But the people all ran away up the hillside among the bracken. Jay stood up and shouted to the headman that the King needed him.
“Heathen!” the headman shouted as he scrambled upward. He pointed down the River. “Heathen! Run!”
There were no Heathens. We could see some miles down the valley there, and there was no one. Tanamil smiled. I think it was his doing. I see I have wronged him, saying he was soft. He is not powerless to work indirectly against the King, and he does. But he is mad if he thinks he can delay the King’s wedding until I have this coat finished. It is barely half done.
However, the King was in a great panic. He said we must put off the wedding and hurry on. So we have come, at a furious speed, to this place. We have only halted here because of a great downpour of rain. The green hills around us were shaded white with it, and large hailstones fell. It was too fierce even for the King’s hurry. We went blindly into a wider valley, where the River runs as a small tossing lake, and there we dimly saw a group of trees. The King angrily ordered us to take shelter there. Under the trees there is an old barn or boathouse, built of big gray stones. Here we all wait, while the King paces impatiently up and down and the rain pelts dimples into the water.
They would not at first bring my loom in. Jay, who used to help me in such things, is not my friend anymore. I had to make Hern ask the King. I am sad about Jay. I have wronged him, too. It was not the One he wanted. It was Robin. I do not know why I am so unready to believe that people can love Robin. I have seen Jay look at her just as Tanamil does. And now Jay will not forgive me.
The King could not understand wh
y I should want my loom. “Why, in the name of the golden gentleman, fluffyhead, do you need to keep on weaving coats?” he said.
“I have to make one for Robin, too,” I lied. “We always do that in Shelling.”
So my loom was carried in, wet as it was, and set up in the doorway. I am sprinkled with rain as I send the shuttles back and forth, but I do not mind that.
“It’s all wet, wool and all,” the King pointed out.
“The way we prepare and spin our yarn,” I said, “that does not matter.”
He looked at Robin, who had taken some of the wet yarn to spin for me. Then he frowned at me, in his quizzical way. “Fluffyhead,” he said, “it usually matters. Wool shrinks. Sometimes I suspect you of—Do the Heathen have lady mages? I think you may be one.”
“No, Majesty,” I said. “That I am not.”
“Then can you swear to me that you’re not making all this pother of weaving on behalf of some other man?” he said.
My heart grew large and bumped a little, but I said, “This is for no mortal man, Majesty.”
Then he was satisfied in a dissatisfied way and went to the doorway to look at the rain. Hern sat with his back against the stones of the doorway and scowled out, too, beside my loom. We look out across a rocky, shivering sort of lake. Almost at my feet, rain popples among rushes. I keep looking up and out between rows because this is as near as I have ever been to real mountains. They ring us round, high green shoulders, higher brown shoulders, and headlike peaks which are blue and black and veiled in swimming clouds. Now that the rain is slackening, I can hear water rushing and shouting down all round. It is the sound of streams that run in every groove, some so distant that you see them as a white smear, like a snail’s path; others I can see leap and spray.
“I don’t see us going much farther by boat,” the King said, and turned away, more satisfied.
I think he is right. We shall have to leave the River. The River comes to the lake in a sort of cleft, between two high shoulders of brown hill, and I think it is a rushing torrent there. Up above the cleft, in the highest and blackest mountain, I can see a smear of white that must be our great River at its rising.
Hern has just noticed.
So much has happened since then, and so little time to weave it in.
As I was saying, Hern looked down at the rushes by our feet. “The tide’s turned. Look at it running the other way.”
I leaned around my loom. The small blobs of foam and twigs that had gathered against the rushes were moving slowly past the bank, toward the rushing water where the River comes down the cleft. It seemed to me that Hern was right for a moment. “But the tide doesn’t run up in Shelling,” I said.
We looked for Tanamil to ask him. He was leaning over Robin as she spun, over on the other side of the doorway. He did not notice us. Lovers!
“Jay!” Hern called. “Does the River have tides up here?”
Jay came and looked at the water. He ignored me. “No. Tides stop at the Red River. That must be an eddy. The waters run pretty swift out in the middle and force the edges backward. See?” The stump of his arm leaped as if to point.
In the middle of the lake we could see angry waters standing in peaks with the force of their running. I could not quite believe Jay. It was churning there, like the tides do.
And a churning came among the rushes at the doorway. It was all spouting whiteness there. Hern and I were soaked. In the midst of the whiteness Mother stood, with her head and shoulders out of the water, quite dry. She was angry.
“Tanamil!” she said.
Tanamil jumped and put out his hand as if he could push her away. “I can’t speak to you,” he said guiltily.
“I must speak to you,” Mother said. “You were trusted to watch, Tanamil! Take your mind off Robin and attend. Kankredin is coming. He and his mages are halfway up the River already, rolling my waters up before them as they come.”