Heart of Hythea

Chapter one-2

His wife replied, not bothering to lower her voice at all. “Then we should send her to the City to school with Willow. She would be safer there and less trouble to me.” Katkin’s eyes went wide with horror.

But Gaspard wouldn’t hear of it. “Not a chance, Anwen. She is much too young for that. This place would be a mausoleum without her, anyway. Wouldn’t it, little Kitty Kat?” Her father turned to her, laughing, and ruffled her hair. “But you have to remember, Jacq has a job to do here, and you must not interfere with him when he is working, all right?” Katkin nodded happily. “Now, let’s get my vielle. I know a new song.”

Father and daughter left the table together arm in arm, leaving Anwen behind, muttering angrily.

* * * *

As he had promised, Jacq showed Katkin the robin’s nest, and where the squirrels kept their nuts and the badger’s den, and a thousand other hidden places. Tintaren was a huge maze of vineyards and cellars, for the wealthy Lord of Belladore owned the only expanse of land suitable for viticulture in Beaumarais. Katkin and Jacq explored every inch of it together, and never grew tired of each other’s company.

Nevertheless, there did exist one secret place that Jacq was very reluctant to reveal to her. Katkin found out about it quite by chance. One winter’s day, after finishing her lessons, she went looking for Jacq out in the wide daisy-studded meadow behind Tintaren Manor. She caught sight of him some distance away, hurrying down a path between two recently ploughed fields. Katkin was about to call out but fell silent as she realized someone else was looking for him too. She saw Jacq’s head lift sharply as the foreman shouted his name. Katkin watched in surprise as Jacq stopped abruptly, stepped sideways, and then completely disappeared from sight. She looked around wildly, refusing to believe the evidence of her own eyes, but it was as if he had ceased to exist.

Katkin jumped when the foreman came up beside her. “Hello, Little Shadow.” He had given her this nickname some time ago, after he noticed that everywhere Jacq went she seemed to follow right behind. “Have you seen Jacq?” he asked. “I need him to help me shift some barrels.”

Katkin looked up at him and answered uncertainly, “No, Rene. I haven’t... seen him, not lately.”

“Well if you find him, tell him I am looking for him, will you?” He stalked off and Katkin walked over to the place she had seen Jacq vanish. After a few moments she heard a strange sound, like the puff of displaced air, and Jacq once more stood beside her. He looked surprised and slightly annoyed to see her.

“What are you doing here, Kat?”

“Where did you go just now, when you disappeared?” Katkin asked excitedly.

Jacq tried to pretend ignorance but she would not allow it. Finally, exasperated by her questions, he snapped, “There is a very secret place I can go to. Don’t ask me how I do it, because I don’t know myself. The first time I went it was an accident, see? I was running from some boys, when I was much smaller than I am now. I tripped and fell sort of sideways, and then I found myself somewhere else, and they weren’t behind me any more.”

“Take me there, now,” Katkin insisted. “I want to go with you. Jacq, please...”

“No. I won’t take you,” he said flatly. “I don’t even know if I can.”

But she had badgered him and sulked for days until finally he gave in.

Katkin skipped along beside Jacq as they crossed the brown fields to a place out of sight of the Manor House and the barn. After checking to make sure they were unobserved, he took her hand firmly in his, closed his eyes for a moment, then stepped forward and a little to the left. Katkin felt such a sickening moment of vertigo, she closed her eyes against it. After she opened them again and looked around, she said with disappointment, “Oh well, you said it might not work.”

Jacq said quietly, “Oh, it worked all right. Look, Katkin.”

He pointed upwards and she saw the dull whiteness of the sky above their heads. It had been a bright, sunny day a moment before. Now there were no clouds, just this uniform lack of color and form, as though the firmament just stopped. Her heart began to pound in fear.

She asked shakily, “Where are we? What is this place?”

He shrugged. “I already told you, I don’t know. Are you ready to go back?”

Katkin did not want Jacq to know she was afraid, so she said carelessly, “No, let’s walk around for a bit. Have you seen any other people?”

Jacq scratched his head. “There are white things here, but I wouldn’t call them people. I don’t think we should explore any further. I tried that a few times when I first came here, but I always felt as though I didn’t belong. Like I was trespassing somewhere very sacred. We should go back.”

“Show me one of the things, and then we can go back, I mean it.”

He looked at her doubtfully.

“Please, Jacq. You never have to bring me here again.”

He sighed. “All right. But you have to promise you won’t tell anyone else about it. Swear on the Goddess Lalluna.” She crossed her hands over her chest, as she had seen the Daminem[1] of the Unity do once on a visit to the Infirmarie in the City, and solemnly swore an oath. Then he took her hand and led her across the brown field to a ramshackle house.

“I know this place,” said Katkin. “It is the old Bell cottage. No one lives here now. The old man died last year.”

“Yes,” said Jacq. “He did. Come inside, Katkin.”

The tiny house was neat as a pin within, as though nothing had been touched since the owner passed away. Katkin stood still, nervously waiting for Jacq to show her the thing that wasn’t exactly a person. The silence was so oppressive she thought she could hear her own heart beating. “Back here,” he whispered, seemingly as afraid of the stillness as she. He pointed to a curtained alcove that hid the old man’s bed. They walked forward together, and Jacq parted the curtains slightly so Katkin could peer within.

As Jacq had promised, something white lay on the bed, on top of the faded blue counterpane. Katkin suddenly understood what Jacq meant about trespassing.

“Jacq,” she whispered urgently. “Let’s go.”

The creature heard her, and lifted its head. Katkin gave a moan of fear, for it had no face, just a flat whiteness, as blank as the sky outside. She turned and fled, and Jacq followed behind her, shutting the door firmly, in case the terrifying being inside should decide to pursue them.

Once they were well away from old man Bell’s cottage, she begged, “Take me home, right now. Please...”

Jacq took her hand, and stepped sideways again. After the same horrible feeling of dizziness, they stood once more in the living world.

“I told you,” he said simply, “but you wouldn’t listen to me, would you?” But then he had to comfort her frightened tears, and he forgot to be angry with her.

* * * *

Time passed, and still they remained the best of friends. Jacq was fourteen, and towered over eleven-year-old Katkin. They spent what time they could together, rambling through the fields of Tintaren, with Jacq on Nestor and Katkin on her new pony, Brinna.

But Jacq seldom had time for such adventures. As he grew larger and stronger his work at the vineyard had grown much more demanding, and the foreman less tolerant of interruptions. He often sent Katkin away with a curt admonition, and her busy father just ignored her pleas to lighten Jacq’s workload. Sometimes Jacq seemed angry, and would go for hours without talking, especially if he saw Katkin reading or writing in one of her schoolbooks. Katkin worried endlessly about his moods and would try hard to coax a smile from him when she thought he was unhappy.

Her mother and father seemed troubled too, and there were whispered conversations about a man named Nicholas Reynard, and something called the Rising. Katkin paid much less attention to this. Her world revolved firmly around Jacq and the endless fields of Tintaren. With a faith borne of childhood innocence, she believed both would be with her forever. She could not have been more wrong.

One late summer day, Katkin waited impatiently behind the barn for Jacq to finish his afternoon work in the fields. They had been planning this ride to the lakeshore for weeks, and now Jacq was very late. As the sun slowly dipped lower in the sky, Katkin felt her own spirits sinking. The grape harvest would begin in just a few days and she knew Jacq would be far too busy then to spend any time with her. As she was about to give up and return to the Manor house she saw him hurrying around the corner of the barn, and she hailed him with a cry of delight.

“At last! I was beginning to think you had forgotten all about me, Jacq Benet!”

He looked tired and a little dispirited as he rinsed his hands and head under the water pump by the horse trough. “Rene was watching me like a hawk. I couldn’t sneak away early. Come on, we’ll have to move if we are going to make it down to the Mere and cook supper before dark. Did you manage to find us something to eat?”

Katkin grinned and held up a box containing half a dozen eggs and some potatoes, stolen earlier in the day from the kitchen gardens.

“Did you tell your father anything of our plans?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t want to chance it. He might have said I couldn’t go.”

Jacq shrugged and accepted this. “You will catch it if we are late back then. Come on, let’s get the horses.”

Katkin led Brinna from the barn while Jacq saddled Nestor. They set off together down a well worn path that led to the shores of the Mistmere. Autumn was in full flight and the hills were awash in the yellow leaves of the oaks, with occasional bursts of flame red from maple and sycamore. There was a nip in the air that presaged the coming of winter, but the sun was warm in the brilliantly blue sky. Katkin thought it a perfect afternoon, despite a bank of heavy-looking clouds that were massing to the east.

Once they reached the shores of the lake, where a stony tributary rushed down to meet it from the hills, she lit a small fire with her tinder and flint while Jacq dug a deep hole in the side of the bank. Katkin scrambled down into the river to retrieve some rounded stones, and then tossed them into the fire. Once they were hot enough, Jacq carefully piled them in the makeshift oven along with the food. In the meantime, Katkin poked about the hillside and discovered some ripened fruit in an abandoned apple orchard. She carried back an apron-full of bright red apples which she and Jacq munched in companionable silence as they waited for their late lunch to roast.

After a time she said, “I heard my parents arguing last night. My mother wants to send me away to school in the City, but my father will not let her.”

Jacq lay on his back, chewing on a piece of grass, and stared up at the sky. He turned his head to smile at her, and he seemed untroubled. “Don’t they have that argument every year about this time? He always wins, does he not?”

She shrugged. “I am not so sure he will this year. It was quite serious. They have been acting very strangely ever since that man Nicholas Reynard started attacking the Lord’s houses. But he will never defeat my father,” she continued confidently. “And someday, when I am Queen...”

Jacq hooted with laughter at this. “You? The Queen of Beaumarais?”

She responded with dignity. “Of course I shall be Queen someday, and you will be the King and rule by my side, Jacq. Then I will put Nicholas Reynard in prison for a thousand years, and decree that no children have to go away to school if they do not wish it.”

Jacq suddenly stopped laughing and sat up. He looked over at her and said seriously, “If I am to be king then we would have to be married.”

Katkin nodded serenely. “Whom else would I marry, Jacq? I love you. I always have. You are the bravest and strongest boy I know and my best friend in the whole world.”

He seemed at a loss for words for a moment, and then he took her hand, holding it gently in his. “It won’t be that easy, Kat. Life isn’t always fair. When you are older, maybe you will understand.”

Her head flew up in alarm. “What are you saying? You don’t want to marry me?” Katkin’s eyes quickly filled with tears.

Jacq shook his head violently. “No! I am not saying that, not at all.” Then he continued, more softly, “Listen to me, Katkin. What I want and what you want — it might not matter — that is what I am saying. Your father is a powerful man. I don’t think he will want you to marry the son of a cottar. He will do everything he can to prevent it.”

She looked genuinely shocked at this. “My father wouldn’t do that. He wants me to be happy!”

But Jacq just shook his head once more. “I hope, one day, that things will be different. Some of us are working to make it that way. In the meantime, I can only make you a promise.”

She stared up at him, suddenly aware of how much he had grown in the last year. There was the suggestion of facial hair on his upper lip and jaw now, and a breadth to his shoulders that spoke of manhood. Though she was still only eleven, Katkin intuitively understood that this promise, whatever it was, was no childhood game between them. She took a deep breath and said slowly, “What do you promise, Jacq?”

He met her green eyes with his own steady gray ones. “I promise I won’t marry anyone else, Katkin. I will wait for you as long as I have to. Do you understand?”

She nodded and said softly, “I hope you don’t have to wait too long.” Then, for the first time since they met, four years ago, she felt suddenly shy in his presence. She turned away to see to the lunch and he grinned, shaking his head wryly.

“We had better head back now.” Jacq pointed up to the sky. “See those clouds up there? It looks like a storm is brewing.” They had finished lunch some time ago, and now were unsuccessfully trying to lure a large water rat from her nest in the bank with various scraps of food. A fine drizzle began to fall as he spoke, and Katkin hurried to collect her things. Soon it began to rain in earnest, and they rode back up the valley with their heads down, each lost in private contemplation, as thunder rumbled away in the distance.

A bolt of lightning split the sky with a deafening boom. A tree beside the path exploded into sheets of flame and Brinna reared in terror, throwing Katkin off her back. Jacq jumped down from Nestor and ran to where she lay on the ground, limp and unresponsive. He shook her gently, crying, “Katkin! Katkin, wake up. We have to get back to your house.” As Jacq brushed the hair away from her face, his hand felt something warm and sticky. Blood poured from a gash on her forehead, and he knew he would have to move her despite the fact she was still unconscious. After binding the wound as well as he could with his handkerchief, Jacq carefully picked Katkin up and draped her across the broad back of Nestor. Though he rode as quickly as he could for Tintaren, it still took him over an hour to get there.

By that time her family was in a panic, and Katkin’s mother and father both met Jacq at the gates of the main house. Anwen took one look at her daughter and shrieked, “You see, Gaspard! I told you this would happen. What has that lout done to her? Look at her! Look at your daughter...”

Jacq opened his mouth, and tried to explain, but Gaspard du Chesne had already instructed two of his men to get the boy off his horse and into the barn. The last thing he heard, before they dragged him away, was Katkin’s voice, crying hysterically, “Jacq! No, I want to stay here with Jacq!” The sound of her screaming his name stayed with him for a long time afterwards.