests linkages between heaven and comfort. Note the words “what Jay took”, which imply doubt and hidden threat. But it is only a passage from a larger text, which remains hidden to me. Then there is another, longer one which I cannot read.’

There the matter had rested until one day, some months later, Henary had gone on a Visitation and had been interrupted by a questioning child. When he had interrogated the family about the boy, he had got the shock of his life.

‘Please forgive him, please. He’s not been himself. He had a shock today, on the hillside...’

‘... says he saw a girl. Don’t we all...?’

‘... makes things up. Sees a fairy. Then the fairy vanishes before anyone else can see it. Of course it does.’

But the name was wrong. Until he questioned the boy himself — ‘everyone calls me Jay.’

Henary had not slept that night. How could it be? What did it mean? How could a child have relived so precisely a sentence of such antiquity?

He had to know the truth but Jay knew nothing. So Henary had taken the boy and begun his education. He had responded well; indeed he was a very able student who had bolstered Henary’s reputation. This Henary carefully hid from his pupil. Jay knew, certainly, that he was quite clever, but Henary did not wish him to become proud, for ‘pride dulls the mind, and blunts the spirit.’ All the while he waited, and whenever he went to Willdon he took out the manuscript and worked on it some more. The girl and the boy would meet again, the words told him eventually.

Henary was annoyed by this, and the temptation it represented. He was trying to unravel the document as a light into the past, and here it was, offering the very different temptations of prophecy.

He had spent his entire career attacking such stuff. All the mystical nonsense babbled by his feeble-minded colleagues he would dismiss, and methodically pick apart their musings, subjecting them and the texts to the cold light of reason. The Story was the truth, but it was not always direct in communicating it. It certainly contained no magic and no prophecies. It concerned what was, not what will be.

But in his last months even Etheran had begun to wonder whether there was something in the utterances of hermits and the interpretations of mystics. Now here was this manuscript, which had foretold Jay and his encounter on the hillside, presenting a new, unrivalled opportunity to test the power of such things. Jay would, one day, trespass in the forest and the girl would appear once more, near the Shrine of the Leader. That was the prediction.

Much was uncertain, there were so many passages and words he could not understand or decipher, but the outline was clear. So he would bring Jay to Willdon and see what happened. He would prove to his satisfaction that this manuscript was not, in fact, magical. It was not prophetic. He would present his case at Ossenfud in a blast against all those who took such things seriously.

‘Why do you pursue this?’ Catherine asked him.

‘Because I need to know. This is undoubtedly a manuscript of high importance. I do not want it diminished by becoming the plaything of soothsayers. It may contain great wisdom. I do not want that lost because it gets tangled up in superstitious babbling.’

‘You really think an apparition will show up in the Shrine?’

‘Of course not.’

‘And if one did?’

‘That would be awkward.’

‘Does your student know any of this?’

‘Not a word.’

There was no guide in the manuscript about when, or how. If the girl did not appear, then sceptics would argue that it was because the manuscript was a fraud, and mystics would respond that he should have brought Jay to the outskirts of Willdon the year before, or six months later. He had worried for long months, checked and rechecked. Then he had decided. Not doing anything would certainly produce no result. He took Jay to Willdon, left him outside and told him not to dare set foot inside the domain. Then he had gone to wait.

‘Is everything ready, Lady Catherine?’

‘I believe so. Your directions are so very poor I have had to use almost every man I have at my disposal. But if your boy enters my land, he will be seen and followed.’

‘You won’t frighten him? I feel as though I am deceiving him, and don’t want him to suffer for my foolishness.’

‘Not a hair on his head will be so much as ruffled.’

Henary was sitting opposite her at a table. He closed his eyes and put his fingers to his lips, uttering a silent prayer, then looked up at her. Truly, she was a remarkable woman.

‘Do not think, by the way, that I am unaware of the gravity of what we are doing,’ she said. ‘I know full well that if this goes wrong and it becomes public then my reputation will be damaged. Gontal would be delighted to have evidence that I believe in summoning spirits and such nonsense.’

‘Then why are you helping me? Goading me on, indeed?’

‘Because you have fascinated me. Also, if the great Henary is about to make a complete fool of himself, I want to watch. Don’t worry, though; the realisation will be my private pleasure. There is some knowledge which is best kept secret.’

She leaned back in her seat — higher than his; she liked these little demonstrations of her authority. ‘Are you sure this manuscript is as old as you say?’

‘I have no idea how old it is, but it is certainly ancient. I could prove it if you wanted, by showing you how the passage I am working on employs certain symbols, certain grammatical forms, uses words that are otherwise unknown. This manuscript, in other words, may tell us about the age of giants. If it does, then the Story itself may become simply part of a much greater story, perhaps not even the major part of it. If there is any power in it, then that is where it lies.’

‘Yet Jay saw a fairy.’

‘Coincidence, I’m sure. If it happened again, of course...’

‘It would eat away at the foundations of all custom and authority,’ Lady Catherine said softly. ‘Who would listen to you scholars when they could listen to prophets instead?’

There was a long silence as each stared thoughtfully at the other. ‘Dangerous things indeed, Scholar Henary. We must discuss them later,’ she said briskly. ‘There is one thing, though.’

‘What?’

‘What on earth do we do if someone does show up?’

‘I suppose you will have an honoured guest on your hands.’

Catherine stood up and clapped her hands. ‘You will excuse me,’ she said as a servant appeared in response. ‘I must prepare.’

For nearly three hours, Henary had to wait in an agony of hope, despair, anticipation. Several times he reassured himself that nothing was going to happen. Bit by bit, news came in which raised his hopes, then dashed them again. Jay was in his tent. He had wandered off. The lad accompanying him was primed to send signals. Henary’s heart skipped a beat, but he had only gone to get some wood for the fire. Nothing more. His spirits rose, then fell once more as the message came through that he hadn’t returned. Then that he had crossed the boundary into the domain.

Henary rocked back and forward with impatience and anxiety. The soldiers waiting in the forest had not found him. An hour. Nothing. Catherine came in to see how he was, and he snapped at her.

Soldiers had found him. He was under arrest. ‘And?’ Henary said to the runner who had sped in with the message. ‘Anyone else?’

‘No one else,’ came the reply, and he sighed in relief. The manuscript had lied.

Then one more messenger. The last one. He was brought in by Catherine, who propelled him forward. He stood there nervous and breathless. ‘Well?’ Henary said. ‘What is it?’

‘A girl. She turned up out of nowhere.’

Henary felt his stomach turning over in panic. It could not possibly have happened. Was it a joke organised by Catherine to make fun of him? One glance at her face convinced him it was not.

‘Who is she? What’s her name? What does she have to say for herself?’

‘I don’t know, sir. But she speaks the old tongue.’

‘What about Jay? How did he react?’

‘He seemed to recognise her, sir.’

As the messenger departed, he went over to Catherine. He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her tight. ‘My God,’ he said. ‘What have I done?’

‘Congratulations, Scholar Henary, wisest of the wise,’ she said, pulling away and giving him a little curtsy. ‘Who would have thought?’

Henary shook his head. He could think of no words to even hint at what he thought or felt.

‘So, we have a new guest,’ Catherine went on in a practical tone. ‘I think I should give her a proper welcome, don’t you? It’s not often an emissary from the gods shows up. Is she the Herald of the last days? That would be so tiresome. You go and sit down and contemplate your own genius for a bit, and come through when you think you can stand straight.’

Henary grunted, but knew she was talking sense. He composed himself, reminding himself that he was a scholar of the first rank, a man of authority and the greatest learning. That he deserved respect and honour. It was hard.

When he was indeed ready, he walked through to the hallway and stood to one side, so that he would not ruin Catherine’s welcome. His heart was beating hard when the doors opened and the welcoming procession came in. He saw the Chamberlain, then Jay, and finally the girl he had thought about for so long, whom he had seen in his mind thousands of times.

He was disappointed. What to make of her? No spirit or fairy, certainly. Jay’s description had been a good one. She had short hair, a pretty face and a look of bemusement or even irritation. But he expected — what? What was a celestial being meant to look like? There was nothing special about her, except for her strange clothes.

The moment of study didn’t last long. The girl looked around the hall and her eyes lit on him. She grinned broadly and came bounding over. He didn’t catch the first words, they meant nothing to him, but the rest he understood. She spoke with absolute fluency and ease, as though she wasn’t even trying. ‘I’m so happy to see you! Why are you in those ridiculous clothes?’