LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

just trying to frighten us?’

      ‘No. He means to hurt me. He means, somehow, to take Jack away from us. When he turns eighteen, we will lose him.’

      Aidan stood up again and picked up his sword, weighing it in his hand.

      ‘I will not allow that to happen. There must be some way of defeating this – this monster.’

      Edith closed her eyes, remembering Gwydion’ face when she had told him she would not marry him. He looked as though his whole world had been ripped apart and stitched back together in a pattern he no longer recognised. ‘Poor Gwydion. What have I done to him? What has he done to himself?’

      ‘Do not pity him! He has free will, like all men. He chose to become what he is now. We must send scouts to all corners of the kingdom; somewhere Gwydion is lurking, and I will find him. He is probably somewhere remote, maybe on one of the islands off the coast, or in the shadow of the hills …’

      Edith’s mind wandered. Somewhere remote, Aidan had said. Somewhere remote. She remembered Anwen’s advice.

      ‘That is what we must do with Jack,’ she said.

      ‘What?’

      ‘We cannot protect him here. We have to send him away.’

      ‘Well,’ Aidan began, ‘we could send him to Ireland, to my brother. Or to your cousin Audrey in Northumberland.’

      ‘No. It has to be somewhere no one would expect him to be. Somewhere his identity can be hidden. And even he,’ Edith paused, as the implications of Anwen’s suggestion became clear to her, ‘he cannot know who he is. It is the only way to stop Gwydion laying hands on him.’

      ‘But Edith,’ Aidan was frowning, ‘that means he cannot know who we are, either. We will never be able to visit him, to talk to him …’ He sat down heavily, covering his face with his hands. ‘He will grow up without us.’

      Edith stared at the hanging above the bed. It showed the emblem of her family: a great wolf, silver and grey, its tawny eyes gazing back at her.

       I will be like the wolf, and do what I must to protect my cub. Even though I can feel pieces of my heart freezing away.

      ‘It will be hard, Aidan. Almost impossible. But if Jack is safe, and alive …’

      She picked up the baby, put him in Aidan’s arms and put her arms around both of them, trying to chisel this moment into her memory. All the tiny details: the translucent creaminess of Jack’s skin, his tiny fingernails, the way he fit so perfectly in the crook of his father’s elbow.

      ‘He looks like you, Aidan.’

      ‘But he has your eyes.’

      The fire burned lower.

      ‘But, if we do this – if – where can we send him?’ Aidan asked.

      ‘To Hilda. She used to be my nurse, and she cannot yet be forty. She and her husband live down by the coast.’

      ‘And you trust her?’

      ‘I would trust her with my life.’ Edith looked down at her son, still sleeping peacefully in Aidan’s arms. ‘Jack will be happy there.’

      ‘And if we can find Gwydion quickly, we may not need to send him away for long.’

      ‘No. I will pray to your god, and to mine, that we will be able to bring him home again soon.’

       And so Jack was sent away, to a village perched high on the white cliffs and a childless couple who quickly loved him as their own. King Aidan scoured the country for Gwydion, but the wizard had left no traces. Queen Edith had other children and Jack was not spoken of. Still, her people whispered about the sorrow that clung to the young queen like a shadow.

       The years passed, harvest followed harvest, and Jack grew into a boy. Finally, his eighteenth birthday came and went, and Gwydion did not appear. The king and queen, believing the danger to have lifted, made preparations to bring their first-born home again …

      

      ‘Jack? Jack! Where are you, lad?’

      Jack sighed. He had just got comfortable, lying on the sand in the shade of the cliffs, and now he was going to have to climb back up to the farm at the top. The whole plan had been to work fast so he could have a sleep before the rest of the day’s labour.

      ‘Jack! If I have to come down there …’

      There was no help for it.

      ‘Coming, father.’ He picked up the sacks of seaweed and carefully made his way up the steep track cut into the side of the cliff.

      ‘Ah, good.’ Edwin took the sacks from Jack’s back. ‘Rufus can spread this on the field, and we will have a fine harvest in the fall. Have you eaten?’

      ‘Yes, father.’

      ‘Then you can go and wash. Father Brendan is waiting in the house. I hope you’ve been practising your letters, and learning your history.’

      ‘But Ned and I were going to go hunting this morning. If I catch a couple of rabbits, mother will be able make that pie you enjoy so much.’

      For a moment Jack thought he was going to get away with it; he could see his father wavering.

      ‘Well …’ But Edwin shook his head. ‘No. Hunting later. Learning first.’

      ‘But why? None of my friends have to sit with Father Brendan and listen to him go on and on about—’ Jack stopped. His father had that look in his eye, the look that meant: If you don’t do what you are told, I will tell your mother, and then we will see. He sighed. ‘As you wish, father.’

      ‘You’re a good lad, Jack. I know there’s much you don’t understand as yet, but one day soon it will all become clear. Off with you now.’

      Jack hurried away. Recently, his father had often seemed to come out with odd references to the future, to some revelation that would answer all Jack’s questions. Given that Jack’s questions were mostly along the lines of ‘When will I be able to leave the village?’ he suspected sometimes that the ‘revelation’ was just a delaying tactic – like their insistence that he still needed lessons. Jack could not see the point of reading, or learning about politics. What he really wanted was to go to Helmswick, fight for the king and win his own land. He’d listened to the heroic tales as a child: Beowulf defeating the monster and gaining renown and treasure from his lord. That was what he dreamt about. That, and winning the hand of a beautiful maiden.

      Jack scowled and kicked at the rushes growing at the edge of the nearby stream. A cormorant squawked angrily and took off into the air. His dreams of glory were pointless; he was bound to end up a carpenter, just like his father. As for all the nonsense about a future revelation, maybe it was just a sign of old age. His parents were a good twenty years older than the parents of all his friends. An unlooked-for gift, his mother called him.

      The house came into view. It was a low, comfortable building, with a separate area for the animals, and even two separate sleeping chambers. Jack sometimes wondered how his father had been able to afford to build such a house. Edwin was a good carpenter, but he made simple furniture for the other villagers, not expensive items for the king. Maybe this was another of the mysteries that would one day become clear.

      Jack was just about to go into the house when he stopped, brought up short by the sight of a girl planting seeds in the garden of the house opposite.

      ‘Good day, Winifred.’

      A lot of the girls in the village liked Jack. He used to hear them as he walked around

Скачать книгу