Crossing To Paradise (29 page)

Gatty
spread her arms and ran, yelling, into the deep bed of leaves beneath the copper beech. She staggered and fell flat on her face.

For some while, she lay there, motionless. Then she rolled over.

“What is it?” asked Snout.

“I don't know what to do.”

Snout smiled down at Gatty. “In your coat of many colors,” he said. “Come on!”

Gatty stood up and slapped away some of the leaves, pink and cinnamon and rust. “When that messenger told us we were only one day's walk away, I wanted to come here so much,” she said, “but after we got here, I wanted to go away.”

“I know.”

“Then Sir John and Lady Helen told me they wanted me to come back.”

“So did Oliver.”

“And that made me want to. But now!”

“What?”

“Everything reminds me. Everything clutches me. This fishpond, this is where me and Arthur saved Sian when she went through the ice. Everything, Snout. The Yard and the butts and the sty and Fallowfield…everything clutches me. It's too late to come back. There's no hope in it.”

“But it's different now. You can read. You can write.”

“It won't be no different,” Gatty said.

Snout knew when to keep quiet. He shuffled through the crackling leaves.

“Our companions,” said Gatty. “They're my life now. I keep wondering about Nest. Up at Ewloe, I could begin again.”

“It won't be easy,” said Snout. “Not without Lady Gwyneth.”

“Nothing's never easy,” Gatty replied.

“Well, you're coming to begin with,” Snout observed. “See what happens, like what we said.”

As they walked past Merlin's cottage, Gatty told Snout how some people were sure he knew magic, and how Merlin always used to argue with Oliver and how, three years before, he had simply disappeared.

Then the door of Merlin's cottage opened, almost as if he had heard Gatty and Snout talking.

Gatty froze. She stared. She took a couple of steps. “It is!” she cried. “Merlin!” Gatty strode towards him.

“Ah!” said Merlin, looking pleased. “You're back.”

“Where have you been?”

Merlin considered Gatty. “I could well ask you the same question.”

“On our pilgrimage!” Gatty told him. “We been to Jerusalem. Here! This is Snout.”

“Good morning, Snout,” said Merlin.

“What are you doing here?” Gatty demanded.

“Doing?” Merlin repeated. “Living.”

“You're living here?”

“Didn't I just say so?”

“But Sir John didn't tell me.”

“He didn't?”

“No.”

“Hmm! Is he beginning to take me for granted? Perhaps it's time to go away again.”

“Where have you been?” Gatty asked again.

“Oh!” said Merlin rather offhandedly. “Where I was needed.”

“Arthur will be glad,” Gatty exclaimed.

“Isn't he already?”

“What?”

“Glad.”

“I don't know. I haven't seen him.” And then, “Did you go to the wedding?”

Merlin closed his eyes. “I certainly did. Wonderful! The very thing I hoped would happen.”

Gatty flinched. Then she took a deep breath. “Merlin, if I come to live here, if I do, will you help me?”

“Help you? How?”

“I don't know. Talk to me and teach me. Like you helped Arthur.”

Merlin blew on the back of his spotty right hand. “Will you help yourself?” he asked. “Isn't that the question?”

Gatty smiled. “Arthur told me you always asked him questions.”

“Did he now?”

“I can read! I can write!”

“
Mirabile dictu!
” exclaimed Merlin, spreading his cloak. “Sir John's manor will become a court of love and learning.”

“And I got three questions for you,” Gatty said. “That night when the old century died, and we saw nine fires burning, and Oliver rang the bell.”

“Is that a question?” Merlin asked.

“Did you fly down from Tumber Hill?”

“Ah!” said Merlin, closing his eyes again.

“And that leaping contest! We saw you, I know, but how can you have jumped forty-seven feet?”

“And the third question?” asked Merlin.

“Is it true what Arthur said? Can you be in two places at the same time?”

Merlin's eyes stayed closed. “I cannot tell,” he said. And after a while, “Do you believe such wonders are possible?”

“I do!” cried Gatty. “Me and Snout, we've seen wonders. One Saracen, he told me that what we don't understand always seems like a wonder.”

Merlin opened his blue eyes and smiled gently at Gatty. “Well, then,” he said. Then he raised both arms in a kind of benediction, and went back into his cottage.

Merlin looks like that old Saracen, the one in the pound, Gatty
thought. They both got the same eyes. And they both like answering questions with questions.

Before returning to the manor house, Gatty and Snout retraced their steps along the bank of the Little Lark, and they came to the place where the track divided: One way led west to Holt and Offa's Dyke, one wound upstream to Wistanstow.

Gatty remembered how Arthur had promised her that one day, one day, they would go upstream.

I told him I hadn't forgot when I wrote him that letter, Gatty thought. I'll hold him to it. I will!

And then there was a marvel.

Gatty and Snout heard the sound of hooves and saw a horseman advancing through the trees towards them. A riderless cob cantered beside him.

Almost at once, they were all upon each other.

The horseman was Austin.

The riderless cob was Syndod.

Gatty's heart began to thud and bang in her chest, as if it were a songbird imprisoned in a little cage.

“God in heaven!” the priest shouted. “God in heaven!”

Austin dismounted, and Syndod stared at Gatty as if she could scarcely believe her slightly bloodshot eyes. Then she sort-of barged her with her muzzle, and whinnied.

Gatty and Snout and Austin embraced, and even then Syndod was not going to be left out. It seemed nothing short of a miracle that God should have brought them all together, in a damp wood, in the Middle March, on that first day of December.

Streaming with tears, Gatty clung to Austin. Then she buried her face in Syndod's muddy bay coat and, as she'd done very early one morning nine months before, she caught her pony's delicate breath. Sweet April grass. Violets.

“God gives us marvels and moments such as these,” said Austin. “They're consolations. Light in the darkness.”

“Amen,” chimed Gatty and Snout.

Now came all the words—a stream, then a torrent. Austin told Gatty and Snout he was utterly amazed to see them and they said they'd arrived at Caldicot only the previous evening, and were on their way to Ewloe; Austin said in that case they could all go back together, and that he and the others had reached Ewloe just fourteen days before. Then he showed them how his right hand had completely healed, leaving only a jagged scar.

“But what are you doing here?” Gatty asked.

“As you can imagine,” Austin replied, “I scarcely wanted to set off on another journey. But it's my duty to tell Lady Helen about Lady Gwyneth.”

“We've told her,” said Gatty.

Austin nodded. “I suppose you have,” he said in a resigned voice. “And then, I knew I must tell Lady Helen and Sir John about how we'd…mislaid you.” The priest gave Gatty a keen look. His bushy eyebrows kept twitching.

Together they walked back towards the manor house, Gatty leading Syndod.

“I waited in Venice,” said Austin. “I waited so long that I doubted whether the others were going to come back. They were more than two weeks late.”

“What happened?” asked Snout.

“Gobbo's ship was battered by storms. He had to put in at Ragusa for repairs.”

“Nest!” said Gatty. “Is she all right?”

“She is,” Austin replied, lifting his eyes to heaven.

“She found Sei?”

“Oh yes.”

“What?”

“He didn't want her to stay in Venice.”

“No!” cried Gatty.

Austin nodded thoughtfully. “So she came back with us—crying most of the way.”

“Nest!” said Gatty sadly. “Poor Nest! What about her baby?”

“Safe inside,” Austin reassured her.

“God be praised!”

Austin read Snout's thoughts. “And Hew's all right too,” he told him.

Snout gave the priest a huge, grateful smile and, after that, his face was wreathed in smiles all day.

“He'll make a good altar boy, your son will,” Austin said. “In fact, everyone's all right. We've all got aches and cuts and bruises, of course. And Tilda's hands…they're no better, for all her prayers.”

Snout gave a prodigious sniff. “Like my nose,” he said.

“In fact,” Austin went on, “Tilda says they're worse than before. As you can imagine, everyone at Ewloe is distressed about Lady Gwyneth. Everyone's grieving for her and very anxious.”

“What will happen to Nest?” asked Gatty.

“It's not only Nest,” the priest replied. “What will happen to us all? Who's going to be the next lord of the manor? Will the Earl of Chester and the Welsh lords fight over Ewloe? They've done so before. We began to talk about all this in Venice, after Lady Gwyneth died, and the nearer we got to home, the more often we thought about it.”

“It was the same with us,” said Snout.

“But Nest can stay at Ewloe, can she?” Gatty persisted.

“Nest's not the first girl to have a baby out of wedlock,” Austin replied. “We'll look after her, if that's what you mean.”

“I'll be there to help her,” Gatty said. “I promised her I would. The end of February.”

“But as to what will happen after that,” Austin went on, “none of us knows. As if things aren't bad enough, with the harvest failing.”

“Here too,” Gatty told him.

“I suppose the Earl of Chester may summon me to talk to him,” the priest said, “but I fear we can do little or nothing. English or Welsh,
the lords of the land make their choices and decisions without taking much notice of their priests or people.”

“And Syndod?” said Gatty. “My Syndod! You brought her all that way? Over the mountains and all.”

“Don't thank me,” Austin said.

“What do you mean?”

Austin rubbed his dark chin. “When I spoke to Lady Gwyneth before she died, she told me she was proud of you.”

“Did she?” said Gatty in a small voice.

“She said she wanted you to have Syndod. She said that when we all got back to the stables in London…”

“Like we didn't!” interrupted Gatty.

“…I was to keep her for you.”

“Keep Syndod for me?” Gatty said wonderingly.

“And astonish you!” added Austin, with a sharp smile.

“But what if we'd gone back to the livery stables?” Gatty asked. “What if we'd done that and Syndod wasn't there?”

“We had no way of knowing whether you'd come back to Venice, but it didn't seem very likely,” Austin replied. “To tell you the truth, it didn't seem likely you'd come home at all.”

“That's what we thought sometimes,” Gatty said.

“But in case you did…” Austin said, “Nakin made arrangements with the stablemaster in Treviso, and Nest rode Syndod back to London. And when the time came to sell our horses back to Sayer…you remember him?”

“Sayer and Solomon!” said Gatty with a smile.

“I kept Syndod.”

“Oh Austin!” exclaimed Gatty, shaking her golden head in amazement.

Still talking and talking, Gatty and Snout and Austin crossed the stone bridge, and tied up the two horses.

Then Gatty led the way in and walked straight up to Sir John and Lady Helen, who were standing beside the fire with Oliver.

“Another pilgrim!” said Sir John.

Flushed and eager, Gatty introduced Austin, and told them he had come all the way from Ewloe.

“So who should we expect next?” Sir John asked, giving Austin a little sideways smile.

“Sir John de Caldicot!” said Austin in his strong, deep voice. “Lady Helen. I've made this long journey in vain.”

“No journey's in vain,” Oliver interrupted. “No journey. I'll give you chapter and verse.”

Sir John held up one hand. “Later, Oliver, if you will.”

“My duty, my sad duty…” Austin began.

“We know,” said Lady Helen. “Poor soul! She had the dragon's blood in her veins.”

Austin slowly and gravely made the sign of the cross. “Before she died, she spoke lovingly of you,” he said.

Lady Helen lowered her eyes and gently shook her head.

“And then,” Austin continued, “the second purpose of my journey! It was to tell you that this sweet…Gatty…had been left behind in Cyprus and was unlikely, most unlikely ever to find her way back home.” Austin paused and looked warmly at Gatty and Snout. “Never in my life have I made a journey for so little reason. And never, I may add, have I been so happy to do so.”

“Indeed!” said Lady Helen, clapping her hands.

“Austin's brought Syndod!” Gatty told them joyfully.

“Who?” asked Sir John.

“My cob! My Welsh cob!”

“There's a good name!” Lady Helen said. “Syndod.”

“He brought her back from Venice,” Gatty said. “And you know I told you about Austin's hand,” Gatty went on, “all black and green. Look at it now!”

Austin held up his right hand. “It was mangled,” he said. “And but for our Gatty, I'd have been mangled all over. Like a rabbit after a red kite's finished with it.”

“Can you write with it?” Oliver inquired.

Austin smiled. “I'm left-handed,” he replied.