Aunt Beck, as I hoped, was distracted. “It was our obvious choice, Aileen,” she told me. “We were in a strange land with no money, no food, no transport, and we had a task to do. All kings are supposed to be generous, provided you can give them a high enough reason. And, as you see, it worked – although I must say,” she went on in a most disapproving way, “I’d not expected to find a fat man snoring in a smoky barn and clinging to his geas as an excuse to be lazy. If I were his wife now – and I think his queen must be as bad as he is – I wouldn’t stand for it longer than a week.”
And she was off on a tirade about King Colm and his court that lasted until we reached the first of the hills. She seemed to have noticed far more details than I had. She mentioned everything, from the dust on the king’s chair to the squalor in the farmyard. I remember her going on about the gravy stains on the king’s clothes, the laziness of his household, his underfed pigs and the ungroomed state of his horses, but I didn’t attend very hard. My attention kept being drawn to a softness and a throbbing by my shins.
I kept looking down, but there was nothing in the cart but our bags and the food. In the end, I reached down and felt at the place. My fingers met whiskers, a cold nose and a couple of firm, upstanding ears on a large round head. It was as I half expected: Plug-Ugly. Invisible. Who would have thought such an ill-looking and magical cat could have such very soft fur? I couldn’t resist stroking him – he was like warm velvet – and I could easily do this unnoticed, since Ivar was staring moodily over the edge of the cart, highly offended by Aunt Beck’s accusations, and Aunt Beck herself was haranguing the landscape.
Actually, Finn was listening to her as he trotted beside the cart. “Hold your horses, Wisdom!” he protested as Aunt Beck moved on to the tumbledown state of the huts in the farmyard. “Why should a king be grand? Give me a reason.”
“For an example to the rest,” my aunt retorted. “For standards of course. And talking of standards …” And she was off again, this time about the responsibilities of a king to set an example to his subjects.
Plug-Ugly purred. He rumbled so loudly I was amazed none of the others heard. Or maybe Green Greet did. He interrupted Aunt Beck’s discourse by saying, “Claws and teeth, claws and teeth underneath!”
But no one took any notice, except my aunt, who turned to the parrot and said, “If that’s aimed at me, shut your beak, my good bird, or you’ll be sorry!”
Green Greet rolled his wise eyes around to her and stopped speaking.
The hills, as I said, were hard for Moe the donkey, and for Finn, who puffed and panted and went pink in the face, but like nothing to the rest of us. Bernica is a low country, with lumps in it, and nothing like the deep slopes of Skarr. As Moe toiled up the hill, I looked around at the green, green landscape dappled with moving patches of sun from among the moist purple clouds, and I thought I had never seen such lovely countryside. It came on to rain near the top of the hill and at once there was a rainbow arching over it all. I found it glorious.
“Pah!” said Aunt Beck. “Wet.”
I could tell she was in a really bad mood. When Aunt Beck gets like that, the safest thing is to keep quiet, but none of the other three seemed to understand this. Finn said soothingly, “Ah, but Wisdom, the rain is what greens our lovely island so.”
Aunt Beck made a low growling noise. She hates being soothed.
Then Ivar asked innocently, “Where are we going? Do you know the way?”
“To the next town of course!” Aunt Beck snapped. “Cool Knock or some such name.”
“Coolochie, Wisdom,” Finn corrected her.
“And of course I know the way!” snarled my aunt. “I was here as a girl, for my sins.”
“But—” said Ivar.
Ogo tried to help. “The prince really means,” he said, “what is our route? Don’t we have to make for Gallis?”
This got him in trouble from two directions. Ivar said, “Don’t speak for me. Dolt!”
Aunt Beck glared at Ogo and snapped, “Naturally, we do, you great fool! We go south-east, down to the Straits of Charka, and find another boat. Do you think I don’t know what I’m doing?”
Ivar still didn’t seem to understand. “How do we go? Is it very far?” he said.
“Shut up,” said my aunt. “You’re a fool too!”
Ivar looked so puzzled at this that Finn sidled up to him and whispered, “It will be three or four days for the journey. Bernica is larger than Skarr, but not so large as Logra.”
“Did the boy learn no geography?” Aunt Beck asked the wet sky.
After this, I cannot remember anyone else speaking much for the rest of the day. We stopped for a silent picnic of bread, ham and plums and then went on across the green pillowy plain. By dusk it was raining really hard and quite obvious that we were not going to make Coolochie that day. We were forced to stop at a damp little inn for the night.
Aunt Beck glowered at the rain pattering off its thatch and the green moss growing up its walls. “I hate Bernica!” she said.
I sometimes wonder if my story would have been different if the beds in the inn had been comfortable. They were not. The mattresses seemed to have been stuffed with gorse bushes. They prickled and they rustled and the bed frames creaked, and I know it was hours until I got to sleep – and I only slept when Plug-Ugly came creeping in beside me, warm and soft. Aunt Beck probably had a worse night than I did. When I got up soon after cockcrow, she was still fast asleep, looking exhausted. I crept away downstairs where I found that Ivar had ordered a splendid breakfast for himself and Ogo and Finn, but forgotten Aunt Beck and me entirely.
“I’ll order more for you now,” he said. “Does Beck want any?”
My aunt never eats much for breakfast, but she does like her tea. When I asked in the kitchen, they only had nettle tea. No camomile, no thyme, no rosehip. I told them to take her up a mug of what they had and went out into the yard to see to Moe. Ogo had made sure she was fed luckily, and brushed her down, and Plug-Ugly was sitting in the cart, fully visible, eating the rest of the ham. I went and sat with him and finished most of the bread, and most of the plums.
“You are a strange creature,” I said to him. “What are you really?”
He just rubbed his head against my arm and purred. So we sat happily side by side until an uproar broke out in the inn. I could hear the landlord and his wife protesting mightily, sharp cracks of anger from Aunt Beck, Finn shouting for peace and Ivar yelling that it was not his fault. Shortly, both Ogo and Ivar shot into the yard, still eating, and Finn hurried after them, feeding a handful of raisins to Green Greet.
“What is going on?” I said.
“Your aunt’s being a sow!” Ivar said through his mouthful.
“Sure, she meant for us to eat in the cart as we travelled,” Finn explained.
It turned out that Aunt Beck had not budgeted for our stay at the inn, nor for the breakfasts – Ivar and Ogo had of course eaten the food they’d ordered for me. And Plug-Ugly and I had eaten the rest of the food in the cart. Aunt Beck was furious because this meant that we had to buy food in Coolochie now. I must say I didn’t feel this was a very good reason for being so angry. I put it down to the bad night on the bad bed, and I sympathised with Ivar when he kept saying, “She could have told us!”
We set off under another rainbow – a great double one – as a very subdued group, Aunt Beck all upright, with her mouth pressed into an angry line, and the rest of us hardly daring to say a word. Only Green Greet said anything, and he kept squawking, “Double bow, double measure!” Aunt Beck shot him looks as she drove, as if she was longing to wring his green feathery neck.
We