“Oh, good!” Grundo grunted when I told him. “I’ve always thought that.”
Another time I laughed, I had to explain to him, “It was the kind of woman she is! Almost all the flower headings are dry, twisty kinds of plants, like thistles or brambles or teasels. Or gorse. That’s a big file. There’s not a juicy dandelion or a lily or a forget-me-not anywhere! She was so dry and bitter!”
“It’s not evil magic, is it?” Grundo said anxiously.
“No,” I said. “That’s the odd thing! You’d think the way she hurt and hated, she might use bad magic, but she didn’t. There are several evil files—privet, yew, ivy—but they’re made like read-only. For reference, so you know what to do when someone uses black magic against you, and they all have the counterspells with them, which are the only active ones. All the rest is just, well, clean knowledge. I don’t know how she did it, considering the life she had!”
I kept having memories of that pain she’d lived with, like long, blunt teeth clamped on the top of her leg, and she still did her duty and kept her magic white. It was enough to make me swear to be worthy of her gift, to use it properly or not at all.
My grandfather was outside the manse when we came round the last bend in the way, like a stick of charcoal on the grass in front of the house, watching for us. He did not move as we came across the top of the valley, except to take down the hand that was shading his eyes. When we came up to him, he said, “There is no need to tell me. I see you found what you went for. Tea is ready.”
As we f
ollowed his upright black back into the manse, it came to me that Mam must often have been hurt or offended when he behaved like this. I wondered if I was. And I found I wasn’t. It was his way. He had shown he was anxious by waiting outside for us. When he saw we had succeeded and that we were all right, he felt words were unnecessary because we all knew anyway. I wondered if I would ever be able to explain this to Mam. Or if she would believe me if I did.
Tea was magnificent again. I let Grundo enjoy himself and chat to Grandfather Gwyn and did not speak much myself. My head was still heavy and fuzzy with all that had been packed into it. Afterward I left Grundo looking at books in the tall, damp-smelling parlor and toiled away to bed. I suppose I undressed. I was in nightwear next morning. But all I remember is plunging into sleep.
TWO
I slept very heavily. It was the kind of sleep people describe as “dreamless,” except that it wasn’t. All through it I felt that knowledge was unfolding in my brain. Then, around midnight, I seemed to have a dream.
I thought I lifted my head from my pillow because the bell in the little chapel was ringing. “I must go and see,” I said to myself, “but I’m not used to this and I hope I get it right.” So, while the small bell kept tolling out its silvery ting, ting, ting, I sorted sleepily through my new knowledge and used it to float out of bed and through the window, where I sort of hovered round to the front of the manse. Everything was dark and gusty out there, but there was somehow enough gray light to see by. I could see that the arched door at the front of the chapel was open. People in dark clothes were coming out of the darkness inside it, riding horses, or riding other things much stranger, and coming slowly uphill in threes and pairs toward the manse.
There must have been a good fifty of them on their way by the time the chapel bell gave a final tong-ting and stopped. Their pale faces lifted expectantly then. My grandfather came out from behind the manse, riding the gray mare. He was not in his cassock, but all in black, tight-fitting clothes, except for his silky cloak, which had a white lining that billowed around the dark shape of him.
He spoke to the advancing people in the thunderous voice he used when he said grace. “I am summoned,” he said, “but for no good purpose. Come.”
He rode the gray mare straight forward, straight off the edge of the grass and into the air above the winding valley, and the other people followed him in a dark procession.
I had a moment when I knew this had to be a dream and then another moment when it was fairly clear to me that my grandfather was not just a mere wizard. Then I was speeding after them through the air.
It was certainly like a dream for a short while. Blue-dark landscapes rushed underneath us, mountains heaved up, pale roads and glinting rivers coiled, black woodland swept up and swept behind, and every so often the clear yellow lights in houses flitted by far below. Those lights were like heaps and strings of jewels, and I got the feeling they were equally precious. But we did not stop for them or for anything else, even for the small flier that blundered across our way, chugging and roaring and no doubt full of people hoping they were imagining the sight of us, until we came to the dim shape of a castle on a knoll beneath. Then we swept down and around it in a grand curve, and my grandfather rode down the air to land on the turf inside the castle gardens.
I recognized the place as we came down, mostly because of the huge orderly cluster of tents, lorries, and buses just outside the gardens to the right. This was Castle Belmont, where the King’s Progress was camped.
But we were not going to the camp. My grandfather led his riders silently on through the parkland until they came to the dark walls of the Inner Garden. There, at its gate, he turned and led them, much more swiftly, around outside its walls. I knew, for some reason, that this part was not my concern. I sat hovering in the dark air and watched while they circled the garden three times clockwise, faster and faster. My grandfather was always easy to see, on the white mare with the white lining of his cloak flapping and gleaming, so that on the second circuit it was easy to see that he was now carrying some kind of pale banner or standard. On the third circuit, most of the riders following him were carrying pale lights that bobbed and glimmered as they swept up to the gates, swept around in a great curve, and went noiselessly galloping and glinting round the walls in the opposite direction.
My innards gave a lurch at this, because this was widdershins. All that I had been taught by the teachers at Court said that this was the direction of bad magic. But the knowledge that was now in my head from the woman with the hurt hip reassured me about this. My grandfather was one of the few who were outside these rules, and the gates of the garden would not open to him until he had circled three times counterclockwise as well.
Sure enough, on the third reappearance of the speeding procession, the gates sprang apart, and the riders trotted sedately inside. They were not completely silent now. As I swooped down to follow them, I could hear thudding, and faint creaks and jingles from their harness, and the horses snorting as they recovered from the gallop.
I overshot them a little. I was not used to floating about bodiless. There was a tiny flickering among the bushes up beyond the first lopsided pool, and I assumed that was where the riders would be. But what I found there was a double ring of lighted candles. Sybil, Sir James, and the Merlin were standing in strange attitudes inside it. The Merlin had his arms raised and bent as if he were pushing against a low ceiling.
“It’s coming—coming at last!” he panted.
Sybil, who seemed to be heaving at an invisible rope, gasped, “I hope it’s quick, then. It’s all I can do to hold it!”
Sir James didn’t speak. His was the weakest magic, and it was clearly all he could do to keep up his part of the working. The candles glistened on his sweaty face and clutching hands.
The gray mare climbed the bank beside me and stopped. My grandfather sat on her back, staring at the three magic workers with his face blank as marble and utterly scornful. “I am here,” he said.
The three inside the ring of candles relaxed and puffed out great thankful breaths. “It’s here,” said the Merlin.
“Thank goodness!” said Sybil. “It took its time!”
Sir James, bent over, with his hands on his knees, gasped out, “They do, the big ones. Owe it to their pride, you know.”
None of them looked toward my grandfather. I realized that they were unable to see him.