Harvest (12 page)

His advisory post was in the gift of the President of the United States, his job was to distribute research funds to the many who needed them. He was therefore both politician and paymaster, a
scientist no more. The wonder and excitement of discovery in the brutally ambitious young man Arthur once knew had evaporated in the face of the conflicting realities of the world of men.

Yet not quite all of the Erich Arthur had known, for whom Margaret had had a soft spot, was gone. In the brief moment they half-embraced, Bohr’s momentary pleasure at seeing him again was
apparently genuine.

But then: ‘I’m sorry, Arthur . . . and . . . I hope . . .’ and an apologetic smile as he retreated into the shadow land of compromise and impossible decisions, in which he was
both king and subject.

He hopes
, thought Arthur, interpreting the ambiguity in that whispered ‘I’m sorry’,
that I’ll tell them all about the Hyddenworld but if I don’t, he has
the power to make me.

He knew that humans, even when they count themselves as friends, are capable of anything if they believe it to be a matter of survival.

His gaze involuntarily drifted towards the window and the wide expanse beyond, across which lay his only possibility of escape and so keeping from them the knowledge needed to access the
Hyddenworld.

‘Ladies and gentlemen . . .’

The introductory session began.

They were briefed by Erich and two others about terrestrial events so far and the threat of meteorological ones as well, the wall behind them turning into a firework display of images, graphics
and live links. Arthur paid very careful attention. He realized what was happening. By their very presence at that briefing, he and the others became participants in secrets of a kind that it was
treasonable to divulge. No wonder Bohr had sent his people to descend on Arthur so fast, and got him somewhere secure. He had been afraid that the few others in the know about the Hyddenworld,
particularly Professor Liadov of MIIGAiK, the Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography, and Dr Hsueh of the Department of Astronomy, Beijing Normal University, both in the pay of their
respective governments, might have triggered those governments’ interest in him. Of them all, Liadov was the one he would have trusted most, the only one to whom he might have divulged what
he knew.

But neither man was there and Arthur had no intention of asking if they were likely to be. Wrong question to the wrong people. It would have given too much away: that he had something to
divulge, that he trusted some more than others.

They were given an agenda for the discussion that was to start after a meal.

‘Questions?’

Arthur bided his time, affected to look tired and breathless, which was not difficult.

Eventually he raised his hand.

‘I’m not used to being cooped up. Never have been. Do we have access to the great outdoors?’

Erich Bohr smiled his pale and puffy smile.

‘I can see no reason why not,’ he said slowly, glancing questioningly at one of the military.

It was answered with a reluctant nod before one of the other officers said cautiously, ‘For your own safety, ladies and gentlemen, it is better that you are accompanied if you want to go
outside. Ask one of the orderlies, and someone will show you where you may go.’

‘Tell them to come in trainers,’ Arthur called out affably. ‘I intend to sprint round the perimeter before supper . . . it’ll sharpen my mind.’

He said it with an irony that would have been lost on most of those present had he not smiled with a self-deprecation intended to suggest that the last thing Professor Arthur Foale was capable
of was jogging, let alone sprinting around an airbase.

He had created his chance. In the next few days he must find a way to take it.

‘J
ack!
Jack!
’

‘
Stort!
’

It was Katherine, shaking them. It was six in the morning, it was urgent and it was extraordinary.

They each woke from deep sleep, aware enough of the potential danger their arrival at Abbey Mortaine the night before and the discovery of the bodies of the hydden monks had put them in, to stay
silent.

Stort slowly sat up rubbing his eyes.

Jack, always instantly alert, rose up and grabbed his stave. ‘
What is it?
’ he whispered.

It was Katherine’s watch and she was doing her job.

‘Has one of the threads been triggered?’ murmured Stort, struggling with his trews.

Sensible hydden went to bed with their trews on in such situations but Stort said he could not sleep without a certain airiness.

The dark hours of night had been trouble-free. Now it was dawn, and cool air and a lingering mist hung in the trees about them, and among that part of the ruins they could see through the trees
below. The mist was thickest along the river and it blocked out the disturbing sight of the murdered hydden.

‘
Listen!
’ she said.

It was quiet singing, a duet. It came from the steep hillside to their right but the mist made it impossible see who was singing, or exactly where they were.

Jack relaxed.

This was not the sound of enemies and it seemed benign.

Stort smiled. What they were hearing more than justified the stops and starts, hesitations and shocks of their journey from White Horse Hill.

‘Ancient and old,’ he said, ‘a music made to an unusual scale which means . . .’

‘They can’t know we’re here,’ said Jack. ‘They probably saw us arrive yesterday and watched us leave. The sight lines are such that they wouldn’t be able to
see us from over there, or see us leave higher up. They just assumed it.’

‘Ssh!’ said Stort. ‘Listen! This is a rare privilege indeed. I doubt that hydden have heard such voices or such song for many centuries, but for those who lived here . .
.’

First an old, cracked, male voice, as of one who is dying. The voice of a hydden who hasn’t got much time left now but needs to pass on what he knows to a new generation. Then, in answer
and in counterpoint, a much younger voice, a tenor, pure as a lark’s flight. It rose above the first, back and forth across the sky, playing and dancing with the deeper notes it had been
given, transforming them to something new that sang of life and hope.

Then the old voice again, deeper, broken, warning, encouraging, questioning, challenging, shot through with yearning for an era and youth gone by, shot through with sorrow.

A pause before the reply, which suddenly flew up from the withered undergrowth of the base, beating its wings into the thin air to gain height and find direction, encouraging the older voice in
its own turn; the young giving the old a reason to live.

They sang and counter-sang, a duet that was beautiful in its sadness and loss, yearning and discovery. Its thought was all around them, but no more substantial than the mist itself which, as
they listened, filled with the light of the rising sun so brightly that they had almost to hold their hands in front of their eyes not to be blinded.

The music that came to them then seemed as if made by the very Earth herself.

The words that were sung were distinct in parts but Katherine and Jack did not recognize the language. They looked to Stort for an explanation. He was standing now in his undershirt, trews round
his ankles because he had forgotten to pull them up, head to one side as if to hear the better.

‘It’s plainchant,’ he murmured, ‘but of an unusual kind. Its sensuality and feeling of visceral communion borders on the blasphemous. The voices might be mortal lovers,
the song an act of procreation.’

Jack ignored him, preferring to concentrate on practicalities because of the danger of Fyrd and his consciousness of the bodies that still lay below.

‘Since they don’t seem to know we’re here,’ he said, ‘we’ll stay just as we are until the mist clears or they show themselves. My guess is that they managed
to escape the carnage below and have gone into hiding until they think the coast is clear.’

Stort hauled up his trews.

‘This song is a liturgical rite of some kind, a song of celebration for lives led and a farewell to those who can no longer share the future. It will be followed by a funeral.’

Jack quietly packed up the camp while Katherine made breakfast for them all.

‘We can’t be sure the Fyrd won’t return,’ said Jack. ‘In fact I think they will, and we’re going to have to get out of here fast sooner rather than later.
Stort, if you’ve business here, the moment the mist clears you’d better see to it. These choristers may know about the musical instrument.’

‘The Quinterne. They almost certainly do; the question is will they tell me what they know? Knowledge of its
musica
may help us in some way in the weeks to come if and when we find
the gem of Autumn.’

‘Not if, when,’ said Jack. ‘We have to find it.’

‘Why should they tell us?’ said Katherine, giving him some mead to fortify him for the day.

‘Why indeed?’ said Stort. ‘If Brief couldn’t get it out of them, why should I do any better?’

The sun rose higher and burnt off the mist, revealing the three bodies among the rocks. Already rooks were hopping from rock to rock, eyeing each other, negotiating a pecking order.

‘Look!’ said Jack, ‘There!’

A tall and sturdy young hydden emerged from the mist halfway up the hill. He was leading a much older one, white of hair and hunched, out of a cave and down the slippery slope.

He did so with infinite care, holding the older one’s hand and waiting patiently while he summoned up strength and perhaps courage for the next alarming step downwards.

In this way, very slowly, they made it safely back to the riverside, stopping finally a few yards from the corpses.

They stared at them in very evident distress, bewildered and uncertain about what to do. Occasionally they broke into song, but it was in snatches and undirected, as if it was their way of
thinking and talking to each other.

‘Time for us to join them,’ said Jack, ‘and make ourselves known. You go ahead, Stort, and greet them; I might scare them off.’

It was a good suggestion.

Stort meandered down the slope, humming as he went, his tall gangly figure and long, thin stave and the way the morning sun caught his unruly red hair making him look the very picture of
harmless eccentricity.

He waved a greeting long before he reached them.

They seemed surprised and wary, but after a brief consultation between themsselves, after which the younger of the two cautiously picked up a very sturdy-looking stave, they acknowledged him
with a wave in return.

Jack and Katherine stayed in the shadows until Stort was closer and had said his piece.

‘My dear brethren,’ he called out from the other side of the river, ‘I, we, saw the cause of your distress yestereve.’

‘We saw and watched you,’ said the young one, who had a good, strong voice to fit his frame. ‘But you’ll forgive us, pilgrim . . . we have been witness to vile murder and
must mourn good brothers who are now lost friends. Where are the two we saw with you?’

‘Hiding,’ said Stort frankly, ‘for fear of frightening you away.’

‘Why are you here? We have no visitors for months on end and then the Fyrd – may the Mirror take them back into its light so they are seen no more – and yourselves arrive.
Something’s strange with the world. Now . . . now . . .’

He turned away and the two brethren stared at their fallen comrades helplessly.

Stort signalled to Jack and Katherine and they crossed the bridge.

After a while, in which the two brothers chanted in low voices, Stort said, ‘I don’t know why I was drawn to come. It felt in the wyrd of things to do so. My mentor, Master Brief,
came many years ago.’

The old one looked up.

‘You knew him, the Master Scrivener of Brum?’

‘He was as good as a father to me, brother.’

‘He must be white-haired by now.’

‘He is no more,’ said Stort. ‘He was killed by a representative of the Emperor of the Hyddenworld this Summer gone. He . . .’

They stared at each other mutely by the stream which flowed as quietly as their unspoken tears.

‘My name is Bedwyn Stort. This is Katherine, mother of the Shield Maiden . . .’

The two brothers looked astonished.

‘This is Jack, Stavemeister of Brum and a giant-born. Some who know the legends of Beornamund might fairly say . . .’

‘They might fairly say,’ said the old hydden, ‘that he is
the
giant-born.’

‘They might,’ said Stort.

‘Or they might not,’ grinned Jack. ‘If you need help . . .’

‘We need help to make a pyre, that is what we need.’

Jack and Stort exchanged glances. Ritual and the courtesies of death were all very well but down there in the meadow, surrounded by hills, they were dangerously exposed. The mist had all but
cleared, the sun was rising, it was the kind of day that Fyrd, perhaps still seeking something they had not found, would come back.

‘Join us,’ said the young one, and they did, standing in a circle around the three sorry bodies of the monks.

‘Brothers,’ said Stort, ‘the Fyrd will come back. If they do it will be in numbers, and we are in no position to defend ourselves. Therefore . . .’

They nodded as if they understood and silence fell while they thought.

Finally the old one said, ‘The names of our comrades were Compline, Sext and None . . .’

‘Named after the liturgical hours of one of the human Christian sects,’ murmured Stort.

‘You are well informed, Master Stort. It was a usage of those who founded Mortaine many centuries ago. They founded, too, one of the great choirs in Christendom of which we two, old and
young, are the remaining survivors and with us the music of the heavens that we sing.’

‘So you are the Kapellmeister of this abbey who, if I remember right, is given the title, Meister Laud,’ said Stort respectfully, ‘and your good, bold friend must be Terce.
First and third of the canonical hours.’