R K Duncan Read online

  Clever Jack, Heavy with Stories

  By R.K. Duncan

  Jack was only a cook’s boy, but Rowland, Lord Robert’s own son, had been his friend since both were little children. They ran wild together through all the mischief and scrapes that a clever boy and a boy no one dared punish could manage, all before either one thought of degree or station.

  When he and Rowland had nine summers each, and Lord Robert thought to have tutors for his son and see him learn knighthood, he had Jack and Rowland brought to him, and he looked at the way they stood so close together, and he bent to look Jack straight in the eye and said: “I think it will be easier to teach you manners, Boy, that to keep my son from your side.”

  So Jack got an education, that he might serve as a secretary or a groom of the chamber for Rowland, and some practice at riding and arms, though he never grew as strong and bold as Rowland did. He also listened to his mother’s stories and the tales told by her friend Agnes, who people called a witch, and in them got learning that Rowland never did.

  The two stayed fast friends, closer with one another than either was with any of the other boys that lived and played in the castle yards. Nothing kept them apart for a free moment, not until their fourteenth year, when Rowland was married to a pretty dark-haired woman, Mary-Anne, who rode up from the borders on grey-spotted horse and wore a fine blue gown at the wedding.

  Mary-Anne was all of twenty-four, and she made no secret that she didn’t like being married to a child. She would shame Rowland into spending more time at study or on the practice grounds, to do what a grown man would and not play with Jack and the other boys.

  Today, with the weather so fine, she had relented and even brought her needlework onto the green outside the castle walls to watch them as they sported with a ball and sticks on the lawn around the grey stone chapel. Rowland was the leader, and he was bright and strong and fairer than all the rest together as they tumbled and ran behind him.

  As they ran, Rowland hit the ball with his stick, so high it flew over the chapel and out of sight. He turned to chase it, and Jack could not help give the warning his mother had given him before.

  “Wait, Rowland, not that way! It’s terrible bad luck to go widdershins around a church.”

  Rowland nodded. He was used to Jack’s little spells and omens. He said he didn’t believe them, but he would always humor Jack and do as he asked. He would have turned back, but Mary-Anne laughed then. She had a way of laughing loud so that Jack and Rowland knew she was laughing just at them.

  “Are you still a child, Husband. Do you leave a candle burning against goblins and boggarts under the bed, too?”

  Rowland shook his and clenched his mouth in a crimson face. Jack knew what Rowland would do, with Mary-Anne goading him. It was her fault really, but Rowland was still a fool to do it for her.

  He ran once widdershins around the chapel, and Jack could only watch. Mary-Anne nodded him on, and Rowland ran again. A third time he went round the grey stone walls, to show he was a man.

  They watched and waited, all of them, but Rowland never came back to the lawn beside the church. The whistling wind the village people called the Elf-King’s Horn blew in the trees outside the castle wall. All the boys, and Jack, and Mary-Anne were silent for a moment, waiting for Rowland to appear.

  Jack was the first to move, and Mary-Anne came after. They ran rightwise around the chapel and back to the place where they had started from, and they saw no sign nor heard no sound of Rowland or his footfalls on the grass. The boys who had been playing scattered, calling after Rowland, for his joke had gone too far and frightened them. Jack stayed and looked at Mary-Anne.

  “He’s gone now,” Jack told her, “taken by the king of the elves or some other dark thing, because you shamed him into foolishness.”

  He watched her chew over his words like a tough cut of beef. She looked to the castle, where Lord Robert was, and away south to her father’s country.

  “Will he come back?” she asked.

  “Not likely,” said Jack. “You have to win your lost ones back from fairies in the tales, not wait for them.”

  She swallowed and looked him full in the face and nodded, and then she ran widdershins round the stone chapel with never a look behind. No horn blew for her, but she was gone on the third turn as well, and Jack walked round it once again and saw that she was gone too, wherever Rowland was, or to some stranger place that bad luck and cold wind off the hills had opened a door to.

  Jack wanted to run after, to bring back Rowland from wherever he was gone, but Jack was cleverer than he was brave, and he knew many stories of the other country, where fairies chased white deer with packs of red-eared dogs. Jack would make sure he was ready before he went to fairyland, and maybe he would come home with Rowland at his side.

  First Jack went to his mother in the kitchens, and he told her what had passed and what he must do, and she would have told him not to go, but she knew that he loved Rowland close as kin and had no others in the world but her and Rowland. She gave Jack salt and bread and a good iron knife, sharp and heavy at his side.

  “Eat and drink nothing in the other country, Jack,” she said, “and wear your good boots with iron hobnails when you go.”

  Jack heard, and he kissed her on each cheek, and he did not cry until he left the kitchen.

  Then Jack went out of the castle, down the winding lane of the village to the last house before the hills, where the old witch Agnes lived. She was his mother’s friend and the heal-all for all the village and the servants in the castle, and it was her tales of the other country that Jack would use for his guide.

  Jack asked her to write three tales of fairyland onto his heart, so he would remember them though all the snares and tricks and magic of the other country and know how he could win his Rowland back.

  The witch did not try to dissuade Jack, but she was grim. “You’ll die more likely than save him, Boy, or be caught there, which is much the same.”

  “I know, but I won’t leave him.”

  The witch had Jack take off his shirt and bare his chest. She bound Jack’s arms to the spindly chair so that he wouldn’t flinch. She took a knife with a bone handle and a copper blade, and she muttered stories to herself as the knife slid through his skin. It hurt like itching under a scab, sweat in a fresh cut, a sad ending when he expected a happy one.

  When she was finished, there was no blood, and his skin was whole, but there were shadows that almost looked like letters, bleeding through from somewhere deeper in his flesh.

  The old witch said that he had been a clever boy to ask for such a thing to guide him in the other country. She had not heard of such a trick in any of her tales. She gave him a leather bottle of sweet water from well behind her cottage, safe to drink in any land he traveled to.

  Jack ran back to the castle. No one was in the yard, no one looking yet for Rowland, or if they were they had abandoned superstitions repetition of the path around the chapel. Likely Lord Robert had heard of his son’s vanishing and put it down to some excess of play among the boys. He did not listen to fireside stories or bow his head when the Elf-King’s Horn blew on the heath above his castle.

  Jack started round the grey stone chapel, walking widdershins as slow and tentative as tightrope walker in a carnival. He found a rhythm he could make himself maintain, and he felt for something: a winding up of tension, a prickle on his neck, a holy trembling in the bright air of the summer afternoon.

  There was no sign but a dryness in his throat and a shimmer that made him dart his eyes after each mote in the sunshine. In fear and dullness he walked around the chapel, once, twice, three times widdershins, and felt no breath of wonder to transport him.

&nb
sp; He stumbled as he rounded the last turn. He caught himself and found he had crossed over. The castle walls and towers were all gone, and the stone chapel was a lonely boulder with a great cleft leading into darkness. The forest all around was twisted, tall and thick as the curled hair of a sleeping giant, full of shadows deeper than should have been under the summer sun. The grass was bright as emeralds, richer hued than fine Holland cloth. It was trampled by the hooves of many horses, and their trail led away into the west.

  Jack followed the trampled road across the lawn and under the twisted trees, and he walked in dream. He seemed to move by fits and starts, so that he went long minutes without moving and then leapt forward a furlong at a stride. His feet pulled left and right as currents in the ground urged him to turn from the straight way and search the shadows for his Rowland. He stamped each step down heavy and felt his hobnails pin him to the path as to a lodestone. He blessed his mother’s gifts for the first time, and not the last.

  After an uncountable time of dream-walking under the trees, Jack came out onto a green lawn of grass so firm and thick it showed no dint of hooves, and he could not reckon his path forward. A choice of three roads lay before him, one broad and smooth running over the turf, and one winding beneath willow ash and alder through a country of green hills, and one narrow as a blade, beset on all sides by thorns and briars.

  And in a shiver of light, a lady stood there at the parting of the ways, and she was beautiful. Jack found he could not tell more than that. Whether her hair was dark or fair, her skin pale or black, her figure broad or thin, her eyes bright or darkly lidded, he knew not; only that she was beautiful, and she laughed a smiling laugh at him, so that he felt awkward, a child grubby from play and long walking, at the feet of a great and noble lady.

  “Will you kiss me in friendship at our merry meeting, Jack?” she asked him in a voice like sparkling wine and honey.

  Almost Jack bent forward and kissed her as she asked, for friendship and the wonder of her beauty, but the shadows on his breast ached, and he remembered the tale written on his heart and gave a clever answer.

  “I will not, Lady. I have to find my friend who was taken by the blower of the Elf-King’s horn, and if I stayed to serve you seven years, I would never bring him home safe to our own country.”

  The lady laughed again and smiled and said: “You are a clever boy to reckon the cost of my kiss so well, but do you know the road to elf-king’s hall? I will tell you the right path for a kiss, and there is other payment to be had for your service in my kingdom once you win free.”

  The tale carved on his heart was like a bed of coals, and the warmth that rippled out from it made Jack’s tongue loose and clever.

  “No, my lady, no matter the reward, I have not seven years to spare, and I may need a lying tongue to come safe through all that waits for me.”

  He knew the way well enough now, for he sought neither hell nor heaven, by the broad road or the thorny one, but it was hard to set his feet on the path. The dream of the other country filled his head like the fragrance of too many flowers or the scent of grass in a field the scythemen had just crossed. He should bend forward and kiss the fair lady who waited on him, and tarry with her on the green grass soft as down.

  The tale in his heart tugged him away. He would not be True Thomas, stolen seven years. He had no need for prophecy; only for Rowland.

  He took the winding path beneath the fairy trees, to follow Rowland to fair elf-land, and when the lady called after him to offer a kiss for good luck on his road, he did not turn again.

  Under the trees, the sound of water grew louder, and a little stream sprang from the turf and ran beside the path, twisting in and out of shadow and chuckling as it ran over little falls on its path through the green hills.

  After a little walking, at a place where the stream was farther from the road, lost in the shadows of the willow trees, Jack heard a voice over the noise of water, and it was Mary-Anne, speaking gently to someone.

  Jack balked a moment at the thought of leaving the road. Paths were hard to find in fairyland once they were lost. He had heard more than enough tales to know. He thought of leaving Mary-Anne behind and going on to save his friend and come home a hero, even with the spectre of Rowland’s noble wife gone into wind and shadow, but that would be a poor tale for a winter night, and Jack knew more than Mary-Anne about the other country. He did not think she would come home without him.

  Jack stepped from the path, and he let a trail of salt fall behind him, and he blessed his mother’s gifts for a second time, and not the last.

  Under the shadow of the trees he saw Mary-Anne, and she was gentling a white horse, tall and proud and beautiful. Mary-Anne was a fine rider, better even than Rowland, and if she could mount the white horse, she would think to master it and ride as swift as it could go to follow Rowland, and perhaps she had heard enough stories to guess that a fairy horse would know the way to whatever she desired. It was a fine plan, but Mary-Anne did not know the tales of this country as Jack did.

  Mary-Anne had not noticed the stagnant bow in the stream only a few paces back, where the horse still dipped a trailing hoof. She had not seen its hungry look or marked the stain of red around its lips. She had not felt the fairy vines already twining round her ankles where the ground beneath was soft, or seen how fast and deep the water ran just a few paces farther down the stream. Lost in the white horse’s eyes, she did not notice Jack come near.

  Jack saw Mary-Anne bend her knees and test the firmness of the ground under her feet. She meant to mount. He dashed the last few paces and drew the iron knife from his belt and knelt on the soft ground to cut the vines that twined round Mary-Anne’s ankles.

  The vines slithered at him like blind worms chasing food, but all withdrew when his blade parted the first cord. The iron cut the fairy vines easy as cutting a taught thread. Jack blessed his mother’s gifts a third time, and not the last.

  Still Mary-Anne was caught in her trance, and she lifted a leg to mount. Jack caught her round the waist and pulled her back before she could climb to the water horse’s, the kelpie’s back and be taken down to drown.

  The white horse reared up and neighed like screaming, and spittle and blood flew from its lips. Mary-Anne screamed half a scream before it choked off, and Jack held his iron knife out, shaking.

  The horse leapt forward, and the water followed it, carving a new bank to keep the kelpie’s hooves wet. Jack stumbled back and dropped his knife, but Mary-Anne caught it up and struck the white horse across the nose. It reared up again and screamed, but it did not come farther after them. It stayed on the bankside, with one hoof in the stagnant water, and watched them go.

  The woods twisted thick and blind between the river and the road, and Mary-Anne looked wild, searching for the way to go, but Jack could see the trail of salt he had let fall before and he followed it, leading Mary-Anne by the left hand.

  “What was that, that horse?” she asked, when the color of her cheeks calmed and her eyes no longer darted quick as dragonflies in her face.

  “The old witch called it ‘kelpie’ in her tales. It would have drowned you if you sat on its back, and eaten you down to the bones and entrails.”

  She looked along the road and into the woods around. “Do you know where Rowland is gone in this strange country?”

  “I know the road to find him.”

  “Lead on, then. Doesn’t time move wrong from here to home? I don’t want to wake a hundred years after we came here.”

  Jack led her back to the winding road and on toward the elf king’s hall.

  It was harder, traveling with Mary-Anne. She could only half-see the path that Jack thought a clear road. Without stories on her heart, she was more mazed by fairy dreams, and there were no nails in her soft slippers; her feet were always straying from the path.

  They moved by fits and starts for a while, with Jack always having to correct her, until she thought of tying them together and bound their wrists with the cloth
she had been sewing while she watched the boys play in the morning. Bound by his left hand to her right, Jack could lead her on without a stop.

  Being tied to Mary-Anne pulled Jack out of himself and his armor of stories and more firmly into the other country. He heard voices call from the woods: sweet, uncanny voices like the sparkling-wine lady from the meadow. The birds that sang in the trees were strange; too tuneful and too much in harmony with one another, like minstrels and not wild things. Silver bells rang in the distance, like the fall of frozen rain. Jack felt Mary-Anne’s fear in the trembling of her arm through the linen that tied them together, and she must have felt his, but they also held each other steady. They trembled, but they did not fall or stop.

  “What are the bells?” asked Mary-Anne

  “Fairies hang them on their harnesses when they ride out hunting.”

  “Why do they make you shiver?”

  “They would hunt us if they found us in their country without leave.”

  The road wound on under the twisted trees and out over rolling hills, and later they came to a river running with blood up to Jack’s knee.

  Mary-Anne, in her fine linen, shrank back from the bank. “What’s this, Jack?”

  “Stories say that all the blood shed on earth runs through the streams of fairyland.”

  “So this is the blood from Lord Robert’s wars, and my father’s, away south of the borders?”

  “Maybe, or from some other battles far away.”

  She looked at the river and sucked her teeth. “Jack, why did you come here after Rowland, when you knew how terrible this country is?”

  What answer did he have for that, except the foolish truth? “To save him. I love him. What else could I do?”

  “You could have stayed and lived your life, grown to a man instead of dying in this uncanny place.”

  “Why did you come then, if you think we’ll die? I know you don’t love Rowland like I do, don’t pretend.”

  Mary-Anne laughed without smiling. “How long do you think Lord Robert would have kept me, with my husband gone and you to blame me for his going? How warm do you think my welcome would be in my father’s castle, with two husbands dead and mourned and never a child to show?”