The Language of Stones

The music stopped and folk set to helping one another clear the stalls and tables away. They muttered that this was unheard of, because the last time the May Pole dance had been washed out was beyond living memory. Will had just finished lending a hand when a cry went up. He turned and saw old Frithwold coming up the track, shaking his fists as he ran.

‘Jack o’ Lantern!’ he wheezed as he reached the Green Man. ‘May Death cut me down if I tell a lie! Jack o’ Lantern’s down in the lanes!’

‘Now, sit down and catch your thoughts, Frith,’ Bregowina, the brewster’s wife, said coolly. ‘There ain’t no warlocks round here.’

‘Sit down be blowed! It be Jack o’ Lantern in the lanes over by Bloody Meadow, I tell you!’

Baldgood peered past his barrels. ‘You’ve had too much of them cider dregs, Frith.’

‘Noooo! It was Jack o’ Lantern, as I live and breathe!’

They settled him down, and the clearing away carried on until all the doors were put back on their hinges and everything was closed up tight. There was no doubting Frithwold believed what he was saying – he was grey in the face and more upset than Will had ever seen him. Groups ofValesmen were muttering to one another, scythes in hand, glancing fearfully down the track. He turned to Baldgood and asked, ‘Who’s Jack o’ Lantern?’

‘You won’t recall him,’ Baldgood said, troubled.

‘Tell me.’

‘He’s a visitor who comes to these parts from time to time. And not such a welcome one neither. You’d’ve been just a babe in arms when last he came this way, or not even born maybe.’

Cuthwal leaned across. ‘We don’t none of us like the looks of him. And we never did.’

Will looked down the lane and saw nothing unusual. ‘Why not?’

‘Because he’s a crow, and up to no good.’

‘Don’t you fear now, Will,’ Baldgood said. ‘There’s a hue and cry gone up after him. Our stout lads’ll drive him off! Now you best get back home.’

Will looked out across the green. Inky clouds filled the sky now. It was almost as dark as night. Then it began to pelt with rain. The May Pole looked forlorn as it swayed with its ribbons streaming out. The wind had got up fiercely and was trying to tear down what was left of the bunting. Bregowina, unruffled as ever, lit candles, and her sons barred the doors. They had just finished when Gifold One-Tooth and both his sons started banging, wanting to be let in. The way they held their pitchforks showed they expected trouble, but nobody had told them what sort.

‘What does Jack o’ Lantern look like?’ Will asked, but nobody answered him.

He folded his arms. No fire burned in the hearth and the only light in the parlour now was from two candles that burned with a quavering, smoky flame. It was a light that did not penetrate far. ‘I’ve never seen a crow. Is that the same as a warlock?’

‘None of them knows much about what Jack o’ Lantern looks like, Will.’

He turned at the voice that came from the back of the room. At the table in the corner shadows sat Tilwin. He had found a place where nobody had noticed him. His hat was in front of him on the table, and he was thumbing the edge of a long, thin knife. He said, ‘The only man in Nether Norton who ever challenged Jack o’ Lantern face to face was Evergern the Potter, and he’s been dead these ten years.’

‘What are you doing, skulking back there?’ Gifold demanded, as if he was speaking to a ghost.

‘Minding my own business, Gif. Like you should be doing.’ Tilwin leaned forward and turned his gaze on the rest of them. ‘I slipped in quiet, so I did, while you were all running about down the way like fowls with their heads stricken off. I could have marched an army in here for all you’d have known about it.’

‘You’re a strange customer, and no mistake,’ Baldgood said.

‘That I may be, but let me tell you something about your Jack o’ Lantern – in this part of the Vale you call him by that name and say he’s a crow. Others further down call him “Merlyn”, or “Master Merlyn” to be correct about it, though that isn’t his true name. Down by Great Norton they say he’s “Erilar” and claim he’s a warlock. While over at Bruern they put the name “Finnygus” on him and fetch their horses to him to benefit from his leechcraft. But none of them knows who he is, for Jack casts a weirder light than any lantern ever I saw.’ Tilwin leaned further forward until the candlelight caught in his blue eyes. ‘He runs deep does our friend Jack. Deep as the Kyle of Stratha. Nor does he suffer fools easily. So if he’s got business in this place, I’d let him finish it without hindrance – if I were you.’

There was silence. Like everyone else, Will listened and held his peace. He didn’t understand much of what had been said, but the thrill of excitement at Tilwin’s words made the hairs rise up on the back of his neck.

‘Now that’s enough of that kind of talk,’ Baldgood muttered, bustling out from behind his counter. ‘Willand! Now, I thought I told you to get on home?’

Will went to the door but after what Tilwin had said home seemed a long way to go in the pitch dark. In truth it was no more than a furlong – a couple of hundred paces – but it was still raining hard. He poked his head outside. Water was trickling down the track. Where only a short while before there had been dry dust, now there was a stream. He jumped out into the night and set off at a run until the light from the alehouse gave out. Then he stubbed his toe painfully on a flint and almost fell. After that he groped his way along by the side of the green. His shirt was soaked. Every village door was closed and every shutter barred tight.

So much for welcoming the summer in, he thought as he felt twigs snapping in the grass under his feet. His outstretched hands met the deeply grooved bark of the Old Oak. He paused, listening. Overhead, leaves were rattling in the downpour, and there was something eerie about the sound, as if the tree was talking to itself.

He shook the water out of his eyes and peered into the dark to where a faint bar of yellow light escaped under a door. Home. He stumbled towards it, and soon his fingers felt a familiar latch.

The light guttered in the draught as he came in, then steadied. He saw Breona and Eldmar, his mother and father, standing together by the unlit hearth, and there, seated before them, was a stranger.

The figure was wrapped in a mouse-brown cloak with a hood that shadowed his face. Will’s heart beat against his ribs. He was about to speak when his father told him sternly: ‘Go up to bed, Willand.’

‘But Father—’

‘Will! Do as I tell you!’

Eldmar had never barked at him like that before. He looked from face to face, scared now. He wanted to go to his mother’s side, but his father was not to be argued with, and Will obeyed. He felt his knees give slightly as he climbed the ladder into the rafters, and dived straight to his nest in the loft. There he lay on the bag of straw that served as his bed. It was warm and smoky up here under the eaves. His wet hair stuck to his forehead and his shirt was clammy on his back as his hand sought out the comfort of a stout wooden threshing flail. He moved as quietly as he could to the edge of the loft where he could watch and listen, telling himself that if anything happened he would pull back the hurdles, jump down and set about the stranger.

But if this was Jack o’ Lantern, he was nothing like the warlock the men had spoken about. By his knee there rested a staff a full fathom in length, fashioned from a kind of wood that had a marvellous sheen to it. The stranger himself had a pale, careworn face, with a long nose and longer beard. The hair of his beard might once have been the colour of corn or copper, but it had faded to badger shades of grey. He was swathed in a wayfarer’s cloak that was made of shreds, and at times seemed almost colourless in the flickering tallow light. Beneath his hood he wore a skullcap, but under the hem of his belted gown his long legs were without hose and his feet unshod. There were many cords about his neck, and among the amulets and charms that rattled at his chest, a bird’s skull.

‘It is said that eavesdroppers will often pick up things they do not like to hear,’ the stranger said. His voice was quiet, yet it carried. It was touched with a strangeness that made Will think of faraway places.

‘Why can’t you leave us alone?‘Will’s mother whispered.

‘Because promises were made. You know why I am here. I must have him.’

At that, Will felt an icy fist clutch him. His world suddenly lurched and refused to right itself. He heard his father say, ‘But those promises were made thirteen years ago!’

‘What does the passage of time signify when a promise is made?’

‘We’ve grown to love him as you said we should!’

‘A promise is eternal. Have you forgotten how matters stood when you made it? You and your good wife were childless, denied the joys that parents know. How dearly you wished for a baby boy of your own. And then one night, on the third day past Cuckootide, I came to you with a three-day-old babe and your misery was at an end.’

‘You can’t take him back!’ Will’s mother shrieked.

The stranger made suddenly as if to rise. Will’s parents took a step back as his grip tightened on the flail. ‘He is no longer a boy. A child you wanted, and a child I brought. But now the child is become a man – a man – and I must have this son of Beltane as we agreed. I said there would be an errand for him, and so there is.’

A dark gulf of silence stood between them for a moment, then the stranger spoke subtle words and Eldmar and Breona hung their heads and made no further argument.

Up in his loft Will found himself numbed to the marrow of his bones. He began to tremble. Whether it was from shock or fear or the working of evil magic he could not tell. As the stranger rose, Will’s grip tightened on the threshing flail, but when he looked again there was nothing in his hand but a wooden spoon, and the flail was nowhere to be seen.

‘Call the lad down,’ the stranger suggested. ‘Tell him he has no need to fear me.’

Eldmar called, and Will came down the ladder as if his arms and legs had minds of their own. He felt his father’s hands on his shoulders, but his father’s face betrayed only heartsickness. ‘Forgive me if you can, Willand,’ he said simply. ‘I should have had the courage to tell you sooner.’

‘Tell me what?’ Will asked, blinking. ‘I won’t go with him. He’s a warlock, and I won’t go with him!’

‘You must, son.’ Eldmar’s face remained grim. ‘Thirteen years ago we gave our word. We swore to keep the manner of your coming to us a secret. We swore because we so wanted a boy of our own. Each year that passed sons came to others, but never to us. You seemed like our blessing.’

Will drew a hollow breath. ‘You…should have told me.’