Great Britain -- History -- Henry VII, 1485-1509 -- Fiction; Historical fiction
“Was there any one else?”
“No. ’Tis a lonely place--a great wold. There was a dog running
about--not mine. I’m thankful to ye, but I think my leg’s broken, and
my head is singing, singing.”
“Do you know the wold? Where is the house you were going to?”
“It’s Gaffer Garrow, the shepherd. There’s the wold hostel, too--the
Good Man. But it’s not a good inn--they be robbers! My head is singing.”
“Let’s see if canst stand. Now arms about shoulders. So!”
Half carrying him, they followed the stream. When he failed, Englefield
carried him outright. So they went, very slowly, down the hollow land,
a long way, until they saw Gaffer Garrow’s furze heap and hut. An old
man and woman and a shepherd lad and a girl came forth to meet them.
“Alack and alack, and Jack, what’s happened?”
Diccon Dawn, it seemed, could set a bone. When it was done and the
sailor on his straw bed, with gaffer and gammer and younger brother and
sister to his hand, Diccon and Alice Dawn went on over the wold. The
young girl walked a little way with them to show the way, seeing that
they were going to the sea. “You will come to the Good Man, but I would
not lodge there. Then you will come to three trees, then will be wold a
long way, then you will smell the sea.”
At turning, she said. “Our Jack might have died there, earth over him!
Our Lady must have been walking before you. I see Her sometimes in the
even, walking the wold.”
They walked it, the girl returning to her hut, and they seemed to be
alone, except for Silver Cross rising.
The Good Man topped a low wave of the April earth. They saw it against
cool, blue sky, with an ash and an aspen pricked out above either end.
Men and women were in the doorway. Richard Englefield and Morgen Fay
went by, though the host called to them and an urchin came running
after. “Hey! This be the Good Man, the only hostel this half of wold!”
Diccon Dawn shook his head. “We are in haste.”
“I make guess that ye have not the reckoning!” The urchin grinned,
threw dry turf and pebble against them and ran away.
Silence came down around them and upon them and within them. The
sun was westering, the wold growing purple. The stillness became
both fine and vast, a permeating and encirling hush within the hush.
_Wait--wait--wait!_ Out of it or into it pushed shadowy sorrows,
ancient poignancies. The wold grew peopled with these.
The sun descended. The horizon rose up and took it; a chill and
mournful light spread evenly, then withdrew, evenly, slowly. It was
dusk. The wold was spectral; all was spectral.
They came to a ring of ancient stones, placed there long ago by
long-ago inhabitants of that island and now grown about with whin and
thorn and furze. They like the wold, seemed now eternal, now going
away, fading away. It was to rest here and sleep here; it was the best
place. They lay down. There was silence, and still--faint, faint, in
dark lines and pallid silver lines--rose Silver Cross!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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