In bed that night, Farnor lay awake. Normally such a day’s exertions would have sent him straight to sleep the instant his head touched the pillow, but the events of this particular day had unleashed a host of thoughts and imaginings which conspired noisily to keep sleep at bay.
Gryss and his father had taken him over the bound-ary that had marked the whole of his childhood existence. And he had seen and touched the castle and found it to be a wondrous place, though for reasons quite different from those he would have imagined even as recently as that morning.
The great, finely jointed stones piled relentlessly one upon the other high into the spring sky sat in his mind with the same feeling of massive solidity that the castle itself exuded. So also did the huge gate timbers with their echoes of the trees that had yielded them. The who and the how of its building tantalized him. As too did Marna’s questions; why was it so big? And why was it there?
And, it occurred to him, there were no large quarries nearby, nor trees of that size. What must the valley have been like when convoys of wagons were wending to and fro, bringing in all those stones and timbers and all the other paraphernalia that would have been used in the building of such an edifice? And what would the castle itself have looked like with its great walls and towers half completed and with masons and joiners and all manner of other artisans crawling about it like so many ants?
At the thought of joiners he found himself perched giddily high on one of the castle’s towers, struggling perhaps to secure some heavy roof rafter. The swaying perspective that he and Marna had viewed from the base of the walls he imagined downwards from those half-built eaves. Even in the dark safety of his bedroom, Farnor felt his hands start to shake at this vision and, toes curling, he had to clench his fists and close his eyes tightly to dismiss it.
Then, feet on the ground again, he pondered the valley when the castle was garrisoned.
Soldiers?
He had no conception of what they were, really. On the one hand were Yonas’s tales of mighty armies fighting great battles against hordes of cruel invaders, and valiant knights searching always for heroism and glory. On the other was Gryss’s revealing and sour response: ‘From what I’ve seen of soldiers and their ilk, consider yourself more than fortunate that the castle is empty and locked.’
The iron ring outside Gryss’s house came back to him, with its vivid representation of the lines of sombre, waiting soldiers; these seemed to be different again from either Yonas’s or Gryss’s view – ordinary men made extraordinary by evil circumstances. A lucky charm, Gryss had called it. Lucky? Farnor smiled to himself in the darkness and wondered for a moment if the old man had ever really looked at it properly.
Probably he had, he decided after a moment’s reflec-tion on this silent act of disrespect for the village elder.
But there must have been soldiers in the village once. Or was the village even there when the castle had been first built and manned? Perhaps in fact it grew into being afterwards because of the need to grow food for the garrison.
Farnor had never had such thoughts in his entire life before.
And then there was still the why of it.
Had there once been enemies to the north? Had the lush green valley once rung to the cries of battle?
Round and round his mind went. Then, as he drifted towards sleep, the real concern of the day emerged like nemesis. What had happened to him when he had picked up that piece of animal fur? The sensation had been so intense. He had touched something. Something desperately wicked. And it had been as if he had touched it in another world; a world that had been real and solid, while the valley and his father and the others had become but distant dreams at the edge of his awareness.
He turned over and plunged his face into a cool part of his pillow. Could it have been the sun, and the general strangeness of the day?
Please let it be that.
But it could not be. He had laboured long and hard in the fields many times under hotter suns than today’s. He might sweat and stink and have a mouth like a cowshed floor, but he didn’t become light-headed, nor did he drift into vivid waking dreams. And still less did he faint.
So it had happened. Somehow he had gone into another place and touched the creature that was killing the sheep.
The conclusion came slowly and fearfully and not without much anxious denial and backsliding. But come it did, despite his resistance. And it stayed, showing the same immovable solidity as the castle itself.
Farnor suddenly felt very alone. And he had lied to Gryss and to his father; a further act of isolation. He had told them he remembered nothing.
But how could he have done otherwise? How could he have said, ‘I’ve been into the heart of the creature and known its evil,’ when he had been all the time lying unconscious at their feet?
His father would have supported him gently, his manner a mixture of concern and impatience at such unmanly nonsense. Gryss would have recommended this, that or the other physic, and the rest would have pulled knowing faces at one another.
Then cold, black panic surged up inside him. What did it really mean? Was he some kind of oddity, a freak? He recalled Rannick standing over the slaughtered sheep. He saw again the black cloud of flies swarming up around him to be dispatched to hover at a watchful distance like a waiting army by a snap of the fingers. And he knew that Rannick had touched them in some way. He remembered, too, his own momentary disorien-tation.
Was he like Rannick? Did he have in him those traits – evil traits – that would bring Gryss’s condemnation down on him? Some power beyond most people’s understanding? ‘Going from bad to worse… faster and faster.’
He found himself trembling and, for the first time in many years, he felt his throat tighten with the need to weep. He swallowed hard and forced the urge down though the effort involved left him drained and unhappy. The haven of his familiar room could not protect him from the desolation he began to feel.
For a long time he lay motionless, painfully wide awake and his heart and mind blacker than the surrounding darkness.
Then the memory of the creature’s evil came back to him. He would have to tell someone about it, somehow. Men would be sent out on night watches soon and they would be slaughtered as easily as the sheep if they came across it unprepared.
But how could he do that?
No answer came, but the comforting practicality of the problem took his mind away from his darker, less tangible anxieties and, as he pondered it, his young body, wiser than he, eased him gently into sleep.
He had no solution to his problem when he woke the following day, and it remained at the forefront of his mind as he pursued his early morning routine of jobs about the farm.
‘You look tired,’ his mother said when he eventually came into the kitchen.
‘I am,’ Farnor yawned ungraciously as he hung up his leather cape dripping from the fine drizzle that was misting the landscape outside.
‘Yesterday was a long one by all telling,’ his mother said. ‘Sit down. Eat your breakfast. Your father’s gone to Gryss’s to get something sorted out about the night watches.’
Untypically, food had not been dominating Farnor’s mind since he had awakened, and such appetite as he had shrank further at this news.
He was careful to keep his reluctance from his mother, however, and he watched her surreptitiously as she moved busily about the kitchen. Her greying hair was pulled back into a loose bun, setting off a round face that even he could see was still attractive. And small agile hands pursued long-familiar tasks with practised ease, pausing only now and then to smooth down her white apron.
It came to him that he had never really looked at her. Never seen her for what she was. He had looked at his father, particularly of late, and seen him slowly, almost imperceptibly, change. Change from being just a father to being also a friend; a respected, older and sometimes stern friend admittedly, but a friend nonetheless. Vaguely he could understand how such a thing could come about. His mother, though, was his mother. It was beyond him to imagine her as anything else. She couldn’t ever be just a friend. It wasn’t possible.
Perhaps it was a father and son thing. Perhaps mothers and daughters too became friends while fathers and daughters stayed always fathers and daughters.
The thought brought Marna, unbidden, to his mind, and as he watched his mother he felt guilty about the richness of his own good fortune. Marna had only her gentle, easy-going father, perhaps neither friend nor support to her. Was that why she was so strong, so belligerently independent? And one day he would have this farm, but what would she have? As far as he knew she had little, if any, of her father’s skill at the weaving, and it would be a rare one indeed that would take her on as a wife.
And yet she was a very whole, solid person, and she loved her father, and he her. You only had to see them together to realize that.
‘You’re not eating.’ His mother’s voice ended the voyage he had set forth on before he wandered into territories beyond charting. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ he heard himself saying. ‘Sorry. I was daydreaming.’
Better a confession to a lesser crime than to try to explain that he did not want to eat, could hardly eat, while his secret knowledge of the creature lay so heavy inside him.
Better, too, to force the food down with affected enthusiasm than to risk further inquiry.
‘I’m going down to Gryss’s,’ he said, rising to his feet the instant he had finished his first plate. ‘They might want some help with the arrangements.’
His mother looked at him enigmatically, but said nothing.
As he fastened his cape about him he returned her gaze. Suddenly he wanted to reach out and embrace her and say, ‘Thank you, mother. Thank you for everything. Thank you for my whole life and for being what you are.’ But instead he shrugged awkwardly and gave her his usual clumsy kiss on the forehead as he left.
Unusually she came to the kitchen door and watched him as he strode across the farmyard and clambered over the gate in preference to opening it. She watched him until he had disappeared from view.
Once out of sight of the farm, Farnor slowed. He was glad that his father had inadvertently given him this opportunity to be alone and to think. He was glad also to escape his mother’s perceptive eye; he would not have been able to keep his preoccupation from her for very long.
The cool, grey dampness of the day soothed him. It made everything wonderfully quiet and still.
Within minutes the fine drizzle had soaked his black hair and pressed it flat against his skull, and his face was shiny with rainwater. His leather cape had been well oiled and would protect most of him from a soaking, but it would be damp with condensation on the inside by the time he reached Gryss’s cottage and the rain would have leaked coldly down his neck.
He was unconcerned about such discomforts, how-ever, sensing that this journey to Gryss’s would perhaps be the last opportunity he would have to decide what he should do about the danger that he knew the creature offered to the night watchers. And know he did, he reaffirmed to himself. Despite his night’s sleep, the memory of the creature was as vivid as ever.
Carefully he rehearsed a number of explanations for Gryss and his father as to why the watchers should go out in larger groups than usual and why they should be better armed. It wasn’t going to be easy but he would have to say something. He’d just have to watch and listen until an opportunity presented itself for him to speak.
Arriving at Gryss’s cottage he was greeted first by his father, who opened the door and looked pleasantly surprised to see him, and then by a belated and indifferent bark from Gryss’s old dog.
‘It’s Farnor,’ Garren said, as he entered the back room with his son. Gryss, seated in a large wicker chair, smiled and raised a hand in greeting.
‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t stand, Farnor,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I did rather too much yesterday and my legs aren’t what they were.’ He motioned the new arrival to a chair facing him across the empty fireplace. Garren sat down at the long wooden table on which were some papers and an open box containing various writing materials. He picked up a long pen and carefully wiped the nib on a cloth. Then, to complete the ensemble, the old dog entered and lumbered over towards Gryss. It bumped heavily into Farnor on the way and then slumped to the floor noisily at Gryss’s feet. After settling itself wheezily, it let out a great sigh as if to declare that the meeting could now continue following this unwar-ranted interruption.
Gryss rooted down by the side of his chair busily, and retrieved a towel from somewhere. He threw it at Farnor. ‘Here, dry your hands and face. You look like a drowned rat.’
Gratefully, Farnor rubbed his damp hair into an untidy mass, then wiped his face. The smell of the towel was the smell of Gryss’s room. Welcome familiarity closed protectively around Farnor’s concerns.
‘Did your mother send you?’ Garren asked as Farnor completed his brisk toilet and handed the towel back to Gryss.
‘No,’ Farnor replied. ‘I just thought I’d come and help with the arrangements for the night watches if I could.’
He was pleased when he saw his father successfully fighting back an urge to ask his once-usual, ‘Have you finished all your jobs, my lad?’
He glanced around. ‘Is no one else here?’ he asked. Gryss chuckled. ‘Only the people who matter,’ he replied. Garren smiled and nodded knowingly.
Alarm lit Farnor’s face. ‘We’re not doing night watches on our own, are we?’ he asked.
Gryss’s chuckle became a soft laugh. ‘How many people do you think would like to go out on night watch?’ he asked.
‘Not many,’ Farnor replied.
Gryss shook his head. ‘None,’ he declared, firmly. ‘But we’ll all have to do it, and if I get the whole crowd in here they’ll spend half the day concocting excuses as to why such and such a night will be inconvenient and why such and such a place will be awkward, and why we should do this and why we shouldn’t do that. Then they’ll spend the other half saying it all over again. And in the end they’ll decide they need to go to the inn because their throats are dry with all the talking.’
Farnor thought that this judgement was a little harsh, though he could see some truth in it.
Gryss went on. ‘So what your father and I will do is decide on the watch places, prepare the lists of watchers and just tell them.’
Farnor looked at the old man uncertainly. ‘Won’t they mind?’ he asked, after a moment.
‘Probably,’ Gryss said, laughing again. ‘But they’ll get it out of their systems by haggling with one another about who should do what when, not why they shouldn’t be doing it at all.’
Rather to his surprise, Farnor felt mildly indignant at Gryss’s high handed treatment of the villagers. ‘Surely no one would try to avoid helping to catch this thing?’ he said.
Gryss’s eyes widened at this response, then he put his head back and stared up at the ceiling. Farnor’s insides curled up in anticipation of a rebuke or, worse, some acid rejoinder. It wasn’t his place to reproach a village elder, for any reason.
But no axe fell. Instead, Gryss threw an acknowledg-ing salute to Garren who accepted it with an unusually proud smile.
‘You shame me in your innocence, young Farnor,’ he said, his tone half serious, half mocking. ‘You put me in my place. You’re quite right,’ he conceded. ‘Probably none of them would try to avoid helping if asked outright. It’s just that I’m so used to people turning to me to sort out the most unbelievably foolish quarrels and disputes that I tend to forget they’re quite capable of thinking for themselves at times.’ He chuckled again. ‘However, it’s still the only way to organize these night watches if we’re to get it done this side of the summer solstice.’
Farnor was not disposed to try his good fortune too far and took the opportunity to pursue practicalities. ‘How much have you done?’ he ventured.
Garren picked up one of the sheets in front of him and pushed it along the table to his son. On it were various lists. One was of times, another of places. The longest was a straightforward list of names, and a final one seemed to be of equipment, food and general advice.
Farnor looked at it for a moment, uncertain what was expected of him, and then handed it back to his father. One of his prepared speeches clattered awk-wardly round his head and he cleared his throat as casually as he could.
‘How many men will there be in each group?’ he asked.
‘We usually work in pairs,’ Gryss replied ‘Six or seven scattered around where we think the dog is prowling. Setting aside the grumbling, night watches are a nuisance. They interfere with everybody’s work and we try to keep the disturbance to a minimum.’
Two people. Alone and isolated in the dark night. The memory of the creature’s savagery returned to Farnor. He had to say something.
‘This creature’s big and vicious,’ he said hurriedly. ‘I think it would attack two people alone. I think you should send them out in groups of at least four.’
His suggestion was made with considerably less subtlety than he had hoped, but immediately he felt easier in himself.
Gryss and Garren exchanged a glance. ‘Why do you say that?’ Gryss asked quietly. ‘No dog’s going to attack a man when it can have a sheep. You know that. If we send out men in larger groups there’ll be fewer groups and the chances of catching it will be that much the less.’
Farnor cringed inwardly. He could not deny Gryss’s answer without explaining in some way his knowledge of the creature. And yet he could not sit silent when men might be sent out to face it, oblivious of its malevolence.
‘It’s just that it’s so big,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘Didn’t you notice the size of the wounds on that second sheep?’ He held up his hands, his fingers curling clawlike. Reluctantly he edged away from his intention to warn. ‘Perhaps it won’t actually attack, but if it were cornered or caught with its prey I don t think it would run away.’
Neither Gryss nor Garren spoke.
A memory came to Farnor’s rescue. ‘You yourself said we shouldn’t go out alone when we came to tell you about the sheep the other day,’ he said to Gryss.
Gryss nodded. Even as he had spoken it he had thought it a strange remark, and now it returned to confront him. Like Farnor, he had had a troubled night, with dark, ill-formed thoughts keeping sleep at bay and refusing resolutely to come clearly into focus. Dominant amongst them was the sensation he had felt when he had touched the creature’s fur. The merest whiff of something admittedly, but he was wise enough to take heed of such happenings, however transient, and it had been bad, without a doubt.
And then Farnor, down-to-earth, strong, young Farnor, a steadfast son following a long, steadfast line of sons if ever there had been one. But he had fallen into some kind of trance at that same touch.
Discreetly, Gryss looked at the young man. He was patently troubled in some way, and, it seemed, turning from a boy into a man almost as he watched.
What was moving here?
He wanted to question Farnor, persuade him to speak out and bring his concerns into the open, but he had to be patient. Farnor was teetering on some unknowable edge and an injudicious inquiry might send him the wrong way, plunging him into deeper silence.
Besides, he knew that the urge to bring Farnor’s secrets into the light was merely a reflection of his desire to have his own confusion clarified. Whatever was amiss would have to wait events. For now he could simply use his authority to advocate the caution that Farnor’s intervention had stirred in him.
‘I think I agree with you, actually, Farnor,’ he said, levering himself out of his chair with some effort and moving to the table to sit next to Garren. ‘And I commend you for noticing the size of the wounds to the sheep. It is a big dog, as I said to your father yesterday. A very big one.’ He took the cork from a bottle of ink and stood it carefully on end. ‘And there’s no saying what it might do if it comes across anyone in what it now probably thinks is its territory. Four men per group it is. And well armed at that.’
Farnor breathed a discreet sigh of relief. Garren looked mildly irritated. ‘That’ll cause problems,’ he grumbled.
Gryss pushed a clean sheet of paper in front of his scribe. ‘That’s what we’re here for,’ he said.
For most of the rest of the morning they worked through those problems, deciding who should go with whom, and where and when. Farnor contributed little, but sat in some awe as he listened to Gryss’s detailed knowledge of the everyday affairs of the villagers and farmers being used to arrange a system of watch nights that they would be likely to accept. He was impressed, too, by his father. He had never seen him doing anything like this before, but at the same time he realized that his methodical and orderly approach actually pervaded the whole of his daily, weekly, even seasonal routines at the farm. At intervals the two men came to an agreement, and Garren diligently wrote down the details, his tongue protruding between his lips slightly as his weathered hands pursued this untypical task.
‘I think that’s all we can do,’ Gryss said finally. ‘We’ll discuss it at the tithe meeting tomorrow night. Everyone will be there. A time of great healing.’
The two men chuckled conspiratorially. Knowing that arrangements for night watches were being prepared, more than a few of the interested villagers could be expected to find tasks out in the fields for the next day or so. But absence from a tithe meeting was potentially disastrous, as those attending would determine the tithing to be paid by those absent. Many a bed-bound invalid had been miraculously cured by the announcement of a tithe meeting.
‘I’ll put these away,’ Garren said, gathering up the writing materials and the unused papers.
Gryss nodded his thanks, then, as Garren left the room, he took a risk. He leaned towards Farnor and spoke softly and urgently.
‘In your own time, Farnor, talk to me about this creature and what happened yesterday. I’m troubled by something I felt. Something bad.’
To his alarm, he saw panic filling the young man’s eyes. He raised his hand reassuringly but Farnor was speaking even as he did so.
‘Am I related to Rannick?’ he asked hoarsely.
Garren’s footsteps sounded along the hallway.
‘This is a small community, Farnor,’ Gryss said hastily. ‘We’re all related in some way.’ The panic grew. ‘But no. You’re no more related to Rannick’s line than I am.’ He waved a hand for silence as Garren returned.
‘We’ll leave you to rest,’ Garren said. ‘I must admit it’s been a day or two since I walked so far and my own legs are letting me know it. Is there anything I can fetch for you before we go?’
Gryss declined the offer and rose to see his guests out. The air was pleasantly fresh as they stepped outside. The drizzling rain had stopped and a warm sun was yellowing the thinning grey sky.
Farnor rested his hand on the iron ring as he passed it, causing the bell to tinkle slightly. A faint bark wandered down the hallway.
Gryss laid his hand on Farnor’s shoulder. ‘I’m glad you came, Farnor,’ he said. ‘You helped me get some things clear in my mind about this business.’ Farnor smiled awkwardly by way of acknowledgement. Not only for the words, but for the pressure on his shoulder that said again, ‘in your own time, speak to me about this creature.’