Crossing To Paradise (2 page)

Yuletide
.

It was different for Gatty this year. For the first time in her life, her father was not blowing the pipe and banging the tabor, leading Slim into the hall, Slim raising the boar's head on a silver dish while everyone sang:

“
Bring on the first dish of meat!

A boar's head. That's what you'll eat.
”

No, Gatty's father was dead, and Arthur was far away, and in twelve days' time she herself would be leaving Caldicot.

As usual, the priest Oliver treated everyone to a particularly lengthy sermon. He reminded his flock that their hearts were like cradles, waiting for Jesus to be born. “And if it's God's will,” he went on, “one of our flock, one of our own Caldicot flock, will reach the Golden Gate. She will stand inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the most holy place in holy Jerusalem.”

Gatty listened, and she felt that Oliver wasn't really talking about her at all but about some stranger.

“Let us pray for Gatty and her great pilgrimage,” Oliver said. “And if she reaches Jerusalem, may she pray for each one of us at each of the holy places.”

On Saint Stephen's Day, Caldicot had visitors, Winnie de Verdon and her father, Sir Walter.

They arrived early, in time to join the games, and when they stepped into the hall, the first thing Gatty noticed was Winnie's half of her and Arthur's betrothal penny, strung on a cord around her neck.

The first thing Sian de Caldicot noticed, though, was Winnie's exquisite white fur mittens.

“Where did you get them?” she exclaimed, and she grabbed Winnie's wrists and buried her face in the misty fur.

Winnie tried to pull her hands away.

“They look like Spitfire did. My cat!”

“Let go!” said Winnie, and she turned pink. “I don't like them, anyhow,” she said. “They're too tight. Like my betrothal ring.”

“I love Arthur,” Sian declared. “I wish I could marry him.”

“Well, you can't!” said Winnie. “I'm not going to wait forever, though.”

“You can marry my cousin Tom,” Sian went on. “He said he'd be glad to marry you if Arthur doesn't come back.”

Winnie smiled and said, “Anyhow, you're only eleven!”

“Twelve,” said Sian.

“Winnie!” said Sir Walter. “Have you even greeted Sir John and Lady Helen?”

Winnie curtsied, she clasped hands, she smiled, she said the right words, but she didn't so much as incline her head to Gatty.

She didn't even notice her.

Gatty felt breathless. Her mouth was dry and there was such a knot in her throat. She had heard all about the betrothal but this was the first time she had ever seen Winnie, face-to-face.

All day Gatty kept her distance from Winnie, her sharp words and flashing betrothal ring, her flame of hair, her wide-sleeved gown and grassgreen shoes.

In her stained sackcloth and untanned boots, Gatty felt as if her own friendship with Arthur didn't really exist. She felt so worthless.

Yuletide! How soon the twelve days were over.

On the last morning, Gatty carried her squawking chickens one by one up to Sir John's run, and drove Hopeless up to Sir John's byre. She put her arms right round her cow's neck, and felt her calm warmth; then Gatty
gave a long moo, soft as the bottom-most notes of a flute and, with an aching heart, walked away.

In the afternoon, Gatty found Oliver in the church vestry. He was sitting at his sloping desk, his feet on a footstool, writing on a piece of parchment.

“There you are!” said Gatty.

“In the service of the Lord,” Oliver replied.

“Oliver, can you write a message for me? Please.”

“Can I or will I?”

“Will you?”

Oliver looked dimly at Gatty. “To whom?”

“Arthur!”

Oliver smiled. “There's a surprise,” he said. “Well, you're in luck. I've one small piece of parchment left over from my labors. My morning labors.”

“Who are you writing to?” asked Gatty.

“Lady Gwyneth's priest.”

“Why? What about?”

Oliver completed the character and then the word he was writing. Then he rolled up the little scroll and gave it to Gatty.

“Keep it safe and dry,” he said. “This letter could make all the difference.”

“To what?”

“You'll find out,” said Oliver. “Now! What's your message?”

“Ready?” asked Gatty.
“Where are you today I keep wondering. I often talk to you and see you easy.
”

“Easily,” said Oliver.

“No,” said Gatty. “Easy.”

“Easy is wrong,” said Oliver.

“Not for me,” Gatty replied. “Please, Oliver! Write what I say. Then Arthur will hear me.”

Oliver pressed his lips together. “Go on, then,” he said.

“
You got the sky on your shoulders,
” Gatty dictated. “
You remember when I said let's go to Jerusalem? I can't explain but somehow I thought it, I believed it, and now I'm going. You and your singing will keep us all safe, Lady Gwyneth says. Arthur, when are you coming back? I haven't forgot…
”

“Forgotten,” said Oliver.

Gatty gently shook her head and then, very boldly, she laid the flat of her right hand on Oliver's back.

Oliver sniffed.

“…I haven't forgot going upstream. You promised. Or can you ride to Ewloe. Them bulls, and me wearing Sir John's armor, and rescuing Sian from the fishpond and going to Ludlow Fair, and everything…It's true! It is. Best things don't never get lost.”

Oliver looked up at Gatty: so eager, her eyes shining. He knitted his brows. “Just what are you to Arthur?” he inquired.

“Me? To Arthur? What do you mean?” And then, with a smile and a little shrug, Gatty said, “True.”

“Yes,” said Oliver. “True.” He wrote four more words, and voiced them as he wrote.

“
By your true Gatty
…

“There you are!” said Oliver. “That's your letter.”

“Will you keep it and give it to him?” Gatty asked. “When he gets home.”

“If he gets home,” the priest replied.

“He will,” said Gatty.

“Some do,” the priest said. “Most don't.”

“I know what,” said Gatty. Then she untied the violet ribbon she wore day and night round her waist, the one Arthur had bought for her with his last farthing at Ludlow Fair. She doubled it, tore at it with her teeth and bit it in half.

“Really!” said Oliver, wrinkling his nose.

“Half for him, half for me,” said Gatty.

So Oliver rolled up the little piece of parchment and Gatty secured it with the violet ribbon.

Gatty took a deep breath, and noisily blew out her pink, freckled cheeks. “There!” she exclaimed. “Writing and all!”

She smiled brightly at Oliver and then she wound her half of the violet ribbon round and round her left wrist.

Oliver
was ringing the church bell as Gatty rode out of Caldicot and she wondered why. Steady and unhurried, neither eager nor forlorn, the bell rang and rang, and it never once occurred to her that Oliver was ringing it especially for her.

For a long while, Gatty and Macsen rode side by side in silence and then Gatty gave a heartfelt sigh.

“You all right, girl?” Macsen asked.

Gatty was not all right. Her strength was bleeding out of her as she left the only landscape she knew. She couldn't get the strange idea out of her head that the Marches and her body were one: This earth was her mother, and she was mother-earth.

When at noon they reached the Great Dyke, Gatty and Macsen entered a no-man's-land. A hovering grey mist blotted out the sun, turned trees into roaming spirits and one-legged giants brandishing clubs, and lay on the land on either side of the Great Dyke like a vast wraith-ocean.

For three days Gatty and Macsen rode north, and when at last they turned east the hazy sun blessed them. Down they rode from the high fields and farms, with their huge flocks of sheep and yapping sheepdogs, down into a sopping forest, and somehow their two horses sensed the journey was almost over. They raised their tucked heads; they whisked their tails.

Gatty stared ahead. Nothing but trunks, some silver, some grey-green, some ivied, some carbuncled, nothing but a prison of tree trunks stretching to the end of the world. But then there was something.

A handsome high wall, brown as an eggshell and speckled, with teeth along the top. Five peephole windows, four of them slits but one round as the full moon.

Side by side, Gatty and Macsen rode across the drawbridge. They dismounted and walked up to the huge ribbed oak door.

Gatty stepped into the hall, and she caught her breath.

She saw Lady Gwyneth at once, standing at the far end of the hall, very tall and slender and fair, with a girl on her right and a big man on her left, but in that same first long moment she saw the kind tapestries hanging on the walls and the soft honey-light of dozens and dozens of candles, she smelt scents sweeter and thicker than Fallow Field in June, she heard a cascade of notes, more notes than a climbing lark sings in May, and saw a man plucking an instrument with a forest of strings.

Then Gatty let go of her breath again, and Lady Gwyneth turned to her, took two steps towards her, and inclined her head.

Had Gatty been able to look at herself through Lady Gwyneth's eyes, what would she have seen?

A grubby parcel of sackcloth and, sticking out of the top, a freckled and dirt-streaked face; large river eyes, set quite wide apart; and a storm of curls, now in the candlelight more silver than gold.

Gatty shuffled towards Lady Gwyneth, and grinned.

“God's bones!” she exclaimed. “I never knew there was no place like this.”

Lady Gwyneth looked, unblinking, at this creature standing before her.

“Gatty!” she said. “It is Gatty, isn't it?”

“Me,” Gatty agreed, and as she nodded each of her curls seemed to have a life of its own.

Lady Gwyneth of Ewloe tilted her head slightly to the right. A smile hovered around the corners of her mouth. “Yes,” she said. “I rather thought so. You and…” she hesitated, and her pale brow creased. “You and…”

“Macsen,” Gatty said in a loud voice. “Saxon, I call him!”

“Welcome back,” Lady Gwyneth told Macsen. “You do both look rather the worse for wear.”

“Mucky!” said the pretty girl standing behind Lady Gwyneth.

Gatty frowned. “No,” she said. “I'm Gatty.”

“I said mucky.
Baw isa'r domen!
That's what you are.”

“That's enough, Nest,” Lady Gwyneth said sharply. “How do you think you'd look after three days traveling?”

“In January,” sniffed Macsen.

“Quite so,” said Lady Gwyneth. “And it's a very long journey.”

All at once, Gatty felt most terribly tired. She opened her mouth so wide she could have swallowed half the hall, and gave a noisy yawn.

Lady Gwyneth lowered her eyes. “Up here, Gatty, we cover our mouths when we yawn.”

Gatty looked quite mystified. “What for?” she asked.

Lady Gwyneth smiled. “This is Nest,” she said, gesturing to the pretty girl, who had pale arms and long gold hair. “My first chamber-servant. And this is Snout, my cook.”

Snout nodded in a friendly way and raised his right paw. He was a large man with a mop of copper-colored hair, and eyes to match. But the most striking thing about him was the way his upper lip was split halfway up to his flaring nostrils.

“We were just about to kneel for my retiring prayer,” Lady Gwyneth said. “Will you join us?”

Around the fire they all knelt, and in her clean, light voice, that seemed to sharpen each syllable, Lady Gwyneth prayed:

“May groaning Sword Wood and Wepre Wood praise you,
May the speckled quarries praise you,
May the hills of Clwyd rise and praise you,
Clod, grain, bough, bud, may each one praise you,
May each one of your children praise you
As, Shining Lord, we greet you in this hall.”

Lady Gwyneth got to her feet and, wearily, Gatty and Macsen followed her.

“Now,” said Lady Gwyneth. “First things first. Warm fingers. Warm toes. And you, Snout, find our guests some food and ale.”

“I certainly will, my lady,” said Snout, and when he spoke he sounded as if he had a cold.

Gatty rubbed her red eyelids, and wiped her dripping nose on her sleeve.

“Yes,” said Lady Gwyneth. “Well, we'll talk in the morning.”

Nest
screwed up her pretty face. “Lady Gwyneth says you're to have a bath first,” she told Gatty. “Then you should go up and talk to her.”

Gatty burst into laughter. “A bath!” she exclaimed. “Me!”

So before noon, Snout warmed vats of water in the castle kitchen. Then he and the kitchen-boy carried them into the hall and Gatty had a bath, the first one in her life.

What warmth! What heat! It made Gatty stretch each limb, like a cat. Before long it made her yawn and yawn again. It seemed to make her stronger and weaker, both at the same time.

While Gatty was lying in the tub, naked as a needle, Snout and the kitchen-boy arrived with another vat of seething water, and they tried to walk right in. Nest shouted at them, and blocked the way, so they put it down and retreated, laughing. Then Nest told Gatty to pull up her legs, and she tipped it into the tub herself.

“Here,” she said, giving Gatty a small pot. “Mutton fat soap. I made it with my own fair hands. Now scrub yourself all over.”

Ruefully, Gatty inspected her own chapped red knuckles and the grime under her nails. It's true, she thought drowsily, Nest's hands are fair.

Nest picked up a pair of tongs from the hearth. “Your clothes are filthy,” she said. “How could you have slept in them?”

“What are you doing?” asked Gatty, alarmed.

“Burning them.”

“No!” cried Gatty.

“They're disgusting.”

“I haven't got none others.”

“Ugh!” exclaimed Nest, and she grabbed Gatty's clothes and threw them into the fire anyway. “Lady Gwyneth says I'm to lend you a gown,” she said. “Look at you! I've never seen such revolting, scummy water.”

Gatty rose from the tub, pink and white and shiny, like a nymph from a pool. “I'm as clean as a cat's tongue,” she caroled. “No, as clean as a conker. You know, when it's just split out of its mucky old shell.”

“This is my solar,” Lady Gwyneth told Gatty. “It's where I sit when I want to be alone, or to talk to someone without being interrupted.”

“I've never been up to Lady Helen's and Sir John's,” Gatty remarked.

“It's quite small,” said Lady Gwyneth. “Well, everything at Caldicot is quite small, really.”

Gatty looked around. “It's secret in here,” she observed. “You know, like petals and dust have settled for years and no one hasn't disturbed them.”

Lady Gwyneth looked at Gatty with interest. “You're right,” she agreed. “Petals and dust, and thoughts and feelings.”

Gatty sniffed at her wrist and the sleeve of her gown. “I'm that clean I don't even smell like me,” she said, grinning. “I don't look like me. I don't feel like me, up here with you.”

“I understand,” Lady Gwyneth replied. “But you'll get used to it. You'll grow into it. Now, then. Let's begin at the beginning.”

“What's that?” Gatty asked.

“Your mother. Tell me about her.”

“Can't,” said Gatty. “She died birthing Dusty. And he died when he started laughing and choked himself, and he was born two years after me, he was.”

“I see,” said Lady Gwyneth. “And your father?”

Gatty lowered her eyes. “He died last spring, with pains in his stomach. He said it was like an army of elves was jabbing their spears inside him.” Gatty swallowed noisily. “Sir John's reeve, he was.”

“Oh Gatty!” said Lady Gwyneth. “What was he like?”

And so, piece by piece, Lady Gwyneth began to put together the jigsaw of Gatty's life: her parents, her brother, her field-work at Caldicot. But not the piece about her friendship with Arthur. Gatty hugged that to herself.

“I got something for your priest,” said Gatty, fishing into the swinging, outsize gown Nest had lent her, and pulling out a little roll of parchment. “Oliver wrote it.”

“And who is Oliver?”

“Our priest.”

Lady Gwyneth unrolled the parchment, and as she read she moved her lips without voicing the words. “Yes,” she said, “your Oliver would like my priest, Austin, to teach you to read.”

“Read!”

“Yes, Gatty.”

“I couldn't never do that.”

“Why not?”

Gatty jammed her right forefinger against her temple and grinned. “Not me. I'm only a field-girl. Well, I was!”

“As it happens,” Lady Gwyneth said, “Austin is already teaching Nest to read, so maybe he can teach you at the same time.”

“God's gristle!” exclaimed Gatty, and she leaped to her feet and laughed for sheer joy. “Me! Learning to read!”

“My chamber-servants need to be able to read,” Lady Gwyneth said.

“But you can read yourself,” said Gatty.

“Not for long,” Lady Gwyneth replied. “The words begin to hop around, and stars and little black shapes float across them.”

“Like clouds, you mean?”

“Anyhow,” Lady Gwyneth said, “there are few joys greater than being read to.”

Gatty sat down again, then bounced on the bench. “I'll read to you,” she said. “I'll read to you forever.”

Lady Gwyneth smiled. “Very good,” she said. “And the clerk Everard will teach you to sing—to sit right and breathe right and tighten your stomach and relax your throat and enunciate.”

Gatty looked around the solar, wide-eyed. She gazed at Lady Gwyneth.

“What is it, Gatty?”

“Lady Helen told me what you said,” Gatty said.

“What was that?” asked Lady Gwyneth. “What did I say?”

“About helping to keep us all safe.”

“Helping to keep us all safe,” Lady Gwyneth slowly repeated.

“You didn't say that?” Gatty faltered. “Did you?”

Lady Gwyneth smiled again. “I told Helen your singing would be like a charm. Like a spell.”

Gatty puffed her cheeks and blew out all the air. “Why are we going to Jerusalem, anyway?” she asked.

“My lady,” said Lady Gwyneth.

“What?”

“When you speak to me, that's what you must say to show respect. My lady.”

“I keep forgetting,” said Gatty. “I can't help it. My lady.”

“Do you know what a pilgrimage is?” Lady Gwyneth asked.

“A journey,” said Gatty.

“It is,” Lady Gwyneth said.

“My lady!”

“What, Gatty?”

“A journey, my lady,” said Gatty, her eyes as wide as draught-pieces.

“And great pilgrimages are long journeys. To England's own Nazareth, the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. Over the mountains, to Rome. To the grave of Saint James, in Spain. And by far the longest and greatest of all, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem.”

“It's dangerous, isn't it?” Gatty said. “Robbers and Saracens and beasts, and that.”

“It is,” Lady Gwyneth said. “Any pilgrim who wishes to travel to Jerusalem must be prepared to carry Jesus's cross. But I tell you, Gatty, the more dangerous the way is, the more likely God is to forgive our sins. Our terrible wrongdoing. The more likely He is to heal our grief.”

Gatty could hear the quaver in Lady Gwyneth's voice and was quite startled.

“Yes, Gatty,” said Lady Gwyneth. “I've seen death too. Griffith! Griffith ap Robert. My own little baby.”

“My lady,” said Gatty, so tender and sorrowful.

“To kiss the earth of Jerusalem!” Lady Gwyneth said. “To see with my own eyes all the holy places. To see where He walked and died and rose again. I believe my pilgrimage will bring me forgiveness so that, one day, in heaven, I'll hold Griffith in my arms.”

“My lady,” said Gatty, “if a mother can see her child again, do you think a child can see her mother again?”

“What do you mean, Gatty?”

“I mean, if God forgives me too, can I see my mother again?”

For a moment, Lady Gwyneth was silent. “Pray for that,” she said quietly. The lines of her face softened, and in that moment Gatty saw how she and Lady Helen looked like beans from the same pod.

Gatty sighed a little, and then smiled. “You won't be sorry,” she said. “Taking me. I'll make sure of that.”

“My lady.”

“My lady,” Gatty repeated. “Nest don't like me, though. Not from the first. I can tell.”

“First impressions are not always true impressions,” Lady Gwyneth replied.

“I'll rub along with her. I'll learn to.”

“You must,” said Lady Gwyneth. “You have more in common with her than you realize.”

Gatty frowned.

“Neither of you has a mother or father. Nest's seventeen—two years older than you. Her father was the steward at Rhuddlan.”

“What's a steward?” asked Gatty.

“In charge of the household and all the servants,” Lady Gwyneth explained. “When Nest was only eleven, he and Nest's mother were both burned to death when part of the castle caught fire.”

“Oh!” gasped Gatty.

“That was when I agreed to take on Nest as my young servant, and to care for her and educate her. And like her, Gatty, you must learn manners and obedience.”

“And all!” cried Gatty enthusiastically. “Is it just you and Nest and me, then?”

“Three people? No, of course not! There'll be nine.”

“Nine!” exclaimed Gatty, and she quickly counted the number on her fingers.

“You and Nest and Snout and me…Soon enough, you'll know everyone.”

“Nothing's not soon enough!” Gatty said.

“Now,” said Lady Gwyneth, “go and find Nest in the hall. Ask her to tell you your dressing duties.”

After Gatty had left the solar, Lady Gwyneth remained sitting on her padded bench, thinking.

So eager, so staunch and somehow gay: Lady Gwyneth recognized all these qualities in Gatty, and she liked them. But so simple. So very ignorant. And so earthy. True, she thought, Gatty can learn. But she's impulsive too. She's willful. Lady Gwyneth bit her left cheek, concerned that Gatty might upset the other pilgrims in the party.