Crossing To Paradise (28 page)

There
was no one in the great hall except for the two hounds, stretched out by the fire. Tempest opened one eye; then Storm began to rap the marl with his tail. The moment Gatty gave a little cry and sang out their names, they leaped up and mobbed her.

The small fire licked and spat. It twisted its orange fingers.

“Sir John and Lady Helen will be in the solar,” Tanwen said.

“We can go up,” declared Sian.

“I must tell them first.”

“It doesn't matter,” said Sian. “Come on! No, Tempest, not you!”

So Sian led the way up to the small solar, two steps at a time.

Gatty felt unprepared to meet Sir John and Lady Helen. Almost unable. She just wanted to be on her own.

Sian swung open the oak door without even knocking. “Father!” she said loudly. “Mother! Guests!”

Sir John stood up, irritably waving his right arm. “Sian! How many times do I have to tell you?”

Then Gatty appeared in the dark frame of the door.

“Dear God!” exclaimed Sir John. “Our pilgrim!”

Lady Helen jumped up. “
Gogoniant!
” she cried. She hurried across the solar and swept Gatty into her arms. “Oh, Gatty! What a sight!”

“We thought they were raiders,” Sian said accusingly. “They stole up on us.”

“So who is this?” Sir John inquired.

“Oh!” said Gatty. “Snout. One of us pilgrims.”

“So I see,” Sir John replied.

“God go with you, sir,” said Snout.

“Well!” asked Lady Helen. “Where are all the others? Lady Gwyneth. Is she here?”

Gatty drew in her breath. “No,” she said slowly. She looked at Snout.

Snout nodded. “We'll tell you everything,” he said.

Seeing Gatty and Snout so exhausted and mud-stained, smelling their sour sweat, and learning they'd walked all the way from Shrewsbury and not eaten since breaking their fast, Sir John observed, “All right! We've been waiting for news of you for almost ten months, so we can certainly wait a little longer.”

“No!” cried Sian, hopping around.

“Sian!”

“I told them about the wedding.”

“There's much to tell and much to ask,” said Sir John. “And of course Oliver will want to hear every word.”

“Twice!” said Sian.

Sir John's expression softened. “Gatty! Get Slim to give you both something to eat. Wash yourselves.”

“In the moat,” added Sian.

“No, not in the moat,” said Sir John, flapping Sian away with his right hand. “Ask Slim to warm a pan of water, and give you a pot of soap. Wash away all the aching miles. Tanwen will find you clean clothes.”

Gatty couldn't wash away her heartache, though.

Arthur! She shaped his name with her lips without voicing it. Arthur, you know me. You know me like I know myself. You always did. What am I to do without you?

Then Gatty remembered the saying, the one Brother Gabriel had told her, about how God never asks us to suffer more than we can bear.

That's not true, she thought. He does ask us to. He takes away the people we love.

Gatty swirled the dirty water in her washing-pan and tossed it out of the kitchen door. Miserable and dry-eyed, she began to draw lines with her forefinger on the inside of the bowl.

Four legs. And a belly. A back. Two mounted figures.

A winding track. A stream larking beside it.

Musical notes dancing around them.

Gatty stared into the bowl, trembling, and, once again, tears sprang into her eyes. They dropped into the bowl. Gatty's sigh was as deep as a dark well of lost dreams. Angrily, she wiped all the lines out.

What now, she kept asking herself. What am I to do?

Gatty put the bowl over her head like a cowl. A shield.

You and me, she thought, I know we're not close like we used to be. I mean, before you went away to be a squire. It's just that when we did meet. When we did…Please, little Jesus. Help me to understand. Help me to bear this.

That evening, Sir John himself made up the fire, as if it were Christmas Day, and everyone ranged themselves around it. Gatty and Snout sat side by side facing Sir John and Lady Helen. Oliver and Slim were on their left, and Sian sat next to Tanwen, her mother's chamber-servant.

“Now then!” said Sir John with no small satisfaction, stretching out his long legs. “Where do we begin?”

Oliver cleared his throat. “By thanking God for guarding Gatty and Snout, and guiding them home. By thanking God.”

“Very true,” said Sir John. “And after that?”

“At the beginning,” said Sian.

Lady Helen shook her head. “That way we'll be here all night. Gatty and Snout must tell us what matters most.”

“That's right,” said Sir John. “Tomorrow we'll talk again, and ask and tell much more.”

“About the wedding,” said Sian.

“And the harvest,” said Sir John. “Ghastly! The worst in my lifetime. We'll have to slaughter half our cattle before winter's over—there's nothing to feed them on. Oh, Gatty! I should tell you. A couple of things.”

“What, sir?”

“Your cow, Hopeless. She died on me this autumn.”

“Oh no!” cried Gatty. Her eyes filled with tears.

“I'm afraid so.”

“Not Hopeless.”

“Also,” said Sir John, “I've put Ruth and Howell into your old cottage.”

Gatty lowered her eyes. She felt like the ghost of herself.

“Don't look so doleful!” She could hear Sir John's voice. “Time waits for no one.”

“Ruth's got a baby,” chirruped Sian. “Guess what she's called it.”

Gatty sighed. I always slept with Hopeless, she thought. She kept me company.

“Ruth!” announced Sian. “Gatty, are you listening?”

“All the women in that family are called Ruth,” Lady Helen said.

“It's Jewish,” said Gatty.

“What is?” Sian asked.

“Ruth.”

“How do you know?”

“Now!” said Sir John. “The two of you must have been traveling for weeks and months.”

“One hundred and seven days, sir,” Snout told him.

“Dear God! No wonder you're worn out.”

“Arthur did for even longer,” said Sian. “He told me about it at the wedding. And about coming home and seeing Winnie for the first time.”

“One hundred and seven days,” Sir John repeated. “You must be glad to be home.”

“But where's Lady Gwyneth?” asked Lady Helen. “Is she all right? Has she gone straight to Ewloe?”

Gatty and Snout leaned a little towards one another; they pressed shoulders. Gatty drew a deep breath and puffed out her cheeks, and then very slowly she let all her breath out again.

“What is it?” asked Lady Helen.

Gatty stood up and walked round the fire behind Tanwen. “Change places with me,” she instructed her.

“What is it?” Lady Helen asked again.

Gatty sat down and took her left hand. “What you fear,” she said, in a steady, tender voice. “My lady.”

Lady Helen turned to her. “No! No, it's not true. Tell me it's not.”

“My lady,” Gatty said again.

“Oh! Poor soul!” Lady Helen cried. “Poor, poor soul! What happened?”

So then Snout gently explained how, in Venice, Lady Gwyneth's stomach had burst inside her.

“I sat with her when she died,” Gatty said, “and I promised to get to Jerusalem, no matter what! To get to Jerusalem and pray for her soul.”

“Austin couldn't, though,” Snout told them. “Gatty saved his life on the edge of a precipice but his hand was mangled.”

“Black and green,” said Gatty.

“Who is Austin?” asked Oliver.

“Austin?” said Gatty. “Oh! Lady Gwyneth's priest.”

Oliver puffed up his chest like an offended hen. “Her priest! Are you saying her priest didn't reach Jerusalem?”

“The doctor told him he had to stay in Venice or he'd lose his hand,” Snout explained.

“And maybe he did anyway,” Gatty said sadly. “Maybe he lost it.”

“Arthur lost his gold ring,” said Sian. “He told me he did. That was in Venice.”

Gatty's heart lurched.

“On the beach near his camp. You ask him, Gatty. He'll tell you what happened.”

Gatty felt breathless. I will, she thought. I will, anyhow.

Oliver tutted and shook his head. “So the priest had to stay in Venice.”

“And then I got left behind in Cyprus,” Gatty told them. “Because I had a baby.”

“A baby!” Lady Helen and Tanwen exclaimed, and Oliver sat right forward on his bench.

“You had a baby?” gasped Sian.

Gatty laughed. “Not my own! I'll explain later. I got left behind and the ship's captain wouldn't wait and the others had to go on but Snout, my brave Snout, you stayed behind and waited for me. Otherwise…I don't know what.”

Now Oliver was utterly dismayed. “So…so you…you didn't…” His voice rose and broke, and ended in a squeak. “You couldn't get to Jerusalem?”

Gatty gazed at Snout. Then she stared into the fire. Sir John noticed how calmly she listened and how still she sat. She always used to be so restless, he thought. The Gatty who left Caldicot was a girl; the Gatty who has come back is a young woman.

“We did,” Gatty said in a low voice.

“You did!” Sir John exclaimed. “You did reach Jerusalem?”

Gatty nodded.

“Glory be!” cried Lady Helen.

“Why didn't you say so before?” Oliver demanded.

What was it? Everyone's excitement? The gold ring? Snout beside her? Her own achievement. When Gatty raised her river eyes, hot from the fire, they were filled with light. Not dancing but not drowning.

“We could have stayed in the Holy Land,” said Snout. “With Sir Faramond.”

“Who?” asked Sir John.

“He was a crusader, sir. A Norman, but he spoke English.”

“He's married to a Saracen,” Gatty added.

Oliver opened and shut his mouth. He turned pink. “A Christian!” he said. “Married to a Saracen.”

“Yes, sir,” said Snout. “Brother Gabriel told us it does happen sometimes.”

“Hundreds of times in Spain,” added Gatty. “Kit the Trader told me.”

Oliver was breathing heavily. He was too upset to say anything.

“Oliver,” said Gatty. “It's not like you thought. Not like you told me. They haven't got tails, none of them.”

“They're enemies of God,” Oliver said.

“I know you think that,” said Gatty, “and I know crusaders do, but me and Snout have met lots of them. I've worked it out, I have. They're good and bad, all mixed up, just like Christians are.”

“God in heaven!” exploded Oliver. “You're quite wrong.”

“Anyhow,” said Gatty brightly, looking across the fire at Oliver. “It's all because of you.”

“What is because of me?”

“Because of you, Oliver, I can read.”

Oliver blinked several times. “You can read?”

“And write.”

“My child!”

“That letter you wrote to Austin. Remember?”

“God be praised!”

“Not perfect, mind,” said Gatty.

Oliver laced his stubby hands over his stomach. “Well! Who is?”

“And she can sing,” added Snout.

“Everard's taught me much more,” Gatty told him. “He's the choirmaster in Chester cathedral.”

“You should hear her,” Snout told them.

“We certainly will!” Sir John said.

“We must give thanks for Gatty's and Snout's homecoming,” said the priest.

“Quite right!” agreed Sir John. “In church. Everyone in the manor.”

“And Christmas is coming!” Lady Helen added.

Gatty and Snout glanced at each other. Each knew what the other was thinking.

“We…” Snout began. “Well…”

“What is it?” asked Sir John.

“We got to get back to Ewloe, sir.”

“Not before Christmas,” Sir John said.

“No,” said Sian. “I've made a new Christmas riddle.”

“We must,” said Gatty. “Our companions may be back by now. Austin and Everard and Emrys and Tilda and Nakin!”

“They don't even know if we're alive,” Snout explained, “and we don't know if they are either. We haven't heard anything about them—not since the messages they left in Jerusalem.”

“And I got to find out about Nest and her baby in Venice,” said Gatty, shaking her head.

Sir John smiled grimly. “Well, then!” he said. “We mustn't stand in your way.”

“I got to tend Griffith's grave, sir,” Gatty said, “and dig a lock of Lady Gwyneth's hair into it. And I got to talk to Austin, and give him something from Lady Gwyneth.”

“I understand,” said Sir John. “Duty first. Quite right.”

“Then we must all give thanks before you go,” Oliver said. “And you, child, will you sing for us?”

“And tell us about golden Jerusalem?” asked Lady Helen.

“And all,” said Gatty, eagerly.

Sir John considered Gatty. “You will come back?” he said slowly.

Gatty didn't reply. She thought about Arthur, and the wedding. She thought about Jankin and the betrothal they never had. About Hopeless. About her cottage.

“Gatty?”

“Sir?”

“You will come back.” This time it was less of a question, more of a quiet statement—warm and firm and understanding. Sir John gave his wife a meaningful look.

“It was a bad day when I gave you away to Ewloe,” Lady Helen said. “Gatty, I need you here.”

“We all do,” said Sir John. “Don't we, Oliver?”

“The child can read,” said the priest. “And write. And sing. Who else in Caldicot can do that?”

Sir John nodded thoughtfully. “You see, Gatty,” he said.

“Now that Gwyneth has no further need of you,” Lady Helen added. “The poor, poor soul!”